Will Peak Oil Turn Flying into Something Only Rich People Can Afford?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Miller-McCune.com / By Sam Kornell

Will Peak Oil Turn Flying into Something Only Rich People Can Afford?
Expert physicist: 'At $150 dollars a barrel, the air industry is barely viable. At $200 a barrel, it’s going to something that only rich people do.'

May 7, 2010 |


Sitting atop the queue in my inbox is an e-mail from a travel company advertising a $736 roundtrip flight from Los Angeles to Auckland. Captain Cook discovered New Zealand in 1769; for the next 200 years the idea of visiting it, for an American, would have been alien to all but a few very wealthy individuals. Things change. As I write this, a ticket to travel 6,500 miles — one-quarter of the circumference of the Earth — is only a few clicks away.

But how permanent is that change? In the last decade, studies have consistently demonstrated that the world’s storehouses of oil are drying up. Oil is now being consumed almost four times faster than it is being discovered, and in early March, Kuwaiti scientists projected that we will reach peak oil production in 2014.

Preparations to electrify much of the country’s ground transportation are under way. But airlines have a problem: No battery is large enough to power a jet.

“Electricity holds great promise for substituting for a large fraction of the driving we do,” says Joseph Romm, a physicist who writes the blog Climateprogress.org. “But it’s not a perfect substitute for liquid fuel. You’re not going to use electricity for air travel. We’re going to need an alternative.” .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/146769/will_peak_oil_turn_flying_into_something_only_rich_people_can_afford

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Passenger airships....

...48 hours across the Atlantic..

[dipsydoodle]

2. Hopefully

.

[customerserviceguy]

3. At the point where oil becomes that expensive

it will be too expensive for other forms of transportation, as well. As those forms switch to electric, that will free up oil for air travel. But it might get pretty expensive along the way.

Right now, my lady and I fly twice a year between the coasts, it would take up way too much vacation time to travel overland. But when we retire in a dozen years or so, we'll have the time, and I look forward to taking two or three weeks to make a leisurely trip across various parts of the US. When I'm too old to drive that trip, a train will be fine.