New tecnology simply takes time to work out the "bugs" in the details.  And only then can one make a valid comparision with the alternatives.

RUF does not strike me a very good idea at all from a technology/engineering POV.  I think the attraction for others is a "have your cake & eat it too appeal".  Your personal car in "electric train mode".

Another poster is very "up" on the concept of wind turbines floating and not anchored to the seabed offshore.  At first glance "nice" but I see a host of potential problems.

He proposes masses of these offshore Florida for example (good winds there) that can move aside for hurricanes.  I see side loadings and leverage issues that will be difficult to engineer around economically (they cartainly can be made stable but at what price ?)

So experiment, get a half dozen years experience, and I will consider that it MIGHT be practical.

In the case of RUF, I see it as a distraction from viable, workable solutions.

Few people realise how rich is the operating experience of 175+ years of railroad experience.  SO many problems have been resolved.  Thus my preference in the few years we have left prePO (if we are not post-PO today).

Best Hopes,

Alan

In other nations with mixed electric & FF rail lines (UK, Russia, India) changing locos is the normal practive.

Long distance trains through rural areas are good candidates for electrification.

Best Hopes,

Alan

Yes, TOD has its entertainment value, but beyond that it is a testing ground for ideas, some of which may go somewhere. Testing it here first in this laboratory, one can take it elsewhere with a better reasoned argument that just might make a difference with one's legislatures.  

"suggests that in a future with higher energy costs people or groups who implement efficiency measures will win.  He predicts, in his words, a "race to efficiency."

That is already starting I think.  Europe seems to be holding up well, even given higher energy costs.  The test for them, though, as well as for the Japanese, will be natural gas.  Europe is facing a crucial issue on this.  If they can bring advanced technology, renewables and conservation on stream fast enough, they could be the bellweather.  The Japanese seem to be going with nuclear and renewable, with solar and hybrid and electric auto engineering more advanced there than anywhere in the world.

The test will be this:  When countries fuel consuption levels off, but there is no real economic dislocation in the country.  That will be the bellweather that we are leaving the fossil fuel age as the engine of prosperity, and entering a newer "non carbon" regime.  When it will happen, I don't know but it needs to happen soon, actually.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

If all our little efforts snowballed some day into a greater awareness...then perhaps it could save some parts of the world.

I read your comments as you not even wanting to try to change people's mindsets.

Oh dear.  Well, I could avoid any possible controversy here, and just say something nice like "be a good little scout, conserve fuel, turn down the thermostat, etc, and baby out of it, or I could play it straight and give you an honest answer, even though if anyone is still reading this particular string, I may get chopped up a bit.  The good part, since posting here is a hobby and not a paying job, I can play it straight and give you my honest answer, with no real penelty, that's one of the reasons I like kickin' ideas around here, :-), so here goes:

First, to the sentance, "Knowing that we are deep into overshoot...", I have to ask, how can I possibly know that?  I want it noted that I am not saying it's not true.  But frankly, I could have no way to know.  We could be deep in overshoot, or very far from it.  What is the "carrying capacity of Earth, and is not structured by the way we live, the amount we consume and waste for now noticable gain except ritual, appearance and habit?
  My contention is that we are almost certainly deep in overshoot IF we intend to go on operating the way we do.  But I do not know that we (meaning the human race) will continue to engage in the incredibly wasteful, sloppy and over consumptive design and engineering we have in this century.  I like to think not, not becuase we want to be less "comfortable" (hard term to define there, too!),  but because much of the waste can be removed with not a decline in real living standard, but an increase in all around comfort, sustainability and security.  My contention is that we are not in this fix because our technology is "advanced" but because it is so very primitive.  That does not yet answer your question, but it structures what I am about to say to some extent.

Now, to your question:
If I could do anything first to "make the misery a little less for future generations?", what?

First, I would free the last slaves.  Worldwide, the last stats I looked at, that would mean freeing in a REAL way about half the world population.  The women.  In every culture that has truly allowed it's women to be free, to choose their own livestyle, to work and to be educated, birth rates have fallen like a stone.  Even if we ignored the atrocities committed against the women of the world (and how do the major faiths of the world do that, by the way?), and even if we forced ourselves not to think about the millions of potential scientists, engineers, designers, biologists, medical doctors, city planners, horticulturists...well, I could go on all day, even if we don't think about the horrible loss of talant the world endures by not even letting them into the game, the decline in birthrate, done not by force of "population control" but by alllowing freedom and dignity would make it worth it, plus, it would be the humane, moral thing to do.

