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cammd said..

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels. They are present in most products we use, its highly hypocritical to demonise something whilst enjoying the benefits it provides.

I think if you want to demonise them don't use them or anything made with them or by them.

The question was "could we have weaned ourselves off fossil fuels earlier?"

My question is who is anywhere even close to being weaned off them now.

I won't be getting rid of my ICE vehicles anytime soon because I enjoy driving riding them (I have two that wouldn't have done 8,000km in 40 years).

But why not use EVs for mundane A to B driving, or for a partner who has never watched a 70's car chase movie?

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cammd said..

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels.

Demonised! EVs cop a fair bit too I notice. We were well on the way to where we are now before oil. Oil was just a trickle from US wells in 1900. Tesla had electric motors sorted in 1888. Lead acid batteries 1859. "Practical, commercially available electric vehicles appeared during the 1890s." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle

In 1912 40% of US vehicles registered were steam, 38% electric (33,842) and 20% petrol.
It's just that big oil won the race and EV development stalled.

20% of oil is used for plastics, lubricants, paint, pharmaceuticals I suppose, bitumen, fertiliser? Any more? It's just the 80% that's burnt that's the issue.

What should OPEC do? They can see the writing on the wall, their market will decrease by 80%. All they can do is delay the inevitable. Funding youtubers to demonise EVs is worth a try.

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cammd said..

decrepit said..

cammd said.. How weaned off fossil fuels are you . Do you rely on any them in any part in your life.

You sound like you are saying, "if you can't do it all, it's not worth doing anything"

I agree at the moment it's close to impossible for an individual to be carbon neutral, unless they go 100% off grid.

However there's quite a few adjustments people cam make to reduce their carbon footprint.

Buy local for a start, so much produce carries a big transport carbon price, especially the big supermarkets here in the West.

Reduce energy consumption.
Not everybody can afford solar and batteries, but if you can, that helps the grid a lot and eases the problems of energy transition.

I'm not sure how much carbon is involved with some of the stuff you mention, like computers and mobile phones.

Clothes, yes fast fashion is a problem, and another area that can be cut down on.

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels. They are present in most products we use, its highly hypocritical to demonise something whilst enjoying the benefits it provides.

I think if you want to demonise them don't use them or anything made with them or by them.

The question was "could we have weaned ourselves off fossil fuels earlier?"

My question is who is anywhere even close to being weaned off them now.

Surely we are able to criticise the overuse and over reliance on something, even if we rely and use that very same thing?

As you and many others have pointed out, we can't live in our modern world without oil and it's many uses.

It's not hypocritical for someone to say they believe we should shouldn't rely solely on burning oil for transport while still having to rely on ICE vehicles to survive in society.

That is, until viable alternatives are readily available.

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D3 said..

cammd said..

decrepit said..

cammd said.. How weaned off fossil fuels are you . Do you rely on any them in any part in your life.

You sound like you are saying, "if you can't do it all, it's not worth doing anything"

I agree at the moment it's close to impossible for an individual to be carbon neutral, unless they go 100% off grid.

However there's quite a few adjustments people cam make to reduce their carbon footprint.

Buy local for a start, so much produce carries a big transport carbon price, especially the big supermarkets here in the West.

Reduce energy consumption.
Not everybody can afford solar and batteries, but if you can, that helps the grid a lot and eases the problems of energy transition.

I'm not sure how much carbon is involved with some of the stuff you mention, like computers and mobile phones.

Clothes, yes fast fashion is a problem, and another area that can be cut down on.

I was commenting on the demonisation of fossil fuels. They are present in most products we use, its highly hypocritical to demonise something whilst enjoying the benefits it provides.

I think if you want to demonise them don't use them or anything made with them or by them.

The question was "could we have weaned ourselves off fossil fuels earlier?"

My question is who is anywhere even close to being weaned off them now.

Surely we are able to criticise the overuse and over reliance on something, even if we rely and use that very same thing?

As you and many others have pointed out, we can't live in our modern world without oil and it's many uses.

It's not hypocritical for someone to say they believe we should shouldn't rely solely on burning oil for transport while still having to rely on ICE vehicles to survive in society.

That is, until viable alternatives are readily available.

No one has said we have to rely solely on oil for transport

No one has said it's not ok to try to reduce your carbon footprint.

No one said its not OK to criticise the overuse of something

What was said or asked was could we have weaned off fossil fuels earlier. My reply to that was how weaned off fossil fuels are you now.

I think if you believe your not dependant on them for the modern lifestyle we all enjoy just because you have a ev then your deluding yourself.

Am I wrong, where would we be without oil and coal right now.

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cammd said..
Am I wrong, where would we be without oil and coal right now.

You are not wrong.

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

Uh-oh... welcome to the future:

www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/on-the-road/plans-being-fasttracked-for-new-road-user-charge-for-ev-drivers/news-story/f92e837e0e7eb8de5265ef6eb49f433b

I told 'youse' that the government don't like losing out on revenue, even if its contradictory to what they should be doing.

