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Check out my friend Craig's web site: turquoiseenergy.com
He does wave power generation, electric car conversions, is working on his own battery technologies and much more. I should talk to him about wind power, as I'm sure he'll come up with something that would work for small scale generation.
Me ka ha`aha`a,
Mike
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quote:
Originally posted by jackson
Here's a unique concept: It was the dinosaurs and their mass extinction that provided us with oil. Good possibility that we are the fuel for whatever will follow our sorry asses.
It wasn't the dinosaurs but the earliest "trees" (actually mostly giant club mosses like wawaiole and tree ferns) that became coal and oil. And they only did so because there was nothing at the time that could eat the wood after they died and fell over in swamps. Animals (and fungi) have evolved since then, so now everything rots away before it gets buried and "cooked" into hydrocarbons. So there will never be any significant amount of oil made, and hasn't been for 300 million years.
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You think fungi evolved after trees??
No, oil mainly comes from the oceans. It's still being made.
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http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/systems/en...pture.html
Okay, I'm not the only one laboring under the dinosaur misconception. But according to some scientific belief, oil is still being produced (I can cite the article is asked). And most scientists will tell you they don't know anything for certain regarding oil production. Very interesting and thans all for spurring the education of Jackson.
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Oil coming from dinosaurs is one of those fake stories they tell school children, like George Washington cut down the cherry tree or that he had wooden teeth. The majority of it comes from microscopic organisms in an aquatic environment, mainly algae which was probably more abundant millions of years ago when the earth was warmer.
But regardless of whether or not it is still being produced, we're mining millions of years worth of stored carbon and releasing it into the environment.
Oddly enough, one of the top contenders right now for an oil replacement is from the same micro organisms, except extracting it in real time which is carbon neutral because they remove as much carbon dioxide during their life span as they release when the bio diesel is burned. You can google algae diesel or whatever they are calling it. They experimented with it in the 70's but the dept of energy determined it would take too much land to make it feasible but current efforts are based on growing it vertically instead of horizontally so the real estate issue is not a problem, and in the 70's they didn't have bioengineering to tweak the algae to produce more oil. This is one of those things that is being produced right now, not something from a science fiction novel, but of course the cost is so astronomically high that its only used as a proof-of-concept. If they can get the price down, and when the price of oil goes up, you'll see vertical algae farms surrounding the windmills.
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What are you telling me, George Washington didn't cut down the cherry tree? He didn't have wooden teeth? Huh?????
Seriously, all I really learned after much reading is that no one knows for certain how oil is produced or how much there really is or if it still being produced in significant quantities. There is strong speculation that there is enough natural gas to last for millenia. As it stands now and for the forseeable future, it will be far cheaper than oil. . .everywhere except Hawaii 
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I remember the oil embargo and the lines to get gas, only being eligible for gas on the days your license plate ended with an even or odd number, etc. Since then we've gone from importing 30% of our oil to importing 70% of it. Wrong direction. Since then, Americans have become even more accustomed to just-in-time delivery of goods and services, fast food, and other gimme-it-right-now entitlements. If OPEC shuts off the taps to us (either through an embargo, war, environmental disaster, or something else that creates the same effect) $10-$15 for a gallon of gas will only be one problem in this society where everybody demands stuff NOW. In the 70's a good portion of the population still remembered war rationing and doing without things, sacrificing for a bigger cause. Fast forward to now, and very few of these people are left. When the next big energy hiccup comes (and it WILL come) our economy and society is less able to handle it now than when we were only importing 30% of our energy. Imagine what it's going to be like next time when we're importing 70% of our energy. People will be screaming for bio diesel, practical electric cars, and other technologies that will be 5+ years away. And like last time, the oil exporting countries will make sure the taps start flowing generously again just before the technologies become ready for the market. This is a game that we should be tired of playing after almost 50 years, but here we are... the electric cars we were screaming for 4 years ago are no longer wanted. And won't be until the market dictates it.
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World oil production peaked in 2005 (discoveries peaked in the 1970s), so it's all downhill from here. There's MAYBE 30 years of recoverable natural gas left, if we're willing to accept the environmental devastation that fracking causes. And willing to keep drilling madly, because the new gas wells deplete in 3-5 years. Not a pretty picture.
Oil isn't still being produced; that's just a fairy tale that the far right likes to tell so they don't have to admit what a predicament we're in. The oil (and coal) we're using now can be (and has been, approximately) dated. What hasn't ever been found is so called "abiotic" oil, but some people just won't stop believing in magic, no matter how much evidence is presented.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/57...3.abstract
Rhenium-osmium (Re-Os) data from migrated hydrocarbons establish the timing of petroleum emplacement for the giant oil sand deposits of Alberta, Canada, at 112 ± 5.3 million years ago. This date does not support models that invoke oil generation and migration for these deposits in the Late Cretaceous. Most Re-Os data from a variety of deposits within the giant hydrocarbon system show similar characteristics, supporting the notion of a single source for these hydrocarbons. The Re-Os data disqualify Cretaceous rocks as the primary hydrocarbon source but suggest an origin from older source rocks. This approach should be applicable to dating oil deposits worldwide.
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/94/940804Arc4170.html
STANFORD -- The Jurassic (180 million to 140 million years ago) was a very good age for oil formation. So too was the Cretaceous (140 million to 65 million years ago). But, until now, oil industry experts have lacked a direct way to date their crude.
The method is not a very precise yardstick. Oils of any age can lack oleanane if flowering plants were not part of the material from which it formed. But lack of oleanane is a significant clue that the oil may have formed in the Jurassic or older times, before angiosperms evolved. If the compound is present in relatively small amounts, the crude is almost certainly Cretaceous or younger. If it contains large amounts of the organic substance, on the other hand, its pedigree most likely dates from the post-Cretaceous or Tertiary Age (65 million to 5 million years ago).
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"World oil production peaked in 2005"
Wrong.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production
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And then the US gov't changed the definition of crude oil to include liquids from natural gas. Production is actually decreasing these days, but the economy is in such bad shape that prices are pretty stable (at just over $100bbl). If the recession ever ends, there won't be enough to go around.
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