A bicycle, and maybe a veg-oil diesel.
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I think we should breed giant St Bernard's and ride around on them. Comfy and very economical!
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I have been thinking about this oil problem and have come up with what I think to be the perfect solution.
You will need:
1) 50,00000000000000 creatures of the hamster variety
2) a large hamster wheel
All we need to do is hook the wheel up to the car and set the hamsters a running.
The car shouldnt be able to go over 30 so it will satisfy NoWheels.
:-)
Let me know what you think
Adam
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St Bernard? Economical? ye gods, Have you seen how much those things eat?
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Steam engines might enjoy a new lease of life. Would they re-open coal mines or carry on importing it?
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Well, sorry to spoil the disaster movie, but the oil won;t run out in the foreseeable future. We will always have around 25 years of known reserves; as demand and price increases, so does the incentive to find more reserves.
It's a little bit like my saying that my fridge has a week's worth of food, so I'm going to start starving next Monday. No I won't, I'll go and find new reserves of food (at Tesco in my case).
One estimate is that there are 5000 years' supply of oil at current consumption rates. I'll not mothball the car tonight, then.
The thing that will be the death knell for the use of petroleum for energy is when a cheaper source of energy coming along. That's the chief reason coal was overtaken as a fuel source. For example, solar power halves in cost per KwH every decade. If that trend continues, look for its use around 2040 to overtake energy from oil. (Source = Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist)
V
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Well, sorry to spoil the disaster movie, but the oil won;t run out in the foreseeable future. We will always have around 25 years of known reserves; as demand and price increases, so does the incentive to find more reserves.
One of the Radio 4 programs did a detailed investigation on this recently, and could find no oil economist to agree with you.
The optimists reckoned we would be in serious trouble in 20-40 years, the pessimists within five years. None of them reckoned that supplies wre going to stop entirely: the issue was the rate at which oil could be pumped. While there may well be many more reserves, it may not be possible for much longer to extract oil from the wells at sufficient rate to meet current demand, never mind future demand.
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NW,
"it may not be possible for much longer to extract oil from the wells at sufficient rate to meet current demand, never mind future demand."
I take your point but might also mention that when I was at school in the '60s I was taught that "oil will run out in 1980". At that point, they started putting gas and oil exploration rigs in the North Sea, several of which we could see from Scarborough, where I lived. Technology moves on - "impossible to drill in the Atlantic" - no they are doing it. In the 1960's they also said that there was a lot of oil under the Gulf of Mexico but couldn't be reached - it is now. As the price of oil rises it will be possible to extract from those tar sands we heard about so long ago. Just as with coal, we will be able to extract previously unexploitable reserves - coal is now obtained from slag heaps which are material they chucked away years ago because they couldn't get the coal out economically.
I am an optimist - oil is like food - some people will go short because they can't afford it but at least we won't have too many Malthusian scenarios. What we should acknowledge (and the Americans are the worst for ignoring it) is that oil will never be cheap again and we should not waste it.
I speak as a complete amateur by the way so don't shoot me down to violently!
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"One of the Radio 4 programs did a detailed investigation on this recently, and could find no oil economist to agree with you."
But this will no doubt have been made with a slant. TV and radio programmes rarely give a balanced view - they find experts who agree with whatever they are trying to say. Not saying it's not true (I'm not an oil specialist) but that Radio 4 isn't always a bastion of truth.
I, too, remember being told when at school in 1974 that the oil would run out in 25 years. Now I'm being told that the oil will run out in 25 years. According to Lomborg, in the 20's, people were being told that oil would last, er, 25 years.
If oil supply (let's not call it reserves) were looking to be too little in the imminent future, the markets would force the price up. At that point (or a long time before, thanks to planning) it becomes worthwhile to look for new sources/methods of retrieval/ways of clearing the bottleneck. If the bottleneck is not cleared by the action, price goes up again, until eventually, even expensive ways of clearing it become worthwhile, etc, etc.
