[ExI] Peak Oil -- Amory Lovins

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson

>...He wants to build lighter cars out of carbon, for example. He shows how
building lighter cars is a virtuous cycle that saves energy and lives...

We like to talk about the concept of EROEI.  I do invite those who are
engineering-oriented to do some calcs, or just estimates based on numbers,
BOTECs.  I did a few of these on home insulation, changing out lighting and
so forth.  Of all those I did, the lighter cars notion was a huuuuge winner,
by a big margin.  We are holding ourselves back from that.

It isn't just low weight ape haulers, it is super low profile (to minimize
air resistance.)  Imagine a very small featureless ellipsoid shaped device,
single seat, with a plastic bubble for the driver's head.  It would look a
little like the 1930s vision of a flying saucer, with the top of it only a
meter off the ground.  Super light,  super low air friction, too dangerous
for current road use, but not too dangerous if everyone is driving those.   

I am not necessarily a Lovins follower, but he hit that one right on.  We
can do transportation for a quarter of the current fuel use, at about three
quarters of the current speed.  


>...He has Walmart and Texas Instruments as customers. What Walmart does
really matters. When Walmart changes the lighting in all of its stores, it
makes a big difference. He got them to do that...

Good example of a small effect multiplied a jillion times over. 


>...Monkeys like saving money, especially the ones that run big businesses.
I think the hardest part of his plan is doing anything about individual
homes. That's a tough one. But factories, long haul trucking, cars, advanced
biofuels for more efficient airplanes, those all sound reasonable to me.
-Kelly

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Agreed, inefficiencies in homes will be more difficult to fix.  It requires
individual action to make that happen, which means there will be some who
are slow to transition, and some who never do, such as my Tennessee cousins
still heating with coal.

Passing comment about airplanes.  As much as I am reluctant to post this
comment, I think most of you will agree: it is only a matter of time before
some yahoo puts a hunk of C4 up his ass and gets on a plane with it, for
that would be undetectable with current tech.  As soon as that plane comes
down in pieces, and they find his apartment filled with radical Presbyterian
literature, it could spell the end for the airline industry, for it has
never been a really healthy industry.  We already have at least two examples
of radical Mormons ready to die to bring down an airliner, or they might
have been Methodists, I often get them confused, one of those religion
biggies.

As soon as business fliers all over the world really start to focus on how
to do business from the office, I don't see how the airline industry can be
sustained.

spike