This chart show various possible solutions to a problem. If you can create energy in one location how do you store it? For example you might charge up a battery or spin up a fly wheel.
The upper right corner is suggestive of how dense and hot fuels are, i.e. oil and it’s friends. But it’s hard to make an entire energy cycle out of them.
This post doesn’t really have point. Just something I’ve been thinking about. Triggered, to a degree, by discovering that natural gas is cheaper than pellets for your pellet stove and the associated fact that people heat with corn in parts of the midwest.
I lifted that out of this presentation (pdf).
Out of pure curiousity, any idea where body fat would sit on the graph? I.e. how efficient are us mammals in comparison.
No, but in a marginally related bit of information I did encounter this amusing brief note http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/68/8/765.pdf that says you could run a couple major american cities on the energy saved if people just lost weight :).