isle of wight is only 380 sqaure kilometers,  isle of man 572 square kilometers and the total surface area of the earth is 510065600 square kilometers. we are relatively insignificant.

Bit ridiculous all this.

You have some interesting views aveli666 but the starter was about bio-fuel in F1. My guess at an answer is that the FIA adopted the 5% thing as it reflects the EU legislation, which you can read about here:

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/5

Like you, I may or may not have issues about the validity of using biofuel but the fact is that our current political generation seem mostly to agree that it is good idea.

As far as the oil supply question is concerned, I believe there will be problems in future if we continue to rely on imported petrol and diesel for 99% of our road transport. Actually, I think we already have problems with rising prices...not to mention the complex moral and political trade-offs we have to make to ensure the oil keeps flowing!

ZakspeedF1:

Bit ridiculous all this.

You have some interesting views aveli666 but the starter was about bio-fuel in F1. My guess at an answer is that the FIA adopted the 5% thing as it reflects the EU legislation, which you can read about here:

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/5

Like you, I may or may not have issues about the validity of using biofuel but the fact is that our current political generation seem mostly to agree that it is good idea.

As far as the oil supply question is concerned, I believe there will be problems in future if we continue to rely on imported petrol and diesel for 99% of our road transport. Actually, I think we already have problems with rising prices...not to mention the complex moral and political trade-offs we have to make to ensure the oil keeps flowing!

very informative link there zakespeed, but i do not think biofuel is a good idea. so much money has been wasted on biofuel development which could have gone into building a global solar power station. energy from the sun is used by plants to make oil which is converted into biofuel and burnt for energy when you can trap the sun's energy directly.

oil prices may have gone up but it is not because it is oil is running out. no one really knows how much oil there is in the ground but there is more than we can possibly consume. geologists who carry out oil explorations don't look for oil or signs of it. they use seismic to study the structures in rock formation and look for dome shaped non porous rock with porous rock formation beneath it. as soon as the find the structures the drill to see if there is any oil trapped under the dome. more often than not they find oil and gas or coal and gas. there isn't an instrument which can measure exactly how much oil there is in any oil field, they estimate the quantities based on the size of the dome but in some places, as the oil is pumped out more seep up the replace what has been pumped out. as i explained above, more countries are becoming oil producing nations but none has stopped being an oil producing nation. so there is no real threat of oil running out.

we have consumed so much oil and there is still more in the ground than we have consumed so far. all insulation on wires is made from crude oil, plastics, flooring, furniture, paint, cosmetics, instrument casing, some building materials, cars, clothing, chemicals, drugs, etc are partly or fully made from oil products so even if we stop using crude oil as fuel, we will need it for the rest of the products made from crude oil.

the world has never run out of any mineral so i don't understand why some people think oil will run out in the near future. the real problem is that the increasing demand for oil is growing faster than the rate of production of oil so we need to develop or improve production techniques to keep up with demand. 

aveli666:

we have consumed so much oil and there is still more in the ground than we have consumed so far. all insulation on wires is made from crude oil, plastics, flooring, furniture, paint, cosmetics, instrument casing, some building materials, cars, clothing, chemicals, drugs, etc are partly or fully made from oil products so even if we stop using crude oil as fuel, we will need it for the rest of the products made from crude oil.

They come from Naphtha which is a minority constituent of crude oil. I think only about 5% goes to the chemical/plastics industry so I agree it wouldn't make sense 

But I still think you are ignoring the political aspects of it. Is it not true to say that the regions from where most easily accessible oil is exported are politically unstable? When you add that to the growing demand/price problem (not to mention climate change which, whether you like it or not, is perceived to be a massive international issue), you can see why there is lots of investment and legislation favouring alternatives...which hopefully answers your original question - without any side tracking - in full !

ZakspeedF1:

aveli666:

we have consumed so much oil and there is still more in the ground than we have consumed so far. all insulation on wires is made from crude oil, plastics, flooring, furniture, paint, cosmetics, instrument casing, some building materials, cars, clothing, chemicals, drugs, etc are partly or fully made from oil products so even if we stop using crude oil as fuel, we will need it for the rest of the products made from crude oil.

They come from Naphtha which is a minority constituent of crude oil. I think only about 5% goes to the chemical/plastics industry so I agree it wouldn't make sense 

But I still think you are ignoring the political aspects of it. Is it not true to say that the regions from where most easily accessible oil is exported are politically unstable? When you add that to the growing demand/price problem (not to mention climate change which, whether you like it or not, is perceived to be a massive international issue), you can see why there is lots of investment and legislation favouring alternatives...which hopefully answers your original question - without any side tracking - in full !

 what comes from naphtha zakespeed?

have you heard of catalytic cracking of long chain hydrocarbons? this results in shorter chain hydrocarbons which are used in making plastics alcohols, esters, carboxylic acids, amines amides, and thousands of other organic chemicals. and yes naphtha is a feedstock for the manufacture of chemicals but a lot more can be got from crude oil than you imagine. even if naphtha is a small component of crude oil, can you imagine life without plastic? what will we use to insulate our wires? look around you, you are surrounded by plastic and paint. 

