fossil fuels

[nibot]

Supposing that we have already passed the time of peak oil production, my question for you is this: in what year will we see fewer cars on California roads than in the previous year?

At what point will the Interstate Highways be fossil roads, abandoned relics, like the decaying steel towns of Pennsylvania, like the Erie Canal?

When will Phoenix be Detroit?

Or will someone invent the coal-powered car and doom us all? (The plug-in Prius actually burns coal.)

Comments

[nibot.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much "wind power" is consumed (by people paying the premium) versus produced (actual wind power).

Are the utilities over-selling their wind power? I suppose this is fine if it really does pay for more renewable generating stations.

But the wind power thing is kind of stupid in that it lets us feel good about our energy use while not actually providing any real alternative: the potential for wind energy generation is not very great and could never meet more than a tiny fraction of current demand.

Our household does it too.

[surpheon.livejournal.com]

I disagree a bit on wind. Barring a PV hail-mary coming through (nanophotovoltaic, paint on solar, thin-film membrane mass production, whatever -- there are a lot of long shots in the air), wind is the most mature, economical and plentiful option. It meshs well with existing hydro and nuke baseline capacity as well as playing nice with the nanescent distributed solar infrastructure. There is a lot of it economically available, and even as a mature tech it has its own hail-mary's in the air, things like airborne wind platforms, kite systems, or offshore H2-from-wind barges.

[shamster.livejournal.com]

A few thoughts:

the power generated by wind farms out in the Dakotas (I think that's where they are) or Montana, do they produce enough power to supply our needs AND to move it across the country for use? Are we actually using the wind-generated power over here, or is someone else directly using that while we use coal or oil?

Grey water systems save a lot of energy. That, and not being afraid to pee 5 times before flushing. Oh, and I shower twice a week instead of 7 times.

Eating locally saves a lot of energy. Why burn all that fuel to feed us kiwis and bananas from south america (1000's of miles away) when we can eat the produce from our farm shares and community gardens in town?

Eugene has a "10,000 farms" program that is trying to get that many people to start food-not-lawns at their home. Here we grow kale, chard, lettuce, broccoli, and other things seasonally in our yard which saves me about 10 gallons of fuel per term just driving to do pick-ups.

Filling car tires to the proper pressure saves me up to 10 mpg (the difference between 30 psi and 40 psi).