DIYbanter - View Single Post

(in
) said:

| Robert Bonomi wrote:
|| ...
||
|| Automobile usage is a small part of total fuel consumption. like
|| 1/5 or less. of vehicular use. well under 10% of all petroleum
|| consumption, when you include oil-fired heating, farm implement,
|| and marine use.
|
| Moreover fuel does not account for all the petroleum used.
| Petroleum is the single most important feedstock for organic
| chemicals like virtually all synthetic fabrics, plastics and
| solvents.
|
| Your arithmetic is quite sobering.

It is indeed.

We can expect that as the cost of fuel rises, more and more land will
be given over to ethanol production - and other crops will be
sacrificed until a (shifting) economic balance is achieved. Soybean
derivatives (everything from livestock feed to plastics) will become
sharply more expensive.

If the pressures to maximize ethanol production are sufficiently high,
we face the danger of taking a giant step backward to repetitively
planting the same crop on the same land until the soil is exhausted.
Should we get to that point, there will be serious breakage - and the
worst of it won't be in the corn belt.

We urgently need to develop alternative energy sources and rethink
(especially) our building, production, and transportation
technologies. Even 200 mpg cars and 100 mpg trucks won't solve the
problem, or even just keep us from freezing in the winter.

We should perhaps begin thnking in terms of /passenger/ miles per
gallon and /ton/ miles per gallon instead of /vehicle/ miles per
gallon.

And (near and dear to /my/ heart) we need to improve thermal
efficiency of the structures we build so that those structures /can/
be 100 - 150% solar heated. All of the technology we need to
accomplish this is already available - the problem is that most of
what we build with traditional methods is so "lossy" that solar can
only provide 30 - 50% of the energy needed for heat.

All of this points to a need for improved and expanded architectural
and engineering education - at a time when quality of education
appears to be "on the skids".

rant
It makes me crazy that people seem so willing to say: "What do you
expect from me - /I/ can't do anything," and expect that politicians
will /legislate/ a (no cost) solution. Have we really dumbed down that
much?
/rant

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html