Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air
Lizzie asks…
Will peak oil occur or run out in my lifetime (17 years old) and is it true alternatives are made from oil?
My teacher told me that alternative energy sources won’t happen nor help us once the oil peak occurs because all things like solar panels, plastics, rubber, tires, containers, cars, windmills, coal, gold silver all have to do with oil either producing it, or finding it.
I’m scared cause I have a bunch of little cousins who I think won’t get to live to be my age, and are more depressed that I won’t get to grow up like I thought I would go to college , get married, have fun, grow old…NOW I FEEL DOOMED.
Are we all doomed, is it close to the end. Oil helps keep food good, water supplies, HELP I NEED FACTS AND SOURCES!!!!!!
I also saw a show a world without oil which scared me…riots, massacres, wars, nukes. :((((
admin answers:
Peak oil is real, and so is global warming, but your teacher is a fool or you have misunderstood
It is already possible to convert coal to oil, at a price not much greater than the current market price of oil. The main problem, however, apart from cost, is that this means roughly twice as much CO2 per barrel of oil.
Your teacher seems completely unaware of what is being done to find alternative sources of energy, from nuclear to solar to wind to the best alternative altogether, conservation.
See “sustainable energy – without the hot air” Dvd C Mackay, physics professor, Cambridge. Google the title for a free download.
Sandy asks…
making ‘fridge more efficient?
I have a 3 year old fridge in my basement, I dispense a 1/5barrel beer keg from it. I use it for nothing else. I’m wondering if I can displace the voids around the keg, and the empty freezer, with something like styrofoam, or bags of packing peanuts, to save energy. I did this sort of thing anytime I stored dry ice, supposedly it lessened the sublimation of the ice. Will it help with a fridge? Anyone have EXPERIENCE not just an answer they made up?
admin answers:
Every time you open a refrigerator door, the cold air inside it falls out and is replaced by warm air. This is because hot air rises and cold air falls. So anything you can do to reduce the amount of free-flowing air inside your refrigerator will save you energy.
Also the air that comes in carries humidity, which the refrigerator has to expend energy to extract from the air. (That’s why you should never leave uncovered foods or liquids in the fridge. Not only will you ruin their taste but you add to the refrigerator’s workload.) So again, reducing the open airspace will help.
You can use empty upright milk jugs or pop bottles to take up the space. You could use styrofoam or packing peanuts too but you do want to maintain good airflow within the refrigerator, otherwise it won’t cool properly and some areas will get close to freezing while others stay warm. Since bottles have air spaces between them even in a fully packed fridge, this provides a good level of space-filling without impeding air flow.
Of course, you might want to think about how environmentally sustainable it is to keep a fridge for nothing but a keg of beer. Given the current concern over climate change and the fact that much of our electricity is generated from coal, anything we can do to cut our energy use is going to help. But I do congratulate you for using a relatively new fridge – they are much more efficient than even ten-year-old fridges, and there’s not much that is more wasteful than a 20+ year old fridge kept in the basement just to store beer. With your newer fridge and your attempts to restrict air escape, you really won’t be using that much power to keep your beer cool.
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