• Ferroto@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Burn oil to pump oil

    Burn oil to refine oil

    Burn oil to ship oil

    So we can burn oil at home.

  • SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Not to mention that would drastically reduce dirty ocean water and countries can begin to clean up their coastlines.

  • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Not to mention all the fossil fuel used to build the ships in the first place.

    There’s a lot of fossil fuel burned before that steel arrives at the shipyard.

  • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    19 hours ago

    “We need the fossil fuels to get more fossil fuels to move the fossil fuels just to take the fossil-fuel thing to the fossil fuel store to get more fossil fuels!” -people that sell fossil fuels

  • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    20 hours ago

    Look, you’re not thinking about the shareholders. I NEED YOU to think about the shareholders! How will they ever make their billions? You selfish bastard!

    /s just in case.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    18 hours ago

    At this point I’m starting to believe that we could replace all engines with hamster wheels with actual hamsters and it would be more efficient.

    • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      20 hours ago

      Yes, but you can’t resell it for a profit elsewhere easily. You want us to switch to sky energy, we need a way to make the output portable so someone can make money on it. I really hate capitalism and hope this is the fall at a global level. Though if anyone was watching, China has been making the right moves towards solar and transport. If they stop oppressing their people i’ll move all my soon to be worthless USD to YUAN.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      But if you want to do anything with it other than heat something up, you need to build a contraption. And, we’ve only recently become good at building those contraptions.

  • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    69
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    In the US, we use a lot of prime farmland to grow corn that we turn into ethanol - 30,000,000 acres. Thirty million acres!

    That ethanol is combined with gas (making the gas less efficient, by the way) and powers our cars in the US.

    If you look at the number of miles the ethanol powers in the US, and calculate how many acres of solar we’d need to power electric cars to go that number of miles, we’d need to convert less than a quarter of a million of those acres to solar. So let’s round up from 214,000 acres to the 250,000 because… inefficiencies, or whatever.

    So we could gain 29,750,000 acres of land to grow more food or whatever and stop growing corn to turn into ethanol just to burn it in our cars.

    For that matter, if we wanted to use that ethanol land (JUST the land we’re using for ethanol) to power ALL cars in the US, switching everyone over to electric, it would only take about two million acres. Sure, 2,000,000 acres is a lot, but that would still be freeing up TWENTY EIGHT MILLION ACRES of land we’re using JUST to grow corn we turn into ethanol.

    It does ignore anything like the chaos of forcing everyone to buy a new electric car, setting that infrastructure up - I’m not saying this would be easy, but it is stunning how much land we could stop abusing to grow corn to burn in our cars.

    • plyth@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 hours ago

      So we could gain 29,750,000 acres of land to grow more food or whatever and stop growing corn to turn into ethanol just to burn it in our cars.

      What if there is another potatoe famine? That corn creates food security because it can always be used as food while the ethanol is replaced with petrol.

      • zbyte64@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        You know the Irish wouldn’t have starved so bad if the Brits didn’t insist they export all food that wasn’t potatoes. Let’s not use bad policies as an example for why we can’t have good policies.

      • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 hours ago

        Corn grown for ethanol is not edible by humans. Also, do you really think growing only 29,750,000 acres of corn instead of 30,000,000 acres is a meaningful difference? Because it’s not.

        • plyth@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 hours ago

          You suggest to grown none of those 30 million that are used for ethanol. That would be 30 million acres less out of 90 million that are used for corn. That’s a major chamge.

          • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 hours ago

            Corn grown for ethanol would not help in a food shortage, so for the idea of a food shortage, it is… not helpful.

            We have plenty of land not being used right now that could be used to grow food.

            But we don’t have a shortage of food. We have food being wasted and thrown away. We have plenty of excess food. This is like being worried about your driveway taking up valuable lawn space. It’s… not.

    • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 day ago

      Mandating solar PV in all building codes nationwide, and incentivizing onshoring of all of the processes that go into manufacturing solar PV panels (including using trade protectionism practices such as tariffs AFTER WE ALREADY HAVE PROCESSING AND MANUFACTURING CAPABILITIES IN THE USA) will do wonders for helping average people transition away from fossil fuel Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars to EVs.

      Many people who cry foul about EVs and renewables adding too much load to a grid that is too old and just can’t handle it forget the main counter to disarm their arguments: colocating generation with utilization.

      Having solar PV (and other renewable) generation closest to where that power wants to be used is the best for the grid infrastructure (maybe not the grid investors) because it reduces residential/commercial load while maintaining the needs of the original giga users of the grid: Industry.

      There are solutions to SO many of today’s problems. We just have politicians that are bought and sold by billionaires and their corporations who won’t do the public’s bidding. Voting progressive politicians in, and preferably ones who vocally claim they’re Democratic Socialist or similar, is the strongest way we push back against Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Tech, and all the other mega industries.

    • PokerChips@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      24 hours ago

      If what you say is accurate, the other benefit would be that they wouldn’t even need prime, fertile real estate.

      They’d just need any space with good sun capture.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      Are you just restating the numbers from the Technology Connections video? Or have you verified any of this research yourself?

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      1 day ago

      In the US, we use a lot of prime farmland to grow corn that we turn into ethanol - 30,000,000 acres. Thirty million acres!

      not actually true. This is oil and gas propaganda.

      Most of the corn grown in the US is not edible. Barely 1.5%. Most of it is grown for sugars, oils and other industrial processes.

      • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        12 hours ago

        Bypassing the question of whether sugars and oils are edible (?), field corn is perfectly edible for humans. Field corn isn’t sweet corn, and doesn’t taste good as a vegetable. But we can eat it the same way most people throughout history have eaten corn - as a staple crop, as a grain like wheat, as corn flour, cornmeal, grits, parched corn, hominy, maza, etc, etc. We just choose not to.

        And calling opposition to ethanol “oil and gas propaganda” is ridiculous. Like the comment you responded to point it out, ethanol is sold mixed with gasoline. The industries are synergistic, not competitive. They have a common interest in promoting internal combustion engine vehicles and opposing EVs.

      • Homosexual sapiens@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        Most of the corn grown in the US is not edible. Barely 1.5%. Most of it is grown for sugars, oils and other industrial processes.

        not actually true. This is oil and sugar propaganda.

        Most of the corn grown in the US is grass. 100% of it, in fact. Soybeans make up a large percentage of animal feed.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 day ago

          Most of the corn grown in the US is grass.

          …grass? you mean feed?

          or do you mean maise technically being a grass, but having diverged greatly from it’s original form via agricultural selection?

          if that’s the case, when you say most, what’s the remainder then?

  • wewbull@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    154
    ·
    2 days ago

    …and that would drop the amount of marine fuel needed. Compound interest.