Non-electric cars haven’t “guzzled” gas – most of them – for decades. There are a few that still do, models like the V8 powered Dodge Charger and Challenger most blatantly – and they are of course on the Automotive Enemies List, compiled by people who use “gas guzzler” in the way that some people (often the same people) use “racist” or “misogynist” to cat-call that which isn’t but which they simply don’t like for reasons of general disagreement.
In any event, why it is the business of the person who didn’t buy the “gas guzzler” and isn’t the one paying for the gas it “guzzles” is a question – per The Chimp – that is rarely asked. It is like Jones bitching about his neighbor’s lawn, which is larger than his own and takes his neighbor more time to mow. The neighbor isn’t knocking on Jones’ door and demanding he mow the lawn, nor pay for the fertilizer, etc.
The whole thing is motivated by nothing more than the offense taken – how dare you! – by people who simply don’t like it that someone else has chosen to buy a car that “guzzles” more gas than they think is proper etiquette.
Oh, yes – there is the bogey about “externalities” – this idea that the guzzling of gas imposes indirect costs, shouldered by others, such as the cost of maintaining carrier groups to protect the oil supply chain (never mind that America was energy independent, oil-wise, when Orange Man Bad) and of course, “climate changing” effusions of atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide, a pre-Rona beta test of kernel-of-truth exaggerated to hysterical proportions in order to impose draconian solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist, in any meaningful sense.
The climate changes. This is news? It gets episodically warmer, then colder. Sometimes more and sometimes less. It is all a function of incredibly complex, interwoven factors (e.g., solar cycles/activity, natural events on earth such as volcanic eruptions) that the “experts” themselves have not divined though many pretend to have certain knowledge of the works, with incredibly simplistic solutions proffered that seem to always entail “sacrifices” by the average guy that always seem to redound to the benefit, financial and otherwise, of the stratified elites most unctuously sermonizing about the necessity of these “sacrifices.”
And now these same people are shoving electric cars down the throats of the average guy like a farmer force-feeding a pate-de-foi-gras goose.
This is interesting, given that electric cars are energy hogs – precisely because they are being force-fed to the average guy as the does-it-all replacement for his not-electric car, even if that car doesn’t “guzzle” gas.
The energy-hogging being a function of the attempt to make electric cars capable of emulating the all-around versatility of not-electric cars, which can easily cruise for hundreds of miles at 70-plus MPH without stopping once along the way, unless the driver wants to.
In an electric car, you have to.
But short range is only one of the EV’s many problems and not the problem as regards energy-hogging, per se – though it does aggravate the problem.
In order to even approach the highway capabilities of any IC car – i.e., to have the ability to travel at speeds of 70-plus MPH for more than 150 miles without having to stop – an electric car must lug around enormous and enormously heavy battery packs. A typical EV battery pack weighs in excess of 1,000 pounds – which is hundreds of pounds more than a fully dressed cast iron big block V8 engine from the “gas hog” muscle car era of the ’60s weighs.
These huge, massively heavy battery packs multiply the EV’s energy inefficiency by increasing the electric car’s weight, enormously. The Tesla3 – which is a small car about the same size as a Honda Civic sedan – weighs an Orca-like 4,000-plus pounds (vs. 2,947 lbs. for the Civic).
It takes more energy to get that weight moving, using more electricity. And then to keep it moving – for the same reason a heavy car with a gas-burning engine burns more gas to keep it moving than a lighter car does.
Physics applies to electric cars as much as it does to IC cars.
Compounding this waste is the general EV emphasis on quickness – “ludicrous speed” – which is emphasized to take the attention off the EV’s abbreviated range, lengthy and inconvenient recharging protocols and ludicrous cost.
Speed also costs energy.
In the form of even larger, even more powerful batteries (and motors) which waste even more energy and add more weight, again – wasting even more energy. And not only in the form of the electricity that must be generated and transmitted to feed this greed, creating externalities in the form of an over-taxed grid and likely energy rationing by people who cannot afford an EV but would perhaps like to run their home AC on a hot summer day.
