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I'm not going to read that site because I'm fairly well informed on these issues and don't need to refer to paranoid sources. There's far more than 200 years worth of nuclear power available, it's just silly to think otherwise. You might have to dip into thorium, but that's going to last awhile.
As for electric cars, as mentioned the main problem is the batteries, which limit the range and take time to recharge. I'm still wondering what the numbers would be on a hybrid where it was just an electric motor with a gas/diesel generator charging the battery as needed. I know that's how they do it with some trains.
"What About the Hydrogen Economy?"
Astronomical Cost of Fuel Cells: $1,000,000 per fuel cell
Platinum Supply and Cost: Current uses of Platinum are earmarked for other processes
Inability to Store Massive Quantities at Low Cost:
Massive Cost of Hydrogen Infrastructure:
Hydrogen's "Energy Sink" Factor: Use energy to make energy "Perpetual motion machine?" you lose out
Copy Paste from the Website about Hyrdrogen
"What About the Hydrogen Economy?"
As of 2003, the average hydrogen fuel cell costs close to $1,000,000. Unlike other alternatives, hydrogen fuel cells have shown little sign of coming down in price. Source Unfortunately, hydrogen and/or hydrogen fuel cells will never power more than a handful of cars due to the following reasons:
Astronomical Cost of Fuel Cells
With fuel cell powered cars themselves costing $1,000,000 a piece, replacing just 210 million cars -or less than 1/4 of the world's automotive fleet -with fuel cell powered cars would cost $210,000,000,000,000. (That's two-hundred and ten trillion dollars.) Source
Furthermore, as a recent article in EV World points out, the average fuel cell lasts only 200 hours. Source Two hundred hours translates into just 12,000 miles, or about one year’s worth of driving at 60 miles per hour. That's not much of a deal for a car with a million-dollar price tag.
That doesn't even begin to address the cost of replacing a significant portion of the millions upon millions of oil-powered airplanes, boats, trucks, tractors, trailers, etc., with fuel cells nor the construction of a worldwide system to maintain all of these new technologies.
Platinum Supply and Cost
A single hydrogen fuel cell requires approximately 20-50 grams of platinum. Source Let's say we want to replace 1/4 of the world's petroleum powered cars with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. Twenty-to-fifty grams of platinum per fuel cell x 210 million fuel cells equals between 4.2 billion and 10.5 billion grams of platinum required for the conversion. Unfortunately, world platinum production is currently at only about 240 million grams per year, most of which is already earmarked for thousands of indispensable industrial processes.
If the hydrogen economy was anything other than a total red herring, such issues would eventually arise as 80 percent of the world’s proven platinum reserves are located in that bastion of geopolitical stability, South Africa. Source
Even if an economically affordable and scalable alternative to platinum is immediately located and mined in absolutely massive quantities, the ability of hydrogen to replace even a small portion of our oil consumption is still handicapped by several fundamental limitations, some of which are detailed below. NASA, which fuels the space shuttle with hydrogen, may be able to afford to get around the following challenges, but there is a big difference between launching a single space shuttle and running a $50 trillion global economy with a voracious and constantly growing appetite for energy.
Inability to Store Massive Quantities at Low Cost:
Hydrogen is the smallest element known to man. This makes it virtually impossible to store in the massive quantities and to transport across the incredibly long distances at the low costs required by our vast global transportation networks. In her February 2005 article entitled "Hydrogen Economy: Energy and Economic Blackhole," Alice Friedemann writes:
Hydrogen is the Houdini of elements. As soon as you’ve gotten it
into a container, it wants to get out, and since it’s the lightest of
all gases, it takes a lot of effort to keep it from escaping. Storage
devices need a complex set of seals, gaskets, and valves. Liquid
hydrogen tanks for vehicles boil off at 3-4% per day. Source
While some research into hydrogen storage technologies looks promising, it is still in the experimental stages and decades (at the earliest) from being ready to scale on an industrial level. Source
Massive Cost of Hydrogen Infrastructure:
A hydrogen economy would require massive retrofitting of our entire global transportation and fuel distribution networks. At a million dollars per car, it would cost $350,000,000,000,000 to replace half of our current automotive fleet (700 million cars world wide) with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.
