Re: Oil Peaked !


"Dave Head" <rally2xs@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:md3m54hgmo1g4dilnv4u24t0ltlkij6ta3@xxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:06:55 -0700, "Ernie Jurick"
<invalidexample@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Dave Head" <rally2xs@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cepl5454rqueu4k3jom1a4sg439kfo26hh@xxxxxxxxxx
You're way off on the Volt. I've been watching it closely, and the
price
will
be about $35K.

Like all new models and badges, the first year or two will be sold below
cost to build a market for it. The online consensus seems to be around
$20,000.

I hope so. I'll buy it on the 1st day it's offered if that happens.

As production ramps up the costs will drop like a rock.

I think it'll take a battery breakthru for that to happen.

There will be future battery breakthroughs. We just can't wait around
until
the perfect battery is developed, any more than people in 1910 could wait
around until the automobile was perfected. You take what's available and
build on it.

Yet you have to build something you can sell. Cars that are built and sit
in
the dealer's showroom forever will _not_ cut fuel consumption.

That's why you lower the cost to build a consumer base.

I paid
$3,300 for my first IBM PC, a sizzling 4.5MHz with no hard drive. My
latest
cost $600 with a dual-core gigahertz chip and a 128GB hard drive.

Remember that the hottest market for electrics will be greens and the
under-35s, the people with the least money to spend. A $35,000 car would
be
priced out of their market, even with the gas savings figured in.

The car just might fail, too, if that's the only ones to buy it.

No, but it's the reason the selling price has to be kept reasonable. Older
people won't trust it,

Hey, I'm 61, and I _WANT_ one...

and will keep on driving their Buicks, even if gas is
$10 a gallon. Kids will think it's kewl and everybody will want one, just
as
they wanted VW Beetles in the '60s, and will be snapping up Smart cars.

At least the smart is cheap, and gets good mileage.

And, as in Europe, the price will keep dropping as more are sold here.

What we really need is that air car by Tata. I want one of those too. I
don't
give a F if it rolls up like tinfoil when it gets hit - I'm not going to
let
mine get hit.

I plan not to die, myself.

As for the electricity, have you missed all the news about the power
grid
being
in extremely sad shape and needing to be rebuilt? That was discussed
at
length
after that sagging wire south of Cleveland plunged the entire
northeastern
USA
into darkness for an extended period of time.

Yes, the rash of acquisitions in the early years of this century
produced
energy companies that were shareholder-driven, not public utilities, and
they cut costs on maintenance to boost profits.

What I've read is deregulation of the electric utilities caused them to
act
like profit-driven industries, which all cut costs any way they can.
One
way
they can is to cut maintenance.

Yep, all parts of the same problem.

They should never have deregulated the power distrubution, or the
airlines.

Quite right. But people protested against Big Government running everything
and how much better private enterprise would be. So here we are.

And, stringing power-carrying
copper is WAAAAAAAY more complicated than building out fiber. Fiber
can
be
strung underground with a "ditch witch" sort of machine, but power
wires
require towers and large diameter copper wires, and concrete, and
construction
crews, and snorkel trucks, and sometimes even helicopters.

Transmission lines use aluminum conductors as a rule, not copper.

Hmmmm...

And you're assuming that the old way is the only way. We're on the edge
of
practical superconducting mains,

Well, when we get 'em, we can use 'em, but we ain't got 'em yet.

Nor can we wait for them.

Nope - we should rebuild the electric grid as soon as possible.

When cities were wired at the turn of the 20th
century immense overcapacity was designed into the conduits under the
streets, because everyone could clearly see the future.

all of which would be buried, probably
alongside roadways so they could later be adapted to recharge passing
cars
on the fly.

$$$$$$$$$$$

Iraq = $2 billion/week
Rewiring America = ?

Rewiring America is going to have to be done by private industry, and it
won't
happen unless there is a profit in it. Or, unless the government
re-regulates
the power industry so they have the money to do it.

Even if conventional cables are used, they'd be lots more secure
buried than the pylon-borne setup we have now, a leftover from the
1950s.

Yep, but it is hideously expensive to do.

So was the railroad, the interstate highway system, rural electrification,
air transportation and all the other modern advances. We just need to make
it a priority.

Yeah, but its unnecessary. Just string the wires on the hi-tension towers
like
our grandfathers used to do. People that don't like the looks can just
kiss my
ass.


Nothing could be simpler. As you drive, you broadcast your location
and
time
on the road to the nearest microwave tower, which charges (no pun
intended)
your credit card.

That's if everyone would cooperate, but you know that there will be
hoardes of
people stealing the power, and there'd be no metering possible in
order
to
catch them.

How do you steal induced power?

Easy. The power wires are buried in the roadway, and creating a
magnetic
field
that the car receives via a coil in the bottom of the car. Any car that
enters
the magnetic field can soak up the power. If the wire is as long as the
road,
there's no way to know which car on the road is not set up to send in a
payment
for the power he's soaking up out of the buried coils.

The car doesn't operate if it's not paying its way, any more than your
cell
phone operates if you stop paying the bill.