Anyway, I refer back to my point that in about 30 years, solar will be price advantageous. I think we'll be using it to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen for use in personal transportation.
V
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Exactly this process is reported on the BBC website today:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3536156.stm
Although it's good to see the progress made, and of course alternatives to oil are needed, I thought the 15-20% efficiency or whatever it is of a petrol engine was bad enough, but 8% using sunlight to extract hydrogen from water or other sources, with 10% as a minimum industry standard?
I wonder if battery storage can make the strides forwards that it hasn't really so far, as using the same sunlight to generate electrical power appears to me to be far more efficient.
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Oh for goodness sake! It won't run out. It's always been tipped to run out within 10-20 years. I remember at Prep school in the early 80s learning that by year 2000 there would be neither oil nor gas. As it is... At least these days they're talking about more than 20 years before it all runs out.
RF - go back to your pipe & put some oil in it & stop worrying!
The C5 was supposed to be the beginning of the brave new world. And errrr......
And nuclear fusion is as far off as it ever was. And nuclear power (wehich is the only thing that can save us if NW is right) has been consigned to the bin by the greens (remember them? they predated the NF) - despite the fact that it is cleaner & nicer than any other form of power.
Anyway, must go and fill my plastic rubbish bag with the plastic packaging that my kidneys came in. Then I'm going to run a bath using gas, whilst my gas-powered computer shuts itself down. Oh yes, and hands off the ethanol, please - that goes in a glass, not the car. Just going to choose a nice nightcap.
Nite nite all. Don't have too many nightmares about the oil running out.
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Oh yes, and oil is not particularly expensive at the moment. I forget, but I think it was higher in real terms when the Shah was causing trouble in the early 80s.
PS: nightcap as in whisky. Too hot for the other sort at this time of year.
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I saw on TV a report that north sea gas is already running out and so liqiufied gas is going to be imported from the Far East!
The recent generation of gas-fired power stations produce something like 40% of our electricity, according to the report. Using gas to generate electricity has accelerated the consumption of north seas gas.
Gas and oil will become scarce one day. OK, vast new reserves may be discovered, but there are booming super-economies like China just itching to consume them.
Biodiesel looks to be the big hope, even if it means many more yellow fields of oilseed rape. Combined with super-efficient vehicle technology, there's a real chance to confound the car-haters!
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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We wont drive anything, as the world will end as too many things are dependant on oil!
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In the unlikely event I am still around at that time, Growlette will be pushing me down to the boozer in a bathchair.....
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Sorry to lift one of my posts from another thread, but interesting statistics:
Number of years supply of oil over the decades. In each case, the figures are the total known oil reserves divided by the annual consumption at that time (pre 1944, US reserves only, post 1944, world reserves):
1920 - 10
1930 - 8
1940 - 8
1950 - 20
1960 - 38
1970 - 35
1980 - 30
1990 - 45
2000 - 40
Draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that comments stating we're running out of anything are like my saying that at present rates of consumption the Vin household will run out of food next Friday and starve to death a few weeks later.
V
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I think the biggest worry is that very soon this country will be importing a significant proportion of the gas required for electricity generation from dodgy areas of the world. Shipping the stuff in by tanker or via 1,000's of mile of pipeline going through unstable countries seems daft to me.
We should be building well protected nuclear power stations instead. Having a more secure electricity supply directly under our control would give more options for with what we can power cars.
It's a pity joe public is brainwashed by the greens into an irrational fear of nuclear power.
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There is absolutely no excuse for using fossil fuel to generate electricity.
Nuclear, wind, tidal or wave power could do it all.
The problem is that the Government dare not upset the green lobby, having promised the Earth to them to get elected in 1997.
IMHO wind power is a dead duck: simply too unreliable and needs too many turbines to get a useful output . Plus need equal capacity of conventional stations for windless days.