There is also the gratuitous wastage of energy (and resources) used up during the manufacture of those massive and massively heavy battery packs, without which “ludicrous” speed – or even the capability to travel more than 150 miles at 70-plus MPH without having to stop – would simply not be possible given EV technology as it exists.
And the soy-guzzling fools who lick the EV’s fenders have the balls (if they dropped) to deride IC cars as “guzzlers.”
How dare they!
. . .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
My eBook about car buying (new and used) is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If that fails, email me at EPeters952@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy directly!
Oh another thing about “ludicrous speed” though. Give the average “driver” the combination of “ludicrous speed” and an additional 1000 lbs of weight, what do you think is gonna be the outcome? Most of the idiots on the road SHOULD ONLY be allowed to drive actual golf carts because that’s pretty much their skill level.
And OBTW… I’m seeing HUGE AMOUNTS of fanfare about “Look at our newly installed [two or three] quick charging stations”… YAAAAAAAAY… HIP HIP HURRAY! Free things will be given and balloons and pretty girls smiling… maybe some confetti… free masks and hand sanitizer.
One small problem though. Unless they’re gonna make EVERY SINGLE parking space a “free” quick charging station, how in hell is that supposed to work?? And if they were ever to do that, how in hell is every parking lot going to charge every car at 480V simultaneously ALL DAY LONG?
Unless every town in the country has their own nuclear power plant that shit is not going to work. Period. And enjoy your “free” two – three (maybe four) quick charging stations now because they won’t be free when that’s the only choice.
You don’t need a crystal ball to see where this is going.
Re: “Unless every town in the country has their own nuclear power plant that shit is not going to work. Period.”
I’ve been saying this for a long time. It’s called decentralized power, and it’s a great idea that I doubt will ever happen in the next say 20+ years. I’m guessing because it also decentralized future political power.
Took my “gas guzzler” Audi A8 for the yearly dealer service this past Friday. They gave me a 2021 A6 with a 2.0T. Now I also own an A4 Allroad with a 2.0T — that is an appropriate (enough) combination. The 2021 A6… base model stickers at $56K… and has no demonstrable power. My A4 outruns it easily. That weight matters a lot!
I am 100% unwilling to consider ownership of an A6 with a 2.0T at any price. If you gave one to me for free, I would immediately sell it in order to buy something closer to what I want.
Even if you’re someone that just wants luxury (i.e., can live without engine power *and* spend a LOT of money) well the quality of the 2021 A6 base model just isn’t there. For another $20K or so (IIRC) you can move up to “Prestige” with the 3.0T and better interior/trim.
This is where Audi is at with gasoline these days and they cannot shut up about their virtue signaling bullshit. All electric by 2030 (IIRC). So take the A6 base model, remove the 4-banger 2.0T and replace it with a thousand pounds of batteries?!?! And then set your sights on replacing that 1000 lbs of batteries FROM AUDI?!?! ($$$$$)
Oh JFC no way! And every virtue signaling liberal that continues to buy that shit deserves what they’re gonna get. I’m seeing Hyundai, Honda, Toyotas, where if they’re all EV… screw Audi. Sorry, they left me, I didn’t leave them. The divorce just won’t be finalized for a few years but the “paperwork” is already in process.
“It takes more energy to get that weight moving, using more electricity. And then to keep it moving – for the same reason a heavy car with a gas-burning engine burns more gas to keep it moving than a lighter car does.”
Once moving, it takes no more energy to keep a heavy vehicle moving than it does a light one. OK, a bit more energy is lost at the tires. Nothing else.
You need to re-check your physics. By your logic, it takes no more power to keep several hundred ton’s of freight train moving at X speed than it does a VW bug.
A freight train has many times the frontal area of a VW bug and consequently has many times the aerodynamic drag. A VW bug has four wheels and four wheel bearings, while a freight train has hundreds of wheels and hundreds of wheel bearings, each of which has a degree of rolling resistance. These are the factors that require a freight train to generate more power to maintain a certain speed on a flat and level surface, not the weight of the train per se. Of course, there are not many flat and level surfaces in the real world, but theoretically speaking JdL is correct.
Wrong, if that were true, a my 1/2 ton pick up truck would get close to the same mileage as a Honda civic.
