the future

Jim Ley said:

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:19:32 +0000, Tony Raven <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

John Hearns said:

Lets say all cars are running on diesel, and the biodiesel comes from rape
seed. Do we REALLY have the amount of land in the UK to grow that amount
of biodiesel?

No and the energy gain is not that great (energy produced vs energy
consumed to produce it) unless you burn the straw for energy production too.

Er, algae doesn't have any straw...

RTFP. Rape seed does.

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham

Nick Kew said:

Tony Raven said:

Actually just 1% of the agricultural land area would do in theory. Have
a look at http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Erm, even if that can be put into practice, what is the land good for
*after* a year or two?

They're grown in tanks of water, not in the ground, the soil is not
used at all, they need a source of nutrients aswell as the sun, but
there's plenty of [censored] around...

Jim.

in message <[email hidden]>, Richard

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

The rail travel was dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel (coal).

Only because we happened to have lots of it at the time. Other rail
industries used local fuels - wood, particularly in the US, and sugar
cain husks in the West Indies, which are (can be) renewable resources.

It doesn't take many train journeys to fell a forest. You couldn't run
the current London commuter network on wood-fuelled steam trains, even
if you planted every arable hectare of Britain with quick growing trees.

And if you did, what would you eat?

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; I put the 'sexy' in 'dyslexia'

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

(') said:

Nick Kew said:

Tony Raven said:

Actually just 1% of the agricultural land area would do in theory.
Have a look at http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Erm, even if that can be put into practice, what is the land good for
*after* a year or two?

They're grown in tanks of water, not in the ground, the soil is not
used at all, they need a source of nutrients aswell as the sun, but
there's plenty of [censored] around...

Fallacy. There's plenty of [censored] around, because [censored] is a waste product
produced by animals after they've already processed as much energy out
of the original food as was economically extractable. There isn't as
much energy in your [censored] as there was in your food. [On Topic] Does your
food provide you with enough energy to transport you a hundred miles a
day at 50 miles per hour? No? Then your [censored] doesn't, either.

And that's before you start thinking about using [censored] for anything but
moving people.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; An enamorata is for life, not just for weekends.

Simon Brooke said:

Fallacy. There's plenty of [censored] around, because [censored] is a waste product
produced by animals after they've already processed as much energy out
of the original food as was economically extractable. There isn't as
much energy in your [censored] as there was in your food. [On Topic] Does your
food provide you with enough energy to transport you a hundred miles a
day at 50 miles per hour? No? Then your [censored] doesn't, either.

But it can provide you with enough energy to travel 100 miles at 15mph,
quite happily.
You are also confusing the ability of a multicellular organism to
process foods with all the attendant inefficiencies of a multiorgan
system, with that of microorganisms to process the same substrate.
Animals are generalists, microbes specialists and they can extract the
latent energy to a form where creatures further up the food chain can
make use of it.

...d

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Richard

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

The rail travel was dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel (coal).

Only because we happened to have lots of it at the time. Other rail
industries used local fuels - wood, particularly in the US, and sugar
cain husks in the West Indies, which are (can be) renewable resources.

It doesn't take many train journeys to fell a forest. You couldn't run
the current London commuter network on wood-fuelled steam trains, even
if you planted every arable hectare of Britain with quick growing trees.

True but none of it's run on coal either (at least not directly) these
days but run it does (fsvo "run"😉

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

Quoted message said:

They're grown in tanks of water, not in the ground, the soil is not
used at all, they need a source of nutrients aswell as the sun, but
there's plenty of [censored] around...

Fallacy. There's plenty of [censored] around, because [censored] is a waste product
produced by animals after they've already processed as much energy out
of the original food as was economically extractable.

Er, the majority of the energy comes from the _sun_ are you suggesting
that the Sun is in someway short supply?

Jim.

in message <[email hidden]>, David

Martin (') said:

Simon Brooke said:

Fallacy. There's plenty of [censored] around, because [censored] is a waste
product produced by animals after they've already processed as much
energy out of the original food as was economically extractable. There
isn't as much energy in your [censored] as there was in your food. [On
Topic] Does your food provide you with enough energy to transport you
a hundred miles a day at 50 miles per hour? No? Then your [censored]
doesn't, either.

But it can provide you with enough energy to travel 100 miles at 15mph,
quite happily.
You are also confusing the ability of a multicellular organism to
process foods with all the attendant inefficiencies of a multiorgan
system, with that of microorganisms to process the same substrate.
Animals are generalists, microbes specialists and they can extract the
latent energy to a form where creatures further up the food chain can
make use of it.

