Hope in the energy crisis

[kanis]

I was listening to NPR's environmental podcast, and they have a series of stories about alternative energy sources for the future. Some are rather depressing, like the notion of mountaintop removal to get at oil shale, using new methods to process it into oil at $30 a barrel. In one sense, these ideas alleviate my concerns about "Peak Oil" being

Comments

[draque]

My big worry about converting shale to oil is that it currently takes more energy to create it than can justify its existence. That is to say, the machinery used to extract and refine it would use more energy than they would put out in the form of new oil. It's going to be a few decades until it's a truly do-or-die situation, so we have time to refine the technology... but it's still worrysome.

[kanis]

Well, the system this guy has going produces oil from oil shale at $30 a barrel, far less than the current $80. I don't know how that equates to how much energy is used to get at it vs how much you get from it, but it's obviously to the point you aren't spending more to get it than you get from it.

As I said, it doesn't make me feel any better about fixing global warming, but because of creative technologies like this, and the fact we can save so much with simple conservation, I think oil availability and price will probably not skyrocket out of control. You'll just keep seeing these spikes and a gradual overall increase.

[0rcinus]

The world really needs to start looking at non-oil alternatives. While an 85% reduction is good, it still grows the problem [ green house gasses ]. My question is where are they gonna grow the grass? On farmland instead of growing food?

If this method uses grass, perhaps lawn clippings should be collected separately from the garbage to be turned into fuel. There are certainly plenty of lawns around the world and it wouldn't take up land to grow fuel instead of food.

[kanis]

This is a good question to research. From my limited understanding, it takes a lot of extra energy to coax corn to grow, but grass grows in far more places without intervention. All plants convert solar energy into something substantive, and it only seems natural to harness that energy with technologies like this, which they mentioned can be used on many types of plants (or maybe anything with stems?). If you consider that ultimately, solar energy powers all life, I think there is enough of it to power cars and whatnot, especially if humans can curb their population and not be so wasteful. Eventually, I think humans will get energy in a more direct manner, using some sort of engineered plant-like form to turn solar energy into electricity or chemical energy. For now, they're just working on getting it more efficiently from existing plant forms. I've also heard of experiments in extracting the electric field from trees.

[0rcinus]

Perhaps it's time to revisit Tesla's research on Free Energy which were suppressed in favor of energy the public had to buy.

Learn about him here.