Of all the Stored Energy in America Lithium Ion and that class of batteries would power American for One Three Hundredth of a second and all the cars in America pollute LESS than one large cargo ship going back and forth from China, filled with the goodies our liberal Americans can’t get enough of.
This is feel good nonsense, Cars are not the problem and fixing this “problem” won’t make even a tiny dent in anything but our liberty.
It’s enough of a crime that the current Honda Civic weighs 3,000 lbs.
My 1989 Civic weighed less than 2,300 pounds.
We now know that the only reason for the existence of EV’s is to support fake global warming…oh, and to make musk filthy rich. Like the covid injections, there is no true science or independent testing that concludes without any doubt that replacing IC’s with EV’s is somehow more efficient and practical.
Or, that injections of spiky graphene oxide nano-particles are going to save you from a CoV-2 death. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s strictly a Commie/liberal/socialist/fascist/progressive/ demoncrat/arrogant elitist agenda item as demanded be pushed forward by dr gates, and the WEF …the depopulation wizards.
Resist everything! Question everything! Accept no authority blindly!
Is oil abiotically self-replenishing, or is oil running out? In practical terms, the question is essentially irrelevant. The following statements hold true regardless.
1) The cost (in energy) of extracting currently available oil resources continues to rise, leaving less for society to use.
2) New discoveries have lagged far behind extraction rates for nearly six decades.
These are not premises. They are easily-ascertained facts – check for yourself.
And there are still no cost-effective alternatives.
If the oil supply ever becomes insufficient (i.e. becomes prohibitively expensive), the most likely cost-effective alternative will be distilling coal (probaby also petcoke).
You can do everything you can do with oil using coal, it’s just a little extra work.
The “Ludicrous Speed!” advertising really cracks me up. Try using that ludicrous speed on the highway and you’ll be pulled over by an AGW and given a ludicrous fine……if you aren’t arrested for reckless driving.
A couple of bumper sticker gifts for all:
“Don’t laugh at my car and I won’t laugh at your face diaper.” And,
“You know how you worry whether people are laughing at you wearing a face mask?
Well, they are.”
R.C.
“Non-electric cars haven’t “guzzled” gas – most of them – for decades”
In modern cars, gasoline is a miracle. A gallon of it will propel 3000 pounds 30 miles in less than 30 minutes, and its as cheap as bottled drinking water in many cases. And all it puts out is CO2. Compared to a horse that could pull its own weight about 20 miles a day and requires at least 6 acres to feed, plus they more or less REQUIRE a garage, and put out a lot more than CO2.
Not to mention the massive piles of shit horses leave when they empty their bowels. And to bury the bastards requires a hole the size of a small garage and several feet deep. Cars are so much more recyclable and can be melted down and new items made, unlike the dead horse.
To be fair, to5, horse manure makes for excellent fertilizer, as does the dead horse, which is recycled naturally. 😉
Reading this reminds me of my ex gf and how log and reason would fall upon deaf ears as she’d be like “but, but technology!” (I forget the link, but someone mentioned how the interior of an 80s car looked more futuristic than the “Sterile as a Lab” Douchela interior)
Goes back to the classic, “My [insert economy car] can beat your Ludicrous mode X/Y/3 to [Insert state or city further than the current range]”. Even my Ram, with it’s smaller fuel tank (23 vs 33 gal) could make it from Central Dirty Jerzy to Dirty Myrtle faster with time for me to get a bite in between
If it weren’t for Uncle and the creepy globalists, Douchela and other EV’s would die off again, just like they did over 100yrs ago
Give a liberal a 12 hour head start nj to ca hell nj to the keys and i bet you still beat them.
Even better, especially if more Douchela’s are road tripping and they’re hogging the stations
Also, pretty sure everyone’s gonna use that name now
Even better, especially if more Douchela’s are road tripping and they’re hogging the stations
Also, pretty sure everyone’s gonna use that name now
Puritanism. You shall act as I want you to.
But the petroleum puritans don’t understand their energy consumption is just as much as the evil gas vehicles, just different. With different environmental impacts.
