Reply #59: All energy comes from the sun. [View All]

[rman]

But that doesn't mean we don't have a problem.

Turkeys eat corn, corn doesn't grow on energy directly from the sun alone; it needs fertilizer, made in part from carbon-hydrates (in this case specifically natural gas).

How are we going to grow the corn to feed the turkeys if were're running out of carbon-hydrates?

How many Turkeys do you need to produce a barrel of oil? (taking into account that we in fact eat most of the turkey).

energy > turkeys > energy
sounds nice, but i think we all realize it won't be at 100% efficiency.

Oil was virtually for free; an energy-rich liquid burried in the ground for us to recover. That ment energy almost for free, for as long as it lasted. Energy from TDP is far from free, unless you'd have it run on energy from renewable sources (solar, wind, water etc). If we can do that on a large scale, then that's the solution to the problem of running out of oil. Many processes that require energy can run on electricity directly. TDP may yet have a place there, for those cases where carbon-hydrates are a more convenient way to store energy.

But TDP cannot replace oil as a *source* of energy, since it needs a source of energy to operate.