The OIL Game - (A Necessary Conversation)

[shatto]

OIL.
Not the golden nectar advertised on television to put in a car engine...
the gloppy stuff pumped from the earth, usually in remote places, and brought by super tankers to places with twisty piping and smokestacks everywhere, where it is refined....
and becomes the products that lubricate and power cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes and the ship that brought it in the first place. And does other things.

So, here are the rules of the game;

1. Can be played solo or with any number of people.
2. Conversation is restricted to facts. Theory is another game.

Wherever you are; describe how one nearby item is impacted by oil. When you finish, the next person does the same thing.

That is the game.

The goal? To learn how essential oil is.

Ready? Let's PLAY!

[VetteOwner]

i guess...not sure what you mean by describe how one nearby object is impacted by oil part haha. EVERYTHING near me in some way or form is or used oil to get near me and or be in existence haha.

if u must:

LCD tv:

plastic case is made from petrolium, most of the IC chips, LED's and such have plastic cases too, the wire insulation also plastic. The ccfl backlight bulbs are essentially very small flourecent lights which must be formed in a factory using electricity and vacuum pumps and the oh so recently uber feared mercury haha. the steel base had to be formed somewhere from the original forming of the sheetmetal, to shipping to factory, to factory using a press to punch out said parts, using sanding belts to smooth punched parts, using machines to bend it to shape and tapping screw holes, all which require oil to move those gearboxes 24/7 365.

once its all assembled using air tools that require air tool oil, boxed, taped (all require factories to make the foam, baggies, twist ties, cardboard (more trees cut down fyi haha) THEN trucked, boated, or freight trained into the plant) THEN ya gotta ship it from vietnam, singapore, china, japan, maylasia, india, tiawan, etc to my country in a shipping container, freight trained to my state, trucked to the stores distribution warehouse, distributed to my store, me to drive out there and buy it, me to drive back, me to throw away all the packing materials for the garbage guy to come get in his deisel truck with hydrolic rams to take to the landfil. there it is weighed using electronic scales, pushed around by diesel bulldozers and compctors.

I AINT DONE YET! The biggest one is electricity from the local powerplant that burns a freight train of coal a day (gotta be mined and got onto the train) powered by usually 4 dash-9 locos with its 5,000gal fuel tank of deisel in each loco. EACH loco has 410 gallons of lubrication oil for its 16 piston turbocharged deisel with a total full loaded down locomotive weight of 392,000lbs all riding on millions of miles of steel rails that were made in a factory and welded together to use gobs of electricity all being held exactly 4' 8 1/2" apart by creosote (aka coal coke) soaked ties. These ties didnt originate here and had to be trees cut down using diesel machinery, hauled by diesel trucks (all requiring gallons of oil to lube btw) to a sawmill using electricity and more oil to shape said ties THEN freight trained to where they needed to be...

dont forget the mine the coal originated from and all those dump trucks the size of a house, mining trucks, shafts etc. all need some sort of lube and fuel.

dont forget about the billions mile of wire that went into ALL those trucks trains cars etc, all the billions of pounds of plastics in each of those along with all the rubber insulators gaskets seals tires etc.

anything those items mentioned above use some sort of lube and or was made on machenery that needed it or transported by conveyor belt which ALLL goes back to the powerplant.


arent i a load of fun haha. the above can be said of ANY product, i dare someone to come up with a tangible item that didnt require the use on oil in some way.

[Jay2TheRescue]

Do we start with the plastic my laptop is made of, or the plastic lenses in my glasses that allow me to read the screen?

[VetteOwner]

what about the keyboard you used to communicate that question haha

[theholycow]

I cannot identify a single thing around me that was not delivered by oil, made from oil, or made with energy from oil...and much of what's around me qualifies for all 3 of those conditions at the same time.

I wouldn't mind seeing more plastics made from renewable resources. It's not impossible, it's just that dinosaur juice is still more cost-effective.

[Jay2TheRescue]

I noticed once the iced latte I picked up from a "prominent national coffee shop" had a thing on the clear plastic cup that said it was made from corn, and was biodegradable. Just for curiosity's sake I broke off a piece of the cup to "taste" it, and it was very much like plastic. hard to believe it was made from corn, or that it was biodegradable.

[shatto]

Originally Posted by Jay2TheRescue

I noticed once the iced latte I picked up from a "prominent national coffee shop" had a thing on the clear plastic cup that said it was made from corn, and was biodegradable. Just for curiosity's sake I broke off a piece of the cup to "taste" it, and it was very much like plastic. hard to believe it was made from corn, or that it was biodegradable.

[theholycow]

Hahahah!

Along similar lines, there are environmentally-friendly packing peanuts that dissolve in water and taste like food (because they're made from food).

[trollbait]

It was likely PLA, poly lactic acid. Some stores are using it for shopping bags, and it's compostable. The first plastics where made from milk.

Don't use the peanuts for long term storage. They can attract pests.

It's hard for to complete when petro plastics cost pennies per pound, though.

[VetteOwner]

yea, corn and soybased plastics have been around for a long time. alot of the older electrical wires were insulated with corn based plastic (hence why mice chewed the crap outa it haha)


still gotta remember tho all those biodegradable corn based plastics etc were all made in oil using factories, trucked by deisel and shipped by train or boat to wherever.