Coal in an Engine does not need Fischer Tropsch
Posted by Heading Out on February 5, 2007 - 11:05am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: coal water slurry, coal-to-liquids, diesel engines, locomotives [list all tags]
There has been a fair amount of discussion about the need to form liquid fuels from coal. As the more conventional liquid fuels get more expensive, and less easy to find and produce, an alternative source of fuel has been suggested in the Fischer Tropsch conversion of coal into diesel and gasoline. Can I ask why?
No, not in the sense of do we need the fuel, but rather why go through this long, complex and relatively inefficient process of making the liquid, when, for just the price of grinding it down to micron size, you can mix the coal with water and happily drive your vehicle away. “Preposterous !” I can almost hear the splutters from here, but no, actually it is not, and I thought I would revisit a program that General Electric and others carried out in collaboration with the Department of Energy, between 1982 and 1993, which explains what some of the problems were and how they were resolved.
My initial reference can be downloaded as a pdf from ref. 4 here . The pre-cursor work comes from Jerald Caton’s overall review, which can be downloaded as ref. 7 from the same source.
The idea itself is not new. Rudolph Diesel ran one of his engines with a powdered coal fuel back in 1896, though the test only ran 7 minutes, before being stopped to see what the dry coal dust had done to the engine. Dr Caton considers it likely that the coal was at around 100 microns in size, and left the engine gummed with a considerable amount of sludge (the coal had perhaps 10% ash). There were later tests of differing engine designs in Germany, all using coal dust, from different sources, but mainly using the German lignite, which has about 20% ash and particle sizes in the 75 – 100 micron range. The coal was introduced in a compressed air stream ( about 90 psi), but the engines still underwent high wear rates, sludge accumulation and a lack of reliability and control. These issues had not been solved by the time that the Second World War came to an end and development stopped.
After the war the research largely moved to the United States, with the coal being mixed with various liquids, including diesel itself, in part as a way of getting around the problems of feeding coal particles in compressed air, since this can be an explosive mix, and is difficult to control and provide a constant feed. Some of the problems can be seen from this reported result
The slurry was used in a commercial Caterpillar diesel engine with an unmodified mechanical fuel injection system. During the testing the fuel injection system repeatedly failed due to pump plunger and injector nozzle pin seizures. A wear rate 35 times the normal level was recorded for the piston rings and cylinder liner. Performance of the engine remained similar regardless of the type of coal mixed with the diesel oil. Scope limitations and budget constraints ended the research. The final conclusions were that fuel-injection problems were severe, energy-release characteristics of coal fuels in engines were poor, and that significant wear problems were caused by ash and incompletely combusted particles.
To understand part of the problem with the ignition of the coal, with the higher rpm engines consider that the fuel is injected into the cylinder as a fan mist, and that the fuel must then atomize, ignite, and be totally consumed all within about 10 milliseconds. This becomes more of a problem as the coal particles get larger, and conversely it meant that by making the particles smaller, it became easier to get the coal to completely combust.
By using 2 micron coal, though only at 15% concentration in diesel oil, it became possible to get a diesel to run reliably, although the coal was specially prepared to have negligible ash content and nozzle blockage problems still persisted. Gradually the concentration of coal was increased, to the point that, with a slower cycling engine, it proved possible to run 31% coal in the diesel, with the coal in the 2 – 10 micron size, and the potential economics of making the transition also began to become evident, as oil prices began to rise in the 1970’s. It was about this time that the switch was also made to running the coal particles in water, rather than diesel oil, and with mixes up to 34% coal in water. Some cited advantages to making the switch (apart from improving the economics) were that the combustion temperatures would be lower, reducing disassociation reactions and the oxides of nitrogen.
By the beginning of the 1980’s the potentials of the change in fuels were becoming more evident, as well as a clarification of some of the technical problems that would have to be overcome for the technology to reach the market. And so the Department of Energy began a program where they worked with major diesel manufacturers (Caterpillar, Cooper-Bessemer, Detroit Diesel, General Electric and General Motors) and a program at Sandia looked at ways to improve the injector systems. The Caterpillar program was directed more at an intermediate stage conversion of the coal to gas, but the other four focused on the coal:water combination.
