Re: A Short History of Energy (in the US)

I really liked this part of your article: "This sounds a bit too high to me (on a side note, does anybody know approximately what the energy density of whale oil would be?). "

So, from a bit of web searching about whales, in an effort to answer question 2, the average "oil take" from a whale (fin whale) was some 20 to 30 bbls ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3089/is_1_64/ai_110532128/pg_4 ) = 840 to 1260 gallons per whale. This is about 23,000 to 38,000 whales per season seems higher than historic data suggest by some 4 to 5 times for 1821 ( from http://www.energybulletin.net/3338.html ).

If I knew the answer to question 2 I could put some time and effort into a much more compelling engineering/economics question: how many miles per whale (mpw?!) my car gets (if I owned one). I suppose that bit of scientific research has too low a value to get some US government money to go whale hunting this weekend. Maybe the Japanese already know and are not telling because it is SUPER high energy content and that is their secret ingredient to ultra high efficiency luxury hybrid SUVs for the US market! (The petrol would get slowly leaked onto the road as you drive creating the illusion of burning it so as not to upset the masses that are sensitive to that kind of thing).

Regarding the whole debate about how energy consumption will go: this should be left where it belongs: in economic research departments (preferably next door to the politics research department so they get an accurate source of input data). If you want to buy USD200/gallon gasoline the oil companies will happily sell you as much as you want, and likely give you a tree to take home and plant as a promotional item so you can feel like you are contributing to a carbon neutral world (just don't use it for fire wood in 20 years, make a desk or something as Daniel suggests). Since carbon capture is all about growth rate (and apparently Stephan's nuclear powered robots), sorry Daniel, plants actually use CO2 all the time not just in the future, may I suggest the give-away-plants be poplars or pines? Oak and redwoods would be poor choices I think. (By the way, Stephan, did windmill technology advance rapidly while I was reading your response and they can now convert not just kinetic energy to electricity but also magically suck up CO2 to solve that problem with out the give-away-trees? - damn it was such a good idea too!)

The thing I'm going to miss when we run out of economically extractable petroleum ("rock oil") is plastic. I really like Gore-Tex (R) (bio-plastics not withstanding), which I'll need for all the extra rain the newly warmed world will be generating. At least the trees can provide wind-breaks and shelter from all the new super storms before the massive die-backs set in from our exponential growth rate.

One last comment: be very careful with your "How much CO2 was use to make the car?" question. How much energy did it take to make the world? I suppose you could limit yourself to DIRECT inputs and assume all the thing that made electricity generation possible for the robotic welding sprang up like little turbine-generator-making-and-rail-road-laying trees (not as fast growing as pines). If you really want do answer that questions I suggest you do the exergy calculation yourself and then ask "Why shouldn't we all kill ourselves and hasten the eventual heat death of the universe since that is the exergetically efficient thing to do?" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exergy ).

Just make high quality ceramic bricks out of all the CO2 (that we capture right in the car, pump out at the petrol station, and collect when we drop off more gasoline to be carted away to the brick factory) so we can all live in nicely water proof (with a bit of natural rubber sealant) very high energy efficiency houses with solar panels on top (to be not just carbon neutral, but energy neutral) which will keep us nice an cool - then we can add in all the surplus sulfur in the world to the bricks and we can all follow the yellow brick road to Oz.

And I would still like to know the energy density of whale oil too!

Adrian