Reply #60: Learn more about what goes into our agriculture.....

[BlueEyedSon]

The following discussion relates to food production (specifically calories produced via agriculture), but the concepts are applicable to whatever goes into the TDP intake chute. In other words, TDP can help recapture some otherwise "lost" energy. I encourage you to read the whole piece. Looks like you have to cut and paste the link (remove the semicolon and space after the amper), DU mangles the URL.

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=5000

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The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure
oil, not food. There's a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of
arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at
least a calorie of Oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the
United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of
fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked
closely at this issue), that ratio was 1: 1. And this understates the
problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food
there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot
less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the
1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we
spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only
ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the
Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.

<snip>

There is another energy matter to consider here, though. The grinding,
milling, wetting, drying, and baking of a breakfast cereal requires
about four calories of energy for every calorie of food energy it
produces. A two-pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a
half-gallon of gasoline in its making. All together the food-processing
industry in the United States uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel
energy for every calorie of food energy it produces.

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