I think we've talked about this before. I am skeptical of the value of
this comparison. For example, in 27 grams of aluminum, there are
~~600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. Interesting to know, but only
useful to a scientist/engineer.
In the biomass -> gasoline comparison, they say that burning that
gallon releases 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. What about the other
several tons of matter? Well it was lost at some point in decomposition.
It's just a 'wow' factor, just to say how inefficient our energy source
is. It is farily misleading and useless. It could also make the
uninformed person think that growing any sort of crop for fuel is idiotic.
--
--
Martin Klingensmith
http://infoarchive.net/
http://nnytech.net/
murdoch wrote:
> Yes, we've seen this person's research before, but it bears repeating
> for those who might not have seen it.
>
>
> Discover Data: What's in a Gallon of Gas?
> By Susan Kruglinski
> DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 04 | April 2004 | Environment
>
> What's in a Gallon of Gas?
>
> Everyone knows fossil fuels come from long-dead plants, but Jeffrey
> Dukes wanted real numbers: How much plant matter does it take to make
> a gallon of gasoline? Dukes, a biologist, ecologist, and dabbler in
> biogeochemistry at the University of Massachusetts, discovered that
> such statistics are hard to find. So he decided to figure them out
> for himself and was surprised by the answers. A gallon of gas
> represents roughly 100 tons of plant matter, the amount that exists
> in 40 acres of wheat. Burning that gallon puts 20 pounds of carbon
> dioxide into the air. The annual consumption of gasoline in the
> United States, about 131 billion gallons of gas, is equivalent to 25
> quadrillion pounds of prehistoric biomass and releases some 2.6
> trillion pounds of carbon dioxide. The numbers are even more sobering
> when you consider all the fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, and oil—
> that people consume. Since 1751, roughly the start of the Industrial
> Revolution, humans have burned the amount of fossil fuel that would
> have come from all the plants on Earth for 13,300 years. "We know
> that fossil-fuel use is not sustainable in the long run," Dukes
> says. "This study will, I hope, encourage people to face up to the
> energy problem now."
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