That doesn't even account for replacing a significant fraction of our oil-powered airplanes or boats with fuel cells.
The numbers don't get any prettier if we scrap the fuel cells and go with straight hydrogen. According to a recent article in Nature, entitled "Hydrogen Economy Looks Out of Reach:"
Converting every vehicle in the United States to hydrogen-power
would demand so much electricity that the country would need
enough wind turbines to cover half of California or 1,000 extra
nuclear power stations. Source
Unfortunately, even if we managed to get this ridiculously high number of wind turbines or nuclear power plants built, we would still need to build the hydrogen powered cars, in addition to a hydrogen distribution network that would be mind-boggingly expensive. The construction of a hydrogen pipeline network comparable to our current natural gas pipeline network, for instance, would cost 200 trillion dollars. That's about fifteen times the size of the US GDP in the year 2006.
How such capital intensive endeavors will be completed in the midst of massive energy shortages is anybody's guess.
Hydrogen's "Energy Sink" Factor:
As mentioned previously, solar, wind, or nuclear energy can be used to "crack" hydrogen from water via a process known as electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes more energy than it produces. Source This has nothing to do with the financial costs. Again, Alice Friedemann explains:
The laws of physics mean the hydrogen economy will always be an
energy sink. Hydrogen’s properties require you to spend more
energy to do the following than you get out of it later: overcome
waters’ hydrogen-oxygen bond, to move heavy cars, to prevent
leaks and brittle metals, to transport hydrogen to the destination.
It doesn’t matter if all of the problems are solved, or how much
money is spent. You will use more energy to create, store, and
transport hydrogen than you will ever get out of it.
Even if these problems are ignored or assumed away, you are still faced with jaw-dropping costs of a renewable derived hydrogen economy. In addition to the 200 trillion dollar pipeline network that would be necessary to move the hydrogen around, we would need to deploy about 40 trillion dollars of solar panels. If the hydrogen was derived from wind (which is usually more efficient than solar) the cost might be lowered considerably, but that's not saying much when you are dealing with numbers as large as $40 trillion.
As far as how much you as the consumer would pay for hydrogen fuel derived from renewable resources, Joseph Romm, author of The Hype About Hydrogen, estimates you will have to pay $10-$20 per gallon of gasoline equivalent, assuming you can even find a renewable-hydrogen filling station. Source
For more information, see:
The Hydrogen Economy is a Red Herring
It's there on the site, it can be figured out by running the scenario in your head. Hydrogen is bad and will amount to little or nothing. Novel idea yes, practical solution no.
Did that site really say that a hydrogen fuel cell will always cost $1,000,000, forever, and then base predictions off of that? Really?
Really?
Also, "you can't get more energy out of hydrogen than you put in, so it won't ever be useful!" Hey, guess what? You can't get more energy out of a lithium battery than you put in, either. That's not what it's for.
I apologize for trying to get an opinion on a body of text which you can clearly tell is paranoid psycho mumbo jumbo, especially considering your great choice of refusing to read and deny any potential information contained therein. I humbly withdraw any and all opinions on this issue, I did not know what I was honestly expecting other than some people to run around in circles with me or dismiss me out of hand as some lunatic preaching on a soap box. Thank you for any time you have or have not "wasted" on this thread as it has already been talked into oblivion before.
I'm not going to read that site because I'm fairly well informed on these issues and don't need to refer to paranoid sources. There's far more than 200 years worth of nuclear power available, it's just silly to think otherwise. You might have to dip into thorium, but that's going to last awhile.
There's also an assumption to those kinds of numbers that efficiencies won't be discovered along the way.
As for electric cars, as mentioned the main problem is the batteries, which limit the range and take time to recharge. I'm still wondering what the numbers would be on a hybrid where it was just an electric motor with a gas/diesel generator charging the battery as needed. I know that's how they do it with some trains.
