I agree that the supply of oil is definitely a problem. It's not just america's problem though. It's the problem of everyone that uses oil... from ever single industrialized nation in the americas, Europe, Russia and right on to the far east. I don't have a problem with drilling for more here, wherever it's located. I also don't have a problem with nuclear power, hydro power or any other kind of power. The way I see it, if we need it we build it. There's potential for something like another 2200 MW from the lower part of the Churchill River in Labrador that sits as yet undeveloped because of government squabling over transmission rates through other provinces and finding a suitable route for the lines. That project in itself is quite a large block of energy. Fairly low cost, relatively clean energy... I wish they'd go ahead with projects like that.
The problem I see with ethanol, and that's any form of ethanol is that from my perspective it requires more energy to produce than you get from it. From what I've read that can vary anywhere I believe from 130% to 150% of what you will eventually get from it... so if you're using 30-50% more energy to produce ethanol that it returns to you, you're burnig yourself out of oil faster, not slowing the inevitable. I'm by no means an expert on the subject, but when I look at a crop like corn that's highly dependant on nitrogen (derived from natural gas) along with beets and cane, again both highly nitrogen dependant, I wonder how you can pour energy into the crop and still expect to get more energy out... Look at a crop like beans or canola. Those two are far less dependant on N and I think that by the time you squeeze them for their oil, and run the process, it's still not much better than break even on an energy basis. It's one thing to make oil from beans or canola so long as there's a market for the meal, but once you reach the point where the meal is no longer needed because you've got so much, the energy returns and the economic returns start looking pretty shaky to me...
Again, the general idea I'm using is that oil has been mostly responsible for making agriculture function for the last 60 years. You can't get more energy (oil) out of any system than you put in, agriculture included. Otherwise, Einstein was wrong...
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Today's Featured Article - Upgrading an Oliver Super 55 Electrical System - by Dennis Hawkins. My old Oliver Super 55 has been just sitting and rusting for several years now. I really hate to see a good tractor being treated that way, but not being able to start it without a 30 minute point filing ritual every time contributed to its demise. If it would just start when I turn the key, then I would use it more often. In addition to a bad case of old age, most of the tractor's original electrical system was simply too unreliable to keep. The main focus of this page is to show how I upgr
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