Most of us drive at least one car. Some families have one for each member.
What do they run on? "Gasoline", "Petrol", "Diesel"?
Well, crudely put, they run on hydrocarbons. That's an organic molelcule. Organic here does not mean it is good to eat, but comes from the fact that the fuel is built up from some of the same atoms that make all life: Hydrogen and Carbon, hence the name.
Organic chemistry is varied and very complicated. I loved it! Examples include alcohol (a perennial favorite), pyridine (the smelliest substance on the planet), formaldehyde (to preserve interest), vinegar( for a neat flavor), bleach (a cleaning agent, rather like 007 but with rather less philandering), butter (something spreadable, rather like Annabel Chong's legs), and the most fascinating of all, benzene.
However, these compounds use hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen as well as others, but the car fuel uses only hydrogen and carbon.
Going into the chemistry is not necessary here, suffice it to say that the hydrocarbons are only from chains of carbon with links to up to four hydrogen atoms.
There is hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, and decane which have 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 carbon atoms each. Most vehicles use a combination of octane and heptane. The more octane the higher the "octane". A noun to an adjective. How quaint.
But where does it all come from?
The story is long and dark. Basically it all comes from the black sticky stuff called crude oil.
In a process called "fractional distillation" the 'tanes are sucked off into separate jars. A bit like boiling water to leave all the impurities in the container. How coincidental is this to brewery distaillaries? None. Same process, just different method to distill organic molecules.
So we get the fuel from crude oil via vast Empires called "refineries".
BUT where does the crude oil come from first?
This is where the long, dark story comes in. Crude oil is just the remains of dead sea creatures that have been pressure cooked. It happens in the rocks but only after millions of years. Their dead bodies get squashed with rock above them, and cooked owing to rock temperature millions of years ago. And then there is the pressure. All three combine and the end result is the oil that we love to pollute our beaches with.
The mere fact that these creatures have been extinct for millions of years is a sure pointer to the fact that at some point, their dead remains will also be gone.
All that will be left will be the black puffs of smoke (pure atomised carbon) from the big lorries.
THEN will be the time to worry.
This has been approached here from a pure logical viewpoint. The goverments have waited until they see the physical effects. Where were Greenpeace when the motor car was invented?
The residue of those creatures now pollute the atmosphere (ever seen EDSA in Manila on a calm day?) so maybe this is going full circle and the creatures once extinguished naturally are extinguishing mankind "naturally" . In this sense we are doomed, as nature cannot be stopped.
Maybe whatever efforts mankind are to do, it is too late because someone never even foresaw the fact hydrocarbons are a limited resource.
I am willing to bet that not even any interpretation of Nostradamus' prophecies even remotely predict this potential catastrophe.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Self Destruction?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Please, with Nostradamus, there is a quatraine for every occasion, usually after the fact/event. If you research the early history of the automobile, then you will find the gas guzzler/hydrocarbon monster we drive today was not the only automobile vying for dominance. Just as with dinosaurs, in the beginning, there was variety.
No doubt you have heard of steam engine trains, ships, and yes, there were steam engine cars too. Given the success of the steam engine, one might have expected a steam engine car to have been as successful as other steam engine forms of transportation. Just as today automakers around the world are trying to come up with an electric car, there were electric cars in the early days of the automobile. If you dig deep enough into the history of the automobile, you might even find early auto races included this wide variety of engine types taking part in these races.
I have never studied the history deep enough to know the exact truth of the matter, but since I believe a Frenchman is credited with having invented the first auto, one possible reason we have gas guzzlers today is Henry Ford came up with the first truly reliable automobile, which happened to use a gas fueled engine.
Whatever the merits of a gas engine in the beginning, the one mistake all countries, especially America, seems to have made, was not to continue investment and research into alternative engines for the automobile. My guess is that human ingenuity would have come up with many improvements on steam cars and electric cars, which might have led to a larger percentage of the autos on the world's roads today being powered by something other than the gas engine. No doubt we would have seen hybrid cars much sooner.
In mentioning dinosaurs and the inevitable disappearance of oil, might I point out that Germany during World War 2 had a synthetic oil industry for a time, as did the USA, I think. Surely, this industry could be revived, if needed, once dinosaur oil is gone. Although I think it has finally been rejected, nuclear powered cars--we have nuclear powered ships and submarines--was once seen as a realistic idea on the auto drawing board.