Cooper-Bessemer developed a technique that led to an engine being tested for more than 750 hours, using a coal:water mixture in which the 12-micron sized coal mixed 50:50 with the water, to give a consistency similar to paint. They concluded that, in 1993, the technology would only be economic with power plants above 8 MW, and were planning at that point, to launch a product line. At the time it was anticipated that the engines would come on market in the 2005 to 2010 time frame with an installed cost of $1300/kW (1992 dollars); an efficiency of 48.2%; NO2 emissions of 0.11 lb/MMbtu; SO2 emissions of 0.37 lb/MMbtu (equivalent to 0.3% sulfur diesel oil); and particulate emissions of 0.01 lb/MMbtu.
To reach this point it had been necessary for the manufacturers to solve the problems of the injectors (while CB used ceramic, GE had moved to the use of diamond nozzles – a product increasingly now available); hardening the piston rings, cylinder liners and valves; and improving the emissions controls. The increase in coal concentrations not only increased the economics, but since around 1% of the coal is required to evaporate a 10% water fraction in the mix, obviously the greater the mix, the better the engine performed. For stationary engines it is more cost competitive to ship the coal dry, and then do the final preparation and water mixing at the engine site, saving the cost of the freight. The paper was written in 1993, and projected that the use of such an engine, today, would produce electricity at a cost of $0.0611/kWh, against the cost of an oil/gas plant which was estimated to cost $0.0625/kWh. The oil/gas price was assumed to be $4.50 per MMbtu, coal price was anticipated to be $1.63 - $1.74 per MMbtu. The entire economics, with those input prices, however was based on the assumption that the preparation costs for the coal slurry fuel would not bring the overall price above $3.00 per MMbtu. The engine would require a higher maintenance cost $0.0036/kWh as opposed to $0.0016 for conventional. (More detailed costs are given in the paper).
Detroit Diesel focused more on large off highway haulage trucks and marine applications and had, by 1993 reached the point that they could achieve auto-ignition and get a combustion efficiency of around 99.2%, the application required a higher rpm engine, and this, in turn, mandated a smaller droplet size (20 microns).
General Motors were oriented more toward locomotive manufacture, and looked at a variety of liquid fuel bases for the coal combination, however, it was the GE team, through their Transportation Systems division, that had the greatest success, with the program reaching the point that a fully modified 2500 hp locomotive was run, during November and December 1991, around the GE test track, with equivalent power outputs to those of the conventional diesel oil powered plant.
Among the major accomplishments of this program were the development of specialized fuel injection equipment, for coal-water slurries, diamond compact inserts for the nozzle tips for wear resistance, and an integrated emissions control system. Over 500 hours of engine operation was accumulated using coal fuel during the duration of this program A major milestone was attained when, during November and December 1991, a coal-fueled diesel engine powered a locomotive on the General Electric test track. . . .They estimated that the coal-water slurry would be about half the cost of diesel fuel, on an energy basis.
In 1993 the further drop in the price of oil, and the discontinuation of the programs at the Department of Energy brought all these programs to a conclusion, and interest faded.
However as the GE Review concluded
GE has developed the critical technologies in the completion of the second phase, electronically controlled fuel injection engine with all durable parts and a complete emissions clean-up system. When the market environment again becomes favorable in the future, the technologies can be further improved and packaged into a commercial system very quickly.
.Well it would appear that we are now entering into those times, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes for this technology to be resurrected.
Some years ago I seem to remember seeing either on TV or on a news show at the cinema (for this was in the UK) the then Chairman of the National Coal Board driving around London in a car powered by this coal:water fuel. Unfortunately my memory is not good enough to remember the source, and though the folks that now have custody of the NCB films have searched diligently they cannot find any reference, so if anyone else can remember I would like (among other things for my own peace of mind) to hear about it.
Thanks!
Heading Out,
Don't you know that Coal is one of those four-letter curse words. Coal is a natural mineral which serves as Nature's human exterminator. We should leave this accursed mineral in the ground rather than sacrifice our existence for the sake of electricity, automobiles and consumerism.
But we humans are not willing to make any sacrifices. Consider this enlightened statement from the governor of Texas:
Governor Perry won't sacrifice texas' economy but he is going to sacrifice Texas' people. Is it any wonder that Homo sapiens is headed towards certain extinction?
