Human behavior and technology do not stay the same. The laws of physics and chemistry do. Hybrids are a temporary stopgap measure – they still burn gasoline, just less of it (and it will be a long time before all cars now on the road are replaced with hybrids), and I’m not optimistic that hydgrogen-fueled or any other kind of non-fossil-fuel-dependent cars can ever be made practical (to the point of providing a substitute requiring no significant lifestyle changes).
Okay, then, here’s another question (and I ask this only to gauge where your beliefs fall): how will that do any good? If oil becomes as scarce as you apparently believe, how will being able to walk everywhere help if you’re starving? If the city’s economy is completely shot because of all the corporations going out of business due to scarcities of plastic and whatever? Shouldn’t you be moving to a rural location, where you can grow your own food?
Not unless I have no other choice (I hate the country, love cities) – like I said, I’m expecting the effect of oil depletion to come on in a decades-based time scale. There will be time (for individuals, at least) to adapt. The effects of global warming, OTOH, might well come on a lot faster than that.
What is your lack of optimism founded on? What core physics or scientific principal precludes it ever happening? Is there some kind of hard law, like the speed of light but having to do with alternative energy sources that I’m unaware of? Is there some kind of physics or scientific law that precludes the use of fission energy? Something that precludes the use of electricity to power vehicles instead of fossil fuels? Something I’m missing that says fusion power is an impossibility?
This of course leave out the vast amounts of coal, shale oil, oil sands and other hydrocarbon deposits that up until now have not been economically viable to exploit.
As for lifestyle changes…look around man! I know that, if you aren’t as old as I am, you are still old enough to have seen a huge amount of changes in lifestyle in your own lifetime. Maybe the big ‘change’ we American’s will be forced too is some kind of massive mass transit system that totally obsoletes the current highway system. It would cost us a ton, it would hurt to do…but if we HAD too, we certainly COULD do it. We just don’t have too…yet. Maybe we’ll have to make some other compromises…like having high tension powerlines over our freeways to power an electrical grid sort of like those old fashion kids race cars (always wanted one of those when I was a kid). Maybe we’ll have to screw the green woman with the red hair and content ourselve with those dilithium crystals. WHo knows. Change is upon us bro…and has been for over a century. You think that our grand parents and great grand parents (well, your’s anyway) didn’t go through some HUGE changes in their lifestyle? One day its riding horses with a huge precentage of the population farming, then next they gots those new fangled airplane thingies, and vehicles that drive without a horse! Honest injun!
-XT
I’m basing it on what I’ve read (no cites right now) about the difficulty of resolving technical obstacles to the use of hydrogen as an automobile fuel. For one thing, hydrogen as fuel has to be very highly compressed to be practical. For another, hydrogen is the most corrosive gas in the periodic table (it’s just one proton, it will bond with anything.) Fusion power might be possible – at massive power plants; but you can’t run cars directly on the output of power plants.
That’s my point! And we have to start now! And just building light-rail lines isn’t enough – to make them practical and economical we have to do a lot of bulldozing, give up the detached-suburban-home-with-a-front-and-back-lawn model, and start building our neighborhoods the way they were built when the streetcar was cutting-edge hi-tech.
JHK doesn’t believe that can be done at all, but I’m a bit more optimistic. If we start now.
Here’s a good site to start with. What disturbs me is that no public officials or candidates are even talking about this kind of thing during an election season.
Kim Stanley Robinson played with that idea in his SF novel The Gold Coast. (He also envisioned all cars being driven by onboard computers called “carbrains” – much safer than human drivers.)
But Pacific Edge is a better vision still.
I don’t believe there is any fundamental law that precludes the use of hydrogen as a fuel. As for its properties, etc, thats engineering. Maybe it will be feasible…maybe not.
I think you are wrong that fusion power could not be used to power cars in some fashion…or fission for that matter, if we could get the old hippy eco-facist crowd to die off or move on. Again, its all about demand…the demand for such solutions is non-existant, so companies are only starting to look into the various alternatives. Batteries for instance could and will be made lighter, stronger and longer lasting. Again, afaik there is no scientific law that says they have reached their peak in performance, size and weight.
