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Car travel 'cut by 80 per cent'
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23290118-2,00.htm
Energy experts from Monash University said the carbon emission standards recommended by the government-hired Professor Ross Garnaut would not be possible if Australia’s love affair with cars and planes continued.

“The car is doomed,” Associate Professor Damon Honnery said. “People are going to have to fundamentally change the way they think about travel and make much more use of non-motorised travel such as cycling and walking.”

His colleague, Dr Patrick Moriarty, said air travel needed to be reduced by the year 2050 in order to meet the emission targets recommended by Prof Garnaut.

“An overseas trip might become a once-in-a-lifetime experience rather than an annual event,” Dr Moriarty said.

Prof Honnery said not even a huge surge in the use hybrid cars was enough to lower emissions enough.

“Our calculations show that not even the best combination of fuel efficiency, hybrid and electric cars, alternative fuels and car pooling could provide the reductions needed to meet the 2050 targets for avoiding dangerous climatic change,” he said.

In a paper to be published in the Energy Policy journal, the researchers said massive cuts in carbon emissions from transport needed a “near-total shift from the private car to public transport”.

The researchers, who both work at Monash University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, also said that no new roads should be built.

Much as I'm happy to see good engineering FINALLY being invested in reducing CD, RR and weight to increase fuel economy, ultimately I have to agree with the Australians.

Alright. I'll get busy on that Star Trek style transporter I've been fiddling with...

;)

On a more serious note, this has been coming for a long time. I don't wish to live in something like Trantor, but I think that is where this is ultimately headed.

In the mean time, I'll dream of my totally electric conveyance back and forth to any distant locations I may need to visit.

Just think how different the U.S. would look right now if all of the money spent on the Iraq invasion over the last few years had instead been used to rework and link our public transportation systems. *sigh*

Just think how different the U.S. would look right now if all of the money spent on the Iraq invasion over the last few years had instead been used to rework and link our public transportation systems. *sigh*

Hah, what if it had been spent on anything but the war.

Costs us $300,000,000 a day. I know the public transit in Austin has a budget of about $200,000,000 per year.

...ok, I'm getting tired of hearing all these people go on and on about global warming. Just this last year the earth has cooled down by about two degrees, I think - which erases the past hundred years of global warming.

Seriously. Green house gases, carbon, etc...it's all part of the earth, naturally occurring. Fossil fuels came from trees that died and didn't decompose in time, so they were buried, and over time, became coal and oil. If they'd decomposed, they would have become CO2 anyway.

...ok, I'm getting tired of hearing all these people go on and on about global warming. Just this last year the earth has cooled down by about two degrees, I think - which erases the past hundred years of global warming.

Seriously. Green house gases, carbon, etc...it's all part of the earth, naturally occurring. Fossil fuels came from trees that died and didn't decompose in time, so they were buried, and over time, became coal and oil. If they'd decomposed, they would have become CO2 anyway.
Correct! I read the same thing. Funny how the tabloids aren't tripping over each other to tell that story. I guess there is too much of a "drive" on bio ethanol to change their mind now.:(
It's long been proven that the athmospheric CO2 has been far far higher before we came along and "messed things up". Having said that, i'm not an advocate of wanton consumption of oil either; its a finite resource and there are a lot of things we can make from it that can't easily be made from anything else. Cars, on the other hand, can function without oil as electric cars have proven. (Well, very nearly almost without!)
It strikes me as ironic that on the one hand, we are being force fed cars and all that goes with them, and on the other hand, we are being told things like the article above, where, in their eyes, the only solution to survival is to go back to the kind of life we had 20,000+ years ago. Albeit with laptops and solar panels instead of sticks and stones. And here's another thing: They want us to cut down on waste but also manufature things like laptops etc. so as they'll break or become obsolete very quickly. So they have a very nice little balancing act going on where we feel bad about having for example, something old and power hungry so they offer us a replacement that uses less power. Around here, you get funny looks for holding onto stuff and repairing it to prolong its life.
Sorry about the rant! Just had a mug of kick ass coffee! I'm vacuming as i type....:D

ollie

Hi Lamebums:

___Have to be real careful about how fossil fuels were created. Did all the dinosaurs and plant vegetation decide to walk over to the area now known as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait Iran and Iraq or how about Texas and Oklahoma to die so their remains could become oil? No.

