[Concerned]

Yes I have heard of it.

Remember PO is not about the end of oil. It's about the end of cheap superabundent oil

[tdrive]

I did a calculation long time ago, the whole world's turkeys won't help to produce one day of world's oil equivalent. Better use them for Thanksgiving.

Cheers,

[EnviroEngr]

Ivan Fraser and I have discussed Drunvalo, to this end: "He promises much, but delivers little." Ivan is at http://www.truthcampaign.co.uk/

The numerous attempts I've made at contacting Drunvalo always mysteriously never got answered. The sniff test detects noticeable amounts of detritus.

A cursory review of both his primary sites does, nevertheless, indicate he may be more genuine now than two years ago. He published a 2 Volume book set a while back called THE ANCIENT SECRET OF THE FLOWER OF LIFE which I have. Among its pages are claims that can't be true in this particular Reality; yet they are presented as having the same kind of truth as observations such as "the sky is blue on a clear, sunny day" and "gravity pulls things down to the Earth". Drunvalo has a nerve-racking predilection for blurring the distinctions between classes of facts and truths in such a way as to render nearly all the material he presents functionally useless. It's a lot of work correcting his 'miscreances' (to coin a fitting term) enough for the concepts and methods to work properly.

Although I am in accordance with his recent moves to make real-world substance out of his erstwhile new-agey offerings, I still recommend more than an ordinary modicum of caution when distilling his rubric for personal use, guidance or direction.

[Kingcoal]

This is the old biodiesel argument and has to viewed in the proper context. Today, using waste, like vegetable oil from a burger joint, I can make cheap biodiesel in my basement. One guy claims 70 cents a gallon. It's cheap right now because our cheap oil based society produced that hydrated vegetable oil using lots of cheap oil (and natural gas.) The same goes for turkeys, coffee, etc. Cheap oil = cheap vegetable oil.

When conventional oil gets expensive, the cost of everything, including believe it or not, turkeys, goes up also. When it gets even remotely close to having to tap the turkey-biodiesel to make more turkeys, it's all over. At that point (actually long before) you are using more than one barrel of turkeydesiel to make a barrel of same.

[Optimist]

No and no.

Turkey offal may be animal feed, but it should not be - not while there are diseases like Mad Cow around. Incidentally, TDP is a good way to destroy the prions that cause Mad Cow and CJD. I don't know what percentage of animal feed is from animal waste but overall, it should be low (<10%). I believe the practice of feeding animal waste to animals has been abolished in Europe, without bringing agriculture to a screeching halt.

No need to pump turkey. The first TDP plant happens to be located next to a turkey processing plant. Eventually TDP plants would probably be located at landfill sites, to process wastes already transported there. Thus, there is no need to transport the wastes any further than is currently the case.

[SmokeStack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is great stuff-as one facet of a sustainable distributed system. But as a panacea for a broken centralized industrial society, or even peak-oil delay, it feels to be another Titanic deck chair mambo.

1. Turkey (chicken for that matter) entrails are food. (to paraphrase Soylent Green). They become feed for other turkeys and other barnyards animals. So this gasoline feed stock is no longer available as human feed stock.

2. Turkey offal does not pump nor flow easily. Poultry production is dispersed all over this country while we now rely on centralized oil refineries. Will people drive up to the turkey farm for a fill up?

Peter

[RepubCarrier]

as peak oil comes and goes, oil will skyrocket, which will drive up the prices of energy and various products. I beleive that energy will still be widely available (at a higher price) with the coming of wind, solar, hydro and wave power. oil for products is a different story...

I was wondering what types of products the light crude produced by biomass plants is useful for? Assuming the plants could be made more efficient and widespread, this might eventually supply enough oil for a lot of a smaller society's needs (at a higher cost). Fuel efficiency in vehicles and industry would be paramount. population controls would also be necessary.

seperate question, how is china's 1-child policy working? is population starting to shrink?

[RepubCarrier]

ADDENDUM: while the plants currently produce 500 barrels of oil, at a global net loss (as a moderator pointed out, the biomass fed into the plant took oil to maintain, etc. I meant in my original post to say that the biomass could and will be sustained by the alternative energy sources, thus making 500 barrels of oil = 500 barrels of oil net.)

This technology isn't widely invested in, so I suppose that explains its horrible 500 barrel per plant ratio. But it's not as bad as I thought... the plants actually produce gas and fertilizers at the same time as oil.

