Perhaps you remember the term Peak Oil! Some terrified individual calculated that 1974 was going to be the year of peak oil production. With every subsequent year having less production.
As a 20 something college educated person back then I bought into it, well for a bit, but in a few short years, I realized what a joke it was. Just part of a religious cult like belief that mankind was ruining the earth. Gasoline today is well cheaper than it was back then. Even with higher taxes.
Having an electric car as a sole vehicle is putting all your eggs in one basket. I doubt if the electric grid could withstand any general near 100% electric car usage. Events in Texas late last winter pretty well proved it.
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Originally Posted by Big Dave
Zero fossil fuels in you grandchildren's lifetime is probably a pipe dream.
Engineers say the perfect is the enemy of the good enough.
Going directly to non-fossil fueled vehicles is probably a bridge too far.
But there are a lot of partial measures to use to assure a prosperous transition.
1. We could at least partially beat the battery/recharging problem by using direct catenary electrification of railroads and long-haul truck. Electrified railroads are a long proven alternative. The Russians manage to operate 10,000 km of fully electrified railroad from Ekaterinberg to Vladivostok. Yeah, they power it with roadside coal plants but they also have plenty of natural gas.
A European consortium is experimenting with electrified eighteen wheelers in Scandanavia. I see no reason it can't work. All the tech is well-proven old-school stuff.
2. The US could substantially reduce its "carbon footprint" by transitioning independent IC motor vehicles by converting much of the transportation system to running on CNG or LPG - supplanting gasoline, ethanol, and diesel. Natural gas emits 60% less CO2 (in lb CO2 per HP-hr than gasoline or diesel. Don't believe that? Peruse EPA Publication AP-42. A night time satellite phot of the northern US shows a light signature nearly as big as Chicago out in the Dakotas. That's flaring of gas needed for pressure control of the wells. Just by building enough pipelines to market areas that flared gas could be compressed/liquified natural gas to run millions of vehicles. Just reducing CO2 by 60% from say ten million vehicles is quite a bit of progress.
Considering the most recent IPCC GHG emission inventory showed that China emits more GHG than the rest of the world combined - and that includes the US. If we cannot get China on-board, what's the point of impoverishing everyone else?
BTW, I am STILL of the opinion that Global Warming is an elitist scam.
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