Do you feel like you are getting screwed at the gas pumps with inflated fuel prices? Price fixing reflective of market manipulation, & racketeering collusion between oil industry executives who pander to their billionaire shareholders, making record breaking profits as the average citizen being cheated by extortionate fuel pricing?
Have you ever considered what it takes to drill a deep hole in Earth's crust somewhere to extract oil & pump it up, collect it, transport it, refine it into gasoline & diesel & JET-A, kerosine, propane, butane, asphalt, tar, bitumen, methane, hydrogen & a zillion other downstream chemical products made using petrochemical processing?
Crude oil literally a feedstock bonanza of base chemicals that can be used to synthesize a bewildering array of other chemicals, plastics, polymers, dyes, explosives, binders, insulators, the world as we know it would be impossible without crude oil & petrochemicals. In the context of climate change & air pollution, continuing to burn carbon for 10+ billion people alive at the same time, even the oil company executives today are calling on the world to recognize the urgent need to decarbonize energy. We do not want to burn up all the crude oil anyway, its more valuable as a chemical feedstock than as a base material for making gasoline & diesel, especially because with higher fuel prices, bio gasoline & biodiesel become feasible to make from cheap natural gas, biogas recovered from trash dumps, bioreactors that convert waste materials produced by agriculture & food waste into fuels and gasses of value.
As America exited the great depression, gasoline & diesel engine vehicles, cars & aircraft, boats & ships & power sports, motorcycles, scooters, 3 wheelers, quads, jet skis, weed whackers, generators, many portable high energy systems were enabled & energized by gasoline. When gasoline burns it generates 3X more energy than gunpowder, even when accounting for the free O2 or oxygen in the Atmosphere, that is more than 10 Megajoules per kilogram for gasoline or 30+ MJ/KG if you do not account for free air oxygen; gunpowder made of saltpeter, pyrolyzed cellulose, and sulfur, combusts with about 3 MJ/ Kg respectively. Common low sulfur diesel fuels combust with around 14 MJ/Kg & compression ignition engines with sturdy block constructure, longer stroke & turbocharging, like most diesel truck engines, have about 30% better energy efficiency at converting fuel combustion into motive power than equivalent gasoline engines of similar power output or mechanical capacity.
In Alaska, the final wilderness frontier of America, a Conoco-Phillips drilling project known as "Willow Oil & Gas" on Joe Biden agenda to help improve "American made oil supply" output to supposedly reduce pump prices of common grades of gasoline & diesel fuels widely utilized by nearly all sectors of the US economy. To say that "Truckers" are the unsung heroes of America and understatement, especially given the lack of train rail networks to move goods, much of which was removed under the auspices of billionaire automobile magnate Henry Ford, back then. Yes, America started degenerating from a democracy / socialism program hybrid country into an Oligarch pandering Plutocracy, at the highest levels of bribery between elite income earners & large corporations & public officials in Congress or the Senate, all for sale to lobbyists of the next highest paying bribery & everyone knows it!
This is why the federal government unpopular with most members of the public & why there is a social convention to avoid talking about "politics" at work or school, because people hold polarized divergent views about the role government should play in normal people's lives. I want smaller, smarter, more efficient government, legalizing everything, with tax, control & regulation. I want to see crime rates reduced to near zero levels. I want to see affordable healthcare developed with better access for all Americans. I want to see agriculture & educations & renewable energy & energy storage development to improve capacity & applied intelligence in all areas to make life better for everyone.
