[suxs]

Suffering from selective amnesia, vtsnowden? Please allow me to refresh your memory, lol.

K-Street corruption is a singular Republican scandal. You remember the K-Street Gang beginning with the fall of Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay the ideologue and prodigious fundraiser who invited lobbyists to run amok in exchange for campaign contributions; Jack Abramoff the conservative activist who left a disastrous career in Hollywood for a new beginning as a Washington lobbyist only to fleece his clients out of millions of dollars; Ralph Reed the former executive director of the Christian Coalition whose religious principles were always subservient to his business interests; Grover Norquist the anti-tax activist who provided intellectual ammunition for the Republican takeover of the lobbying industry only to see the lobbyists take over the Republican party; Adam Kidan a down on his luck Republican businessman who engineered the scam of a lifetime. Also, the mysterious Russian businessmen with ties to Soviet military intelligence who paid for Tom DeLay's trip to Moscow then sold weapons to Jack Abramoff who resold them to militant Israeli settlers; how Grover Norquist helped arranged meetings between George W Bush and men who are now known to be Islamic terrorists; and the Abramoff/Scanlon Indian Lobbying Scandal was a fraud perpetrated by lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon (former communications director for DeLay) on Native American tribes who were seeking to develop casino gambling on their reservations and how a routine audit of an obscure Indian tribe's finances led to widespread public corruption.

[vtsnowedin]

There is so much BS in that rant I do not want to dirty my hands by picking it apart.

[theluckycountry]

Covid is the De-growth plan, as I have said before. Delta, Omicron, Omicron++ lol. Tens of Thousands are lining up for roadside RAT tests now and when the result says they have the flu they are off home for a two week vacation. That puts a dent in fuel consumption, in consumption in general. Watch this space because this Cow still has a lot of milk in it. I expect covid related closures of business operations to go on and on because that is the core of our Growth model, business and employment, leading to consumption.

[vtsnowedin]

Covid is a pretty poor degrowth plan as it kills mostly elderly people well beyond their child bearing and child raising years. Our economies will learn how to live with covid and it will not be a long term drag on business profits.
Actually I am surprised that governments around the world have let it disrupt them anywhere as much as they have in light of how little the lockdowns actually accomplished.

[AdamB]

Covid is the De-growth plan, as I have said before.

So Qanon type thinking made it all the way to the Chinese mining colonies? Wow...didn't realize folks on that island off the coast of New Zealand could even read....

[theluckycountry]

Covid is a pretty poor degrowth plan as it kills mostly elderly people well beyond their child bearing and child raising years. Our economies will learn how to live with covid and it will not be a long term drag on business profits.
Actually I am surprised that governments around the world have let it disrupt them anywhere as much as they have in light of how little the lockdowns actually accomplished.

Degrowth to me is degrowth in the economy, in oil consumption.

Oil prices fell sharply yesterday as US President Biden blah blah blah... Losses also came on the back of demand concerns from top consumer China, after it reintroduced lockdown measures to curb a resurgence of Covid-19.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil

This is what I'm talking about, a conspiracy in the minds of many here but a true conspiracy is simply an agenda kept hidden from public view, well hidden. I was no surprise to me that governments did what they did. We are facing a crisis, our whole world will grind to a halt and we'll be back in fields pulling plows with oxen when the oil is gone.

We can't find enough to maintain what we have now let alone grow more so that only leaves reduced consumption. The trouble is 7 billion people don't want to give up the lifestyles oil has given them, so it's up to government to take measures to curb our consumption. We have known this all along I think, it's one of the things we look to government for, to solve our major problems. They could have just come out and told everyone the truth, and that might have worked? But government isn't in the business of being truthful. Much simpler to take a flu virus and over-react totally to the point where our modern life is shattered, our consumption begins to collapse.

I see this all around me. People just don't travel as much anymore, certainly not on jets to far off places. And they don't go out to dinner nearly as much, and they have stopped upgrading their cars every 5 years, etc etc. Oh yes the government solution is right on track, even the war in Ukraine played into their hands as it allowed oil to go way up, even less consumption. And now we see China is introducing more lockdowns. As the major consumer on the planet that's good news hey.

