xyz

Do you think peak oil is going to be the beginning of the end for the car culture?

Roody

No.

pedex

first casualty will be air travel

Thor29

Yes.

Car culture is unsustainable. Biodiesel won't save it. Hydrogen won't save it. Nuclear power (electric cars) won't save it. And hybrids definitely aren't going to do it.

lilHinault

Yes.

But we'll see mules/horses/the poor masses being used to pull the cars of the rich for a while.....

lilHinault

Will peak oil mean cars are unsustainable?

lilHinault

Blah that's not easy to do....

humancongereel

No. We see how attached people are to those four-wheeled prisons all the time, do you thnink that because they can no longer fuel them as they have been, they'll simply give up? things might be hectic for a while with finding something new (hydrogen's a pretty easy conversion, i'm told, for example), but most people will gravitate towards whatever new car is there as soon as it's available.

Death of car culture? nah, maybe death of gasoline, blah blah blah, but not car culture. it's a culture, and the majority one at that. it'll be tough to make that bastard die.

natelutkjohn

Maybe so, it all depends if they find a better sustainable way to run them.

New2Cycling

I think many Americans are so obsessed with the car that it (the automobile) won't go away. It's unfortunate. I'm actually thinking of getting the oil age poster and hanging it in the employee lounge.

cooker

Hydrogen has to be produced using energy, which has to come from somewhere. Right now, hydrogen is produced using fossil fuel energy. It won't be so easy when there's hardly any fossil fuel left.

Brad M

I certainly hope so.

BeTheChange

The personal automobile will probably be much less used as more efficient forms of public transportation must take hold without cheap energy. Where using trucks and whatnot is the most efficient way to move things that is where there will still be autos I'm guessing. I doubt we will ever see absolutely no cars in our lifetime. I'm with Brad M though, I hope they get phased out so our species (or any species for that matter) can live here in 500 years.

becnal

What oil age poster?

linux_author

- there is no such thing as peak oil for us... the U.S. has, unlike some other continents, unlimited resources and a conducive environment and climate in which to mine or create fuel for internal combustion engines: coal, ethanol, vegetable, and so on...

- until the advent of some next 'age,' which i would guess would be the Age of Energy (upon some revolutionary discovery or development of inexpensive, non-polluting source of fuel), the U.S. will continue to use automobiles, which will remain essential for individual long-distance travel...

- the disconnect of liberal (and European) thought concerning American use of energy is the failure to recognize that there is an ingrained sense of 'individualism' in our culture... are there people who live their lives without driving, an automobile, or a driving license in the U.S.? certainly! but those people are way out of the mainstream...

- can bicycles and mass transit work? of course! but there has to be an incentive... in U.S. urban areas, mass transit is implemented when people-moving is more efficient via mass transit AND there is a lack of parking and other facilities for vehicular movement... (e.g. Boston vs. DC, NOT Tampa vs Atlanta)...

- there is no way our economy could move to mass transit or car-free travel in the next 10-, 20-, or 30-year time frame...

- moving back towards the horse or other beasts of burden brings up other problems...

(although i do like steak tartar [the equine version] like our European brethren; i prefer mine on thin pumpernickel w/chopped onion and lots of salt and pepper; btw, the U.S. is the biggest export of horsemeat to Europe, IIRC)

:-)

KrisPistofferson

Was that a joke?

Anyway, I think peak oil will make automobile "culture" unsustainable to the extent we have it now. Fat cats will be driving in gas-guzzlers for the foreseeable future, but the days when even the super-impoverished were able to afford an automobile are already gone. I don't really foresee a Mad Max-style society coming, unless some other more abrupt disaster befalls us. It will, I think, happen slowly enough for people to adapt to it, if a little begrudgingly.

cooker

Create fuel for internal combustion???? Just how do you create fuel? The ethanol you mentions comes from agriculture, which at the moment is heavily dependent on petrochemical fertilizer and mechanized equipment. With less and less oil, agriculture will become less productive, and when it comes down to a choice of fuel or food, which one will Americans pick?

pedex

peak oil for the US itself happened 30 years ago, production has been declining steadily ever since

unlimited resources? Not hardly

if the US were to switch to coal only and not make any changes in consumption and continue to increase consumption at current rates, coal would be gone in under 60 years

current replacement fuels are not even close to being capable of meeting current needs even if you could snap your fingers and make it happen now all at once

the economy is gonna suffer, its inevitable, unlimited growth is based on unlimited resources which nobody possesses