Would a combination of capicitors and batteries work at all? I also think about setting things up like "parking grids". You're still limited by long range, but for short trips, you'd be able to charge "anywhere".
I apologize for trying to get an opinion on a body of text which you can clearly tell is paranoid psycho mumbo jumbo, especially considering your great choice of refusing to read and deny any potential information contained therein. I humbly withdraw any and all opinions on this issue, I did not know what I was honestly expecting other than some people to run around in circles with me or dismiss me out of hand as some lunatic preaching on a soap box. Thank you for any time you have or have not "wasted" on this thread as it has already been talked into oblivion before.
Cheers
I mean shit, I read halfway into that oil price one before it descended into meaningless paranoia using otherwise reasonable figures. The doomsday speakers for Peak Oil are so often ignorant of basic economics, and don't appreciate that there will be demand response to increasing prices by lowering consumption. Hell even Bill Fucking O'Reilly is pushing conservation really really hard right now. Mostly to stick it to the oil companies, but good enough for me.
There's plenty of lowhanging fruit on the consumption side that can be dealt with, which requires effort but won't substantially affect the quality of life.
I'm not going to read that site because I'm fairly well informed on these issues and don't need to refer to paranoid sources. There's far more than 200 years worth of nuclear power available, it's just silly to think otherwise. You might have to dip into thorium, but that's going to last awhile.
There's also an assumption to those kinds of numbers that efficiencies won't be discovered along the way.
As for electric cars, as mentioned the main problem is the batteries, which limit the range and take time to recharge. I'm still wondering what the numbers would be on a hybrid where it was just an electric motor with a gas/diesel generator charging the battery as needed. I know that's how they do it with some trains.
Would a combination of capicitors and batteries work at all? I also think about setting things up like "parking grids". You're still limited by long range, but for short trips, you'd be able to charge "anywhere".
I asked my brother about the viability of supercapacitors (he's a electrical engineer in the power industry), and his opinion was that they wouldn't be a replacement for batteries, but could be used in the system for rapid bursts because they are good at charging and discharging a bunch, more so than a regular battery. At least I think that is what he was saying. I pictured it as sort of like a cache in computer parlance.
Yeah, the idea to switch in and out batteries has been around, and I'm not sure about the viability of it. It would at very least require development of infrastructure to support that.
The changes in communication can enable me to not need to physically relocate. I can run my job from my house if I need to. The only reason I go into work is because my bosses think they need to get face time out of the employees.
That may be true for you, and for the people who make up laws, but it's not true for the majority of people in America.
Construction, Farming, Retail, Food Service, Factory Work, Live Entertainment, Movie Theaters, Repair/Maintenance, Law Enforcement, Science, etc etc etc etc etc etc ad infinitum, relies on transportation, and very very often, extreme mobility.
Seriously, this is a strawman that keeps the working class wanting to beat the faces of distance-pampered yuppies in and get blood all over their cubicles.
There is a hell of a lot of infrastructure and location required for a hell of a lot of jobs, and since human beings insist on having spouses and children it gets even worse.
And, actually, face time is very important sometimes, especially for choosing future leaders. Home office types tend not to go very far in a company.
The strong will survive, the weak will die, humanity will move on.
If people are actually concerned, go ahead and buy some land, install a rainwater capture system, some solar panels would help with comforts. Start farming plants and crawfish. Make sure to pick up some weapons - I'd suggest a converted Saiga 7.62x39mm. You can get 1000 rounds of Wolf ammo for a couple hundred. Pick up some antibiotics from Mexico and that's a healthy start.
When alternative fuel sources become profitable, big businesses will invest money towards their development.
All you gots 'ta do is follow the money
My own view of the matter is pretty similar to this.
I have absolutley no proof to back up what i'm going to say. Its purely speculative. Now that i've covered myself i'll start my little rant.
