[grabby]

O, that is a lot ofpower, but you still don't understand how much power we waste. America USES 20, million barrels of oil a day. That is 20 TRILLION watts. You need to take all the windmills in the world today, and multiply by 300 times to meet just our oil requirements.

we should accomplish that in about 300 years as a safe guess if we dropped everything and started mass producing windmills (We would have to build the equivalent of all the windmills on line now that were built over the last 20 years, EVERY YEAR you have to build that many for the next 300 years to match our oil use. never gonna happen.

oil is the most energy rich form of use of power, nothing can replace it. Now, Wind turbines make electricity, which is kind of un-useful. there is about a 50- percent WASTE for conversion of electriciy to a sourceful liquid like hydrogen or gasoline (at the very best) so in about 600 years we can build enough wind turbines to replace our lecherous use of oil.

by that time every bird will have been klonked on the head and dead long ago. and every where you look a wind blade whooshes by. really pretty thoughts. plus, think of all the OIL it takes to MANUFACTURE WINDMILL BLADES, WIND THE MOTOROS PRODUCE THE CIRCUIT BOARDS etc

do you know it takes the same amount of oil to make 5 computer motherboards as it does to manufacture a whole CAR? we dont have enough oil to build that many windmills. windmills are a non-answer, they won't solve anything but some guys tax problems for the year in investing, thats it. they are useless for energy replacement.

We have a place near Palm springs, and everytime we drive by the windmills most are not turning, and a few are on line. California has some really big farms, but they didn't amke a dent in the power they use.

Do you know I can drive down to the local gas station and buy enough gas with my savings account to outproduce every windmill in the world today? Petrodollars = power. I have more power in our local gas station than all the windmills in the world.. I'll leave you to figure out how many gallons of gas equates to 47 gigawats, it isnt that much.

Solar is very expensive and we cannot use it to replace our needs.we dont have 4 quadrillion dollars.

[Antimatter]

You have a lot of questionable (at best) facts!$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O'), that is a lot ofpower, but you still don't understand how much power we waste. America USES 20, million barrels of oil a day. That is 20 TRILLION watts.

[orz]

Grabby, not only do you have questionable facts, you are almost undoubtedly on crack. Crikey, you have like 10 posts just in this thread.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') great revolution will come when we have spent the stores of coal and oil that have been given to us as a gift, stored in the bowls of the earth, in the last millenia. After these are used up, it is obvious that there will be a very great change in ways of life.

[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') have more power in our local gas station than all the windmills in the world.. I'll leave you to figure out how many gallons of gas equates to 47 gigawats, it isnt that much.

[grabby]

Oh your right!
it would take 660 years to build 4 quadrillion dollars worth of windmills.

[grabby]

In short we use unbelieveable amounts of energy. its like emptying a swimming pool with a drinking glass to use windmills. if a windmill makes 1 megawatts, then it would take 44 million windmills IF THEY RAN 24 HOURS A DAY! estimate is 4 useful hours a day, so yo would really need 352 million windmills.

to make GASOLINE you need to double that. 704 million windmills to solve our energy crisis, America has 3,537,441 square miles of land That means you would have to have 200 windmiles on every square mile of land in america from pikes peak to death valley.

Every tenth of a mile in any direction from california (An improvement) to New York (Yiddish windmills) would have to be a windmill to replace oil. There wouldnt be a bird left alive. and how much would they cost? 704 trillion dollars

it is absolutely impossible to replace our current needs with windmills.
8 trillion is our National debt. the windmill debt is 88 times the national debt it is impossible, non workable and a dream to think wind will save us. Wind is not the answer. Solar is worse than wind.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Look, i just think this whole PeakOil argument is blown totally out of wack. Sure we might run out of oil sooner than any of our other energy sources, but the fact is we have lots of other energy sources after oil, if that time comes sooner or later I don't believe that it will be such a great deal. Everyone here ramps on about "Oil Oil Oil", we have lots of other energy sources and if they arn't so compatable with our current combustion engines so be it, install newer engines or find a different mode of transport. Seriously, I believe there is a big scare mongering tactic going to scare everyone for who knows for whatever reason, but I believe oil is the least of our worries, it's not really that important. It might be important right now, like coal was important to the steam engine but seriously we have plenty of other sources of energy. Sure people say we need trucks to haul food, and right know I don't know of a better energy source to power trucks, but the time of oil running out is along way away, and I believe we will have better transport methods in place if and when that time comes. Yeah is it cool to be a doomer and impress and scare people but give it some thought. The world will run fine without oil, as long as we have other energy sources, although that doesn't mean everything will be rosy with the US government debasing their currency during M3 by not reporting money printing next year but that is a different story. For people here I would be more worried about the bebasement of the US currency than PeakOil. I think people here should still learn to live cheap by buying cheap food and housing, but invest or spend more money on energy to make themselves and their investments more productive.

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', ' ') but seriously we have plenty of other sources of energy. .

