After reading a great poston visualizing energy, I thought I’d share with you the video produced by Getty Images for corporations to use as a point of reference when they are trying to promote and brand clean energy.

What images help you to better understand complex topics like energy and alternatives to fossil fuels?  Join the conversation and let us know what you think.

Beyond Thunderdome

I’m a Mad Max movie buff so I couldn’t resist writing a post comparing the energy embargo scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome to our current world oil addiction.  Beyond Thunderdome is set in a post-apocalyptic world where we’ve destroyed civilization and a few survivors struggle to live on the leftovers of mankind.  Bartertown is one of the towns where people have gathered to live.  Deep underground, there is a large pig farm where workers feed and raise pigs to produce methane to power the generators that provide electricity to Bartertown.

Tina Turner is the leader of Bartertown on the surface but Master Blaster, the leader of the pig farmers underground, demonstrates that he has the real control.  He controls the energy supply.  At one of the key scenes of the movie, Master Blaster turns off the power and makes Tina Turner announce to the whole town that, “Master Blaster runs Bartertown.” After she submits to him, he turns the power back on.

I can’t help but call out the similarities between the United States and Bartertown.  We are addicted to oil.  Everything we do and use is somehow tied to oil.  From transportation to plastics; from fertilizers to animal feed.  They are all directly tied to petroleum.

Unfortunately, we cannot produce enough of our own oil to meet demand.  We purchase it from countries and regions that mostly do not like America.  Now that China and India are industrializing, these oil producing countries will soon not need the United States to sell their product.  As world demand for oil continues to grow and supplies become more difficult to extract and process, these oil producers will be able to pull the strings and hold our economy hostage.

You don’t think this could happen to the US? Think again. In October of 1973, some of the Arab members of OPEC proclaimed an oil embargo in reponse to the US resupplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The embargo was lifted only after the US helped negotiate the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Golan Heights. I remember the lines at gas stations and only being able to fill up on odd or even days.

Who runs Bartertown?  Who controls the United States?  OPEC will… if we don’t do something about it soon.

For those of you who haven’t seen the Mad Max movies, here is the embargo clip from Beyond Thunderdome.

How Do I Reduce my Petroleum Usage?

I see many articles on ways that people can reduce their usage of oil in the home and in their lifestyle.  Bike to work, buy a scooter, buy natural fiber clothes.  All of these will make some difference but is it really the best bang for the buck?  Here is a short list of the best ways you can make a difference and use less oil

1. Buy a more fuel efficient car. This is “hands down” the very best way you can impact your daily use of petroleum.  I own a ’99 VW Jetta TDI diesel sedan that gets between 40 and 55 miles to the gallon.  If all of us bought cars that get 40 miles to the gallon, we’d reduce our daily oil consumption from between 2 and 3 million barrels a day.  That’s barrels of crude oil.  Therefore, the actual savings in gallons of gas would be between 40 and 60 million gallons per day!

I told you it would be a short list.  Don’t ignore the small changes like using washable cloth grocery bags and avoiding plastic water bottles.  All of these things add up but the best way to impact our oil consumption is to drive a more fuel efficient vehicle.

It’s time to trade in the Hummer for a Hybrid!  (or a small diesel sedan or wagon)

We want to hear from you about ways that you reduce your dependence on oil.  Come join the discussion in the Vehicle Efficiency forum at the Mapawatt Community.

Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of Pioneer Astronautics, comments on the book,  Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy written by Nobel laureate chemist, George Olah.  His commentary takes a very technical tome and provides a concise summary of the case in language that the average reader can understand.

Read the entire essay, The Methanol Alternative, at New Atlantis.

More…

With the 2008 Presidential election now only a week away, speculation will soon be over on where our country will be heading under the leadership of a new president.  Whoever is elected will have a costly Middle East War and a failed domestic economy to deal with.  I don’t envy their position.

After reading both the Obama energy plan and the McCain energy plan, Obama has put the most effort and thought into crafting and documenting how he intends to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and catalyze the shift to the new Clean Energy Economy.

With a drastic increase in unemployment looming, the next president should consider taking a page from the play book of FDR and institute a New Deal for America’s energy infrastructure.   This “Green New Deal” would mobilize the country’s workers by funding the largest new industry created in the 21st century.  By funding public works projects, the new President would create valuable new jobs, boost our economy and wean us from dependence on petroleum.  These public works projects could include:

• building a new high voltage DC power distribution network
• retrofitting power plants with co-generation capability that uses biomass, solar, geothermal and wind where applicable
• developing sustainable biofuels that don’t adversely affect food prices and supply
• developing alternative fuels such as natural gas and methanol while reducing the amount of energy required to manufacture, refine and deliver them for consumption.
• fostering research in CO2 reduction and sequestration techniques including reformation of CO2 and H20 into methanol for fuel and as an energy storage mechanism.
• funding additional research of reforming atmospheric CO2 into methanol using selective absorption and other techniques.
• incenting research in alternative methods of transportation such as electric vehicles and more advanced hybrid technologies.
• upgrading our homes and buildings with energy efficiency improvements such as improved insulation, CF and LED lighting upgrades, more efficient windows and improved sealing of the building envelope.
• adding government-mandated requirements on efficient new building designs
• help funding energy generation retrofits to homes and businesses using solar PV, solar hot water, geothermal and wind where applicable.

David Morris’ article on AlterNet makes a case for why our nation is ready for a Green New Deal.

- RADscientist

Polar Ice Caps Melting by September

It appears that the ice at the North Pole has decided to melt and should be completely melted by this September.  I guess you can look on the bright side; now you can take a cruise to the North Pole and experience what many an explorer froze to death trying to accomplish!

It’s also a well-known fact that there is oil under the Arctic Ocean.  I guess it will also be easier to drill for it now…

- Veggie Ranger

I surfed the internet and was amazed at all of the sites discussing HHO as the miracle mileage saver both for gas and diesel vehicles. However, most of the sites gave little bits of information and offered the rest as a e-book download for a fee. It reminded me a lot of the first time I heard you can run a diesel engine on waste vegetable oil so I began searching for blogs and forum postings on people’s experiences with using HHO injection to get better fuel mileage. To my dismay, I found nothing credible; just people debunking it as a scam but not from their own experience in trying it. Others swear by it but couldn’t provide more than a few sentences on how much fuel they saved or a short Youtube video showing the device under the hood bubbling and boiling its contents with the engine running.

After further research, I did find some comments that appeared to come from an engineer that was involved in a research project at Caltech’s JPL analyzing HHO as a fuel enhancer.

In order to contribute more information and research on the actual results of researching, installing and testing an HHO or Brown’s gas injection system, I have purchased what appears to be the most complete and well-thought-out e-book on how to build and install an HHO injection system.

Over the next few months, I will be chronicling my experiences with testing HHO injection on gas and diesel vehicles. Stay tuned…

- Veggie Ranger

Sources:

Green Car Congress Article

This morning, I read about a farmer in NW Kansas that bought a Chinese-made screw press to experiment with making his own diesel fuel from sunflower seeds. Daniel McAmoil began his experiment in April of 2006 and began first by purchasing sunflower seeds on the open market until he was able to harvest his own crop for processing. McAmoil’s experiment was successful! To date, he has produced and used over 8,500 gallons of sunflower oil!

I have always been skeptical about growing my own fuel but McAmoil has shown that for landowners with more than a couple of acres of land, growing and pressing your own fuel from sunflowers is viable. It is so viable that McAmoil upgraded to a larger 10-ton screwpress in August of 2006.

If you would like more information about McAmoil’s research and process of making fuel, you can visit his website by clicking here.

- Veggie Ranger