# why not blubber?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 24, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688 "2006-03-24T04:57:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![xkoolkacix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/898d66/32.png) [@xkoolkacix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xkoolkacix)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/1 "2006-03-24T04:57:56Z")
I have been thinking about our nations recent gas problems, and have come to the conclusion that we should resort back using whale blubber for our energy needs. Look at it this way… petroleum isn’t a renewable resource, and whales are. I say we make a deal with Russia to put a giant net into the Artic Ocean and breed whales for our nations energy needs. =) and if that fails… theres always bio diesel!! ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/2 "2006-03-24T05:05:00Z")
You can’t be serious. If we collected the blubber from every whale in the world, it wouldn’t even make a dent in fulfilling our energy needs. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/3 "2006-03-24T05:16:27Z")
Several reasons: 1. Whales haven’t been domesticated, and thus are unlikely to breed on command and at a rate necessary to keep up a regular flow of materials. 2. No machines exist to rend whales into oil and non-whale. This may not be a difficult thing, but it would still probably be a very expensive (and large) device. 3. Potential investors would just laugh. 4. Green Peace would raid and bomb your operations once a week. 5. Non-replenishable resources are cheaper since the production phase has already been done for you, so you have just to reap the rewards. 6. You would need to establish an operation in the middle of the ocean, keep it manned, and have people there to feed the whales throughout the year. This is problematic and expensive in various ways. 7. You would have to have a separate fish/plankton fisheries so as to feed your whales. 8. You would have to have yet again a farm that produced vegetation and such with which to feed your fish so you could feed your whales. 9. #7 and #8 mean that you’re burning a lot of potential energy to form oil out of plant matter in a very roundabout–if natural–method. 10. Processing whale oil into something that cars can use is something that would need to be developed and that would be, probably, highly inefficient for a good amount of time. Meaning that again you’re going to be losing a lot of potential energy and thus your profit per whale drops and the price at the pump increases. 11. etc. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/4 "2006-03-24T05:18:05Z")
> [@xkoolkacix](#): > > I have been thinking about our nations recent gas problems, and have come to the conclusion that we should resort back using whale blubber for our energy needs. > Look at it this way… petroleum isn’t a renewable resource, and whales are. I say we make a deal with Russia to put a giant net into the Artic Ocean and breed whales for our nations energy needs. =) [Annual whale oil production around 1830 or so](http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/gesner.html): 10-15 million gallons/year. [Crude oil production in 2003](http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s01-wogi.html): about 1 trillion gallons/year (68 million barrels/day.) Methinks there’s going to be a slight problem. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/5 "2006-03-24T05:18:15Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > You can’t be serious. If we collected the blubber from every whale in the world, it wouldn’t even make a dent in fulfilling our energy needs. We would need to know how much fuel one could potentially get from a whale and how many whales there are in the world to compute that. ---
**Author:** ![Hirundo82](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/919ad9/32.png) [@Hirundo82](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hirundo82)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/6 "2006-03-24T05:21:30Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > If we collected the blubber from every whale in the world, it wouldn’t even make a dent in fulfilling our energy needs. Is there a significant difference between whale blubber and human fat? I’m betting there would be more than enough if we sucked the fat out of every American’s ass. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/7 "2006-03-24T05:22:34Z")
> [@](#): > > We would need to know how much fuel one could potentially get from a whale and how many whales there are in the world to compute that. No, all that’s needed is to do a quick estimate of the total biomass in the world’s whales and compare it to daily usage of petroleum to realize the inanity of this plan. ---
