KICKING THE FOSSIL FUEL HABIT-IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE ?
Harvard superstring physicist Lubos Motl shows how we might have the energy equivalent of oil at $ 15 a barrel.
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December 21st, 2004 at 9:37 pm
How about just using better engines? Like this one:
http://www.engr.arizona.edu/newsletters/AEFall03/students/jonova.html
December 22nd, 2004 at 6:54 pm
Interesting. I don’t know enough about engineering here to guage from the article how the relative increase in efficiency could be extrapolated into economic data in terms of savings. I’m sure it would help though if the design is also within shouting distance of being cost-effective vis-a-vis a standard engine.
December 22nd, 2004 at 7:19 pm
The problem (as Steven Den Beste always pointed out) was scale. We consume a lot of turkey but there’s nowhere near enough byproduct to make this more than a niche energy solution. A lot of neat alternative energy ideas are like that.
Where I always disagreed with SDB was over the possibility that collectively, this and other schemes that turn waste to energy was whether collectively these asterisks might not total up to something significant in the world energy stream. There, I was more optimistic than him.
Anybody seriously looking to analyze this sort of thing should curl up with some nice basic economic statistics and figure out where we’re going with energy demand and see if we’re going to hit a serious physical wall on energy availability. Pricing will ration what resources we have in our capitalist energy markets but it’s going to be very rough for latecomers to the free market system to break in to the Core when energy demand puts relentless upward pressure on prices.
October 24th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Blogs are a blast….So is my niche business site. Check it out for yourself niche business