Plantagenet wrote:pstarr wrote: Resources and consumer products move by ocean ship (bunker oil), truck (diesel), and freight train (also diesel). I really don't see how globalism can survive peak oil. At all.
Your idea that the world is going to collapse due to peak oil presupposes that humans won't make adjustments or re-engineer parts of the transportation grid to run on alternative fuels.
I guess it depends on your definition of "collapse. I am looking at "Never-Ending Economic Depression" as a reasonable definition. Pretty much assured without constant primary-energy production growth. Because our financial system (from the Federal Reserve, through commercial and retail banking, loans, business investment, personal inheritance, etc.) and normal global population growth all depend on an ever-increasing economic pie. That pie is shrinking because oil is shrinking.
Plantagenet wrote:But each of your three examples of things that will stop working due to peak oil can easily be converted to run on natural gas and/or electricity.
Easily? That's laughable.
Plantagenet wrote:(1) freight train (also diesel) Its a simple matter to electrify trains. The European train system already is electric, not diesel. No problemo.
The European mass-transit was established about a century ago, just about the same time we ripped ours out. Our will not be replaced because of Republican hatred for public transport . . . and trains in particular. What would your plan look like? Privatize the Rocky Mountains? Give Boone the prairies? Only Big Government fix this, and Big Government will NEVER BE GIVEN THAT MANDATE. But you know that, right?
Plantagenet wrote:(2)
truck (diesel) We can convert interstate trucking entirely to NG. Some US trucking companies are ALREADY converting their fleets to NG. T Boone Pickens and his business partners are already building NG gas stations along interstates as part of the
"Pickens Plan" Check it out.
Trucks run on diesel and can not be converted to NG. Besides a thousand miles of Rt 80 (the main trucking interstate for delivery of food and services to the East Coast) is without natural gas (or sufficient electricity for that matter) to power anything other than diesel. It would cost a trillions of dollars to electrify or NG our transport infrastructure.
Pickens is a self-promoting rich guy who got guilty and now feels obligated to greenwash his life. Good luck with that.
Plantagenet wrote:3.
ocean ship (bunker oil) Its just starting to happen right now. Norway is already converting some of its coastal fleet to NG and Japan is developing
natural gas powered ocean ships
Right plant. Sure.
Plantagenet wrote:Peak Oil doesn't mean that alternative fuels won't be used----in fact its MORE likely that we'll convert to alternative fuels like NG and electricty because of peak oil.
dream on dude. you sound like a hippie dippie now, and not a good hard-assed republican realist.
If you are not a curmudgeon. . . you are not awake.