The End is Near - by Kurt Vonnegut

[MadisonProgressive]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1546/

The American Wright brothers, of course, built and flew the first airplane only 101 years ago. It was powered by gasoline. You want to talk about irresistible whoopee?

A booby trap.

Fossil fuels, so easily set alight! Yes, and as Bush and Kerry are out campaigning, we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and drops and chunks of them. All lights are about to go out. No more electricity. All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery.

And nobody can do a thing about it. It’s too late in the game. Don’t spoil the party, but here’s the truth: We have squandered our planet’s resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn’t going to be one.

[Ready4Change]

1. Too dire, but in essence I agree.

I don't see this as the end of the human species. But I do see it as a threat to civilization as we have come to view it.

When oil starts running dry we will swap to burning easily obtained coal to power most of our actions. That will limp as along a bit further, while also being quite a bit more polluting. Then, when the coal is used up, either we will have built the alternative energy infrastructure needed to support the status quo, or we will regress to whatever we CAN support.

How far we regress depends on how far we progress alternative energy abilities now in this energy rich environment. Left in the hands of the likes of this Bush administration, we'll fall back to stone tools, at least here in the USA.

Maybe Europe will haul us out of the caves?

[MadisonProgressive]

2. You can run your car on coal

nor can we product fertilizers and insecticides out of coal.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

3. Did you mean to say "You can't run your car on coal"? n/t

[MadisonProgressive]

4. Yes - thanks for pointing it out

[Ready4Change]

6. Mostly true

(After the can/cant thing :) )

I suppose someone could figure a way, although comical images of road going steam trains comes to mind.

But natural gas is being used today. That can probably suffice until it and all the other fossil fuels are depleted. That's when were really in trouble.

And at humanities current growing rate of energy consumption, many on this board are likely to live to see those days.

[MadisonProgressive]

9. If you do some research you will find

that natural gas is peaking too. It's not looking real good.

[MadisonProgressive]

12. I was under the impression that we are also close to Peak NG

On edit; Darn it I already said that! Just woke up from a little nappie poo and am kind of delirious!

[Ready4Change]

15. (grin) Pre-coffee here for me.

From what I gather we aren't at peak for NG at current usage rates. However, if we should further shift power generation to NG I think we'd exceed our production ability real quick.

[BlueEyedSon]

10. Dr. Diesel designed his engine to run on coal dust suspended in water.

So yeah, you can run a car on coal.

[Ready4Change]

11. Yah? Cool!

Love humans and their ingenuity.

[BlueEyedSon]

14. Sorry, here's a link

Dr. Rudolf Diesel actually invented the diesel engine to run on a myriad of fuels including coal dust suspended in water, heavy mineral oil, and, you guessed it, vegetable oil. Dr. Diesel’s first engine experiments were catastrophic failures. But by the time he showed his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, his engine was running on 100% peanut oil. Dr. Diesel was visionary.

http://www.veggievan.org/biodiesel/articles/dr_diesels_invention.php

[MadisonProgressive]

13. I always learn something new on DU! Thanks!

[fedsron2us]

7. You may be right about cars and insecticides

but fertlisers certainly can be produced from coal. Indeed, the
Haber-Bosch process originally used it as a feedstock to synthesise ammonia.

http://www.fertilizer.org/ifa/statistics/indicators/ind_reserves.asp
http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1918/haber-bio.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/texts/readmach/zmaczynski.htm

edit for links

[MadisonProgressive]

8. You may be right, but

I'm going by the fact that 90% of commercial fertilizer is petroleum based. This is what makes the land produce 500% more than it would without those fertilizers. If coal could do the same thing this wouldn't be an issue (but as usual I'm talking through my hat)!!

[bpilgrim]

5. i thought that was mopaul, for a sec

gotta love'm both :loveya:

peace

[libertypirate]

16. We don't need fuel to generate energy

http://www.keelynet.com/bedmot/bedmot.htm

If the motor is a 1.5vdc slot car motor, they easily draw from 200 milliamps (300 millwatts) to 500 millamps (750 milliwatts). 4000 rpm with this kind of power usage should NORMALLY drain that 9VDC battery in a couple of hours.

John says this circuit ran for 5 days (120 hours!!) on the single 9vdc battery, that is amazing and the girl should be congratulated for demonstrating it to win the science fair awards.

Scale this up and no need for the economics of fuel; putting oil out of business would be a gift to the world.