Additional are the added costs from the use of fossil fuels. Hidden or overlooked many have argued that needs to be considered.
Looks like diesel gonna be a problem.
- Thread starter sanford12
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DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
That's true. But establishment economists, who power all the economic data, don't know how to put a cost on that "externality." Similarly, we don't know how to cost anxiety and depression on the job-strained population.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
I hope you are safe, and not suffering damage from all this rain and wind. The reports look dreadful. Be well, amigo!
Cheers!
Mark
We live about 100 miles north of Sacramento. Out west, the distance is pile up quickly and there can be long gaps between charging stations. I’m holding out on all electric until they get a 5 to 600 mile range that’s real.
I’d love to be able to climb into a car, tell it to take me to Venice Beach, and then go to sleep and wake up 500 miles later at my destination. I hope that happens in my lifetime.
Where we live probably gas/electric hybrid would be our next Car choice.
Given driving time, TSA time, etc. if something is 600 miles or less we will typically drive it.
onepixel
.
I like driving and exploring.
From Canada down to Mexico and ever place in between.
Getting 13 miles per gallon, back in the day wasn't to bad.
Probably get electric on Maui in a couple years.
onepixel
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Thanks, Mark!
Need to get a regular chain saw to do some work out back.
Otherwise still hanging on.
Mahalo!
Carl
I hope they have a handicapped version. Right now, I have to call the transportation company 3 days in advance for a ride to the drs. Handicap vans with 150,000 miles start at $10,000.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
Are you referring to vans that have a wheel chair ramp? Or, vans with hand levers in place of foot pedals?
A ramp. I can’t drive for a couple of reasons. I’ve seen a couple that have these plates where the passenger seat is in the front. They put the connection piece on the bottom of your chair, and you get to sit up front like a real person!
I remember back as a young adult, diesel was one half the cost of gasoline.
Earliest recollection as a child, gas was $0.24/imperial gallon, the good ole days
I get a laugh out of Americans complaining about fuel costs and how it's such a big deal, when they are paying some of the lowest costs on the planet. Reality check.
We switched to propane heat two years ago, as home heating fuel, once the cheapest way to heat your house ( other than having free fire wood) is not anymore economical.
OT, Only use olive oil margarine and drink soya milk, but love Gouda cheese, you can keep your cheddar cheese
Earliest recollection as a child, gas was $0.24/imperial gallon, the good ole days
I get a laugh out of Americans complaining about fuel costs and how it's such a big deal, when they are paying some of the lowest costs on the planet. Reality check.
We switched to propane heat two years ago, as home heating fuel, once the cheapest way to heat your house ( other than having free fire wood) is not anymore economical.
OT, Only use olive oil margarine and drink soya milk, but love Gouda cheese, you can keep your cheddar cheese
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I wonder about how this is calculated. So it takes an amount of energy to get a gallon of oil, and burning that oil produces ~25x that much energy. OK, got it. Problem is thats a one-time use. Now you need to get another gallon of oil.
The sun comes up most days, and the wind blows pretty often, so that initial investment will keep chugging out power for the life of the panel or wind turbine. Turbines have an amount of maintenance involved but panels are pretty maintenance-free and will go for years without issues. I admit to knowing comparatively little about wind turbines but i've had solar on my house for about a decade now. One inverter has failed in that time, the other is fine and all of the panels are fine.
so yes its short-term profitable for oil, no question, but does the long-term output vs energy input eventually favor renewables? I get that profit is generally the metric people care about, I'm looking at energy input to make it vs energy output over the life of the device though. Oil is largely a one-shot deal, burn it and its gone. Panels that can sit on a roof or field or whatever for 20+ years just keep going.
We also drive some of the least fuel-efficient vehicles on the planet.
The fatal flaw with renewable energy is its inconsistency as a reliable source. The window of peak energy production for solar is maybe six hours a day and this doesn't include cloudy days. Wind is probably more reliable but it isn't available all the time in most use cases. Then there is the environmental damage from having vast wind and solar farms that can't be ignored. Keep in mind that "renewable" sources have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture components and install them. Oil has much lower production costs and a typical oil well produces for 20-30 years which is similar to solar and wind longevity. Below is a comparison of what it takes for solar and wind to equal the equivalent of a typical oil well considering the end user efficiency of each energy source. The environmental impact of oil is much lower than renewable regarding the area of land being impacted. Especially when considering the mining needed for solar production.