We are going to burn up all of these fossil fuels and then Nature is going to burn us all up. Nature will survive, but humankind will not.
Problem solved. The sun will keep on rising and the Earth will recover and life will flourish and the Universe will forget that Homo sapiens ever existed and God will look down from Heaven upon the human-less Earth and say, "good".
Coal has already damaged the Earth too much. It is time for humankind to stop, otherwise Nature will stop humankind forever.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Lots of money to be made supplying coal for electricity.
http://www.prosefights.org/coal/northantelope/northantelope.htm
How long will all of this last? Senior citizen wonders?
www.prosefights.org/reigps/reigps.htm
David, thanks for stating the (what should be but obviously isn't to some) obvious.
Coal contains the opportunity to end life on earth.
Is the Oil Drum indifferent to climate change? Is climate change any less an established fact than the coming of peak oil?
Proposals to make coal more usable are proposals to end human life on earth that much faster.
Is this article included because the Oil Drum is just interested in any scientific proposal that relates to our energy situation?
I'm genuinely curious about why such an apparently horrible idea (the more likely it is to work, the more horrible it is), is deemed worthy of an article.
Sigh...
DMathew1 and Oegon7, Heading Out isn't advocating the use of coal to deal with Peak Oil. He's discussing the science so that we are better informed.
Hello IntoTheBlack,
If Heading Out doesn't speak about the negative consequences of using coal in this manner he is doing the readers a disservice. The fossil fuels industries prefers to not think about the consequences.
But the consequences are important to me. Coal is an obscenely dirty fuel source. The carbon in coal is best sequestered in the ground as coal.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Sigh...
IntoTheBlack, I was afraid that what was going on. He is taking a "just the facts" approach, and it is being published because the facts are believed to be morally neutral.
So... a serious discussion of a new way to build an atomic bomb is just an exploration of physics and engineering... an informed public discussion of a new way to build a computer virus for Windows Vista is just an exploration of practical computer science issues... an IBM sale of computing technology to Nazi Germany in the 1940s was just a way of helping a foreign government keep track of details....and so on?
It is certainly possible to have a discussion about oil and its alternatives, but let's not imagine that such a discussion can be value neutral when the recent IPCC report suggests that we are on a sinking ship.
People on The Oil Drum like to take the big picture about the future of the global economy... shouldn't we consider how the choices made in the global economy affect the global ecology? Is it really possible to discuss technologies that could if successfully promulgated kill the planet and human life on it as value neutral alternatives?
I suppose you could say climate change is beyond the mandate of The Oil Drum... but isn't the word "future" in "discussions about energy and our future"?
Is there any more basic fact about our future than the fact that the earth is rapidly warming due to global carbon emissions.
So, sigh, no, I don't see how it is possible to have a value neutral discussion about potential ways to use our vast coal resources to enable the economy to keep chugging along and using the atomosphere as a carbon sink.
I just don't get an effort at value neutrality when coal is involved.
I'm not against a discussion of the science/engineering of using coal as a fuel... but I'd expect at least a few comments by the author to the effect that, "if scaled up to widespread use, and if the technological challenges are met, this technology has the potential to enable the increased use of coal, which could hasten the end of human life on earth."
Just a note. A little comment. Some indication of contextual awareness. Since he didn't provide it, I found it necessary to do it myself.
I'm going to assume that your view does not allow for ANY type of fuel infrastructure whatsoever. Am I correct? Not being snide, just getting the impression that you are opposed to ALL fuels.
If it can be done with coal then it can be done with charcoal. It appears the critical processing step is grinding the fuel into micron and submicron sizes. I had thought about if mixing charcoal dust with biodiesel would work since both products can be made on the farm. Apparently the answer is yes and the biodiesel may not be needed since water will work. Now the question comes can this be a substitute for gasoline?
What would be the energy density (BTUs/gallon) and mpg of such a mixture?
The energy content would vary according to heat content of the coal and the percent blends.
For example, a low-ash, high BTU coal (say 12,000 BTU/lb) in a 50% water mixture would be 6,000 BTU/lb. This is about 1/3 the heat value (on a BTU/lb basis) of gasoline, if my calcs are correct.
