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Originally Posted by sendler
Pleas try to aquaint yourself with the scale of our oil consumption.
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A hundred...million...barrels... a day
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Stored electricity is very difuse. Diesel fuel is very dense energy. 1 gallon can do the work of 10 kWh of electricity in an industrial machine at 35%, weighs 7 pounds, and costs $4.
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Fossil fuel borders on magic.
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Farm machines use 570 Liters of diesel per day = 5,700 kWh per day. Even if you cut that by2.5 for the extra efficiency of electric motors with round trip losses you get 2,300 kWh per day for a large size farm machine. 12 Tesla grid scale 200kWh powerpacks per day to hot swap in and out. for just one tractor. We are going to need to start making some mighty long extension cords to get all of this energy around. Food pricing will skyrocket in lock step with oil price in 20-30 years.
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2.5 miles across and .75 miles deep. Mining copper at .2% ore grade. The earth movers carry 250 tons/ trip. 1 truck at 10 mph versus 3,400 donkeys at 2 mph. Anyone should be able to understand that once diesel fuel begins to leave us, we won't be able to ever again undertake big projects like this.
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Human civilization will be much smaller and simpler again. After the age of fossil fuel.
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The farm equipment is idle most of the year.
When light trucks,automobiles,tractor-trailers,trains,and ships aren't using diesel,there should be plenty for farm equipment and extractive industry.
Food prices will rise incrementally just as they have.Without 261-million fossil cars on the road there will be plenty of liquid hydrocarbons for them.And when wer'e off fossil fuel,farmers won't face price volatility as we see just with the recent Memorial Day weekend fuel price run-up.
Human 'civilization' is an oxymoron.