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How much longer can people keep their heads in the sand? Has anyone seen a hydrogen car at a dealership or an electric car that can go more than 50 miles without a recharge? How many people here can keep their lives going without a car? How many people can adapt to our "brave new world" in 5-10 years?
And you thought the housing bubble collapse was fun. Guess what's in store for this decade...
Wonderful. Splendid. Can we just start the damned Depression already? The sooner it starts, the sooner it can be over with. I'm tired of the procrastinating!
How much longer can people keep their heads in the sand? Has anyone seen a hydrogen car at a dealership or an electric car that can go more than 50 miles without a recharge? How many people here can keep their lives going without a car? How many people can adapt to our "brave new world" in 5-10 years?
And you thought the housing bubble collapse was fun. Guess what's in store for this decade...
With Li batteries you can build a nice 500 mile rage car.
Here is my plan.
Put a $1/gl. surcharge on gasoline have it go straight into a not for profit. The not for profit can only release the money for electric vehicles recharged by a renewable source. PV wind geothermal hydro electric etc. The size of the subsidy should be with a 30% administration fee and based on 100billion gl/yr fuel consumption, about 70 billion a year. The cost of the system is electric vehicle $50K battery packs (there will be two of them one hooked up to the PV array the other in the car being driven around.) $30k ish, solar array $20k for a total of $100k. With a $30k copay that works out too 1,000,000 cars a year.
$70,000,000,000/$70,000=1,000,000
Now with that kind of volume the price should start to go down If you drop the price to $50K for the system then the volume for the system assuming the same size copay is 3.5million cars a year.
The size of the array is about 4,000w for 2.4 hrs of sunlight/day based on an average of 30mpg and 12,000mile/year. At 1,000,000 units/year that will be adding 4Gw of power each year to the grid. At 3.5m that works out to 14Gw of power.
With Li batteries you can build a nice 500 mile rage car.
Here is my plan.
Put a $1/gl. surcharge on gasoline have it go straight into a not for profit. The not for profit can only release the money for electric vehicles recharged by a renewable source. PV wind geothermal hydro electric etc. The size of the subsidy should be with a 30% administration fee and based on 100billion gl/yr fuel consumption, about 70 billion a year. The cost of the system is electric vehicle $50K battery packs (there will be two of them one hooked up to the PV array the other in the car being driven around.) $30k ish, solar array $20k for a total of $100k. With a $30k copay that works out too 1,000,000 cars a year.
$70,000,000,000/$70,000=1,000,000
Now with that kind of volume the price should start to go down If you drop the price to $50K for the system then the volume for the system assuming the same size copay is 3.5million cars a year.
The size of the array is about 4,000w for 2.4 hrs of sunlight/day based on an average of 30mpg and 12,000mile/year. At 1,000,000 units/year that will be adding 4Gw of power each year to the grid. At 3.5m that works out to 14Gw of power.
Hopefully the price will fall farther than that.
If this was 1951 then maybe it would work. But with insane forclosure rates, 3 decades of flat wages, the highest unemployment rate in decades and a national debt that equals the number of galaxies in the universe it seems very unlikely we can even affort that.
This guy is over optimistic and he knows it. Sustainable peak oil was hit in 2005, with a temporary second peak in 2008 due to unsustainable overproduction. Looking at the number of projects coming online (megaprojects) and offsetting that against the underlying decline rate in current production, we can see when overall net decline sets in. That is around 2011-2012 at best if all goes well. And oil is not just used in cars, it underpins our entire economy.
If we went full steam ahead at transitioning off oil with WW2 type mobilisation it would still take 20+ years. We should have been planning for this back in the 70's.
Last edited by archineer; 02-21-2010 at 04:11 PM..
Peak oil has been a running joke since 1956, when it was predicted that peak oil would cause economic meltdowns and energy crisis between 1965 and 1970. Every year since then, for the past 4 decades, people have said "Don't worry, this year it will happen".
Oil is a finite resource, which always leads to the tiny bit of truth of peak oil, but as technologies increase efficiency and alternative technologies the risk of the same scenario is vastly overblown by apocalypse nuts. Especially since the original theory has not been updated since my parents were children, so it might be a bit out of date.
I think future generations will wonder why people so passionately fought Obama's agenda to help build a renewable energy economy.
We need to use this time to transition and they want to fight every policy that doesn't simply let businesses maintain the status quo.
What agenda ? Cap&Trade ?
That's nothing more than corporate welfare.
China just opened 16 new R&D centers for "green technologies"..what has the US done ? Oh..we've offshored solar panel manufacturing to China.
Talk is cheap..and Cap&Trade was not the answer. Having GS make money hand over fist trading invisible "carbon credits" will not move us anywhere.
Europe has been doing that very thing for years. Just look at Japan. They are furiously buying up carbon credits all over the world because they still can't meet their cap. Bogus agenda that hasn't panned out.
Peak oil has been a running joke since 1956, when it was predicted that peak oil would cause economic meltdowns and energy crisis between 1965 and 1970. Every year since then, for the past 4 decades, people have said "Don't worry, this year it will happen".
Oil is a finite resource, which always leads to the tiny bit of truth of peak oil, but as technologies increase efficiency and alternative technologies the risk of the same scenario is vastly overblown by apocalypse nuts. Especially since the original theory has not been updated since my parents were children, so it might be a bit out of date.
You understand the difference between US peak oil and world peak oil right? Your argument is moot btw as world peak oil has already happened.
What agenda ? Cap&Trade ?
That's nothing more than corporate welfare.
China just opened 16 new R&D centers for "green technologies"..what has the US done ? Oh..we've offshored solar panel manufacturing to China.
Talk is cheap..and Cap&Trade was not the answer. Having GS make money hand over fist trading invisible "carbon credits" will not move us anywhere.
Europe has been doing that very thing for years. Just look at Japan. They are furiously buying up carbon credits all over the world because they still can't meet their cap. Bogus agenda that hasn't panned out.
I never said we were on the cutting edge of anything, but massive investments in renewable energy technologies and businesses have been met with cries of pork spending and wasted stimulus and all the other lies.
If you seek to point fingers on this one, I can assure you it is those who wish to hold onto our oil / coal economy who are holding us back. Just like health care - the insurance companies have put up a noble fight and deceived the populace into believing it's in their self-interest to maintain the status quo.
We are truly a lost nation. I was simply pointing out efforts Obama's making to try and point us in the right direction. We spent 8 years squeezing everything we could out of oil. Very sad state of affairs.
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