this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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xkcd

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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I think people forget that petroleum is condensed and distilled solar energy. One gallon of gasoline is the results of years of solar energy.

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Non renewable solar energy unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If you're making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don't really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don't, there's still NOx, but that's what cat piss is for).

Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn't consuming.

Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you'd want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Ah. I'm generally skeptical of any plant-based 'green fuel' because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (4 children)

No, it's renewable. But... not in any practical timeframe.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's not the definition of renewable.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not really. Its trees from a time before micro organisms evolved the ability to eat dead trees. These days, the solar energy collected by trees will get used to power the metabolisms of fungi before those trees can get buried and eventually become new coal & petroleum.

I suppose an impact from a sufficiently large asteroid could turn the entire crust of the planet into magma, sterilizing it and therefore opening the possibility that new oil might be created some day.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

IIRC it is actually mostly from algea. A small amount from some fern-like plants. By the time trees existed, they were being broken down by bacteria.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

I think I read somewhere that oil will not be produced anymore because now bacteria can break down that biomass that it previously didn't. Hence, non-renewable even on long timescales.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Only if we bring back the dinosaurs. There are six movies (and counting!) explaining why this is not a good idea.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Technically no. Only if we erase bacteria capable of breaking down trees.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Energy density is a huge advantage which most people find hard to give up especially when the biggest problem that we face is invisible to most people. We can't fix a problem if we ignore the cause.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

A lot of people have been having their cake days recently. Guess it's the first anniversary of the Reddit exodus.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

oops you posted irrelevant pedantics that verge on misinformation 😧

sure it’s distilled solar energy that cannot be renewed. relevant language highligted. no one “forgets,” this. literally no one. it’s just not relevant to a timespan less than millions of years. cheers! ☀️

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Petroleum can't be renewed, but biofuels can be.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

v true but i also dislike how biofuels get smorked into yet more CO2 which is kind of a problem rn

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO~2~ when burned, but it doesn't matter because that same CO~2~ had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

In theory true. In reality not true.

While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study

Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that's left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.