Where do you get this stuff? I stick a coil in the bottom of my car, wire
it
to an electric motor, and the coil picks up the power out of the air, from
the
magnetic field. There's _NOTHING_ stopping my car from working - any more
than
there would be something to stop a refrigerator magnet from clinging to a
refrigerator. No metering would be involved. It would be damn difficult
to
know it was happening - my car would look like it was any other gasoline
powered car, but it would be running on electric from that wire under the
road.

May I suggest a course in basic electric motors? What you're saying is that
you can get the refrigerator magnet to power the refrigerator.

Nobody would have much chance of knowing.

If you tried to drive an unmetered car it
probably wouldn't start, and if it did you'd be broadcasting your
position
to every police car in the vicinity.

????

Police would be monitoring for cheats the way they monitor for speeders
and
electronic toll-jumpers today.

They wouldn't have an effective detection tool.

And you know this how? I can hear a great-great ancestor of your saying that
walking upright was a bad idea and fire was not to be trusted. Pioneers are
not happy with the status quo. That's what makes them pioneers. They take
the risks and reap the rewards. Those stuck in the present day die
miserably.

Yes, any change is resisted. Look how reluctant you are to give up
gasoline.
:-)

Am not. I'm only reluctant to give up gasoline-equivalent
performance -
the
electric car I buy needs to perform as well or better than my gasoline
engined
car, that's all.

That may not be possible. You may have to make some sacrifices for the
greater good. Americans used to be able to do that. Witness the public
response to WWII. I wonder if we're still capable of it?

They did it during WW2 'cuz they knew that some TEMPORARY impact to
their
lives
would result in the much greater good of defeating the enemy.

You're not likely to get people to PERMANENTLY make their lives less
pleasant,

No, I'm not projecting a permanent dystopia, just a transition period
where
there will be some inconviniences, nowhere near like the home front in
WWII.
Things on the other side will be just peachy. Oil dependence will be a
thing
of the past.

That would take about 20 - 30 years to complete,


Where do you get this 20-30 year business? Do you have any evidence?

which would most likely be the
rest of _my_ life, so yeah, it is essentially "forever", as far as I and
anyone
else my age is concerned. Even if you're 30, you're looking at extremely
hard
times 'til you're 50 or 60 - this would cut the best years out of your
life and
condemn you to a relative austere existence, with deprivation of things
that,
if you aren't lucky, may kill you. Go ahead, get cancer when you can't
afford
insurance, which many more won't be able to that are not able to now.

I've had cancer, thank you. And you've just pointed up the need for another
priority-- a national health plan to go alongside our national energy plan.
To bring us up to European levels.




especially when it is based on some PINHEAD's idea that we can't drill
all
the
oil we have because of some fraud like global warming or spilled oil on
some
beaches or some damn caribou in Alaska or all the other excuses.
They're
more
likely to lynch the pinheads, tho. That might happen.

Yes, they might. There is amazing power when enough stupid people form a
lynch mob.

Not stupid - just looking out for their own interests by dealing with
people
who would harm them.

But global warming deniers are the lunatic fringe these days.

No, global warming proponents are looking more and more like the
charlatans
that they are. This is all hype to bring people down to living the way
the
environmental lunatic fringe wants them to - poor, unable to travel, so
that
they _can't_ use any fuel...

Like the rest of your philosophy, you want to do nothing and hope it gets
better, or do the same thing an dhope for different results. :-)

No
one takes them seriously except talk radio hosts.

There _is_ _no_ consensus on this issue, only hype.

Only if you chose to see it that way. But then, I subscribe to world class
tehnical magazines and only listen to talk radio for amusement.


And why do you feel that
America has to despoil every square mile of its heritage so you can have
enough gas to drive your SUV to the mall?

Its more like avoiding an economic collapse that could kill millions, and
there
is no "despoiling", there is only drilling. That is not despoiling. Do
you
know that if ANWAR was the size of a newspaper page, that the portion to
be
drilled would be no bigger than a single letter on the page? Worrying
about
that is absolutely absurd.

It gets their foot in the door. Once they have precedent, it's goodbye,
ANWR.

Isn't that just a tad... selfish?

What? Saving millions from starvation resulting from an economic
collapse? No,
I don't think so.

You're starting to believe in your own fantasies. That's dangerous.

What about your grandkids?

_I_ don't have any, but if you have some, they may starve to death if the
gas
goes to $8 / gallon and the economy goes tits up. Get into a collapse
like the
last one in the 1930's, and you and they may spend the rest of your/their
lives
getting out of it.

We are coming very close to that thanks to greedy, short-sighted people to
whom the dollar is God Almighty.

There's lots of ways to have virtually unlimited power, so we can live
wherever
we want, if we are just willing to go ahead and build it. Nuclear power
could
be made to last 1000's of years - there's that much Uranium and Thorium
to
be
mined. Use breeder reactors, it goes way up. Get fusion working, it's
going to
be virtually limitless. Solar is virtually limitless. Geothermal is
virtually
limitless. We can solve the problem in maybe 30 - 100 years, but we
have
to
survive the years in between those. We can't do any of this fun stuff
today -
not solar, geothermal, etc.