I don't really think there's enough biomass waste in industry, even if all of it was processed, to meet even 5% of our oil needs. but assuming energy and vehicles are powered by something other than oil, things like plastic and medicine might still be produced from oil coming from these plants in the future (again at a higher price. cheap plastic will end very soon).

[BlueGhost]

The chinese 1 child thing is working to reduce the pop. It is also educating people that more people == lower quality of life for those people. Something that doesn't really affect people in the west when they think about having kids.

However it isn't without its problems as time goes by there average population age is shifting, so the shinking group of workers have to maintain more non-workers.

[RepubCarrier]

Well, another thought:

At the risk of sounding racist.... most industrialized nations of the world (US, canada, East and West Europe, Japan, Russia and some of the former USSR), the population increase is 2% or lower in all of them (and one has to wonder how much of that is actually natural birth, considering massive immigration to these countries. many eastern european countries, and italy, have NEGATIVE population growth despite immigration exceeding emmigration). http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_d ... _countries

According to this site, for data which I did not extrapolate, the average population growth annualy for industrialized nations is .3% (this does not consider immigration from poorer nations). The average population growth for developing nations is 1.5% (this does not consider emmigration to richer nations).

Nations in africa, asia, and latin america have populations growths as higher than that, between 2 and 4% annually, despite relatively bad living conditions there.

I am not statistically knowledgeable (and Im lazy) enough to calculate the actual BIRTH rates in these nations, but I suspect the industrialized world would come to barely above 0% birthrate (i.e. sustaining the current population), and developing nations around 2%.

It would make sense for a richer nation to have more children, but it isnt the current reality. If these poor populations, growing on average 5 times faster than ours cannot be controlled, they are going to bear the brunt of the worldwide depression that follows peak oil.

[Kingcoal]

Back on topic. The key phrase is "our energy needs." Right now that is defined by a cheap oil market. As oil becomes very expensive what we need will be redefined downward. I don't have any figures right now, but the biggest use of oil is for transportation. We can do a lot of cutting back, especially autos, before we are starving in the streets.

[EnviroEngr]

Per Thread Restart: http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic3118.html

[EnviroEngr]

Cross Ref - http://www.peakoil.com/post36012.html#36012

[EnviroEngr]

Cross Ref - http://www.peakoil.com/post36012.html#36012

[0mar]

I know they can't be scaled up in time or ever really, nor can they recycle everything.

However, at a forum I visit, people seem to cling onto this as the last savior (along with fusion). I have been formulating some sort of rebuttal but it doesn't look as solid as it can be.

So far I have:

1. TD needs electricity, which requires gas/coal. Gas is plateau, and coal could be useless by 2040 if the current decline in EPR continues.
2. As oil peaks, we will need an incredible amount (I did caculations on a 3% decline, showing that within the first two years, we will lose 4 million barrels of crudge production which would require about 4,000 plants at 1,000 barrels each, and the number would only exponetially rise, assuming inputs remained the same).
3. TD can only produce oil from wastes, which will turn into products and back into waste. Because of the 2nd law, we will be getting diminishing returns.
4. All oil isn't equal, and TD has very few scientific studies (that I have found at least) done on it regarding the quality and quantity truly obtained.
5. Producing TD plants is expensive and a massive overhaul will costs time, money and tons of oil, for what amounts to a high tech recycling unit.
6. There is only one TD plant operating in the US and its profitability remains to be seen.
7. Oil operations are on a scale that we can barely comprehend. After a while, numbers start looking the same, but as it stands, TD is only a bit player in the world of oil and probably will always be a bit player in the grand scheme of things.

I still can't convince these folks. They keep spouting "TEST PLANT" and "PRODUCTION IS SCALABLE" and "AGRICULTURAL WASTES = 7 BILLION BARRELS BECAUSE THE PR PAGE SAID SO" Is there really anything more I can bring up?

[_sluimers_]

TD?

[Taskforce_Unity]

Thermo Depolarisation, Or the recycling of organic waste (bodies, corpses, manure etc.) into Oil.

I believe it is also called thermo Carbon depolarisation sometimes.

[nocar]

Obiously, you need some biological waste to start with. How much wast do we really produce? Even if we use all our waste, including human shit, which is a good idea, I doubt that we can get mroe than 1-2 percent (just guessing, someone else do the calculation) of our current oil to run cars. Good, less traffic, good. How much energy do you think there is in one turd?

[nocar]

Don't you think that if biological waste like turds were so full of energy, they would have been used a lot? Indians use cow dung to cook, but to get petrol how many cows will you need?