I will concede that I appear to be quite wrong, that will show me to not do my research before opening my mouth! 
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Maybe there are too many people.
You don’t get something for nothing. Corn varieties historically yielded 26 bu/acre. Granted, their land was probably tired out from overcropping. The only way to cheat nature on this was to breed race cars of the corn world, varieties which would draw in greater amounts of resources. Bigger carbs, higher test fuels. Of course we are talking about adding nitrogen fertilizer, granular, or anhydrous ammonia. Plus phosphate, a critically limited resource we will soon be very sad trying to cope without. Typical grain yields are in the 30 - maybe 60 or 80 bu/ acre in an exceptional year. But you won’t repeat that steadily.
So Carl is correct in his figuring. His grapes are taking about the sustainable maximum from the environment. Maybe plant breeders could develop a highly input responsive grape, then Carl could get multiples of his yields by applying anhydrous till the land smokes, the way corn farmers do.
That’s the natural limit we have to get our heads around. Do the math on how many people can be comfortably sustained under those limits. And then figure how many cars. As cited earlier, more than double, perhaps triple the arable land mass of the US would have to be sacrificed to perpetuate the automobile vision. And that’s just fueling, never mind manufactiring, lubricant oils, replacement tires, etc.
I would rather focus on human beings than cars. At least the car culture, it was a product of limitless oil, and will not be a part of the future aside from for an elite, or serious jobs. If we have a future, if we get our act together.
As for conversion efficiencies of solar panels, we can’t eat the electricity, or guaranteed make food from it, or fuel with a higher efficiency than photosynthesis. Steps in the photosynthesis pathway are quantum, zero losses. And if nature has been tweaking that looking for breakthroughs for 3 billion years, with no better results than current state of the art, I think its safe to say us hairless chimps aren’t going to better it.
I consider the ethanol fuel issue about debated out. Keep ethanol for drinking. We might want to have a few stiff drinks in the future that’s coming. Or, recognize that ethanol is no panacea, it comes at a significant expense, you can certainly make shaft power with it, but in reality syngas is far more efficient, and syngas itself is more work than refined fossil fuels.
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You actually don’t have a complete solution for yourself, unless you are making your own chainsaw chain, don’t use any oil in your tractor, etc. at some point you depend on the Macro’s to have available the things you cannot do by yourself, or at the very least in a timely fashion.
The government does make choices for us, and some of it is good and some of it is bad. It usually tries to correct general societal issues. Like your gum example, the teacher bans gum not out of “omg I want to control this person to beat them into submission” it is because kids make noise, chewing and popping bubbles which is disruptive., and then they don’t put it in the trash. Who wants to pick up someone else’s used gum? I doubt even you do. We had a bus driver that let us chew gum until she had to pick up a piece of it. Out of 5 years on the bus, with the same rule each year, the longest it went was 3 weeks, and usually it was done in a week.
My point is a lot of the laws you don’t deem as “fair” are the result of abuse, and in others they are reactionary from a traumatic event and are almost never good laws. 9-11 is a great example “everyone is devastated, let’s weaken privacy laws!”
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Yes, my Ranger is OBD2
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Yes, a stiff glass of maple syrup! 
The modern chainsaw is amazing but so is a well made axe.
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They say that in the future robots will do most of our work. I say the future is here and that our robots have been fatefully working for us all along. A lot of them must be made by John Deere because of their green color.
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Is it ok if I ferment that maple syrup, a sort of arboreal mead? 
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I think this statement is as close to the “solution” as it can get… on the micro scale…
Also applicable on large scale if you just convince people to DO it…
Here you see the first step… the power grid connection and a bit more to the left a new cleaned up patch where we are building my new “working/ research site” 690 acre’s
its a “industrial estate” that i am turning into a bamboo plantation / organic farm / power producing plant / teaching research center
in total we will manage 2400 acres as bamboo plantation to fill the energy need for 1 factory and also supply the energy to the grid local.
All based on gasification, biomass fermentation and more
Also included: making liquid fuels for standard cars and more
We all know it can be done, nothing new there…
Just need to DO it…
If we only talk it will never be done…
I have to ad: we rent the peoples land around, the rice farming land that is, plant bamboo for them and pay them salary to take care the crop and plantations for us. We teach them how to make the most profit from it and teach others how to copy the concept.
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Sounds like a blast!
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Reminds me of this song, and the song reminds me of this topic…
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madflower69 your many outrageous statements cause me to weary-dreary-me headache.
So . . . because one cannot live a Perfect Solution, then do nothing, eh? That is stupid narrow minded.
Keep growing your grapes OrCarl. A NewZealand grape grower has a very neat farm tractor “woodgas” converted fueling off of his chunked dried annual grape vines prunings.
Doers, DO. Well worthy emulating.
Wanna’ world changers: Preach, you-need-to-do-this. I know the way.
Excellent response back GaryT.
The wisdom of the honey-bee’s; the millions, billions, trillions stress evolved plants cells “Trumps” all of the geeking’, jabbering, sharp-penciling numbers crunch’ers potificating better-ideal solutions…
O.K. then.
I will work up some big-fail Macro systems to show too.
S.U.
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Logical statements aren’t rocket science.
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The first law of thermodynamics doesn’t actually specify that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead that the total amount of energy in a closed system cannot be created nor destroyed (though it can be changed from one form to another).