[vtsnowedin]

There are a lot of falsehoods in your post. Prices are up but demand has not dropped. Air passenger flights are up not down. Cars last fifteen years now not five. And we will never revert to plowing fields with oxen. Battery powered tractors charged by solar panels at the edge of the field or a couple of wind turbines on the next high ridge perhaps but never back to draft animals. Get real.

[Newfie]

VT,

While I agree with most of your post except the bit about plowing with electric tractors.

I see guys trying to come up with electric sailboats, it is not working except in very constrained applications. They are limited to very little motor use, noting like the range and speed of even a smallish diesel.

With tractors they would have to carry monstrous battery packs, extremely heavy, most likely need to change for a fresh pack every hour or two, and have the capacity to charge them over night. So if you are going to do it with solar then you need some storage medium; more huge stationary batteries or flywheels.

We have electric trains, but they run in HVAC overhead contact wires. 13kV and up.

Coal gas I could see, not electric.

[Sweeney]

I have a copy of an old French magazine (L'Illustration, July 1941) in which there is an article which promotes the use of electricity for ploughing. The system was basically the same as steam ploughing, with a capstan either side of the field and a big electric winch (running on mains electricity) hauling the plough to and fro. Doesn't seem to have caught on.

[topcat]

"Electric tractors"

Check out Monarch tractors from Calif

[Doly]

With tractors they would have to carry monstrous battery packs, extremely heavy, most likely need to change for a fresh pack every hour or two, and have the capacity to charge them over night.

I don't know about that. If you search for "electric tractor" they already exist, the claim is they operate up to 10 hours.

[vtsnowedin]

VT,

While I agree with most of your post except the bit about plowing with electric tractors.

I see guys trying to come up with electric sailboats, it is not working except in very constrained applications. They are limited to very little motor use, noting like the range and speed of even a smallish diesel.

With tractors they would have to carry monstrous battery packs, extremely heavy, most likely need to change for a fresh pack every hour or two, and have the capacity to charge them over night. So if you are going to do it with solar then you need some storage medium; more huge stationary batteries or flywheels.

We have electric trains, but they run in HVAC overhead contact wires. 13kV and up.

Coal gas I could see, not electric.

I think you are off there. A Tesla model Y battery holds enough energy to take the car 326 miles so is equivalent to 10 gallons of gas or about 8 gallons of diesel. Remember that ice engines are only about 33% efficient and straight electric are above 80%.
Now my 45 Horsepower diesel tractor can do quite a bit of work with eight gallons of diesel and the big Ag sized 150 HP powered ones actually do more per unit of fuel burned so replacing that big diesel engine with electric motors and the battery packs to power it all day should not be a problem. If anything they would not have to load the tires like mine are as the batteries would provide the needed weight.
And then much of farming today is no-till where they are not turning over the earth to control weeds but spraying herbicides instead as it causes less erosion losses.
Perhaps harvesting combines would be smaller and it would require more units to get a harvest in on time and that would raise the cost of corn or wheat per bushel but it would not double the cost

[theluckycountry]

There are a lot of falsehoods in your post. Prices are up but demand has not dropped. Air passenger flights are up not down. Cars last fifteen years now not five. And we will never revert to plowing fields with oxen. Battery powered tractors charged by solar panels at the edge of the field or a couple of wind turbines on the next high ridge perhaps but never back to draft animals. Get real.

Passenger flights are still down compared to pre-covid, come back when they have surpassed those figures. As for the longevity of cars, I said nothing on that matter. What I said was that people were upgrading there their cars here a lot more often before the pandemic. What is the point of you commenting on my post if you can't read what I'm saying? My point, is that people are consuming less than before. It doesn't matter if the figures are up from the lows, what matters is that the brakes were jammed on oil consumption and the foot is still over the pedal.

As for solar tractors doing our farming, well that's just a delusion, how are are you going to build them and replace the mammoth batteries without a cheap oil based economy? I see the roads have lots of electric cars, where are the electric trucks? Batteries don't scale up for road transport, which is probably the biggest component of farming anyway.

