I just had a conversation with a colleague who is somewhat mainstream in his/her thinking. The question came up as to why can’t we be energy independent. What is taking so long with the electric cars and natural gas powered … everything? When can we break away from middle eastern petroleum?
In the public sphere, all I hear are the questioners seeking reassurance that there are energy forms out there that will allow us to maintain our current level of consumption. They rarely put it exactly that way, but that is the heart of the issue.
I think multiple generations of people have failed to appreciate the natural wonder of liquid hydrocarbons. The C7-C10 fractions of petroleum, whether directly from the ground or from a cat cracker or reformer, are the motive basis for most of our ground transportation. These liquid hydrocarbons are of a reasonably low vapor pressure and high enough boiling point to allow their use in everything from go-carts and lawn mowers to automobiles and caterpillars. Teenagers and grandmothers can pump hydrocarbons into an inexpensive and simple tank for use at ambient pressure and temperature. This liquid has a melting point low enough to make it flowable under nearly all earthly conditions.
The high energy density and the liquid state of gasoline is what makes it nearly perfect for propulsion. The energy density of gasoline is 34.8 mega-Joules per liter (MJ/L), as opposed to 21.2 MJ/L for ethanol.
Yeah, gasoline is cheaper per liter than the bottled water inside the convenience store. That perversion is just a temporary historical aberration. This will change.
Cosmically, hydrocarbons in the C7-C10 range suitable for automotive use are quite scarce in the local stellar neighborhood. Some small hydrocarbon molecules like methane have been spotted in the gas giant planets and on Titan. But for the most part, the only supply of hydrocarbons we have are found in porous deposits below the surface of the only place we can get to- Earth.
We should appreciate our hydrocarbon resources for the true natural wonder that it is and be a bit more reluctant to squander it. I doubt we’ll ever find a source of energy that is as cheap and convenient to use with such a high energy density. Battery technology may get close, but innovation there is a highly specialized art that is beyond the scope of most shade tree mechanics. Common lead acid batteries require material and energy inputs, like everything else, and have somewhat low energy density and a high weight penalty.
Lithium batteries, with their higher energy density require a variety of manufactured and relatively exotic substances. And, they require lithium which is fairly scarce, both cosmically and on earth. We really should be recycling lithium scrap. Seriously, we need to have great respect and appreciation for lithium as well. There really isn’t enough lithium to support everyone’s high energy density lifestyle.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Gauss: This and so much more. Global warming? Won’t be much global warming after we run out of petroleum. Oh, there is a lot of coal and we’ll figure out a way to use it, but it will be messy here for a while.
I keep hoping the Saudi that said, “the stone age didn’t end for a a lack of stones” is right when it comes to oil. I don’t think he will be.
Hey – how deep is that snow now?
I’ve sometimes related some of these notions to friends of mine. People seem largely unaware that the energy density of oil is something that is basically required for automotive transportation as we know it.
I suspect as time and income inequality progress while reserves deplete we will see something of a petroleum divide, like the so-called digital divide that exists today.
Increasing scarcity in petroleum will lead all of us to ask- How can I live a better life with less? We naturally associate a better life with more. This will be an interesting century. I’m wondering where and when the third nuclear warshot will go off.
You can afford mobility if it’s centralized – then the energy density of the fuel doesn’t matter because it doesn’t have to be portable. Of course, that means things like cars and trucks aren’t sustainable, nor the individualistic and independent lifestyle they help make possible – instead people would need to depend on common and explicit infrastructure (trains, buses) and live closer together.
I can more easily see a political divide between people who have the money and want to use it to preserve their independence at any cost and and those willing to give up more independence to a central/semi-central government to be able to do useful things without being Brazil.
Interesting point I hadn’t considered. Willing to give up independence or must give up independence?
I think willing is more accurate. The problem that comes up is that society has to come up with the resources to build more infrastructure from somewhere – either it can be used to maintain a lifestyle of independence or it can be used to build infrastructure, but probably not both.
Since the population likely to benefit from the infrastructure isn’t the same as that with the money to pay for it, you probably can’t use the market to do it (and if the transit system is going to be good enough to replace cars, it probably has to go lots of places where pop. density won’t sustain the routes – thus either other routes or other money has to be used to sustain it). At that point, you’re having to tax the rich (not exclusively but disproportionately) to pay for it. At some point, if your tax system is harsh enough, pulling the money from people and compelling their interdependence would be effectively the same thing, but I don’t think that that level of taxation would be either necessary or desirable.
[Aside – I am liberal, and think that the gap between poor and rich is indicative of a bias in how government rewards the poor and rich (or allows them to reward themselves) which needs to be corrected in part – you’re supposed to be rewarded for success based on your merits and not those of your parents or family or friends. Clearly people dumb enough to buy too much house with too little money and foresight and banks dumb enough to assume that bundling together bad risks made them not bad both failed, yet one set of people was punished and the other was not only rewarded but allowed to continue mostly as before.]
Alternatively, if more money is spent in subsidies to find and preserve oil, it can’t be spent elsewhere. The scarcity is likely to disproportionately affect poor and middle-class people, and make them worse off. Global warming effects (that could be mitigated better through mass transit – you don’t need oil to generate electricity, though at least now we still need coal) will probably affect poorer people more than richer people (the ability to mitigate its effects through insurance, for example). Finally, the freedom to go wherever you want isn’t terribly valuable if you cannot and will not be able to afford it. (As the old aphorism goes, while laws that make people free to sleep under bridges apply to both to the rich and the poor, they probably aren’t relevant to at least one of those sets.)
