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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gg cox who wrote (275)	4/9/2005 2:25:41 PM
From: AuBug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1183

By any chance do you know how many KWh to recharge an electric car overnight? Does it need recharging every night? I pay $0.106/KWh a 10 hr charge only cost $1.06 which about what I pay in gasoline to commute to work. But, the electric grid can be fed by nuclear, wind and geothermal so it would be better for Earth.

To: gg cox who wrote (275)	4/9/2005 3:28:26 PM
From: Mahatmabenfoo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1183

> Leadership is what is needed right now regarding Peak oil. I 100% agree. But why is there no leadership? why is even Jimmy Carter, who knows better, so silent? - maybe we're nuts (if so, so is Matt Simmons and many others) - George Bush and Al "ecological" Gore (and Kerry and all of them) are stupid - George Bush etc. is well aware of the problem But which of those possibilities is more scary? > Leadership that was demonstrated by bringing a nation > together to put a man on the moon There is a real thrill in facing challenge like that, and the challenge of peak oil threatens our civilization more than any war could. In the worst case (which is widely believed among the peak crowd) we won't start to act UNTIL each year we face a 2% or 5% loss of energy every year -- and at that stage we won't the money or time to do anything but try to survive and fight resource wars. What the pessimists forget is that all options are not known yet. In the fact of the national -- no, global -- effort you describe, we can make this world better than ever; and for the first time ever, sustainable. > electric vehicle the EV1 And EV2 and squandered it, deciding > to stop it's production and then destroying all of the > remaining vehicles at a crucial time when peak oil was upon > them, and concentrating instead on fuel cell prototypes which > are years away and fraught with many problems including infrastructure I half agree with that, but what was so great about EV1 and EV2? Electricity comes from fossil fuels, and using it to charge toxic batteries might be cleaner, but would actually waste energy faster. The second law of thermodynamics says you lose energy with each transformation -- going from coal to electricity to charging a battery loses at each stage. We'd be better off (really) if GM brought back steam engine cars, and we burned the coal directly in them. Similarly going from natural gas to h2 for fuel cells uses up more gas than if you burned it directly in a natural gas-burning engine. Fuel cells are potentially more efficient (65%) than internal combustion (25%) but not if you change the fuel first. And that is the big con of the h2 movement -- we're working on Fcells for h2, but we have no source of h2. NUTS! > electric world car that can possibly be charged by solar(at > home chargeable battery) and the grid, it sadly won't be done by the "big three," I think the problem might be bigger than you realize. Solar, wind power, geothermal, etc. are very nice -- but not nearly efficient enough to provide the energy for the way we live now. Our way of life must change, and it will change whether we like it or not. 100,000 windmills will slow our decline and ease us to another life, but not keep things going they way they are now. I doubt if we'll see cheap airflights during our lifetime, or many lifetimes. Unfortunately, if we don't start building windmills until there is a crisis, it will be too late. It's not just human will, but a matter of physics -- we won't have the energy to do what's needed. - Charles