Drive a Gas Guzzler? Think about this.

I drive a very fuel efficient car, but those of you who drive those that are less so, should consider the following:

Finite Supply
How Much Dead Stuff Does It Take to Fuel Your Tank? Tons.
By Lee Dye
Special to ABCNEWS.com
Nov. 6� Jeff Dukes was driving his lab's huge SUV through the red hills of southern Utah when he asked his wife a question that seemed simple at the time, but led to an astonishing answer.

"We're burning a lot of gas," noted Dukes, then a postdoctoral researcher in ecology at the University of Utah. "Where does all that gas come from?" he asked his wife, also an ecologist.
Months later, after extensive research, Dukes has found his answer. And it casts a new light on the precarious hole that modern humans have dug for themselves.

It turns out that it took tons and tons of tiny plants and animals, buried at the bottom of the seas, lakes or river deltas, to produce every gallon of gasoline that poured through the big engine of that SUV.

It took 98 tons, to be exact, or 196,000 pounds. For every gallon.
abcnews.go.com...

Until they make the alternatives cheaper and more practical....

VROOM! VROOM!

I'm constanly needing the ability to carry more than 5 passengers and lots of "gear", so had to get a van...

Originally posted by Gazrok
I'm constanly needing the ability to carry more than 5 passengers and lots of "gear", so had to get a van...

A van is a sensible vehicle for most folks with your needs. The SUV is a conspiracy of safety regualtion skipping by auto maufacturers and the egomanical. I used to drive company vans and some were sporty and cool. I used to imagine myself with a load of friends on a road course looking like a bobsled team leaning with the curves. That would be cool.

I'm hoping that this postdoctoral student actually knew the answer to his intial question before doing the real work...the number crunching...I'm sure that's not quite the way he put it when he gave his story to ABC...no doubt they added that little twist to make it seem more dramatic

I drive a jeep...I gotta fill the sucker up every week...so I guess every month I go through 7840 tons of rotted and decomposed shrimp and seaweed...lol...I wish I could get 20 gallons of my favoirt sushi rolls each week for $35

Interesting post though - I would have never thought of figuring out the actual fossil fuels required to produce gasoline - makes you think about things from a different perspective....

Judging by what we pay for fuel anymore, I'd say the oil companies think we all drive those turkeys. I guess they have not looked at their average customer in a while, least not in my hood!

We should divert the 100B being sunk annually into Iraq, to develop the hydrogen-based economy. With this kind of R&D money, this can be done in 3 years tops

Wow lots of stuff to make gas. Hope by the time I can drive they have good fuel efficient cars.

ecologist needing months and extensive research to figure out what a fossil fuel is.. really? come on now? Sure I am up for thw whole save the planet thing in some ways. But for someone to come up with a story like this trying to make it sound like WE are killing the plants and animals, I think these people do have problem somewhere in there own mind. The oils, petrol, and coal that we use today was formed about 360 to 286 million years ago.

Stop reading 1/10th of the story, read it all and then figure out that everything thats wrong with this world is not because of humans driving SUVs, useing arisol cans, or whatever else we are doing to destroy the earth.

Well, at least using hydrocarbons for fuel is very, very wasteful. They can go into plastics and such, and it would be nice to save the remaining fossils for that purpose.

Second, I don't really care how many algi go into a gallon of gas but the environment does need our attention.

Hey, if they tell me that one gallon of methanol in my new car take 10,000 corn husks to produce, I'd say "cool".

My question is have we hit peak oil yet??

I know I have read, and hear a surreal amount of hype about it all, and I think thats all it is. I think OPEC is a big joke, and all their supply/production crap is a big story that was cooked up to keep the prices rising in their favor.

I have read about how they can turn the HUGE tarpits in Canada into crude oil, and they are trying to make it cost effective enough to be feasible.

One day I think we will have to make electricity from nuke power to extract the hydrogen from H2O and we could have a hydrogen based economy.

Truck maker will sell giant pickup
CNN.com

Navistar starts marketing cement mixer-based truck that dwarfs the Hummer and the F-350.
September 13, 2004: 3:07 PM EDT
By Chris Isidore, CNN/Money senior writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - For the driver looking for more in a pickup -- one that dwarfs the Hummer and the Ford F-350 -- Navistar has just the ride for you.

The CXT, the new monster pickup from heavy truck maker Navistar.
The new CXT -- short for commercial extreme truck and built from the same platform as the heavy-truck maker's typical tow truck or cement mixer -- will be sold starting this week by Navistar's International Truck & Engine subsidiary.

At 258 inches, or 21-1/2 feet long, the CXT is about 4-1/2 feet longer than the new Hummer H2 pickup, and about 2 inches longer than the F-350 Crew Cab.

How convienent!!!

"It's not going to fit into the standard garage," said Mark Oberle, a spokesman for Navistar, based in Warrenville, Ill., outside Chicago. "We can see it as a vehicle for business people who want to make a distinct impression. For personal use, it's for people who want to make a statement."

One statements: The buyer has a great deal of money to spend. The price for the CXT ranges from about $93,000 to $115,000 fully loaded, with such creature comforts as a DVD player and leather upholstery.

