[DesuMaiden]

According to the UN (United Nations), the construction of a computer consumes roughly 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels. The laptop I am using right now weighs about 5 lbs. So it would require about 50 lbs of oil to construct it. How much oil is that in terms of volumes in terms of liters of oil? How much would it cost to buy all of the oil used for constructing a laptop of 5 lbs. The price of a computer probably has to do with other things than the amount of oil it takes to produce it, but its price is obviously, at least, partially determined by the price of oil because oil is used computers.

As for other daily products, I would like to know some interesting statistics on how much oil was used to construct those products i.e. a car designed for seating 5 people, on average, requires around 20 to 30 barrels of oil to construct. This thread isn't vitally important for your survival, but it should be interesting nonetheless to discuss.

[ROCKMAN]

D - The problem is similar to estimating EROEI with respect to the embedded energy. And even worse. First, much of the components of your laptop aren't made from directly oil. Any plastic would have been made from NG. But there's the metal components which have to be mined, processed, converted to workable steel etc. transported to the construction facility and then transported to the sales point. There is no typical scenario that covers all the laptop. Was your laptop made with recycle aluminum processed in the US or was bauxite mined in Brazil, shipped 1,000 miles to a plant where the ore was refined and then shipped to a fabrication facility in China and then your laptop was shipped by a freighter to the port in LA and then hauled by 18 wheeler to your local Best Buy. Of course, even if you had some of those facts you then face the task of amortizing the individual components of your laptop: how much of that aluminum mined in Brazil made it to you laptop and how much became Coke cans?

Of course there's an even more basic question: if you could actually come up with a reasonable estimate what can you do with that knowledge? IOW to get anywhere close to a correct answer is going to take a lot of work and the payoff is what?

[sunweb]

Along with Rockman, there is besides embedded energy a global industrial infrastructure underwriting most everything we have. Rockman hinted at with the question of aluminum whether it virgin or recycled. Even though recycled aluminum save some 95% of the energy over mined; it still has a huge industrial infrastructure that collects, transports, crushes, compacts, transports, heats, makes ingots and then refabricates. The energy of fossil fuels and this global industrial infrastructure underlies almost all we have, including the mining and drilling equipment to get the fossil fuels.

[Keith_McClary]

The

The environmental impacts of mobile
communications devices needs to viewed
across their entire lifecycle in terms of
the resources and energy they use. With
regards to their manufacturing and
usage, the United Nations Environment
Programme estimates that the
manufacture of a mobile phone produces
about 60 kg of CO2e and that using a
mobile phone for a year produces about
122 kg of CO2e.
http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-con ... evices.pdf

60 kg of CO2 is about 15 kg of FF. Smartphones weigh 150 grams. So it looks like the ratio is 100.

Maybe you could google that United Nations Environment Programme info.

[tom_s2]

Hi Desu,

Ultimately, those products do not require any oil for their construction. There are obvious substitutes for every usage of fossil fuels. Those substitutes have already been developed, and no further technological development is required.

Fossil fuels are not some unique irreplaceable substance. They are ordinary chemicals. They have obvious substitutes, such as electrified transportation and renewable power. Even for the very few usages which really require a chemical combustible fuel (such as air travel), there are many obvious ways of manufacturing such fuels. For example, there are: anhydrous ammonia, dimethyl ether, alcohol fuels such as methanol, biofuels, and many, many others. It's also possible to use metal fuels, such as aluminum, magnesium, and others. It's also possible to manufacture natural gas and oil using renewable energy, using the Sabatier process or the Fischer Tropsch process. There are also many other alternatives being investigated and developed now. As a start, you can find more information about this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_fuel

Fossil fuels are used because they're the CHEAPEST way of accomplishing certain things right now. That's the only reason. Fossil fuels are modestly cheaper than alternatives, that's all.

Oil will deplete gradually over more than a century. That is VASTLY more time than the economy requires to transition to alternatives. The economy ROUTINELY and AUTOMATICALLY transitions to alternatives as they become cheaper. This is an EASY PROBLEM for the economy to manage. This is something which the economy does all the time. Some things may become more expensive, but there is no imminent end of civilization because of peak oil.

