Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: [DW]-Hunter on August 12, 2008, 02:19:22 am
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I was watching a TV show earlier on fossil fuel, and it was talking about what messures the oil industry is taking about the oil crisis. It said that the middle east was about 30-40% left in supply. It said Conoco Philips and Shell are setting up in Siberia on what is the largest oil supply descovered so far, but the problem is that it is contaminated by sand, so they are trying to develop a efficient method of filtering out the sand.
I talked to my father about this, who use to work for an oil refinery and he said that people are finding new suppies all the time, its just a matter of getting it to the surface and transporting them to refineries. I certainly hope that Conoco Philips and Shell get the oil flowing soon from siberia, because these gas prices are really burning a hole in my wallet.
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Hopefully the research of "water" petrol finally makes a working breakthrough before I am 13 . . .
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The problem with the fuel cell is that the fuel (hydrogen) costs 2-3 times more then oil based fuels per mile. So although Fuel cell technology IS availble for people to buy, (Honda FCX Clarity (http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity)) there very few fueling stations out there for fuel cell cars, and its much more expensive to use. But the good part about it is that the only exhaust it has is water, and if the power went out at your house, you could plug your house (and your whole block) into your Honda and have power again, and because it produces so much power, you could put in a much more powerful stereo and not need a capasitor... ever. :)
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I agree absolutely.
However, when one day :doubt: the Save Planet Earth Organizations all over the world get together and start stopping the production of the petrol we use now, it's really either ethanol or hydrogen isn't it?
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It said that the middle east was about 30-40% left in supply.
Sounds like dwindling to me.
People are finding new supplies all the time; they're just not big or easy. Oil prices are never going to significantly drop. Demand is going up, supply is not.
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wonder if anyones gonna bother making a bicycle that can go 100 KM ph
so i can sell my car :)
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Water cars? Hmm...
Jame May, Top Gear presenter, did a review of General Motors' Hy-Wire some years back. Take a look, and don't worry about Jeremy Clarkson describing the Mazda RX-8 at the outset. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46TFbwhOn7w)
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It said that the middle east was about 30-40% left in supply.
Sounds like dwindling to me.
You obviously didnt read the next sentence did you?
It said Conoco Philips and Shell are setting up in Siberia on what is the largest oil supply descovered so far.
Its bigger then the middle east's supply ever was.
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Really? That's good news then. :nod:
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You may wish to lookup the word dwindle. You may also want to consider not wasting the still quite limited oil supplies as petrol. And some source about this might be nice.
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In the end it doesn't matter wether the world's supplies of fossil fuel last another 20 or another 200 years. If we don't want future generations to live on a second Venus we must stop producing greenhous gases at all costs! And that will only be possible by getting rid of fossil fuel as soon as possible. Fuel cells aren't much of a solution there as well, since water vapor is still a greenhouse gas. Electric cars would be a much better answer.
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i think they should centralize energy production and transmit it over the power grid, then we can use lithium ion battery cars, prototypes have good figures, a range of 300 miles, and sports car performance. this also means beefing up the grid, more nuke reactors and hydro plants, make power cheaper by reducing the overhead and loss of physical distribution. any major car factory could put out a general purpose battery car in less than a year if they wanted to. and most people would buy it.
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The problem still is that Fossil Fuel is... fossilic, which takes millions of years to form. As we burn much more then the earth can form, it will run out one day (or we all get nuked before it happens).
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I don't care if we have 10 or 100 years left, we need to get off of fossil fuels, the sooner the better. We will be much happier when we do, and the oil imports wont cause such enormous trade deficits and energy insecurity for the US.
I talked to my father about this, who use to work for an oil refinery and he said that people are finding new suppies all the time, its just a matter of getting it to the surface and transporting them to refineries. I certainly hope that Conoco Philips and Shell get the oil flowing soon from siberia, because these gas prices are really burning a hole in my wallet.
Yes, but are those new finds enough to make up for lost production? Most of the non-OPEC oil countries (including Russia) have dwindling production. Just look at Mexico, their production is collapsing at an alarming rate.
i think they should centralize energy production and transmit it over the power grid, then we can use lithium ion battery cars, prototypes have good figures, a range of 300 miles, and sports car performance. this also means beefing up the grid, more nuke reactors and hydro plants, make power cheaper by reducing the overhead and loss of physical distribution. any major car factory could put out a general purpose battery car in less than a year if they wanted to. and most people would buy it.