Yup, true, but the fact remains that the energy content of the [censored] one
person produces in a day isn't going to propell that person very fast or
very far, regardless of the means used to extract it. I just get very
irritated to people bimbling on blithely assuming that they can continue
to consume energy as if there was no tomorrow, and that some
techno-magic fix will somehow bail them out when they've burned all the
fuel the planet has.

It may do. But it's a very long shot, and there will almost certainly
have pretty unpleasant consequences. It would be /much/ better not to
get into a position where we need to be bailed out.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; This email may contain confidential or otherwise privileged
;; information, though, quite frankly, if you're not the intended
;; recipient and you've got nothing better to do than read other
;; folks' emails then I'm glad to have brightened up your sad little
;; life a tiny bit.

Simon Brooke said:

Yup, true, but the fact remains that the energy content of the [censored] one
person produces in a day isn't going to propell that person very fast or
very far, regardless of the means used to extract it.

Of course not, no-one has suggested it has, You seemed to blindly read
part of the sentence (that involving [censored]) and completely ignored the
primary energy source (the SUN) that is actually providing the
energy, the [censored] is just providing the micronutrients required to aid
in the conversion.

Jim.

Tony Raven <[email hidden]> wrote:
|
| David E. Belcher wrote:
| >
| > Nonsense. As all fans of Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights know, garlic
| > bread's the future - I've tasted it! ;-)
|
| It still doesn't help with knowing what the best thing was before sliced
| bread.

No but the best thing since sliced bread is toast. Works every time.

--
Patrick Herring, http://www.anweald.co.uk/ph

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

Yup, true, but the fact remains that the energy content of the [censored] one
person produces in a day isn't going to propell that person very fast
or very far, regardless of the means used to extract it.

Of course not, no-one has suggested it has, You seemed to blindly read
part of the sentence (that involving [censored]) and completely ignored the
primary energy source (the SUN) that is actually providing the
energy, the [censored] is just providing the micronutrients required to aid
in the conversion.

OK, how much solar energy falls on the surface of the earth per square
metre at 50 degrees northern latitude? How does that compare to the
amount of energy required to get you into wherever you commute to every
day?

Answer: about a kilowatt per m^2 at the equator (but as the south slope
of your roof - if you have a pitched roof house - approximately makes up
for our latitude, also about a kilowatt per square metre of roof).

Your car uses something like 30 - 40 kilowatts. Of course, it only uses
that when it's running, so if you use your car two hours a day and
generate electricity for eight, you only need ten square metres to run
your car. Allowing perfect conversion, of course.

And then there's all the square metres for the trucks that bring your
food to the supermarket, and the planes that fly your peas from Kenya.
And all the square metres required to melt the sand to make the glass to
make those square metres of solar panel.

Like I said, we /could/ solar panel over the Sahara desert. That's four
and a half billion m^2, with cloudless skies and strong sunlight, so say
1300 watts per m^2. Or to put it differently, enough to boil electric
kettles for roughly a third of the world's population.

Yes, there's a lot of sunlight. Like many other things we have a lot of -
oil, for instance - it's finite.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

The Conservative Party now has the support of a smaller proportion of
the electorate in Scotland than Sinn Fein have in Northern Ireland.

Simon Brooke said:

Like I said, we /could/ solar panel over the Sahara desert.

Can you please start reading the posts, Nowhere were solar panels
mentioned, the fuel source was blue-green algae.. go read up on them,
the papers have already been linked to, and stop spouting stuff about
completely unrelated strawmen in every reply.

Jim.

In article said:

Jim Ley said:

Er, rubbish, Enough Green-Blue Algae can be grown on a few % of the US
land to supply enough diesel equivalent fuel for all of the US's needs.

I find that hard to believe. Could you give a reference for these figures?

That's just a cover story. Really Soylent Green is
NO CARRIER

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

(') said:

Nick Kew said:

Tony Raven wrote:

>Actually just 1% of the agricultural land area would do in theory.
>Have a look at http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
>

Erm, even if that can be put into practice, what is the land good for
*after* a year or two?

They're grown in tanks of water, not in the ground, the soil is not
used at all, they need a source of nutrients aswell as the sun, but
there's plenty of [censored] around...

Fallacy. There's plenty of [censored] around, because [censored] is a waste product
produced by animals after they've already processed as much energy out
of the original food as was economically extractable. There isn't as
much energy in your [censored] as there was in your food. [On Topic] Does your
food provide you with enough energy to transport you a hundred miles a
day at 50 miles per hour? No? Then your [censored] doesn't, either.

It's not about the energy content of the [censored], but the nutrients. The
energy comes from the sun. The minerals (mainly nitrogen, potassium and
phosphate) are only required in relatively small quantities compared to
the mass of fuel produced (which is mainly carbon and hydrogen).

