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Posted

When I said "that sort of news" I was referring to the technology news they announced.

 

I figured you were referring to their coverage of the dude with the water engine since that's the Fox News segment this thread was talking about.

Posted

Ah yes water engine. Make it use salt water since that is what the planet has the most of.

 

Nuclear/fusion, I am digging into sci-fi ideas here, and solar power is what we need to concentrate on.

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Posted

Nuclear/fusion isn't science fiction.

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Posted (edited)
Ah yes water engine. Make it use salt water since that is what the planet has the most of.

 

Nuclear/fusion, I am digging into sci-fi ideas here, and solar power is what we need to concentrate on.

 

 

Removing salt from water is a pretty common process.

Edited by alanschu
Posted
Realistically speaking, the only way we'll ever get completely off of oil is when we use it all up and can't find any more.

That'll never happen. There are tar pits in the wastes of Canadia that have huge deposits of low-yield petroleum derivatives, for example.

 

It will never "run out", it will just be economically inefficient to extract it (for most things).

 

Plastic might get vewy vewy expensive, though ...

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Posted (edited)

How hard can it be to make an electrical engine that is recharged(a battery, not the engine itself, of course) as wheels turn, acting as mini-turbines?

 

EDIT:

 

Electricity is mass-produced by sending pressured water into turbines. The energy produced by the rotating turbines is then harnessed and converted to electricity.

 

I don't know the details but a turbine is a big wheel that turns and on a car there are four wheels that turn. Couldn't this energy be converted to electricity and stored in the car's battery?

 

I'm just saying, in my complete ignoramousness, how hard can it be to research and develop this?

 

:huh:

Edited by astr0creep
Posted

wow. Where do I start.

 

The conversion of energy between forms is very inefficient. Bsaically more is lost than is converted.

anyway, since a lot of research is being made into alternative energy-resources I don't think oil will be that interesting a resource in (hopefully near) future!

Danish scientests have discovered away to store hydrogen in solid form without the need to freeze it permanently.. which, with further research, could provide us with alternative energy in pill-form..

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/...50907102549.htm

"Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normalpressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. Withour technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normalgasoline tank", says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department ofChemistry at DTU.

Excellent.

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Posted

Good old entropy screws you every time.

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Posted

Yeah thoswe Dutch are smart Cookiees. Windmills FTW. Plus they have a better system when it comes to keeping water out like dikes compared to levees. :huh:

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Hades was the life of the party. RIP You'll be missed.

Posted

It is generally accepted that we are about at the half way point for oil consumption. Here's some info from wiki on oil reserves:

 

"It has been estimated that there was initially a total of 2,050 (Colin Campbell, 2005) to 2,390 gigabarrels (380 km

As dark is the absence of light, so evil is the absence of good.

If you would destroy evil, do good.

 

Evil cannot be perfected. Thank God.

Posted (edited)
How can they say conclusively they're at the halfway point, when they regularly find new, previously unknown deposits?

 

I would think that oil companies don

Edited by kirottu

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Posted

I have seen Oil geologists speaking on the subject. Admitedly, they have a barrow to push, but they said quite categorically that it is completely unknown exactly how much oil is yet to be extracted. Not counting all the older wells that have been abandoned when the reserves in them became less than super-cheap to extract. Their estimates (including the increase demand curve) were more like 70 years from now.

 

Of course no one can tell for certain; I can tell that the Oil companies have a business imperative to use all of the oil they can BEFORE converting the energy industry over to another source (the oil would just be wasted stock, like a baker throwing out all the day's bread as soon as it was baked in the morning).

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Posted

This issue isn't so much one of oil running out, but of demand outweighting supply by such a factor as to cause the oil-depentent economy to collapse.

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Posted

due to the feedback nature of economics, that won't happen. we won't suddenly be in a position where "OMG, there will be no oil after TOMORROW." what will happen is that once oil reserves really start to get to the point where we're saying "20 years left at best" (20 was an arbitrary choice), prices will start to go up. it won't necessarily be a sudden increase, as the recent suddenness was due to a host of mitigating factors. once that happens, however, other methods will become economically attractive. not only exotic oil extraction methods (tar sands, shale, etc.) but also alternative energy sources. there may be some lag while the economy adjusts, but it will happen.

 

taks

comrade taks... just because.

Posted

You just said a lot better what I was trying to.

 

This is why enviromentalists getting up in arms over 'oil running out' amuses me somewhat.

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Posted

Me too.

 

 

I'd be very surprised if the Oil companies were not investing any money into alternative fuel sources, lest they all go out of business when Oil does run out.

Posted

Shell and BP are spending more than any other companies. :shifty:

 

(Just like tobacco companies make the majority of their revenue from non-cigarette sources now.)

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