Re: Lets Call It Done

"John A. Weeks III" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Lansford <jlnsford@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Right; as if another fuel won't be developed if gasoline becomes
prohibitively expensive. Personal travel will remain necessary, as
will improvement and construction of new roads.

What fuel would that be? It isn't alcohol, there isn't enough
room in the US to grow that much corn, and even if we did put
all of our corn towards auto fuel, what would the cows and the
Mexicans eat? It isn't hydrogen, that is still far too dangerous
and you have to have energy to make Hydrogen. It probably isn't
electric, since when oil runs short, the only alternative is
nuclear, and that hasn't exactly worked out well for us. It
isn't wind--again, there isn't enough land with lots of wind
to make a big dent in our energy needs, plus the wind doesn't
always blow, and those wind machines kill a lot of birds. The
one that looks the best is coal gasification, but then do you
expect that the environmentalists would ever let fly a plan to
mine 10 times as much coal as we currently do each year? Oil
sand looks good, but it has been slow coming on line. Shale
has been a non-starter for decades. Photo-electric is several
orders of magnitude too expensive. And space microwave might
work, but today, we cannot even launch a shuttle on demand,
let alone base an economy on spaceflight.

What am I missing here?

Electric cars, once the battery technology advances. There are many
ways to produce electricity; coal, oil, trash, hydro, and nuclear; and a
utilization combination of all would be in order.

By the way, hydrogen is no more dangerous than gasoline, it wouldn't
take 10 times as much coal, and France generates 79% of its national
electric power from nuclear (so it can be done).

--
Scott M. Kozel Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Capital Beltway Projects http://www.capital-beltway.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley http://www.pennways.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: NASA quietly corrects GW data
    ... We should be building nuclear power plants at top ... We have the technology to generate 100% of our electricity ... is also mature--the difficulty with fuel cells is not that we don't know ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: Summation of Dr Olahs interview on Methanol
    ... The wind ain't polluting, the environmental ... Beats the heck out of trying to fuel vehicles with pure hydrogen. ... When you say fossil fuel generated electricity, ...
    (sci.energy.hydrogen)
  • Re: Irish Electricity II
    ... What do you guys think about nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil ... Nuclear Generated Electricity" wreitten by Scott Heaberlin. ... Professional Nuclear Engineer in Washington State. ... you might consider that fuel made from crops is considered ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Re: Scotland relying on French nuclear power
    ... "Output from major wind farms fell to as low as 2.5 per cent of their ... potential generation capacity during the cold snap as power demand rose ... So just how does anyone work out where the electricity in a grid comes from ... Nuclear reactors go off line too for extended periods, for maintenance, ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: Summation of Dr Olahs interview on Methanol
    ... if we were to generate 100% of our electricity from wind, ... something like 4/5 of the wind in the United States ... Say you need 67 units of energy of transportation fuel and 200 ... turbine producing 100 units netting your 67 units of hydrogen. ...
    (sci.energy.hydrogen)