Today's headlines ( or this past week sometime...I'm catching up after a bit of time away) notify us all that there is nothing to worry about....we have forty years left of petroleum resources. What is beyond me is that people are reassured by this number. Hopefully I will still be around then, if not my children and their children will. I simply do not understand the head in the sand use it until it's gone attitude! Why are we spending so much time looking for more instead of finding alternatives? Well...that's my high horse rant and rave for the day. Now, Since I've been very interested in alternatvie energy supply for a while I think now would be a godd time to start dealing with a subject that in the past has intimidated me. Off to the library first thing in the morning! I'll add this to my topics to research. If anyone has a good simply book for me to start with I'd appreciate your advice. I know it will be several years before I am able to implement any major changes, but I sure would like to know what I'm talking about when the time comes!

-- Jennifer (KY) (acornfork@hotmail.com), September 29, 2000

Answers

Jennifer, I was reading very old back issues of Organic Gardening today (1979-1980) and was struck by the fact that Rober Rodale was talking about the coming energy crisis. We had gone through the gas shortage of the 70's, all the tax credits for solar, insulating, etc., and he was predicting $45 cans of coffee because of the tariffs and the actual cost of gasoline to transport. Here we are, 20 years later, having the SAME discussions about petroleum. When will we start to take this seriously? Are we like the frog in the pan of water, swimming around and enjoying ourselves while the temp goes steadily up? It's 'way past time to get serious about alternative energy. I live in a Southern state, but have no solar panels on the roof. We do heat with wood, but that's about all. I drive a thrifty little compact car, but where are the electric cars Detroit promised twenty years ago? I'm to blame, our congressmen and senators are to blame, Wall Street and Detroit are to blame. Good for you, getting educated about alternatives. I am going to do the same.

-- melina bush (goatgal1@juno.com), September 29, 2000.

Jennifer if you will check to see why the last "oil shortage" came to an end IMHO it is very simple the alternative energies were about to become feasible. I would guess if the federal gov. really wanted to help and not just get votes instead of taping into the reserves they would have offered low interest loans (for some of you please note I said loans not grants) to those in the fuel oil areas for insulation and upgrade windows so that the amount of oil we do have would have lasted. I think it is important to look at other ways to provide the things we need but we also need to look at using less of whatever source of energy. gail

-- gail missouri ozarks (gef123@hotmail.com), September 30, 2000.

Yes, I am very concerned. Especially since I think it is quite possible that there is really only 10-20 years worth left. Check out this site: http://www.runningonempty.org/

I have sites and resources I can suggest to you, Jennifer, for your research but it is LATE, and I don't want to do it now. I'll try to remember to post them here later.

For whomever mentioned the electric cars, Toyota has an electric/gasoline hybrid on the market now (although the wait time after ordering is around 5 months). It is costing Toyota about $30,000 to make these, but they are selling them for around $20,000- $21,000 to get them introduced into the market. They are hoping to bring the cost of manufacture down by raising the demand for them. They have been selling them in Japan for 2-3 years, and they seem to be doing very well, including in snow and cold weather. I know this is not super cheap, but it is a lot less than I thought one would be.

I had the opportunity to see one today. I was favorably impressed with it's appearance and comfort. I didn't have time for a test drive, but I am going back soon, maybe tomorrow, to do so. They get about 47-48 mpg average (city & hwy combined). You can see pictures and read about them by going to www.toyota.com, and clicking on "Prius".

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), September 30, 2000.

You know, I have to think that Gail is right. It is entirely feasible to run at "normal" standards with alternative energy, it is just really expensive to get into it at first. There might be a fair amount of very lightly used hardware available from the Y2K passover.

Remeber Tesla? Remeber Tucker? What would the power mongers do if energy were free to everyone? Who could they control?

There was an article sometime ago in Nexxus magazine about Bodoni engines and another engine developed by a guy named Joe in Austrailia where he drove all over the continent on water in a standard vehicle with slight modifications. I just read an article out of Europe which says that they have tested the hydrogen engine and it worked for them.

