Guest essay by Andy May
It is difficult to compare 1840 to 2015, so much of what we have today didn’t exist then. But, they had to move people and goods from place to place as we do now. They had farms then as we do now. They used wagons pulled by horses, mules or oxen. We use cars and airplanes. They used muscle power to farm, we use tractors, combines, grain carts, and trucks powered by petroleum fuels. In 1840 crude oil and natural gas production and use were rare. Coal was used in manufacturing, but steam engines were still in their infancy. So the world in 1840 was fossil fuel free for the most part. Biofuels, that is burning wood and dung, were common. Windmills would not appear until 1854. Hydropower was not in common use until after 1849. Solar power had not been invented yet.
The cost of gasoline can be seen on the sign at any gas station, but what is its value? Using gasoline or diesel saves us time and manual labor. It also saves air, water and waste pollution. Let us not forget that the automobile was lauded as a great environmental improvement after the “Great Horse Manure Crisis” of 1894. Nothing like having horse manure up to your knees to help you appreciate gasoline!
How much manual labor is replaced when we use gasoline? In other words what is the value of gasoline? In large part our standard of living is determined by the difference between what we pay for petroleum fuels and coal and their value in time and labor. I’ll try and compute that value by comparing a 1,812 mile trip, along the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City in 1840 with a trip today. I’ll also compute the value of diesel by comparing a 10 acre grain harvest in 1840 to a harvest today.
In 1840 to make the 1,812 mile trip, most people used Prairie Schooner wagons pulled by six oxen. Oxen were cheaper than horses or mules and could survive on lower quality grass. The total cost of an equipped Prairie Schooner with Oxen was around $1,000 in 1840 money, the equivalent of $23,373 today. The normal time to make the trip was 4.5 months or 137 days. Fuel for the Oxen was free.
Today we have two choices for the trip. We could drive a car for $1,052 using the IRS business car reimbursement of $0.575 or fly a family of four for $1016. The driving time would be two days. Fuel would be about 72 gallons at $144. Using these figures and considering the 135 extra days in 1840 at today’s minimum wage of $7.25, the value of the gasoline is $411 per gallon for the driving case. A family of four flying in a Boeing 757 will use 92 gallons of jet fuel according to wikipedia, so the value per gallon of the jet fuel is $329. But, the trip is much quicker and easier than driving.
Figure 1: The trip today
Figure 2: The trip in 1840
But, traveling isn’t the only thing that has improved since 1840 due to the invention of gasoline and the internal combustion engine. Farming is much more efficient. In 1840 nearly everyone was employed in the agricultural industry or supported it in some fashion. Now only a small portion of our population is engaged in farming. According to the USDA farm workers are only 1% of US workers.
In order to harvest 10 acres of grain in 1840, it took 130 men working all day. The average wage in 2015 for farm workers in the US is $12.27, this is a total cost of $12,761 in 2015 dollars to harvest 10 acres in one day. In 2015 40 skilled farm workers can harvest 450 acres in one day. Farms are larger today and much more efficient, so we need to scale down to 10 acres to do a valid comparison. On a large modern farm, the cost of the men required, a combine, grain cart and truck to harvest 10 acres sums to $540. The total diesel and lubricant required comes to 24 gallons. This results in a value of $509 per gallon of diesel. So, generally we are paying about $2 per gallon for fuels that are worth over 100 times that, a pretty good deal. The details of the calculations described in this post can be found, along with more references, here.
Plus, you probably won’t die from dysentery!
This is such a profound analysis; I wish everybody would read it, particularly those who denigrate fossil fuels and dismiss them as “yesterday’s” energy source. I always marvel at the amount of energy “compressed” into a gallon of innocent-looking liquid that can propel a 1.5 ton vehicle 35 miles (and that’s without capturing 50% of the energy that’s lost through the radiator)!
I was born in 1933, so I can look back at my early childhood and remember that most families did NOT have an automobile. You walked, cycled or rode the tram whenever you had to move from A to B. Heating and cooking was generally done using a wood or coal fired stove. No automatic temperature control in those days, and certainly no air conditioning.
I think those who are 55 years old or younger (and that will include most climate scientists) don’t have a clue about how lucky we really are to be blessed with cheap, abundant energy in the form of fossil fuels.