The MPG would also suffer accordingly, and since water does not burn, that's a lot of weight to haul around, not to mention the issue of keeping the coal in solution. This is one reason why producers don't like shipping water if they can ship a product that's as low in water content as possible.
I don't know what the heat content of charcoal is. Wood runs around 5,000 btu/lb assuming a 25% water content. Considering the temps Iowa has experienced the past 3 weeks perhaps a 70/30 ethanol/water mix would be more appropriate. Homegrown 140 proof moonshine requires considerably less energy to produce than the 200 proof stuff required by gasoline blenders.
Carbon is 14,500 Btu/lb. Charcoal is (mostly) the fixed carbon part of the wood and the ash. It looks like something on the order of 12000-12500 BTU/lb is about right.
Two things come to mind.
Steam engines.
Stirling Engines.
These are both external combustion technologies that pre-date the
internal combustion engine and both have been used in automobiles
as recently as the 1960s. The coal can be delivered to the burner in
powder form without mixing with water. These are entirely practical and
mature technologies. I am not sure of their efficiencies, but I bet they
beat coal to oil hands down.
I'm not passing judgement about the ethics of extending the automobile
age by employing this fuel source, and I'm sure they meet none of the
current emissions standards in the US or anywhere else. However, I
expect to see them being used in the not too distant future.
My initial reaction to the "new" fuel (coal) was to post something to do with Choo Choos: http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/newsteam/modern12.htm
Most of coal grinding schemes currently in use are primarily rather dodgy tax scams intended to gain govt subsidies.
Practically speaking, there is still an important place for coal. Logically, used to produce stationary electricity. If clean coal burning plants were actually built, CO2 properly sequestered, coal becomes more practical then ever more scarce, natural gas. With one new coal burning power plant going up in China each week, no wonder many here are frightened. Even this aberrant growth may be self regulating.
Party aperachicks, like 19th century London power elite are just as unwilling to see their children sicken and die in orange air..
Let's encourage any new technology that will afford the world truly clean (burning) coal. If we don't, WHEN (cheap) NG runs out, with little or no progress replacing aging nuclear, the air will be too dirty to hang out that wash in any case.
I keep hearing and reading people mention carbon sequestration, but I have yet to hear about a working power-plant that sequesters its carbon and is net energy positive. I have also not heard a viable plan to create said power-plant. It is possible, of course, that one exists and I just haven't heard of it, but I doubt it. If anyone has some intel for me, I would appreciate it.
Until then, any mention of carbon sequestration as a solution will be filed along with fusion reactors under "Check back in a couple of decades".
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2004/Dec/15-595073.html
Weyburn, Saskatchewan, whose CO2 comes from:
http://www.dakotagas.com/
which is a gasification plant, but in principle no difference from a gasification power plant like
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/cctc/summaries/wabsh/waba...
So the technology exists. There are about 20 operational IGCC power plants in the world. What remains is to hook the pieces up.
It might be 20+ years from universal use, but it's 10 years or less from practical wide scale deployment.
Fusion by contrast is 50 years out. Even the advocates think it is 50 years out.
Pulverized coal (PC)is a mature technology but dealing with coal fines is quite problematic. A typical PC burner is dealing with coal ground to the point of 85% through a 200 mesh screen for an agglomerating bituminous coal. Agglomeration occurs for many eastern bituminous coals when they are exposed to the heat of the burner flame, causing the coal particles to stick together and reducing the effective surface area for the coal particle.
The coal be a slightly more coarsely ground for non-agglomerating subbituminous coals (65-70% through 200 mesh screen). But subB coals tend to be wetter and harder to grind. And they both suffer from a serious problem if the coal particles are stored...
A spark and air and...boom.
Early PC systems used a blanket of inert gas to keep this from happening. PC systems quickly adopted a direct firing with no intermediate storage (ground coal blown down the pipe to the burner). The drying/conveying air in most modern PC burner designs is about 15-25% of the stoichiometric air required for combustion. This typically keeps the possibility of explosions/fires to a minimum though pulverizer fires are remarkably common at coal-fired power plants.