you know that i don't believe for a moment that climate change is not caused by pollution from burning fossil fuels. green-peace campaigned heavily against pollution until al gore made the film ' the inconvenient truth' and now most people believe it and major governments have jumped on the bang wagon using phrases such as carbon footprint, green credentials and carbon neutral.

all scientific discoveries have been assigned to the scientists who discovered them for example gravity to sir isaac newton, evolution to darwin, relativity to einstein, but no scientist has assigned their name to global warming being caused by carbon dioxide yet the media have blown it out of proportion and sucked most of the world into it. yes governments are also putting their political might into it and taking steps, some of which are the wrong steps, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

you are also right about some parts of the world being politically unstable yet they produce majority of the worlds oil. this is another factor which motivates the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. slowly those unstable parts of the world are becoming more and more stable by the day kick-started by obama's speach in cairo. i think we may not hear of palestinians attacking israelis again. fingers crossed, heavily crossed.

instead of building the international space station, a big enough solar power station could have been built to supply everybody with more than enough electricity. or even the neutron accelerator experiment carried out in geneva. so yes political will is the most powerful driving force behind it all.  it now looks like the sole reason biofuel is being used in f1 and they considering increasing it's content is political pressure.

A typical example of a car designed to run on Biofuel. Extracted from Wikipedia:

Koenigsegg CCXR 

The CCXR is an "environmentally-friendly" version of the CCX, powered by a modified twin-supercharged V8 engine from the CCX, converted to use E85 or E100 ethanol fuel as well as standard 98 octane petrol. When run on regular petrol, the CCXR develops 806 bhp (601 kW), but when the car is run on E85 Biofuel, the CCXR develops 1,018 bhp (759 kW). Weight-to-power ratio is 2.76 lb/hp. Torque is 782 ft·lb (1,060 N·m). The CCXR can achieve 62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.9 seconds. Christian von Koenigsegg is quoted as saying, "Our engineers couldn't quite believe the figures when we tested the car". The increased power is a result of the cooling properties of ethanol in the engine's combustion chambers allowing for a higher pressure in the cylinder and the biofuel having a higher octane rating of 113 RON compared to 95 RON for gasoline in North America and 100 RON for gasoline in Europe, although the CCXR burns slightly more fuel than the CCX with about 15 mpg (17L/100 km). The only changes to the engine are modified fuel injectors, upgraded fuel lines and piston rings and a higher boost setting on the superchargers. They say the top speed will go 250+ mph, hopefully beating the Bugatti Veyron at 253 mph. 

mo1965:

A typical example of a car designed to run on Biofuel. Extracted from Wikipedia:

Koenigsegg CCXR 

The CCXR is an "environmentally-friendly" version of the CCX, powered by a modified twin-supercharged V8 engine from the CCX, converted to use E85 or E100 ethanol fuel as well as standard 98 octane petrol. When run on regular petrol, the CCXR develops 806 bhp (601 kW), but when the car is run on E85 Biofuel, the CCXR develops 1,018 bhp (759 kW). Weight-to-power ratio is 2.76 lb/hp. Torque is 782 ft·lb (1,060 N·m). The CCXR can achieve 62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.9 seconds. Christian von Koenigsegg is quoted as saying, "Our engineers couldn't quite believe the figures when we tested the car". The increased power is a result of the cooling properties of ethanol in the engine's combustion chambers allowing for a higher pressure in the cylinder and the biofuel having a higher octane rating of 113 RON compared to 95 RON for gasoline in North America and 100 RON for gasoline in Europe, although the CCXR burns slightly more fuel than the CCX with about 15 mpg (17L/100 km). The only changes to the engine are modified fuel injectors, upgraded fuel lines and piston rings and a higher boost setting on the superchargers. They say the top speed will go 250+ mph, hopefully beating the Bugatti Veyron at 253 mph. 

very interesting read but don't forget that you will not get much performance out of a normal petrol car if you replace the petrol with ethanol. the ccxr's fuel introduction systems are specially designed for ethanol so it will perform better on ethanol than it would on petrol. if you put ethanol in a petrol car, it will not perform as well as petrol would. one good thing about ethanol is that it burns cleaner than petrol does but it's energy content is not as high as petrol. petrol 8.79 kilowatt hour per litre and ethanol 3.5 kilowatt hour per litre so your extract is misleading. try putting ethanol in your car and it will not perform as well as an ethanol car would perform running on petrol.

 

aveli666:

 what comes from naphtha zakespeed?

have you heard of catalytic cracking of long chain hydrocarbons? this results in shorter chain hydrocarbons which are used in making plastics alcohols, esters, carboxylic acids, amines amides, and thousands of other organic chemicals. and yes naphtha is a feedstock for the manufacture of chemicals but a lot more can be got from crude oil than you imagine. even if naphtha is a small component of crude oil, can you imagine life without plastic? what will we use to insulate our wires? look around you, you are surrounded by plastic and paint. 