**Author:** ![xkoolkacix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/898d66/32.png) [@xkoolkacix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xkoolkacix)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/8 "2006-03-24T05:31:53Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Several reasons: > > 1. Whales haven’t been domesticated, and thus are unlikely to breed on command and at a rate necessary to keep up a regular flow of materials. > 2. No machines exist to rend whales into oil and non-whale. This may not be a difficult thing, but it would still probably be a very expensive (and large) device. > 3. Potential investors would just laugh. > 4. Green Peace would raid and bomb your operations once a week. > 5. Non-replenishable resources are cheaper since the production phase has already been done for you, so you have just to reap the rewards. > 6. You would need to establish an operation in the middle of the ocean, keep it manned, and have people there to feed the whales throughout the year. This is problematic and expensive in various ways. > 7. You would have to have a separate fish/plankton fisheries so as to feed your whales. > 8. You would have to have yet again a farm that produced vegetation and such with which to feed your fish so you could feed your whales. > 9. #7 and #8 mean that you’re burning a lot of potential energy to form oil out of plant matter in a very roundabout–if natural–method. > 10. Processing whale oil into something that cars can use is something that would need to be developed and that would be, probably, highly inefficient for a good amount of time. Meaning that again you’re going to be losing a lot of potential energy and thus your profit per whale drops and the price at the pump increases. > 11. etc. I see no reason why any of theese should be a MAJOR problem…it would just take a lot of work on our part, which I can see as the only problem because Americans are lazy! ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/9 "2006-03-24T05:48:02Z")
> [@xkoolkacix](#): > > I see no reason why any of theese should be a MAJOR problem…it would just take a lot of work on our part, which I can see as the only problem because Americans are lazy! I seriously hope you are kidding, because actually, each one of those IS a MAJOR problem. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/10 "2006-03-24T05:49:27Z")
> [@xkoolkacix](#): > > I see no reason why any of theese should be a MAJOR problem…it would just take a lot of work on our part, which I can see as the only problem because Americans are lazy! Or because there are other solutions which are easier, cheaper, and more feasible. “Lazy” can be a synonym for “Efficient.” ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/11 "2006-03-24T05:54:44Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > No, all that’s needed is to do a quick estimate of the total biomass in the world’s whales and compare it to daily usage of petroleum to realize the inanity of this plan. So how much biomass is there? And how much could there potentially be once we switched from whaling to “farming”? We harvest enough cows and chickens to make a few pounds of meat for three hundred million people or so every day. Given that the surface area of the ocean is something like three to four times all land area in the world (let alone arrable land), there’s no reason to think we couldn’t have enough whales if we could breed and farm them like cattle. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/12 "2006-03-24T06:38:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Given that the surface area of the ocean is something like three to four times all land area in the world (let alone arrable land), there’s no reason to think we couldn’t have enough whales if we could breed and farm them like cattle. Doing a few quick calculations: 1 barrel of crude oil is approximately 0.14 metric tons. Earlier in the thread it was stated that approximately 1,000,000,000,000 gallons of crude oil were produced in 2003. This works out to about 3,333,333,332 tons of crude oil. Assuming we’re only harvesting blue whales, and the average weight of a blue whale is about 180 tons, and a whale consists of 100% blubber, this means we’d need to harvest 18,518,518 whales to equal the amount of crude oil produced in 2003. Whales don’t consist of 100% blubber. ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/13 "2006-03-24T07:07:11Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Doing a few quick calculations: > > 1 barrel of crude oil is approximately 0.14 metric tons. Earlier in the thread it was stated that approximately 1,000,000,000,000 gallons of crude oil were produced in 2003. This works out to about 3,333,333,332 tons of crude oil. Assuming we’re only harvesting blue whales, and the average weight of a blue whale is about 180 tons, and a whale consists of 100% blubber, this means we’d need to harvest 18,518,518 whales to equal the amount of crude oil produced in 2003. > > Whales don’t consist of 100% blubber. This further assumes 100% yield of the energy, when in reality a huge amount of energy is going to used just to produce the whale oil. Between that and the fact of whales not being completely blubber, I bet we can ratchet the requirement up by a couple orders of magnitude. Ballpark… a billion whales a year? Doesn’t matter, really. Both my number and yours are laughably large. All large whale species today count their populations _far, far_ lower than one million. How long would it take to breed them up to the numbers we’re asking for, and where could be possibly get enough food? _Where do you keep 18 million whales?_ And what would they do to the world oceanic ecosystem if we _didn’t_ keep them penned in somehow? In short, there are millions of reasons why meeting the world’s energy needs by large-scale whale harvesting is extremely impractical. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/14 "2006-03-24T08:11:26Z")