Ironically, our biggest problem is that we exercise too little and we eat too much. What era in mankind’s past ever had to face that problem?
‘In 1840 to make the 1,812 mile trip, most people used Prairie Schooner wagons pulled by six oxen.’
A common misconception. The prairie schooner was for cargo. People walked.
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
Another insightful analysis by Andy May. Useful information for discussions with the innumerate lefties in your life, who do not understand energy math nor attempt to try. This may help get the point across.
The CO2 crisis is just a load of Horse Manure!
And Todays CO2 Alarmists are New-Age Crystal Power versions of yesterdays Luddites.
Ha ha
My father was born in 1925. He was a farmer until he was 17 and joined the Marine Corps. He used only horses. He said that it took about 1/3 of the crops they produced to feed those horses all year long. Does anyone who wants us all to go back to the good old days think that we could afford to loose 1/3 of our food production to the horses?
Traveling by air will minimize the risk of dysentery but obesity is a problem. Let us look at and analyze the climate change debate from the perspective of human nature especially Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The evil of fossil fuel is preached and promoted by men and women who are the most dependent on it. Fossil fuel is never an evil to those who are entirely dependent on renewable energy such cow dung, firewood — the societies of the noble savages or the backward societies depending on one’s perspective. On the other hand, those who are now entirely dependent on renewable energy aspire for a life style dependent on fossil fuel such as coal and oil. When the developed countries promotes renewable energy and decarbonization in the UNFCCC COPs, the demand for funding from developing countries could be translated ” give us the funds so we will have the lifestyle dependent on fossil fuel like what you have now, then we will be dissatisfied with fossil fuel and join in your decarbonization initiative”.
The following link is a little bit more on the wagons, and their history.
I learned a bit looking it up.
michael
https://www.google.com/search?q=conestoga+wagon&espv=2&biw=1360&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx69WX0_rJAhVBzGMKHW_jDr4QsAQITA&dpr=1#imgrc=rEyodFDjCWBcuM%3A
Another very simple way to look at it:
A fit person can do about 1kwh of work per day. A horse can do about 5-7 kWh of work per day. These are based on simple energy conversion. Therefore, we can buy a person day of labor today for less than 20 cents and a horse day of labor for about 1 dollar. The use of fossil and nuclear energy is an incredible bargain by any reasonable metric.
And electricity has much more utility. No amount of unconverted human labor can keep milk cold.
yes but, if you have a field 450 acres of maize that doesn’t leave much room for anything else like the little green frogs like to live in the grass or the skylarks like to nest there in the field.
Another regularly overlooked benefit of using fossil fuel is that it eliminates the very impetus for slavery, of both people and animals.
As for the animals, these so called spoiled rotten “green” people trying to eliminate fossil fuel use have no idea of how badly they were treated only a little over 100 years ago before we had fuel powered trucks from refined crude oil and refrigeration from coal generated electricity.
Horses had to haul ice into the cities to keep the everyone’s food from spoiling. The hotter it was in the summer – the more ice they had to haul. Horses died on the street doing that but the drivers couldn’t stop to arrange to have the carcasses removed, no, the ice was melting and had to be delivered first so the dead horse would have to wait for the drivers to come back and retrieve them later – if they had any energy left themselves. Don’t forget that they had to tote the ice up many flights of steps because, not only was there no refrigeration – there were no elevators either. On top of that it was even hotter inside the building in the afternoon.
A dead horses left in the middle of a stinking city street on a hot summer day was common occurrence back then. Is THAT what these greenies want us to return to?
Their ignorance is simply astounding.
hello,
you are saying something like the burning of fossil fuels is a good thing because it makes it possible for there to be more people ?
We did manage without electricity, but we had to be very inventive.
In 1979 while I was an apprentice at a tool shop that subcontracted for Avco lycoming of stratford ct we retro fitted a 1890s Bullard VTL. It was brought into the shop, still setup to run off of overhead pulleys. Yes it had been running off of a water wheel. We rebuilt it, drilling mountings for a electric motor. I later got to run it, making rings over 6ft diameter. The parts were for Pratt&Whitney Jet engines. Think about it. The craftsmanship in the construction of that old VTL able to hold modern tolerances.