I have read Tesla and to be honest the mathematics and physics are beyond me, but the theories are extremely interesting. I just get that glazed over fuzzy brain when I try to deal with the equations.....anyone else have that problem?

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@yahoo.com), September 30, 2000.

You have a wonderful source of alternative energy info right here in KY.It is ASPI in Livingston KY, just above London, off I-75. We've gotten a tremendous ammt of info from them.They have a demonstration center,cordwood home,compost toilet,solar home,organic garden,solar/electric car,ginsang,land stewardship etc.etc. as well as a library.Give them a call or drive on up to see their site. Well worth the trip!

For those in North Carolina,you have a sister site outside of Ashville. Wish I could recall the name. I think it's Long Branch Environmental Center

Webpage for ASPI is www.kih.net/aspi. Phone is 606 453 2105. Happy Hunting!

-- Sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), September 30, 2000.

I saw a man in Decatur Al with a steam powered paddle boat on the Tenn. river. Said all he needed was water and driftwood. Today, at our hometown Depot Days festival, I saw a couple steam engines on display, they ran quiter than petroleum engines. I told Lynn , I want to start tinkering with one.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 30, 2000.

40 years eh? I'll be dead & gone but I wonder what this world will be like for my kids and grandkids. I can remember 40 years back easy.

I worked at a Texaco station during the oil crunch of the 70's. I wouldn't want to see anything like that again! People as a whole had a bit more restraint and manners then. It would be carnage now.

Our society does not understand the implications of "limited resources". I am going to London, Ky next week for a family reunion/hootenanny. Will have to visit the aspi site in Livingston and get some ideas.

-- John in S IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), September 30, 2000.

Jennifer, moving toward alternate energy techniques NOW is an excellent move. That 40-year timeframe is deceiving. We'll still have oil in 40 years, but it will be darned expensive oil. Picture a mountain in profile, rising on one side to the peak and falling off again on the other. That is global oil production, and the uphill slope represents oil production from about 1890 to today. The peak is expected to occur in this decade, and then it begins to fall off. In forty years, world oil production will be roughly equal to what it was in 1965, which doesn't sound bad until you realize that world oil *demand* has increased exponentially since then. (That's the optimistic scenario, BTW.)

What we're about to see -- this year's oil situation is just the earliest stage -- is the end of *cheap* oil. It won't be a steady progression; prices and supply will rise and fall and rise again, and the peak will likely look more like a plateau in retrospect. Forty years from now, this era will be a golden age.

For more information, try hubbertpeak.com or dieoff.com. Dieoff takes a rather apocalyptic view, which I don't share, but it has lots of excellent information and links.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), October 01, 2000.

Makes me wonder if the latest fuel shortages aren't caused by market pressures/OPEC, but by govts. wanting to ease their citizens into the shortage a little at a time. Like the frog in the pot, we will get used to anything if it is done slowly, only this time the analogy ends up being for our own good - if we slowly phase out high-use vehicles and technologies because of cost and not because we need to for the good of the long run (when have we ever been capable of that as a group?), and slowly become accustomed to less and less costing more and more, we will be less likely to respond in uncontrollably violent ways when the end does come. Yes, there will be protests and possibly riots in the process, but they will be smaller and more managable (city or regional outburts are easier to control than a armed nation of SUV-owning citizens gone amok).

It's a little like the rising cost of cigerettes over the years; as taxes were added a bit at a time, those who were die-hard users(no pun intended) kept grumblingly purchasing, while those who were less committed quit or cut back, and those who had not started had more cash outlay to consider when thinking about it, and herbal varieties (comparable to alternative energy sources) which were not taxed became comparatively cheaper for those who wanted the bang, but not for that many bucks. We've all heard friends say that when cigs got to $X.XX that they'd quit, only to have them meekly pass that hurdle when it arrived, with barely a growl to mark its passing.

IMHO, higher gas prices are a good thing, uncomfortable for me here and now, but good for all of us in the coming years. As it becomes harder for me to afford gas to work an hour away from home, I will look for closer employment and/or try to find ways of making what I need in-home so that I don't have to lay out for gas at all, as far as making a living goes. Gas prices also figure into errand running (at some point it will be easier just to do without or make do with a near miss that I have at hand) and food purchasing (ditto growing some of my own, as I do now, both because of the rising price of gas to the store, and also the rising price of food due to shipping $ increases.), both of which decisions are much better for the world in any case.

