{"id":33756,"date":"2018-04-26T06:26:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33756"},"modified":"2018-04-26T06:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:26:03","slug":"there-are-just-two-sources-of-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33756","title":{"rendered":"There are just two sources of energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"single-featured-image-header\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-twentyseventeen-featured-image size-twentyseventeen-featured-image wp-post-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.darrinqualman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Primary-energy-supply-by-fuel-global-1965-2016-e1522939863148.png\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" alt=\"Graph of global primary energy supply by fuel or energy source, 1965-2016\" width=\"640\" height=\"395\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"single-featured-image-caption\">Global primary energy consumption by fuel or energy source, 1965-2016<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"site-content-contain\">\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"site-content\">\n<div class=\"wrap\">\n<div id=\"primary\" class=\"content-area\">\n<article id=\"post-1051\" class=\"post-1051 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-tools-for-analysis tag-civilization tag-climate tag-energy tag-solutions\">\n<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.darrinqualman.com\/two-sources-of-energy\/\">There are just two sources of energy<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Our petro-industrial civilization produces and consumes a seemingly diverse suite of energies: oil, coal, ethanol, hydroelectricity, gasoline, geothermal heat, hydrogen, solar power, propane, uranium, wind, wood, dung.\u00a0 At the most foundational level, however, there are just two sources of energy.\u00a0 Two sources provide more than 99 percent of the power for our civilization: solar and nuclear.\u00a0 Every other significant energy source is a form of one of these two.\u00a0 Most are forms of solar.<\/p>\n<p>When we burn wood we release previously captured solar energy.\u00a0 The firelight we see and the heat we feel are energies from sunlight that arrived decades ago.\u00a0 That sunlight was transformed into chemical energy in the leaves of trees and used to form wood.\u00a0 And when we burn that wood, we turn that chemical-bond energy back into light and heat.\u00a0 Energy from wood is a form of <em>contemporary<\/em> solar energy because it embodies solar energy mostly captured years or decades ago, as distinct from <em>fossil<\/em> energy sources such as coal and oil that embody solar energy captured many millions of years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Straw and other biomass are a similar story: contemporary solar energy stored as chemical-bond energy then released through oxidation in fire.\u00a0 Ethanol, biodiesel, and other biofuels are also forms of contemporary solar energy (though subsidized by the fossil fuels used to create fertilizers, fuels, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>Coal, natural gas, and oil products such as gasoline and diesel fuel are also, fundamentally, forms of solar energy, but not contemporary solar energy: fossil.\u00a0 The energy in fossil fuels is the sun\u2019s energy that fell on leaves and algae in ancient forests and seas.\u00a0 When we burn gasoline in our cars, we are propelled to the corner store by ancient sunlight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Global primary energy consumption by fuel or energy source, 1965-2016 There are just two sources of energy Our petro-industrial civilization produces and consumes a seemingly diverse suite of energies: oil, coal, ethanol, hydroelectricity, gasoline, geothermal heat, hydrogen, solar power, propane, uranium, wind, wood, dung.\u00a0 At the most foundational level, however, there are just two sources [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19933,423,578,1564],"class_list":["post-33756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-darrin-qualman","tag-industrial-civilization","tag-nuclear-energy","tag-solar-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33757,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33756\/revisions\/33757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}