What will we do when the oil starts to run out?

[Barnabas]

I think you americans waste too much, I am not a hippie, or an indian who prays to the mother earth (we have millions where I live,), but really, more than one car per family, or buying a car to your sons, or those huge tank like car are a waste of money and resources, I dont know how to translate despilfarro to english (wastage?) but that is how I feel.

And It particularly sucks because the rest of the world feels the consequences.

Train/bus/subway aint going to kill you.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DanS


US Oil shale total known reserves are about 2.5 trillion barrels, little of which is economically recoverable using today's technology.

Canadian tar sands total known reserves are also about 2.5 trillion barrels, about 300 billion of which is economically recoverable using today's technology.

IIRC, the output from these wasn't very large. They might last long, but we live in a ever more voracious world.

[DanS]

There's an awful lot of investment in the Canadian tar sands nowadays. Tens of billions of dollars over the next several years.

[JohnT]

****... corrected with actual (as opposed to remembered) stats:

Canadian well counts:

http://www.caodc.ca/wellcounts.htm

From 1998-2004 Canadian oil and natural gas wells increased from 9,744 to 21,671.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he wasn't thinking that mere hydrogen would somehow spontaneously fuse and explode, and that somehow the nuclear generator would cause it. Not that that's particularly more intelligent.

I was thinking "mini Hindenburg", myself.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Why wouldn't you just produce the hydrogen elsewhere and put it in the car as fuel?

Maybe I was being unclear. The hydrogen would be produced else where and hydrogen powered cars would pull into hydrogen filling stations to refill. The idea is great because it doesn't produce any green house gases if conventional nuclear power is used to make the hydrogen. The problem is how to store the hydrogen safely there are several ideas for storage cells but right now none of them are really economically feasable.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


I was thinking "mini Hindenburg", myself.

That's what I meant.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The problem is how to store the hydrogen safely

No, the problem is how to store the hydrogen at all. In elemental form it just takes up too much room.

I worked for a summer doing research into nanocrystalline materials for storage of hydrogen...

[JohnT]

Yeah, KH, like we're supposed to take your experience and knowledge over our suppositions and beliefs.

[KrazyHorse]

My "experience" that summer was mainly me up to my elbows in grease fixing the motors that milled the samples, running X-Ray powder diffractions on the completed samples and mixing highly-reactive powdered metals in a very-low contaminant (1 part in 100 000) argon atmosphere glove box.

[KrazyHorse]

Though I also got to do some work on the hydrogen absorption/desorption testing apparatus that we built and then sold to the University of Trondheim for like 150k$

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Maybe I was being unclear. The hydrogen would be produced else where and hydrogen powered cars would pull into hydrogen filling stations to refill. The idea is great because it doesn't produce any green house gases if conventional nuclear power is used to make the hydrogen. The problem is how to store the hydrogen safely there are several ideas for storage cells but right now none of them are really economically feasable.

None of these risk some sort of spontaneous fusion explosion.

[Kuciwalker]

We could store the hydrogen as water and then electrolyze it when it's needed

[KrazyHorse]

[Kidlicious]

Wow! Lot's of people on my ignore list in this discussion.

I just want to say that I've been taking the bus lately. My car went out on me and I really don't need another one right now. I'm thinking of just saving money and not buying another one.