Guesstimating at 20% blubber, and then 70% conversion rate to usable fuel (14%), we need 132,275,129 whales slaughtered a year to maintain current fuel use. According to Wikipedia, there are currently only a few thousand blue whales per ocean in the world–so we’ll say a total of 15,000. Any one female can have a calf every other year, which starting at the age of 7 and lasting until…age 31(?) gives them the ability to birth 12 calfs over their life, half of which we will assume to be female. So, if we had all the artificial insemination and whatnot all ready to go for blue whales, we could ramp up to 132 million whales in a period of… (1 \* 12) / 2 = 6 (6 \* 12) / 2 = 36 (36 \* 12) / 2 = 216 (216 \* 12) / 2 = 1296 1296 \* 12 = 15552 as the multiplier of whales (we need 8000 about to hit 132 million whales) So midway through the fifth generation of whales we would have our needed number of whales. So with a seven year difference between generations… 7 \* 5 + ((31 - 7) / 2) = 47 So in about 47 years it is theoretically possible to have enough blue whales to meet our needed blubber source (give or take a lot given all the guesstimates) at modern time. Fuel cells and such are, I believe charted as 15-20 years down the line. So now, we need somewhere to put each whale. So let’s arbitraily say that they need at least 30m[sup]2[/sup] of horizontal ocean per each whale. So the total area of the ocean is 361,132,000 km[sup]2[/sup] or 361,132,000,000 m[sup]2[/sup]. We would need 3,968,253,870 m[sup]2[/sup] of ocean for them to roam, or about 1% of the ocean for our blue whale farms. Which isn’t including our krill farms nor land farms. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/15 "2006-03-24T13:26:31Z")
Can whale oil even be used in cars? It doesn’t seem likely. At the very least, you’d have to retrofit all cars to use it, plus figure out a distribution scheme (most gas stations, for instance, don’t have anywhere to put whale oil). ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/16 "2006-03-24T14:01:39Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Several reasons: > > … > 4) Green Peace would raid and bomb your operations once a week. While you are right that killing whales not only won’t come close to solving the oil depeltion crisis and will certainly result in protest, please don’t casually slander Greenpeace. Not only has [Greenpeace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace) NEVER bombed anyone, they espouse nonviolent action. Other environmental groups have criticized Greenpeace for being too mainstream. More to the point, Greenpeace has _been_ [bombed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior) by a nation-state intent on protecting its own media image. It’s hugely ironic that Greenpeace has never bombed and never killed anyone, and in fact, been the victim of a bombing attack that killed one of their photographers, and yet people today casually toss off the thought that you’d get “bombed by Greenpeace”. Nation-states – basically, _us_, in organized form – have a long history of dealing ruthlessly with anyone who they perceive gets in their way. Greenpeace, _so far,_ does not. Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/17 "2006-03-24T14:06:25Z")
Why not blubber? Not done, old chap. Just not done. Stiff upper lip and all that. ::reads the thread:: Oh. Sorry. Carry on. goes and blubbers in a corner ---
**Author:** ![Bewildebeest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bewildebeest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bewildebeest)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/18 "2006-03-24T14:14:57Z")
Not to hijack or anything, but wouldn’t it be easier to just render old, fat people when they die? It’s not like there’s a shortage. Oh my God! Oylent Green is PEOPLE! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/19 "2006-03-24T15:33:19Z")
As a semi-aside, wasn’t mineral oil first industrially exploited in the late 19th century as substitute for the increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain whale oil, used for lamps, lubrication and so on? I seem to recall that demand was booming and supply not keeping pace two hundred years ago - this would indicate a pretty poor prognosis for switching back again after 100+ years of insatiable demand growth. And I think all the calculations so far are neglecting the energy overhead of harvesting and processing the krill for whalefood, and then the need to herd/catch/render the whales. No idea how that compares to current petroleum processing, but we’d probably need more whales… ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688/20 "2006-03-24T15:35:39Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > …late 19th century… two hundred years ago… 100+ years… Thingy. Whatever. You sorta know what I mean. What’s a century here or there, in the grand scheme of things? :smack: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-blubber/349688.md?page=2)