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 Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:25 pm
Greetings Fellow Techno-Hippies!
I am sorry that I haven't posted for a little while, my senor year is in full swing and I am a busy, busy little bee. And by bee I mean band geek. Despite this I have come across an issue that I feel directly impacts our goals; Peak Oil.
For those of you not familiar with the concept, I will summarize. Peak Oil is the theory that we will, eventually, "run out" of oil. Not so much a theory as an inevitability really. Our oil use is constantly increasing, while our oil supplies are constantly diminishing. I think anyone with basic math skills should be able to look ahead and see, "Golly gee, this isn't gonna work for very much longer."
Now, when this idea was originally put forth in the fifties, rough estimates put the time of Peak Oil in the 70's. Obviously that didn't happen. However, current, more accurate estimates, place the advent of Peak Oil sometime between 2005-2020.
Bad News Bears.
Perhaps we should all start considering the idea that the rising oil prices in the US have less to do with Hurricane Katrina than they do with the fact that there is simply not enough oil to meet the demand. It certainly puts Bush's "War for Oil" into a new light.
So, besides the obvious, how does this affect us? I'll tell you how. Increased gas prices means less travel. Less travel means the world is going to become a larger place. The world becoming a larger place means that our job just got alot harder.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:43 pm
i certinly see your point, but the world will just use other full sorces such as electricity, and fule cells. and we will adapt to it.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 7:43 am
The problem (in my mind at least) is mainly that the big businesses that have a share in the oil world are doing their darndest to keep alternate fuel methods down. We have the technology to build cars that can run completely without gasoline (heck, we've had this technology for years, remember those stories youd hear of some hippy whose car can run on old french fry grease?) and yet the best car out on the mass market is , what 66 mpg? (rough figure, no fact checking)
I know that part of this is so we don't shock the market by jumping from one fuel source to another, but we're only now, in the last 4 years starting to see hybrid cars put into production, and not even mass production (seen the waiting lists to own a Toyota Prias?). If it was a simple case of trying to wean the public off of gasoline, it needed to have been started years ago, back when the problem first became apparent. However, gas money is big, big business (heck, it's arguably the biggest business) and if people start driving cars that run on, say, ethanol, that's this much less money going into the oil baron's and the affiliates pockets. As such, they try their best to ensure that people don't start driving cars that run off of alternate fuel sources in the best way possible: copyright laws. The have the money needed to purchase all research into these methods of oil replacement/supplement, and they do so in order to ensure that it won't trouble them; and if it does, they can sue.
Just MHO on that. I'm not overly certain what could reasonably be done in order to fix it, but I strongly believe it to be the underlying problem.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 8:29 am
So basically, we need to wean people off gasoline slow enough so that they don't have to deal with a big jump from one source to another, but fast enough so we don't run out of oil completely. It looks to me like hybrid cars are a way of using both gas and electricity, buying researchers more time so that they can make an efficient electric car while not being as rushed. So, we need to make hybrid cars more common, and perhaps start rushing the scientists a bit. We need a different fuel source. We need it fast. One major problem I see with electric cars is the batteries. It takes about 1,000 pounds of batteries to store as much energy as 1 gallon (7 pounds) of gasoline. That's a pretty big difference, and you will need more energy for all that extra weight. So, unless researchers are able to make batteries much more powerful and/or lighter, we may be stuck with the hybrid cars. But, you don't necessarily have to make a gasoline/electric car, we may just have to find another fuel source to use with the electric car. Until we find something better, diesel could work. It's cleaner and more powerful than gasoline (though I'm not sure if it's made from oil as well, does anyone know what is used to make diesel?). Wasn't there also talk of using hydrogen? Also, here's a link to a pretty informative article about hybrid cars: Howstuffworks: "How Hybrid Cars Work"
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:51 am
We can always substitute methane, it grows on farms and anywhere else there's droppings for that matter. It's not incredibly cost effective, but compared to where gasoline is headed it's not a terrible idea. Plus it wouldn't really require any modifications to cars, they'd just run about 10-20 mph slower than their original top speed. There's also coal alternatives and fuel cells. We may run out of gas but I'm not particularly worried about it.