Since they can’t see the mining operations, toxic disposal & recovery, or electric generation of their cherished battery cars, they can feel superior to all else.
Unicorn farts and fairy pixie dust are carbon neutral.
Not to mention that an inordinate amount of energy is WASTED transmitting it though a power grid. It’s not in any way an efficient power source. Just quite convenient for what it was intended. To put power in our hands at the flick of a switch. Charging an EV requires a really big switch. One the power grid is unable to accommodate on a large scale. Look at California, demanding EVs, and instituting brown outs at the same time. The grid can’t handle the load without EVs. How will it do so with all cars EVs? Truth be told, it can’t handle air conditioning, which also requires a lesser big switch.
It could handle A/C, but only if they would stop screwing around with renewables & build some more coal-fired, nuclear, or hydroelectric plants.
When the meteor Chicxulub slammed into the earth and formed the Gulf of Mexico, it caused a massive tsunami that traveled some 1200 miles north, search Tanis Event, the wave carried marine life along with the water, fossils became embedded in Hell’s Canyon in the Badlands of North Dakota. Fresh water aquatic life is mixed with marine life in those fossil beds.
Oil is from old kelp that became stranded and buried. There is a salt dome beneath the ocean floor that is 4 miles wide and sixteen miles tall, there are oil deposits from dead kelp from top to bottom ringing the thing.
A collapsed salt dome will release the natural gas, radon gas emitting into the atmosphere in regions of the lithosphere occur naturally. Except where there are oil deposits, oil prevents radon from escaping. A scintillometer can do the detecting, you fly an airplane to find areas that have no detected radon, oil deposit.
There are immature oil formations, lots of natural gas. Mature oil formations have accumulated units, oil deposits with lots of oil in them. The Baku region along the Caspian Sea is the most famous, white oil is the purest oil out there.
At the bottom of those formations there will be fish teeth, skeletons, the formations will be obviously organic content rich.
Leigh Price was a petrochemist, wrote plenty about the Bakken Formation.
Changed how the oil industry approached oil production.
https://www.searchanddiscovery.com/
Coal is not formed abioticly, it is a fossil fuel. Shoveled plenty of coal and hauled plenty of ashes while I was a growing kid, fed the octopus to heat the home during the winter, it had to be done. The basement was a coal bin and the coal burning furnace. The time spent there was shoveling coal into the firebox and removing ashes from the ash bin.
Natural gas can be abiotic, nitrogen from the atmosphere is used to produce anhydrous ammonia, natural gas is piped into a giant tank, 1/2 inch plate steel welded together to form a circle 75 feet high with a domed top. Insulate with heavy aluminum sheets three deep, you get anhydrous ammonia in bulk quantities. The Haber-Bosch process. Have to have a hydrocarbon to make it all happen.
Apply anhydrous when seeding your wheat, germination is going to be high.
In 1978, I wrote a request to the Department of the Interior to provide information for all the federal lands in Wyoming available for oil exploration. I received it in the US mail. Still have the papers they sent me.
Valuable information worth a mint, lol. Don’t know why I sought oil prospects in Wyoming, just did.
There would be no way that the US gov would readily provide such information at all anymore.
Titusville dried up, move to Ohio and some more oil there, then to Texas, why not.
Beaumont grew like crazy.
Spindletop was a blessing in disguise. 75,000 bpd speaks volumes. The Lakeview gusher was at 125,000 bpd in the beginning, 585 days later, nine million barrels of oil didn’t get washed out to sea.
In the beginning, the US exported 40 percent of all oil produced.
Hydrocarbons provide the means to obtain a post-modern civilization.
When they’re gone, humans will be toast, the numbers will decline dramatically.
Crude oil saved the whales, whales were being harvested at a rate of 100,000 each year up until 1849.
Whales were being hunted to extinction, it truly was peak whale oil.
Nikola Tesla trumped them all, a 400,000 horsepower hydro-electric power plant generated electricity in copious amounts.
Niagara Falls was the bomb, the zeitgeist.
“Where’s the meter?” – JP Morgan’s question for Nikola
You need organic matter to have naturally formed petroleum, rock oil.
