[ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 02:00:26PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote:
> > so everything needs to be driven from renewable only
> 
> There is nothing like renewable. If you are talking about the Sun (wind),

Renewable on a scale distinctly shorter than well-fermented dead dinos.

> there is no greater energy spending around, than this of our star. Like

4 MT/s total flux, 2 kg/s (2 Hz of Tsar bombas) just what Earth intecepts.
A factor of 10^4 in excess of our current needs.

> every star it burning mostly in vain.
> 
> (Putting down star fires is a must.)
> 
> A postmodernist friend said to me the other day. Can you imagine the energy
> inefficiency going with the BMW for a bucket of parsley to the supermarket?

Nevermind that in the US, you're putting 10 buckets of dead dino for
each bucket of parsley, without even having fired up your BMW.
 
> I told him, that in the whole energy chain needed  for this parsley, the
> Mother Nature did it at least 1000 times worse than this BMW driver to the
> mole and back.

Even today's biofuels have an abysmal photosynthetic energy efficiency.
 
> 
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:02:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway
> > >
> > > ### Why?
> > >
> > > (only technical/economic issues, no eco-freak-caused legal/political
> > > obstacles, please)
> >
> > It is funny you make that stipulation to me in particular.
> >
> > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030
> > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven
> > from renewable only. At this point your source of carbon can be abitrary,
> > including direct CO2 capture from air, or scrubbing flue gas.
> >
> > See http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > extropy-chat mailing list
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >

> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org
AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B  47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5