chrisch:
We need new technologies - biofuel for example. That is where the US can really make a positive difference (and some dollars) but Bush is in love with oil and fights against such things. That was my point all along. I'm sorry if it got lost in the detail. I'm anti Bush not anti US.
As I said God help your grandchildren... Particularly if you are one of those weirdos who think gloabal warming is a myth, boy are they gonna dis you..
Chris
Bush has only been here a few years and can only be here a few more at the outside. Presidents don't develope new technologies anyway. Industry does that and they don't do it until economics forces them. Laws that force them into it, especially too fast, just raise the cost through the roof and then we may all just be getting that mule you mentioned. Hell I already wear a car out faster than I can pay for it (cuz I have to drive so far to get to work). If the cost goes up much more I'll be hoofin it. oh and BTW, I live so far from work because a month after I baught a house 4 miles from where I worked they anounced they were closing the plant and moving everything to Mexico. I can't sell my house because of the amount of equity in it and I couldn't afford a house near where I work anyway. Long way to say that increased travel cost would kill me.
The thing that some folks may not realize is that while it might not be too hard to build an engine that runs on a different fuel (at least a protoype) there's a rather large infrastructure built around what we have now. Automotive manufacturers have billions of dollars in tooling designed to build what we have. The financial planning for that tooling was based on how much be built with it compared to how long it would take to get a return on the inventment. To re-tool would caost billions more and how does it become profitable. They have engineers who know the technology and they have suppliers of compoinent parts. There are entire industried built around supplying the automotive industry.
We have gas stations where we buy gas. They get the gas from oil companies who sell gas...not biofuel or whatever the alternative would be.
So...the oil companies go out of business. All the stock holders lose their investment because the value of the company is in a bunch of useless wells. The gas stations close and we have a car without a fuel supply. That won't get us too far.
The other alternative is to transition slow and it'll take many years.
It looks like the next step will be these hybreds that are a combination of electric and gas. I doubt electric cars will ever be good for much other than short commutes but we'll see. In the late seventies I was a technician for Gould. We built a fleet of electric jeeps for...AT&T I think it was. We also built a ford...mmm...I don't remember the model. If you drove real carefuly you could get a couple hundred miles and then you needed to spend 8 hours or so charging the batteries. BTW they had a pack of 20 lead acid batteries to run the drive motor and an additional one for accesseries. No air conditioning or sterio on those puppies.
Batteries may have gotten a little better since then but electric motors haven't changed much I don't think.
Anyway don't look for internal combustion engines to go away overnight. At best it might become common practice to use an electric motor so we use less fosil fuel. At that these cars will likely be pretty expensive for a while. buying 2 motors rather than one, batteries and chargers...sounds like big bucks to me.
In years back I've heard of alternative engine designs that were reported to have been purchased by oil companies and buried. Maybe, but they have a lot to lose and so do the people who work for them and are invested in them.
Planes...I don't use em unless I have to travel on business. I'm 45 and have purchased exactly 2 airline tickets with my own nickle. One was to bring my wife with me on a business trip that I managed to combine with some diving and the other was to get my wife home in an emergency when we were in Florida diving and I couldn't leave to driver her back.
I think the only things that can change quickly are our behaviors on and near the water. If people aren't willing to do that than there isn't any sense in even discussing the other things.
As far as global warming...
I'm no expert but from my limited reading I gather that scientists do NOT agree on whether or not it Global warming even exists and if it does they don't agree on the cause.
I seem to even recall articles suggesting that fluctuations in the size of the "hole in the ozone" may even be normal. There's a whole lot that we don't know and we've been tracking weather and temperature for such a short time.
What we do know is like I said before that a large percentage of the world isn't civilized enough for people of different religions to live near each other without killing each other. What? Half the world? Maybe more is constantly at war. And...some of those places are where all the trees are. So much for getting a handle on the demise of the rain forest.