“Crude oil saved the whales” with a lot of help from Andrew Carnegie inventing the rail tanker. Of course that’s about the only good thing he did.
Crude oil is made also by abiotic processes, as old wells once abandoned have been opened back up because the supply of crude was renewed. The term fossil fuel is used to convey that these resources are finite, when they are really infinite. And volcanic activity is still taking place 5 billion years after creation of earth.
True, luk. Oil wells were capped, not because the oil pools shrank, but because of price support agreements made by governments. New discoveries in the oil patch were subdued by OPEC threatening to “show wildcatters $5 per barrel oil” from the ME, which would make it impossible for independent producers in the US to even recover drilling costs.
Even if crude oil was not produced abiotically (which I think it is), the Caddo reserve is still there and can still be brought back into production. East Texas/Louisiana old timers have been pointing that out for many decades.
Another lie spouted by Ecar fanatics is that they have less moving parts to wear out and fail. What about the tesla model x and its 7,104 “18650” lithium batteries? Sure, they aren’t moving parts like a camshaft but they are stressed and degraded during the normal use of the car through thermal expansion/contraction and chemical degradation. All it takes is 1 cell to go out of balance to bork the whole pack up to and including a nice chemical fire. 7,000+ parts is not a simple machine and that’s not even counting the rest of the car. And no, theres no simple repair if even a single cell prematurely fails.
Re: gas guzzler. I would have laughed at you 10-15 years ago that I could buy a pickup today that got 20mpg, has 400hp to do almost anything you ask of it, is more comfortable than a luxury sedan, and have a 600 mile range. And with a relative lack of gimmicks like E-assist, etc….
I would own this same truck if it got 12mpg. So it’s not the mpg, but the whole package. Currently my choice and glad someone makes it.
There is currently no way to replace the BTU power and transportability of a gallon of gas.
And to the eco-freaks, I am very eco-friendly, cause I used to have to own two vehicles to do the jobs I needed done, that I can now do with one. And those ‘jobs’ allow you to live where/how you want. So to the idiots that are offended by large trucks, I probably am ‘saving the planet’ more that you, haha………
The climate has been changing, often radically, as well as rapidly, ever since there was such a thing. The very notion that we have control of such a dynamic, powerful, chaotic force is pure hubris.
I tell the retards that climate change is good. If it wasn’t for climate change the earth would still be a giant ball of molten rock.
Then I get that blank stare that indicates a brain cell fired off for the first time.
Anon, Tell them that without the sun the planet would be at absolute zero temperature. That is minus 450 deg F.
John, in the old Soviet Union it was believed (by the political class, not the proles) that the State would become so powerful it would control the very weather. This idea that human beings are going to take control of the earth’s climate is even more far-fetched than that, and is being fed by the same thought process – the State as an all-powerful God.
Indeed. The state puts forth an edict and assumes that makes it reality.
Talk to N. Tesla about LFRW’s to control the jet stream. You might get a different take about controling the weather. Unless you think you are wiser that him.
rog
There is a huge difference between “controlling the weather” and “changing the weather”. No doubt the latter may be accomplished, but little chance of the former. It could only be changed until it became untenable, at which time no agency could afford to attempt either. Too busy trying to find supper.
‘America was energy independent, oil-wise, when Orange Man Bad [strutted and preened]’ — EP
Well, that inconvenient fact needs to be erased pronto. Time to start ripping out them electric pump jacks along with the confederate statues. /sarc
Speaking of Orange Man Bad, the MSM is now openly setting him up:
‘In January 2012, inside Trump’s office at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, Jennifer Weisselberg watched as Trump discussed compensation with her husband and her father-in-law, both company employees. Her husband wouldn’t be getting a raise, but their children would get their tuition paid for at a top-rated private academy instead.
‘Weisselberg allegedly relayed to prosecutors that Trump turned to her and said: “Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered.”
‘Prosecutors were astonished, according to one source.’
https://news.yahoo.com/explosive-interview-directly-implicates-trump-085548973.html
Danger, danger, Will Robinson: we all understand that many crooks have occupied the White House. But an unspoken consensus holds that presidents don’t go to prison. Gerald Ford made sure that Nixon didn’t. Likewise, the Smirking Chimp didn’t prosecute Bill Clinton for pimping pardons for paper bags full of cash.