I think it is OK for me to be on computer 15 minutes a day
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By-The-Numbers
Between the mid-1980’s thru 2015 there were over ONE HUNDRED Big (Macro) BIO-MASS ELECTRICAL POWER PLANTS invested in; and declared failures.
The average investment failure/loss was $10,000,000 each USD.
I researched this out between 2007 until 2015.
Some of there earlier ones up into the early 1990’s can be read in the DOW library copy of the World Bank Technical Paper #72. They have a nice excellent ending summery of the identified causes for these bio-mass power plant failures. I will not repeat here. Do your own reading of this important publication.
Three bio-mass plant failures that especially interested me were not covered in the #72 as they were later 2000’s failures.
The Connecticut Biomass Energy Project. $163 million of public and private investment from initial enthusiasm written-down, sold, and now resold three times. Each time for less.
The Hawaii Biomass Energy Project
$17.5 million USD of initial enthusiasm sold off at bid for pennies on the dollar for the hardware’s and Labs equipment.
The Alaska Bio-Mass Energy Plant
$15 million of initial enthusiasm investment written down and plant converted to “cheaper natural gas”.
100 plant/project failures at an average of $10,000,000 each is ONE BILLION DOLLARS USD.
For a billon spent out I think something power-making should have been accomplished. For one billion dollars I want to see the bridge. The tunnel. A usable building. Saturn’s moons fly-by pictures.
Now in this same time period WBT #72 list three bio-mas power making operations gotten up running, being used. One a religious middle/high school in Micronesia. Two at religious based communal sawmill operation in Uruguay.
And I could fine easily over 10 successful wood products mills making their own power, from their own mill woodwastes. Ha! I worked for time in the late 80’s at one. 20 horsepower old steam engine plant to make electricity motors and lights. And especially; steam heat for the log-pealer, and finished plywood kiln dryers.
What was the differences?
The successful were making; don’t ask - don’t tell power from their own input stocks, for themselves. Not for Grid-feed. Not for sale. So, NO ONE COULD BLOCK OR SIDE-TRACK DIVERT THEM.
That Conneticut operation got Idealist single-factor failed. Insistence written-in, to use a gas-turbine electrical generator set. The made-gas could never be made “clean” enough for the turbine blades manufacturers guarantee.
The Alaskan one simply priced down by Big-Oil willing to supply then, piped in Natural gas.
The Hawaiian one never put into service over insistence of clean-green Hawaiin never having any remembered history of power generating with solid mass fuels. (they had long forgotten the old coal Navy ships) “Be Too Dirty!” was the nay-sayers easy to sell claims. Bring in Arabian LNG ships.
Want more By-The-Numbers?
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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I was just reminiscing, and diacussing this lost opportunity.
http://www.stirlingengines.org.uk/manufact/manf/usa/new6.html
For a short while woodmizer had partnered with Sunpower, I bet there are very few of these cogen units in existence, but would I ever be happy to have one! Even if the sealed Stirling is basically a black box, this would answer a lot of needs. Put a billion dollars into these, please…
GarryT if it is still Net-way-back findable, there was a published article about the in-USA, CPC (Community Power Corporation) providing the made woodgas for one of the US stirling power wanted-to-be’s.
The engine manufacturer was insisting on min 1800 degrees capable gas. F? C?
One side of the project or the other was having re-occurring seals failure for this level of heating. $250,000 USD in development costs walked away from by agreement.
Once was an Asian video up of a bio-mass heat driven stirling engine hot-end. The absorption metals coils and hot-end bulb all glowing metals!
And I’ve had one confidential gasifer-man back-out report from stirling participation because of a 2200 degree demand requirement.
DeltaT man; in small stirling, seems to rule.
Nobody it seems wants to make a 5 ton weight engine, lower DeltaT capable system anymore. Yep. 5 tons weight for 10 horsepower engine system.
S.U.
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Good points Steve. I believe the biowatt sealed Stirling was engineered for 1kw in a standard wood stove. Let’s say it would make 750W consistently. I am sure like all such units it would run best at a glowing temp, but I tend to trust Sunpower’s engineering, they made units that passed NASA standards for deep space probes, did a lot of good engineering and design work.
I was just discussing with friends that I personally favour the old Rider Ericsson engines. A sealed unit might run beautifully for 25 years, maybe more, but a slow rpm cast iron machine, blacksmith repairable could run for centuries.
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If i remember there was a pilot project in 2010 or 11 to put Baxi ecogen boilers with free piston stirlings in homes in britain for natural gas grid tie cogen. I don’t know if the project went to completion. It corresponds to the time when the price of solar panels and natural gas dropped off a hill and pretty much killed the economics of every other green tech out there. If I was rebuilding an Ericsson I would not do cast iron but aluminum. heavy iron Stirlings interest me but… no time. I’m enjoying the thread Steve I know its meandering on you and that gets frustrating.
Cheers, David
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I read of those European household cogen plants. I think one fundamental issue may be that Europe has burnt their natural gas supplies and is now dependent on exterior supply. Grid tie cogen could make it even more precarious, though more efficient on paper.
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Have you ever notice the math figures equations and drawing proposals work so great on paper. But in the real working world of the application it doesn’t work like they said it would at all.
Bob
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