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

[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.