BF2S Forums What technology are we closest to wean ourselves from Oil?

I think it failed due to the taxes part.

There is already a hydrogen car, I saw one around 5 years ago at some conference, it performed exactly the same as your average car of today. However our government did not allow the patent so it could never be mass produced.

hmm, taxing a company to make it's product obsolete, sounds great!!
seems a bit like jealousy, PUNISH THE EVIL CAPITALIST PIGS FOR BEING SUCCESSFUL!!
<insert remark about oil greed here>
odd how the only reason we seem to be close to having an oil "shortage" is due to the fact that socialist driven groups do their damndest to try to prevent oil research/production/exploration

Harmor wrote:

Is the answer Ethanol like in Brazil?  Hydrogen Fuel Cells? 

In California a recent ballot inititive failed that tried to raise gas taxes to fund alternative technologies:

Source:

CA - Proposition 87 - Would establish $4 billion program to reduce petroleum consumption by 25 percent, with incentives for alternative energy, vehicles, etc... To be funded with tax on oil producers
100% Precincts Reporting
    No    -    3,849,303 (55%)   
    Yes    -    3,175,594 (45%)


Does this mean that we won't change technologies until we are forced to?  Is the answer 'let the marketplace decide', or is there anything that the goverment can or should do to encorage the alternative technologies?

Proposition 87 was bullcrap and poorly written. And who exactly was going to make sure that extra tax money was going to get to where it was supposed to, when so much of it doesn't? I sympathize with CA because things are almost as screwed up in WA.

None of the alternative except for electric cars are really viable.  Hydrogen costs a hell of a lot more to produce and uses more fossil fuels to get what is needed, so the fuel cell is out.  Ethanol is nice, but their is no way we can grow enough crops to keep every thing running.

Truthfully, electric cars are the only option.  And thanks to cell phones and other small electronics, batteries have come along to the point where 300-500 miles from an average sized electric car are possible.  I really have no idea why the major car companies abandoned the electric car and went to fuel cells.  Fuel cells have almost no chance of succeeding unless someone invents a new method of cheaply extracting hydrogen from water.

And of course, with electric cars, you can feasibly cut out all air pollution, get rid of coal and oil fired power plants, go nuclear, solar, wind and other environmentally friendly power sources, and just plug in your car every night.


Just cause I'm a a right winging libertarian gun nut doesn't mean I don't care about the environment, just don't be a freaking nazi about it.

Last edited by ts-pulsar (2006-11-12 21:52:25)

kr@cker wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Ethanol, without a doubt -- if we're talking about removing our dependency from foreign oil.

However, electric cars look like a good start -- if only GM and Big Oil weren't buddies.

georgia's been looking into programs to start producing crops solely for ethanal and becoming a major supplier. ethanol and such look to be the best first alternatives, as it's much easier to fill the billions of ICE engines with alt fuels than it is to replace them with hydrogen or electric units

Cool...  I don't think my state has any plans to do that, but hopefully, this can be a national thing sometime soon.

thats perfectly fine, if it saves an american life by killing a terrorist, thats fine by me, but i was thinking more along the lines of melting it into glass bricks and dropping those bricks into subduction zones.  100 million years from now we might get slightly radioactive lava shooting out of volcanoes, but thats no worse than the carbon 14 spewed into the atmosphere by coal power plants ATM

Dec45 wrote:

I like electricity. Anyone ever seen the documentary, 'Who Killed The Electric Car?'

The problem with Eletric cars is that you still have to generate the electricity and transmit it over powerlines.  If you are generating electricity with coal or oil, then you really haven't solved the problem, just diverted it.

Also Electric cars have very caustic batteries that have to be replaced every 20-40,000 miles.  The mining of the caustic materials like lead, cadmium, and nickel to name a few, hurts the environment.

Unless you can generate electricitiy at plants using environmentally friendly methods, don't you kind of defeat the original purpose?

Perhaps Thermodepolymerization is the solution?

Source: http://www.whizkid.com/stuff/thermo.html

Not trying to get off topic, but interested, whats the price of a gallon fuel in the US these days?
In the Netherlands i have to pay more then 1.4 Euros for 1 liter, thats more than 6.5 Dollars per gallon.
Enviromental issues are top prioirty however costs for driving are a close second

Problem with Hydrogen is the fuel source. Hydrogen costs alot to produce.

Problem with Methanol/Ethanol is economics (Although changing with the current oil price) as its cheaper to
get petrol than make meth or eth.

Bio Diesel looks very promising as an alternative energy. Emissions are also much cleaner than fossil fuels. Lots of new companies are producing this and the shares are booming (the sign of a good promise).

Apparently their is an awesome battery that holds 100 amp hours of energy and can run a car for 400ks on a 5 minute charge. This would be pretty good, but electricity is still made from fossil fuel.

Nuclear energy is pretty clean and promising, though people are scared by melt downs etc. Personally I think this is the immediate solution, but public opinion will prove otherwise.

Metho fuel cells look pretty good too, but once again it costs a bit to produce methanol, however because the process is more efficient than combustion, it could make up for it.

Yup, I'd say nuclear power's the best bet we have so far. A lot of output can be generated from a single uranium core, and given proper building schemes, the risk of a Chernobyl-style meltdown is highly unlikely. Depleted cores could also be enriched and placed back into the reactor. No pollution, minimal waste. It's not uranium's fault military idiots leave depleted shells around battlefields.