EVs better take off soon!

[SabrToothSqrl]

Well, I certainly don't want this future...

http://jalopnik.com/blood-drive-i-have-questions-1794682450

 

[swaltner]

it makes sense if you think about it for half a second and not an instant more

<chuckle>

 

[macpacheco]

Typical Hollywood non sense.
We can power vehicles with renewable ethanol, bio oils (and recycled oils), hydrogen, electricity.
Oh how low can Hollywood go ! Unfortunately this does put non sense on people's heads...
The world isn't going to run out of fossil fuels for at least another 50 years (to be ultra conservative).
The real question is what we'll do for plastics/asphalt/petrochemicals which alternate fuels won't replace.
We should be saving the oil for the non fuel needs.

 

[kurdakov]

The real question is what we'll do for plastics/asphalt/petrochemicals which alternate fuels won't replace.

it is not a question really. Because asphalt is quite replaced with concrete Road surface - Wikipedia and plastics and petrochemicals are quite well produced from biomass - google is your friend (SynGas to Ehylene and Propylene, plastics from sugars, furan )

 

[wdolson]

Typical Hollywood non sense.
We can power vehicles with renewable ethanol, bio oils (and recycled oils), hydrogen, electricity.
Oh how low can Hollywood go ! Unfortunately this does put non sense on people's heads...
The world isn't going to run out of fossil fuels for at least another 50 years (to be ultra conservative).
The real question is what we'll do for plastics/asphalt/petrochemicals which alternate fuels won't replace.
We should be saving the oil for the non fuel needs.

The problems with fossil fuels isn't that we're running out. There is still plenty in the ground, it's just that finding more is getting more expensive. The low hanging fruit has been used up. Even with the CO2 issue set aside, fossil fuels have other impacts on the environment that aren't great (spills, smog, etc.)

Oil will continue to have some uses beyond burning it. We can make plastics from some other things and do other things for road surfaces, but oil still is the best starting material for some plastics and asphalt has advantages too. Most of our oil use today is burning it, if we quit doing that, there will be a virtually unlimited supply for other uses and it will probably be dirt cheap because demand will be so low.

This TV series looks like it ranks right up there with Sharknado in believably. Maybe it will have a camp following? I don't intend to watch it.

 

[strider]

The bigger challenge w/ running out of petroleum is that fertilizer is made from oil/nat gas. Crop yields would plummet and famine would result if this happened in a short time frame. I don't think it will happen in a short time frame and given enough time we will find alternatives but it's not as easy as swapping concrete for asphalt.

 

[S'toon]

it is not a question really. Because asphalt is quite replaced with concrete Road surface - Wikipedia and plastics and petrochemicals are quite well produced from biomass - google is your friend (SynGas to Ehylene and Propylene, plastics from sugars, furan )

There's a problem with concrete. Namely, we're running out of sand for concrete. Concrete needs to be made with a particular kind of sand, otherwise it's not structurally stable.
The world is starting to run out of sand

 

[macpacheco]

The bigger challenge w/ running out of petroleum is that fertilizer is made from oil/nat gas. Crop yields would plummet and famine would result if this happened in a short time frame. I don't think it will happen in a short time frame and given enough time we will find alternatives but it's not as easy as swapping concrete for asphalt.

Non sense. Fertilizer is nitrogen, 70% of the atmosphere is N2.
Transforming N2+H2O into NH3 is the expensive process that requires energy, energy can come from gas, coal, CSP, geothermal and nuclear power. As long as the heat is hot enough for the process, that's all she wrote.
One of the many reasons why Gen IV nuclear isn't going anywhere. Many Gen IV designs provide hot enough heat for most industry needs.
With cheap 600C+ heat, most industry processes that use gas can say bye bye to fossil fuels and insulate industry from the possibility of peak gas.
Beyond Ammonia, cheap process heat enables CO2 free production of hydrogen (very important for lots of industry processes). And natural gas could be used for transportation for instance methane transport aircraft and long distance ships.
Industry uses just about as much natural gas as electricity production worldwide.
The fixation on solar+wind ignores that whole other sector of fossil fuel consumption.

 

[kurdakov]

There's a problem with concrete. Namely, we're running out of sand for concrete. Concrete needs to be made with a particular kind of sand, otherwise it's not structurally stable.
The world is starting to run out of sand

it is more about local sand ( see some more details on the same topic https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/opinion/the-worlds-disappearing-sand.html?_r=0 ) . Now - remote lands ( Sakhara, other deserts ) are full of sand. And here, electric power again turns to help: no need to burn fuel to transport sand. And transporting remote sand is not new - here in Moscow - a river port is famous for huge sand piles which are transported from outside - there is no sand in Moscow, but still a big city is there.

 

[S'toon]

it is more about local sand ( see some more details on the same topic https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/opinion/the-worlds-disappearing-sand.html?_r=0 ) . Now - remote lands ( Sakhara, other deserts ) are full of sand. And here, electric power again turns to help: no need to burn fuel to transport sand. And transporting remote sand is not new - here in Moscow - a river port is famous for huge sand piles which are transported from outside - there is no sand in Moscow, but still a big city is there.

Incorrect. You need sand from rivers.

Because the sand found in deserts often isn't suitable for making concrete, miners strip sand from riverbeds and beaches. Usable sand is a finite resource.

To quote your article:

Desert sand, shaped more by wind than by water, generally doesn’t work for construction.

 

[kurdakov]

Incorrect. You need sand from rivers.

that is because they did not check https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?id=573ad967dc332d855a065001&assetKey=AS:362652636336131@1463474535007

or Laboratory studies of dune sand for the use of construction industry in Sri Lank

 

[Skotty]

I sure hope the show has some vanpires.

 

[strider]

Non sense. Fertilizer is nitrogen, 70% of the atmosphere is N2.
Transforming N2+H2O into NH3 is the expensive process that requires energy, energy can come from gas, coal, CSP, geothermal and nuclear power. As long as the heat is hot enough for the process, that's all she wrote.
One of the many reasons why Gen IV nuclear isn't going anywhere. Many Gen IV designs provide hot enough heat for most industry needs.
With cheap 600C+ heat, most industry processes that use gas can say bye bye to fossil fuels and insulate industry from the possibility of peak gas.
Beyond Ammonia, cheap process heat enables CO2 free production of hydrogen (very important for lots of industry processes). And natural gas could be used for transportation for instance methane transport aircraft and long distance ships.
Industry uses just about as much natural gas as electricity production worldwide.
The fixation on solar+wind ignores that whole other sector of fossil fuel consumption.

I didn't say it wasn't possible, I said it can't be done in the short term. It takes much less input energy to make fertilizer from petroleum products. This is because a bunch of energy was already used to "create" the petroleum in the first place. So now, millions of years later, we don't have to add as much energy to get the products we want. To take it out of the air would take an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Again, I didn't say it wasn't possible, but we don't currently have a surplus of cheap electricity sitting around.

My vote is for LFTRs. You get an incredibly safe reactor that breeds its own fuel from abundant thorium, a nice 700C operating temperature with which you can use Fischer-Tropsch to create liquid fuel, Haber for ammonia, hydrogen from water, etc. But the fuel cycle doesn't provide raw materials for bombs so the US won't pursue them.

 

[BluestarE3]

Talk about vampire drain!