Also on oil companies, it may be bad for a little while longer than it should be, but eventually oil companies will realize it would be cheaper just to invest in alternative fuel sources rather than let their companies phase out of existence.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:01 pm
Calnus For those of you not familiar with the concept, I will summarize. Peak Oil is the theory that we will, eventually, "run out" of oil. Not so much a theory as an inevitability really. Our oil use is constantly increasing, while our oil supplies are constantly diminishing. I think anyone with basic math skills should be able to look ahead and see, "Golly gee, this isn't gonna work for very much longer." Now, when this idea was originally put forth in the fifties, rough estimates put the time of Peak Oil in the 70's. Obviously that didn't happen. However, current, more accurate estimates, place the advent of Peak Oil sometime between 2005-2020. Actually the peak oil theory was that U.S. oil production would reach a 'peak' and then slow down at some point between 1965 and 1970. U.S. oil prduction has been decreasing since 1971. It also predicted that world oil production would peak in 2000, and it seems to have reached that point this year. As for possible solutions, the best way forward would seem to be to encourage greater use of public transport. The potential for energy efficiency for a bus or train will always be higher than that of a car that uses an equivilant technology. I know that isn't a solution to the problem of an expanding world, but I don't see that it is a problem. International travel effects politics in a few ways. It allows people to have greater contact with people of foreign cultures and, hopefully, reducing xenophobia. However, we should still have access to international comminication devices like the Internet which should serve a similar purpose. It encourages diplomatic meetings between heads of states that are a great distance from one another, but they will almost always be able to afford the cost any equivilant high speed travel. Such travel also facilitates a mixing of cultures. Fortunately one of the problems we are faced with is that global unification could homogenise cultures. So, peak oil will probably be a big social problem, but not one that makes global unification any more difficult.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 7:28 am
Ladyfriend Calnus For those of you not familiar with the concept, I will summarize. Peak Oil is the theory that we will, eventually, "run out" of oil. Not so much a theory as an inevitability really. Our oil use is constantly increasing, while our oil supplies are constantly diminishing. I think anyone with basic math skills should be able to look ahead and see, "Golly gee, this isn't gonna work for very much longer." Now, when this idea was originally put forth in the fifties, rough estimates put the time of Peak Oil in the 70's. Obviously that didn't happen. However, current, more accurate estimates, place the advent of Peak Oil sometime between 2005-2020. Actually the peak oil theory was that U.S. oil production would reach a 'peak' and then slow down at some point between 1965 and 1970. U.S. oil prduction has been decreasing since 1971. It also predicted that world oil production would peak in 2000, and it seems to have reached that point this year. As for possible solutions, the best way forward would seem to be to encourage greater use of public transport. The potential for energy efficiency for a bus or train will always be higher than that of a car that uses an equivilant technology. I know that isn't a solution to the problem of an expanding world, but I don't see that it is a problem. International travel effects politics in a few ways. It allows people to have greater contact with people of foreign cultures and, hopefully, reducing xenophobia. However, we should still have access to international comminication devices like the Internet which should serve a similar purpose. It encourages diplomatic meetings between heads of states that are a great distance from one another, but they will almost always be able to afford the cost any equivilant high speed travel. Such travel also facilitates a mixing of cultures. Fortunately one of the problems we are faced with is that global unification could homogenise cultures. So, peak oil will probably be a big social problem, but not one that makes global unification any more difficult. True that most likely it will not drastically affect global unification, but it is a problem, one that, once we are running the world, we will have to deal with. So we should be prepared for this. Public travel is a great resourse. However, no matter how much we promote it, many people will always want their own car. So we will need to think of an alternate fuel source. Preferably one that is not likely to run out as easily as oil and cleaner for the air.
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Aeridea Until we find something better, diesel could work. It's cleaner and more powerful than gasoline (though I'm not sure if it's made from oil as well, does anyone know what is used to make diesel?). Wasn't there also talk of using hydrogen? Diesel is a petroleum product; biodiesel is a renewable alternative to regular. Hydrogen is for use in fuel cells; it combines with oxygen and produces water.
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:41 pm
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:54 pm
As far as I see, only one thing is preventing ethanol from quickly replacing gasoline: availability. As of May 12, only 313 Ethanol fueling stations were operating in the US. Also, this car is only being sold in Sweden, although it may come to the US soon.
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Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 6:43 pm
The main source of ethanol in the US is corn. However, in Brazil nearly all of the cars run on ethanol and nearly all of the ethanol there comes from sugarcane.
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