Crude oil, largely starting with that produced by Colonel Edwin Drake, fueled the 20th centry wealth boom in America that made America the global economic military industrial powerhouse & global nation state Leader we see today, providing more humanitarian relief & with the most generous population of any country on Earth; hated by other envious countries with divergent Islamic ideologies like those in the Middle East dominated by ISIL & ISIS today. Terrorism, smoke & mirrors, designed to instill fear in the general public. Probably used to manipulate commodity prices of oil & other consumables by corrupt sickos in commerce & governments worldwide. Much of the oil base gasoline & diesel consumed by Americans since the 1960's made of imported oil, mined in other countries, manly Mexico, Canada, the Middle East, South America and Russia. A lot of foods in common seasonless grocery stores in America retail fruits & vegetables grown half a world a way and transported in a global supply chain system that was originally commercialized to enable the Dutch Tulip bulb & later fresh flower industry & later still the commercial activities of the East India Trading Company or what became known as the EIC.
Oil based fuels originally provided a nearly 94 to 1 return on energy development investment, meaning that for every dollar invested into oil projects, society was deriving $94 of added value or a 9,400% ROI, better than the profits of illegal drug dealing, the selling of $12,000 per liter perfume & cologne, $2500 per liter ink cartridge scams, & nursing homes charging residents $5000 to $9000 per month for a small studio apartment! Sadly, the NERI or net energy return on investment for oil and gas projects declined over time and we are lucky to see a 41:1 or lower ratio today. Thats in large part because all the "Easy Oil" already pumped up & long ago consumed making environmental toxic pollution & climate change worse along the way.
The scale of human activity makes pollution a problem because of the dose to toxicity ratio principle in Medicine. If Earth, its scientifically demonstratable carrying capacity, only had about 900 million people alive at the same time, then each of those people could enjoy a very wealthy 12kw continually energy level lifestyle of great "billionaire" like privileges, and global pollution emissions would be ~80% lower than they are in reality today & in the near-term future.
This is why people like me call 8.6 billion people alive at the same time, human overpopulation. This is why people like me are also critical of the UN food program for giving so many people a fish without teaching them how to fish! I understand the motive to help people with food programs, especially given the rising costs of foods lately, but giving a bunch of people in a poor country a bunch of free food imported from rich countries only causes the human population in the poor country to increase, without building an economy to provide those people with jobs that create value added profits to make a formal economy, so they can have industrialized waste sewer treatment plants, reverse osmosis water production plants, electrical infrastructure, roadways, schools, hospitals, police & fire services and all the wonderful things that people in rich industrialized countries take for granted as spoiled unappreciated jerks who do not have a clue what it's like to be poor or truly underprivileged.
I am proposing that the green revolution in agriculture was energized by diesel machinery, extensive mechanization of agriculture & the pervasive utilization of fertilizers & pesticides made from oil & natural gas petrochemical manufacturing technology. I am saying that global human population levels experience rapid increases because of the globalization of hydrocarbon fuels & the amazing 10-14 megajoule per kilogram those fuel provide users of them in engines, turbines, and in applications like my 10lb propane fueled 30kw thermal metal furnace used to smelt pneumatically crushed aluminum beverage cans that I am gifted, collect, produce as an output stream due to consumption of engineered fluids like beer & sugar free soda or similar.
You can't do anything without having an impact. 10 billion people at the same time modifying Earth's landscapes. There is a great documentary film called Manufactured Landscapes that I recommend watching. Zeitgeist another good one. DMT the spirit molecule another winner. Forks Over Knives another good one as was Supersize Me. The "Planet Earth Series" by the BBC & Chef's Table series & The Great British Baking Show, though Jeopardy & Modern Marvels are my all-time favorites, along with Mr. Wizzard, How Its Made & How It Works. I watch a lot of topic specific YouTube videos lately, for the last 8 years or so & also make YouTube videos as a hobby.