-Tom S

[KaiserJeep]

I know that the large tires on my Jeep each directly consume about seven gallons of petroleum feedstock to make the neoprene rubber. The tire belts are high tech Kevlar which is an energy-intensive material.

Most modern vehicles have 300+ pounds of plastic, also made from petroleum feedstocks. Then there is a powertrain which incorporates many iron and aluminum alloy castings and many machined and heat-treated parts. The electronics may be the most energy-intensive materials used, but the safety glass and aluminum are not far behind.

Lots of embodied energy in a vehicle - fortunately most of the materials can be recycled for a fraction of the energy for virgin materials. But of course the major problem is that a vehicle consumes fossil fuels directly in most cases, and indirectly in the case of a BEV.

[Dybbuk]

Oil will deplete gradually over more than a century. That is VASTLY more time than the economy requires to transition to alternatives. The economy ROUTINELY and AUTOMATICALLY transitions to alternatives as they become cheaper. This is an EASY PROBLEM for the economy to manage. This is something which the economy does all the time.

Actually, it's something the economy has never done before, handling the phase-out of something that provides this much primary energy, and replacing it with primary energy from someplace else. It's not quite as simple as looking at what has happened with material goods and assuming the same thing will happen with energy.

It might very well turn out to be easy, but I don't think we can assume that at this point. That's the problem with trying to predict the future. Everyone (doomer and corny alike) is quick to provide their hand-wavy predictions based on the world they have experienced, but the future will unfold in ways we can't imagine.

[vtsnowedin]

I know that the large tires on my Jeep each directly consume about seven gallons of petroleum feedstock to make the neoprene rubber. The tire belts are high tech Kevlar which is an energy-intensive material.

Most modern vehicles have 300+ pounds of plastic, also made from petroleum feedstocks. Then there is a powertrain which incorporates many iron and aluminum alloy castings and many machined and heat-treated parts. The electronics may be the most energy-intensive materials used, but the safety glass and aluminum are not far behind.

Lots of embodied energy in a vehicle - fortunately most of the materials can be recycled for a fraction of the energy for virgin materials. But of course the major problem is that a vehicle consumes fossil fuels directly in most cases, and indirectly in the case of a BEV.

Well in the case of a tire or any other physical object like a lap top you can be sure the total energy incorporated in its construction is less then the value of the object. So in the case of a $200 radial tire the energy embodied in the finished project is some where around $100 or half the cost of the object. It wouldn't be close to $200 as there is labor and profit plus taxes involved. I suppose you could go back to using tree rubber to make your tires but you would still use some fossil fuel collecting the natural rubber and the supply probably won't meet demand.

[sunweb]

Having enjoyed tom_s2 humor and fantasies in the past. I look forward to even more. Business as usual is so critical to maintain. I wonder if this would apply? - “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair

[ROCKMAN]

Sun - I view it different: who would understand a situation more clearly then a man whose salary depends upon on that knowledge. Forget the warm fuzzy PR pieces put out by the Big Oil PR machine. Do you think the Rockman et al don't understand the energy dynamics better then any other group? It isn't just a matter of trying to maintain BAU but the effort to survive. And today survival is very uncertain for a great many hands and companies in the oil patch

[jdmartin]

Very interesting topic! It's been a little while since I've posted, so nice to see some of the old familiars still here . This thought occurs to me sometimes when I see what products are out there and how (relatively) cheap they are. The fact that one can even buy a brand new computer for $300 amazes me when you think about all the parts that go into the thing plus shipping and stocking it.

On a completely related note, but off topic, does anyone have any idea if glass is becoming uneconomical to recycle? The reason I ask is that we have always recycled (I live in BFE and we have to take our own trash & recycles to a transfer station), but a few weeks ago the transfer station had signs on the recycle bins that said "No Glass! All glass goes in dumpster!" I thought it just meant windows or things like that but the operator told me they now only take cans, plastic bottles, and newspapers for recycling (they do take big metal items like appliances separate) in the bins. I made the decision to just quit recycling, since we have no paper or plastic bottles and only go through a few cans a week; most of our recycling was bottles - beer, wine, olive oil, pickles, etc. I would think that glass would be more valuable than a plastic bottle.

Thoughts?

[Newfie]

Glass and recycling was once common. There were deposits on soda and beer bottles and such. In rural South NJ (yes, such a thing once existed) each town had a bum who rode around on a beat up bike and picked up bottles and cans, tin cans.