Indeed this would reduce a lot of oil consumption, but what about our diesel powered heavy machinery (such as semi trucks, earth movers, etc)?
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Oil should really be used for plastics, and carbon fibre and all that other good stuff. Not being burned unneccesarily.
That said, I'll not be ditching my car anytime soon.
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Oil should really be used for plastics, and carbon fibre and all that other good stuff. Not being burned unneccesarily.
Spot on.
That said, I'll not be ditching my car anytime soon.
At least I'm not a hypocrite, I don't have a car. :P
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At least I'm not a hypocrite, I don't have a car. :P
I don't have a car either, and I like using my feet and taking public transport. :)
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The problem with the current fuel situation is that OPEC are being just a bunch of impossible morons and not allowing for future development. If we could just get more oil flowing, then we wouldn't be burning a hole in our wallet every time we go to the pumps.
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Do we have a working replacement for petroleum burning jet engines yet?
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jet engines burn karosene, which can be distilled from coal. if we run out of oil there is still an alternate source for jet fuel.
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At least I'm not a hypocrite, I don't have a car. :P
Many places and many things necessitate having a car. Especially in cities with low urban density and poor transit services.
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i think they should centralize energy production and transmit it over the power grid, then we can use lithium ion battery cars, prototypes have good figures, a range of 300 miles, and sports car performance. this also means beefing up the grid, more nuke reactors and hydro plants, make power cheaper by reducing the overhead and loss of physical distribution. any major car factory could put out a general purpose battery car in less than a year if they wanted to. and most people would buy it.
Do you know how much polution is created in the process of the batteries for the electric and hybrid electric cars? Its far more then a land rover discovery makes in its life time to make 1 single Prius battery. Electric and Hybrid Gasoline-Electric cars are NOT the answer if you want less polution. Proper desposal of batteries are a pain in the ass, and most electricty is created by Coal Power, so increasing the electricty usage with electric cars would just make the powerplants work harder, thus making them polute more.
And for those Hybrid Gasoline-Electric car lovers, hate to bust your pride but you get more MPG in a Volkswagen Golf TDI then a Toyota Prius, and thats not even hybrid.
Truthfully, Now that car manufacturers have put filters on diesel engines and we have low-sulfer diesel now, I think Diesel is the way to go... Its cleaner then gasoline now with all the filtering that is going on with it. And if you use Bio-Diesel you also get better MPG and less harmful emitions aswell. And if you look at the figures of how much green-house gases are produced by cars, Its a really minute percentage.
Bottom line, HYBRIDS SUCK.
Hybrid lovers, watch these:
TopGear - S05E07 (http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Top-Gear-05x07-2004-12-12-avi/3878b3c4bf4fe39299f20de181370d05c34f70c1eb9e)
TopGear - S11E01 (http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Top-Gear-S11E01-WS-PDTV-XviD-ANGELiC617716932603-081/46176b60abea36fdadfb3b763a128157887866c67c52)
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You'll have to do better than TopGear for referencing. With proper funding, alternative electricity sources could replace coal. Similarly some effort into batteries with higher energy density would alleviate those issues with electric cars.
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Using Top Gear in this instance is like citing Mr. Bean as a thought-evoking psychological romp through the different stages of depression and ignorance. It's entertainment.
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You'll have to do better than TopGear for referencing. With proper funding, alternative electricity sources could replace coal. Similarly some effort into batteries with higher energy density would alleviate those issues with electric cars.
But like i said, yes that would be more economical for the consumer, but very bad for the envirement, battery production creates massive ammounts of polution. And yes I do agree, we need to ditch coal power and get more solar, geothermal, wind and natural gas power, all of which don't create any polution. Fusion would also be a great producer of power. I don't remember what they use to start the reaction however, so I can't say if there is any radioactive waste involved, but I can imagine it would be very little, since the major product of fusion is helium, unlike fission which is plutonium.
Using Top Gear in this instance is like citing Mr. Bean as a thought-evoking psychological romp through the different stages of depression and ignorance. It's entertainment.
I am a big car fanatic, I know for a fact the facts they stated on the Prius ARE TRUE. I am a subscriber to 5 different car magazines, popular machanics and popular science. I have read numerous articles in various magazines that Prius' are the ****tiest car to buy if your concerned about the envirement because of the polution that is involved in creating the batteries.
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natural gas power, all of which don't create any polution.
Can you try thinking about that one more time?