[theluckycountry]

I think you are off there. A Tesla model Y battery holds enough energy to take the car 326 miles so is equivalent to 10 gallons of gas or about 8 gallons of diesel. Remember that ice engines are only about 33% efficient and straight electric are above 80%.
Now my 45 Horsepower diesel tractor can do quite a bit of work with eight gallons of diesel and the big Ag sized 150 HP powered ones actually do more per unit of fuel burned so replacing that big diesel engine with electric motors and the battery packs to power it all day should not be a problem.

There is a big difference between a car with high tire pressures cruising down the blacktop and a heavy tractor moving through loose soil, hauling a plow in the dirt behind it. Your back of the envelope calculations explain nothing I am afraid.

[vtsnowedin]

I think you are off there. A Tesla model Y battery holds enough energy to take the car 326 miles so is equivalent to 10 gallons of gas or about 8 gallons of diesel. Remember that ice engines are only about 33% efficient and straight electric are above 80%.
Now my 45 Horsepower diesel tractor can do quite a bit of work with eight gallons of diesel and the big Ag sized 150 HP powered ones actually do more per unit of fuel burned so replacing that big diesel engine with electric motors and the battery packs to power it all day should not be a problem.

There is a big difference between a car with high tire pressures cruising down the blacktop and a heavy tractor moving through loose soil, hauling a plow in the dirt behind it. Your back of the envelope calculations explain nothing I am afraid.

You disregard that I have actual experience with a full sized tractor actually pulling plows and harrows. I know how much fuel or energy it takes to plow an acre of ground. You on the other hand know nothing about it.

[Newfie]

Quick look up, I will calculate as I type, lets see where this leads.

A Telsa Y has 75kW battery capacity. So, for easy math lets say this is 10kW for a gallon of gas/diesel.

I have 2 each 300W solar panels, the very best I have done with them is a bit over 1kW (each) in a whole day, clear sky, tropic sun. They are +5’x3’ or over 15 square feet each. I need 10 to make 1 gallon of diesel equivalent.

So that is 150 square feet for one gallon of diesel. 1,500 square feet for 10 gallons.

And that is in perfect conditions. You will typically need much more than that because you are in Vermont and can’t count on sunny skies when farming. So you need to capture and store enough energy to keep your tractor running when you are not using it. I am guessing you may need storage of something like 10 to 20 times the daily fuel consumption to assure success. Lets assume 10.

So you will need the equivalent of 10 Tesla storage batteries to act like a diesel fuel tank. And then you need to charge those batteries FAST when the sun does shine. So you will need something like 5x the solar array for sufficient recharge.

That works out to 7,500 square feet of solar panel and 10x Y type battery banks for storage. And that may be conservative.

It all depends upon 2 things.
1-How important is it for you to plow/seed/till/harvest your field TODAY or THIS WEEK.
2-What are the consequences if you don’t have sufficient power? Does your family starve?

I watched a guy rip out a perfectly good diesel (about 40-50hp) and install an electric motor with a big battery bank and a small charge diesel. Then he went for a couple of month cruise to see how it worked. When he came back he ordered a 36hp diesel to charge his batteries to run his y motors. Why? Because it quickly became evident to him that he could never STORE sufficient electricity to meet his needs for a safe passage. And this is what diesel is; super dense and stable and light energy storage.

[vtsnowedin]

Quick look up, I will calculate as I type, lets see where this leads.

A Telsa Y has 75kW battery capacity. So, for easy math lets say this is 10kW for a gallon of gas/diesel.

I have 2 each 300W solar panels, the very best I have done with them is a bit over 1kW (each) in a whole day, clear sky, tropic sun. They are +5’x3’ or over 15 square feet each. I need 10 to make 1 gallon of diesel equivalent.

So that is 150 square feet for one gallon of diesel. 1,500 square feet for 10 gallons.

And that is in perfect conditions. You will typically need much more than that because you are in Vermont and can’t count on sunny skies when farming. So you need to capture and store enough energy to keep your tractor running when you are not using it. I am guessing you may need storage of something like 10 to 20 times the daily fuel consumption to assure success. Lets assume 10.

So you will need the equivalent of 10 Tesla storage batteries to act like a diesel fuel tank. And then you need to charge those batteries FAST when the sun does shine. So you will need something like 5x the solar array for sufficient recharge.

That works out to 7,500 square feet of solar panel and 10x Y type battery banks for storage. And that may be conservative.

It all depends upon 2 things.
1-How important is it for you to plow/seed/till/harvest your field TODAY or THIS WEEK.
2-What are the consequences if you don’t have sufficient power? Does your family starve?

I watched a guy rip out a perfectly good diesel (about 40-50hp) and install an electric motor with a big battery bank and a small charge diesel. Then he went for a couple of month cruise to see how it worked. When he came back he ordered a 36hp diesel to charge his batteries to run his y motors. Why? Because it quickly became evident to him that he could never STORE sufficient electricity to meet his needs for a safe passage. And this is what diesel is; super dense and stable and light energy storage.

Well first off Vermont is not viable for any grain or corn crops to compete with those grown in Iowa etc. I would expect the electric tractor to be recharged off the grid in Iowa which might be mostly provided by wind turbines. I have taken down wind turbines and their eighty foot tall towers in the Dakotas and I can tell you they have plenty of wind potential.
No a sailboat does not have enough surface area to mount panels on for it's energy needs. A farm as on the other hand has acres of land and roof tops for panels a a bit for a wind tower or two. Using your real world figure of 1KWH per day per 3'x5' panel and acre of panels would produce 290 KWHs per day. Now on an Iowa farm of four sections (2560 acres) having even 50 acres covered in solar panels to not have a diesel bill might work out just fine.

[Newfie]

VT,

That 1kW/day was in the tropics, sun overhead, in near perfect conditions. You will be very lucky to get 15% to 20% of that on average in VT. Summer somewhat better. Winter worse. Now figure out what AVERAGE VT homeowner uses for heat and then how many sq feet of panels he needs for heat.

Wind, even in the trade winds, is a fraction of solar.

I use both.

We use very little electricity. The ONE thing that might be a good addition is a small microwave. They use relatively little power and can be a net gain over diesel/kerosene/gas if you have good solar.

And finally. Your square footage of panels means exactly zip at night. That is why you need huge battery banks, as a fuel tank.


Look, I am not against solar or wind. It is just that they alone won’t support the profligate energy budget we currently are used to.

Build out solar and wind.
Modernize our grid to take advantage of HVDC distribution.
Reduce our energy budgets, live leaner.
Build nukes.
Save as much fossil fuel as possible for mobile requirements.

[AdamB]

As for solar tractors doing our farming, well that's just a delusion, how are are you going to build them and replace the mammoth batteries without a cheap oil based economy?

By a cheap electricity based economy. Duh. You might not have noticed, but we've made it through years of non-cheap oil based economy, and not much changed then as compared to now. Now even among out among the mining colonies.

I see the roads have lots of electric cars, where are the electric trucks?

You live in a mining colony that can't build them for yourself, so obviously you wouldn't know. Find yourself a civilized place to live where they build submarines for the ignorant natives...and some of those electric trucks too.

Silly aborigines, do you even wear pants where you live? Have you invented the wheel or fire yet?

[vtsnowedin]

VT,

That 1kW/day was in the tropics, sun overhead, in near perfect conditions. You will be very lucky to get 15% to 20% of that on average in VT. Summer somewhat better. Winter worse.

Wind, even in the trade winds, is a fraction of solar.

I use both.

Forget Vermont. Other then milk and cheese Vermont is a minor player in the food supply.
Planting time in Iowa the sun is high and the winds are blowing. Not so much sun come harvest time so they will tap the grid mostly but doing that they can get away from diesel if forced to. One chart I saw said that moldboard plowing an acre uses 3.85 gallons of diesel and almost all other operations use much less. But moldboard turning the soil is already a rare practice so it is a worst case scenario.
One of my calculations has a farmer needing to dedicate 13% of his land to solar panels to go totally that route but you can have wind turbines at the corners of the fields and have corn or wheat planted right up to the foundations. As long as they c an feed in whatever power they generate on site into the grid then pull it back when needed I think they can create a viable system at a reasonable cost per finished bushel but other countries still using diesel will have to be prohibited from competing with the diesel free grain grown here.