US economy is tied directly to energy, energy represents money for all practical purposes, once world oil production peaks which is likely right about now, energy costs will start climbing fairly rapidly, our easy motoring society wont be able to cope, it isnt set up for this, neither is our economy

looking at alternative fuels:
ethanol using corn is a net loss, the ROI is negative
biodiesel.......net gain but impossible to grow enough feedstock to even produce 1/2 of the fuel being used today
hydrogen........current tech means using natural gas or lots of electricity and water
tar sands or shale oil........also uses natural gas in huge quantities

bottom line, unless really big changes are made, we are in for a bumpy ride

humancongereel

to my knowledge, all that's necessary to separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen in water is an elctrical current, which could be as easily from a battery, a solar panel, etc, as a fossil fuel source.

now, in bush's proposal to develop hydrogen, you won't find any of that, just ways to use oil to make hydrogen to replace oil...the man amazes me. how does he get people to buy into what he says? when he's not saying something stupid, he's telling a lie.

xyz

What proposal is that? I have heard him speak of solar and wind power before. The problem is that these methods will not be enough by a longshot. Anyway, the plan is to use coal, not oil, to produce hydrogen. If congress will allow any new coal plants to be built, that is.

humancongereel

hm, it's been a while since it was in the news much, so i'm speaking from memory there. not always the wisest thing with a mind like mine. you may be right, but i remember distinctly the mention of oil being used in the creation of hydrogen energy.

yangmusa

Dream on! The USA had peak oil production in the early 1970's, and it's been declining ever since. Are you not aware that the USA imports almost 60% of the oil it currently uses? Consumption is growing by several %/year, at an increasing rate. Now maybe you understand the real motivation for W to invade a certain oil rich country...

BeTheChange

linux_author I am currently working in a biochemistry lab at my university. The new biochemistry professor used to work at a company called novozymes who's work was to create enzymes for industrial ethanol manufacturing. Although it sounds good, right now you only get 1.23 times the energy out that you put in to make the ethanol. Now if someone comes up with an enzyme that can quickly break down cellulose we could make ethanol from all sorts of fibers and wood products. This may help but you have to realize that biodiesel and ethanol are coming from food sources right now. Cooker is right, if we have to choose between food and driving I think most sane people will pick food. All of the nitrogen fertilizers we use come from the haber bosch process wich fixes atmospheric nitrogen with the help of emense pressure in heat which requires a great deal of energy. And where do we get that energy from? And the survey says... fossil fuels!

I wish people wouldn't just rely on us scientists to fix all of their problems so they can go on living without having to make any moral decisions that may make their lives harder. We didn't learn much from the 72 American oil production peak and we didn't invest much at all trying to find new sources of energy. So we are pretty much starting now when it is getting very late. Hopefully most of us are wrong and we will find an environmentally friendly energy solution that will keep everyone alive and happy. But from someone who is going into the alternative energy field it's not looking too bright as of yet. (keep your fingers crossed)

BeTheChange

Why in the hell would it be a good idea to use fossil fuels as an energy source to create hydrogen? Because the carbon polution is happening somewhere else than in the hydrogen car? Energy is going to be lost by changing the energy in fossile fules to the enrgy in hydrogen so it will actually be worse for the environment if we use hydrogen produced with the use of fossile fules.

There are other ways of making hydrogen. Right now scientists are bioengineering photsynthetic bacteria to produce more hydrogen from sunlight energy. I really believe this will be the way to go. But, this is the field I am going into so it would make sense that I think it's great . It may seem like it would help get carbon out of the air too because adding photosynthetic organisms that use CO2 take carbon from the air and fix it into sugars. But a new study done in europe has found that there is just more throughput of CO2 through the photosynthetic organism. So if you hear about some company being "carbon neutral" by buying a bunch of plants in the rainforest, they really aren't doing anything for their carbon emissions. To be fair they couldn't have known this since the study if very recent. But, they have done some good by maybe keeping some forest's diversity intact.

When I hear people who don't know about where hydrogen comes from talk about how hydrogen cars will save us I realize that we really are an incredibly scientifically illiterate nation. It's not the people's fault though, it is the scientists (like me) that don't teach or reach them. Hopefully we can fix this problem because we need strong public support if we are going to solve the energy problem.

New2Cycling

www.oilposter.org

It's very eye opening to say the least.