___Secondly, there is a difference between natural occurring events like massive volcano eruptions spewing megatons of Carbon in the air vs. 6 + Billion inhabitants doing the same.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

...ok, I'm getting tired of hearing all these people go on and on about global warming. Just this last year the earth has cooled down by about two degrees, I think - which erases the past hundred years of global warming.

The one that gets me is how livestock farts are going to be the doom of the earth and that we need to kill off all of the cows to save the planet. Domesticated livestock populations grew as the wild ungulant populations fell. So herds of farting cattle have replaced the herds of farting bison, antilope, and elephants that used to roam the plains before being killed off by humans, so the overall quantities of methane released from this source hasn't changed all that much. Also the populations of farting baleen whales, manatees, and dugongs are much reduced from their original levels due to overhunting.

I wonder how many years of cooler than normal years it would take for the press to stop singing "Global warming, global warming" and change their tune to "Global cooling, global cooling", both sung to that ever-popular Chicken Little melody, "The Sky is Falling". They were on the global cooling kick back in the late 70's following a string of colder than normal winters, so I could see them doing it again. Instead of rising sea levels, increased drought/fires/tropical diseases, mass extinction as climate zones moved poleward, drowning polar bears, and starving walruses; the new threats would be the entire ecosystems of Canada, the Mid-West, New England, and northern Europe disappearing under continental glaciers, the Great Lakes ecosystem turning into an ice cube, salt marshes drying up as sea levels fell, mass starvation as the wheat and corn belts became too cold to grow those crops, overcrowding as people were evacuated from glaciated regions, etc, etc. Hey, it helps to sell papers.

Let's all hope this year is a first of a long string of cooler years--but frankly I don't think the press has much say on it one way or another... I'll keep watching those global temp monitors and refereed studies and pray the last few months are the new trend...

Hi Lamebums:

___Have to be real careful about how fossil fuels were created. Did all the dinosaurs and plant vegetation decide to walk over to the area now known as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait Iran and Iraq or how about Texas and Oklahoma to die so their remains could become oil? No.

___Secondly, there is a difference between natural occurring events like massive volcano eruptions spewing megatons of Carbon in the air vs. 6 + Billion inhabitants doing the same.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Well, here's the deal, though - some 300 million years ago the oxygen content was much higher than it is today (some scientists have said as high as 35%) which facilitated a whole load of plant and tree life. I don't remember the specifics but I surmise that it was so fast that dead matter didn't have time to decompose before being buried. Why there's only oil pockets in certain areas is because that's the layers of rock that have survived to this day are the ones at haven't been buried beyond recovery many miles under the earth (or came to the surface and amounted to nothing since we didn't get it and refine it.) Oklahoma and Texas used to be lowlands, salt marshes, and forest many millions of years ago.

As to the volcano, it too is naturally occurring. One volcano, however much carbon it produces, isn't going to match six billion people (True) but it's something that's been going on forever. We're just burning another one of those naturally occurring resources.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for wanton consumption either, because oil is a finite resource, and what we're going to do when oil is in short supply...heh, we'll be in a pickle. The laptop I'm typing this on? Plastic - oil. Shipping from Taiwan to here - probably oil. The electricity - Duke Energy - coal, I think. Plastic chair - oil. We can only go so far.

Edit: This should not be interpreted as a suppression of speech on this forum :)

Personally, I only understand PUBLIC skepticism of climate change from fossil fuel industry supporters.

I believe in climate change primarily for one simple reason.....the increasingly strong consensus within the IPCC and international scientific community.

Now, having said that, I can certainly understand skepticism. It's a very complicated topic. And it's easy to find information (of questionable reliability) that might make one dubious. And privately one might be suspicious.

But I assume that most Americans motivated to end the era of Oil do so for economic (Peak Oil) and/or national security (energy from non-friendly states) reasons.

Assuming that's the case, wouldn't one give the benefit of the doubt to the IPCC? At the very least, wouldn't one be publicly neutral on the topic?

Bob Lutz recently mentioned that he did not believe the IPCC. Fine. But why did you tell me Bob? I assume you believe in the economic & natsec reasons mentioned above. And, you are also overseeing product development that will tackle those two. I would never ask you to add a third reason you don't believe, but I certainly expect you to not argue publicly the other way. Why are you publicly hurting the cause by unnecessarily giving me your private thoughts on this matter?