I seem to recall discussion on this in NJ, where I grew up,and the glass manufacturers lobbied to have the deposits removed in order to sell more glass, stimulate the economy.

Decent article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... ng/273575/

[Newfie]

Ayers is a very simplistic approach I have used.

Many world people use almost no oil, there income is under $5,000 annual, or so.

Almost everything we have and use is one way or another supported by oil. So take what you spent (not made, spent) last year, deduct things like insurance and Netflix. say $5,000 and divide by the cost of oil. SWAG $50/bbl. So you used 100 bbls of oil.

Surely not perfect, maybe not even very good. The SWAG cost of oil is debatable. But it does capture roughly the relationship between spending and oil.

[Pops]

There is a lot of oil left, plenty to make smartphone cases from now on.

The bigger question is "how much work is required"

The system of trade goes like this: work>earn>spend>consume. The problem with peak oil and FF limits in general is not so much the spend & consume part, the problem is the income and work part. Once upon a time, the capitalism equation went: labor + capital = Profit. But the new clause was added: labor = oil = x * energy slaves.

Oil as an energy slave has been too cheap to meter for 150 years. As a result, "work" has all but disappeared from the equation. We've fooled ourselves into believing the entire equation is: earn>spend>consume.

The unspoken part of the modern rubric is that every job is essentially a straw boss position directing a personal holding of slaves—the more slaves you control, the more income you earn. All income then is a direct result of uncountably cheap mechanical work powered by fossil fuel slaves.

The great conceit of modern life is that oil is merely another raw material like steel or copper. Rather than just another input to industry — oil is the reason industry exists.


For a glimpse into the post oil-slavery world, take a look at the post human-slavery, antebellum South.

.

[Newfie]

That's a good way of looking at it.

To extend that, humanities population footprint, including all the oil slaves, is on the order of 100 billion souls, hunter gatherers.

[DesuMaiden]

The

The environmental impacts of mobile
communications devices needs to viewed
across their entire lifecycle in terms of
the resources and energy they use. With
regards to their manufacturing and
usage, the United Nations Environment
Programme estimates that the
manufacture of a mobile phone produces
about 60 kg of CO2e and that using a
mobile phone for a year produces about
122 kg of CO2e.
http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-con ... evices.pdf

60 kg of CO2 is about 15 kg of FF. Smartphones weigh 150 grams. So it looks like the ratio is 100.

Maybe you could google that United Nations Environment Programme info.

That was the answer I was looking for.

[tom_s2]

Hi sunweb,

I've posted a series of basic, factual claims which are based upon chemistry, upon the price mechanism from economics, and upon pessimistic estimates of how rapidly oil will deplete.

In response, you haven't posted any relevant objection to any of those things. Instead you've reverted to personal remarks and fallacious ad hominem remarks, and that's it.

Those are not valid objections. You haven't posted any valid objection to anything I said. If there were some factual error in what I wrote, then it should have been easy for you to look it up and post the objection here. However, you've failed to do so.

For that matter, neither you nor Desu have ever posted any kind of valid objection to anything I said. I'm waiting for some kind of logical or factual retort.

-Tom S

[tom_s2]

Hi Pops,

The great conceit of modern life is that oil is merely another raw material like steel or copper. Rather than just another input to industry — oil is the reason industry exists.

Oil isn't the reason industry exists. The industrial revolution was powered by COAL for about two centuries before oil had any important role. The coal was burned inside steam engines that could use anything that will burn as fuel.

The industrial economy transitioned to oil for transportation. The transition took a few decades, from about 1910 to about 1940. By 1950, the transition was complete, and coal was no longer used for any transportation purposes.

-Tom S

[Pops]

There hasn't been any transition I can see Tom, that would imply consumption of something falling wouldn't not?
Looks to me like increasing consumption of nonrenewable energy across the board.
Coal is about to take back the top spot, in fact, lol

[vtsnowedin]

There hasn't been any transition I can see Tom, that would imply consumption of something falling wouldn't not?
Looks to me like increasing consumption of nonrenewable energy across the board.
Coal is about to take back the top spot, in fact, lol

I'd like to see that chart updated to today instead of five years ago.