People keep going on about this oil crisis and how we're all fucked when it runs out. Wars, starvation and all that kind of thing. Which is of course very very bad.
However this means that executive boards of oil companies have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
I honestly think (and this is the part where everyone calls me crazy) that alternative sources of fuel have already been found and if not already perfected, they're almost there. The reason we don't know about them is because right now oil companies are making a fuckton of money off oil. There is nowhere in the UK where a litre of petrol is under £1. Its just good business to keep alternatives to oil secret. Hell its what i would do.
However this means that executive boards of oil companys have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
problem is that by the time this happens the current execs would have long since retired and probably died of old age.
So they all think: "Hey, why should I waste my money on research when I can make a lot of cash selling expensive oil and just let the next guy take care of it!"
So they will pass the buck till the company is too far in the shitter to recover... at which point the government will probably bail them out any way.
However this means that executive boards of oil companys have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
They have thought that. They've even invested in finding that replacement product. However, petroleum is still their main thrust because it's so much more efficient and cost-effective than any alternative, and they don't believe that peak oil is impending.
However this means that executive boards of oil companys have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
They have thought that. They've even invested in finding that replacement product. However, petroleum is still their main thrust because it's so much more efficient and cost-effective than any alternative, and they don't believe that peak oil is impending.
I agree. The oil industry is not full of stupid idiots out to just make money, as some people seem to think they are, or that the execs don't care. They are in the business of staying in business. First off, its a company, there are young people. They will be around for a while, and have a vested interest in the company doing well. Oil is doing so well right now because it is one of the most energy dense materials that we have. As well, they do their own studies, etc, to look at oil around the world. They have probably some of the best data on how much oil there is left in the world. Most of the oil companies, though, have dumped millions of dollars into alternative and future energy research. They just don't want to go under right now switching over completely.
However this means that executive boards of oil companys have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
They have thought that. They've even invested in finding that replacement product. However, petroleum is still their main thrust because it's so much more efficient and cost-effective than any alternative, and they don't believe that peak oil is impending.
I agree. The oil industry is not full of stupid idiots out to just make money, as some people seem to think they are, or that the execs don't care. They are in the business of staying in business. First off, its a company, there are young people. They will be around for a while, and have a vested interest in the company doing well. Oil is doing so well right now because it is one of the most energy dense materials that we have. As well, they do their own studies, etc, to look at oil around the world. They have probably some of the best data on how much oil there is left in the world. Most of the oil companies, though, have dumped millions of dollars into alternative and future energy research. They just don't want to go under right now switching over completely.
This is pretty much my argument, summed up by someone with a better grasp of english.
I imagine Shell has put more money into alternative energy than any other company in the world. Exxon probably isn't far behind. Along with that, they've put tens of billions of dollars in capital projects in the last 5 years. As some have mentioned, they are energy companies. They don't care in the end where their profits come from, so long as there are profits. I wonder how many people realize there are negative refining margins at some companies right now. I'll tell you one thing for sure, the downstream sectors in the oil companies are very unhappy about the cost of a barrel.
Anyway, just though I'd shed some light.
Continue with all the sky is falling business. Let me know when we're going to riot in Houston.
So I went and read "The Outlook for Energy" report on Exxon's website that the OP website linked to. It has a slide that talks about the U.S. Power Generation requirements for electricity and has a graph that shows coal provides 50% of that demand, nuclear 22%, and natural gas/oil only provides <20%. Now granted we are not talking any oil used in manufacturering, transportation, etc but as far as our electricity needs, we are not as dependent on oil as that website would like us to believe.
Transportation is the big worry in my mind since it is what brings food to our grocery stores, gets most of us to our jobs, gasoline to the stations, and what not. I believe it is also where most oil goes. It does not seem like any of these alternative energy sources really addresses that issue in the short term (<10 years)
I think the price of oil is partially a result of the sub-prime meltdown and the response of the federal reserve. There is a lot of money shifting from bank sectors into commodities. Weak dollar, spikes in commodity trading volumes. Should stabilize and come back down after summer.
