I have always driven a small car. I get 43 miles to the gallon. It really ticks me off that people drive those unnecessarily large vehicles. They are using up the oil and the rest of us will have to suffer in the future when we have to start paying higher and higher prices for what will become a scarce commodity, and when we run out sooner rather than later. In Europe everyone (at least 5 years ago) had small cars. It shows you can live without those huge gas guzzlers. I think they should be outlawed in the US until we come up with an alternative energy source.
A dear friend of mine who I’ve known for at least 25 years or more now, (and someone who I have zero need to distrust), well he’s a very learned and talented man in the field of biological chemistry.
In the mid 1990’s he was ‘nominated’ for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry when he discovered how the bacteria within certain barnicles in the Bay of Naples can turn ferrous iron particles from the hulls of ships into organic waste. Quite a breakthrough into enzyme research apparently.
Well my friend tells me that already, research is being performed into genetically modifying similar bacteria to produce pure hydrocarbon chains of known complexities such as heptane and octane.
He predicts that hydrocarbon producing bacteria farms might be a reality as soon as 20 years or less.
So, I guess that kinda shoots your doomcry out the window in a way… after all, fossil fuels are ultimately the remnants of millions of tons of sea going plankton from eons in the past. Obviously the breakdown of plankton results in crude oil deposits so the next step to get bacteria to create hydrocarbons as waste isn’t so far away.
By the way, for those of you who are interested… when I say ‘nominated’, I should explain that the Uinversity of Naples where my friend was doing his research at the time, well THEY were the institution who lobbied to have him get the big gong. And he was quite in the running apparently.
With all the ideas for alternative fuel sources, we only have to wait until it’s economically feasable and they’ll come forward.
But I still hate people that drive big vehicles for no reason. They’re too damn hard to see around.
The problem is that there is a continuum of vehicles and a continuum of requirements; some people need a big powerful vehicle, others(perhaps even the majority) don’t. But some people drive smallish, fairly economical vehicles when they could actually get about quite adequately on a bicycle.
Applying economic pressure (in the form of fuel taxes, for example) might be fair and might help to balance things a little, but do you really want to live in a world where you have to justify your choice of vehicle to the government and that the choice of what is ‘adequate’ to your needs is something over which you have no control?
Who doesn’t love an Escalade with 22" chrome rims on it?
Aren’t there plenty of alternate engergy sources already? Propane, hemp, etc… You don’t really hear to much about these because big oil wants to keep in business until it runs out, by buying off political pawns.
As the for the notion of outlawing, that’s just ludicrous.
I’m sure your friend is a fine scientist and his research is quite promising, but I’ve heard about so many promising research projects that would solve our energy problems that I’m kinda cynical about them. I’m afraid it’s all pie in the sky stuff until I see something different going on at the gas pump.
Oil IS a limited resource, and it’s dangerous and stupid to assume otherwise. And just in case no one has noticed, Americans are dying because so much of it is in the control of whole countries full of people who hate our guts. Finding a way out of oil dependence would be smart, which is why I don’t expect it from this administration.
:rolleyes:Just because you can get by with a smaller vehicle, does not mean everyone can.
The argument could be extended to all sorts of areas - do you really need a computer? Or all those electric lights in your house? Couldn’t you make do with washing yourself in cold water? - All of these things can be classified as an unacceptable waste of energy, it’s just that most people like washing in warm water, and being able to see after dusk, and posting on the SDMB, just as they like driving their SUV.
Someone needs Big Oil to stop preventing me from getting my hemp-powered car!!
Brad
Imagine being in rush hour traffic, with all that smoke from those hemp-powered vehicles.
It might not be as stressful. Some may look forward to it.
Supposedly, hemp would smell like like french fries, or popcorn when burned. Hemp powered vehicles would use diesel engines too. And I seriously doubt that the smoke would get you high as the fuel would come from the stalks of hemp, not buds. Wishful thinkers.
Also, I probably shouldn’t have included Propane in my Big Oil argument.
Diesel engines were designed from the start to unyoke us from petrochemical fuels and their troubling finite quantities. Real (clean-burning, renewable) diesel fuel is made by catalyzing ethanol and vegetable oil with a strong base, but petroleum interests exploited their existing distribution infrastructure to sell filthy kerosene mixed with by-products of gasoline refining as a less-volatile fuel for diesel engines.
Personally, I think petroleum is far too valuable a substance to burn as fuel – it’s much more useful as a material for manufacturing. If we wait until oil reserves are depleted to substantially switch over to the alternate technologies that have been available to us since the freaking nineteenth century, where does that leave us with regard to the plethora of other things that our society is dependant on hydrocarbons for? How do we rearrange things so we can live with plastic as a rare and valuable material?
Gee, I guess I can tie my three kids to the roofrack. They wouldn’t mind too much.
My brother works in the oil industry. He’s told me that there is an awful lot of oil left and we’re not in any danger of running out in the near future.
Me for one. My Toyota pickup with 14 " chrome rims suit me just fine.
Personally, I’ve always wanted a tank.
One with those cool rims that keep spinning.
Big Oil. Heh. That should be Big Energy. Who do you think’s going to be in the forefront as it becomes economically viable to develop other sources of energy? BP (one of the biggest) didn’t rebrand from being “British Petroleum” to “Beyond Petroleum” for nothing.
In the meantime, though, qts has a point. According to the scenarios painted around the time of the first OPEC embargo, we should be just about out of the stuff right now. But we’re not. We’ve added reserves beyond what could’ve been contemplated 30 years ago through advances in exploration and exploitation technology. While much peripheral to this thread could be said about the current state of the mineral-based energy extraction business, the fact remains that there are many decades of naturally occuring hydrocarbon consumption ahead of us.
As it behooves us to adjust our consumption, we will.
For the moment, though, I continue to drive a European gas guzzler.