Living Car Free - Ok, the oils gone so you CAN'T use a car..now what?

Without a supply of cheap oil, we could easily see more and more small rural communities springing up.

A century ago, there were all sorts of small farming communities in the Canadian prairies. Because of the time and effort it took to travel, small towns each had the services they needed. As transportation became more efficient, the smaller of these towns began to close down. Today, the prairies do not have small towns every few kilometres, each with their own basic services. Instead, some of these towns have disappeared or have become nothing more than a couple of houses, a cemetery and a few abandoned buildings.

If cheap oil were removed from the equation, whether gradually or suddenly, it would make sense once again to have a lot of small communities, each providing basic services. And it would no longer make sense to have huge sprawling urban areas. Such cities would quickly become unworkable and impractical.I think that has more to do with available transportation than oil per say. Before the petrol powered car came on the scene in numbers, small towns were already dwindling because of the advent of mass production and availability of electric light rail. The car/oil exacerbated this by providing more flexibility than electric light rail, but... I don't think it can be attributed to oil. Even as oil increases in price, cities are perfectly suited for EVs of all kinds/shapes. If anything, an increase in high energy liquid fuel prices will likely drive people inward and housing prices up, since commutes won't be as cheap as they used to be and available electrics won't have large enough range. Of course, we have a ways to go before this happens imo because just about any manufacturer out there can make a ~200+mpg tandem two seater, and likely will after gas gets consistently high enough.

The Galena nuclear plant is only 8 feet underground! There's only a token number of police guarding the plant during the day! The article says if anyone trys to start drilling, the town folks will easily be alerted. That sounds real safe to me. Suppose they don't decide to call? According to the article, they intend to "save" money by cutting back on security on this power plant because having an army would make it unprofitable. Wonderful!

A couple of shot guns should handle the security guards and maybe a hundred pounds of plastic explosives?

There is no power plant in Galena at this point. What exactly are you thinking someone would do with the plant if they got it? The proposed reactor is tiny. The petro fuel storage tanks in an average village present much more explosive danger, not to mention the environmental damage.

This was from the article on the Net about the Galena. Oh I'm sure no one's going to Alasaka to blow it up and kill the whole town. However, it goes to show you that you really can't construct this with enough security or else it becomes unprofitable. Several feet of concrete separate the town from a toxic bomb.

Several feet of concrete are better than a quarter inch of cheap steel, which is all that protects the fuel dumps now. The real danger isn't it blowing up the town, but in shutting down the fuel supply during the winter months. But as noted the terrorists would have to have a screw loose to try to target some bush village. The boys out there have been killing anything that walks, crawls or swims since they could carry a rifle. They're friendly and good to know, but you don't cross them.

A terrorist attack might be small for a rual community like Galena but not for a major city like Boston. You're going to need thousands of Galenas to replace our need for oil and they're going to have to be built close to the metropolitan.

This is where the real danger is. But even so, you must know that Boston currently faces a huge risk of explosion from the LNG tankers that drift right through the heart of downtown. The relative explosive dangers of nuclear plants vs. petro fuels is often misunderstood. It takes a lot of precise, extremely difficult work to get a nuclear blast to go off. All it takes to set off an LNG explosion big enough to destroy downtown Boston is a hole and a match.

One thing that bothers me is how my being invisible may be compromised.
I really don't exist, for most drivers and pedestrians, I am cycling because I am
poor (irrelevant that some of you guys' bikes are worth thousands) and have no
value, meaning not likely to be holding large amounts of cash.

My 'humble' bike may be considered valuable in a oil scarce world. It might make me
more of a target for theft.

I already hear of complaints of crowded MUP's, now imagine all paths like that.

As for a Mad Max scenario.... 2 men enter... one man leaves!
(could be fun)

CE

I wouldn't call myself "poor", in fact, I could easily afford a car if I chose to purchase one. However, I share your concerns. (http://life-cycle.blogspot.com/2006/10/is-this-what-we-really-want.html)

There would be a lot less cars so the roads would be safer for bikes. You wouldn't be squeezed into the bike lanes with all the rest of the new riders. Think of china. Millions of cyclist and people still manage. I think our roads being made unpassable due to millions of cyclists is unlikely.

Now now gentlemen, the title of this thread is, -
'Ok, the oils gone so you CAN'T use a car..now what?'

May I gently guide you back to the subject in hand; - the Living Car Free forum is not the place to argue nuclear power plant security or the finer points of atomic physics. To clarify the topic the proposition is You can't use a car due to oil being unavailable, - what will you do now?

