[ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)

[Samantha Atkins]

On 02/25/2012 03:22 PM, spike wrote:
>> ... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
> ...
>
>>   The point is how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable
> synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW?
>
> But it isn't really about cars.  Alternatives there are fairly easy: way
> smaller lighter slower cars, and failing that, bicycles and scooters.

Try your average commute on a bicycle.  Scooters are ok.  But really the 
largest part of oil use by personal vehicles is commuting.  So have 
everyone that can do their job from home do so.  That we still have 
hours of daily nasty traffic and spend $100 billion/yr in the US alone 
of lost productivity commuting to jobs is much more damning than the 
lack of flying cars.

Also remember that the last (at least) leg of almost all delivery 
services, including to the shelves of stores, is by truck.  This is a 
very direct increase to the price of all goods if oil rises to high.  
Many distribution channels can simply disappear at a certain price point.

> But
> it isn't really all about cars, or even semi-trucks that carry food from the
> agricultural areas to the population centers, for we can retrofit and slow
> these and save a lot of fuel.

Slowing them is actually wasteful and expensive on multiple fronts.  We 
can't retrofit them at all quickly except for flex fuel which is pretty 
easy to do.

>    The transition to renewable energy is really
> about fertilizer and powering farm equipment.

It doesn't have to be renewable.  We have enough thorium for 10000 
years.  And used correctly it produces energy cheaper than anything we 
have today and far cleaner than almost all alternatives.

- samantha