Jujharoo

I don't believe its a century away. They are making such predictions because they have their stocks prices to worry about, of course.
New technologies have been and are being developed all the time, but the amount of financial and political power oil companies have, they make sure the 'alternative energies' are undermined.

mmarshall

I don't agree with that line of reasoning. Although it is true that we don't know what will ultimately replace gasoline in the long run (there are, of course, several possibilities, or a combination of those possibilities), that's no reason at all to neglect the investing and development we are ultimately going to have to do. Brazil, for instance, invested long ago in a major ethanol-fuel infrastructure to suppliment its existing petroleum one.....and they are in a lot better shape than we are today, because of it.

bad co

BIO DIESEL!! Get used to it!!! It can be made to be politon free, it is made from grabage, old cooking oil, anything almost can be used to make biodiesel. Thats the only thing that I see that we can switch to in the near future. Hydrogen is a joke, its the most plentiful resource yet its also the hardest to extract. The hydrogen that is used today is made from natural gas. Find me a cost effective way to extract from sea water and then we might be on to someting.

ktiger

The enviromentalist are currently stopping California from developing a very large solar farm in the desert because of the fricking desert turtle. The two Senators from Mass. are stopping the state from developing a huge wind farm off the east coast because it will disrupt their sunsets. Congress will not allow a new nuclear plant or oil refinery to be built. The use of food to produce ethanol is creating huge shortages and rioting in poor countries. Today's electric cars will travel 100 to 300 miles before it needs recharging for a minimum of 45 minutes!!! Can you imagine sitting in the car for 45 minutes with your family waiting for the batteries to recharge. No more driving to disney for me. Hydrogen sounds promising if we can build mass distribution points.

Will oil last another 100 years? I don't but in this country it will because our stupid lawmakers will not allow us to retrieve it out of the fricking ground. They would rather pass a stupid law (cap and trade) to increase the price of oil and gas in order to make the other alternatives, excluding nuclear, look cheap while collecting more tax revenue. What about oil shale? Natural gas? Liquid coal? They can give a crap less, all they (I'm talking about all politicians) want is a new revenue stream so they can continue to buy votes.

Can you imagine having wind and solar power along the gulf coast? I sure as hell wouldn't want any of those huge blades near my home during hurricane season which runs for six months out the year. Will the insurance company pay to replace my roof top solar panels at a cost of almost $40,000 for a 2800 sqft home? I doubt it, they are already charging me 5% of my home value for a wind and hail deductable on top of my regular home owners deductable. Do you know that this deductable is per storm not per season.

Solar and wind will not work for Florida, southern Miss., southern Alabama, southern Louisiana, and the Texas gulf coast.

Wait, I got a simple solution. Why don't we do ALL OF THE ABOVE! Then we slowly wean ourselves off of FORIEGN oil and gas while becoming diversified in our energy usage and cutting down our carbon footprint.

ktiger

Brazil was smart they used sugarcane husk. They teamed up with the private sector to find the solution then subsidized the infrastructure buildout. The government didn't force the country to go with ethanol but used their most abundant resource that was available at the time, sugarcane. Our government is doing just the opposite. We refuse to use our most abundant natural resources while mandating inefficient and expensive alternatives. The southern states have an abundace of sugarcane. As a matter of fact BP with our state's blessing is assisting the local cane farmers in building the first cane husk ethanol plant. They broke ground last month. Do you know that the Feds tried to stop the building of this facility. Now why would they do that? Because they are hell bent on setting up a system to tax the people and don't want anything to stand in their way especially big Oil companies like BP.

Back to Brazil.
So did Brazil stop seeking other alternatives just because of their success with bio fuels. No, they did not. They started drilling off of their coast for oil and gas finding billions of barrels. Brazil back in those days was an importer of oil and gas now they have become one of the biggest exporters of oil and gas of which 40% of the revenues are dedicated (a word not found in our Congress dictionaries) to finding new alternative fuels. That's how you stay ahead of the game.

LexFather

Very good posts, thank you.