Now Jacobin Democrats are tempted to end that tacit understanding. They are itching to lynch the Orange Man, while of course continuing to grant Hitlary a free pass for her brazen obstruction (‘Wiped — like with a cloth?‘ har har).
Open season on ex-presidents will have unpredictable consequences. Look what happened in South Africa. Passions get stoked; cities get smoked.
In a country already primed for civil war, taking down the Orange Man would be the first shot at Fort Sumter all over again.
And of course, so much energy is lost in transmission from the power plant….if you have a bit of property along high tension lines, you can convert a metal mesh fence to a 1 turn transformer to grab this power leakage for free, heck you can hear electrical corona loss when it is moist out
Indeed, electric power transmitted by wire is one of the LEAST efficient sources of power.
“Physics applies to electric cars as much as it does to IC cars.”
Yeah, about as much as actual mammalian reproductive biology applies to humans — until the government decides that transgenderism and Lysenkoism shall the the official doctrines under penalty of censorship, unemployment or arrest.
2+2 = 4, until the government declares that it equals 5.
For what it’s worth, the soy-and-latte crowd would contend that it doesn’t matter how much energy EVs hog up, because it’ll all be produced by windmills and solar panels.
Merle Haggard called bullshit on that scam forty years ago:
“When they find out how to burn water
And the gasoline car is gone
When an airplane flies without any fuel
And the sunlight heats our home
But one of these days when the air clears up
And the sun comes shinin’ through
We’ll all be drinkin’ that free Bubble Up
And eatin’ that rainbow stew”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEDT7QGDzsE
Merle is one of my all time favorite singers.
The more I read about the world’s energy sources and supplies, the more I become convinced that people in power are recognizing the approaching limits of oil. In 1950, 95% of the oil harvested was available to power the economy and create wealth; in 2021 that figure has fallen to about 80% (for newer discoveries such as the Athabasca oil sands). It will continue to fall, necessitating more and more discovery just to keep pace, never mind grow.
Oil discoveries have, since the early 1960s, also fallen precipitously, well below extraction levels. The biggest discovery in recent years, 1 billion tons or so, was found a few months ago in China. If every drop was extracted (impossible), how long could the world run on that amount? Less than three months according to my rough, back-of-the-napkin calculations.
To make matters worse, all of the world’s giant oil fields, which provide the majority of the stuff, are in decline.
Electric vehicles are not about the climate – they’re about eliminating ICE vehicles and the fossil fuels they burn. No one gives a damn that the peasants won’t be able to afford EVs – that’s just icing on the cake.
Ditto for fuel economy mandates – governments, militaries and coporate interests need that gasoline and diesel, so can’t be wasting it on the hoi polloi.
Oil won’t run out for generations yet, however it will slowly cast an ever greater shadow on modern civilizaton, with the peons getting the shaft first, as always.
Enjoy it while you can. 🙂
Your premise is false.
Oil is abiotic and is migrating from the depths of the earth as we speak. In fact, oil is being found ad depths not possible for “fossil conversion”. The whole concept of oil being derived from “fossils” is a discredited concept that was adopted in the 1950s when little was known about the creation of oil. In fact, abiotic oil was a Russian “state secret” as Russian interests have been drilling much deeper than others and coming up with oil.
There are other planetary bodies that are loaded with hydrocarbons despite having no “fossils” to create them…
Environmentalists and other loathe the fact that oil is indeed a “renewable resource” and is constantly being produced within the earth.
good one. I have been calling them natural fuels, but ‘renewable’ is correct too. spread the word, whenever you hear ‘fossil’.
Fact: saturns moon titan has lakes of liquid methane, a potent hydrocarbon fuel. Japan has plans to tap offshore methane hydrate deposits to gain energy independence. Hydrocarbon fuels are not scarce. When or if they do become scarce there will be an economic incentive to find alternatives. The “renewable” energy and electric car nudge should have everybody worried.