James
--
James Annan
see web pages for email
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/

Simon Brooke said:

OK, how much solar energy falls on the surface of the earth per square
metre at 50 degrees northern latitude? How does that compare to the
amount of energy required to get you into wherever you commute to every
day?

IIRC 10-30MJ/m2/day typically. Diesel is about 35MJ/litre.

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

Like I said, we /could/ solar panel over the Sahara desert.

Can you please start reading the posts, Nowhere were solar panels
mentioned, the fuel source was blue-green algae..

It doesn't matter /how/ you convert the energy, laddie, it
matters /how/ /much/ energy there is to convert. Blue-green algae can't
magic energy out of nowhere. Solar energy, raw, unconverted, as it comes
from the sun, amounts to about 1500 watts per m^2 under ideal conditions
in the most favourable places on the planet. If your blue green algae
can achieve 100% conversion - and in the process can extract every last
joule of energy from every gramme of pigshit on the planet - it still
won't boil kettles for the world's population.

Do the maths!

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; lovely alternative to rice.

in message <[email hidden]>, Tony Raven

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

OK, how much solar energy falls on the surface of the earth per square
metre at 50 degrees northern latitude? How does that compare to the
amount of energy required to get you into wherever you commute to
every day?

IIRC 10-30MJ/m2/day typically. Diesel is about 35MJ/litre.

Which is approximately what I said in the post you quoted.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; I'll have a proper rant later, when I get the time.

Simon Brooke said:

It doesn't matter /how/ you convert the energy, laddie, it
matters /how/ /much/ energy there is to convert. Blue-green algae can't
magic energy out of nowhere. Solar energy, raw, unconverted, as it comes
from the sun, amounts to about 1500 watts per m^2 under ideal conditions
in the most favourable places on the planet. If your blue green algae
can achieve 100% conversion - and in the process can extract every last
joule of energy from every gramme of pigshit on the planet - it still
won't boil kettles for the world's population.

Do the maths!

You've already been corrected on the "energy from pigshit" error
several times. Don't repeat it too many times unless you want everyone
to think you're a moron :-)

The world's entire population does not actually want to boil kettles
simultaneously - a vague google suggests a typical UK *household* (not
person) only consumes a few hundred watts of electricity on average,
and much of the world is of course far lower.

James

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Jim Ley

(') said:

Simon Brooke said:

Like I said, we /could/ solar panel over the Sahara desert.

Can you please start reading the posts, Nowhere were solar panels
mentioned, the fuel source was blue-green algae..

It doesn't matter /how/ you convert the energy, laddie, it
matters /how/ /much/ energy there is to convert. Blue-green algae can't
magic energy out of nowhere. Solar energy, raw, unconverted, as it comes
from the sun, amounts to about 1500 watts per m^2 under ideal conditions
in the most favourable places on the planet. If your blue green algae
can achieve 100% conversion - and in the process can extract every last
joule of energy from every gramme of pigshit on the planet - it still
won't boil kettles for the world's population.

Do the maths!

A kettle takes 3kw, or requires all the sunshine for 2m2 of the earths
surface. No problem then if everyone wants to boil a kettle. Even the
most densely populated area doesn't get anywhere close to an order of
magnitude of that. (ie less than 1 person per 20m2.)

So the answer is that it would boil kettles for the worlds population.

And a significant proportion of the worlds population do meet their
energy needs through burning animal dung.

...d

Simon Brooke said:

It doesn't matter /how/ you convert the energy, laddie, it
matters /how/ /much/ energy there is to convert. Blue-green algae can't
magic energy out of nowhere. Solar energy, raw, unconverted, as it comes
from the sun, amounts to about 1500 watts per m^2 under ideal conditions
in the most favourable places on the planet. If your blue green algae
can achieve 100% conversion - and in the process can extract every last
joule of energy from every gramme of pigshit on the planet - it still
won't boil kettles for the world's population.

Do the maths!

Lets do the maths on the back of an envelope then. The US uses about
100 quads a year which is approx 3x10E13kWhr.

The only external energy source in the algal process is solar. Solar
energy is 1000-3000kWhr/m2/year. So we need in the region of 10E10m2 or
100,000 hectares at 100% conversion efficiency for 100 quads. UNH
reckon on 200,000 hectares to produce one quad by algae so about 0.5%
solar conversion efficiency.

Compare that with 200million hectares in the US for crop production
(mostly animal feed) and another 200million hectares for pasture and it
is feasible to supply all the energy needs of the world's most energy
intensive economy with 5% of its current agricultural land area.

To replace just its transportation oil consumption would require about
1% of the agricultural land area or 60% of Lake Michigan (where they
have problems stopping the algae growing) and that's with their current
gas guzzler vehicles.

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham