> > At 10:14 PM 6/6/00 -0500, altamira wrote:
> >
> > >The predominate method of food production used these days requires an
> > input of several calories of fossil fuel for each calorie of food obtained
> [snip]
I saw a study done by a pretty cluey group that showed that
corn could be grown, distilled, some of the alcohol used to
run the corn processing machinery with plenty of alcohol left
over to run internal combustion engines that are currently running
on petrol. The notion was that we could estimate the amount
of land and water available and calculate a maximum possible equivalent
price of fuel, regardless of the supply of petroleum. They calced
it was in the neighborhood of 6 bucks U.S. per equivalent gallon,
and this was a few years ago, early 90s, and that with economies of
scale it could only go lower. This is expensive of course, but realize
that this is the highest logical energy price we should ever expect.
With the advent of hybrid cars, even a total loss or embargo of
fossil fuel is not the end of high tech society as we so fondly know it.
spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:04 MDT