I concede I too think auto, and other forms of hydrocarbon pollution, are a very real threat to life on this planet in any number of ways. We have not made a serious enough attempt to deal with this problem from a scientific, political, and business point of view. Too many ostriches with their heads in the sand say, "Let's get our profits now and we will solve this when we finally have to." This is how we will eventually end up with a World Government. In the meantime, we will see many wars, large and small, and killer events caused directly or indirectly by how we have polluted our own world over the years. However, I do not see it making mankind extinct. Mankind, like the roach, will persist. We may be polluting other worlds, already.
Greenpeace? Are they the group that use gas fueled boats to try to stop ships from whaling? None of us are without sin, but where do we go to repent and how do we repent? How do we save our world from ourselves?
Being unable to sleep and having both the subjects of transportation and energy floating around in my brain, allow me to offer some alternatives, which may or may not have merit in our modern age.
It seems to me that most cities of reasonable size and population should have an electric trolley system of transportation. Many cities once had this form of transportation. Surely it could be made safer than it once was, more efficient, and timely. Closed trolley cars would mean dealing less with inclement weather as well.
The bicycle is still a notable form of transportation in many cultures, so why shouldn't this be true in all lands and cultures? It even makes for good, healthy exercise. I will add the adult tricycle too. Rollerblades and rollerskates have merit in this group as well.
For longer transport that has no immediate deadline, I suggest the return of the dirigible/blimp. The blimp would have weather and wind limitations, no doubt, but has merit when it comes to reducing the need to burn fossil fuels all the time. Might there be efficient and useful services hot-air balloons could fulfill? How about applying the technology that makes the Predator aircraft possible to the need to transport things? We have long heard of the space elevator potentially launching spacecraft into space or transporting supplies into space, etc. Could it be we are not investing enough in this technology to speed it into existance?
Nikola Tesla, famous for the Tesla Coil, among many other inventions, including America's well established AC current, had an idea for transporting electricity through the atmosphere to whatever location desired. I recently heard someone plans to give this idea a test, though on a smaller scale than Tesla, because they too think this can work. Solar power and windpower have the potential to work both on a large scale and an individual scale. Not sure of its potential, but have heard a few things about gasification of coal. :-) I even read in England they plan to use the heat from chilling the milk of cows to warm a castle on a royal dairy farm. Might this royal idea be applicable in other areas; factories that generate a lot of waste heat, for example.
These have been just a few thoughts on how we might lower the levels of hydrocarbons burned and in our atmosphere. There is a great need for out-of-the-box thinking, as well as more conventional thinking. I am even reminded of how many greenhouses there are. Might their heat be used for other purposes? I would like to see every house and appartment generate at least half, if not all, of the electricity needed to dwell there. I also think magnetism/electromagnetism has a larger role to play in generating electricity on the local and personal level. However, let me end here. Surely, I am not the only one giving thought to this subject.
Dave, I am in my field doing research into what COULD be of influence in 20-30 years' time. Many people have offered solutions to the problem presented here. My dad has actually placed a bet (from my advice) that F1 racing would be banned by 2020. He got 500-1 .
As a scientist, I have been metaphorically screaming my lungs out since just after I was born about just this issue. WE saw the hole in the ozone layer in 1985.
No-one listened.
Why do you think I put the title photo up? It is an illustration of how we (scientists) find ourselves "outside the box" shouting at everyone else to see what we can see. When I first saw Sarah Connor doing it in her dream in Terminator 2, my eyes were filled with tears of sympathy.
This is the primary reason for the blog. To Let People Know.
If I may add something here: I recently read there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is USA territory. Nitrogen, from fertilizer, flowing into the Gulf from the Mississippi River is one major suspect. This deadzone is growing, not shrinking, despite its discovery several years ago. I think they also mention phosphates being involved as well. My point is not to give the details of this event, though.
My point is the Aki point. From Ozone holes; Deadzones in the ocean; industrial clouds over a large segment of Asia, from air pollution in India, science is showing us we have not been good stewards of the Earth. Our reaction has been so slow and so feeble to these serious alterations of our planet by mankind, that one feels compelled to conclude, catastrophic events are inevitable. The kind that may literally take millions of lives.
As she mentions, time may have already run out on us to act before disaster strikes. We have tried to act in the case of the Ozone hole, yet that is far from resolved after many years.
There can be honest disagreement, and I do disagree with science sometimes; but even a fool surely would not see an Ozone hole, a Gulf of Mexico Deadzone, and a poison cloud over a vast stretch of Asia, as a good thing to be ignored. It is cancer in a variety of forms, which desperately needs curing, before the planet begins to die as we know it. We MUST become better stewards of planet Earth. Our lives depend on it.
Post a Comment