I will enjoy streets devoid of greedy clueless idiots in deathmobilles, instead I'll play slalom with the fat wheezing ex-cagers riding ill fitting, knobby tired walmart specials (not that there's anything wrong with that, ILTB), maybe 'rage a few clean off the road while yelling something like "you're not a car" or "get on the f###ing sidewalk", or just throw a few empty beer bottles at them as I fly past..... it'll bring the universe back into balance.:D

I'll also ride a heck of a lot further for food, but I commute 50 miles a day a it's no big deal. If need be we'll pack up the family and move (yes, by bike) somewhere where we can establish or contribute to a sustainable community. Probably ramp up growing my own veggies to cover more land area, even knock down part of our house to create more growing area if that's what it takes.

Essentially we'll adapt, survive, and even thrive.... people did so for thousands of years before the relatively recent industrial revolution and we'll do so again. This time we'll even have all the competitive advantages of whatever knowledge & technologies we can re-deploy in the post-oil future.

Unfortunately the reality is that it's highly unlikely that post-oil mainstream transpost will be the bicycle. Sure, the bike will be hugely popular but I think we'll be trying to share the road with fat wheezing cagers in little electric vehichles that still don't beleive we should be on the road. At first they'll be smaller (the cars not the cagers) with littlle 1 or 2 seaters the size of a large tadpole trike being popular.

Life in the future will be tougher but its the only future we've got so we just have to make the best of it.

Who said that cars/trucks had to run on petroleum? Henry Ford's first tractors ran on grain alcohol on the assumption that farmers would be able to brew up their own fuel. Rudolph Diesel originally intended his engine to run on peanut oil. We may be running out of oil, but we've got coal coming out of our ears, and the the technology to extract both gasoline and diesel fuel from coal has been around for over sixty years. Finally, we don't have a viable electric car yet, but we are getting closer every day.

My late father was physically incapable of riding a bicycle; if there were no cars, he would have been homebound for the last few years of his life. Not everyone lives in a large city where everything is in walking or cycling distance, or there is a decent public transportation system. It would be wonderful if all our cities had good public transit, and they could--but what about people who live in towns too small for public transit, or even in rural areas?

Who said that cars/trucks had to run on petroleum? Henry Ford's first tractors ran on grain alcohol on the assumption that farmers would be able to brew up their own fuel. Rudolph Diesel originally intended his engine to run on peanut oil. We may be running out of oil, but we've got coal coming out of our ears, and the the technology to extract both gasoline and diesel fuel from coal has been around for over sixty years. Finally, we don't have a viable electric car yet, but we are getting closer every day.

My late father was physically incapable of riding a bicycle; if there were no cars, he would have been homebound for the last few years of his life. Not everyone lives in a large city where everything is in walking or cycling distance, or there is a decent public transportation system. It would be wonderful if all our cities had good public transit, and they could--but what about people who live in towns too small for public transit, or even in rural areas?

We CANNOT convert enough food to fuel to maintain the current consumption rate...it ain't gonna happen, no how, no way. There isn't enough acreage even with the high yield stuff. Depending on whose study you read coal may have peaked, the conversion process is very messy (polluting) and even at current crude prices in the $100 bbl range is still not particularly cost effective. LNG has peaked, so any plants that are currently using LNG, will have to convert to coal, further depleting supplies. We are getting closer on the electrics, but in many areas the electric generation infrastructure is already overextended and is becoming undependable (rolling blackouts and brownouts) as well as outdated. We also use oil to produce electricity, but it is a fairly low percentage (3% or so).

Small towns don't need mass transit outside of a few taxi cabs (mine is around 10k and doesn't). As far as transportation for people not capable of handling a bicycle by themselves, there are many options, tandem tricycles, bakfiets, horses, dog carts, pedal rickshaws, etc. People that live rural had better be prepared to fend for themselves.

Another thing that many people don't take into consideration is that as the price of oil escalates, and the dollar devalues, fewer and fewer people are going to be able to afford a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk, or whatever. The economy is going to take a major hit, with massive unemployment very few people will be able to afford fuel at any price. Jim Kunstler (http://kunstler.com/mags_diary22.html) has an interesting outlook this week.

I don't mean to be a doom and gloom guy, but if the US doesn't make some drastic changes we are going to be up the proverbial creek sans proverbial paddle. We have been importing most types of energy for so long, along with so much of our consumer products that if we loose even a few percentage points of any import it is going to heavily affect the US economy and the US consumer.