:smack: Thats just what we DON’T need to be doing. Where is the demand for light rail? You are assuming you can read the future and know what the tea leaves are saying. You want to expend massive ammounts of public funds on something that there simply isn’t any demand for…yet. Maybe never. We simply don’t know. Also, building it now you may build the equivelent of a better buggy whip…as 2 years from now something (theoretically) could come along that makes all that obsolete. Maybe new room temperature superconductors will suddenly be dirt cheap to produce. Though I’m no scientist or physist, the amount we are learning about the universe is simply staggering, and the advances are astounding. I don’t think there has EVER been a time in human history when discovery was so fast and far reaching. Couple those really unbelievable discoveries in every field of science with a free market, and market driven pressures and I believe we will see some rather astounding things before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
I think 20 years folks will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about energy…sort of like folks looked back and wondered why they ever used that stinky whale oil before. Of course, they will have a whole NEW set of things that worry them (maybe even this Global Warming stuff)…but I’d place bets it won’t be about how to get to KFC for their chicken fix.
-XT
The trouble with this is that current lifestyle choices, like current business conditions, aren’t very good at preparing for future needs. Due to choices made by our parents and ancestors, much of the rail infrastructure in this country has been obliterated. and development has proceeded for the last 60 years in a way that makes mass transit ever less practical.
Methanol or its more carbon rich sibling Ethanol behaves very like what we in the UK call ‘petrol’
Locate a decent source of energy and one can produce Hydrogen and from that Ethanol.
The joke is that we are swimming in energy, we just need to find ways of tapping it
(heat is energy)
Peak Oil makes me yawn, so does CO2
Global warming is a problem, but to put it down to human activity is sheer arrogance.
We have done sterling jobs of polluting our environment, like with lead in petrol and sulphurous smogs in industrial cities, but somehow we are waking up to that.
Our big danger is a sudden shift in the supply of a currently key product, we saw that with the oil price hike in 1974
- gradual change is easy to deal with - rapid disruptions are a PITA
By the time ‘Peak Oil’ hits it will be a quaint substance we used to use
- like Whale oil
I read this as “White people who look forward to an apocalyptic economic collapse due to oil shortages are probably not all there intellectually speaking”. Dr. Freud is whispering in my ear that this means the PO crowd is mostly made up of guilt-ridden [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobos_in_Paradise]Bobos
[/quote]
in search of moral cleansing.
It’s the defining downwards of the middle class lifestyle to meet the tastes of the post-WW2 Joe Sixpack generation. A day at the mall instead of a day in the park. An 18 piece chicken bucket instead of a picnic basket of deviled you-name-it. Going to the pix at the Hell Plaza Octoplex instead of Loew’s Grand.
Kunstler is trying hard to be a kook, or appeal to them. But I like his statement:
“America was reduced to a nation of tattooed, overfed clowns in paramilitary drag, pretending to be powerful and good.” Such are the people who haunt my nightmares.
But BrainGlutton, we don’t HAVE to use hydrogen as a fuel…it’s just that hydrogen has a lot of advantages. Set up your nuclear power plant, all you need as a raw material is water, crack the water. Burn the hydrogen and the only emission is water.
But there’s nothing that says we have to make hydrogen. We can make any fuel we like, as long as we have enough power to do so. This fusion powered factory can manufacture methane, ethanol, or octane if that’s what we want, we just need a source of carbon, and we need to deal with the CO2 emissions from any carbon containing fuel. All we need to do is stop thinking of octane as an energy SOURCE and start thinking of it as an energy STORAGE. We can manufacture octane out of agricultural waste and electricity, if octane really turns out to be the optimum transportation fuel rather than hydrogen. Octane does have the advantage over hydrogen that it’s a volitile liquid at room temperature rather than a gas. And it contains more energy per gallon than ethanol. But ethanol is probably better than octane because it’s not quite as toxic, and it’s liquid rather than gaseous.
