Let's change the U.S.A. Crude Oil dominance!

[Harmless]

inb4thisguyisanadvocateforpeaceinthemiddleeast

Crude Oil is just proving to not exactly be well worth it anymore. We're using up too much for our own good, it's polluting a ton, and man it will take a really long time to regenerate (due to the decompressing corpses that need time to turn back into crude oil). So let's look for an alternative source of oil, gasoline, etc.

Any advocates for Vegetable Oil? I think that's a pretty sustainable resource, the country just needs to play their cards and budget right. Otherwise it can be regenerated and recycled faster like no other. Now we just need farmland and manpower. Maybe benefits like the Homeless Garden Project can employ homeless people to work on these farms, so that way everyone manages a job, resources, etc. As for farmland... that might be a tad bit difficult to manage, but inland space could possibly be made (I'm talking more around less-populated midwest/east states).

Electricty from Nuclear Energy might be possible, but my only concern is the pollution level.

I'm not too knowledgeable about Diesel, but if anyone can elaborate on possible Diesel use (because I hear it's better than straight-up gasoline) then that's another opportunity.

Solar Power is great, but doesn't seem like it can replace the oil power that Americans are so used to. Seems to fall more with Electricity power.

[Venexis]

Last I had heard, it was relatively easy to make modifications to a vehicle so that it could run on vegetable oil or ethanol, and comparatively cheap too. The only real issue with this is that it takes a lot of solid biomass (corn is popular, but just about anything organic will work) to begin with, and you get a rather small amount of usable fuel out. I can't find any reliable numbers online, and there might be more efficient methods, but I recall reading a couple years back that even if we used all the available biofuels, it would still satisfy less than 2% of our fuel needs. (I'm really not sure about this anymore at all, so if someone wants to prove it wrong, that would be great.)

Your next point mentions nuclear power. This would be my personal choice, but it's sortof a double edged sword. Nuclear power is very efficient (in terms of amount of fuel to power output ratios) and surprisingly low when it comes to waste as well (in terms of mass). But when a nuclear plant goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong. Just look at Chernobyl, or the recent incident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor in Japan. Even assuming everything works as it should, the leftover nuclear waste and surrounding land stays radioactive and unsafe for humans well after the reactor has been shut down.

I don't really know much about diesel either, other than the fact that diesel engines generally run better with the various biofuels put forward in the initial paragraph.

Finally, solar/wind are just too environmentally dependent or expensive (or both) to be seriously considered. The cost of solar panels has gone down immensely in the last few years, but their low power output combined with the fact that they do not work at night, or even during overcast days, automatically writes them off as anything but a small power supply on a camping trip, or a nice supplement for your house. Wind farms, however, are actually pretty common where I live, but they have the same constraints. Driving down a highway you can see maybe 300 of them, and that definitely sounds like a lot, but in reality that's still not enough to power a small city- even when it's windy.

Ultimately, if you're worried about things like dwindling reserves of oil and natural gas, you're better off doing what you can as an individual to reduce your impact. Take a bus to work, or turn off the TV when you're done, things like that. Society is too reliant on our current methods to make a quick and easy change, but we live in an age of technology and innovation. Things like these kinetic tiles can be embedded in sidewalks, hallways, or even roads to generate electricity from traffic in busy areas, and new research into sustainable power for future generations is constantly underway.

[Harmless]

Oh, nice.

Oh, that reminds me, what about Geothermal and Hydro alternatives? I think they make much more power actually, and considering the rising temperatures/sunlight intensity, I think Geothermal's more or less efficient now.

[darthbrowser]

The chief problem with with conversion to "renewable" energy sources is the fact that changing to such sources requires a massive initial investment - even though renewable sources theoretically imply that, for example, business interests will no longer have to purchase endless amounts of fuel, they will only began to repay on the initial investment decades into the future.

Furthermore, each of the alternatives you mentioned comes with a lengthy list of flaws.

As Venexis noted, organic fuels require often excessive amounts of initial material. In a world which still features starvation, it is truly viable to consider a fuel source which would consume about 75% of the world's current food production at the most optimistic estimates?

Nuclear power would only come into being via fusion reactors (efficient fusion power as not yet been developed), but such research is constantly hindered by political funding issues.

Diesel is more efficient then gasoline, but diesel fuel is derived from light virgin gas oil that is produced from the distillation of crude oil. Therefore, diesel is a fossil fuel itself, so I fail to see how replacing current fuels with it will create an impact.

Solar/wind/hydropower simply do not produce justifiable energy outputs.

Geothermal energy would require massive effort to harness in enough quality, and, as many people apparently do not know, geothermal energy *is not renewable.* The earth's internal heat is the Earth's remnant of the superheated gases which formed the solar system. Once the outer layer solidified, the heat stopped being replenished by the Sun, as the crust (and, more importantly, life) absorbs the light.

A mass consumption of the Earth's remaining heat reserves, while comparatively vast, would likely cause tectonic problems, such as reduced plate movement and sporadic volcanism, and would contribute significantly to furthering the erosion of the Earth's magnetic field (which is maintained by convection currents caused by heat transfers in the Earth's core and mantle).

Some have also posited that excessive geothermal utilizing would deplete the mantle's heat faster then the core could replace it, thus causing an overall cooling of the mantle which could lead to unknown results.


The outer mantle would cool far faster if mass geothermal utilization was achieved.

I personally support anti-matter power, but it will require additional research before it can be harnessed en masse.
Nevertheless, progress is been made, such as this design:



How the reaction would proceed:

[Oranjui]

You put those images there as if anyone on these forums is going to even remotely understand what they mean.

But really, people have been pushing for alternatives for quite some time now and it really hasn't done much good. I've seen ethanol emerging in some gas stations, but really not many. At some point, crude oils will probably be fully replaced, but we'll be pushing for even more powerful, better, "greener" (more or less) fuel and power solutions. It's a cycle.
Also, semi-relevant, I found this pretty interesting: http://100yss.org/

[Harmless]

You think maybe we're going to expand past Earth once we use up all its natural resources?

Wow, just like in those Sci-fi movies!

[*Emelia K. Fletcher]

(((Dyson spheres)))

[Oranjui]

type IV civilization pls

But really I don't see anything like that happening within the next few centuries.

hm, fair enough.

[darthbrowser]

But really I don't see anything like that happening within the next few centuries.

In 1961, every major newspaper in the world ran articles pointing out how Kennedy had lost his mind by declaring America would put a man on the moon before 1970.