Aaron:)

Can anyone here remember just how quickly social order collapsed
during.......Katrina?

That's because our government proved to be a bunch of NIMRODS that nobody could turn to and we were on our own! It screwed up the psyche of the nation worse than 9/11 when private despair turned to what-the-hell and especially when the gas prices went up 50 cents...it was "Mad Max" for weeks...

Who said that cars/trucks had to run on petroleum? Henry Ford's first tractors ran on grain alcohol on the assumption that farmers would be able to brew up their own fuel. Rudolph Diesel originally intended his engine to run on peanut oil. We may be running out of oil, but we've got coal coming out of our ears, and the the technology to extract both gasoline and diesel fuel from coal has been around for over sixty years. Finally, we don't have a viable electric car yet, but we are getting closer every day.

The problem with using crops to fuel cars is it takes an enormous amount of energy to produce the crops and turn them into fuel. Far more than simply sticking a straw in the ground and sucking up the fuel nature has already created. It's certainly POSSIBLE to run cars on bio diesel or grain alcohol, but because the costs of making it are inherently high, the price of such fuel will be high. The only way to get it on par with regular fossil fuel is with huge gob'ment kickbacks to the farmers.

Electricity is another option, but again must be generated. Most of that generation is coming from fossil fuels. Hydro power has reached its limit and has not been the cure-all it was expected to be 100 years ago. Nuclear has its own set of serious limitations and dangers. All of which means the cost goes up as the fuel dries up, and you're back in the same boat. Cars will keep running, but it will be inherently more expensive to run them per mile.

Coal is a backup, but we've already grabbed up the easy to reach reserves at enormous environmental cost. There are vast reserves untouched up here in AK, but aside from destroying the environment it would be extremely expensive to get at them and their yield of auto fuel is going to be pretty lame compared with black gold.

All in all, no matter where we turn it looks to me that prices will be going way, way up to run personal autos. We won't ever use up the last gallon of oil, but as it gets more expensive to run cars we'll have to shift our lifestyles. Change will be driven, as it almost always is in the end, by the wallet.

I don't mean to be a doom and gloom guy, but if the US doesn't make some drastic changes we are going to be up the proverbial creek sans proverbial paddle. We have been importing most types of energy for so long, along with so much of our consumer products that if we loose even a few percentage points of any import it is going to heavily affect the US economy and the US consumer.

Aaron:)

Yes, America ,in many ways, is "fiddling while Rome burns" when it comes to getting ready for
no/low oil future. France, on the other hand, is taking an aggressive stance on all fronts to get
it's population ready for the no/low oil future.

That's because our government proved to be a bunch of NIMRODS that nobody could turn to and we were on our own! It screwed up the psyche of the nation worse than 9/11 when private despair turned to what-the-hell and especially when the gas prices went up 50 cents...it was "Mad Max" for weeks...

I really can't see how you can blame the government for your own situation. I have NEVER seen the government as the great savior of the people. I am fully prepared, no matter where I am, to go a week or longer on my own, regardless of the emergency. Too many people expect the government to bail them out of every problem that comes along. If you look at most governmental emergency plans that are in place you are on your own for the first 24 hours, then the state/local is supposed to respond within 48 hours and the federal in 72 hours. I was in Mobile, AL when Katrina came. I packed up an left for a safer area, and came back after the storm had passed. Yes fuel was hard to get, but by a bit of planning I had enough to get me through until it became less of an issue. The one that amazed me the most, was the people lined up in South Florida after Wilma went through. They had well over 72 hours warning that the hurricane was coming, it had not even cleared the east coast and they were already lining up for water, ice and other handouts.

I hope you aren't depending on stable fuel prices, the chain from the crude oil well to the gas pump is tenuous at best. It would only take a well placed terror attack, hurricane or political fueled war to stop the system cold. IIRC we are never more than a couple of days of running out of fuel. I keep my work truck tank(s) topped up to the point that I can always make it home from where ever I am at even if all the stations are shut down. I also keep a bicycle in the back as a lifeboat/dinghy.

Aaron:)

As I recall, Katrina left a big mess with the fuel distribution system in that area. It was entirely different from a fuel supply problem. It was a small taste of what a sudden fuel supply problem could become.