A true believer in the myth of eternal progress. Take just a moment to consider what the energy and dollar cost of going to Titan and shipping back vast quantities of liquid methane might be. (Let me guess, some future magic technology is coming soon to make it possible, like fusion, right?)
You might also want to investigate the EROEI on seabed methane extraction. China has also been working on that. Let’s just say there are… problems.
karklan
Be honest. Read what is written and respond to that directly. Do not write responses to what you’d have liked to have seen written.
The points are that hydrocarbons are not scarce. They are common. They are so common that they are found throughout the solar system including in locations that do not possess life. Hence the origins of much of this would be by abiotic processes. If that is occurring elsewhere, then it is a good possibility that the same abiotic processes can occur deep in the Earth’s interior. Indeed, there appears to be good evidence for this.
The correspondent to whom you responded with cheap sarcasm did not recommend going to Titan to collect hydrocarbons to ship back to Earth. YOU are the one who came up with that. You substituted YOUR idea for that which was written. Talk about making myths….. Do you often do this? Is this your standard approach to dealing with the ideas of others?
In regards to harvesting methane hydrates, there certainly are challenges, but there always are challenges to trying out something new. Nothing has altered in that regard.
During my lifetime it was the case that mobile off-shore oil platforms were developed and commissioned. They were new. During my lifetime it was the case that the first fully automated off-shore oil platforms were developed and commissioned. Those were new. During my lifetime the first deep underground tunnels were bored. Those were new. During my lifetime the first fully automated underground mines were excavated and began production (first for coal but now other minerals also). New. Not a single man down the mine! Definitely and radically new. Many, many of these challenging projects have been considered, planned, constructed and commissioned. Industry develops more capabilities with each new project. On it goes. There are many iterative improvements leading to what is seen today. People in these vital industries keep getting better at what they do and they keep achieving more. There certainly is sufficient ROI to make such efforts worthwhile, otherwise none would do them.
Take home lessons. Just because YOU can’t do something, let alone work out how to do it or how to profit from the doing of it, does not mean that it cannot be done. Just because YOU can’t do something that does not mean that someone else (someone who lacks your particular limitations) cannot and will not do it. In the end this is all another example of “mind your own business”. Just get out of the way and stop whining about those who are willing to attempt to do what you can’t do or are incapable of even understanding.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – T Roosevelt
I agree that hydrocarbons are common. However, that doesn’t mean as much as we might like, in light of the following two facts:
1) The energy available to society from a barrel of oil has been declining steadily for at least a century, after subtracting the (energy) cost of extraction. The ratio has gone from more than 100:1 to about 7:1 for newer sources such as Venezuela heavy or Athabasca.
2) Discoveries have significantly lagged extraction/consumption for nearly six decades.
The limits of oil are not about running out. They’re about the cost of extraction, and at what point those costs become prohibitive.
I sincerely hope that future technology will abate these problems. But I’m not optimistic.
I’ve spent some time looking into that theory, and indeed would prefer it to be true. Can you provide sources and links to back it up? I personally haven’t found anything convincing.
karalan
Be honest.
It is doubtful you have spent any serious effort looking into that abiotic hydrocarbon processes at all.
It is not anyone else’s responsibility to educate you, do research for you, nor to convince you. That is, you have to undertake your own homework and not expect others to undertake those tasks for you.
The material is readily available, easily located and conveniently obtained (even should you not want to purchase copies of the books and papers yourself). Go away now and do some study. If you are stuck you might like to start by visiting a suitable library with good, competent librarians…
Dear Siotu;
Are you calling me a liar? Eff you and the horse you rode in on, not to mention your mother.
Show me a valid source, Effhead. Guaranteed I’ve already read it and dismissed it for lack of peer review or replication.
‘people in power are recognizing the approaching limits of oil.”
Me thinks that thou dost give them too much credit.
Quite possibly, but it does provide an explanation for otherwise irrational-seeming behavior. Not everyone with a billion dollars and/or a voice in gov.com is stupid.
I mentioned nothing of harvesting liquid methane from titan. I simply stated that hydrocarbon fuels exist independent of finite buried organic matter. So much of it exists that japan is abandoning nuclear to harvest methane. Dolt.