I only know the very basics about polymer synthesis, I'm afraid. My understanding about crude oil was that it is refined to produce gasoline, kerosene etc and naphtha, from which the other chemical products that you mentioned (including long chain hydrocarbons as feedstock for plastics) are produced. I accept that you might know better about that but I do know that only around 5% of crude oil produced is used by the plastics industry. I remember that fact very clearly from a college lecture because, considering the amount of plastic used nowadays, I was really suprised at the figure. I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!

ZakspeedF1:

aveli666:

 what comes from naphtha zakespeed?

have you heard of catalytic cracking of long chain hydrocarbons? this results in shorter chain hydrocarbons which are used in making plastics alcohols, esters, carboxylic acids, amines amides, and thousands of other organic chemicals. and yes naphtha is a feedstock for the manufacture of chemicals but a lot more can be got from crude oil than you imagine. even if naphtha is a small component of crude oil, can you imagine life without plastic? what will we use to insulate our wires? look around you, you are surrounded by plastic and paint. 

I only know the very basics about polymer synthesis, I'm afraid. My understanding about crude oil was that it is refined to produce gasoline, kerosene etc and naphtha, from which the other chemical products that you mentioned (including long chain hydrocarbons as feedstock for plastics) are produced. I accept that you might know better about that but I do know that only around 5% of crude oil produced is used by the plastics industry. I remember that fact very clearly from a college lecture because, considering the amount of plastic used nowadays, I was really suprised at the figure. I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!

yes zakspeedf1, you are right about that but as i have already said above except my knowledge (i don't think i know much better than you do), it is a huge part of our lives. the 5% used is more than enough to satisfy our needs but if we need more, that 5% can be easily increased. however it is the ignorance of the public which leads to the few in the know to exploit the rest by scaring them with suggestions of the world's resources running out.

my main point is that we are insignificant to exhaust any of the worlds resources, on the other hand there is nothing wrong with being efficient. the world is constantly evolving and no one really knows what resources there are on earth and how much.

 

zakspeedf1 wrote "I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!"

 

No-one ever thinks of the turtles!!!

kelrad:

zakspeedf1 wrote "I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!"

No-one ever thinks of the turtles!!!

Sorry, not with you on that one, kelrad.  Is 'turtles' some joke thing I don't know about?   Or do you mean that turtles, like a lot of marine life, are suffering from discarded plastics? 

pedekay:

kelrad:

zakspeedf1 wrote "I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!"

No-one ever thinks of the turtles!!!

Sorry, not with you on that one, kelrad.  Is 'turtles' some joke thing I don't know about?   Or do you mean that turtles, like a lot of marine life, are suffering from discarded plastics? 

Sorry all and Pedekey, I think I'm dragging this away from the original point of the post.

But there is a more serious point, it's not just the burning of fossil fuels and intensive farming that is having an effect on our global enviroment. It's all the 'little things' that we may consider irrelevent that actually have impacts that are currently beyond our understanding.

Good Lord I think I'm becoming a greeny/lefty

kelrad:

pedekay:

kelrad:

zakspeedf1 wrote "I always think of it whenever somebody compalins about throwaway plastic bags being a waste of our resources!"

No-one ever thinks of the turtles!!!

Sorry, not with you on that one, kelrad.  Is 'turtles' some joke thing I don't know about?   Or do you mean that turtles, like a lot of marine life, are suffering from discarded plastics? 

Sorry all and Pedekey, I think I'm dragging this away from the original point of the post.

But there is a more serious point, it's not just the burning of fossil fuels and intensive farming that is having an effect on our global enviroment. It's all the 'little things' that we may consider irrelevent that actually have impacts that are currently beyond our understanding.

Good Lord I think I'm becoming a greeny/lefty

very interesting point but how do you know the 'little thing's have an impact when you say it's beyond our understanding?

aveli666:

yes zakspeedf1, you are right about that but as i have already said above except my knowledge (i don't think i know much better than you do), it is a huge part of our lives. the 5% used is more than enough to satisfy our needs but if we need more, that 5% can be easily increased. however it is the ignorance of the public which leads to the few in the know to exploit the rest by scaring them with suggestions of the world's resources running out.

my main point is that we are insignificant to exhaust any of the worlds resources, on the other hand there is nothing wrong with being efficient. the world is constantly evolving and no one really knows what resources there are on earth and how much.

If nobody really knows how many resources there are, how can you know that we are insignificant to exhaust any of the world's resources?

justrace:

aveli666:

yes zakspeedf1, you are right about that but as i have already said above except my knowledge (i don't think i know much better than you do), it is a huge part of our lives. the 5% used is more than enough to satisfy our needs but if we need more, that 5% can be easily increased. however it is the ignorance of the public which leads to the few in the know to exploit the rest by scaring them with suggestions of the world's resources running out.

my main point is that we are insignificant to exhaust any of the worlds resources, on the other hand there is nothing wrong with being efficient. the world is constantly evolving and no one really knows what resources there are on earth and how much.

If nobody really knows how many resources there are, how can you know that we are insignificant to exhaust any of the world's resources?

because i know the population of the world, the size of the whole population put together and the size of the earth. the earth is too large for humans to exhaust any of it's resources. if you think otherwise name a single resources which has been exhausted?