Who said that cars/trucks had to run on petroleum? Henry Ford's first tractors ran on grain alcohol on the assumption that farmers would be able to brew up their own fuel. Rudolph Diesel originally intended his engine to run on peanut oil. We may be running out of oil, but we've got coal coming out of our ears, and the the technology to extract both gasoline and diesel fuel from coal has been around for over sixty years. Finally, we don't have a viable electric car yet, but we are getting closer every day.

My late father was physically incapable of riding a bicycle; if there were no cars, he would have been homebound for the last few years of his life. Not everyone lives in a large city where everything is in walking or cycling distance, or there is a decent public transportation system. It would be wonderful if all our cities had good public transit, and they could--but what about people who live in towns too small for public transit, or even in rural areas?

I guess they'd do the same thing that was done before the car. Improvise, overcome and adapt. Civilization wasn't spawned the same day Henry Ford rolled off the first model T. If it came to a point where there were no more cars. I think things would be bad for awhile but eventually we would figure how to live without them and we would thrive again. The human race is scary smart. It may not seem like it now. But I don't think we would let the end of fossil fuel end our society.

I think things would be bad for awhile but eventually we would figure how to live without them and we would thrive again. The human race is scary smart. It may not seem like it now. But I don't think we would let the end of fossil fuel end our society.

That's a refreshing view. There are some who seem to think we will descend into bands of barbaric thugs without an oil infrastructure around us. Personally, I think we'd be able to find ways to cope quite nicely, but it wouldn't be anything like our lives now.

I doubt oil will run out any time soon.
The U.S. used petroleum at a 40% rate in 2006 for energy productions. That is alot of oil to use, but there is alot of oil out to be had.

Proven reserves in Saudi Arabia are at around 264.3 BILLION barrels, with each barrel at 42 gallons. That's alot of oil. Canada has 178.5 billion barrels, but alot is in the oil sands, Iran has 132.5, but we don't necessarily buy from them due to political problems. 115 is in Iraq, but it's estimated to be around 185 billion because it hasn't been surveyed in a while because it's a political hot spot. Kuwait has 101.5 and they are pretty smart about selling it. Those are the top five oil reserves in 2006. If we bought from every country that sold oil regardless of political problems, that is alot of oil.

However, if it did run out, or stop being produced for some unknown reason, I can see other power sources to use electric vehicles or a new fuel be created since it would be 'necessary'. We could use Biomass, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar and nuclear to produce energy on a level to sustain transportation and heat. That would require alot more plants though.

I'm always blown away that people think scientists will find another great technology and life will know it will go on just fine. Thus absolving them of any responsibility. (I listen to talk radio all day in the car and these is the mantra for environmental discussion on the right wing station.) We can continue to write checks with no money in the bank because someone will surely bail us out. Hey that sounds like the current administrations policy.

Think of all the power generated every day by the tides. There must be some way of using that to generate electricity. I know that there have been experiments along those lines, but if the technology is developed properly. . . .

Between wind, solar, tides, and geothermal, Hawai'i (for example) could be energy-independent.

Think of all the power generated every day by the tides. There must be some way of using that to generate electricity. I know that there have been experiments along those lines, but if the technology is developed properly. . . .

Between wind, solar, tides, and geothermal, Hawai'i (for example) could be energy-independent.

http://www.tidalelectric.com/technology.html

http://www.google.com/patents?id=vhsrAAAAEBAJ&dq=4418286

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Tidal_Power

I'm always blown away that people think scientists will find another great technology and life will know it will go on just fine. Thus absolving them of any responsibility. (I listen to talk radio all day in the car and these is the mantra for environmental discussion on the right wing station.) We can continue to write checks with no money in the bank because someone will surely bail us out. Hey that sounds like the current administrations policy.
Administration...sounds like the general publics too:p I have heard it called the Jiminey Cricket Syndrome..."if you wish hard enough..."

Aaron:)

Administration...sounds like the general publics too:p I have heard it called the Jiminey Cricket Syndrome..."if you wish hard enough..."

Aaron:)

True.

"I hope you aren't depending on stable fuel prices, the chain from the crude oil well to the gas pump is tenuous at best. It would only take a well placed terror attack, hurricane or political fueled war to stop the system cold."

This is the point that 99.9% of the population just does not get or are in denial about. However,
to be fair the illusion of stable ,and plentiful, fuels has been supported by Big Oil and Big Gov't.

Any real changes in mindset must come from the grassroots up in America or there will be chaos
to deal with shortly. Talk with your friends & family about this issue when you can.

that is alot of oil.

