John:

I represented a number of ranchers in the Altamont Pass. They called the wind turbines 'Raptor Cuisinarts'. For those unfamiliar with the turbines, the posts are about thirty stories high and the propeller blades about twenty stories. They don't rotate all that fast. I can't figure out why these birds can't avoid them. Must be God's way of emptying the shallow end of the avian gene pool.

I'm no law-talkin' guy but how do you sue on behalf of a bunch of birds?

Fred: Funny. The Wife sent me the link and that was exactly my first reaction -- just tidying up the gene pool. Same reason I don't break for cats crossing the road. Giving "kitty" a false sense of survivorship is really a disservice to the greater feline lineage.

Arg. Brake that is. sheesh.

Raptors, like sharks, are not Mensa-eligible. Just superb at what they do. Plus, they're migrating when they hit the fan. On autopilot.

Fred - The tip speeds are regulated to about 60 meters per second, or 120 mph. That's faster than the birds fly, and the tips are probably hard to see.

Well, now we add windpower to the list of unacceptable power sources. That leaves solar, tidal generators and turkey guts. Did I miss something?

Maybe they should mount little plastic rabbits around the hubs to attract the raptors to the slower parts?

Genecis:

East of the Altamont Pass is a major north-south high-voltage transmission line corridor. My ranching clients find electrocuted birds all the time under those wires. So you can add the distribution system for electricity generated from any source to your list.

It's just a wonderful illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The early (1970's) advocates of subsized wind power were ardent environmentalists. They were utterly blinded by their opposition to nuclear power. When skeptics raised the issue of bird migrations, they (we) were hooted down.

"...force wind farm operators and county officials to tackle the problem of bird deaths"

Might I suggest the following: Game Bird Stew

i thought we had a raptor excess problem ?

"Maybe a giant scarecrow would do the trick."
Maybe a giant paper mache Nancy Pelosi puppet?

Bill: you want to scare the birds away, not scare them to death.

This is classic environmental bait and switch, we shouldn't do X, its bad for the environment, we should do Y. Then somebody says, Y is bad we should do Z. And on and on.

For along time wind power was part of the holy trinity of energy sources (wind, solar, biomass) that would replace coal, oil and nuclear. Now that wind is almost economically feasible it is no longer holy, and it must be condemned.

This is why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can 1) be a self proclaimed environmental advocate and 2) leading the charge against the Nantucket Bay wind power project, and nobody from the MSM looks at him and says: "Why should we take you seriously?"

Now I am not a wind power advocate. I don't believe in Global Warming. I am fairly certain that our future energy needs will be meet by coal, nuclear (fission) and other traditional sources. There will be some updating of the technology used to extract energy from these sources (e.g. coal gasification, pebble bed reactors), but they will not be very different.

But, we have to learn that 1) decisions about energy sources are political and economic decisions about the allocation of costs and benefits and there is no way of avoiding the world of costs and benefits, and 2) people who call them selves environmentalists do not want to solve problems -- they want to be problems.

Genecis: Bad news on the turkey guts:

Innovative turkey-to-oil plant eats money, spits out fowl odor

Actually, good news on the turkey guts:

CARTHAGE, Mo. — The eyes of the world have been on this Missouri town for several years to see if a New York businessman can really turn turkey leftovers into oil.

The answer: A resounding yes. In fact, a revolutionary plant is turning 270 tons of poultry waste into 300 barrels of crude oil every day.

The fact that the plant is losing money hand over fist isn't really germane.

This is a test facility, not well-designed for maximum efficiency, and they're still working out what raw materials will be the net cheapest.
Once the kinks are worked out, $ 40/bbl oil seems possible, and $ 60/bbl oil seems quite likely.

The important point is, they built a test plant, and "IT'S ALIVE !!" - to quote the estimable Dr. Frankenstein.

So, we now have proven technology that can DOUBLE THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF OIL...
At the right price-point.

