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Date Posted: 07:13:43 09/21/08 Sun
Author: Mark D
Subject: Re: Another way of looking at it.
In reply to: Owen 's message, "Re: Another way of looking at it." on 22:36:51 09/20/08 Sat

The original comparison was "1 barrel of oil is equivalent to 23,000 hours of human work" I believe Neil was thinking of work in the same sense that a physicist would. Moving weight around.

You might scoff and chalk it up to filling a few potholes, but you must realize that in our county alone well over half a million tons of gravel are used each year for maintenance. If I wanted to get nit picky I could probably push that number well over a million easy. So yeah a few potholes if you wish. *That will take over 1/2 a million tons of material to address.*

Now the question is oil energy VS human energy. NOT HUMAN INGENUITY. Sure we could move cut stone instead of gravel. Ever wonder why we use gravel though? Why is cut stone so much more expensive than crushed stone? to crush stone obviously takes more energy... Because it is so much cheaper to make and use. Crushing it costs very little, and the machinery that loads it hauls it and puts it into place are very inexpensive to run. At each point in the process the vast amount of cheap oil energy available is being exploited. The process that uses more energy is the less expensive process, something to dwell on.
Yeah *if* human labor had to be used I am sure something a bit more intelligent would be worked out. But that's really not addressing the original comparison of how much "work" is in a barrel of oil. To source and deliver over half a million tons of aggregate via human means alone would be very tough. And that's just one county in a country with over 3000. To fill a few potholes easy though, I agree with you on that. You could just round up the drunk and homeless and task them with that... Problem is that isn't exactly the task at hand.

Neil was attempting to point out that we have vast amounts of energy available for very little outlay of money (or energy on our part). I think it's a very valid statement. His figure of 23,000 hours per barrel could be debated sure but there is ALOT of energy in that barrel. IF you don't believe this all you need to do is go out and find a process that makes relatively efficient use of this energy and then try and undertake it using you own sweat instead.

Even a mythological lumber jack and his ox failed to hold with the oil. But heck give it a shot.

As far as the world coming to an end when the price of oil rises another nickel... I suspect that you and I are much in agreement on that matter. However my rationale is that there is so much waste and inefficiency in our current system that it will actually serve as a protective buffer of sorts. For example our truck drivers drive these huge dump trucks to and from work each day. When oil got expensive they started leaving the trucks at work and car pooling. Now that's funny if you think about it. However it saved them a considerable amount of pocket money. On the other hand the industrial processes that use oil don't have the same amount of flexibility. We did have to raise the price of a ton of rock.

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