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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

      • cron@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.

        • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          If you’re making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don’t really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don’t, there’s still NOx, but that’s what cat piss is for).

          Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn’t consuming.

          Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you’d want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.

          • cron@feddit.de
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            5 months ago

            I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.

            • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              Ah. I’m generally skeptical of any plant-based ‘green fuel’ because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food

      • rmuk@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        No, it’s renewable. But… not in any practical timeframe.

        • Delta_V@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Not really. Its trees from a time before micro organisms evolved the ability to eat dead trees. These days, the solar energy collected by trees will get used to power the metabolisms of fungi before those trees can get buried and eventually become new coal & petroleum.

          I suppose an impact from a sufficiently large asteroid could turn the entire crust of the planet into magma, sterilizing it and therefore opening the possibility that new oil might be created some day.

          • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            IIRC it is actually mostly from algea. A small amount from some fern-like plants. By the time trees existed, they were being broken down by bacteria.

        • aname@lemmy.one
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          5 months ago

          I think I read somewhere that oil will not be produced anymore because now bacteria can break down that biomass that it previously didn’t. Hence, non-renewable even on long timescales.

        • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Only if we bring back the dinosaurs. There are six movies (and counting!) explaining why this is not a good idea.

      • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Energy density is a huge advantage which most people find hard to give up especially when the biggest problem that we face is invisible to most people. We can’t fix a problem if we ignore the cause.

        • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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          5 months ago

          A lot of people have been having their cake days recently. Guess it’s the first anniversary of the Reddit exodus.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      5 months ago

      oops you posted irrelevant pedantics that verge on misinformation 😧

      sure it’s distilled solar energy that cannot be renewed. relevant language highligted. no one “forgets,” this. literally no one. it’s just not relevant to a timespan less than millions of years. cheers! ☀️

        • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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          5 months ago

          v true but i also dislike how biofuels get smorked into yet more CO2 which is kind of a problem rn

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO2 when burned, but it doesn’t matter because that same CO2 had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.

            • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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              5 months ago

              In theory true. In reality not true.

              While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study

              Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.

              • grue@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

                The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that’s left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.