If it was just a few industrialized nations sucking it up, you'd be right. But with China and greater Asia climbing in the car what seems like a lot of oil will start getting sucked up a lot faster. The scale of things is hard to imagine. Just look at how the world market on basic raw materials from copper to concrete has been impacted by the building projects in China. That pace isn't slowing down. The impact can be felt in many ways. For example, in the more lawless parts of the backwoods it's no longer safe to leave any copper wire in your cabin or vacation home as it will be stripped out for cash by meth heads. A ransacking of your house is directly related to the building boom in China. EVERYTHING now has to do with the price of tea in China. Expect to see the same thing happen as demand for oil jacks its price up beyond $100 and $200 and $300 a barrel in the decades to come.

I'd still be able to get to work. I'd have a lot more teachers drafting behind me on the Yolo causeway.

My students' parents who say "It's too dangerous to let my kid walk/bike to school" would no longer have that excuse.

All very true, but denied by most of the public & businesses. Most don't want the sweat manual
labor a non-oil supported world would bring. "Modern" life will not stop but it will change more
into labor intensive way to live.

One other point.....
Many have noted that electricity would save us in small way. T'ain't so. Coal is plentiful but coal
will also kill the planet if used in large amounts again. The number of people on the planet is
what must change first or all efforts to save the planet will, in time, fail.

Finally someone said it. The population of the earth will do just fine without oil. As long as about 80% of us die right away the remainder will be able to eek out an existence.

We would need a population which is smaller than it was 2000 years ago. In those times great discoveries could be made (timeline will be wrong but this is for illustration only) for example mining copper - it was probably much easier than it is currently to get 1lb of the stuff. Now it takes deep mines serviced by many oil using machines to get the same amount. For those that remain it will be a hard life. Back to our nomadic roots for some, small dirt farmers for others.

All the oil is gone, what will I do?
I will laugh.
I will laugh at all the people who spent $80,000 on a car. I will laugh at all the people who thought their government was telling them the truth when they said "It's going to be okay." I will laugh hardest at the suburban a-holes I see every day waiting in line in their idling SUV's to pick up one kid from school who could have ridden the bus (which we're all paying for anyway) or ridden a bike or walked the 6 blocks to get there, when they cry and cry that they can't afford $50 a gallon to fill the tank anymore.
(can you tell that's the one that really makes me mad?)
I will laugh at all the denalis and expeditions and escalades and h2's I see abandoned along the side of the road, up on blocks, every removable part long since stolen and the rest covered with graffitti as I cycle past eating an apple (can anyone say "sustainable fuel"?)
I will laugh when the oil executive in his high rise office, who has spent his entire life raping mother earth, realizes his company is now bankrupt - he is now bankrupt- and jumps out the window.
But mostly I will laugh because I'm just a really sick and twisted individual.

All the oil is gone, what will I do?
I will laugh.
I will laugh at all the people who spent $80,000 on a car. I will laugh at all the people who thought their government was telling them the truth when they said "It's going to be okay."

I see your point about hating suv's, but as you're laughing, you'll also be starving to death unless you have the ability to grow a large portion of your own food.

Oil derived fertilizers are the reason we, the people of the industrialized world have enough to eat. Without these, the crop yields drop dramatically and people go hungry.

We also seem to forget that all crops (large scale anyway) are planted by machine which are running on oil. They are irrigated, harvested and transported using oil powered machinery.

Face it if oil was suddenly gone, it would be about 5-8 months before a large percentage of the world's population was dead.

Ok that's enough doom and gloom for now, as it's depressing - but sometimes the truth hurts. :(

Just want to point out that nitrogen fertilizer (which comes from natural gas) can also be made from water, air, and energy (say from a nuclear plant, solar, wind, etc.). Phosphorus fertilizer on the other hand. That is another story.

All the oil is gone, what will I do?
I will laugh.
I will laugh at all the people who spent $80,000 on a car. I will laugh at all the people who thought their government was telling them the truth when they said "It's going to be okay." I will laugh hardest at the suburban a-holes I see every day waiting in line in their idling SUV's to pick up one kid from school who could have ridden the bus (which we're all paying for anyway) or ridden a bike or walked the 6 blocks to get there, when they cry and cry that they can't afford $50 a gallon to fill the tank anymore.
(can you tell that's the one that really makes me mad?)
I will laugh at all the denalis and expeditions and escalades and h2's I see abandoned along the side of the road, up on blocks, every removable part long since stolen and the rest covered with graffitti as I cycle past eating an apple (can anyone say "sustainable fuel"?)
I will laugh when the oil executive in his high rise office, who has spent his entire life raping mother earth, realizes his company is now bankrupt - he is now bankrupt- and jumps out the window.
But mostly I will laugh because I'm just a really sick and twisted individual.