Using fossil fuels is just one more step in humanities never ending effort to “make a better mouse trap”
michael
The automobile has been reckoned as the greatest advance in 20th century medicine.
Not only did it allow the doctor to get to the patient but it eliminated flies and disease from the streets.
I’m old enough to remember the “roller skate & bicycle slalom” as I dodged around sometime steaming mounds of manure from horse-drawn milk, bread & city garbage wagons. This, as recent as the 1940s in Toronto.
Enterprising homeowners sometimes picked up a few piles for their rosebushes- but for the most part the piles remained for a week or two – until city workers came around with shovels and (you guessed it) a horse drawn wagon !!!
In 1840 there were a lot less people. Those people used the best technology available to support themselves. They didn’t know of anything better.
In 2015 we have a lot more people. The people of today still use the best technology available to support themselves. We don’t know of anything better.
Some would have us return to 1840 technology even though we know better.
Why? To return us to 1840 population levels? Again, why?
When this land around here was first settled the size of the farm was 160 acres, as it was surveyed in sections and broken down into four quarters. Today, the size of the average farm is a section and a half, or six quarters, which is almost a thousand acres. Something that would be next to impossible without fossil fuels, and modern machinery, plus and modern transportation system to handle and move it to market.
I had a client involved in rail roads. Like many, I thought that rail roads were a thing of the past. But moving freight by rail is incredibly efficient.
https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Environmental%20Benefits%20of%20Moving%20Freight%20by%20Rail.pdf
Sorry, but I find it hard to credit 130 people to harvest 10 acres. I’m old enough to remember large harvest crews, using towed combines, so have some idea or reaping and threshing.
The standard in early 19th century Britain was that a good man would be able to mow an acre a day; a fine performer an acre and a half. Yields then were of course lower than now, with taller stalks and smaller heads. So ten men to reap ten acres in a day. Add in those who bind and gather the sheaves, tossing them onto a wagon, and, if different, those who thresh, separating the grain from the chaff. Then bagging the threshed grain. I just don’t see a need for 130 people in this operation.
The other cost the Green Revolution fanatics fail to consider is the cost in human lives. If we really rolled back civilization to the 1840s millions would die. Without fossil fuels we could not clothe or feed the existing population. Without plastic products for food storage, and cheap energy to process food and water, diseases that were eradicated or reduced would flare to life again.
They dream of the simple agrarian life, local produce, local industry. It worked when the population was a small fraction of those alive today, but with the current population it simply cannot be done. And they have no idea of what it would really be like, they have forgotten the joys of the chamber pot, hand water pump, and wood stove.
The immense benefit over cost of fossil fuels very easily justifies a transfer of the taxation burden from income and sales to fossil fuels. Trebles (?) the consumer price, encourages thoughtful consumption, keeps the green/climate lobby happy, and should make no material difference to the cost benefit.
Though I don’t disagree that fossil fuels made all of this possible, a great deal of value that should be attributed to other things like development of better materials, increased machining capabilities, etc… are completely ignored by this analysis.
The fact is, the value derived from fossil fuels can be achieved through the use of other fuels and technology. I think its also important to note that farm equipment that can be run on 100% bio-diesel is a reality today. I have also read about 100% commercial scale electric farm equipment (though that was done by converting traditional diesel equipment to electric.) Which in turn means that in addition to bio-fuels, hydro, nuclear, etc… are possible substitutes in today’s world.
For the record, I’m not anti-fossil fuels. I believe they are still the most economical alternative for most of the jobs they are employed to do. I just think this article ascribes greater value to them than what they truly have in today’s world.
Curious, you forgot the government bureaucrats who keep the whole process from being more efficient.
“Windmills would not appear until 1854.”
What nonsense is this? Your own link shows that windmills are a very ancient technology.
By 1840’s standards a gallon of gas is a liquid miracle.
That should have been written better it appears.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_windmills_in_the_United_States
Wikipedia is frequently wrong but at this hour what else!
“Orleans [Massachusetts]
Jonathan Young windmill: smock
The Jonathan Young windmill was returned to Orleans ownership in 1983, after having first been built in the town about 1720. She was moved to Hyannisport in 1897, then given by the Groves family to the Orleans Historical Society in 1983, who then donated it to the town of Orleans. The final move brought it back to Town Cove Park, where it now stands.”