Your combustion efficiency (heat to steam) depends upon design. Modern large scal esystems accomplish remarkable heat transfer effciency. It becomes more difficult with smaller sizes and lower pressures and limited superheat. In addition, the steam thermodynamic cycle has it's own limits and it won't be the >30% efficiency that we associate with modern coal-burning power plants. The combination of low heat transfer effciency and low thermodynamic stema efficiency would probably put the coal burner much lower than you might expect.
We've been through this on another thread.
The short answer is: No.
External combustion engines do not beat the combined mine to wheels efficiency of a CTL machine.
On top of that there is the mechanical handling of raw coal vs. the convienience of liquid fuels.
Plus the localised pollution control aspect. Coal burning is much better off done at centralised plants with emission controls.
Andy
I would suspect that your conclusion makes some basic assumptions about both mining and crushing the coal that may not be correct. There have been some interesting thoughts from Russia and elsewhere on the combination that might make quite a difference in the numbers for energy costs that should be used.
I was intrigued by the comment that it might be unethical to "extend the automobile age". You mean it might be unethical to find even good solutions? Is our civilization so evil that it needs to be destroyed?
Civilisation is not evil, but your post implies that you see it as impossible without
the automobile. I see it the otherway round, if we are not do destroy civilisation through
catastrophic climate change, then the car has to go. We cannot afford to burn that much carbon,
and once oil runs short, the amount of carbon burnt will get worse as we revert down the chain
to burning coal. Renewables will never provide enough energy.
China did very well without the car until 10 years ago, India about 20 years
ago. Europe will get by if forced to do without it. I can't speak for the US, but I can't
imagine that it will by it self, reduce society back to olduvii gorge.
Civilization is not evil, but it is lethal to all life. Civilization is a natural phenomenon every bit as much as a violent volcanic eruption or a forest fire or mold on cheese or a supernova. When all the right conditions for civilization are present and the ingredients are readily available, civilization has a chance of happening. Like any other complex natural phenomenon, there is a lot of chance involved in the particulars of exactly what kicks it off, but if the conditions are right, it will
take root and grow. For moldy cheese, the conditions are cheese, the right temperature and humidity, a mold spore, and being left alone for a while. For civilization, it's
a bit more complex, but the most important ingredients are energy, the means to exploit the energy, a reproducible change in the balance of power that involves the exploitation of that energy, and the inertia of competetive escalation.
The change in the balance of power is the thing that trips it off. In the first stage of civilization, it was the beginning of food production which led to a huge boom in food supply and the density of food supply, in all likelihood in its origins an essentially random change in the ongoing evolution of cultural idiosyncracies. Most such idiosyncracies are harmless and quaint- they don't affect the balance of power. Some of them did, though, and by the time anyone noticed what had happened the process had probably been going on for a long time.
Once the population practicing the particular idiosyncracy which affected
their food supply in a positive way, and their population increased, the particular idiosyncracy was also being practiced more widely. Sooner or later this led to a population pressure which forced the paractitioners of that idiosyncracy (which for many many generations must have not seemed like anything
important to anyone) to spread out more, and since they had a more intense exploitation of the resources of the environment, over time their population prevailed over or simply outbred others - or the idiosyncracy was adopted by
the neighbors. This self-reinforcing process only became more intense over time,
but the process was very slow. It probably kicked off and died out dozens of times before ever getting out of the stone age- the technology of stone tools
was sufficient for there to be an opportunity for the past 12-14 thousand years, and the climate after the last ice age made other conditions favorable in that timeframe as well. Thousands of years later people were aware of the process and
since the total environmental impact was still minor, began to enthusiastically pride themselves on their superiority because of their set of self-reinforcing cultural idiosyncracies which affected food production. These were the first village and town dwellers.
From there, the escalation of civilization has progressed, and from a very early time people were aware that by playing that game they were living beyond their means and only postponing the day of reckoning at the cost of making the reckoning worse when it finally came. Sumerian philosophers five and a half thousand years ago were lamenting this in their mythologies of the origins of cities (which were the protoype for later mesopotamian mythologies of the conquerors of the sumerians, who are the ancestors of the present inhabitants,
and the cultural progenitors of the modern-day dominant religions) and recognized the inescapable 'deal with the devil' that they had entered. For it is true that
while that escalatory game is being played, there is no escape- everyone present has to play or be out-competed by someone who does. Since then there have been countless attempts to hold back the process or mitigate its awful and destructive effects, but of course we all know that at the very best those attempts have turned into moral admonitions and the rest flat out failures.
