* Ever fly in an airplane - thank oil
* Ever ride in a car or bus - thank oil
* Live in a cold climate and heat your home in winter - thank oil
* Ever use plastics - thank oil
* Ever buy something on Amazon and had it shipped to you - thank oil
* Ever buy something manufactured in another country - thank oil
* Ever use electricity on a still night - you should probably thank natural gas or coal
* Ever mail a letter - thank oil
If tobacco and tobacco products were suddenly unavailable tomorrow morning - the world would probably be a better place
If oil and oil products were suddenly unavailable tomorrow morning - it would probably result in the collapse of civilization as we know it and millions of deaths
Let's not pretend oil and tobacco have anywhere near the same pro/con trade offs.
NPR Planet Money recently did a series of podcasts about oil - it was pretty good. #4 was the episode where they talked a bit about what oil goes into: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/19/490408060/oil-4...
That's wrong. This article compares the two because it seems both groups committed fraud via funding misinformation campaigns that had a goal of affecting legislation on regulation.
Extremists are the ones who cannot deal with the obvious negatives of oil along with the benefits.
Unfortunately, it's not going to work, and they will be ran out of business through the political will of the people, just as the tobacco industry is now having done to it.
https://www.scribd.com/document/320110894/Alex-Epstein-Moral...
Funny that the people who get labeled "climate deniers" are also the most pro-nuclear, while the loud environmentalists are the most anti-nuclear.
I frankly don't give a damn what they believe or don't believe, if they're going to solve the problem anyway.
2. Electric cars will make this irrelevant, since they'll draw their power from the grid. In the meantime, ICEs/hybrids are becoming increasingly efficient.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
We have several alternatives.
The only problem they have is that most of them are difficult to store in a self-contained moving vehicle that turns rubber wheels to move on flat blacktop.
So, we increase reliance on vehicles that turn steel wheels on steel tracks, and get their power from overhead wires.
Next question?
Getting people and things moved by train is a great idea, but in the grand scheme of things we're dependant on oil for so many other things.
In 2013 91.6% of the energy cames from CO2 producing sources[1], and nuclear production is decreasing[1], having peaked in 2005.
The exact percentage, whether it's 91.5% or under 60% doesn't even matter though, what matters is that fossil fuel burning is increasing in absolute terms[1].
[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...
Easily, 99.9% of all energy used by humans comes from sunlight just looking at farms. Plants store a tiny percentage the ~200+watts per meter of sunlight* average over 24 hours, but if you needed to grow them indoors it would take ridiculous amounts of energy.
* You can approximate that from 4 pi R ^2 as surface area of a sphere / pi * r^2 surface area of a circle. So ~25% of 1050 W/m2 of direct sunlight on the surface. We don't farm above the arctic circle for example so that's just an approximation and most places have winters etc.
So, really it's just a question of how and what we are counting.
PS: ~200w average * 10,000 * 134,000,000 = 2,300,000 terrawatt hours. Oil and coal combined provide less than 40 terrawatt hours per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi... You can play with the numbers but we also depend on plankton to feed fish and of course enough sunlight to keep the earth from freezing.
If we are concerned about reducing CO2 emissions, energy usage is the important metric, not electricity.
However, this distinction doesn't matter much here, because, as I said:
> The exact percentage, whether it's 91.5% or under 60% doesn't even matter though, what matters is that fossil fuel burning is increasing in absolute terms[1].
Also, we burn fossil fuels to heat up houses. If we want to burn less fossil fuels for that, we need to generate more electricity, but we need to do it without fossil fuels. The only available ecological technology that exists today and has enough capacity is nuclear, and nuclear production is decreasing.
We burn a lot of fossil fuels. A big part for electricity, some other part to do other things (X). A big part (not all) of X can be done electrically too, but then we need a way to generate that extra electricity without fossil fuels.
> [something about plants and fish]
True, but I don't understand the relevance.
Just re-stating the problem. People use fossil fuels to heat homes, but we don't generally consider passive heat gain.
China has a lot of fossil fuel use if you look at fossil fuels, but they are also a world leader in solar hot water heaters. They don't show up on most statistics, but people still enjoy the hot water. Further they cost less than 1/10th of what similar systems cost in the US and could dramatically reduce the need for home heating.
Woe to the bicycle commuter, I suppose.
Also, I think you forget there are huge chunks of the world where this is utterly untrue.
And I propose the e-bicycle conversion kits, generally for the price of a commuter class cheap bike the cost per watt of motor and cost per KWh lithium battery has been dropping by half every couple years. Today in 2016 you're looking at about two watts of motor power per dollar (so $500 kit would get you more than a horsepower, and riding on horseback seems adequately fast) and about $30 per mile of battery range so $500 of lithium ion should get me around 15 miles on a charge (depends a lot on speed, hills, how much you pedal, etc)
Of course the government is getting in the way with all kinds of regulation and outright banning in some more backwards cities (NYC, etc). But I don't live in a backwards city so no problemo.
Until 2016 I'm not going to ride a bike to work because I'll be all sweaty during the roughly two months per year the weather is good enough to ride a bike. However my son is very interested in the mechanical work of assembling an ebike conversion, and it sounds like a fun teen boy and dad project to work on together, so in 2017 I could slowly ride an ebike to work mostly sweatless. Its an interesting technological development. I have not gone beyond a couple hours of online research on this project, but I'm figuring for a couple grand, which isn't much, we can build matching ebikes.
Sounds cool! Let me suggest (if you haven't thought about this already) to document all steps and publish it on a blog or something. Other interested dads, curious kids and DIYs in general will love it and might give a shot.
I actually don't have one, though, but that's only because everything I do on a regular basis is within 2 miles. My ride to work on a normal pedal bike is 6 minutes.
I agree that cities are absurd for banning small 2 wheeled vehicles with little momentum while permitting large 4 wheeled vehicles with massive momentum (and with it, massive ability to mangle and destroy human bodies).
Transport for the 1%! I'll just carry on with my bus. Some of them are already hybrid.
PM has been trading for more in the last 5 months than it has in the last 8 years.
Cool to who? Tesla ownership is a sign that you have money to spend but are not informed enough to purchase a vehicle that's worth the money. You might be cool in tech circles, but people that know cars will roll their eyes.
My car friends fall into two camps: those who have never driven a Tesla, and those who have. The former group is optimistic and looks upon Tesla products with naked desire; the latter group has already dismissed the entire company as The Sharper Image of car sales.
Since the Tesla is a car that competes with luxury cars rather than sports cars, it falls into neither of these categories. A reviewer calling it out for poor handling will thus generate a ton of ill-will and angry comments sections from the 'who-cares' crowd, so they don't bother with it.
Here's an example of what passes for an excoriation from mainstream auto media:
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/tesla/model-s/ride
The phrasing here, combined with a lead-photo of abysmal body roll, indicates to car people that this thing handles like a boat. I've verified this myself behind the wheel.
I understand and agree that this car handles just fine for the mass majority of people, but "meets needs" is kind of a shitty bar to set for a car priced to compete with the BMW M4.
Unfortunately, it's not going to work, and they will be ran out of business through the political will of the people, just as the tobacco industry is now having done to it.
You're not cool if you smoke, and you're not cool if you don't drive a Tesla. It isn't often that the right thing is also the cool thing; everyone involved should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.