The text is auto generated, so sorry if there are some odd translations…
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[Music]
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[Music]
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welcome to this edition when the biomass
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hits the wind turbine a discussion of
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sustainable living and what that means
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to you and me i’m annie Warmke and I am
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Jay Warmke and today we have another dead white
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scientist episode oh boy I can hardly
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wait and J what are we going to talk
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about today we’re gonna talk about from
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whale oil to kerosene or let there be
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light
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Wow and a lot of people don’t realize ok
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I’m gonna be geeking out again here on
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this one but a lot of people when they
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talk about energy don’t really realize
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that the early days of energy was all
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about light right lighting your home
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that was the big search that was the big
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app you know we think about energy like
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for automobiles or industry or whatever
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but those things were not a big factor
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yet mostly just people were tired of
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sitting around in the dark and they were
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trying to figure out some way how do you
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staff later at night to light their fire
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yeah so so here’s the myth this is this
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is an oft old story by whom by people
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who tell stories often this is the story
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of of essentially how we went from whale
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oil to kerosene and and the reason why
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this is a big deal is people use this as
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an illustration of the inevitability of
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market forces and why if you just leave
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everything alone it will be okay right
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and the myth goes that at some point
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people began to use whale oil to light
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their home it was it was clean it didn’t
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stink it was a good source of light
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lighting oil by the early 1800s whale
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oil was costing as much as two dollars a
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gallon which is the equivalent of $200 a
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gallon today so it had gotten super
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expensive but wait a minute don’t people
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realize there’s only so many whales in
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the world this is the 1800s man
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everything is unlimited and and this is
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where the in retrospect we say okay they
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they’ve hunted these whales to the point
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of
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distinction the price of the product
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gets so high that some where along the
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line fell up in Canada and that’s
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kerosene and suddenly the whale oil
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industry is replaced by the petroleum
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industry whale oil selling for $200 a
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gallon you can buy kerosene for five
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cents a gallon and everything’s
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hunky-dory so this is the myth and
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people will say ok so therefore there’s
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no global warming no need for government
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intervention industry will take care of
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itself
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just look at what happened with whales
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you know yeah they became rare the cost
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went up a replacement technology came
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along in the nick of time and we’re
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saved it doesn’t make any sense so we
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better move on well it does make sense
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it’s just not true well that’s why it
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doesn’t make sense I mean there’s no
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part of it that makes sense so let’s
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look a little bit about the history of
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whales because because this was the
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technology this was the the apple of its
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day right and the technology Apple it
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was the big the big company oh the big
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company the bigger are the big apple
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whales were the big company right well
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in fact by the by the middle of the
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1800s
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whale hunting and whale oil production
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was the 5th largest industry in the
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United States yeah but you’re a pretty
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small country still you know don’t
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diminish ok smells a pretty big thing
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here yeah all right so if we go way back
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to the way what happened to candles and
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fire and all that stuff where they still
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using that yeah obviously obviously but
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if you could afford it whale oil was
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also is rich people well that’s who
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writes history so if we go way back to
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the beginning of the colonies John
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Captain John Smith right those Smith’s
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they were really and this is like the
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Pocahontas John Smith this is the real
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John Smith right ok not the fake one who
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signed in at the hotel anyway so this is
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the the pocus huh well he he had come
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here he had established the
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the virginia colony he headed back to
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europe that a little bit bored decided
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he was going to come back to america and
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do some mapping map the coast for the
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for the powers that be but he came back
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there were so many whales he got
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distracted right he was like there’s
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money to be made in killing these whales
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that’s good all that’s what I always
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think I think there’s too many of
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something let’s just that’s right Elam
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so um so anyway there were by seventeen
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thirty or so that the oil industry had
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centered up around Nantucket they were
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harvesting oil the industry continued to
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grow if you read a lot of the history
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and it’s it’s pretty interesting you
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know we always think about these these
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Hardy pioneers out there but once again
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the lawyers were involved because if
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somebody would kill a whale or try and
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kill a whale it may not they may not
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retrieve the carcass in fact it may sink
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and then come to the surface later and
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float up onto the shore and then they
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would get into these big lawsuits about
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who owned the body of this whale that
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washed up on shore and and this was
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happening in New York and there was a
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lot of lawyers involved this is the
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history and America was not settled by
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pioneers I think it was settled by
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lawyers and who sued litigants so anyway
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so so this industry continues to grow up
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until really the Revolutionary War and
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the Revolutionary War these big Wars are
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usually big transition periods both in
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technology and and in the history of a
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country so by by 1774 the whale industry
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was pretty big but the British had just
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kicked the the French out of Canada and
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they had fought a war they wanted to pay
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for this war so they decided to tax put
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a duty on whale oil and they decided
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that only if you if you were not British
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you had to pay this tax and they
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considered that the Americans were not
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British which is kind of a weird
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situation if you figure because the
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Americans were feeling they were British
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they’re British subjects well that’s
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iffy but the other thing that was going
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on was that they could that Americans
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the people in the colonies could only
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use goods that came from Britain they
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were not allowed to produce things on
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their own so they were in a precarious
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position yeah and what ended up
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happening is they said all right if
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you’re not British what you’re not mr.