Now, there we would be with a flattening population, and a new vast pool of talant (think about the situation now...what we have is billions of female mouths to feed, unless we want to let them starve, but no use of their talant, what a crappy break!), so what to do next.  

Decentralization.  Develop alternatives with that as the first goal.  Great misery is already here, whether peak is or not, whether overshoot is or not, due to concentration of power, knowledge, wealth, and yes, energy.  The middle east bloodbath is creating a crisis of conscious for the Americans, and a hell on earth for the people there, because of concentration.  Of knowledge.  Of wealth.  Of power.  Of energy.  Decentralized systems are redundent, democratic, and bring power and wealth.  With freedom of movement (which, as much as many hate to admit it, is one of the great reducers of misery worldwide) one can move freely from one system or culture to another if conditions become unbearable.  The only thing that will keep a system humane is if it is surrounded by competing humane systems. Technically, this is why, in the long run, it is perfectly fine to lose "perfect" maximization" of efficiency IF it reduces centralization.  If I can make energy locally, without shipping imputs and outputs all over the place, I gain.  I would gladly take a solar set making power and possibly hydrogen locally, without having to carry in daily raw materials, and then trying to carry out daily waste, even if it was not of the most maximum efficiency.  

Likewise knowledge.  The destruction of our education base has been horrendous over the last twenty years or so.  If we want to reduce the suffering of the human race, we must educate.  As Thomas Merton once said "If you teach a human being he is nothing but a gorilla with a gun, he will act exactly like a gorilla with a gun."  If you teach a child, however, that they are designers, artists, creators, involved very much in the creative process, you will get creators, not destroyers.  If we teach them that they are directly responsible for the way in which they use the knowledge they gain, and teach responsibility with learning, we can reduce the misdirected use of knowledge, science, and technology.  Can we do away with it completely?  Probably not, but you only asked to make "misery a little less", not to end completely.  As you said, we are trying to be magical, or God.

Lastly, but perhaps as importantly as all the others, I would not try to destroy HOPE.  I know, the last consolation in Pandora's box, for little kids, right?  But I have learned more each year that even grown ups need HOPE, need a reason to care, need a reason to believe that we are here to do more good than evil.  I saw a man on 60 Minutes the other night who was fighting to preserve tigers in India.  It is an uphill fight, and in the greater scheme of things, what did it matter?  The world can live, in the end, without tigers.  We live without Sabre tooth tigers, right?  When asked why he was doing this, he said simply "because if the tigers are gone, I do not want to be alive."  He had set his standard, and he placed hope in his ability to at least help, in some small way, to keep the world worth living in.  We know there are men and women who have died going into space.  They believed that by helping humans reach outward, they were making the world more worth living in.  Were they foolish, is the whole attempt to reach outward and upward pointless.  We each have to decide for ourselves how we feel about that.  But they had made their choice.  And in some cases they died.  But we all will die.  They had at least believed, held hope, and so they had lived before they died.
So if I cannot make things better, the least I can do is not destroy the hope of those who think they can.  "First, do no harm" says the oath.

On a more down to Earth note, I will have a reply to another post on here tonight, playing with the research I have done today on thin film solar.  I used to laugh at PV as "pie in the sky" even though I had a Bell Labs PV kit when I was a child, to build a little photo cell to prove it would work!  Now, it is coming back, but not the silicone ones, but the CIS thin film....this is going to be so much fun to watch develop and knock everyone's hat in the creek!
Have fun, that's one more thing that will reduce misery, and make friends and lovers, that's good too, and watch comedy....(as the alien told Woody Allen in one of his early films, "you want to make the world a better place, tell funnier jokes!")....you see, we know how to do this, as Grandma Moses, the old lady painter said when she was over 100 years old, "Life is what you make it...always has been, always will be."  Hey, if she could take it to 100, she must have known something! :-)

All kidding aside, thank you for the chance to work out some of my own demons and give myself a booster shoot, I needed it actually!  I may be taking a bit of a sabbatical from posting on TOD, so I might as well go off for a while on a high note....I think I need to get out in the field and do more and talk less...:-)  (was that what you were trying to hint in your question?  either way, don't agree too fast, o.k.!)

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout