If you were OPEC

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cammd said..

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels. They are present in most products we use, its highly hypocritical to demonise something whilst enjoying the benefits it provides.

I think if you want to demonise them don't use them or anything made with them or by them.

The question was "could we have weaned ourselves off fossil fuels earlier?"

My question is who is anywhere even close to being weaned off them now.

I won't be getting rid of my ICE vehicles anytime soon because I enjoy driving riding them (I have two that wouldn't have done 8,000km in 40 years).

But why not use EVs for mundane A to B driving, or for a partner who has never watched a 70's car chase movie?

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cammd said..

decrepit said..

cammd said.. How weaned off fossil fuels are you . Do you rely on any them in any part in your life.

You sound like you are saying, "if you can't do it all, it's not worth doing anything"

I agree at the moment it's close to impossible for an individual to be carbon neutral, unless they go 100% off grid.

However there's quite a few adjustments people cam make to reduce their carbon footprint.

Buy local for a start, so much produce carries a big transport carbon price, especially the big supermarkets here in the West.

Reduce energy consumption.
Not everybody can afford solar and batteries, but if you can, that helps the grid a lot and eases the problems of energy transition.

I'm not sure how much carbon is involved with some of the stuff you mention, like computers and mobile phones.

Clothes, yes fast fashion is a problem, and another area that can be cut down on.

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels. They are present in most products we use, its highly hypocritical to demonise something whilst enjoying the benefits it provides.

I think if you want to demonise them don't use them or anything made with them or by them.

The question was "could we have weaned ourselves off fossil fuels earlier?"

My question is who is anywhere even close to being weaned off them now.

Surely we are able to criticise the overuse and over reliance on something, even if we rely and use that very same thing?

As you and many others have pointed out, we can't live in our modern world without oil and it's many uses.

It's not hypocritical for someone to say they believe we should shouldn't rely solely on burning oil for transport while still having to rely on ICE vehicles to survive in society.

That is, until viable alternatives are readily available.

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cammd said..
Am I wrong, where would we be without oil and coal right now.

You are not wrong.

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

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FormulaNova said..

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

But that fellow in the village is at the tail end of a huge web of distribution and R&D. He's somehow got refined oil from the middle east and MB-designed diesels. What if in 1912, when EVs and ICEs were neck and neck, the mayor of London decided he didn't like those smoky Stanley steamers and noisy ICEs, and banned them. The mayor of New York's brother in law was an EV salesman? Your guy in the village would be charging up a beat up old EV with some 2nd hand solar panels.

We'd still have a climate issue, couldn't have got away from burning coal, but maybe we'd be at 1.35 deg C rise in global temp atm rather than 1.5 deg C ?

(Ah I've been trapped again, focusing on climate change, it was urban air quality that could have pushed EVs sooner and it was the driver in the recent 2nd push. A harder argument for the ICE advocates to win.)

Ice vs EV gets confusing. Evil number plate, giving a handout to the poor in a Lambo with a USB charging port on the back.

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Ian K said..
We're all speculating now. But was it just chance that has steered history for the past 100 years? What if by chance oil didn't exist, or not discovered by Jed shootin' at food until 20 or 30 years later? We only had coal. Would transport have been delayed by 20 or 30 years or would we have developed alternatives that oil could never catch up with?

Yes, of course it is speculation. That's all we can do.

If there were no oil reserves would we have turned to synthesising something like petrol from coal or wood, or even using ethanol?

I don't think electric cars were really practical until light-weight high capacity batteries were available. Would we have the takeup of them now if we all had to use lead-acid as the battery? I doubt it as it would weigh a heap more and have less range as well. From your video I guess that puts us back to 1972 at the earliest. Even then I doubt that these sort of things would have been available as early if cheap oil was not around.

Didn't plastics revolutionise the world? Without plentiful oil, would we still be using bakelite or again synthesising from something else? Would we even have that technology if oil were not able to support the transport revolution that happened?

I keep going back to places like Vietnam where the wages are low. They used to look at bicycles as the main personal transport, now they have moved to motor scooters, and the wealthy are trying to switch to cars. I am sure their industrialisation has rocketed ahead since the takeup of motorscooters to get around. Just getting around a big city with a bike would limit how far you can go from home to work.

How long ago was it that Toyota was making a hybrid Camry in Australia? 15 years now. Makes me wonder why the government didn't prioritise those in order to tackle emissions back then.

When I was studying for a post-graduate degree in natural resources in the early 80's; one of our lecturers commented that "fossil fuels will never run out, they will just become more expensive."

If I were OPEC I'd buy mega yachts and plot all day long.

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Ian K said..

Chemists are pretty clever at trying everything, if we had oil, but not enough to burn, plastics would have come about at the same time. I agree oil hurried things along, but we'd only be a couple of decades behind without it I'd guess. )

I agree with Cammd, in that everything we own seems to be based on having oil around to make it or at least make making it cost effective. Even being able to get around quickly and easily affects the development of things.

I am getting jealous of EV owners now. Working on ICE cars is annoying. As you have pointed out there are so many moving parts, and in my case the cars I own are of an age where lots of those parts are failing and replacing them is a drama. Maybe it is time to go to an EV? I think I would be much happier changing a battery on a Leaf than changing hoses and timing belts on cars.

I wonder how many weeks it will be between when I buy an EV and when the government introduce a replacement for the fuel excise for EVs?

My previous surfwagon was dual fuel, and it was never a problem filling it up, there'd be a gas outlet at every station. Now if you want gas, it's almost impossible to find.

I remember reading a few years back that ethanol in fuel was pushing traditional food prices up.