But the fuel of choice doesn’t matter so much, because we can manufacture any fuel we like, and we’ll probably have a much more varied fuel market in the future, look at how many fleet vehicles use alternative fuels compared to consumer vehicles. And it’s possible to cut your gasoline consumption by a factor of 10 TODAY…just trade your 4 passenger sedan for a motorcycle. There is no magic needed, just simple economic common sense.
The demand for alternative solutions has been artfully controlled by simply keeping them off the discussion table. If people don’t think about them - presto! no demand.
By and large, the public wants only what it knows it can realistically get - what is presented to them as available.
WTF? Fluorine, for one, is far more corrosive.
In any case, the existence of multiple possible alternatives (hydrogen, alcohol, biodiesel, electric, etc) means that it’s no big deal if one of them turns out to be a dead end.
Hydrogen (if it turns out to be workable) solves that problem – it’s an energy storage mechanism, not an energy source. Ditto for sythetic fuels and electric (if one of those turns out to be the most practical).
This social-engineering proposal pretty much confirms the thesis of the OP, you know.
First, elemental hydrogen does not exist at our level of existence. Hydrogen gas is H[sub]2[/sub] and is nice and stable if rather inflammable and even explosive under the right conditions. Second, to run a fuel cell, you’re not going to have a tank of compressed hydrogen under the car, at least that’s not ideal. Far better is some sort of storage system (if the link doesn’t work, tell me and I’ll see what I can do), preferably something nice and solid and stable.
500 kilometers? :eek:
It would be interesting to see how society adapted to all the oceans boiling away…
For comparison, the impact that helped along the extinction of the dinosaurs was a 10 km object. I’ve seen a calculation somewhere (don’t remember where) that anything larger than 1 km is going to have a noticeable global effect.
Yes…I know. 
I said that tongue in cheek…and also to see if anyone was paying attention.
-XT
The question is: if it’s possible to run a viable transportation system like the one we have now on coal or nuclear or solar or hydrogen or whatever, why aren’t we doing it already? Because we love the Saudis and Chavez so much that we’re voluntarily propping up their economy? No, we’re not running our transportation system on these other fuels because it’s too expensive to run that amount of traffic using those technologies (including all their immediately foreseeable developments).
So when petroleum becomes to expensive to use as fuel for transportation will the cost of coal conversion suddenly drop because the timing is convenient? Again, the answer is an obvious no - what we’ll have is a system with no viable fuel source instead of a system with one viable fuel source. Sure you’ll be able to drive cross country - if you’re willing to pay $2000 for the fuel (and it makes no difference if that fuel is gasoline or hydrogen or coal extract). The point is that nobody can afford to use cross country shipping when fuel costs that much.
There are possible solutions. But they’ll need some radical advances in technology. The kind of advances that will probably take two or three decades to develop and cost a lot of research dollars. So we need to admit now that this is a real problem and start working on some serious searching for solutions.
Well…no. Thats not the case. The reason we aren’t using those alternatives now is simply because they cost more than what we have. Why WOULD we spend more for energy than a cheaper alternative? Seems obvious to me.
The reason we don’t exploit shale oil, tar sands, etc (which is what you cited from me) is because it costs more to get at them…and why exactly would we spend more when we can get oil cheap in the currently developed fields? Just for the sake of doing it? As those easy to get at resources are used up and become scarce though, the more difficult to get at and develop ones will become viable…and we’ll be able to continue to run the same ammount of traffic we currently do. It will simply cost more. But there is more exploitable oil locked in shale than there ever was in the Middle East, and I believe that goes for the tar sands in Canada as well. Once the investment is made to go get it (and it will be a rather large capital investment to exploit those resources…note though that Canada is ALREADY taking steps along those lines, and I believe that Shell is re-newing its interest in the shale oil in the Rockies), its not like the oil flowing out will be a trickle. It will be a flood…and EXPENSIVE flood, but a flood all the same. Also, the logistics of getting it to the refineries here will be a bit easier than the current tanker system…maybe pipelines directly to the refineries on the gulf coast, maybe new refineries on site.
Well, it might (just developing this technology process on the scales we’d need, for coal say, would probably spark innovation and competition and could potentially drive the price down), but I don’t think anyone is saying that it will. In fact, most acknowledge that the cost of fuel will indeed go up, quite significantly.