Hap- Thanks for the reply. What I see happening now is a reconstruction of American society by the accelerated implementation of structures that favor those of means. We are witnessing the deconstruction of government in general. In particular, we are seeing the beginning of the abdication of the state and federal social safety net in favor of vouchers or other contrivances. This is nothing more than the channeling of power to powerful corporate entities whose main interest is the issuance of an invoice, preferably by setting up a monthly debit to your credit card.
The market has advantages over central control of goods and services. The collapse of Soviet communism bears witness to this in some ways. But to use the market as a template for social order, or as a driver for the anthropology of the future is to make the assumption that human society is nothing more than an extractable resource like fish in a barrel. The government and business has colluded for too long in aligning the public to be more compliant consumers.
What we do not need are more MBA’s humping exotic commercial paper schemes for fast cash. We do need a more grounded expectation as to what a well lived existance looks like. We must see to it that accomplishment is encouraged and rewarded. But we must also find a way to downplay the definition of success as measured by acquisition. Maybe the current educational emphasis on math, science and engineering is partly to blame for our wasteful materialism today.
The Buddhists have understood this for a very long time. Yet, it is puzzling how evangelical Christians sects have evolved a theology of wealth. God wants you to be rich. But “rich” only has meaning if there is also the poor. OK. I’m out of my range here.
“natural gas powered… everything”
http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982
Pookie pookie. “8^>)
Even the most optimistic (corrupt) estimates of Marcellus shale methane production only sum to 14 years US total consumption. Weitzmann, WWII England, ABE process to make butanol. Butanol fermentation is now well-perfected – 165% the energy density of ethanol, efficient, no azeotrope, non-hygroscopic, not a substance of abuse. Few corruption opportunities Department of Agriculture to the pump. Maize pimp Archer-Daniels-Midland says “no.”
To ferment cellulose, begin by plasticizing its hydrogen bonding for degradative access: supercritical water or ionic solvents. That almost makes sense. All photosynthesis goes through RuBisCO, the slowest least efficient enzyme on Earth – about 10 turnovers/sec at 5% efficiency. Have a Caltech summer class gene-gineer a better RuBisCO. 10X agricultural output would bankrupt a world ruled by imposed scarcity. Franken-RuBisCO makes Baby Jesus cry.
Uncle Al! I thought maybe you were captured by aliens again. Nice to hear from you!
I don’t believe any of the shale gas babble. We’ll burn it up faster than ever. I do wonder if there is helium in it, though.
Last week at a trade show I spent some time with a person from the Helium world. He said the Marcellus does not contain an appreciable amount of helium. Discussed the value of NASA blowing 645 gallons of helium into space in the GP-B tests of relativity… not the best use of He was our conclusion.
Sent a card to you via a coworker with hellos on it.
Morris,
Were you at Informex?
yessir I was, helping them keep the gumbo inventory as low as possible.
I’m jealous. I love NOLA. Well, visiting at least.
Shale gas is leaky at all stages and places. I doubt there is helium. The methane is from thermal diagenesis of trapped shale organics. There is no primordial methane and helium catchment. I did Colorado oil shale 1977-79. Shale oil is BS containing ~50 ppm arsenic (kills noble metal catalyst) and ~3% nitrogen (kills acidic zeolite support).
For three years I’ve sought to get 300-400 messages in bottles lain across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current -55 to -60 south latitude. Their 8-layer laminated seal should survive a century of sunlight and saltwater. A weathered crack stops at the next layer.
Barrow, Alaska, autumn 2011.
A Tasmanian cruise line may cooperate, hence Australian Customs to import sealed transparent bottles. Customs as such has no problems. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Biosecurity; the Marine Division… I am lowering Aussie unemployment as you read this.
I don’t know how to do that. The economic structure we have makes it easier for people for find work, but harder to sustain the social networks (family, friends, religious community or not of your choosing) that make life have meaning. It’s also harder to sustain the professional networks that help make one’s work fulfilling (and harder to keep at work that one finds fulfilling) – the Internet makes that easier, but lots of intimacies require physical rather than electronic presence. Things can’t replace our need for meaning in our lives, no matter what the commercials say or imply.
(We probably keep lots of stuff because we don’t know what to do with it, not because it makes us happy. If we could find better ways to recycle it, we could have less stuff and still feel OK. That doesn’t help the feeling that getting better things and experiences will make us fulfilled, though.)
We pay a lot of the money we have for experiences and for capabilities. The things help us to live longer (or to be happier in what time we do have) and to do and make things that we couldn’t do before. What they can’t do is make us happy. Replacing community with acquisition probably makes it harder for the infrastructure (intellectual, social, and physical) that fostered the ability to make and acquire things on such scale to continue to exist. One community doesn’t work for everyone, and we have been better at allowing people to find their own way than we used to be. No community probably works for no one, though – if an economic system threatens the existence of community, it serves no one’s interest for long. People and community are how the values that sustain our culture and economic system are propagated, and when they are unable to do so, well…
Freedom took a lot of community and work to make possible, and lots of work for everyone to sustain. If you ruin your playground, no one where you live is going to be able to play safely and freely. Even if you have to work some to keep up the playground, you would probably be better off than if you don’t do anything and expect it to maintain itself. We know that making everyone work at the playground doesn’t work well, but I don’t know that hoping that everyone else will work at the playground will go well, either.
One interpretation of the Bible argues that Jesus wanted to change Judaism and not destroy it – that the insistence on wealth as value and security and on literal and legalistic interpretation of law and Scripture (and their use to avoid moral duties) held by some sects of Judaism and the ruling classes of Israel negated what Judaism was supposed to mean and destroyed the proper relationship of its people to one another and to God. Round and round again.
The fallacy many successful people have is that they did it all on their own. I might believe that if they could show me that they can smelt iron, fabricate semiconductor devices, farm a few hundred acres of corn, and build a container ship. We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants. Economics is one of the social sciences.