Therefore, we can now say with confidence that we will NOT see $ 100/bbl oil as the norm, just as temporary spikes. Any time naturally extracted crude oil pushes up over, say, $ 60/bbl in the future, these plants will begin cranking up production.

Crisis averted, Hubbert's Peak put off for another century.

Michael,
Somehow I don't think that we consume enough turkeys to double the supply of oil, though I could be wrong. By your equation, each ton of turkey guts yields approx 60 gallons of oil. I don't know the conversion rate of oil to gas, let's say it is 1-1. Now for the average commuter, 60 gallons is about 3 weeks of driving. If you put the meat/guts ratio on the turkey at about 10 to 1, the average commuter would have to eat 10 tons of turkey every 3 weeks.

Robert -

The conversion rate of oil to gas is averaged at 2 to 1 (2 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of gasoline). So its a worse deal than you think. And bizzarely Michael doesn't take into account the cost of turkey to oil processing or the cost of oil to gas processing in making his assumptions concerning the cost of oil futures.

Fission/fusion tech development is our best bet. 200 years form now people will remember fossil fuel power like we remember the horse and buggy.

Michael: I go on what I read do you have a link to the story you quoted.

Further, the real reason that peak oil is not a problem is that liquid and gas hydrocarbons can be made out of coal (even low grade coal), water and air. The process was first devised in the 19th century, was refined and used by the Nazis in WWII, and used by the South Africans during the apartied era.

The only issues are 1) convincing the industrial and financial communities that the peak really is here and their investment will not be destroyed by an oil price crash like the late 1980s and 1990s; and 2) getting the tree huggers and NIMBYs to allow the permits to be issued.

Robert Duquette:

The process works on anything containing carbon. Turkey offal is only the fuel of choice for the test plant, because the developer assumed that there would be legal changes that would cause the turkey processing plant to pay him to haul away the waste.

You could throw in anything biological, or scrap plastic, and get oil.

Shelton:

The cost of turkey to oil processing is currently $ 80/bbl, but that will certainly drop.

The oil from the plant would fetch the same price as West Texas sweet light crude, so large scale production would affect the cost of oil futures just as increased extraction of in-ground oil would.

Fission/fusion tech development is our best bet.

It's our best-case scenario, but hardly our best bet. Net energy producing fusion reactions have been "just around the corner" for forty years. We'd be betting on pie-in-the-sky.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't fund the research, just that we shouldn't count on fusion bailing us out anytime soon.

Robert Schwartz:

The story quoted is from the Kansas City Star, it's the article that you provided the link to, earlier in the thread.

Yeah, the Carter administration provided additional funding for coal-to-oil research. It does work, but it's not cheap enough.

This is cheap enough, AND, it's already working.

The only issues are 1) convincing the industrial and financial communities that the peak really is here and their investment will not be destroyed by an oil price crash like the late 1980s and 1990s...

IMO, the peak is NOT here.

For one thing, the Canadian tar sand operations aren't anywhere near maximum production.

If oil prices stay above $ 40/bbl, then they will continue to add capacity.

For additional info on the trash-to-oil process, go to the Discover magazine site.

The Discover site charges a fee. However, from the magazine:

Out of 100 Btus in a given unit of feedstock, only 15 Btus are used to power the process, with the remainder residing in oil, gas, and chemicals. Most important, the oil produced in these tests easily meets the specifications for diesel fuel. “The main process chemistry does exactly what we thought it would do.”

ConAgra Foods formed a joint venture with Changing World Technologies called Renewable Energy Solutions to operate the Carthage plant. “We now know that the technology is sound and the science really works,” says Michael Walter, ConAgra Foods’ senior vice president for commodity procurement. “The front end of the plant is producing organic liquors and free fatty acids, and the back end does make a diesel fuel product.”

From Answers.com :

Theory and process:

Previous methods to create hydrocarbons from depolymerization expend a lot of energy to remove water from the materials. This hydrous pyrolysis method instead uses water to improve the heating process and contribute hydrogen from water to the reactions.

