$98 per barrel oil

Thomas Borchert wrote in
:

Bertie,

You're Greek?


German.


OK, I better explain then, there's a difference between developing a system
of argument and getting five (excellent) beers into you and then
telling your neighbor he has to start wearing lederhosen.


The Jefferson Airplane will back me up on this one.

Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Yes - I have a name writes:

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

About 250,000.

About fifty times less.

Um.. That would be -12,250,000

How is that possible?

It isn't.

250,000/50 = 5,000



Autism boi chips in with his finger math skills once again.



Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Dylan Smith writes:

Aviation is probably the hardest nut to crack - it requires a portable
and highly energy dense fuel - batteries probably never will crack it.
It'll always need a fuel with similar energy density characteristics as
diesel or gasoline.

Hydrogen springs to mind, but storing it safely and in small volumes is
problmatic.


Been done, fjukkwit.



Bertie

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Yes - I have a name writes:

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

About 250,000.

About fifty times less.

Um.. That would be -12,250,000

How is that possible?

It isn't.

250,000/50 = 5,000

Gee, you're "near correct"

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in :

There are no alternatives to oil.

The electric grid uses a vanishingly small amount of oil.

The transportation system uses a vanishingly small amount of
electricity.

Concerning ground transport, there's rail which nowadays is mostly
electric. The combustion engine is really only indispensable in air and
ship transport, as you say, and a fraction of ground transport which
for various reasons can't be transferred to rail.

Most rail is diesel electric; there is a diesel engine driving a
generator.

There are no electrified rails or overhead wires between LA and
Chicago.

Unless you run tracks from every distribution center to every local
retail outlet, rail can never be more than a small fraction of the
transportation system.

Rail is good for hauling bulk items, such as coal, over long distances
between major hubs.

It doesn't get lettuce from Fresno to grocery stores in San Diego.


Technically the problem is trivial; manufacture synthetic fuels. We've
known how to do that for half a century.

Practically the problem is enourmous; the estimated costs I've seen
for synthetic fuels would be many times the current cost of gasoline
and diesel.

There are methods for making oil from coal. Somewhere I read that the
process has been revived in China. If it's so uneconomical, why are
they doing it?

As I said before, such processes have been doable for about a half
century now.

No one is doing it commercially because it is too expensive.

Lots of people are tinkering to see if the cost can be reduced.

When the price of crude oil exceeds the cost of making artificial oil,
then it will happen commercially.

--
Jim Pennino

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kontiki wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

There are methods for making oil from coal. Somewhere I read that the
process has been revived in China. If it's so uneconomical, why are
they doing it?

It's becoming ecomonically viable to do it in the west as well.



Exactly.... Especially when you build these plants so that
they use nuclear and/or solar to power the synthetic fuel
'refining' process. This is also true if you want a positive
payback in ethanol production.

Nuclear yes, solar no; solar is too expensive.

Just because sunlight is free doesn't mean the equipment to do the
conversion is.

Remember that oil is used in zillions of products, manufacturing
processes and machinery that we still use and will need to use,
probably forever. Yes, we can reduce our use of it but we are still
going to *need* it. Other countries seem to understand this and are
still exploring for and producing oil, if not for export but even
just for their own use. For us not to do the same thing is simply
foolish.

Exactly, the petrochemical industry uses lots of oil.

--
Jim Pennino

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Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2007-11-08, wrote:
Electric transportation will never be viable until and unless a dramatic
advance in battery technology is made that will enable electric cars
to go 200-400 miles and power all the trucks on the interstate.

To be pedantic, *personal* electric transportation. Over here in
Rightpondia, electric transportation has been viable for frieght and
mass transport for decades. Here's a picture of such transport hauling a
load of frieght:
http://jasonrodhouse.fotopic.net/p43333298.html

Sure, it works great in some circumstances, especially when the
distances are trivial.

How do you get lettuce from the field in Fresno to the supermarket
in San Diego, much less Chicago?

Aviation is probably the hardest nut to crack - it requires a portable
and highly energy dense fuel - batteries probably never will crack it.
It'll always need a fuel with similar energy density characteristics as
diesel or gasoline.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

--
Jim Pennino

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Montblack wrote:
("Judah" wrote)
So illuminate. What exactly is the scope of what's happening in
(industrial) China?


Phenomenal growth and potential for more growth.

Phenomenal growth by selling at a loss with potential for a total
economic crash.

China can't sell at a loss long enough to drive all the competition
out of business, part of it maybe, but not all of it.

--
Jim Pennino

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Wolfgang Schwanke wrote: About the wonders of electic trains.

Yes it is the American persepctive but you need to realize a little more
American perspective.

The distances here are just plain longer than what you are dealing with in
Europe. The straight line distance between Paris and Berlin ~450 miles. In
the US that would get you from New York to Detroit. To get to Los Angles
you'd have to go another 1900 miles. Which is further than the distance from
either the Northern tip of Denmark to the Southern end of Italy or from
Gibralter to the Polish border.

Would it be nice to have electric rail serving the majority of the US, hell
yes, but after WWII we decided a huge highway system would be the way to go
and it served us well and help make the US the worlds largest economy. But
trying to install an electric rail system now would be next to impossible.
It has become alost impossible to add to the interstate system we already
have.

And there is one big plus to highways over rail. We don't grind to a halt
every time a single union goes out on strike.

Judah wrote:

But supply is controlled by OPEC, not by free market forces, so your
observations are skewed. OPEC magically cuts supply at Holiday periods to
maximize profit taking. It happens now every holiday like clockwork. Google
"holiday gas price increase" and read articles from NYTimes and Wash Post,
and plenty of other sources that describe this phenomenon going back to 2004,
and that's just when it became so blatant that we figured it out...


Well then isn't about time we start to replace more of these Opec-
controlled imported oil with more our own domestic production?

Oh that's right, we can't so that, that's Baaaaad! So let's just
keep whining about it.

Or perhaps if we all just pay a "carbon tax" maybe the problem will
just go away.