I think the price of oil is partially a result of the sub-prime meltdown and the response of the federal reserve. There is a lot of money shifting from bank sectors into commodities. Weak dollar, spikes in commodity trading volumes. Should stabilize and come back down after summer.
Grain prices are doing the same.
Edit: I wrote that backwards.
A large portion of that is due to bio-fuel subsidies. But, yeah, there's a lot of paper keeping oil over what it should be. Supposedly $80 per.
Meh - everyone (well, the Mayans) knows that the world ends in 2012 anyway.
That said, you'd be surprised how many "last-minute-miracle-alternatives" get trotted out by the oil/automotive companies once the same old stuff become unprofitable/untenable. What will be funny will be to see them try to act like they hadn't been sitting on the patents for decades.
Meh - everyone (well, the Mayans) knows that the world ends in 2012 anyway.
That said, you'd be surprised how many "last-minute-miracle-alternatives" get trotted out by the oil/automotive companies once the same old stuff become unprofitable/untenable. What will be funny will be to see them try to act like they hadn't been sitting on the patents for decades.
France now has a car that runs on air. I want to buy one so bad. Only 70 miles a tank, but it comes with an air compressor that costs about $2 in electricity to run for the 3-4 hours it takes to fill it up. You can also get extra carbon-fiber tanks which fill it up pretty much instantly, and that's what air-stations would have. The hybrid model goes 700 miles on a half-size tank of gas, which is kind of neat too.
so an effective top speed of like 20 miles an hour
hm
70 miles an hour. I think I fudged the numbers a bit. Hang on.
It's more of a city-car than a road-trip car, though.
I read it right, I think - 70 miles per fillup, fillup takes 3-4 hours, and costs ~$2 of electricity. Works out to about $10 for the 350 miles I get on a normal fillup, or around $.60/gal. I'll take it. :P
I saw the car you were talking about on Modern Marvels the other day. Neat stuff.
I'm one of those that sees hydrogen cells being the direction cars go in the future, with the electrolysis being powered by nuclear (along with everything else on the power grid). I'm in a class right now called Current Environmental Issues (i.e. environmental science with little debate allowed), and my teacher really doesn't appreciate my love for nuclear power. :P
Or is it more of a 'nuclear is a good stop-gap not a final solution' type? Because I fall into the latter. Solar and wind are the future, but that future starts in earnest about 60 years from now so we need a few hundred new reactors to get us to there from here.
I think the price of oil is partially a result of the sub-prime meltdown and the response of the federal reserve. There is a lot of money shifting from bank sectors into commodities. Weak dollar, spikes in commodity trading volumes. Should stabilize and come back down after summer.
Grain prices are doing the same.
Edit: I wrote that backwards.
This is my Dad's theory as well, and it seems to make a lot of sense.
From a Peak Oil perspective, what's happening with the price of oil right now fits perfectly with the predictions of the more pragmatic Peak Oil people such as Matt Simmons. I don't agree with the "end of the world" predictions, they are unrealistic in my opinion.
The thing is Peak Oil isn't about running out of oil. Its about production rates peaking, and starting to decline. The most pronounced symptom of this is an increase in the price of oil.
I want to talk more about this, but my taxi to go out is here. I'll post more tomorrow.. or maybe tonight if I am coherent enough.
I would advise anyone who is interested in non-crackpot theories (again, my opinion) to check out matt simmon's website, http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/.
Al_wat on
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Or is it more of a 'nuclear is a good stop-gap not a final solution' type? Because I fall into the latter. Solar and wind are the future, but that future starts in earnest about 60 years from now so we need a few hundred new reactors to get us to there from here.