How, um, economical!!!

Buyers will also have to have a fair amount of money to fill it up -- it's projected to get between 6 and 10 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.

The vehicle weighs about seven tons empty and can carry another six tons in its truck bed.

How many tons of dead things per mile?

16.3

I think I need to put a crowbar in my trunk just for beating the [canoli] out of the people who'll drive that around here. When the H2 came out, there were so many here... 11 mpg? What the hell? IT'S THE SUBURBS! What'll the CXT get? 2 highway, 0 city? -hoping it's used only by those who need it-

Here is a good way to look at it. Gas is very effeciant in a certain way. One gallon of gas is about 6 lbs, so compare this with the 196,000 lbs of dead plants. And then on top of that when the gas is burnt, one gallon worth of gas will be weigh how much? Fairly good space saver I would think.

Aelita you do realise that switching to a so called "hydrogen economy" would actually be worse for the environment don't you? The production of all that hydrogen would actually take far more energy than burnig gasoline. And since most power is generated by fossil fuels a "hydrogen economy" would actually increase the amount of fossil fuels used.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott

A van is a sensible vehicle for most folks with your needs. The SUV is a conspiracy of safety regualtion skipping by auto maufacturers and the egomanical. I used to drive company vans and some were sporty and cool. I used to imagine myself with a load of friends on a road course looking like a bobsled team leaning with the curves. That would be cool.

Careful Grady, you're starting to sound like one of those liberals.

When I'm driving my kids to soccer practice while doing my makeup and talking on my cell phone, do you think I have time to watch the road? I need a car that'll keep us safe!

Originally posted by mwm1331
Aelita you do realise that switching to a so called "hydrogen economy" would actually be worse for the environment don't you? The production of all that hydrogen would actually take far more energy than burnig gasoline. And since most power is generated by fossil fuels a "hydrogen economy" would actually increase the amount of fossil fuels used.

I realize that in 50 years thermonuclear energy will become reality. As far as I know, every engineering milestone in this program has been met on schedule.

In the meantime, there is nuclear energy. Nuclear plants release less radioactive isotopes into the environment than conventional plants (because coal does contain radioactive sulphur, but most people aren't aware of that).

In addition, with sufficient research, the cost of methanol (produced from hemp and/or corn) can be lowered such that it becomes affordable. This would be actually quite clean fuel, and completely organic based.


[edit on 22-9-2004 by Aelita]

Aelita, nuclear power from fission is not a good alternative. The worst industrial accident ever came from a single power plant explosion. Yes there are safety precautions but there's always the human element. Human element + time = accident.

Besides that, where are we going to store the waste. NIMBY is in full effect, as witnessed out in Arizona.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
I drive a very fuel efficient car

What would your opinion be on adding a dollar tax per gallon to gasoline? Perhaps using the tax to reimburse people who buy cars that are more fuel efficient (or entirely electric or fuel cell based) for a portion of their price (if, say, their car was more expensive than a corresponding gas guzzler model, or some such)

"Where does all that gas come from?" he asked his wife, also an ecologist.
Months later, after extensive research,

Are these people kidding? What kind of ecologists are they? Totally uneducated ones or charlatans? Anyone with any geological background, and certainly actual ecologists would've already known the asnwer to this. And months? It took them months to find one of the fundamental facts of the oil industry?
It turns out that it took tons and tons of tiny plants and animals, buried at the bottom of the seas, lakes or river deltas, to produce every gallon of gasoline that poured through the big engine of that SUV.

It took 98 tons, to be exact, or 196,000 pounds. For every gallon.

But keep in mind that this involves entire oceans, filled with populations of these organisms, at both shallow and deep depths, members of which die in the millions each day, for millions of years.

Not to say that the world's oil reserves are unlimited, they most certainly are limited and they're effectively a non renewable resource, but there's no information that strongly indicates these resources will be 'tapped out' anytime soon.

aelita
We should divert the 100B being sunk annually into Iraq, to develop the hydrogen-based economy

Since hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are already on the road, what needs to be developed?

I drive a little 4 banger as well. While I don't really buy the whole "petroleum from fossils alone" idea, its mostly an economic question for me. The difference between 10 bucks and 50 bucks at the pump. I'm not really worried about an oil shortage since they have yelling that since the 70s and its really a question of refining it quick enough rather than limited supply.

I say, if you do utility work, you need a utility vehicle, since I don't, the only reason left is social status and thats stupid. People are rolling SUVs because of they were designed to be loaded down with hundreds of pounds of tools and cables, not a few pounds of groceries. A utiliy vehicle is just that and adding the word sport to the title did nothing but get a lot of people who could barely operate a car killed. Now a days, they're putting low profile tires and 24 inch rims on them. People, this does not look good. This looks like your phone guy has flipped out.

If you need a lot of room, a van is far and away a better and more cost effective way to go.

This is an article I read a while back that does a very ggod job of explaining the realities of why hydrogen is no solution.
www.fromthewilderness.com...
www.fromthewilderness.com...

[edit on 22-9-2004 by mwm1331]

[edit on 22-9-2004 by mwm1331]