$98 per barrel oil

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in :

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in
:

There are no alternatives to oil.

The electric grid uses a vanishingly small amount of oil.

The transportation system uses a vanishingly small amount of
electricity.

Concerning ground transport, there's rail which nowadays is mostly
electric. The combustion engine is really only indispensable in air
and ship transport, as you say, and a fraction of ground transport
which for various reasons can't be transferred to rail.

Most rail is diesel electric; there is a diesel engine driving a
generator.

There are no electrified rails or overhead wires between LA and
Chicago.

OK you're writing from an American perspective. In Europe most long-
and mid distance connections are electrified. You'll only see diesel
traction on short sections. And all city transport is electric by
definition. If the USA doesn't have the infrastructure in place, I say
it's time to build it up. The next problem is to convince people to
actually use it, i.e. to actually use it for private travel as well as
commercial transports. The latter is a problem that Europe has too (if
to a lesser extent).

OK your're writing from a European perspective.

You do realize most of our states are bigger than most of your countries?

Also, cities here are a bit different too.

It is all "city" from Santa Monica to San Bernardino, for example,
but they are about 60 miles apart.

Unless you run tracks from every distribution center to every local
retail outlet, rail can never be more than a small fraction of the
transportation system.

Make that a large fraction, otherwhise I agree. But there's a lot of
things you can do. You don't need trucks going 1000s of kilometers
across the continent. Ship the stuff to the nearest railway station and
let the trains bring it to the destination city, then ship it by truck
the small distance to wherever it's needed. Build factories close to
railway lines and vice versa, so the last mile gets shorter or
disappears altogether. Commuting in big cities can be done entirely by
public transport, no need at all to have lots of freeways cut through
the suburbs. etc. etc.

Both my wife and I commute over 50 miles one way. My next door neighbor
commutes 60.

Most US areas are spread out horizontally, not vertically as in Europe.

The vertical places, like New York, are few and far between.

Of course we'll need the supermarket delivered by truck, we need
ambulance cars, police cars, people in rural areas will need cars for
their daily needs, and city dwellers will want to drive to their
weekend destinations. But we can shift the weight a lot if we want to.
Private cars can become mostly leisure toys.

Not with 30 to 60 mile commutes being common for most places.

Rail is good for hauling bulk items, such as coal, over long distances
between major hubs.

That is the American perspective again.

Of course, we have thousands of land miles to worry about.

I can drive all day in one direction without leaving my state.

There are methods for making oil from coal. Somewhere I read that the
process has been revived in China. If it's so uneconomical, why are
they doing it?

As I said before, such processes have been doable for about a half
century now.

No one is doing it commercially because it is too expensive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasol

OK, there's on start up.

With the current price of oil I wouldn't expect it to be too far in
the future for it to be generally viable.

Regards

--
Excessive verbing weirds the language.


http://www.wschwanke.de/ usenet_20031215 (AT) wschwanke (DOT) de

--
Jim Pennino

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Gig 601XL Builder wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote:
Wolfgang Schwanke wrote: About the wonders of electic trains.

Yes it is the American persepctive but you need to realize a little more
American perspective.

The distances here are just plain longer than what you are dealing with in
Europe. The straight line distance between Paris and Berlin ~450 miles. In
the US that would get you from New York to Detroit. To get to Los Angles
you'd have to go another 1900 miles. Which is further than the distance from
either the Northern tip of Denmark to the Southern end of Italy or from
Gibralter to the Polish border.

Would it be nice to have electric rail serving the majority of the US, hell
yes, but after WWII we decided a huge highway system would be the way to go
and it served us well and help make the US the worlds largest economy. But
trying to install an electric rail system now would be next to impossible.
It has become alost impossible to add to the interstate system we already
have.

And there is one big plus to highways over rail. We don't grind to a halt
every time a single union goes out on strike.

And trucks can go over mountains that trains can't, which the US has
a lot of.


--
Jim Pennino

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writes:

And trucks can go over mountains that trains can't, which the US has
a lot of.

Trains cross the Rockies every day. What other mountains did you have in
mind?

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

... after WWII we decided a huge highway system would be the way to go
and it served us well and help make the US the worlds largest economy.

The highway system helped to do that? What leads you to that conclusion?

writes:

You do realize most of our states are bigger than most of your countries?

You do realize that Europeans have trains that can roll at 350 mph?

It is all "city" from Santa Monica to San Bernardino, for example,
but they are about 60 miles apart.

Europe has more civilization per square kilometer than the U.S.

Both my wife and I commute over 50 miles one way. My next door neighbor
commutes 60.

Paris covers that with its mass transit system.

Most US areas are spread out horizontally, not vertically as in Europe.

Most European areas ore more horizontal than vertical; the skyscrapers are in
the U.S.

Not with 30 to 60 mile commutes being common for most places.

People do that on mass transit here in Europe all the time (at least in
Paris).

I can drive all day in one direction without leaving my state.

Actually, you'll cross half the continental United States in a full day of
continuous driving.

writes:

Sure, it works great in some circumstances, especially when the
distances are trivial.

Distances aren't that much of a problem, and many electrified lines extend for
great distances.

Additionally, a small fraction of a network tends to handle a large fraction
of the traffic, and only that small fraction need be electrified.

The advantage of electrification is that you can haul heavier loads with
electric locomotives.

Montblack writes:

Phenomenal growth and potential for more growth.

With whose resources?

writes:

Phenomenal growth by selling at a loss with potential for a total
economic crash.

China is in much better shape than the U.S. in terms of risks of a crash.

China can't sell at a loss long enough to drive all the competition
out of business, part of it maybe, but not all of it.

What competition?

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

writes:

And trucks can go over mountains that trains can't, which the US has
a lot of.

Trains cross the Rockies every day. What other mountains did you have in
mind?

Why, you gonna go out and scale them, fjukkwit?


Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

... after WWII we decided a huge highway system would be the way to go
and it served us well and help make the US the worlds largest economy.

The highway system helped to do that? What leads you to that conclusion?


Good grief.


Bertie