Cumberland BC: The Cumberlander Articles Section
Global · 12th February 2009
Editor
The following quote is from a longer article by Gail the Actuary posted on The Oil Drum.
Earth Is Finite
What is happening is that the earth is finite, and we are starting to reach some of its limitations. At this point, most of the "easy to extract" oil has already been removed. There is still oil in the ground, but what remains is becoming more and more difficult to remove.
When we try to find alternatives, we encounter limitations of other types. In some situations, natural gas might be a substitute, but in North America it is also in relatively short supply. Coal is in better supply, but it has serious climate change issues.
We hear a lot about ethanol from corn. Growing corn for ethanol requires huge amounts of agricultural land and fresh water. Both agricultural land and fresh water are in limited supply. About 25% of the corn we grow in the United States is now being used to produce ethanol. Even using this huge amount of corn, we don't produce very much ethanol. The energy content of the ethanol produced is equal to only about 1% of energy of the oil we use. Clearly, there is no way we can scale up this process, to cover any reasonable shortfall of oil.
Even the minerals that we might use in batteries, and the uranium we might use in nuclear reactors, are becoming increasingly difficult to extract. We have already removed most of the high quality ores of many minerals. What is left is ores of lower concentration. These ores can still be extracted, but it takes more energy resources to process this ore. The energy resources used for processing the ore are often oil and natural gas, and they themselves are in increasingly short supply.
Complete article HERE.
Earth Is Finite
What is happening is that the earth is finite, and we are starting to reach some of its limitations. At this point, most of the "easy to extract" oil has already been removed. There is still oil in the ground, but what remains is becoming more and more difficult to remove.
When we try to find alternatives, we encounter limitations of other types. In some situations, natural gas might be a substitute, but in North America it is also in relatively short supply. Coal is in better supply, but it has serious climate change issues.
We hear a lot about ethanol from corn. Growing corn for ethanol requires huge amounts of agricultural land and fresh water. Both agricultural land and fresh water are in limited supply. About 25% of the corn we grow in the United States is now being used to produce ethanol. Even using this huge amount of corn, we don't produce very much ethanol. The energy content of the ethanol produced is equal to only about 1% of energy of the oil we use. Clearly, there is no way we can scale up this process, to cover any reasonable shortfall of oil.
Even the minerals that we might use in batteries, and the uranium we might use in nuclear reactors, are becoming increasingly difficult to extract. We have already removed most of the high quality ores of many minerals. What is left is ores of lower concentration. These ores can still be extracted, but it takes more energy resources to process this ore. The energy resources used for processing the ore are often oil and natural gas, and they themselves are in increasingly short supply.
Complete article HERE.