Hi Lamebums:

___There is a difference between 6-billion that were not here before and now as CO2 is climbing almost in lockstep with population growth.

___About the oil … And 10,000 feet below the ocean seabed which is itself tens of thousands of feet below sea level today? Oil was not created by dinosaurs or forests being reburied again and again but something internal to the creation of the planet more than likely.

___If we can limit it, we darn well should. Fortunately, Peak oil will limit it for us and hopefully in time to keep us from destroying ourselves.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

About the creation of fossil fuels (from Wikipedia):

Most geologists view crude oil and natural gas as the product of compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time. Oil is formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae which have been settled to the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions. Terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tend to form coal. Over geological time this organic matter, mixed with mud, is buried under heavy layers of sediment. The resulting high levels of heat and pressure cause the organic matter to chemically change during diagenesis, first into a waxy material known as kerogen which is found in various oil shales around the world, and then with more heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as catagenesis.

Geologists often refer to an "oil window" which is the temperature range that oil forms in—below the minimum temperature oil remains trapped in the form of kerogen, and above the maximum temperature the oil is converted to natural gas through the process of thermal cracking. Though this happens at different depths in different locations around the world, a 'typical' depth for the oil window might be 4–6 km. Note that even if oil is formed at extreme depths, it may be trapped at much shallower depths, even if it is not formed there (the Athabasca Oil Sands is one example).

This would explain why places like Texas have oil - millions of years ago it was a shallow sea. Coal in Appalachia would be because millions of years ago the mountains were much more significant (since weathered down), and trees and such grew there, just to use examples within the States (I don't know enough about world geographic history to surmise the situations elsewhere, but it would seem to make sense.)


Why are you publicly hurting the cause by unnecessarily giving me your private thoughts on this matter?

I am "publicly hurting" your cause because I don't believe in it. I do not believe the earth will incinerate itself due to man-made actions. It's natural for someone to oppose something he doesn't believe in. Al Gore doesn't convince me. The IPCC paints a very mild picture, little to nothing compared to what An Inconvenient Truth was alarming about.

(I hope that didn't come off the wrong way, but meh.)

If we can limit it, we darn well should. Fortunately, Peak oil will limit it for us and hopefully in time to keep us from destroying ourselves.

I'm all for finding ways to reduce consumption of oil. However, this would require serious investment in alternative fuels, since asking someone to cut their energy consumption would cause a collapse in most of the technological gains we've made since the 1300's. (Thing is, what alternative fuel - at what cost, and who has the political will to get it done?)

I am "publicly hurting" your cause because I don't believe in it. I do not believe the earth will incinerate itself due to man-made actions. It's natural for someone to oppose something he doesn't believe in. Al Gore doesn't convince me. The IPCC paints a very mild picture, little to nothing compared to what An Inconvenient Truth was alarming about.

(I hope that didn't come off the wrong way, but meh.)


Nope, didn't come off the wrong way at all.

My question was for Lutz, and did not apply to vigorous debate in this forum......which is a good thing.

By "cause", I meant "ending the era of oil" not "promoting climate change".

Oh, well, in that case I'm all for it. We can never totally put an end to oil - oil is used in so many materials we use today. However I think we could cut it 95+% by getting our electricity and transportation off fossil fuels.

(Thing is, here's the problem. Wind power plants are unreliable since when there's no wind you're SOL, solar is a pretty weak case because power is needed most when the sun isn't shining, and hydrogen fusion is some years off. I'm tempted to say nuclear, since it's pollution is comparatively minuscule and is much more easily controlled. Imagine EV's, with electric public transportation, electric machinery, all run on a clean-burning nuclear national power grid.)

Yeah, I support nationalizing the power grid simply for the sake of simplifying it and allowing the government to interconnect the whole thing. Then we could make it cheaper and more affordable since we'd become more dependent on it (but capacity would have to be tripled, or more).

We may have oil here in Okiehoma. But nothing like it use to be. And some of it is the best oil in the world. Really neat stuff that okie sweet is. :)

Here we only have one wind farm. And no massive solar efforts. They could put wind farms all over this darn state. And also dot it with solar farms. Let me tell you. If the winds not blowing the sun will shine! Its rare indeed when neither is in action. But nooooo we have coal and nat. gas fired plants here. The closes nuke is in Arkansas. And its a small one at that.

