Great discussion, thank you. You've all cheered me up!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn McCalip
As far as the economy, I know of many people that have started spending more on things like DVDs and video games to watch and play at home because gasoline costs $4/gallon. Lots of folks aren't going to load up the ol' Suburban and go on a long family vacation, so they're going to entertain themselves at home.
...If less and less people have the means to travel, they might want to live vicariously through their DVD collections.
|
Very good points. I hadn't really thought about the point that you make: that a slowing economy will actually
increase demand for some "film products" (like DVDs and, soon, video-over-the-internet).
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Pietro Impagliazzo
Ditch oil, use Hydrogen like Iceland is doing.
|
Hydrogen is an energy
carrier rather than an energy
source. In other words, you have to make the hydrogen somehow; you can't just pump it out of the ground like you can with oil. At the moment, one way of making hydrogen is by converting natural gas. However, supply of nat gas will certainly peak within our lifetimes so that's not an ideal solution. Alternatively, you can make hydrogen using hydrolysis to split water using electricity. (Where do you get the electricity from though? Coal-fired power? Ick) However, once you've hydrolysed the water, compressed the hydrogen, stored the hydrogen, transported the hydrogen and finally oxidised the hydrogen in either an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell you've wasted a lot of energy. It's generally far more efficient to use electricity to charge batteries in an electric car rather than to use electricity to create hydrogen from water. Also, hydrogen is a minuscule molecule so it leaks out of every type of container and pipe. Not good.
If I was a betting man, I would certainly bet against hydrogen playing a major role in our "post-oil" energy infrastructure.
And, as Shawn says, one of the biggest hurdles for moving away from an economy powered by oil is building a whole new energy infrastructure. That sort of thing costs
trillions of dollars and takes decades. Plus it's a real PITA that steel has quadrupled in price in the last 2 years and that borrowing large sums of money has become almost impossible.