The feedstock material is first ground into small chunks, and mixed with water if it is especially dry. It is then fed into a reaction chamber where it is heated to around 250 °C and subjected to 600 lbf/in² (4 MPa) for approximately 15 minutes, after which the pressure is rapidly released to boil off most of the water. The result is a mix of crude hydrocarbons and solid minerals, which are separated out. The hydrocarbons are sent to a second-stage reactor where they are heated to 500 °C, further breaking down the longer chains, and the resulting petroleum is then distilled in a manner similar to conventional oil refining.

Working with turkey offal as the feedstock, the process proved to have yield efficiencies of approximately 85%; in other words, the energy required to process materials could be supplied by using 15% of the petroleum output. Alternatively, one could consider the energy efficiency of the process to be 560% (85 units of energy produced for 15 units of energy consumed). The company claims that 15 to 20% of feedstock energy is used to provide energy for the plant. The remaining energy is available in the converted product. Higher efficiencies may be possible with drier and more carbon-rich feedstocks, such as waste plastic.

By comparison, the current processes used to produce ethanol and biodiesel from agricultural sources have energy efficiencies in the 320% range when the energy used to produce the feedstocks is considered (in this case, usually sugar cane, corn, soybeans and the like).

The process breaks down almost all materials that are fed into it. TDP even efficiently breaks down many types of hazardous materials, such as poisons and difficult-to-destroy biological agents such as prions.

Feedstocks and outputs:

Plastic bottles:
Oil 70 %
Gas 16 %
Carbon solids 6 %
Water 8 %

Turkey offal:
Oil 39 %
Gas 6 %
Carbon solids 5 %
Water 50 %

Sewage sludge:
Oil 26 %
Gas 9 %
Carbon solids 8 %
Water 57 %

Medical waste:
Oil 65 %
Gas 10 %
Carbon solids 5 %
Water 20 %

Limitations:

The process only breaks long molecules into shorter ones. Longer molecules are not created, so short molecules such as carbon dioxide or methane can not be converted to oil through this process. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the turkey-processing plant is creating fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide which was collected by the growing plants which provided food for the turkeys.

The process cannot remove radioactivity from radioactive waste, but can still process it into oil.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in 2001 there were 229 million tons of municipal solid waste, or 4.4 pounds generated per day per person in the USA. [1] (http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/facts.htm) Industrial facilities in the USA create 7.6 billion tons of industrial wastes each year and, as a whole, the USA creates over 12 billion tons of total waste. [2] (http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/industd/questions.htm)

Many agricultural wastes could be processed, but many of these are already used as animal feed on individual farms.

Current status:

According to a recent article by Fortune Magazine, the Carthage plant is currently producing about 400 barrels per day of crude oil. This oil is being refined as No 2 (a standard grade oil which is used for diesel and gasoline) and No 4 (a lower grade oil used in industrial heating).
As of February, 2005, the Carthage plant received an economic setback. It was thought that concern over mad cow disease would prevent the use of turkey waste as cattle feed, and thus this waste would be free. However, turkey waste is still used as feed, so the feed stock costs from $30 to $40 per ton, adding $15 to $20 per barrel to the cost of the oil. On top of the expenses, the roughly $42 per barrel biofuel tax credit on production costs that had been hoped for didn't materialize because the oil produced did not meet the definition of "biofuel" according to the relevant American tax legislation. Final cost is $80/barrel ($1.90/gal), making it uneconomic compared to the net wholesale price of conventional diesel of about $72/barrel ($1.73/gal) (as of April 2005). However, this setback does not apply to other forms of waste such as plastics.

Michael,
Thanks for the info. The article talks about the economics of converting waste from existing agricultural and industrial processes, but doesn't consider ways to convert hydrocarbons to fuel that were grown specifically for conversion. Might it be possible to grow or harvest kelp & plankton or other plant matter in mass quantities cheaply as inputs to this kind of conversion process?