I am a big car fanatic, I know for a fact the facts they stated on the Prius ARE TRUE. I am a subscriber to 5 different car magazines, popular machanics and popular science. I have read numerous articles in various magazines that Prius' are the ****tiest car to buy if your concerned about the envirement because of the polution that is involved in creating the batteries.
Perhaps you could provide some of this evidence to the rest of us. I have to say I'm rather dubious about the credibility of those magazines.
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natural gas power, all of which don't create any polution.
Can you try thinking about that one more time?
Burning methane doesn't produce polution at all, its product is Carbon Dioxide (CO2), NOT Carbon Monoxide (CO) when it is setup properly, for example, why would you have a poluting element cook your food in your house. Methane gas is very clean. Which is why many people use it to heat their homes and cook their food on their natural gas burning stove. This is something I learned in Chemistry in high school about 4 years ago actually, that when the flame is blue it is producing Carbon Dioxide (CO2), when its orange its producing Carbon Monoxide (CO) which is why you see black smoke comming from the orange flame, but no smoke from the blue flame.
I am a big car fanatic, I know for a fact the facts they stated on the Prius ARE TRUE. I am a subscriber to 5 different car magazines, popular machanics and popular science. I have read numerous articles in various magazines that Prius' are the ****tiest car to buy if your concerned about the envirement because of the polution that is involved in creating the batteries.
Perhaps you could provide some of this evidence to the rest of us. I have to say I'm rather dubious about the credibility of those magazines.
Why would you doubt the creditibility of Popular Science and Popular Machanics, I believe popular machanics was the one that said that Hybrid Electric cars create TONS of polution in the making of their batteries.
Here is an article that explains why the prius is bad to the envirement :
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188
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The smoke from the orange flame would most likely be carbon, given that carbon monoxide is colourless.
You deny carbon dioxide is a pollutant?
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You breathe out carbon dioxide everyday, it hasen't done any damage to the envirement in the past how many melleniums of the existance of life?
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That only works if the amount stays relatively constant, which it isn't now.
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natural gas power, all of which don't create any polution.
Can you try thinking about that one more time?
I am a big car fanatic, I know for a fact the facts they stated on the Prius ARE TRUE. I am a subscriber to 5 different car magazines, popular machanics and popular science. I have read numerous articles in various magazines that Prius' are the ****tiest car to buy if your concerned about the envirement because of the polution that is involved in creating the batteries.
Perhaps you could provide some of this evidence to the rest of us. I have to say I'm rather dubious about the credibility of those magazines.
I did a quick Wiki search and found this little gem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNW_Marketing_Research
Never thought I'd live to see the day when a company logo was a blatant use of WordArt. I also found this article (http://www.thecarconnection.com/article/1010861_prius-versus-hummer-exploding-the-myth) that talks about it.
The article in question by CNW Technologies is roughly 458 pages long. However, a lot of that appears to simply be tables of numbers. What did catch my eye when I started looking it over was this:
Over time and after on and off again discussions, as well as extensive Internet searches of available studies on this issue, it was discovered that many had tried, none had succeeded in measuring TOTAL energy consumption for the auto industry.
The evidence they present here doesn't support the conclusion. It's entirely possible that such a study was done, and completed successfully, but it wasn't available online. But in addition, their focus on "TOTAL" energy consumption also concerns me. Taken literally, it's impossible to determine such a figure with 100% accuracy. You can approximate but there's going to be a lot of different ways you can approximate, things you can include, etc.
But from a basic marketing POV, this makes sense. "There's a problem, and we have a solution!"
In many cases the jargon was overly technical and aimed at scientists and engineers.
Woah. Isn't that the point? Who do you think builds cars? Who are the people who most understand the issues at stake here?
Furthermore, the last paragraph had stated that nobody had succeeded at doing this. Why talk about jargon, then? All this seems to be is an attack on the style of writing for other reports that has nothing to do with whether the study was comprehensive or not. Indeed, I would expect a comprehensive study to require extensive knowledge of the processes in question in order to be able to fully understand the report - the kind of knowledge that a scientist or engineer would possess.
Government agencies are offering significant incentives for consumers to buy hybrids as are manufacturers. Is this misguided? Perhaps. We make no conclusion about such good intentions. Our goal, again, is simply to look at what society has to pay for the energy needed to support various vehicles.
At this point I'm getting kind of skeptical about the way this thing is written. From what they claim to be doing, they should be able to state with some confidence whether government subsidies towards hybrids actually are resulting in more environmentally-friendly measure.
