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Why should we be worried?

In all of history, mankind has never become dependent on any resource, like they have on fossil fuels. Our addiction for oil goes way beyond that of a transportation fuel. The extent of our dependence on fossil fuel is best described in the preface to the book titled "Oil" by Matthew Yeomans."

From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, oil controls our lives. Its influence reaches far into politics, international affairs, global economies, human rights, and environmental health of our planet.

The most obvious way that oil dominates us, of course, is transportation. Oil powers 97 percent of America's transportation needs and over half the oil we consume daily goes to keeping our cars and trucks on the roads. Thats one barrel out of every 7 used in the world. Not surprisingly, United States has more automobiles than any other country; in fact, it has more cars and trucks than it has people.

But oil is far more important to modern society than simply as fuel for our automobiles and airplanes. Oil provides the heat in the winter for millions of American homes, and it accounts for 40% of our total energy needs. Without oil, there would be no plastics, nor many of the chemical-based medicines we take for granted. Perhaps most important, America would go hungry without oil: commercial agriculture would grind to a halt without oil to run farm and food processing machinery or to make fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

To better understand oil's impact on our lives, I devised a little experiment. I would spend a day without oil. How hard could that be ? After all, I live in Brooklyn so I'd already won half the battle; I'd leave the car on the street and hope I didn't pick up a parking ticket.

I began in the bathroom. I'd have to carry off the rough-and-ready look this morning as petroleum products play a role in my shampoo, shaving cream, and deodorant. There was also going to be a lot of water to clear up--my plastic shower curtain is also an oil product.

Brushing my teeth became a far less appealing experience without the benefit of toothpaste, whose ingredients include petrochemical-enhanced artificial coloring and mineral oils. (But at least I still had my own teeth. If I'd worn petroleum-based dentures, I'd be gumming my way through this particular day.)

As it was, I was going to have to make do with only limited vision as both my contact lenses and plastic-lens eyeglasses came from petrochemicals. And I'd have to skip putting on lip balm; thats petroleum oil. Worse still, I'd have to dress my six month old son in cloth diapers instead of normal disposable ones. ( What a day to have made the switch to solid food! )

Next came the problem of what to wear. Typically, I live in sneakers but not today--I had to search out an old pair of non rubber-soled leather shoes. It was raining outside but I had to forgo any waterproof outerwear. Goretex, it turns out, is yet another genius invention of the petrochemical industry.

I left my house and immediately encountered another problem. All New York streets are paved with asphalt, the sticky by-product that remains after refining crude oil to extract its more lucrative properties, like gasoline and heating oil. Lacking powers of levitation, and with not an inch of grass in sight, I had to admit defeat on this point. I traipsed slightly forlorn to my neighborhood cafe for breakfast. Eggs and coffee came courtesy of a nonstick pan and a heat-resistant glass pot--products of the petrochemical industry. Defeated again. At least I could pay in cash. All credit and debit cards are oil products.

On my return home, I realized this wasn't going to be the most productive day of my working life because I couldn't use the computer or telephone, both of which are housed in plastic. Neither could I kick back and listen to music or watch a movie--CDs and DVDs also contain oil. Perhaps then I could just go and play a round of golf? Stuck again: golf balls contain polybutadiene, another petrochemical.

The list of off-limit items continued. Bandages, blenders, garbage bags, glue, pacemakers, and pantyhose (the latter two not being items I needed on this particular day) all got their start as oil. This whole day-without-oil thing was beginning to to give me a headache. Perhaps I should just take a few aspirin and forget about the whole thing. You guessed it: Aspirin is another proud legacy of oil."



Fossil Fuel and Farming

What most people don't realize is that a huge amount of energy is spent to produce the food we eat. In fact, 17 % of all hydrocarbons used in the U.S., is consumed by the food production system.

Most food is now produced by large industrial scale, centralized agricultural facilities, which use energy-intensive farming procedures. Enormous quantities of hydrocarbons are needed to power heavy farming machinery, to process foods, to refrigerate foods during transportation, to produce packaging and to manufacture and transports agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.

The production of 1 kilo gram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel alone, not taking into account the Natural Gas feed stock. In the year from June 30, 2001 until June 30, 2002, the U.S used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer. That equates to the energy content of 15.3 to 21.6 billion liters of diesel fuel or 96 to 124 million barrels.

On top of the diminishing availability of fossil fuel, post peak oil agriculture has to content with falling grain production per capita, availability of fresh water, salinization of soil, erosion of topsoil, pests/insects with evolving immunities to pesticides/insecticides etc.