I think she is kind of a hippie, still. She's completely off grid, uses solar and wind for her house (but makes huge concessions for that, i.e. no television or home computer and the like), and likes to talk about it. She is, however, intelligent - she realizes that solar and wind are very cool, but they are not usable everywhere. Future energy needs probably will be filled with more niches than broad uses. Solar is great in the western half of the U.S., and even in the midwest, but on the east, and particularly this area of New England, there is simply too much cloud cover to make solar worthwhile. Wind will do ok in some areas up here, but not all, and that's where I say nuclear should be stepping in. I definitely get a lot of the "but Chernobyl/Three Mile Island/Terrorists!" thrown back at me, but I give them a big shrug. Its a good time.
I don't mean to say that she shuts down any debate I might have. She actually likes that I'm there. I assume because since she says one thing, and most people in the class agree with her, having a "crackpot" in the class makes her sound more right...? ;-)
Meh - everyone (well, the Mayans) knows that the world ends in 2012 anyway.
That said, you'd be surprised how many "last-minute-miracle-alternatives" get trotted out by the oil/automotive companies once the same old stuff become unprofitable/untenable. What will be funny will be to see them try to act like they hadn't been sitting on the patents for decades.
Which patents?
Some of the many that they've pretty obviously bought up and are sitting on. One of my friend's old neighbor was working on alternative energy stuff, and one day he talked about how one of the major car companies was interested in buying his work and then he just up and disappeared - left his furniture, TV, everything. We joked about how they must've had him killed, but rumor had it that he got paid so much he never bothered to go back for his stuff.
I'm not fully buying into the idea that they've got a smorgasboard of universe-saving alternative energy stuff waiting, but the idea of companies buying up rights to discoveries/inventions that would compete with them or damage their ability to do business is nothing new. Look at the big pharma cartels!
Instead of having free energy we'll now have somewhat costly energy. Which means we won't be so damn wasteful in such stupid, stupid, needless ways. Likely increasing our standard of living in the process.
Keep the feet, reduce the footprint.
Oh, and since Sal's obligatory post was made, here's mine.
Read this:
Now. As in right now. Why aren't you reading it?
Because my local Borders keeps trying to make me pay $54 for something that's $13 on amazon?
I really should do a bulk order on that site soon, though.
No, I'm pretty sure they're about to send someone to kneecap me in lieu of overdue fees. Media prices here are a good example of what happens when you have to spend a lot on transport to isolated markets, though. I can't help but think that services like libraries (and other rental businesses) may become more popular if prices for such goods rise with energy costs.
Australia is a pretty good example of a place that needs to convert to using those e-readers as soon as possible, I think, with libraries being a good place to temp-load them from or something.
Posts
Scrounging to feed my family does not sound like a good time.
Hey, maybe Apophis is made of oil? Wait, wrong thread.
As for electric cars, as mentioned the main problem is the batteries, which limit the range and take time to recharge. I'm still wondering what the numbers would be on a hybrid where it was just an electric motor with a gas/diesel generator charging the battery as needed. I know that's how they do it with some trains.
Did that site really say that a hydrogen fuel cell will always cost $1,000,000, forever, and then base predictions off of that? Really?
Really?
Also, "you can't get more energy out of hydrogen than you put in, so it won't ever be useful!" Hey, guess what? You can't get more energy out of a lithium battery than you put in, either. That's not what it's for.
Cheers
Buffet on oil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWn4OVMwc4s
edit: starts about 1 minute in.
Would a combination of capicitors and batteries work at all? I also think about setting things up like "parking grids". You're still limited by long range, but for short trips, you'd be able to charge "anywhere".
I mean shit, I read halfway into that oil price one before it descended into meaningless paranoia using otherwise reasonable figures. The doomsday speakers for Peak Oil are so often ignorant of basic economics, and don't appreciate that there will be demand response to increasing prices by lowering consumption. Hell even Bill Fucking O'Reilly is pushing conservation really really hard right now. Mostly to stick it to the oil companies, but good enough for me.
There's plenty of lowhanging fruit on the consumption side that can be dealt with, which requires effort but won't substantially affect the quality of life.