Only when the game itself starts to run out of fuel does the whole thing start to break down and alternatives begin to for the first time present any kind of opportunity at all. The viable long term strategy for H. Sapeins is, and will remain, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Civilization, like any other positive feedback loop, is a self-correcting phenomenon. We have the blessing and the curse of living in the interesting times where we get to observe the natural processes of conservation take their due. Driving hybrid cars and recycling won't do anything to change the matter, and
moral arguments don't really have anything to do with what's essentially a physics problem. PO is only one of the parameters which are contributing to the
new regime of the escalation game having entered the conditions for collapse, but
it is a significant one and worth discussion. Investing in renewables without leaving the technological paradigm behind is a shortsighted and failure-prone approach (though stocking up on canned foods and building a bunker in wyoming is equally shortsighted and failure-prone.. both are extremes.) The real 'renewables' are the ones that have been here long before civilization and will be here again long after even an archaeologist would have a hard time finding any evidence of civilization's rise and fall.
Sir! Lay down that keyboard and step away from the computer! It is a product of... civilization.
You can pick up your stone tools at the local center for de-civilisation. Your clothing will be replaced with a decency loin fur for the beginners. Please do not complain to the attendant about the fleas in the fur, they are perfectly normal. So is an initial allergic reaction and the rash that usually follows. Once you survive both, have your tape worms implanted and get used to the other natural parasites, your immune system will rapidly learn to adapt to the host of diseases that are common in de-civilised people. Your life expectancy will not decrease by more than 40 years if you are 30 years of age or younger.
Lessons in how to distinguish edible maggots from poisonous ones will be held next full moon. Until then you are well advised to starve because you will not receive any form of medical treatment from now on. Please do not eat any types of red berries, no matter how hungry you are. Most types of tree bark is safe to eat, albeit not very nourishing, some are medicinal and you will figure out the ones from trees to avoid all by yourself. Please try to remember what poison ivy looks like. We had a very unfortunate case of a person filling up on it last year. Very tragic... we all remember the muzzled screams of the suffocating young man all too well.
The center for de-civilisation is proud to announce its annual success figures. Over 31% of all participants have learned in time to hunt small animals before they died of protein deficiency last summer. Of all surviving participants in the program the oldest is 42 years of age and going strong (he lost only a couple of toes to frostbite last year). And even though he lost all his teeth to scurvy last recently and has a hard time chewing raw meat, he is very hopefull to make it through summer and probably even survive until next spring.
The center for de-civilisation has decided not to allow the annual meeting of hunter-gatherers any longer because they violated the statutes. Some of them have been seen building shelters from natural materials.
:-)
Hello IP,
De-civilization is a process which future humans will undergo by necessity, not choice. I don't imagine that many will survive the process because technological civilization has destroyed, degraded and polluted all of the ecosystems which formerly made life possible in the pre-industrial age.
Such is the price humankind will pay for the foolish, destructive and failing experiment in civilization. When the bill becomes due billions will die. Such is fate of humankind.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I stil find it amusing that people, like IP, use such pathetic arguments. The idea that arguing against the prevalent society requires that you argue from the position of someone who has already formed that other society is logically retarded. It is like saying that we cannot argue global warming unless everyone who is against it gives up any and all carbon production first.
As a member of western society, I swim in tech everyday. I am assaulted by it at every turn. An alternate society does not exist yet. That does not mean that tech is okay because we MUST use it to make our points.
You may as well tell American revolutionaries to stop busting King George's chops until you already have a country.
Sad, sad monkey.
I stil find it amusing that people, like IP, use such pathetic arguments. The idea that arguing against the prevalent society requires that you argue from the position of someone who has already formed that other society is logically retarded. It is like saying that we cannot argue global warming unless everyone who is against it gives up any and all carbon production first.
