Text 4180, 182 rader
Skriven 2010-01-31 11:36:00 av WAYNE CHIRNSIDE (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHIEL VAN DER VLIST
Ärende: Re: a world without oil
===============================
-=> MICHIEL VAN DER VLIST wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-dd

 MVV> Hello WAYNE,

 MVV> On Saturday January 30 2010 23:52, you wrote to me:

 MVV>> A jet fighter without oil? Sound like a challenge to me.

 WC> Well recently a group of scientists working in California developed
 WC> a process using nothing more than heat, iron oxide, CO2 and another
 WC> available product to produce carbon neutral fuel.

 MVV> So where did the heat come from?

Answered below.

 MVV> Making synthetic fuel is nothing new. Problem is that it costs more
 MVV> energy to make it than you will ever get out of it.

Yup, WWll Germany.

 WC> Details escape me just now though they get their heat for the process
 WC> by focusing the Sun's heat on the reaction chamber and out comes
 WC> carbon neutral fuel.

 MVV> Sound good. In theory. Now get it to work in practise on a large
 MVV> scale...

 WC> There are quite a few such tecnological solutions however with the oil
 WC> industry's lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. they currently remain
 WC> meagerly federally funded.

 MVV> In the seventees I worked as a scientist at Utrecht Universtity in the
 MVV> department dedicated to the study of alternative energy sources. Our
 MVV> groups was not the only one, there were hundreds of such groups of
 MVV> scientists all over the world. That was 35 years ago. We are still
 MVV> burning oil...

Things have advanced quite a bit since the 70's.

I respect the fact you're a scientist but I've a certain advantage in being
disabled
and that is I've nothing to do but indulge my sciejntific curiousity via
searching the
internet.

There's literally little else I can do.
Then too I do not even own a television so that particular waste of time 
and intellectual growth doesn't exist for me.


 WC> I'm not quite as pessimistic of our chances as you seem to be on this
 WC> point.

 MVV> 35+ years of research have not gotten us any further away from an oil
 MVV> based economy than a few windmills and solar cells. Do you really
 MVV> believe the tide can be turned in say five more years?

Not five.
Perhaps 15 and then only if the economic interests of big oil can be
persuaded this is the road to continued riches.

Personally I like a hydrogen based energy future and there's work being done
along the lines of
replicating the actions of the common leaf at M.I.T. in the U.S. and recent
labratory successes
in Japan that involved starting with leaves, running them through various
chemical
processes ultimately resulting in a product that exposed to light converts
sunlight and nutrients into both oxygen and hydrogen.

Sorry my memory retention for the details are scant but it's interesting.
That one is nowhere near being scaled to commercial operations.

On the other hand hydrogen right now can be cheaper to run your car off of than
gasolene if you electrolysed and compressed it at home

The problems with that is it just transfers the burden of the production of
energy to fuel
your vehicle elsewhere and by itself accomplishes little.

Physicists are now getting somewhat optimistic about fusion power being
realized soon
though they've been saying that for 50 years now.

I do believe there are technological solutions that are also green with regards
to the environment. 

In my opinion it's the economic interests of the big oil companies that is
holding back scaling alternatives up to where they are commercially viable.

So the key to my optimism on our energy future lay in making big oil the
solution rather
than the problem starting with economic incentives in the here and now and not
based upon future projections of earnings from alternative energy.

I really don't see big oil looking beyond the next quarter profits.
But that too is slowly changing and some of them are now throwing serious money
 at alternative fuels with the promise to be commercially viable and
profitable. 

 WC> Personally I'd like to see the oil industries tax breaks and tax
 WC> credits swapped from the existing pursuit of oil to developing on a
 WC> commercial scale some of these technologies.

 MVV> Well, good luck...

Yeah there is that and here I do share your pessimism.

However big oil has plenty of scientists working for them as well and they
are beginning to see the handwriting on the wall in the fact that in the not
distant
future oil will no longer be economically viable to extract from the ground.

 WC> Perhaps we can even stop meddling in the middle east when oil has
 WC> domestic competition.

 MVV> we should never have meddled there to begin with.. :-(

Heartily agree.

 WC> Oil is a dead end in 75 - 100 years anyway as that resource is finite.

 MVV> Make that 30 years.

Economically speaking given the costs of extracting it as oil runs low I'd say
your estimate falls within my projected range towards the lower end.

 WC> There has been far too much blood and treasure spent in the pursuit of
 WC> Persian Gulf oil.

 MVV> No argument there.

 WC> Now were the previous administration still running things I would
 WC> share your pessimism however we've now an energy secretary who is an
 WC> actual respected scientist rather than a polititcal appointee as was
 WC> more often the case in the previous administration.

 MVV> That is good, but the task at hand is too big to be accomplished in
 MVV> four or even eight years.

Again, I agree with you however it will never happen unless we _start_.
Germany appears to be on track to meeting its goal of 20 percent of its
electric power from solar by 2020.

 WC> We've met previous challenges, we can meet this one.
 WC> The leadership right now is the important matter and will
 WC> remain so for some decades to come to clean up the mess left to this
 WC> administration.

 WC> If the will is there we can do it.

 MVV> Overconfidence is as good a recipe for failure as is lack of
 MVV> confidence.

I am likely one of the least optimistic people you will ever converse with on a
great many matters involving human endeavor.

It just so happens in my opinion green energy production is within our grasp if
we only commit to it.

 WC> Actually the United States Air Force has been a leading promoter of
 WC> alternative fuel for just the forward looking thinking of providing
 WC> synthetic fuel for their aircraft and they've been so for the greater
 WC> part of a decade that I'm aware of.

 MVV> Military aircraft are the greatest earth bound fuel hogs on this
 MVV> planet. If you want to save fuel, dismantle the Air Force.

 Do not confuse technological advancement with social advancement as the former
 far outstrips the latter.

 That's not going to happen anytime soon.

 In the geological reference to time we as a species were primitive hunter -
 gatherers about 15 seconds ago.

 

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