Text 4168, 87 rader
Skriven 2010-01-31 13:28:33 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av WAYNE CHIRNSIDE (1:123/140)
Ärende: a world without oil
===========================
Hello WAYNE,

On Saturday January 30 2010 23:52, you wrote to me:

 MVV>> A jet fighter without oil? Sound like a challenge to me.

 WC> Well recently a group of scientists working in California developed
 WC> a process using nothing more than heat, iron oxide, CO2 and another
 WC> available product to produce carbon neutral fuel.

So where did the heat come from?

Making synthetic fuel is nothing new. Problem is that it costs more energy to
make it than you will ever get out of it.

 WC> Details escape me just now though they get their heat for the process
 WC> by focusing the Sun's heat on the reaction chamber and out comes
 WC> carbon neutral fuel.

Sound good. In theory. Now get it to work in practise on a large scale...

 WC> There are quite a few such tecnological solutions however with the oil
 WC> industry's lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. they currently remain
 WC> meagerly federally funded.

In the seventees I worked as a scientist at Utrecht Universtity in the
department dedicated to the study of alternative energy sources. Our groups was
not the only one, there were hundreds of such groups of scientists all over the
world. That was 35 years ago. We are still burning oil...

 WC> I'm not quite as pessimistic of our chances as you seem to be on this
 WC> point.

35+ years of research have not gotten us any further away from an oil based
economy than a few windmills and solar cells. Do you really believe the tide
can be turned in say five more years?

 WC> Personally I'd like to see the oil industries tax breaks and tax
 WC> credits swapped from the existing pursuit of oil to developing on a
 WC> commercial scale some of these technologies.

Well, good luck...

 WC> Perhaps we can even stop meddling in the middle east when oil has
 WC> domestic competition.

we should never have meddled there to begin with.. :-(

 WC> Oil is a dead end in 75 - 100 years anyway as that resource is finite.

Make that 30 years.

 WC> There has been far too much blood and treasure spent in the pursuit of
 WC> Persian Gulf oil.

No argument there.

 WC> Now were the previous administration still running things I would
 WC> share your pessimism however we've now an energy secretary who is an
 WC> actual respected scientist rather than a polititcal appointee as was
 WC> more often the case in the previous administration.

That is good, but the task at hand is too big to be accomplished in four or
even eight years.

 WC> We've met previous challenges, we can meet this one.
 WC> The leadership right now is the important matter and will
 WC> remain so for some decades to come to clean up the mess left to this
 WC> administration.

 WC> If the will is there we can do it.

Overconfidence is as good a recipe for failure as is lack of confidence.

 WC> Actually the United States Air Force has been a leading promoter of
 WC> alternative fuel for just the forward looking thinking of providing
 WC> synthetic fuel for their aircraft and they've been so for the greater
 WC> part of a decade that I'm aware of.

Military aircraft are the greatest earth bound fuel hogs on this planet. If you
want to save fuel, dismantle the Air Force.


Cheers, Michiel

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