[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Peepers', 'T')his year's attempt is House Resolution 1631, called the Railroad Infrastructure Development and Expansion Act for the 21st Century (RIDE-21), ...

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sparaxis', 'S')ince global growth is dependent on global growth in exports and trade, any reversal of that trend will have profound impacts. "Efficient" ships running on coconut oil won't cut it.

[Peepers]

Emerson,

Below is a link to a press release you might find of interest regarding HR 1631 :

http://www.house.gov/transportation/pre ... ase41.html

Also, do a Google search using these terms "HR 1631, RIDE 21" and you'll surely come up with even more worthwhile reading. Also, check for updates via the National Association of Rail Passengers' "hotline" at www.narprail.org

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sparaxis', 'Y')ou leave out global shipping, the fundamental underpinning of globalization. Bunker fuel usage is 2.6 mm b/d (Source), and currently there are no easy fuel alternatives for propelling large ships across oceans. At some oil price, this intricate network will start unraveling, but it won't be a matter of just relocating all the manufacturing back to the country of origin, as that infrastructure--built in cheap energy days--is largely dismantled and turned into shopping centers and expensive lofts.

Since global growth is dependent on global growth in exports and trade, any reversal of that trend will have profound impacts. "Efficient" ships running on coconut oil won't cut it.

You far overstate the percentage of oil use for transportation. In the US it is 63%. In China it is 34%. That leaves big chunks of usage (chemical feedstock, irrigation pump fuel, glass making, and hundreds of other special usages) completely vulnerable to price and availability shocks.

Oil is a major energy input into coal mining--as oil goes up, so do other energy forms, since they all rely on oil in the production process.

Reductionism is a common but sometimes fatal way to "get your head around" a complex phenomenon. This is indeed an energy crisis, since all the alternatives promoted today do not increase the amount of NET energy available to us once oil begins steady depletion. And without increasing net energy, there can be no economic growth. It's just the way the structure we created works.

[EnergySpin]

Point to consider:
Globalization will be the last to suffer cause it is in the system's big interest to continute. Cities totally dependent on oil for transport (i.e. everything in the US except Chicago, NY, Boston, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia etc) will do suffer a die-off (financial). Due to the subsidy culture in the Western world ... agriculture - food industry will suffer less (at least initially).
Summing up: Monte If I were you I would move the hell out of Arizona. I'm moving anyway out of my disadvantaged Midwstern city... to a place with a decent mass transit next year (after a 1 yr post-doc in Zoorope)

[backstop]

Wildwell,

you are missing two crucial factors here that seem quite obvious to me (as well as to others).

First, the rate of growth of the 'techno-saviour' industries you propose as feasible is patently unsustainable, particularly under conditions of significantly declining global oil supply.

Those alternative would need to expand at a rate to maintain strong global economic growth to begin to fund the investment required, and would need to do so despite greatly raised energy prices.
Furthermore, no such rate of new industries' physical development has ever been achieved before, despite dirt cheap coal, oil and gas.

There is, fortunately, no prospect of that rate of growth of new industrial plant being achieved.

I say fortunately because of a second critical issue you appear to overlook. It is that of the destabilization of the climate, on which all nations' food supply depends. Just to stop making the problem worse (that is, just to stop adding to the present 34% excess atmospheric carbon) we need to cut our global carbon output by over 60%. For industrialized nations it is of course a far larger percentage cut that is now imperative.

The cost of sequestering CO2 by piping it from massive new Oil-shale, Tar-sand and Coal to Oil facilities into distant oil-wells would of itself make their output prohibitively expensive in financial terms. Yet the failure to sequester that CO2 would make them lethally expensive in terms of the exponential intensification of climate turbulence. Those fossil-energy resources, which are necessarily large fractions of any techno-solution to PO, are simply untenable.

Far from moving headlong into new and dirtier fossil fuel resources, we have to be cutting fossil fuel usage very rapidly if we're to have a chance of an integrated global society surviving the coming climate shocks.

Your view seems quite representative of the increasingly shaky status-quo belief that nothing will stop economic growth.
Both history, and the simple formula for the finite surface-area of our planet (4.Pi.Rsquared) beg to differ.



Backstop

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Summing up: Monte If I were you I would move the hell out of Arizona. I'm moving anyway out of my disadvantaged Midwstern city... to a place with a decent mass transit next year (after a 1 yr post-doc in Zoorope)

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Summing up: Monte If I were you I would move the hell out of Arizona. I'm moving anyway out of my disadvantaged Midwstern city... to a place with a decent mass transit next year (after a 1 yr post-doc in Zoorope)

[Ender]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Peepers', 'A')llow me to interject myself on the transportation aspect of this discussion. Aside from cities along the Northeast Corridor, most U.S. cities have little or no rail passenger services (be they urban or intercity).

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '.')..
Even if you are correct, the cost will decimate the economy. Energy of the futurer is not going to be cheaper, and the that is what PO is about, it's about the end of cheap energy.
...

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the past 20 years, wind technology has come a long way. The cost has dropped dramatically and continues to drop as conventional power sources become more expensive. Modern wind turbines can produce more and more power (currently, the large ones can produce 1.5 megawatts each and 2-3 megawatt types are currently under testing and development).