No, but they are without exception insane.
Let’s assume you’re correct, arguendo. Where do you think the electricity will come from to power hundreds of millions of cars, much less trucks, construction machinery, and 12-tired formerly 400 hp farm tractors? Windmills and solar panels? It is to laugh.
Your argument reminds me of a meeting I attended circa 1976 at the University of Michigan. The meeting was billed as an explanation of why the government MUST take over energy production in the U.S., and it was put on by the Communist Party of America (no kidding). During their presentation they produced slide after slide of graphs and stats that proved the free market was blind to the impending doom of humanity due to the exhaustion of oil supplies within 20 years. Only an omniscient and progressive government, overriding market shortsightedness, could redirect critical resources away from oil and toward nuclear in time to stave off the deaths of billions.
Bad, bad free market.
I’m glad to report that their calculations missed some data points, primarily that with 20 years of proved reserves in 1976, the bad bad free market saw no reason to explore beyond that. But with each passing year, the market continued to look 20 years into the future and, lo and behold! found more oil. So here we are, a bit beyond the point at which we should all be dead, still purchasing gasoline for the price of filtered water, with decades of proved reserves still to be burned up. Presumably we will all be dead in another 20 years when the last ICE expels the last puff of CO2, the lights of the world go out, and we all die. Or not.
We’ve been hearing about “peak oil” and gas for many decades. It’s been rubbish.
Yeah Eric, why????????
Anon just eviscerated your entire argument that electric oil field pump jacks are bad!!!!!!!!
…and they ask me why I drink!
Don’t buy a Milwaukee cordless drill you hypocrite! Hahahahahaha
Some people……
Time for my morning cocktail, cheers.
So why do they use electric motors to power the pump jacks in the oil field?
Because power needed that is stationary is a great application for electric motors. You can bring the electrical lines to it (which the cost of such is part of figuring out if electric or ICE will be used to do work).
Electric motors are the largest rotating equipment in the world, by far, and have been for a long time.
BUT, and a big BUT, they are not practical, and sometimes useless if they have to move around. Hence why you see ICE powered equipment on mobile trucks, like welders, generators, etc….
They don’t in many places. They use casinghead gas, or propane, and have for over 100 years. Electricity is used when it makes economic sense to use it, just as it should be with transportation powerplants. Here’s an example still in operation in PA that dates back to the 1930’s at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=incIHHBx46A
There are cases where a motor is a better option than an internal combustion engine. Like a diesel locomotive. A diesel locomotive is actually propelled by motors. The diesel engine drives a generator which provides electricity to power the drive motors. Motors provide the huge amounts of initial torque it takes to get a train started from a standstill.
…but in the case of a Diesel-electric loco, the motive power is still Diesel. The electric part merely replaces a transmission, mechanical or hydraulic, with a generator and motor(s) as you note. Now, a juice jack (electric loco) is a whole other thing entirely.
COT, that means that with no abiotic fuels that are replenished by the earth, that all trains will come to a halt when the refineries are closed due to “electric” cars. How will these greenies get all their corn chips and chocolate bars?
Why, by splitting atoms of course! Oh, wait a minute, Chernobyl, Not In My Back Yard they say. Build them in redneck states, yeah, that’s the way, so if they have a problem, it turns deplorables into mutants. Win-win! And massive new transmission line projects…oh, might kill a desert tortoise, can’t do that. Well, they’ll figure out a way to transmit terawatts of juice over thousands of miles without loss by using Tesla farts and Elon rainbows, yeah, that’s the ticket! Then the juice jacks can roll on from sea to shining sea…oh wait, what about “Climate Change” and that pesky sea level thing…
If you’re a commie (greenie is a subset of commie), you live life worried about things that matter not at all.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with an electric motor. In fact they are extremely durable if built to be so. The very first electric elevator, I seem to remember its in Georgia, is still running on the same electric motors it was almost 100 years ago when it started. They almost always wear out the machine they’re attached to. When my grandfather died, he had a garage full of them that had been salvaged from dead refrigeration compressors in his dairy business. The problem arises when you ask them to move.