[extropy-chat] OIL: Albertan tar sands, was Peak Oil?

[The Avantguardian]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > "The energy balance is favorable; under a
> conservative life-cycle 
> > analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for
> every 1 unit used 
> > in production."
> > 
> > =Let's burn some fossil hydrocarbons so we have
> process heat to
> > extract
> > fossil hydrocarbons so we can burn those fossil
> hydrocarbons, too.
> > This is not very good. Using nuclear process heat
> to extract fossil
> > hydrocarbons just for chemical feedstock is only
> moderately better. 
> 
> Ah.  True - but it strikes me that solar heaters
> would be ideal for
> this sort of thing.  Easy to port from field to
> field (moreso than
> nuclear or even fossil fueled, with no reactor or
> combustion chamber),
> no waste products (after the solar panels have been
> manufactured), et
> cetera and so forth.

I like the idea of solar powered heaters better for
getting oil out shale, but every advance that aids in
the burning of yet more hydrocarbons is an advance to
the rear. That is, to say, a step backward. We know
the health and environmental impact of burning
hyrocarbons, yet we do it any way. And the oil
companies are probably not going to rest until, we
have burned every last drop of oil on the planet. All
the carbon that has gone to ground over a billion
years released back into the atmosphere in less than a
millenium. And with all the deforestation it will be a
long time before all that carbon gets scrubbed back
out of our atmosphere. And if there are abiotic oil
sources, we will end up with more carbon in the
atmosphere than was ever there before. All in all a
losing proposition as hydrocarbons will never get us
to the stars.
   

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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