I hope you have your own orchard to grow your apples and can farm it without oil.

My wife owns and operates an orchard where we live(apples, peaches, cherries, pears) and what her and her father say is, if there is a doomsday scenario and they run out of fertilizer, pesticides, and can't run tractors etc because of oil, they can grow enough food to feed family, friends, and barter for other food with other farmers.

To wholesale? not so much.

So, again, I hope you have an orchard where you grow your own apples for fuel.

Just want to point out that nitrogen fertilizer (which comes from natural gas) can also be made from water, air, and energy (say from a nuclear plant, solar, wind, etc.). Phosphorus fertilizer on the other hand. That is another story.

Good point. Let's then say that we want to move said fertilizer. How many bikeloads will it take to fertilize this orchard? How many people will pull these trailers for say a nice close (by today's standards) 200 miles from plant to point of use for some apples in payment? The energy expended on pulling the trailers will be greater than payment received.

Then we get into security. Biking across the countryside carrying valuable cargo will be a dangerous proposition.

And then of course, depending on how long after the oil's gone you want to ride said bikes across said countryside to the farm, roads are going to be in pretty bad shape since they are made from oil.

Like it was said before, unless you're self sufficient now and can continue to be without machinery/fertilizer/outside seeds/etc. you die.

The indigenous people of the amazon who hardly know that we exist will be some of the few groups of homo sapiens around the world unwittingly tasked with carrying on the human race.

Just want to point out that nitrogen fertilizer (which comes from natural gas) can also be made from water, air, and energy (say from a nuclear plant, solar, wind, etc.). Phosphorus fertilizer on the other hand. That is another story.

Nitrogen can be 'fixed' by any legume worth it's salt. It's the reason that alfalfa can produce a high protein feed, regardless of how much nitrogen is in the soil. Many green manure crops are leguminous, for that reason (and of course, to improve the tilth of the soil).

East Hill

Small farming and home gardening can be done without recourse to oil. I'm growing my own herbs and vegetables and as I've done for most of my life I garden with handtools only. When I had a 10 acre small holding during my 30s I did the same thing and owned quite a marvellous collection of vintage handtools and cultivators. Small farming is a local thing, - it's not about trucking stuff off halfway across the country. It's about local community markets where what is grown in the district is sold in the district. To my delight a local 'Farmers Market' is now being held once a week in the small rural town where I now live and I've purchased everything from vege seedlings, to delicious homebaking, to bicycle parts & etc at the market. Back when I was an alternative lifestyler working the land we had a slogan, 'Local solutions are Global solutions'. It's still just as true as it was back then.

All the oil is gone, what will I do?
I will laugh.
I will laugh at all the people who spent $80,000 on a car. I will laugh at all the people who thought their government was telling them the truth when they said "It's going to be okay." I will laugh hardest at the suburban a-holes I see every day waiting in line in their idling SUV's to pick up one kid from school who could have ridden the bus (which we're all paying for anyway) or ridden a bike or walked the 6 blocks to get there, when they cry and cry that they can't afford $50 a gallon to fill the tank anymore.
(can you tell that's the one that really makes me mad?)
I will laugh at all the denalis and expeditions and escalades and h2's I see abandoned along the side of the road, up on blocks, every removable part long since stolen and the rest covered with graffitti as I cycle past eating an apple (can anyone say "sustainable fuel"?)
I will laugh when the oil executive in his high rise office, who has spent his entire life raping mother earth, realizes his company is now bankrupt - he is now bankrupt- and jumps out the window.
But mostly I will laugh because I'm just a really sick and twisted individual.

I would like to see balloons drop, mariachi bands pop out of nowhere when the last sub 20mpg SUV is purchased. Just think of how ridiculous you will feel to realize you are the last dumb@$$ buying something that will hopefully become a thing of the past.....or maybe I am the crazy one thinking that at some point people are going to give a rat's @$$ about the planet they leave their kids.....