Most people are ok, many people are boring, a tiny percentage of people are bad & in need of professional rehabilitation. They can obtain this kind of redemption through Faith in Christ Jesus through the Be In Health Ministries or they can go the secular route with social workers, therapists, psychologists or psychiatrists. When I say professional help, some of these mentally ill people, like that deranged sicko who used a homemade shotgun to assassinate Shinzo Abe in Japan recently, need to seek out help from people who work full time making a living helping other people; people with the knowledge and skills to repair someone supplements mind, including prescribing a better nutritional regime or food nutrient program, supplements & vitamins, even some prescription drugs in a small percentage of special cases can actually help. The Mind-body connection well recognized, but a person has a spirit and soul too. What you think about affects your bodies health, since your brain sends out so many regulatory compounds & substances into your blood, that affects your hormone levels, organ function, emotions, energy levels, sleep & other metabolic & physiological regulatory mechanisms like digestion by the ecosystem of beneficial microbes that live a health persons gut flora :)
Not as much lately, but for many years I spent tens of thousands of hours reading Wikipedia articles. Inspired to acquire knowledge about anything because of a profound mind-altering experience I had as a 17-year-old stressed out teenager when my former friend Adam convinced me to smoke cannabis with him at the Friday Night Embassy Suits party, he was operating with around 25 other peers from our school and other nearby high schools. The THC driven high was so profound, that for 6 months after that Friday night, I felt like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I started reading only about the pharmacology of THC on EROWID & realized that there are plants in nature that contain medicinal compounds that can probably help most people who are suffering from a range of stress & nutritional deficiency or overabundance issues that plague Americans with dietary imbalances, deficiencies & excesses, too much of the wrong things & not enough, while malnutrition plagues billions of other poor people worldwide.
In college, I learned that it was impossible to know everything about all topics, that the human brain can hold a vast but limited about of information ~700 terabytes, assuming a sound well balanced mind & brain in a healthy average adult, as an example. Watch the TV show Jeopardy & check out how "bright" some people are, like Ken Jennings! Regurgitating facts alone, sadly, not intelligence, that rote memorization with excellent recall performance.
The human brain better as creative problem solving & that's what enables people to work smarter than harder. Knowing a lot of things can help some people work smarter, so knowledge important too. This is why giving people real facts enables them to make better informed choices, not that they always will, since people are emotional beings motivated by background limbic processes as animals, something most people prefer not to think or talk about; they have a big ego as a person & think they are above others, the environment or animals in nature, but they are flawed hypocrite sinners just like everyone else, who lack all the answers, who are unable to solve all the world's problems, and can only make a big positive difference by collaborating with other inspired people to create new better emergent products & services aimed at reducing pollution & produce more clean renewable cheaper electricity for everyone!
Energy the real subject affecting everyone, food & fuel prices & why I am writing about oil & gas; because carbon energy plays a pivotal role in all aspects of human societies worldwide, in human civilization on Earth as we collectively forge history together concurrently & emergently. Energy ROI provides most of the value added in all aspects of most economies & in most sectors. It takes energy to do anything. The human body for example leverages food calories 24/7 to enable the human brain & muscles to work, so that people can move in so many different ways to engage in all the activates required to make it happen for so many people at the same time while also trying to protect nature from the negative fallout or footprint of human activity or development, energy use, emissions, etc. Companies & most people do not usually pollute out of malevolence or evil motivation, they are just trying to stay profitable in a sea of competitors that became harder to compete with during the emergence of globalization. Now people and businesses in rich countries have to compete against huge, diluted pools of cheaper labor widely available in developing countries around the world. Look at what the CCP in China has done to develop its economy so rapidly, they leveraged the dirtiest cheapest carbon energy, Coal Power. Don't be arrogant, the British did the same thing, including child & slave labor, in the 1800's during the British imperial expansion as the then global superpower.
You know the old adage about "big ships" or when someone or some economy peaks, there is only one place to go, down. So even China will peak & then slowly decline, just like most of the other non-oil rich countries in the G20, like most of Western European Nations, North, Centra & South America. When a country is booming, the average person in that country starts consuming more energy & goods & services. A developing formal economy contains all sort of positive feedback mechanisms between economic value-added activities as bright motivated people are inspired to engage in profitable businesses & taxation that fuels government growth, defense spending & social programs like socialist programs like social security & Medicare & Medicaid in America. People get excited when the country is booming, like during that Saturn V moon program in America during the 1960's, when the American economy peaked. Thats why Donald Trump kept talking about America being made great again, he wanted America to be more like it was, in terms of economic progress, when he was a younger mover & shaker, back then, when the Saturn V's F1 engines & upper stage F2 engines first put real human people on the surface of Earth's Moon.
