In a World Short Of Oil, Provisions Must Be Made

[valuesystem]

In a World Short Of Oil, Provisions Must Be Made
Mr. Wissner of Middleville Stocks Up on Rice, Gold; No Faith in a 'Techno Fix'

Wall Street Journal; Page A1
January 26, 2008
By NEIL KING JR.

MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. -- It was around midnight one evening in November when Aaron Wissner shot up in bed, jolted awake by a fear: He wasn't fully ready for the

Comments

Thanks for clarifications

[anonymous]

I think electric cars get a bad rap. I have an electric tractor (made by GE in the '70's) called an Electrak. One of the things that electric cars do is teach the people who use them a lot more about energy than they would otherwise concern themselves with. Windmills on rooftops, solar panels, etc. won't replace the power grid, but they would become much more popular if people had electric cars and could get a 'free' ride to work every day. A lot of the changes we need to make are more about the psychology than the actual technologies. There are lots of technologies that sit on the shelves at GM and other car companies because people aren't willing to pay for them (composite driveshafts, ceramic engines, liquid-cooled electric wheelmotors, flexwheels) until the price of gasoline gets high enough to justify the cost. The high cost of an efficient vehicle also puts more pressure on governments to provide mass transportation. We could do a lot immediately by requiring all companies over 50 employees to provide employee transportation (buses) and to coordinate this transportation with school systems and municipalities.
These are just a few of the things I think about. I don't think about peak oil per se, but about the lameness of our System of systems and how much waste is involved with it. http://www.storyofstuff.com
Auntiegrav

Re: Thanks for clarifications

[valuesystem]

I think the Story of Stuff video is probably well worth watching... unfortunatly, my dialup connect at home won't tolerate it.

I'm doubtful about the extreme long term use of electric vehicles.

In the short term, I suspect they will become increasingly popular. Using the home renewable energy electricity generating system is certainly something that some people will be able to do. I think it is extremely unlikely that we'd ever be able to replace all cars with electric cars and home power systems. Not only would it take decades, but we're going to want to spend most of our resources proping up the food distribution system.

I like the "advanced technologies" ideas. Again, probably short to mid term techno-fixes, but they would certainly be interesting to see. Someone told me of a very low cost car, planned to be sold in India, that will use compressed air as an energy storage device. I'll have to try to find the article on this sometime.