Should the world start growing high level sugar producing crops in vast quantity to prepare for oil eventually

Question

running out? - that's part of the above question !

Answer 1

Ethanol production from sugar/food crops is a losing proposition. It drives up the price of food and requires almost as much energy to produce as it provides. In the USA ethanol production is basically a political gift to farmers in the red states that provides them huge government subsidies for growing corn.

When ethanol can be produced in mass quantities from other non-food plant materials, then it will make sense. We are some years away from having that happen.. anyway, who is going to do the expensive research when growing corn is so profitable!

Oil is definitely running out. To imagine otherwise is merely a fantasy. Anyone who knows anything about oil shale is aware of the numerous problems involved in that technology, and there is no hope whatsoever that any offshore oil or national park oil can do more than provide a short term bandaid to our national gluttony for oil. In Mexico the oil depletion is becoming a national scandal, and there are many other countries which are now past their peak productions and rapidly declining. The USA has done the least to prepare for this approaching problem, so we will suffer the most. Too bad, we used to be a pretty good country.

Answer 2

This may be a temporary solution, but fundamentally society can do without motor vehicles. They have only been in widespread use since the mid 20th century and there are millons of families that did not own a car until about 1950 or so, later in some countries.

Oil will not entirely run out by the way. It will just become more and more expensive until only the wealthy will be able to afford to use cars regularly. Some private vehicles burning ethanol or biodiesels will remain in use. However the USA cannot grow enough corn to feed it's people and it's vehicle fleet as well. Eventually most of the vehicles on the roads will be public transport and emergency vehicles like police, ambulance and fire brigade.

People will find it is better to live reasonably close to their work, if they are not working from home, and will walk, take the bus or bicycle to work as their ancestors did in the early 20th century.

This also means the end of the shopping mall and other large centralised retail and entertainment venues. It will also mean the end of the long distance trucking industry and a probable return to rail, as it is far more energy efficient at moving freight around.

Mass transport by airline will also fade away as fuel prices make flying more and more expensive. This will be moderated for a while by larger and larger jetliners, the A380 is a sign of the times. Within many countries there will also be a return to passenger rail.

Overall energy costs are likely to reduce the application of air conditioning to private homes and later other buildings, so there is a great field there for good design by architects. However architects seem to have had their heads so far up their a**ses over the past few decades that I doubt they will see it. (Sorry, could not resist that)

Answer 3

You need to look at the reasons why you would do it and what are the implications.

Currently most of the world’s agricultural production goes into producing food for people to eat. With the increasing population of the world the requirements of this are only going to increase. So it is unlikely that there will be any large scale change in the purpose this land is used for.

As we use vast quantities of oil we will need a hell of a lot of ethanol (the most common fuel from sugar) to replace it. To do this we have to take land from agricultural crops (unlikely) or find other land in which to plant the high sugar producing crops. Unfortunately, due to the large quantities of new land required this will mean cutting down vast area of forest. This will lead to problems caused by deforestation.

For this and other reasons, some of which are explained above, the production of Ethanol on a large scale is unlikely to be a solution to the energy currently supplied by oil. It can play a role in the solution (I suspect small) but it is not THE solution.

Actually, I don't see A solution, but a lot of different technologies all contributing to the solution of meeting our energy needs.

As regards to oil running out. It has supposedly been running out for decades (I am talking back to the 1920's here). But as the price increases, this means that it becomes more economically viable to extract oil from wells and other areas that are not currently viable. This will extend a lot of the predictions of when oil supplies will run out.

This does not mean that we should become complacent. Using oil is bad for the environment. I my view we should look at the current oil reserves as a buffer, to enable us to move to other less environment damaging technologies to power our homes cars and industries while we still have time. The transition will take decades; but we need to start today.

There is a lot of information out there on how we can start to do this on an individual level.

Answer 4

Matt is right, there are better crops than sugar cane or corn to produce ethanol from.America is already growing lots of corn for ethanol production much to the annoyance of Mexico.World Maize prises are rising because of this and in Mexico there have been demonstrations about this rise in price of a food for oil commodity.A recent programme on radio 4 highlighted this and explained the inefficiency of crops such as corn.We need crops where the nearly the whole plant can be used leaving the remainder to regrow.There are some grasses that have been suggested as good candidates.

Answer 5

It would be better to work out methods to produce ethanol from a wide variety of trash biomass, with no need to grow any special crops for the purpose. There is work being done in this direction.

Most of the gas consumed for private owned vehicles is for "luxury travel," ie unnecessary travel. It's bad enough the price of gas is driven up by this excess, it will be worse if agricultural resources are swallowed up in the name of supporting it. Demand for gas will simply increase to take up the available supply, and you will be paying more for food as well.

Answer 6

Thirty years ago, the party line was that all the oil would be gone by 2000. I think we have a way to go with the supply and you may not know this but a gallon of ethanol yields 80,000 BTU and takes 70,000 BTU to be produced. It's clean but I still think we need something better.

Answer 7

How far in the future are you planing for? Between all the new oil they are finding ( off the coast of Cuba ) oil shale and coal throw in nuclear power for electricity. You and your children will not run out. Should we keep conserving oil YES should we keep looking for other sources of power YES should we panic NO
Should we drill for oil off our own coast and in Alaska for oil YES

Answer 8

i think we should be more prepared on America attack everyother country for their oil

Answer 9

They will when it brings in the revenue.