Don't forget wind, already paying its way in many places.

Wind is a minor player. There's not enough of the stuff in the country to
make
a sufficient dent. T. Boone Pickens, the oil billionaire, is about to
build
the largest windfarm in the world in N. Texas, and when he's done, it'll
still
be a very small percentage of the total consumption of power in the
country.

Rome, as they say, wasn't built in a day. Nor was the global petroleum
industry. People tend to forget that a century ago there was no such thing.
A century from now it will probably have vanished again.

Now solar, that's something else - there's _enough_, easily, but we have
to
make some solar cell efficiency improvements and be willing to put up
collectors, both PV and solar-thermal, in the desert southwest and ship
the
power all over the country.

Present-day converters are quite adequate. And yes, my idea is to pave the
Mojave Desert with them.

But if you think
we can just wait for it to happen you're going to wake up some day with
everything gone.

Exactly. We can't wait, and should be starting now. Start with
solar-thermal
- we can do that now, build wind farms as fast as possible, AND DRILL
EVERY
DAMN SQUARE INCH OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE WITH OIL UNDER IT AND AN AMERICAN
FLAG
OVER IT!


Have you ever seen an addict in an alley desperately trying to find the last
drop in a syringe, or an alcoholic poring through beer cans? Yes, we can
degrade ourselves before the world and sacrifice what little pride we have
left, but for what? So you can drive your SUV to the mall to go shopping?

We have to aggressively pursue EVERY approach.

Many countries used the 1970s oil shock as a warning and
took steps to prepare for the future. Brazil converted all its cars to
ethanol, France built its nuclear network, etc. Americans bought economy
cars in droves,

Everybody keeps beating this dead horse, but fails to notice that they did
it
on sugar. WE CAN'T GROW THAT MUCH SUGAR.

Brazil will sell us all the ethanol we want. We just have to drop Bush's
55¢/gal tariff on the stuff. Which he refuses to do.

We have to do it on corn, at least
until some smart guy figures out the celluose to alcohol enzyme that will
allow
us to use things like switchgrass. But as it is, we're using corn. Sugar
produces 7 times as much energy as it takes to make alcohol from it, but
corn
produces something like 25% more energy than it takes to make it. That
means
we don't have anywhere close to enough land to produce all the ethanol we
need,
and we can't grow sugar can in more than a very small percentage of land
in
this country.

Yes, Bush's subsidized ethanol program was a landmark of stupidity, but the
Republicans forced it through anyway.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out that nanotech is only a small part
of
battery research, and one assistant professor spending 3 weeks to 3 months
a
year cooling his heels in Riyadh isn't going to be coming up with a
breakthrough anytime soon.

He's _already_ made the breakthru, but if there's any adaptation that is
needed
to make it work in the real world, it'll be done in SA, and then this guy
will
disappear, along with his work.

Just like the guy who invented the 400 mpg carburetor in the 1950s. Or the
legions of people who have free power machines or who can extract
electricity directly from cucumbers.

Saudi Arabia will continue to do what it's always
done-- invest where there the greatest chance of return.

They're going to bury this thing if they can, because it will make their
oil
worth a lot less than it is now. Probably put oil back down at $6 a
barrel.

Yep. And the space aliens will be helping them do it, I have no doubt.


The interstate highway
system, rural electrification, satellite phones, FedEx, personal
computers--
all were impossibly expensive and far too complicated until somebody
with
vision came along and did them. Now they cost next to nothing and we
take
them for granted.

Yep, but we have to keep it going long enough that we don't kill several
million people via starvation in an economic collapse.

Can you say "obsession"? I thought you could. Any proof of these wild
claims, other than Weekly World News?

-- Ernie


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Oil Peaked !
    ... The car just might fail, too, if that's the only ones to buy it. ... They should never have deregulated the power distrubution, ... strung underground with a "ditch witch" sort of machine, but power wires ... So was the railroad, the interstate highway system, rural electrification, ...
    (misc.news.internet.discuss)
  • Re: Oil Peaked !
    ... We don't have to reinvent electricity, ... cost $600 with a dual-core gigahertz chip and a 128GB hard drive. ... couldn't be metered to each car to have the electricity paid for. ... people stealing the power, and there'd be no metering possible in order to ...
    (misc.news.internet.discuss)
  • Re: Oil Peaked !
    ... cost $600 with a dual-core gigahertz chip and a 128GB hard drive. ... The car just might fail, too, if that's the only ones to buy it. ... strung underground with a "ditch witch" sort of machine, but power wires ... So was the railroad, the interstate highway system, rural electrification, ...
    (misc.news.internet.discuss)
  • Re: driving habits in Europe
    ... If you generate the power in one place you may well be able to clean ... the overall cost of energy is as high for an all ... electric car as an efficient petroleum fuel car. ... replacement at a future time adds significantly to the cost per mile. ...
    (rec.travel.europe)
  • Re: IEP, drop the diesel only version.
    ... The diesel version was a 20 cyl MTU 4000. ... and it was into traffic as a diesel, when the electrification proposal ... something like 6-8 car sets with a diesel power head, ...
    (uk.railway)