Furthermore, they're putting all of this talk, all of this focus on hybrids, before they really start talking about the methods used. Even before you read the document, you can tell that they're putting an intense focus on hybrid cars.
Example: If the consumer lives in the Los Angeles Basin, reducing smog and contending with some of the country's highest fuel costs make a hybrid a solid and logical vehicle choice. What consumers need to know, however, is that the LA Basin and the Los Angelino's wallet might benefit, the energy demands and pollution are exported somewhere else – either to the country of manufacture or to the states where the eventual vehicle will be disposed through recycling or scrap.
"Los Angelino's wallet". 'k.... I think there's a "while" missing in there between the "that" and the "the", and "Los Angelino" is supposed to be...I dunno, Los Angeles? That doesn't make much sense, either. "The Los Angelos' wallet"? Is this some kind of slang for white people? Oh well.
I find it interesting that they're not willing to evaluate the effectiveness of government actions, but they are willing to speak with absolute certainty to consumers. If you buy a Prius, it will be just as or more environmentally costly, and the cost will be exported to somewhere else. There's no kind of conditional qualifiers on that sentence. (What if you were thinking of buying a Maybach, or it's a used vs new decision?)
This is a general-consumer report, not a technical document per se. It includes breakdowns of each vehicle's total energy requirements from Dust to Dust but does not include issues of gigajuelles, kW hours or other unfriendly (to consumers) terms. Perhaps, in time, we will release our data in such technical terms. First, however, we will only look at the energy consumption cost.
What's a juelle? Is that like some kind of German version of "joule"? And why would kilowatt-hours be unfriendly to consumers - what exactly do people see on their electric bills these days? Horsepower-seconds?
Furthermore, there's nothing stopping them from sticking them in an appendix or separate file, although that would make the document even longer than it is now. Speaking of which, how is a 458-page document consumer friendly?
The information contained is as accurate as we can make it currently although we believe it has an error margin somewhere between 11 and 14 percent due to shifting production plans and new technologies being implemented in the salvage industry which includes recycled, non-recyclable and re-used vehicle components. Over time, we hope to be able to reduce that error margin as data becomes more easily available. There are some disclaimers and caveats which you can find in the Appendix section.
This isn't stated in any kind of statistical manner that I'm familiar with. Exactly how certain is "We believe". Is that a "We're pretty sure" kind of "We believe", or is that a "These numbers just make intuitive sense" kind of we believe?
So I decided to take a look at the appendices, and I didn't see any kind of disclaimers and caveats. I did notice that they had about 56 appendices, none of which were given a title, and all of which appeared to be random hybrid-related news postings from the internet. (Perhaps that is the result of all their extensive internet searching) Note that Appendix UU consists entirely of comics. (pg 439-443) How much do you want to bet that they didn't bother to secure a copyright before including them in their document?
I could search more, but given that they can't take the time to even name their appendices so you can find data in any kind of meaningful way from the table of contents, and given that they apparently didn't take the time to run a spellchecker over their document for "gigajuelle", and given that they've basically admitted they're being as vague as possible in the document - I don't have any kind of faith in their study.
Conclusion
Based on their introduction, their document format, and - I have to admit - their logo, I do not have the confidence that this company is willing to go to the time and effort required to conduct a survey of this magnitude. I feel that they are relying on the size of the document to obfuscate the document to the point at which it is hard for anybody to conclusively attack it without going to a significant amount of trouble in order to do so. Probably, given the supporting documents in their appendix section, more effort than they put into the document.
Based on their statements, and again based on their supporting evidence, it looks like the majority of their initial research and a fair amount of their research conducted during the construction of the document came from a bunch of Google searches. The fact that they can't even spell joule suggests to me that they either didn't take, or didn't pay very much attention in the science or engineering classes that would have given them an understanding of the basics required to be able to understand the manufacturing process and the technology involved in this survey.
I could read further but I think it's pretty clear from the introduction that I'm not their intended audience. I'd expect them to back their claims up with specific facts and numbers - they, on the other hand, explicitly state and imply that they are not releasing definite figures because they're too technical. There's no way to prove they're correct and there's no way to prove them wrong. Perhaps they're taking a page from Intelligent Design.
Finally, though they state that Toyota is an unreliable source, they also make it clear that a large portion of the information that they're relying on to produce their data comes from Toyota itself. Since the document seems entirely uncited with regards to what pieces of data come from what sources (I can't find any kind of citations index or citation footnotes anywhere), this puts their data on the entire Toyota line into doubt. Thus their most controversial claims are also the most uncertain ones.