But you see, your hyperbolic example of $2000 (I assume for the equivelent of a gallon today) is just that…hyperbole. I’m thinking fuel may go as high as $8/gallon…maybe $10/gallon (talking here in the states) when these alternatives will become economically feasible. I believe I read somewhere that the tar sands in Canada will start becoming viable around those levels. At, say, $12/gallon (I’m just WAGing here), perhaps shale oil becomes economically viable to begin extracting. Also around that price perhaps hydrogen fuel cells or methane fuel cells become economically viable (might be even before this threshold).
Far cry from $2000 a gallon.
But the don’t. There are plenty of technologies in the wings that you seem to completely discount in a ridiculous hyperbolic fashion. Shale oil is real. There is a LOT of it. Tar sands are real. There is a LOT of oil there as well. They don’t have to wait until the price is $2000/gallon before they are economically feasible.
Nuclear power? Nothing new or radical there…just have to get the eco-facists out of the way. FUSION of course is one of your advanced technologies…but fission will work just fine, and there are some rather good advances going on (sadly) in other countries like South Africa, China and France.
Hydrogen fuel cells? This isn’t radically advanced technology…its under development by several car companies. I believe that Toyota is planning on introducing its version (in theory) sometime in the next decade. Chevy is claiming they will have one ready by something like 2010. I remember reading that Shell and BP both tested pilot hydrogen filling stations, and I don’t recall any insurmountable hurdles there.
Hybrids are getting better and more efficient all the time…this generation of hybrids is an order of magnitude more reliable and get even better gas mileage than the first ones released. Batteries are getting smaller with higher capacities. None of these things are radical or highly advanced technologies…they are technologies that are either here now or nearly ready for prime time.
And of course there are breakthroughs that we simply can’t predict, new materials being developed constantly. But for the next few centuries I don’t think we need to count on Star Trek solutions to get us to work or to pick up that KFC dinner…
-XT
I believe he said $2000 for the fuel for a trip across the country, not per gallon. Anybody want to calculate an estimate for what it would cost to drive across the country today?
:smack: My apologies to Nemo then. Chalk it up to a rough day (thats still going on…I have 3 fileservers down at the clients site atm, 2 switches totally tits up and one firewall thats fried. They lost their A/C so its not exactly been a pleasant work environment either).
My back of the napkin calculation says it would cost something over $500 (about $525) to drive across country (figured using 3500 miles, 20 miles per gallon and 3 dollars a gallon). If we figure gas at $10 per gallon it would cost you about $1750…but anyone still driving a car that gets only 20 miles per gallon when gas gets to $10/gallon will either be rich or nuts. If technology gets no better by then than it is today, then figure the average non-nuts person will be driving a car that gets around 45 miles per gallon (this is a WAG on my part, but 45 miles per gallon is certainly achievable today), then your trip is back to only $777…which isn’t exactly going to make people suddenly bound to their home towns, never to venture forth 'cross country again.
-XT
As others pointed out, I was using $2000 as a rhetorical figure for a cross country trip not a per gallon price. My point was that petroleum doesn’t have to disappear for a diminishing supply to have a major impact.
The point is that we now have cheap travel because of petroleum. If petroleum becomes as expensive as coal derivatives or hydrogen or whatever, we’ll still have those other fuels to use. There won’t be an apocalypse. But the new fuels won’t be as cheap as petroleum is now. We’ll still have travel but we won’t have cheap travel.
An analogy would be to compare automobile travel to commercial jet travel. People travel by both means but the two methods are not interchangable. We use automobiles to make quick trips to the store, haul a load of fruit cross-country, drive to visit grandma 200 miles away, and to drive cross country to take a vacation in Las Vegas. Now what would happen if automobiles didn’t exist (or for the sake of this discussion if automobile travel had costs comparible to jet travel). People would still travel but they would no longer travel casually. Instead of going out shopping four or five nights a week, they would combine all their shopping into one or two trips a month. Oregon apples and Florida oranges would cost five dollars apiece by the time they arrived cross country. You might only visit grandma once or twice a decade.