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America you have to pay this duty but
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you’re not allowed to sell the oil to
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anybody except the British so therefore
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you have to sell it to us and you have
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to pay this duty so that wasn’t all that
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Pleasant there was already this tax
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ation without representation and Fife’s
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and drums going around well when America
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declared their independence then it was
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no-holds-barred the British then felt
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that the whaling fleet of America was
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fair game and these whalers would
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sometimes go out for several years
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looking for whales and if they were
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stopped by a British ship at that point
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they either had to join the British Army
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or Navy
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in this case or be put in prison so it
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was fairly decimating not only to the
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Whalers but then at one point Sir Henry
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Clinton decided to attack New Bedford
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Massachusetts there had been about a
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hundred and fifty whalers operating out
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of New Bedford and all but just a
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hundred and thirty four of these boats
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were either destroyed or captured and
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the whole town was razed
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so essentially the war ended the
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American whaling for that for that
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moment but so tell me about caffeine
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can’t pronounce it ca MP h en e
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caffeine can’t feet I’ve never heard
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this word Jim point it was it was
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actually well this was the next big
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thing right whaling was decimated it
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grew back up and and really by the 1850s
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was a pretty good-sized industry this is
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the way the myth goes whaling was the
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source of oil well that wasn’t true
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because caffeine as you mentioned was
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developed by a fella named Henry
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Porter in Bangor Maine you know the best
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people come Henri’s of Maine and he sold
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it
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just like toothpaste and and he actually
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marketed under a thing called Porter’s
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burning fluid because it was really
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quite a catchy title and it was mostly
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it was basically grain alcohol with a
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little bit of turpentine added and then
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they know it would be really flammable
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yeah and it tended to burn down houses
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and I was going to say are people all
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these little problems you know I know it
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where’s the controls oh no standards so
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Henry Porter he started marketing this
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stuff and it was doing well by 1856 he
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sold the company to Rufus Spalding and
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and I love the fact Rufus Spalding I
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when I was doing some research on this I
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found him only in the patent records as
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having invented what he called the bug
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destroyer which is like this thing you
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put on your back and you spray potato
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bugs with it so this is Henry spa Oh
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Rufus Spaulding’s big claim to fame
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so in he began marketing Henry Porter’s
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burning fluid or Porter’s burning fluid
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well this was this in fact by 1850 cam
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Fein was selling huge amounts as
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compared to the to the whale oil I’ve
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got some numbers here I’ll have to find
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them but were they when it cheaper than
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the whale oil oh yeah yeah much cheaper
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in fact it was selling for about 50
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cents a gallon where the whale oil was
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selling a dollar thirty to two dollars
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and fifty cents a gallon it had sold as
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much as I think it was like 90 million
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gallons in 1850 as opposed to like three
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million gallons of whale oil was this
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corn liquor they were using its grain
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alcohol so it could have been drunk I
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guess except for that turpentine yeah so
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about the same time because as we always
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like to say when something’s going on
