Re-imagine (World Without Oil)

 "Re-imagine" is the latest addition to the burgeoning new words generated almost daily.  The social world can't seem to function without adding new words; politics is no exception. So, we are supposed to re-imagine everything. Politicians and shapers of the new social order has added it to drive home a point, which does not necessarily have to be new.  We just have to preface it differently. The latest in the lexicon - "re-imagine" - is used for everything.  Let's re-imagine the police department, health care, immigration, the courts, the Supreme Court, the congress, the electoral college, etc.

Why stop there? Let's re-imagine the world without oil, after "transitioning" from fossil fuel because it "pollutes", according to the leading presidential candidate in the upcoming U.S. election. Continuing, let's re-imagine - wishfully or legislatively - that we had gotten rid of oil.  Let us do that!

Let's first re-imagine an old funny story and update it to the conditions of today. 

The chief of staff of the esteemed senator from Hawaii was walking down the beach in Oahu one day and behold he found a bottle washed ashore. He picked it up and instinctively opened it. Out came a genie from the cloud of smoke that preceded it. "You have one wish", without any introduction, the Genie said. 

"What happened to three wishes?", the staffer asked.  

"Well, after centuries of doing this - out of the bottle, back into the bottle, out of the bottle - I  re-imagine only one wish this time.  So, choose wisely".

"My senator is an avid environmentalist and proponent of transitioning from oil to renewable energy. We'll be rid finally of the carbon emitting jet planes, ocean liners for a cleaner atmosphere and pristine oceans. I wish therefore for one continues bridge from here to Washington.  The senator will be riding an electric limousine to travel back and forth".

"Whoa, whoa! Impossible! You know the engineering challenges and material and construction equipment it would take to do such an epic undertaking?  A bridge connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic and the depths and weather and all the wave forces the bridge must withstand. No, no, ask me another I can grant".

"OK. I will ask another and promise me that if you cannot do it you will have to grant the first one".

"OK. Go".

"I understand your concern. So, do this for me then.  It will help me greatly in dealing with the senator.  Give me the power to understand her, how she thinks, so I can anticipate her next moves so I can keep her from blundering into all kinds of intellectual challenges and pitfalls of stupid ideas.  Help me to look into what she is thinking so I can really understand her". 

The Genie, with stooped shoulders and helpless resignation said, "Do you want the bridge to have two lanes or four?"

So let's re-imagine a world without petroleum, fossil fuel, oil, whatever you want to call any hydrocarbon product. Impossible. Even the Genie will tell you that. But, it has to be explained.

Let's grant that we made it to having nothing on the road but all electric vehicles. Unless these vehicles can simply hover and float over solid ground, they will need tires. But rubber tires require carbon black. Pure rubber is totally useless as a tire.  Carbon black, a by product of petroleum refining is what strengthens rubber.  That is why 99.99 per cent of all tires are black.  Carbon, as a hardener that turns iron into steel, does the same thing with rubber. Let's take to the roads over which these electric vehicle will have to travel.  In the U.S. alone, roads are paved with asphalt 93 to 94 per cent of the time. For the rest of the world, it is a much higher percentage but that the next material is not cement. Next to asphalt, the world's roads are plain gravel or dirt roads. Asphalt is the only material that can and will pave the world economically and efficiently. 

Petroleum refining is one process that practically uses every component, every molecule in a barrel that goes through it.  From the moment crude leaves the storage tanks through to the distilling columns, they are further "cracked" into its various product streams. 

As you can see, a barrel of crude oil does not only give us gasoline, fuel to heat our homes and cook our food but are also turned into other components into everyday material, including petrochemical feedstocks from which all plastic containers are made, including the plastic bags that contain blood, plasma, medicine, your Tupperware and other containers for safe handling and storage of our food, and don't forget that electric vehicles use plastic, including body panels, to keep their weight down. Speaking of lighter but stiffer, yet a material that will be pliable and shock-absorbent, how about kids' safety helmets for biking, skate boarding, or for that matter adults' helmets for football and baseball, little league, etc. And asphalt, tires, hoses, electrical insulators and every conceivable lubricating material that make machines and tools work, and yes, including why your Tesla will keep on running smoothly.  

We cannot go back to whale blubber for lubrication, candle making and waxes.

But oil pollutes! Oil spills! Oil darkened our skies! London smog during the early stages of the industrial revolution exemplified that.  Is London still that way today?  1989 (Exxon Valdez) was not that long ago but did you check lately what Prince William Sound, Alaska, looks like? The industry had given in to and accommodated regulations and safety standards for safe handling and protection of the environment.  If oil was such a threat to our existence why is it that our population had almost quadrupled from the days of the industrial revolution to the present day.  

We will transition from petroleum to renewable energy, continuing with our re-imagination.  Energy is the key word. But solar, wind and hydroelectric, geothermal sources will not be able to do it all.  Clearly these sources will not provide everything that comes along with a barrel of oil cited three paragraphs ago.

Meanwhile, we cleared acres and acres of land for solar panels and wind turbines and relocated the "endangered" species from those areas.  A huge percentage of those animals, from turtles to rodents died at the relocated areas that were not their natural habitats. More birds and bats, including endangered species of raptors and migratory birds, die from wind turbines than from any other causes.  Acres and acres of solar panels in a couple of decades will become waste products after their serviceable lives and do we know what to do with them?

Read the quote below from an article in Forbes magazine.

• The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”
• “The reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago.”
• “Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”

Don't forget the batteries needed to store the electricity.

The wind turbines don't look that fast.  Why do they kill birds and bats? It is an optical illusion that they don't spin that fast in the same way how seemingly slow airliners look from a distance, even when they are cruising at 400 miles per hour, even landing at 200 mph.  The moon looks still and motionless above but it is hurtling at 2286 miles per hour. On an average wind speed of only 13 to 15 mph, the tip of the wind turbine slices through the air at 120 miles per hour! Birds could only be flying at 20-30 mph. 

Since we are re-imagining, we need to do this.  Re-imagine a world to be sunny everyday 365 days a year and always windy at between 10 and 25 mph. At gale forces, wind turbines stop operating. Also re-imagine a world blanketed by solar panels and spiked with wind turbines at a fourth of its total land surface area, since the oceans can't have solar panels floating over them  or wind turbines sticking out from the depths.  Speaking of oceans we will have bridges to connect the continents, archipelagos and islands.  Of course, we will need for the genie to provide all the cement quarries and mines from which iron can be dug and giant smelters to process them into steel. Giant electric bulldozers, excavators, trains to transport them all.  Meanwhile, to feed the world we also need to wish for electric agricultural machines, combines and harvesters, tillers, etc.  Wait, how did we turn iron into steel again? Yes, carbon.

That is re-imagining a world without oil. Re-immagine along with it millions of jobs lost. Forever. Is it not easier to re-imagine a world without politicians, radical thinking dreamers with very little familiarity, if at all, with basic science and without a working knowledge of energy production, distribution and efficiency?

Is it not easier to re-imagine a much cleaner, safer nuclear energy source?  Keep in mind that in the U.S. with 98 nuclear plants and Europe with a lot more, India and China as well, fatalities from accidents are nil.  Chernobyl was an exception and contrary to the movie - "China Syndrome" - danger from nuclear plant accidents is highly exaggerated or imagined. 

Nuclear fusion - how the sun and all the stars do it - needs to be re-imagined instead.