Eventually, rising trucking costs will result both in more efficient fuel decisions for shippers and in a ressurgence in locally grown markets and regional fare, as in the case of Europe today. Perhaps the rising cost of fuel will even encourage farmers to ease into no- till farming and other less invasive (and high fuel-cost) practices.

We are a young nation and could stand to pay attention to those "elder" civilizations and economies who have gone through this and other comparable issues many time in the past (the cost of shipping silk from the orient made it neccessary to invent rayon as a locally produced substitute, until the silkworm was smuggled out. End result - a locally produced, cheaper cloth and a boost in the whole creative/inventive field as it was researched and made.) All these problems have been experienced and dealt with in the past, so why not learn from the results of others difficulties rather than blindly walking into our own obvious brick walls? I mean, the price of shipping and transportation has always been an issue in all times, whether it was by canoe, freighter, horse, human-back, or flown in from Pakistan packed in ice.

Ah, well, we are essentially a teen-ager, nation-wise. Whoever can get a teen-ager to listen to his elders is either truly a master, or more intimidating than any leaders we have today. The result will be the same regardless. All that changes is the road we travel between times.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), October 01, 2000.

40 years huh? Just when I'll be retiring! So how much more money will I have to have to retire then?!?! It's along the same mentality of so many people. "Where does your food come from?" "The grocery store." I'm sure many people don't understand that the "cute" cows out in the country are the same thing they just ate in that hamburger at McDonalds! Does this mean I should buy more energy stocks?!?!?!? Gotta laugh about it 'cause we can't do anything about it!

-- Michael W. Smith (kirklbb@penn.com), October 01, 2000.

I'd encourage everyone to spend an hour (yes...) or so at :

http://www.dieoff.org/

40 years is optimistic...

j

-- j (jw_hsv@yahoo.com), October 01, 2000.

This question doesn't bother me as much as Stephen Hawkings thoughts about humankind becoming extinct within the next 1000 years.

link: http://www.the- times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/09/30/timnwsnws01023.html

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), October 01, 2000.

Logic would suggest that in the next 20 years or so, hydrogen and methane will be our fuel sources. Indication of this are :Chryslers development of the hydrogen powered, water converter engine,Fords' turbo/electric configuration and the methane generation electric plants being built at landfills. The hydrogen engine is the one of these that could be the demon, destoying water resourses as the oil resourse have been. Methane will probally be the best, just lay a pipeline out of D.C. and daytime t.v.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), October 01, 2000.

Jay, hydrogen is very nice, clean and efficient to burn, but costly to create. Most fuel-cell hydrogen sources are actually petroleum-based. One of the most efficient fuel cells uses gasoline as the H source! Remember that hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source -- we still have to create it by injecting energy into something else. In the case of water, we need to use electricity to electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen, and it takes more energy (electricity) to create the hydrogen than the hydrogen itself generates when burned. TANSTAAFL. If we see gasoline/natural gas as stored solar energy from millions of years ago, they are an energy source -- creating more energy when used than is needed to deliver it.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), October 02, 2000.

Cash, my point is that the direction for alternative energy sources is moving at high acceleration away from petroleum based.The auto industry has even stated the hydrogen engines, while burning cleaner are too costly to operate. I really believe in the methane direction. We were using a frontend loader to move a large hill of chicken manure that had gone through a heat, everytime we broke fresh layers that engine reved up from the gases like it had a afterburner.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), October 02, 2000.

I still think that bio-diesel, in one form or another, is the way to go. Most European nations require that all boats, recreational and otherwise, use only biodegradable oils in their engine, in case of spills. I don't see why, with our technology, we can't put biodegradable diesel and oil into our cars within 10 years, if not less. The smarts are there, it's just the desire that's failing us.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), October 03, 2000.