The power company's are just cheap ass's. Thus nobody here trust them or the Ok Corp. Commission. The power companys want a rate hike due to the ice storm we had here to cover repairs. The city of Tulsa is upset over the clean up cost. But neither wants the power lines under ground. DUH, twisters, ice storms and our high winds. And they want them strung around on poles.

So lets say the people of the state and the OK Corp. Comission ok a tax or a rate hike to fund wind, solar or other options. How many billions would be wasted like they waste now. Work to be penny wise and pound foolish should be there motto.

Its really imbaressing being a member of the human race when you look at the big picture. And to think most of our politico's, heavy thinkers and money movers really aren't any better than the trash that smashed out a friend of mines car window to steal her purse. Our leaders are no better than the smash and grab punk.

Its a shame.

While I have never been a fan of the GW mess. And I have issues with the sci. involved with. I don't have issue with atleast cutting back a small amount. Being grid lock in traffic isn't fun and not healthy at all with what the cars are spewing out and all. Heck,,, Im a smoker and I find car fumes a pain.

Every thing has got so extreme now days. The dumb-o-crats and the Rip-off-reps is a prime example. The greenies and the Hummer owners. A extreme hypermiler and a street racer. Its like every thing has to be extreme! I don't think anything will get done until the oil is gone. Then everything will come to a grinding halt. <<<<< Isn't that extreme.

There really is no hope for humans IMHO!

So herds of farting cattle have replaced the herds of farting bison, antilope, and elephants that used to roam the plains before being killed off by humans, so the overall quantities of methane released from this source hasn't changed all that much.

The amount of flatulence from cattle has risen dramatically over the last 50 years as their diet has changed. Cows have evolved to eat grass; this doesn't give them digestive problems. However, it takes a lot longer to fatten a cow for market on grass than on grain, so grains are predominantly used today -- normally corn, but I believe it's recently shifted to soybeans with the recent rise in corn prices for ethanol manufacture.

Besides methane production, one of the other problems with feeding cattle a grain-based diet is that it makes them much more susceptible to disease. Grain-fed cows in feedlots are given tons of antibiotics along with the food, and the waste from this eventually contaminates the waterways.

I'm sure somebody from Texas can confirm that feedlots are pretty awful places to be around compared to ranches -- hold your nose and get by as quick as you can.

If you eat beef and want to do something about it, buy grass-fed beef.

The amount of flatulence from cattle has risen dramatically over the last 50 years as their diet has changed. Cows have evolved to eat grass; this doesn't give them digestive problems. However, it takes a lot longer to fatten a cow for market on grass than on grain, so grains are predominantly used today -- normally corn, but I believe it's recently shifted to soybeans with the recent rise in corn prices for ethanol manufacture.

Besides methane production, one of the other problems with feeding cattle a grain-based diet is that it makes them much more susceptible to disease. Grain-fed cows in feedlots are given tons of antibiotics along with the food, and the waste from this eventually contaminates the waterways.

I'm sure somebody from Texas can confirm that feedlots are pretty awful places to be around compared to ranches -- hold your nose and get by as quick as you can.

If you eat beef and want to do something about it, buy grass-fed beef.

All ungulents produce methane, since it is a natural by-product of the bacteria in the anaerobic environment of their rumen. People think of cattle and other ungulents as plant eaters, but what they digest in their intestines are mostly bacteria and their digestion products, not plant matter. Their rumen (the 4 chambered stomach) is a very sophisticated fermentation vat where specialized bacteria and protozoans digest the plant matter the cattle have eaten, (including cellulose which mammals lack the enzymes to digest), producing a bacterial slurry, which is what the cow is living off. Feeding grain (or grazing on clover, alfalfa or other rich forage) just revs up this fermentation process, producing more methane and more nutrients to the cow over a shorter period of time (and making the animal more prone to bloat) than would be the case when eating a less rich diet (grass or grass hay). Just think of it as compressing a month's worth of grazing into 2 weeks. In normal production, cattle spend the bulk of their time at pasture grazing grass and are only fed the expensive, high-grain diet for the last 3 months of their lives when they are being finished in a feedlot. So they are only in the high methane producing regime for a short period of their lives. But as long as people insist on fat marbled steaks, they'll need to finish cattle in feedlots.