Charlie Bell
Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:59:05 -0800
On 19/02/2010, at 3:16 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Charlie Bell <char...@culturelist.org> > wrote: > >> >> >> On 18/02/2010, at 11:29 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > snip > >>>> You'd be surprised. My maths isn't great (ie i'm not a natural >>>> mathematician), but my chemistry is fine... >>> >>> The US uses about 20 million bbs of oil per day. How much electric >>> power would it take to make that much synthetic oil. >> >> What do you want synthetic oil for, except as plastic feedstock? Please >> explain what you're trying to do with that much sythetic oil, other than >> attempt to keep running the same kinds of ICE powered vehicles that we do >> today? > > What it would be used for wasn't part of the question. But how do you > propose to power aircraft, heavy trucks and ships after we run out of > fossil fuels? Also, how long will it take to replace ICE powered > vehicles?
Well, your question was "how do you replace the entire current US oil usage with synthetic oil". Which is the wrong question, IMO. It's "how much synthetic oil do we need to run those things we can't do other ways". So the first question is "how much can we reduce the need for oil before we're lowering standard of living". How much of that oil is wasted in profligate burning... I'll come back to this later today or tomorrow - haven't got time to look carefully at the discussion (explain below). But cheers for discussing, always interesting. > > snip > >>>> Examples such as water tanks, solar hot water, decent insulation are small >>>> steps that if taken by large numbers of people can massively lower the >>>> demand for energy. >>> >>> That's not as true as most people hope. All the saving you can make >>> in a year are blown on one short aircraft trip. >> >> If you're talking per capita CO2 emissions, yes you're correct. If we're >> talking energy usage across a city (especially mainly suburban cities like >> in Australia), we're talking significant savings through these steps - >> they're the low-hanging fruit that it's crazy not to get on with. Tanks >> compared to desalination, for example, are so sensible and yet there's a >> push from politicians to huge wasteful desal. We've got our per capita mains >> consumption down to under 100l a day, and a few more changes to our home >> system will take us to using no more than 10l/pp/pd. This across a city the >> size of Melbourne can save at least 200gigalitres per annum, which would >> save building the 788GWh per annum > > 788/8760 is 90 MW. ie a whole power station you don't have to build... >> \ >> Please, show your working. I don't disbelieve you but if you can point to >> work on this I will read, ponder and digest. As always. > > Not my work. Try here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3091 Cheers. Will look tonight (not delaying, just the time difference to here and that I'm doing a hundred mile bike ride today - it's 05:45 and I've got collect a carload of people and bikes and get out to the start). C. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com