Ah, methane and biodiesel, now you're talking serious homemade energy. Throw in alcohol and you've got a tidy triad of farm-based energy sources. No disrespect meant about hydrogen technology, Jay. My radar starts to blip whenever someone mentions it because of the eMergy issue. Biodiesel isn't ten years away, BTW. Some folks here in Maine are already powering their vehicles with the stuff. There were two buses at Common Ground Fair this year that used it. Following them down the highway was like trailing a Fryolator! ;-)

Jay, didn't the old Mother Earth News do a lot of farm methane research in the 1970s? And I seem to recall that village-level methane digesters were (are?) common in parts of India. Haven't seen anything recent, tho. It still astonishes and saddens me that we flush so much fertility (and potential methane) down our rivers or out to sea.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), October 03, 2000.

I know very little about biodiesel -- can ANY vegetable oil be used? Or just certain ones, and if so, which ones? What about hemp oil? If only we could grow industrial hemp . . . . :-(

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), October 05, 2000.

Just wanted to offer a good book on the subject- The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Can't remember the author. We are researching and moving towards an off-the-grid lifestyle. We've got our first solar panel, which we plan to "play" with this winter- plan on running a light and radio/CD player with it. That's about all I need on a winter's night. Just wish the local govt. didn't have so many rules and reg's, making alternative solutions so difficult. For example, they will make us wire our house (that we'll soon be starting on) conventionally, even though we've said we just intend to have a small solar system. The reason given is for the NEXT owner of the house. I believe it's really to make sure they bring in the revenue.

-- Laurie (NC) (lepick3@hotmail.com), October 05, 2000.

I can remember during the fuel shortages of the 70's an announcement of the development of an efficient and cheaply produced photo-electric cell. It was developed by a few very respected scientists and was reportedly going to revolutionize the energy field. If you can produce reliable and cheap solar power you can power just about anything.There was a big to-do for a short time, then all of a sudden we had fuel again and I've never heard another word of this wonderous cell. Makes a person wonder where these things go???

-- Peg (NW WI) (wildwoodfarms@hushmail.com), October 06, 2000.

There are over 100 trillion barrels of proven reserves for the next 50 years for world wide usage. But we have only tapped the surface. There are reverse cracking processes that converts lighter gasses into petroleum made from biomass such as organics. Right now oil is controlled by creative legislation by the oil companies.They want to maintain profit levels and monopolies. EPA controls what is being imported: this is one of the control factors of restriction. Didn't god create enough oil! The automotive companies have more than done there share to double the utilization of fuel through EPA legislation. They can still heat the molecules of fuel to get even more combustion from the inefficiency of gas if implemented. There are plenty of materials on the subject. You can fit the entire worlds population in Martha's vineyard. The anti nukes protested clean efficient fuel in exchange for fossil fuels. As usual a hand full of communist are working to control America just like the Soviet Union is controlled by a handful of bullies. I tolerated these people in the early 1970s and ask who is financing them? What Gorby couldn't due with red his people will do with green. Beware of heresy

-- johnstergios (johnstergios@ameritech.net), March 10, 2001.

johnstergios said: "There are over 100 trillion barrels of proven reserves for the next 50 years for world wide usage." 100 trillion barrels of what? Water? Certainly not petroleum. Natural gas, assuming you're talking cubic feet, maybe? Source, please?

"But we have only tapped the surface. There are reverse cracking processes that converts lighter gasses into petroleum made from biomass such as organics." Yep, and once again it costs more energy to create this "organic petroleum" than it produces when used. See www.dieoff.comn.

"Right now oil is controlled by creative legislation by the oil companies.They want to maintain profit levels and monopolies. EPA controls what is being imported: this is one of the control factors of restriction." I love conspiracy theories that require thousands of people to carry them without any one of them talking to the authorities, to the media, or to me!

"Didn't god create enough oil!" Uh, no. Not at the rate we're burning it.

"You can fit the entire worlds (sic) population in Martha's vineyard." And how high will that pile be? Now Texas is another matter, but that still doesn't allow for minor things such as roads, mines, parks, factories, office buildings, pastures, cropland, forests, waste disposal, etc. etc.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), March 10, 2001.