Renewable Revolution

 A. G. Gelbert   


Anonymous (Of COURSE!) said, "Anyone who believes that we can eliminate fossil fuel and nuclear from the grid, without an unprecedented breakthrough in long term energy storage, needs a refresher course in Physics and Engineering."

Anyone that thinks fossil fuels and nuclear power plants are not poisonous technology that remain the main source of energy use in civilization by any other means than corruption, externalizing costs and gaming the subsidy playing field needs a course in empire politics in the 20th century and a review of the history of Standard Oil and the Rockefeller empire. Neither the physics nor the thermodynamic properties of fossil fuels or nuclear fusion have anything whatsoever to do with it. The Manhattan project ALONE was bigger than the automobile industry while remaining secret. Not one penny of that was EVER recovered by the American public.

As far as Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) is concerned for fossil fuels, long before PV or wind power was envisioned, ethanol from farm crops was CHEAPER than gasoline but a huge alcohol tax and then prohibition forced ethanol out of the competition even though it is a HIGHER OCTANE FUEL than gasoline.

And for those who think the lead spewing poison additive now banned from cars, tetra ethyl lead, is no longer poisoning children and adults, I'm sorry to tell you that in the USA it is LEGAL to put tetra-ethyl lead in aviation gasoline! So if you live near an airport with a lot of light plane general aviation traffic, you are getting showered with it. Of course they can design aircraft engines to run on ethanol instead of high octane tetra ethyl lead gasoline for high compression aircraft engines. Brazil has been doing it for years. The reason WE don't do it is because big oil is protecting more of its turf.

For those who want to understand the ACTUAL physics and engineering proving renewable energy has ALWAYS been more cost effective than fossil or nuclear fuels, this detailed, multi-page article comparing the various energy source EROEI numbers (with ALL THE COSTS included) will clear up the doubts about the insanity of fossil fuel and nuclear power use in human civilization.

In short, unlike renewable energy, fossil fuels and nuclear power never have been cost effective for civilization and the biosphere because governments controlled by these industries massively subsidize them though taxes, turn a blind eye to health costs the people must pay, and reward the small group of elite investors that hold stock in these poisonous industries. That is corruption, not thermodynamics.

Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables

Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never Did

Published July 17, 2012. | By A. G. Gelbert.

 
Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables

Snippet:

When they fall back on the EROI formula Procrustean Bed with the claim that EROI only deals with energy density in fuels and not efficiency coefficients in different engine types, calmly remind them that gasoline is not customarily used for furnaces, room lighting, barbeque grills or to boil water; it’s used almost exclusively in the ICE (internal combustion engine).

For these fossil fuel lackeys, water carriers and quislings to refuse to measure gasoline’s EFFECTIVE USABLE ENERGY when it is actually used in an ICE to do work is the height of duplicity.

But this subterfuge by Rockefeller’s admirers is not new. As I have mentioned before, way back at the end of the 19th century, Rockefeller was flushing his gasoline waste product in the rivers by his refineries at night. He could not avoid producing gasoline in his refinery cracking towers (about 19 gallons of gasoline for every 42 gallon barrel of crude refined)*. When the automobile came out in the early twentieth century, the early car fuel called benzene had to be eliminated because that hydrocarbon is a carcinogenic. As you read above in the 1906 Edison lab study, ethanol was considered competitive energy wise with gasoline.

What did Rockefeller do? He lowered the price of gasoline (remember his cost was near zero because it had been a waste product of the refining process) so much that ethanol was priced out of the market**. It was a win-win for Rockefeller.

It was only a matter of time before his nasty habit of flushing gasoline into rivers at night was going to get him and his refinery employees facing the wrong end of a shotgun from some irate farmer who noticed his horses and cows getting sick or dying when drinking the river water downstream of an oil refinery.

So Rockefeller managed to change the flush operation from the rivers to the atmosphere and make a bundle out of it too. But this predatory capitalist wasn’t done killing ethanol yet. He gave millions to a temperance group that ultimately succeeded in Prohibition legislation banning the production and use of ethanol (ethyl alcohol), not just for drinking, but for ICE fuel as well (and you thought Prohibition was just the fundies not wanting you to get high on booze. Rockefeller USED the fundies to block ethanol competition).

The reality was that the “cheap” gasoline was far, far more expensive than ethanol due to the atmospheric poisons introduced. It got even worse when tetra-ethyl lead entered the mix in the 1920s. It wasn’t until about 1973 that the severe damage from leaded gasoline was recognized and even so, to this day, unleaded gasoline is not mandatory in off road vehicles.

Now that ethanol is out there and available once again as a competitor to gasoline, the fossil fuel enablers return with the familiar FALSE claims that ethanol is not competitive with gasoline and the poppycock that gasoline gets better mileage than ethanol.

Call out these overeducated, Procrustean Bed, creative thermodynamics “geniuses” carrying water for the fossil fuel industry on their lies and distortions. Accuse them of being well aware of the above and deliberately distorting the fuel facts when they are actually applied to their use in engines. Tell them their Procrustean Bed EROI BS isn’t going to fly anymore.



"*On average, about 19.5 US gallons (16.2 imp gal; 74 L) of gasoline are available from a 42-US-gallon (35 imp gal; 160 L) barrel of crude oil (about 46% by volume), varying due to quality of crude and grade of gasoline. The remaining residue comes off as products ranging from tar to naptha.[4]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline


** "The gasoline engine became the preferred engine for the automobile because gasoline was cheaper than alcohol, not because it was a better fuel. And, because alcohol was not available at any price from 1920 to 1933, a period during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. In time to produce alcohol fuels during World War II. By the time World War II ended, the gasoline engine had become “entrenched” because gasoline remained cheaper than Alcohol, and widely distributed – gas stations were everywhere."

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables/

http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/agelbert

Full Knock Down Drag out Thread from above with article fueling the debate here