Peak Oil

When the oil runs out, what will we run on? Ethanol has been dead in the water since Bush left town, but just to put in perspective what are needs are, here are some important numbers to crunch:

86,000,000 acres of corn in US by 2008 numbers

1 sq mi = 640 acres

86,000,000 / 640 = 134,375 sq miles of corn in US

US = 3.79 million sq miles, 3.5% used to grow corn

1 acre of corn = 328 gallons of ethanol

1 gallon of ethanol requires approx .003 acres

137,800,000,000 gallons of gasoline burned in 2008

137,800,000,000 gallons x .003 acres = 413,400,000 acres needed to supply enough ethanol to meet the demand for gasoline by 2008 standards.

that's 4.8 times more land needed to grow corn (but not for food)

16.8% of US land would be needed to grow enough corn to meet US gasoline demands by 2008 standards

2007 total acres of farmland approx 2,261,000,000 acres

about 18% of total US farmland used to grow food by 2007 numbers (the numbers have fallen since) would be needed to supply the amount of ethanol to meet the demands of consumption based on what was used in 2008 (that number has increased since).

No oil = fucked, but then again, we do have atomic weapons and other means of coercing the third world to hand over their land. Is there any surprise that the US is sending forces to Costa Rica to practice war games (46 warships, 200 helicopters)? New Axis of Evil. Hey man, we gotta grow corn somewhere...

Ethanol = fairy dust and unicorns, but we always have the tar sands, right?

This, of course is only considering motor fuels. We still haven't talked about plastics (and high fructose corn syrup).

Eat well tonight.