I will laugh when the oil executive in his high rise office, who has spent his entire life raping mother earth, realizes his company is now bankrupt - he is now bankrupt- and jumps out the window. But mostly I will laugh because I'm just a really sick and twisted individual.
I'll have to admit. I kinda hope if it gonna happen it happens in my life time. For all I know we only get one ride and it would make for some excitement.
I think the least affected people will be an oil executive. He'll have a ton of his money in other things. Contacts galore. By that time he'll have long seen the problem coming and will probably have shelter/food and everything else already set for life.
I on the other hand will be screwed. No way to get parts for my bike. No way for anything to get to the store for my to get. No farm/garden. No skills for use in a post apocalyptic world.

I believe that as the oil goes, the effect on the industrialized nations will be much like the effect on corpulent, greasy couch lumps when they kick the red meat habit and get on a bike: we will be leaner, sexier, healthier and happier.

Imagine zooming around on an aluminum and carbon frame tripod electric velo, with active inflatable fairing, in lanes which allow only sub-700 kilo vehicles, at 100 kph (60 mph). It would be faster, more maneuverable, safer and vastly more efficient than the average fleet auto of the present day, and as the shell would be one giant airbag, with proper three-point restraints one could be bounced around like a ping-pong ball and come through with little more than whiplash.

The only reason we aren't doing it right now is that oil is effin cheap, and batteries remain primitive. Alternating layers of carbon and silica aerogel will result in hypercapacitors which are, at a conservative guess, four to eight times denser in energy than the best lithium on the market, which can be charged and discharged extremely rapidly and which have a duty cycle in the hundreds of thousands. Once that's in place, the switch to electric is inevitable...even the car companies know that. Think fast electric bicycles, tricycles, quadricycles, rather than a heavy steel-framed unit like the early e-cars will be (tesla roadster and sedan, et al). Pedal power will be optional but fashionable, like home gardening.

large amounts of electrical power can be extracted from sunlight in some parts of the world (the sunny ones), easily enough to allow a manufacturing base for goods to continue. A 60 MW pilot plant was recently built, and the liquid salt technology allows the plant to continue to run at night; this means turbines of the usual sort can be used, including ones decommissioned from coal and natural gas plants. The recent discovery of the extraordinarily high metal content of extinct smokers on the ocean floor leads me to believe our supply of metals is secure for long enough to go fetch an iron-nickel asteroid, which is probably all the metal we'll ever need. Everything else can be generated from electrical power, seawater, and various organisms, notably algae; that secures plastics, and the world is generous in providing raw materials if we can learn to harvest them in a way that doesn't damage her bounty. If this manufacturing base is leveraged to produce local power options for the cloudier parts of the world (biofuels, efficient photovoltaic, vertical wind turbines and the like), then we're in business. Our hydropower alone, if it were used to produce photovoltaics and computer chips instead of, say, to support the gambling and entertainment industry, would see us through any sort of fossil fuel crunch...assuming the oil runs out along the shape of the Hubbard curve, and not catastrophically more steeply. There's every reason to think it will be gradual, steep at first but then tapering.

no message

At the end of the day the elephant in the room will still be.......overpopulation.

atman, I like how you think!

I agree with all your points. Humans are smart and we'll work with what we have and learn the lessons that have come before us.

Oil is close to $100 a barrel now..so, looks like things are moving along faster that we seem to have predicted.. :)

Good thing is we're already ahead of the curve...arogant *******s aren't we? :)

One of the Madmaxx movie shows a scenario that is or could take place in not far off future. Chaos, lawlessness, mayhem and war could result if there's total shortage and the wells dry out.

One of the Madmaxx movie shows a scenario that is or could take place in not far off future. Chaos, lawlessness, mayhem and war could result if there's total shortage and the wells dry out.

I think there may well be, but whether it will be isolated or wide spread remains to be seen. I recall what happened in NO after Katrina came thru, yet other areas suffered and did not have the issues that cropped up there. In every community there are people that will take advantage of anyone at first chance, but there are quite often others that will help out regardless of their situation. As long as the altruistic outnumber the opportunistic (and I mean that in a bad way;)) I think things may well work out. Anywhere with a strong sense of community is going to be better off in the long run.

Aaron:)

At the end of the day the elephant in the room will still be.......overpopulation.

I love this part...

OK...who decides who stays and goes?

<rolls eyes>

:mad:

I love this part...

OK...who decides who stays and goes?

<rolls eyes>

:mad:

Not to worry. As always nature will apply "Survival of the Fittest" rule. Hard to be sure but that's
the way of it all.

i read that theoretically you can base an econemy on hydrogen. i mean, it could work...

i read that theoretically you can base an econemy on hydrogen. i mean, it could work...