[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'O')h your right! My facts were off, we use 22 million barrels a day so it would take 660 years to build the windmills, sorry. --snip--
If I'm wrong then just adjust it, but it worked out pretty close.

[grabby]

Ok thanks That means you only need one windmill every mil in every direction and it would take 66 years to build them all and only 70 trillion dollars. oh well

ERROR

I still am amazed that it takes 6,600 pounds of coal to move a 747 half a mile just to get ready for takeoff. for every gallon of oil it takes a 1/2 ton of batteries to store the equiivalent energy 250 tons of batteries to move the 747 to the takeoff slot, then you have to recharge. well never go electric to fly.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', '
')I still am amazed that it takes 6,600 pounds of coal to move a 747 half a mile just to get ready for takeoff.
for every gallon of oil it takes a 1/2 ton of batteries to store the equiivalent energy

250 tons of batteries to move the 747 to the takeoff slot, then you have to recharge.

well never go electric.

[Paul64]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'N')ow if someone is going to conserve energy, they are putting themselves at a great disadvantage.

[grabby]

Another correction.

I redid the numbers cause the gigajoules thing threw us off, so I will stick with watts.

30 liters of gasoline makes 278 kilowatts/hour of energy.
there are 6.66 of those "units in a barrel.

that means one barrel produces 1.853 mega watts of power for one hour.

the US uses 22 million barrels a day of oil, for everything from making plastics to running cars and jets to making roads.

that is how many barrels of tar and oil we would have to make from coal to keep our lifestyle equivalent

1.853 megawatts times 22 million barrels is
yes
indeed
37.5 TERRAWATTS OF EQUIVALENT POWER.

so yes, it would not tak 600 years of windmill manufacturing to get an equivalent amount of energy, it would take 511 years if we produced the local world supply of windmillsthat exist now every year we would make them all i one year, and keep repeating that for each year, it would take 511 years to match the windmill power production of 20 million barrels of oil.

Now a prior quote said
"BUT THE WORLD ONLY USES 4.5 TERRAwatts OF POwER for the whole world!!"

SO i THOUGHT MY NUMBERS WERE WRONG, BUT THEY WERENT , THEY ARE COUNTING ELECTRICITY NOT OIL.
yes the world uses about 5 terrabytes of ELECTRIC POWER, but it uses and consumes 37.5 terrabytes of POTENTIAL electric power in the form of oil.

Check the numbers, they are right I believe.

WELL THAT IS TRUE, BUT THE UNITED STATES USES 37.5 terraWATTS of oil a DAY.

So, if you took all the electric power in the world, and used it exclusively to manufacture oil and it was 100 percent efficient, we could only manufacture 1/7 of our oil or hydrogen needs.

that is shocking.

that means our lifestyle, if there were no oil at all and we still had all our electric power would be 1/7 as power hungry.

There is no way to keep the current lifestyle without oil a dn since we need electricity also I would estimate our lifestyl will have to be cut back about 20 times.

like driving car 1 day a month instead of daily.

wow. 37.5 terrabytes of oil the UNITED STATES ALONE uses daily, when the world electric production is only 5 terrabytes.

yes, we would need a windmill every 1/10 of a mile in every direction coviring the whole united states of 3.5 million square miles, and at a cost of 500 trillion dollars to manufacture them to keep this lifestyle.

Conservation is minimal. compared to the oil we consume.

I did the numbers twice, it is amazing, how much oil we consume.

Oil is a real blessing for America, without it we couldn't function.
Not a pretty picture.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

You don't need to tell me Grabby, I use my own eyes and am gobsmacked at what we've built, and how much oil we use. A lot of people here need to get their ass out into the world and take a peek.

[orz]

#1 We don't need to use all the oil we use. And we won't once it hits $100+ a barrel.

#2 Restructuring ourselves to not use so much oil does not necessarily involve going back to the stone age.

#3 Stop using the plane analogy. Pretty much everyone agrees air travel will be the first thing to go once prices rise. Hell it's already half gone.

#4 The price shocks start at the peak, where this is still half the oil left. We aren't going to use the last drop of it, before we start panicking as you seem to imply.

#5 You're way too obsessed with wind.

www.heliovolt.com has already developed a solar film with 14.1% efficiency that they will soon begin mass producing. This is just the first company that has begun to do this.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Some people here are answering questions with numbers which on the whole doesn't really mean much. Alot of people are dismissing nuclear energy and thats one energy source that we have in abundance. There will be no peak in nuclear energy, the used fuel rods can be processed into an even higher grade of fuel, the reason we don't use it is because of fear, and fear limits your choices. There is no reason if we need oil in the future to run tractors that we can't manufacture oil ourselves. Hydrocarbon energy could easily be created by extracting carbon from the atmosphere and combine it with hydrogen using either solar or nuclear energy to create hydrocarbon energy. I understand that we don't have that technology currently, but see no reason why it can't be done, it's just that no one has bothered to think about it yet.