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over here something’s happening
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there well Abraham Gesner up in Nova
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Scotia he was a medical doctor and he’s
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playing around and he develops what he
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called kerosene from the Greek word
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meaning wax oil but he developed it out
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of coal and it was basically coal oil
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and he found that this actually produced
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a good light when put into a lamp that
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he had built and he tried to he obtained
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patents for it tried to set up a factory
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he tried to market it in New Brunswick
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but he was blocked by the coal industry
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who claimed that kerosene was actually
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coal because it was made from coal and
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took him to court so he couldn’t develop
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his industry up in Canada because the
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courts agreed oddly enough and so he
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moved down to to New York to set up his
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factory and a lot of people will say
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that it was Abraham Gesner who developed
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kerosene the big app but actually like
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almost every invention that we ever
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talked about here it was it was not it
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was not invented by him it was there
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their ninth century references in the
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Persian scholars in fact the Persian
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scholar
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Rossi’s talked about in his book I love
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the the kitab al azar or the book of
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secrets talking about kerosene what
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about the Chinese they invented it the
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Chinese invented it yeah in fact there’s
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there’s they were using it for lamps and
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heating homes as early as 1500 BC so
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when we talk about history I guess we’re
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only talking about white men dead white
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guys and in North America most that’s
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right unless they’re scottish then okay
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we give him so so anyway so he comes
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down he creates the North American Gas
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Light Company and miraculously this is
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where our tale ends right that that
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whale oil has now been supplanted by
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kerosene because of the natural order of
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the
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this is the myth that that is handed
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down and in fact you’ll find it on most
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of the American petroleum industry
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websites of today it’s it’s a great a
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great little myth so you’re listening to
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when the biomass it’s the wind turbine
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with Jay and Annie Warmke reminding
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you that it’s the end of the world as we
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know it and thank God and it’s the end
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of whale oil the end of kerosene
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well the whales were glad about that man
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well I’m not quite sure how happy they
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were we didn’t stop hunting them to
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extinction anyway not not yet but we’re
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still working on it
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so so tell me now about commercial oil
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refinement because it strikes me that
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all of these things that you’re talking
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about cap camp theme and kerosene and
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some other things all require a certain
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agenda theme well I mean so to go from
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coal to kerosene being coal I mean
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there’s refinement going on there so so
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what went on with commercial oil
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refinement how did that develop well
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it’s kind of funny because I mean you
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love the dead dead white scientist stuff
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and and the oil industry is often
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credited as as beginning in Pennsylvania
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when Edwin Drake drilled the first
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American commercial oil well and there’s
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a lot of Mythology around that and in
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Titusville Pennsylvania and the industry
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grew up there there’s a lot of arguments
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that is start in Pennsylvania to start
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in Ohio to start in West Virginia there
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are different people who will make these
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arguments and and I’m sure somebody will
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sue somebody over it because that’s what
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already happened I’m sure but the
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grandfather of the American oil industry
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it’s gotta be William Murdoch no he’s
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coming no I love this guy Samuel Martin
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here Samuel my guy you’ve never heard of
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and and it’s so typical of the oil
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industry in 1851 right he’s like he’s
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like digging for salt while I was in the
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1840s
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he’s digging for salt
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really important stuff it was high price
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then and there was this petroleum that
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kept getting into his salt wells so what
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does he do like a typical oil refinery
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he dumped it into a nearby river to get
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rid of this oil stuff until the oil like
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caught the river on fire and then his
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brilliance was there’s money to be made
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in that fire right he starts going you
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know what that stuff is bright maybe we
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can burn that so he develops this oil
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lime lamp and he begins marketing it as
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carbon oil and it was distilled from
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crude oil and it turned out it was a lot
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easier basically to make kerosene this
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carbon oil from oil than it was to make
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it from coal like like Gesner had been
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doing so so he took this otherwise
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worthless by-product that he was
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throwing into the rivers and he created
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what was referred to as rock oil or
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Seneca oil and actually the very first
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thing he tried to do is sell it as a
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medicine oh my god I heard about that
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why was it mixed with it was something
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really awful well it was mostly just oil
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I know and people were taking yeah we
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carried something so I’m not sure why so
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he was packaging this stuff is patent
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medicine charging 50 cents a bottle for
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it good stuff he then started making
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petroleum butter which we would call
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petroleum it’s really hard to imagine
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how that tasted going down well these
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that’s why I’d life expectancy was right
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so he’s selling petroleum jelly selling
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this guzzlin you know guzzle yourself a
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bottle of Senna coil
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neither of these surprisingly was a
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commercial success petroleum jelly
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yeah yeah that’s still around today yeah
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the same thing I have no idea and a
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lubricant yeah well a topical ointment
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that’s I bet it is the same thing so he
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starts selling this carbon oil to local
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coal miners in 1850 he has an app for a
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lamp and he’s beginning to market that
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but he never patented this stuff there
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you go
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him again but even so he was making
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about 40 grand a year
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Wow that was big money millions today
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big money so he established the very
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first oil refinery in Pittsburg on
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seventh Avenue near Grant Street look it
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up it’s gonna be diagnosed right where
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the Monongahela and the higher river
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yeah well they probably threw the extra
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I’m sure it used to be horrible there
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so anyway said so by this time then oil
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was selling for about 50 cents now the
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kerosene 50 cents a gallon so so really
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what had happened was whale oil which
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had been the mainstay had been
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supplanted by you mean replaced
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well it wasn’t replaced it was still but
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caffeine came along and it was cheaper
18:42
it was a better alternative so that one
18:44
was selling quite a lot well then again
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another alternative came up which was
18:49
kerosene so you’ve got three competing
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technologies going on right about 1860
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well what else happened in it but
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where’s mr. Mergen well Murdock is like
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1794 he had invented the gas light so
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that’s a fourth competing technology
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right gas lighting
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campign kerosene whale oil and don’t
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forget there was still lard you know