Summary Comparison Table
To put the scale of operations in perspective when attempting to match the lifetime output of a typical 25-year well:
Scale this out to where solar and wind meets all energy needs and the environmental impact would be massive.
Summary Comparison Table
To put the scale of operations in perspective when attempting to match the lifetime output of a typical 25-year well:
| Feature | 1 Average U.S. Oil Well | Equivalent Wind Infrastructure | Equivalent Solar Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical Footprint | Less than 1 acre (drilling pad) | ~1 to 2 square miles (turbines must be spaced out) | ~150 to 200 acres of land |
| Lifespan | 20 to 30 years | 20 to 25 years | 25 to 30 years |
| Intermittency | Pumps continuously (steady baseload) | Generates only when wind blows (requires grid/battery backup) | Generates only during day (requires grid/battery backup) |
Scale this out to where solar and wind meets all energy needs and the environmental impact would be massive.
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Cheap relatively to most everywhere else. Typically we expect to pay double in Europe and 1.5X in Canada when we travel.I guess this depends on what you feel is "cheap."
For me, it really hasn't been cheap in a decade. Regular gasoline averaged around $2.25 to $2.75 in 2015.
SoCal Sam
Lunatic Member
Some studies suggest corn ethanol has negative EROI.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
Also has negative effects on engines - so I am told. I was told to add TECHRON after a trip to midwest where many gas blends use lots of ethanol.
ConradH
Lunatic Member
I've long been a fan of Don Lancaster. He passed in 2023 but his site is still up. He wrote a lot on the science and economics of energy, most of which presents an almost unbeatable case for fossil fuels. It's not that he was a fan of fossil fuels, but wanted to point out how much of a scam most other renewables are, ethanol included. Scroll down to the greenish box and read his energy stuff. Use the embedded links that often take you to his other writings with more detail on a specific thing:
The energy density and portability with fossil fuels can't be replicated with renewable sources. Put a load on electric vehicles and their range plummets as is the case with EV trucks versus gas and diesel ones. It will be a very long time before electric replaces diesel, gas and other fossil based fuels used by trucks, long haul rigs, oversea shipping, airplanes, military equipment, etc. IMO, the only renewable fuel that can come close is hydrogen. Some interesting things are happening in regard to ground sources of hydrogen and how it is produced. Life as we know it is not close to possible without vast quantities of fossil fuels.
Edit:
As a side note, 2026 EV sales in the US have dropped around 25% since the $7,500 tax credit was eliminated. This shows that a large portion of EV sales in the US was manufactured by the government and not only from unmanipulated market demand. Since 2008 (inception of the EV credit) the total of all EV industry subsidies have been ~$60 billion. Who knows how many hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that were, and still are, being spent on all government renewable energy programs.
Edit:
As a side note, 2026 EV sales in the US have dropped around 25% since the $7,500 tax credit was eliminated. This shows that a large portion of EV sales in the US was manufactured by the government and not only from unmanipulated market demand. Since 2008 (inception of the EV credit) the total of all EV industry subsidies have been ~$60 billion. Who knows how many hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that were, and still are, being spent on all government renewable energy programs.
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IMO, thorium reactors are the endgame energy source. It is 200 times more energy dense than uranium and produces very little harmful byproducts. They can't have runaway fission like uranium reactors. The reactors can be scaled from large to small. Below is AI's estimate of the longevity of thorium as an energy source.
"Thorium reactors could theoretically power global energy needs for thousands to billions of years, depending on how efficiently the fuel is burned and how much crustal rock we mine. [1, 2, 3]
Why Thorium Lasts So Long
- High Abundance: Thorium is about 3 to 4 times more common in the Earth's crust than uranium. It is often collected as a byproduct of rare-earth mining. [1]
- Energy Density: Just 1 kilogram of thorium in a breeder reactor can unleash roughly 24,000 megawatt-hours of thermal energy—matching the energy output of thousands of tons of coal. [1]
Estimated Timelines
- Thousands of Years: Standard conservative estimates suggest known terrestrial reserves can comfortably fuel human civilization for 10,000+ years at modern consumption rates. [1, 2]
- Billions of Years: Theoretical models using widespread breeder reactors and extracting trace thorium from ordinary crustal rock suggest it could last up to 1 to 5 billion years, outlasting the stable lifetime of the Earth's biosphere. [1]"