"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
The real price of oil?
"I would take 11 1/3 years to replace a barrel of oil (equivalent to 1700 kwh), while a top athlete would make it in about 5 2/3 years." Luis, writing here.
So the work equivalent of the energy in one barrel of oil - over a decade of human labour. Oil is an incredibly concentrated form of energy.
I tried to break it down a bit further, to get my head round what it really means: (please point out if I have made a mistake in this calculation!)
"One barrel of crude oil [159 litres], when refined, produces about 19 gallons of finished motor gasoline, and 10 gallons of diesel, as well as other petroleum products." from here.
19 U.S. gallons of gasoline = 71.9228239 litres
Taking Luis's 11 1/3 years to produce a barrel of crude, dividing that by the petrol/gasoline output, gives us an estimate of each year's work output in oil equivalents, approximately
71.9228239 litres / 11.333333 years = 6.34613152 litres a year.
So approximately 6.34613152 litres /365 days = 0.0173866617 litres per day.
So 0.0173866617 litres/day * 7 day/week = 0.121706632 litres per week.
Hence 1 / 0.121706632 weeks to make 1 litre.
1 litre of petrol/gasoline is equivalent to 8.21647912 weeks - a little over 8 weeks of manual labour.
Google says 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres so that means a U.S. gallon of petrol/gasoline is the energy equivalent of 8.21647912 * 3.78541178 = 31.1027569 weeks to make the energy equivalent of 1 U.S. gallon.
So the work equivalent of the energy in one barrel of oil - over a decade of human labour. Oil is an incredibly concentrated form of energy.
I tried to break it down a bit further, to get my head round what it really means: (please point out if I have made a mistake in this calculation!)
"One barrel of crude oil [159 litres], when refined, produces about 19 gallons of finished motor gasoline, and 10 gallons of diesel, as well as other petroleum products." from here.
19 U.S. gallons of gasoline = 71.9228239 litres
Taking Luis's 11 1/3 years to produce a barrel of crude, dividing that by the petrol/gasoline output, gives us an estimate of each year's work output in oil equivalents, approximately
71.9228239 litres / 11.333333 years = 6.34613152 litres a year.
So approximately 6.34613152 litres /365 days = 0.0173866617 litres per day.
So 0.0173866617 litres/day * 7 day/week = 0.121706632 litres per week.
Hence 1 / 0.121706632 weeks to make 1 litre.
1 litre of petrol/gasoline is equivalent to 8.21647912 weeks - a little over 8 weeks of manual labour.
Google says 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres so that means a U.S. gallon of petrol/gasoline is the energy equivalent of 8.21647912 * 3.78541178 = 31.1027569 weeks to make the energy equivalent of 1 U.S. gallon.
Views: 116
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Comment by ninmah on March 25, 2010 at 3:44pm
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What an interesting way to look at this -- I had never thought of it that way.
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Comment by John D. Boyden on March 25, 2010 at 6:43pm
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nice job, fun stats
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Comment by Starling on March 25, 2010 at 8:23pm
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Thanks - it's great to be able to think "is driving 10 miles really worth 8 week's hard work??" I'm not saying I always manage to choose the right option, but thinking about it this way is helping me concentrate on getting much more local faster.
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Hmm - yeah kind of! I just use it as a way to get a reality check on the "real cost" of how we live at the moment. That in fact our lifestyles - every time we jump in the car - we are burning up a massive amount of energy. We have to build a way to live that we like and that doesn't use this stuff! It's a serious design challenge. David Holmgren wrote something like use fossil fuels to set up systems that don't need fossil fuels to run themselves. His permaculture principles doc**ent is a good one - it's a wh*** new way to think about how to live, as I see it.
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