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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries
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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (64850)6/10/2005 4:57:40 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (2) of 74559
 
<for the U.S. to attempt a wholesale switch to bio-fuels would require putting more land into fuel production alone than is used today for food production. >

Of course Ray. People can only eat about 5 kg of food a day [even Americans] which is about 1,500 kg a year. Just the fuel for the SUV would gobble that much. Then there's the fuel to make the road, the metals in the SUV, to power the house and office airconditioners and other electricity [such as heating]. Already we are needing more land, and we haven't even got into the new fuel-efficient Airbus 380 for a trip to Noo Zealand.

But that's a bit wrong because the food from crops is a small portion of the crop. The corn eaten is only about 10% of the plant's mass. I suppose only 10% of the potential calories of the annual growth of most plants are digested in people's stomachs. The rest is cellulose and stuff.

So with people buying a Toyota Prius instead of a monster SUV, bringing more land into production, living closer to work etc, it would be doable to run the show on biofuels.

But photovoltaics are probably better - no rainfall needed to make them grow. The deserts could be planted with photovoltaics.

There's no shortage of energy Ray. The universe is made of energy. E = mc2 so there's an awful lot of it. We just need to squish it up and pop it into the fuel tank. At $60 a barrel oil equivalent, a LOT of sources of energy become economic.

Mqurice
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