No more petrol?

[inlinefour]

Don't believe everything you read on the Interweb -- including this...

too much propaganda and paranoia in the web...

[Eurodave]

If, some time in the distant future, all that is available is the hydrogen powered "ENV" [& ,no doubt,its electric powered brothers] Id still sooner have one of them than take public transport or walk

[James Deuce]

If, some time in the distant future, all that is available is the hydrogen powered "ENV" [& ,no doubt,its electric powered brothers] Id still sooner have one of them than take public transport or walk

I'd rather use light rail than be forced to ride some silent hybrid mountain bike.

[Storm]

I'd rather use light rail than be forced to ride some silent hybrid mountain bike.

What he said. If you're not going to do it properly, then dont do it at all
Nuff said

[Skunk]

It's crap,

can only be refuelled at one service station in the UK,

that has a top speed that probably takes a couple of years to reach some 20mph slower than the speed limit on a UK motorway.

Any alternatively fuelled motorcycle I am forced to buy will need to perform BETTER than my current motorcycle, otherwise what's the point?

1. How good was the first car?
2. How many gas stations were there when they made the first car?
3. What was the performance of the first car?
Pointy head? Not me, but everything has to start somewhere eh? We didn't get the bikes we've got when the first one was built.
Thanks for biting...

[James Deuce]

1. How good was the first car?
2. How many gas stations were there when they made the first car?
3. What was the performance of the first car?
Pointy head? Not me, but everything has to start somewhere eh? We didn't get the bikes we've got when the first one was built.
Thanks for biting...

You should see some of the emails I've sent "friends" who sent me that link.

I think that the points you raise are invalidated by the need to replace an existing infrastructure almost overnight in comparison to the way the current infrastructure has grown up over century or so. Also people's expectations of the capability of current personal transport are at odds with the capability of every proposed replacement for fossil fuelled vehicles I've seen. The only alternative is to ban personally owned transport, and establish a paradigm of on-demand tax payer funded "public" transport, fuelled by "alternative" methods and fixed to set routes.

[Hitcher]

Those who watch Top Gear may recall Jeremy Clarkson's comments (in this Sunday's episode) about the relative fuel efficiency of trains versus cars on a per-person-moved basis. Entertaining, yes; but true? I presume he was referring to some British study. If anybody knows anything about this, I would be most interested to broaden my knowledge...

[pete376403]

Yeah yeah. I've been hearing this for half a century now. There's enough oil in shale to last the world about a million years. And it can be synthesised from scratch . The Nazis did it in WWII and I imagine we've advanced a bit since then.

Only question is how much it costs , which comes doen to how much to we want to protect the profits of the oil companies.

It's true that there are large reserves of oil shale but the problem there is it takes more energy to extract the oil than is they get back. Pointless spending the energy from 2 barrels of oil to get one barrel back. Likewise oil can be synthesised from coal - Germany in WW II and more recently South Africa did it too, but it still takes more energy that they get back. It's not the $ cost as much as the energy cost.

[Ixion]

It's true that there are large reserves of oil shale but the problem there is it takes more energy to extract the oil than is they get back. Pointless spending the energy from 2 barrels of oil to get one barrel back. Likewise oil can be synthesised from coal - Germany in WW II and more recently South Africa did it too, but it still takes more energy that they get back. It's not the $ cost as much as the energy cost.

. So use nuke power to extract the oil. can't strap a nuke reactor on a bike, but can use the nuke power to make petrol.

[Skunk]

people's expectations

I think those two words pretty much cover the whole "real" problem with getting any alternative working.

[Indiana_Jones]

I wouldn't mind if there was no cars etc lol
Give me a chance to bring back old school man-of-war's
mmmmmmmm sexy, but no planes though
BUT THEN THE BATTLESHIPS SHALL RULE AGAIN!

-Indy

[Skyryder]

This

Apparently, according to oil industry people and independent geologists, Hubbert's Peak has possibly already arrived with a plateau in global oil production this very year, midpoint peak by 2008 and terminal decline setting in from 2010. You may have noticed a growing number of stories about it but for those of you who don't know, peak oil occurs when half the oil in the ground around the world has been pumped out. From that moment on the remaining oil is harder to extract, so they pump water and natural gas into the oil field to maintain pressure as the production in barrels per day declines. Using more energy to pump it out and less of a flow means oil is more expensive to produce and there's increasingly less of it to go around. Or in other words, and it's just a simple geological fact, there's no more cheap oil.

From this http://www.energybulletin.net/729.html

Skyryder