I asked my brother about the viability of supercapacitors (he's a electrical engineer in the power industry), and his opinion was that they wouldn't be a replacement for batteries, but could be used in the system for rapid bursts because they are good at charging and discharging a bunch, more so than a regular battery. At least I think that is what he was saying. I pictured it as sort of like a cache in computer parlance.
Yeah, the idea to switch in and out batteries has been around, and I'm not sure about the viability of it. It would at very least require development of infrastructure to support that.
That may be true for you, and for the people who make up laws, but it's not true for the majority of people in America.
Construction, Farming, Retail, Food Service, Factory Work, Live Entertainment, Movie Theaters, Repair/Maintenance, Law Enforcement, Science, etc etc etc etc etc etc ad infinitum, relies on transportation, and very very often, extreme mobility.
Seriously, this is a strawman that keeps the working class wanting to beat the faces of distance-pampered yuppies in and get blood all over their cubicles.
There is a hell of a lot of infrastructure and location required for a hell of a lot of jobs, and since human beings insist on having spouses and children it gets even worse.
And, actually, face time is very important sometimes, especially for choosing future leaders. Home office types tend not to go very far in a company.
If people are actually concerned, go ahead and buy some land, install a rainwater capture system, some solar panels would help with comforts. Start farming plants and crawfish. Make sure to pick up some weapons - I'd suggest a converted Saiga 7.62x39mm. You can get 1000 rounds of Wolf ammo for a couple hundred. Pick up some antibiotics from Mexico and that's a healthy start.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8957268309327954402&q=Robert+Newman&total=668&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en-GB
This is what got me interested into peal oil and the after effects.
My own view of the matter is pretty similar to this.
I have absolutley no proof to back up what i'm going to say. Its purely speculative. Now that i've covered myself i'll start my little rant.
People keep going on about this oil crisis and how we're all fucked when it runs out. Wars, starvation and all that kind of thing. Which is of course very very bad.
However this means that executive boards of oil companies have not thought:
"Lads...hold on a minute.....how are we going to keep making money when oil runs out? Because if we can't offer a replacement product we're bankrupt".
I honestly think (and this is the part where everyone calls me crazy) that alternative sources of fuel have already been found and if not already perfected, they're almost there. The reason we don't know about them is because right now oil companies are making a fuckton of money off oil. There is nowhere in the UK where a litre of petrol is under £1. Its just good business to keep alternatives to oil secret. Hell its what i would do.
So, who here thinks i'm mental?
problem is that by the time this happens the current execs would have long since retired and probably died of old age.
So they all think: "Hey, why should I waste my money on research when I can make a lot of cash selling expensive oil and just let the next guy take care of it!"
So they will pass the buck till the company is too far in the shitter to recover... at which point the government will probably bail them out any way.
I agree. The oil industry is not full of stupid idiots out to just make money, as some people seem to think they are, or that the execs don't care. They are in the business of staying in business. First off, its a company, there are young people. They will be around for a while, and have a vested interest in the company doing well. Oil is doing so well right now because it is one of the most energy dense materials that we have. As well, they do their own studies, etc, to look at oil around the world. They have probably some of the best data on how much oil there is left in the world. Most of the oil companies, though, have dumped millions of dollars into alternative and future energy research. They just don't want to go under right now switching over completely.
This is pretty much my argument, summed up by someone with a better grasp of english.
Anyway, just though I'd shed some light.
Continue with all the sky is falling business. Let me know when we're going to riot in Houston.
Transportation is the big worry in my mind since it is what brings food to our grocery stores, gets most of us to our jobs, gasoline to the stations, and what not. I believe it is also where most oil goes. It does not seem like any of these alternative energy sources really addresses that issue in the short term (<10 years)
Grain prices are doing the same.
Edit: I wrote that backwards.
A large portion of that is due to bio-fuel subsidies. But, yeah, there's a lot of paper keeping oil over what it should be. Supposedly $80 per.
That said, you'd be surprised how many "last-minute-miracle-alternatives" get trotted out by the oil/automotive companies once the same old stuff become unprofitable/untenable. What will be funny will be to see them try to act like they hadn't been sitting on the patents for decades.