One silver lining of higher fuel prices, it makes the commercialization of hydro-diesel, DME, Bio-gasoline, cellulosic ethanol & other cleaner burning & less polluting drop in replacement fuels, more feasible so that market forces can enable widespread adoption of renewable fuels without government subsidies, like the generous ones given to oil and gas developments by the American government for decades. Oil refining in the United States one of the leading consumers of electricity. People blame bitcoin mining, but its oil refining's electric boilers that consumer the gigawatts of electricity inconspicuously. Refining aluminum metal from bauxite also a major consumer of electrical power. Biogas, waste gas, natural gas, hydrogen, ammonia, methanol & others can be used in the FT or Fischer-Tropsch reaction to make renewable drop-in replacement fuels like synthetic gasoline & synthetic diesel via the Shell GTL or Gas to Liquids process technology, using natural gas & methanol primarily as input feedstocks. Synthetic & renewable drop-in fuels are cleaner burning, less pollution, make engine oil last longer, contain more chemical energy, improve fuel economy, reduce pollution emissions & lower acid rain levels & slow down climate change when used, when compared with traditional finite crude oil-based fossil fuels, common around the world today, like regular unleaded gasoline & low sulfur on-road diesel fuel.
We need more energy to make the world a better place for everyone! More fission, commercial fusion, wind, solar, energy storage, all the carbon energy sources, we need a mix of thermal & electrical energy technologies to do all the amazing things that people do to make human civilization happen in 2022, especially in the face of COVID19 & Russia invading the Ukraine and other debacles. If you are reading this, like me, you're probably a blessed and lucky person living in a miracle life, compared to the average wild animal or so many other less fortunate people on Earth! That's why I hate the CCP in China, they do not, in any demonstrable way, value human life or the health of ecosystems in nature; its all-greedy fueled economic progress fueled by coal energy no matter who it harms or hurts or kills or what kind of damage it does to Earth's biosphere. The people in the CCP are ignorant foolish haters as deranged as Vladimir Putin. Ask people in Taiwan or Hong Kong what they think of the CCP in the PRC // they will tell you it's an ideological virus as a government, evil to the very core! I know this because I am united with my brothers & sisters in the End the CCP movement; inspired largely by the June 4th, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Speaking of Massacres, there are so many public shootings and mass killing events happening all the time that global media cannot even keep up with publishing news about all of it! Thats right, it's not because of access to guns either. That sicko that killed Shinzo Abe used a homemade improvised shotgun that no gun control regulations could stop from being made or used. Gun violence because of mental illness, plain & simple. Gun crimes are because of sick people who choose to use the guns to harm & hurt other people, especially in war, when all the problems continue. Look at the Vietnam war & how many people killed & it ended up communist country anyway, a major loss. America lost the Vietnam conflict & tens of thousands of American GI's died fighting in Vietnam.
We cannot hurt & kill other people & animals in nature & ecosystems, to make the world a better place to live for our grandchildren & their children & future generations of people who will look back at what we were doing right now. What kind of legacy are you leaving behind? What kind of false beliefs do you hold? Who are you? Think about it! Who are you becoming? How can you make life better than when you entered it? How can you shove more life into your finite time alive without being foolish or wasteful? Can you be cheap or frugal & still enjoy a dynamic & interesting life, well I do, thats parts of why I publish this blog!
Special thanks to the API or American Petroleum Industry: I have a keen interest in inspiring the oil & gas industry into converting most of the remaining crude oil in Earth crust into products and services vastly more valuable than dead end transportation fuels like conventional finite overpriced gasoline & diesel; that you are likely overpaying for at common refueling station pumps today.
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