Ethanol Fantasy

Ethanol makes a wonderful public spectacle. It rests on a lie: it doesn't take near as much energy in the production of ethanol compared to the energy produced by the ethanol product.

Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).

In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that :

  • Corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than fuel produced;
  • switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
  • wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
  • soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
  • sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
According to another study by Hosein Shapouri, James A. Duffield, and Michael S. Graboski, Agricultural Economics Report No. (AER721) 24 pp, July 1995, ethanol has a paltry EROEI of 1.24. This means to produce 25 million barrels of ethanol per day, industry would have to use 20 million barrels as feed stock, an implausible task.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that world grain consumption will increase by 20 million tons this year, roughly 1%. Of that, 14 million tons will be used to fuel cars in the U.S., leaving only six million tons to cover the world's growing food needs.

Between 1950 and 1990 grain yields more than doubled, but they have grown much more slowly since. Production rose from around 630 million tons to 1.78 billion tons, but has only edged up in the past 15 years, to around 2 billion tons.

According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, just a single fill of ethanol for a four-wheel drive SUV, uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year. This year the amount of US corn going to make the fuel will equal what it sells abroad; traditionally its exports have helped feed 100 - mostly poor - countries.

Brazil is being touted as a model of energy independence through sugar based ethanol, but not according to Kenji de Souza writing from Brazil.

So clearly the cure is worse than the disease.

Hydrogen Humbug!

Hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant element in the universe. Hydrogen can be produced from a wide variety of domestic resources using a number of different technologies. Fuel cells harness the chemical energy of hydrogen to generate electricity without combustion or pollution.

Fill vehicle fuel tanks with it instead of gasoline. Pipe it to homes for heating and cooking instead of natural gas and to generate electricity on site instead of sending electricity through transmission lines. And emit only water vapor where it is used. Fuel cells that electrochemically combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and heat offer the promise of making hydrogen an ideal universal fuel. Make that an ideal energy carrier rather than a fuel, because while hydrogen does grow on trees and fall with the rain, it does not occur naturally by itself. It cannot be mined or harvested. But other energy sources can be used to make hydrogen, and then the hydrogen transported or stored for use where and when needed.

And now let's look at the reality:

Hydrogen, at about 18 atomic percentage, is the most common element in the earth's crust. However, due to its low density, this corresponds to less than 1 wt percentage, placing hydrogen 9th in order of occurrence by mass. Hydrogen does not occur to any significant extent on earth in its elemental form, although it is vastly more commonplace in outer space.

Hydrogen does not occur naturally in the free, elemental state and is therefore not readily available. It is always present as water (H2O), as hydrocarbons (mostly alkanes, CNH2N+2) and a few other compounds. Dry coals contain about 4-6 wt% of hydrogen, compared to about 12.5 wt% in gasoline. Hydrogen is therefore a secondary energy source like electricity. It must first be extracted from those materials in which it occurs. In all cases, this requires a substantial investment of energy - energy that today must be obtained from another, typically non-renewable and 'dirty' source such as oil or coal.

Most hydrogen production today is by steam reforming natural gas. But natural gas is already a good fuel and one that is rapidly becoming scarcer and more expensive. It is also a fossil fuel, so the carbon dioxide released in the reformation process adds to the greenhouse effect. Hydrogen has very high energy for its weight, but very low energy for its volume, so new technology is needed to store and transport it. And fuel cell technology is still in early development, needing improvements in efficiency and durability.

Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density (energy content per unit volume), whether as liquid, gas or compressed gas or even when absorbed on or in any of the materials that have been proposed for its storage. The liquid must also be cooled (at very high energy cost), stored and transported at cryogenic temperatures. These factors raise major engineering issues in storage and transportation. The chemical and petroleum industries mostly use hydrogen close to where it is made. Thus, transportation issues seldom arise and the hydrogen is treated and evaluated economically as just another commodity chemical.

Because of its low energy density, considerable energy must be used, not only to manufacture, but also to compress and/or store hydrogen and to move it through pipelines at high pressure. When all energy requirements are considered, much more energy is required to make and deliver hydrogen than can be recovered from it.

Electrolysis can electrochemically split water into hydrogen and oxygen in essentially the reverse of the reaction in a fuel cell. To make sense for large-scale use, this process must use an inexpensive source of electricity. Even with low cost electricity, splitting water consumes more energy than the energy released from the subsequent hydrogen produced.

source: Washington Post

If you are interested in reading further on this topic, I suggest you read tmgtech's work.

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