As a member of western society, I swim in tech everyday. I am assaulted by it at every turn. An alternate society does not exist yet. That does not mean that tech is okay because we MUST use it to make our points.
You may as well tell American revolutionaries to stop busting King George's chops until you already have a country.
Sad, sad monkey.
My point was that the poster that I was replying to seemed to be suggesting that, for ethical reasons, we might not even want to determine whether a technology was a good one because maybe we should have the objective to end the age of the automobile. This to me is a kind of Eager Doomer mentality. I have read this kind of thinking often here so I am sort of picking an argument because I think this kind of talk does more than almost anything else to marginalize and discredit the Peak Oil "movement". I do not think the mainstream community is going to take us seriously if we seem to be cheering for and working towards the end of civilization.
I can see the value in a smaller population but I am not about to work to enable a big die-off. I am not about to dismiss mitigations that might preserve many aspect of life as we know it now. I do not think it is time to man the lifeboats. If we do not all hang together, we will all hang separately.
I'm sick of these "Eager Doomers" too. Not to straw man, but the "Eager Doomer" position sounds a lot like the Khmer Rouge ideology whose goal was to get rid of industrial society and modern influences, and to go back to a society based on self-sufficient subsistence agriculture. They actually tried to implement it -- by whatever means necessary. Not pretty, but after the regime collapsed, Pol Pot insisted the whole thing didn't work because of "errors in the implementation". Might have even muddled along if they hadn't been so dumb to attack Vietnam. If it had we would have been able to send all the "Eager Doomers" to live there.
LOL.
Yeah, let's keep that automobile alive. Let's put ALL the ancient carbon sinks back into the atmosphere. Let us not be too eager to get away from a species killing technology. There are still a few years left in our poisonous paradigm.
I also find it amusing that these people who chide the so-called "doomers" believe that civilization must contain automobiles, or computers, or chocolate or whatever particular particular element they have arbitrarily decided constitutes "civilization."
Nature will reign us in. That is a fact. Sure, we can help make it particularly bloody by extending the poisonous paradigm. Nature does not care. The environment is the environment is the environment. Question is, do we want an environment that will prove a blessing to humanity or one that only harbors roaches living off the detritus of our failed species?
You make your choice obvious with every tech worshipping comment you make.
Its just the typical desire to see the transition between one age to another. I expect many people will be disapointed in fifty years to see even more automobiles than there are today.
I second that.
I'm afraid I see a lot of wishful thinking going on... we are not even close to an oil scarcity problem yet and we see people dismissing many potentially feasible (and dirty!) alternatives (CTL, methanol, PC, tar sands, oil shale etc.). With the (should I say "naive") assumption being that when oil becomes scarce, people are simply going to choose to walk away from their cars and MacMansions in favour of becoming organic farmers. Not going to happen.
Do I hate coal? Yes.
Would I use a coal powered car to go to work? Probably not.
Would I use a coal powered car to go on holiday? Maybe.
Would I drive a coal powered car to take my wife to hospital? Yes.
Would I drive a coal powered tractor on my farm? Yes.
Would I operate a coal powered generator to run my PCs & run my wife's washing machine? Yes.
We may do it slowly ... but we WILL burn ALL the coal ... and chairs and park benches ... and books ...
Yours is a weird comment. You hate coal, yet you are burning several lbs. of it every time you turn on your computer for a couple of hours. What do you do that for? Why don't you have solar panels? They will still allow you to turn your computer on and you wouldn't be burning any coal, at all.
And why do you want to burn books? They have a very low heat content and are much more useful as insulation material for your home. If you want to destroy them, at least do it in a way that makes sense.
I would (almost) NEVER burn books ... but others certainly will!
Even major eco-warriors take low cost flights ... and I am no better.
If the people who care nevertheless use tons of energy and natural resources then the human race has no chance ... the aware & caring souls will use quite a lot ... and the "masses" will gobble up EVERYTHING else.
Be honest: how many people do you know have given up almost all energy & resource consumption?
Even if you know 3 or 4, they are the amazing exceptions.
To keep my family healthy I am prepared to use energy & resources.
Maybe not much ... but probably way too much for a healthy global future ...
We are so stuffed!
Amazing. Its like some people never heard of nuclear power or any other fossil alternative.