19:15
large round and there’s a civil war no
19:19
another big push another big push coming
19:21
technology industry guess what happened
19:24
in the beginning of the Civil War it was
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people that killed okay
19:28
these details so no I’m talking kerosene
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here man oh I don’t know turpentine
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which is a part of caffeine came from
19:38
the south the north south south cut off
19:42
turpentine so there was no turpentine
19:45
but then another thing happened in 1862
19:48
the in turn the Internal Revenue Service
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the IRS was founded and it was founded
19:55
to pay the costs of the Civil War and
19:57
the very first thing they did was put a
20:00
$2 a gallon tax on alcohol well cam Fein
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now is competing remember
20:08
was selling for about 50 cents a gallon
20:10
now it’s gonna know it’s two and a half
20:12
bucks ago yeah competing against
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kerosene that didn’t have any tax on it
20:17
so immediately the governmental policies
20:21
pushed the petroleum industry to the
20:24
forefront and completely crushed the
20:28
competition so the oil industry was
20:31
founded through government subsidy well
20:35
isn’t that the case pretty much I mean
20:38
welfare to corporations is still still
20:41
huge it has always been the sweet oh
20:44
that’s right well they’re the ones that
20:45
make the rules boys
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so Gesner in 1863 said ah forget this
20:50
I’m heading back up to Canada right so
20:53
he sold his patents and he headed back
20:56
up to Halifax actually went to work at I
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guess it’s pronounced Alois University
21:03
and as everything comes around the first
21:06
American woman to walk in space was from
21:09
that University not in that year though
21:11
it was two or three years later skip
21:22
ahead to my careers for heaven’s sake
21:25
alright so so we we see this happening
21:28
where the Civil War comes along and not
21:30
only decimated the the campaign industry
21:32
it bolstered the kerosene industry
21:35
whaling was a big issue and it was so of
21:39
the the Whalers actually one of the
21:42
Norse strategies was to take these whale
21:44
boats and sink them in the in the
21:45
entrances of harbors in the south and so
21:49
they blocked the traffic going in and
21:51
out but the Whalers ended up basically
21:55
the fleet was was decimated once again
21:58
so so where where are we how do we come
22:03
back to all of this stuff well the IRS
22:05
our friends at the Internal Revenue
22:07
Service actually published a report that
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stated that in 1860 the American
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marketplace was burning about ninety
22:17
million gallons of cab
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or burning oil Porter’s birding oil a
22:22
year I have a question though who’s
22:26
making all that alcohol because it was
22:28
was it legal to make your own alcohol it
22:31
was not only it was necessary I mean
22:34
right everybody anyone with a still and
22:36
some corn or some sugar beet I know well
22:38
I’m just wondering though there were no
22:40
revenue men coming after you well this
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is where the IRS stepped in oh that’s
22:44
right yeah the two dollar a gallon
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that’s that was not a very popular
22:48
decision so the IRS has a lot to ask
22:51
answer for they also came up with the
22:54
income tax but that was a different
22:56
issue then the whale oil really had
22:58
peaked at 18 million gallons so if you
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compare the ninety million gallons of
23:03
caffeine with the 18 million and as you
23:05
stated you’ve never even heard of can
23:07
see no I never but we’ve all heard whale
23:09
oil and all of that well that was still
23:11
just a drop in the proverbial oil bucket
23:14
compared to caffeine at that time and by
23:17
1875 it had dropped all the way down to
23:19
about 3 million gallons a canteen no
23:23
whales Oh whales were probably mostly
23:26
dead I wouldn’t say that they had been
23:28
excessive ated that quickly I think the
23:31
industry was dead the whales you know
23:34
they’re slow it doesn’t help that they
23:36
destroyed most of the boats and they
23:38
killed off so many of the whales in the
23:40
process of it and then what the
23:42
government subsidies by 1870 kerosene
23:45
had risen to about 200 million gallons
23:50
so really by the end of the Civil War
23:53
kerosene or the oil industry through
23:56
governmental policies I was just gonna
23:58
say those lobbying boys must have been
24:00
mighty busy there you go and and then
24:03
you know you’re saying all right well
24:05
kerosene is now set to to dominate which
24:08
it did but but then we start to see 1878
24:13
Edison creates the electric light Matt
24:16
silly Ohio and he just is such a
24:18
marketer isn’t he so really kerosene was
24:22
still the primary product of the oil
24:26
industry and and it remained so until
24:30
really Rockefeller came up with
24:33
idea of using gasoline which was a
24:35
byproduct right they used to throw that
24:37
away in the coyote Rockefeller the oil
24:39
industry now they’re Ohio company there
24:43
in fact that’s why that’s where kerosene
24:46
was the primary motivation for refining
24:50
oil it wasn’t until the internal
24:52
combustion engine right around the turn
24:54
of the century converted over to
24:56
gasoline that the oil industry got sort
24:59
of its second wind that will be
25:01
discussion for another day but I’ll
25:03
close on this because I just I just love
25:06
how government works right you do not I
25:09
do I love every bit of it
25:11
so by 1878 the government commissioned a
25:15
report to figure out what happened to
25:18
the wheel industry so the industry’s
25:23
dead invariants and now they’re going to
25:24
come out with this report so a fella by
25:27
the name of Alexander Starbuck he coffee
25:32
shop after that I’m sure that’s where
25:34
that came from and in 1878 he published
25:37
a history of the American whale fishery
25:40
a report for the Commissioner of fish
25:42
and fisheries which is funny because
25:44
whales are not fish but we won’t but
25:47
anyway he’s he happens to be a direct
25:50
descendant from the Starbucks of
25:54
Nantucket and if you ever read the book
25:57
Moby Dick one of the main characters in
26:00
that book is Starbuck and it comes full
26:04
circle what can I say mm-hmm you’ve been
26:08
listening to when the biomass hits the
26:10
wind turbine with Jay and Annie Warmke
26:13
along with our famous now famous Emmy
26:15
award-winning producer Adam Rich
26:18
infamous thank you for spending a bit of
26:20
time with us and as my grandmother
26:23
probably used to say the secret to a
26:26
happy and sustainable life is to blame
26:29
nice with others clean up your own mess
26:33
don’t dump kerosene into the rivers and
26:36
eat your vegetables no problem
26:38
[Music]
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[Music]
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you can find more information on living
27:15
sustainably in our unsustainable world
27:17
at Blue Rock station calm
27:19
[Music]
27:23
you
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[Music]