[LINK] Standards, please! The third coming of electric vehicles

[Frank O'Connor]

Oh I agree ...

I was simply quoting the figures and pointing out that the demise of the supply of hydro-carbons is nowhere near as bad as some would have us believe.

That said, my preferred solution is the hydrogen route ... and then the electric. The problems with electric remain however (and as I stated most are engineering and design problems) and need to be rectified before it can be considered a mature technology capable of supplanting the dominant vehicle technology at present.

Burning hydrogen offers the least polluting, most carbon friendly, least disruptive and most potential technology ... and hydrogen fusion offers the least polluting industrial scale power generation potential. 

That said, distilling hydrogen (via electrolysis) on an industrial scale without resorting to pollution and greenhouse gas creation to power the electrolysis, and getting a working fusion reactor going, is still a long way off.

Biofuels, natural gas, shale oil, and the like are simply a continuation of the 'world's worst practice' of the past and an indication that there is little creativity or idea in Big Oil and the car industry. They want their comfortable niche, and are not interested in going outside it. The Prius and hybrids like it simply serve that purpose.

							Regards,
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On 22/04/2012, at 7:30 AM, Ben Elliston wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 02:02:22AM +1000, Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
>> But the supply of hydrocarbons seems to be increasing if natural
>> gas, fracking, shale oil, shale gas, and other sources are taken
>> into account. The current estimate is that we have 500 years or more
>> of hydrocarbon fuel sources at current or better than current demand
>> levels.
> 
> 500 years?  To quote Albert Bartlett, "The greatest shortcoming of the
> human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
> 
> It doesn't really matter how much hydrocarbon fuel is believed to be
> out there.  If you take IPCC emissions trajectories seriously, we
> don't even need to be exploring for any fossil fuel.  We already have
> enough to cover the transition to full decarbonisation.
> 
> Ben