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Oil is about the only PRACTICAL way to make gasoline.
Innovation changes everything and without a crystal ball there is no way to predict this sort of thing. Its not like there is another alternative that is market ready and viable.
All the infrastructure already exists for gasoline, I would not role out its existence as the primary energy source for automobiles well into the future.
Innovation changes everything and without a crystal ball there is no way to predict this sort of thing. Its not like there is another alternative that is market ready and viable.
All the infrastructure already exists for gasoline, I would not role out its existence as the primary energy source for automobiles well into the future.
Agree that I do not have a crystal ball, either -- it is just I really (really, really) work this field. Just turning oil to gasoline is tremendously energy intensive in itself, and transforming other things -- whether Tar Sands, Coal, Shale, Algae or Alfalfa -- into gasoline is even more so.
Somewhere along the line you have to sit down and look at the object of the exercise, and figure out that it is much more efficient and effective to use the energy to create the transportation directly and leave the gasoline portion or step behind.
The life of oil equipment infrastructure including -- or maybe especially -- refineries is surprisingly short. And mindboggling expensive. We generally have outages planned for major rebuilds at every break.
What a bunch of drivel, honestly. Not only does the article totally ignore the potential for innovation in this country (there is a huge precedent, by the way), it also ignores a basic fact of the internal combustion engine as it exists today. Read here for more (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/***/atv.shtml - broken link).
What a bunch of drivel, honestly. Not only does the article totally ignore the potential for innovation in this country (there is a huge precedent, by the way), it also ignores a basic fact of the internal combustion engine as it exists today. Read here for more (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/***/atv.shtml - broken link).
It's well known ,and seldom denied, that the IC engine is old tech. That said, what sort of engine did you have in mind to replace it with?? Where is all this American Ingenuity that you claim will save the day? All of the stuff that is supposed to be "new" tech is just a re-hash of old tech one way or the other.
Another "apocalyptic" type that will undoubtedly prove WRONG -- as the links from others suggest, higher efficiency internal combustion engines AND personal transportation that look pretty much like what we have today WILL BE the major mode of transportation GROWTH for a LOOOONG time.
Eventually LPG will probably be the choice of large numbers of internal combustion engines and once the infrastructure for highly pressure gases become common place the benefits of driving vehicles with hydrogen will dominate. These are multi-decade long processes and in the mean time TREMENDOUS numbers of cars WILL BE SOLD.
For every skillless sad sack that falls down a few rungs on the ladder of consumers DOZENS more will, be hardwork and smarts, climb UP to buy cars.
Ever hear of Malthus? Basically any one that theorizes on the "scarcity" of ANY resource is falling prey to same errors of logic that have disproved over and over and over for the past 170+ years. The notion that "peak oil" is some kind of WALL that constrains civilization is ridiculous. Just because there may be some truth to constraints on the extraction of oil from low cost providers in the mid-east (and there is much conflicting evidence as to that...) in NO WAY suggest cars will be out of reach of ANYONE. Heck on cost basis alone it may be that we'll be flooded with Nano's from Tata Motors. Those would still be NEW CARS!
[color="Blue"]...you can see why Kunstler (and now me too) tell people that most Americans have bought their last car. I don't mean their last "gasoline powered" car, I mean any car.[/i]
I'm a big fan of using my own two feet or a bicycle to get around, but even I think this prediction is a little over the top. Cars will be around for many more years, because our living patterns demand it.
Innovation changes everything and without a crystal ball there is no way to predict this sort of thing. Its not like there is another alternative that is market ready and viable.
All the infrastructure already exists for gasoline, I would not role out its existence as the primary energy source for automobiles well into the future.
Mopst of us will be dead before the infrastructure for a alternati8ve exist and even then it will be more expensive because of all the cost.Otherwise we would just do it now with electric but its a problem with everyhting from batteries to cost. I always rememeber that only one form of energy comes close to 1% now and that is wood.Then we have to sork on the tousands of prodcuts that come from crude.
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