EDIT: And really, that is a horrible logo. I haven't used WordArt in years, but even I can tell in one glance that it's one of the preset WordArt templates. They didn't even bother to customize the colors or anything.
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I wouldn't burn methane unless if I really had to. It's not toxic, but in large amounts can really do a lot of damage especially since everywhere is so prone to gas leakages these days. (OK, a bit of exaggeration.)
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jet engines burn karosene, which can be distilled from coal. if we run out of oil there is still an alternate source for jet fuel.
Potatos too, I'm told. (Germans did it in WW2, which was pretty good evidence Hitler didn't give a rat's ass about his own people; a lot of them came close to starving.)
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i think they should centralize energy production and transmit it over the power grid, then we can use lithium ion battery cars, prototypes have good figures, a range of 300 miles, and sports car performance. this also means beefing up the grid, more nuke reactors and hydro plants, make power cheaper by reducing the overhead and loss of physical distribution. any major car factory could put out a general purpose battery car in less than a year if they wanted to. and most people would buy it.
Do you know how much polution is created in the process of the batteries for the electric and hybrid electric cars? Its far more then a land rover discovery makes in its life time to make 1 single Prius battery. Electric and Hybrid Gasoline-Electric cars are NOT the answer if you want less polution. Proper desposal of batteries are a pain in the ass, and most electricty is created by Coal Power, so increasing the electricty usage with electric cars would just make the powerplants work harder, thus making them polute more.
And for those Hybrid Gasoline-Electric car lovers, hate to bust your pride but you get more MPG in a Volkswagen Golf TDI then a Toyota Prius, and thats not even hybrid.
Truthfully, Now that car manufacturers have put filters on diesel engines and we have low-sulfer diesel now, I think Diesel is the way to go... Its cleaner then gasoline now with all the filtering that is going on with it. And if you use Bio-Diesel you also get better MPG and less harmful emitions aswell. And if you look at the figures of how much green-house gases are produced by cars, Its a really minute percentage.
Bottom line, HYBRIDS SUCK.
Hybrid lovers, watch these:
TopGear - S05E07 (http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Top-Gear-05x07-2004-12-12-avi/3878b3c4bf4fe39299f20de181370d05c34f70c1eb9e)
TopGear - S11E01 (http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Top-Gear-S11E01-WS-PDTV-XviD-ANGELiC617716932603-081/46176b60abea36fdadfb3b763a128157887866c67c52)
nowhere did i mention hybrids, i was thinking about the tesla roadster :D
hybrids suffer from more weight, from having both an electrical and a gas engine, requiring pore power to get the sme performance. ditch the engine all together. theres really no reason to generate the energy on the spot with an ineffitient gasolene engine. let me point out that any engine output is gonna be 75% waste heat. it would be more efficient to burn it in gas turbine engines at the power plant. this allows for an advanced system to possibly capture some of that waste heat to produce steam to spin turbines, makeing even more power. still id say we conserve our gasolene for the trucking and shipping industry and just build nuke plants.
nuke reactors are your friends. some current reactor designs are down right idiot proof. like some of the reactors in canada,which use heavy water in place of control rods and uses lower grade nuclear fuel. if you're in danger of melting down, just flood the reaction vessel from one of the several always full and redundant heavy water tanks.
then we need to improve battery technology. we come up with a battery design that is easily recyclable yet have enough energy density to power a car with very little weight. thats why the tesla roadster hauls ass, because it has its power to weight ratio in ts favor.
jet engines burn karosene, which can be distilled from coal. if we run out of oil there is still an alternate source for jet fuel.
Potatos too, I'm told. (Germans did it in WW2, which was pretty good evidence Hitler didn't give a rat's ass about his own people; a lot of them came close to starving.)
yea thats it, we will just run vehicles on vodka! :D
a waste of good booze though.
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yea thats it, we will just run vehicles on vodka! Big grin
a waste of good booze though.
You do realise that a great deal of Eastern Europe would rather revert to bartering vegetables and riding horses before that happened ;)
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jet engines burn karosene, which can be distilled from coal. if we run out of oil there is still an alternate source for jet fuel.
So we could just take the bike and cycle to the airport! Weezee!
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I should keep my mouth shut up about this, but really in Siberia? Good luck in keeping the:
1) necessary equipment next to you
and
2) the finished infrastructure on your side.
I will not say more about that (in Internet, that is).
Mika