PeakOil is You
PO suppression
by Dezakin » Wed 22 Jun 2005, 18:08:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')k, so you can make steel with electricity?
You've heard of electric arc mini-mills? They're what are taking over much of the steel scrap industry.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou can build roads with electricity? Make the ashpalt from electricity too? You can make tires with electricity?
No. You make the chemical products you're talking about with electric (or nuclear thermal) energy inputs to crack hydrogen out of water and use that to hydrate carbon for building the hydrocarbon products you desire. You get the carbon either from coal (which wont run out for a long time) or limestone (which we can assume for the purpose of discussion wont ever run out)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou can build a nuclear power plant with electrical construction equipment (which doesn't exist)?
Of course electrical construction equipment exists for special purposes. If gas prices get high enough you can run the whole site on electric power more competitively. But really this is a strawman. I didnt say that you needed electric construction equipment... you can synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from electric inputs using ordinary fischer-tropsh chemical methods. Its more expensive, but fuel is not the dominating cost of construction.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou can mine the metals needed for your electric batteries with electricity?
See above.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') mean I'll buy that you can power things with electric power--but to even get to that point you need to build the infrastructure (since we don't have electric powered machines, or very many of them) with oil power. And even then, the raw materials--steel, asphalt, rubber, plastic, metals--these cannot be made with electricity.
Of course they can. You need me to detail the procedures?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ot even close. You cannot make fertilizer with "energy". You cannot make pesticides with "energy". You cannot make topsoil with "energy". You can get water with energy via desalinzation, but it is expensive, and you'll have to engineer massive irrigation projects from the desalinzation plants on the ocean to the interior of the country.
Sure its expensive, but workable. People wont starve. You can make pesticides and fertilizers from 'energy.' Its all just simple chemistry. You know, we do know how to do chemistry now.