The logical solution is tidal: 100% reliable and green (except during construction) but blocked by nature-lovers for loss of tidal mud flats beloved by birds.
You need either a large tidal range or a decent surface area.
The Severn, Southampton Water and the Wash are obvious candidates. The Scottish Lochs are alternatives but have deeper water, therefore higher construction costs and longer distribution distances.
Ideally you need a number of sites round the coast so that slack water at one site is compensated by full output at another, plus some pumped storage in the hills to meet peak demand.
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"irrational fear of nuclear power"
Oh, I don't know. There's nowhere to put the waste material we've got now!
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>>There's nowhere to put the waste material we've got now!
Owing to an irrational fear of nuclear power. It's pretty inert (once vitrified). If the Government weren't so nervy about the reprocessing facities at Sellafield then we wouldn't have any problem.
The problem is that energy generation is environmentally unfriendly, however you do it.
Solar panels (pretty useless in the UK anyway) require lots of horrid chemicals to lots of energy to make the panels.
Water power - we don't have enough rain or enough high mountains. fine in Scandanavia.
Nuclear fission - very clean, but perceived risk is very high.
Nuclear fusion - tainted by association with fission. Technological requirements enormous.
Wind - never windy when you need it to be. Blot on landscape in some of Britain's prettiest & most remote areas. Perceived as 'clean' by politicians in Whitehall so imposed on rural areas. Absolute disgrace. Fine offshore
Tidal - impact on sea/shore life.
Coal - filthy, gas perceived as much cleaner - despite limited resource.
It's a lose, lose situation, really!
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>>Water power - we don't have enough rain or enough high mountains. fine in Scandanavia.>>
Scotland gets enough rain (and has the mountains) to supply the whole of the UK with water and energy if the powers-that-be (no pun intended) put their minds to it.
There's a big power station on the Clyde at New Lanark that I visited in the 1990s and I'm sure there will be others.
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1920 - 10 1930 - 8 1940 - 8 1950 - 20 1960 - 38 1970 - 35 1980 - 30 1990 - 45 2000 - 40
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To update some of Vin's stats, the current (end 2003) production/reserves ratios are;
Gas - 67.1years
Oil - 41.0
Coal - 192
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2004 - well worth a look if you are interested.
As mentioned before, these values will change as new technology increases production ratios, and new discoveries are found/developed. Increasing demand obviously has a major impact on these stats if new discoveries do not keep pace.
Political and economical factors also play a major role - E.G. it has been estimated that we may end up leaving 1/3rd of the future recoverable reserves of the North Sea in the ground due to the limited lifespan of the infrastructure currently in place.
"There are lies, damn lies and statistics." Can't remember who said this, but highlights that stats can give you whatever answer you want!
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>>>>>>>There are lies, damn lies and statistics." Can't remember who said this....
Often attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, but many believe coined earlier by Leonard Henry Courtney in a speech to the Royal Statistical Society in the 1800's. Not many people know that.
....anorak mode off/
I was well known for using this in my last company in management planning meetings to debunk the marketing pimples whose reach usually exceeded their grasp.
Look out for a rise in the cost of bath chairs.
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"Not many people know that"
And there was I, thinking it was Mark Twain!
My favourite device against marketing pimples is the wilful misinterpretation of their favourite qualification, the MBA (= Master of B.. All).
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"There are three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics"
Apparently, Mark Twain attributed (incorrectly) the quote to Benjamin Disraeli, and either or both of these people have been linked to the quote ever since.
As Growler stated above, the quote is first recorded in Courtney's speech
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"As Growler stated"
I wasn't doubting him! (It would take a braver man than me...)
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>>Gas - 67.1 years>>
As North Sea gas is apparently running out British Gas yesterday signed a $15b contract for supplies from Malaysia yesterday...:-)
We have a gas rig off the coast between Liverpool and Preston opposite Ainsdale; apparently there are quite extensive gas supplies across a wide area of the Irish Sea.
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