Which patents?
France now has a car that runs on air. I want to buy one so bad. Only 70 miles a tank, but it comes with an air compressor that costs about $2 in electricity to run for the 3-4 hours it takes to fill it up. You can also get extra carbon-fiber tanks which fill it up pretty much instantly, and that's what air-stations would have. The hybrid model goes 700 miles on a half-size tank of gas, which is kind of neat too.
so an effective top speed of like 20 miles an hour
hm
70 miles an hour. I think I fudged the numbers a bit. Hang on.
It's more of a city-car than a road-trip car, though.
I read it right, I think - 70 miles per fillup, fillup takes 3-4 hours, and costs ~$2 of electricity. Works out to about $10 for the 350 miles I get on a normal fillup, or around $.60/gal. I'll take it. :P
I saw the car you were talking about on Modern Marvels the other day. Neat stuff.
I'm one of those that sees hydrogen cells being the direction cars go in the future, with the electrolysis being powered by nuclear (along with everything else on the power grid). I'm in a class right now called Current Environmental Issues (i.e. environmental science with little debate allowed), and my teacher really doesn't appreciate my love for nuclear power. :P
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Or is it more of a 'nuclear is a good stop-gap not a final solution' type? Because I fall into the latter. Solar and wind are the future, but that future starts in earnest about 60 years from now so we need a few hundred new reactors to get us to there from here.
This is my Dad's theory as well, and it seems to make a lot of sense.
From a Peak Oil perspective, what's happening with the price of oil right now fits perfectly with the predictions of the more pragmatic Peak Oil people such as Matt Simmons. I don't agree with the "end of the world" predictions, they are unrealistic in my opinion.
The thing is Peak Oil isn't about running out of oil. Its about production rates peaking, and starting to decline. The most pronounced symptom of this is an increase in the price of oil.
I want to talk more about this, but my taxi to go out is here. I'll post more tomorrow.. or maybe tonight if I am coherent enough.
I would advise anyone who is interested in non-crackpot theories (again, my opinion) to check out matt simmon's website, http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/.
I think she is kind of a hippie, still. She's completely off grid, uses solar and wind for her house (but makes huge concessions for that, i.e. no television or home computer and the like), and likes to talk about it. She is, however, intelligent - she realizes that solar and wind are very cool, but they are not usable everywhere. Future energy needs probably will be filled with more niches than broad uses. Solar is great in the western half of the U.S., and even in the midwest, but on the east, and particularly this area of New England, there is simply too much cloud cover to make solar worthwhile. Wind will do ok in some areas up here, but not all, and that's where I say nuclear should be stepping in. I definitely get a lot of the "but Chernobyl/Three Mile Island/Terrorists!" thrown back at me, but I give them a big shrug. Its a good time.
I don't mean to say that she shuts down any debate I might have. She actually likes that I'm there. I assume because since she says one thing, and most people in the class agree with her, having a "crackpot" in the class makes her sound more right...? ;-)
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Some of the many that they've pretty obviously bought up and are sitting on. One of my friend's old neighbor was working on alternative energy stuff, and one day he talked about how one of the major car companies was interested in buying his work and then he just up and disappeared - left his furniture, TV, everything. We joked about how they must've had him killed, but rumor had it that he got paid so much he never bothered to go back for his stuff.
I'm not fully buying into the idea that they've got a smorgasboard of universe-saving alternative energy stuff waiting, but the idea of companies buying up rights to discoveries/inventions that would compete with them or damage their ability to do business is nothing new. Look at the big pharma cartels!
http://www.frugal4life.com/images/dollar-bill-water-bottle.jpg ?
Because my local Borders keeps trying to make me pay $54 for something that's $13 on amazon?
I really should do a bulk order on that site soon, though.
Yes.
The prices for books in Australia are fricking atrocious.
Soda prices are okay though. :P
Have you tried the library though?
If you can't localize, virtualize.