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samboct -> RE: Global Warming- need any more proof? (1/23/2009 6:02:16 AM)
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Sanity
If not growing food is murder, then our government is doing a wonderful job of genocide, since we still pay farmers not to grow food.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
The estimates I've seen are that currently 50% of arable land is used for crop production. However, since biofuels shouldn't use a food crop, it's quite possible that we'll come up with something like ethanol or biogas from switchgrass which can be grown where food crops can't.
AM- you missed my point. My guess, and I'll be the first to admit its nothing more than a rough guess, is that 1 kg of Pentium chips costs about the same as a car. Since we're using dollars as a metric, its not an apples and oranges argument- it's an apples and apples argument. So which takes more energy, making a kg of chips or making a car? I'll give you a hint-if you build a semiconductor plant in your town, you generally don't need more generating capacity. Not true of automotive manufacture. Also- lots of the processes needed to purify Si aren't all that energy intensive- you can do a pretty good job of purification using solution chemistry at close to room temp. But the real reason chip mfg doesn't chew up that much energy globally is that the overall volumes of Si used are probably still only the size of a big indoor hall.
I'm picking Si production because much of our economy is now tied up with the silicon chip, whether its manufacturing the hardware or writing software. It's clearly at least on par with auto manufacture- if not larger. Another industry which is not energy intensive compared to durable goods manufacture is the pharma industry- since again, the damn little pills sell for a fortune.
It does take a bit to wrap your head around the idea that we don't need increasing energy production for manufacture, since for years I was coming from the same place Sanity was- i.e. we need cheap energy and more of it to keep our economy growing. It's not true, but it's a shift that's only occurred relatively recently. Growth in energy demand has come from air conditioning residences and offices for the most part. It's also why the old power generation paradigm of cheap base load power is way off these days. Anybody that thinks that increased nuclear power is a good idea....well, like I said, there's a bridge in Brooklyn that's recently come on the market.....The nuclear industry has cooked the books worse than Madoff.
Sam
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