Theoretically you could, but people have looked the question, and it doesn't really add up.

To begin with, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. More like a battery, really. Yes there is hydrogen in water, but to release it you have to add a lot of energy. When you try and use it you get some of that energy back. Some but not all..

There are other drawbacks as well. If you wanted an energy efficient vehicle that could be run on renewable fuels, an electric car would be the closest.

Theoretically you could, but people have looked the question, and it doesn't really add up.

To begin with, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. More like a battery, really. Yes there is hydrogen in water, but to release it you have to add a lot of energy. When you try and use it you get some of that energy back. Some but not all..

There are other drawbacks as well. If you wanted an energy efficient vehicle that could be run on renewable fuels, an electric car would be the closest.

Just a note for you: oil is just an energy carrier. Not a source. More like a battery, really.

The only real difference is that nature stored the solar energy however millions of years ago... now that we so greedily used up all that energy that took umpteen million years to store, we'll have to figure out how to do all the work ourselves... or choose another energy source that has been previously stored (nuclear?)

As far as cars go... whether we go electric or hydrogen (or something else altogether?) comes down to energy density... which is going to store more energy? A tankful of hydrogen or a bank full of batteries?

The oil industry wants us to lean towards hydrogen... they want a chunk of it... keep us in the same distribution model that we now have for gas. Electricity makes a lot of sense for consumers, though... the distribution system is already in place (though it probably needs updating for increased demand)... we wouldn't have to go to gas stations anymore.

To begin with, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.Everything is an energy carrier since energy isn't created or destroyed, it just changes.

Well by that time I will be so agri-independent - and hostile that I'll be smacking down some gas-hogging SUV's in order to go and stomp some soybeans for some precious oil so I can ...

clean my chain.

Yep, a clean chain is just awesome.


Oh, I'm sorry ---- you needed that soy bean for what?


hehe ;)

As far as cars go... whether we go electric or hydrogen (or something else altogether?) comes down to energy density... which is going to store more energy? A tankful of hydrogen or a bank full of batteries?


Ultimately efficiency needs to be factored in somehow. Hydrogen proponents claim that you can use solar or wind to make hydrogen, but the process of electrolysis, compressing and transporting the stuff isn't 100% efficient. Fuel cells aren't 100% efficient either, so at the end of the day most of the energy is lost rather than available to do useful work. I recall about 30% of the input energy is available for actual work.

That's why electric is more attractive. Charging and discharging a battery is very efficient, so at the end of the day you use less electricity to travel a given distance.

An individual consumer may only care about their cost per mile, when you sum together all consumers using electric cars we would place an additional load on the grid. Using a less efficient propulsion system would mean more stress on the grid than a more efficient system.

Your theory that the oil industry is backing hydrogen in order to retain the distribution model that we have in order to retain control may have some merit. But Detroit is backing it too, for reasons that are far from clear to me. Their obsession with technology and high performance may have something to do with it.

Wow - it's getting abstract in here. Nuclear could be termed a source, since energy is being converted from mass. The sun's radiation could be considered a carrier, since those rays are just carrying some fusion energy from the sun :).
As it is commonly used, 'source' refers to something that can provide us with an abundance of energy. Oil has been a source, because there is/was a lot of it. Hydrogen molecules (H2) have a lot of energy (to release when combined with oxygen), but they are not a source, because there is virtually no molecular hydrogen available for use. Hydrogen atoms are all around (in water), but hydrogen atoms are not in themselves a source of energy any more than carbon atoms are.

That is why oil has been a source, but hydrogen will never be.

Wow - it's getting abstract in here. Nuclear could be termed a source, since energy is being converted from mass. The sun's radiation could be considered a carrier, since those rays are just carrying some fusion energy from the sun :).
As it is commonly used, 'source' refers to something that can provide us with an abundance of energy. Oil has been a source, because there is/was a lot of it. Hydrogen molecules (H2) have a lot of energy (to release when combined with oxygen), but they are not a source, because there is virtually no molecular hydrogen available for use. Hydrogen atoms are all around (in water), but hydrogen atoms are not in themselves a source of energy any more than carbon atoms are.

That is why oil has been a source, but hydrogen will never be.


Right--this is the practical or functional definition. Since we didn't have to do much work to get the oil, it is for all practical purposes "free" energy, or as I like to call it, magic juice.