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FormulaNova said..

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

But that fellow in the village is at the tail end of a huge web of distribution and R&D. He's somehow got refined oil from the middle east and MB-designed diesels. What if in 1912, when EVs and ICEs were neck and neck, the mayor of London decided he didn't like those smoky Stanley steamers and noisy ICEs, and banned them. The mayor of New York's brother in law was an EV salesman? Your guy in the village would be charging up a beat up old EV with some 2nd hand solar panels.

We'd still have a climate issue, couldn't have got away from burning coal, but maybe we'd be at 1.35 deg C rise in global temp atm rather than 1.5 deg C ?

(Ah I've been trapped again, focusing on climate change, it was urban air quality that could have pushed EVs sooner and it was the driver in the recent 2nd push. A harder argument for the ICE advocates to win.)

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Ian K said..
FormulaNova said..

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

But that fellow in the village is at the tail end of a huge web of distribution and R&D. He's somehow got refined oil from the middle east and MB-designed diesels. What if in 1912, when EVs and ICEs were neck and neck, the mayor of London decided he didn't like those smoky Stanley steamers and noisy ICEs, and banned them. The mayor of New York's brother in law was an EV salesman? Your guy in the village would be charging up a beat up old EV with some 2nd hand solar panels.

Yeah, maybe that guy could be recharging his EV with 2nd hand solar panels, but I still think that those 2nd hand solar panels wouldn't be around so soon if it weren't for cheap oil.

I was reading a story about someone touring through Vietnam on a motorbike. This was in the 80s I think. Even in remote villages there would be someone able to sell petrol by the soft drink bottle full, everywhere. Once it has been refined its easy to transport and store. These were villages without electricity which you can do without, but fuel for heating and cooking and transport, not so much.

Ice vs EV gets confusing. Evil number plate, giving a handout to the poor in a Lambo with a USB charging port on the back.

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FormulaNova said..

Ian K said..
FormulaNova said..

All it takes to validate this is to see someone in a remote village somewhere carting food with a diesel truck to see how reliant we are. If we had to carry everything with horse and cart again, we couldn't even feed ourselves.

Not only are we reliant on oil, but we are reliant on cheap oil.

But that fellow in the village is at the tail end of a huge web of distribution and R&D. He's somehow got refined oil from the middle east and MB-designed diesels. What if in 1912, when EVs and ICEs were neck and neck, the mayor of London decided he didn't like those smoky Stanley steamers and noisy ICEs, and banned them. The mayor of New York's brother in law was an EV salesman? Your guy in the village would be charging up a beat up old EV with some 2nd hand solar panels.

Yeah, maybe that guy could be recharging his EV with 2nd hand solar panels, but I still think that those 2nd hand solar panels wouldn't be around so soon if it weren't for cheap oil.

I was reading a story about someone touring through Vietnam on a motorbike. This was in the 80s I think. Even in remote villages there would be someone able to sell petrol by the soft drink bottle full, everywhere. Once it has been refined its easy to transport and store. These were villages without electricity which you can do without, but fuel for heating and cooking and transport, not so much.

We're all speculating now. But was it just chance that has steered history for the past 100 years? What if by chance oil didn't exist, or not discovered by Jed shootin' at food until 20 or 30 years later? We only had coal. Would transport have been delayed by 20 or 30 years or would we have developed alternatives that oil could never catch up with?

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Ian K said..
We're all speculating now. But was it just chance that has steered history for the past 100 years? What if by chance oil didn't exist, or not discovered by Jed shootin' at food until 20 or 30 years later? We only had coal. Would transport have been delayed by 20 or 30 years or would we have developed alternatives that oil could never catch up with?

Yes, of course it is speculation. That's all we can do.

If there were no oil reserves would we have turned to synthesising something like petrol from coal or wood, or even using ethanol?

I don't think electric cars were really practical until light-weight high capacity batteries were available. Would we have the takeup of them now if we all had to use lead-acid as the battery? I doubt it as it would weigh a heap more and have less range as well. From your video I guess that puts us back to 1972 at the earliest. Even then I doubt that these sort of things would have been available as early if cheap oil was not around.

Didn't plastics revolutionise the world? Without plentiful oil, would we still be using bakelite or again synthesising from something else? Would we even have that technology if oil were not able to support the transport revolution that happened?

I keep going back to places like Vietnam where the wages are low. They used to look at bicycles as the main personal transport, now they have moved to motor scooters, and the wealthy are trying to switch to cars. I am sure their industrialisation has rocketed ahead since the takeup of motorscooters to get around. Just getting around a big city with a bike would limit how far you can go from home to work.

How long ago was it that Toyota was making a hybrid Camry in Australia? 15 years now. Makes me wonder why the government didn't prioritise those in order to tackle emissions back then.

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FormulaNova said..

Didn't plastics revolutionise the world? Without plentiful oil, would we still be using bakelite or again synthesising from something else? Would we even have that technology if oil were not able to support the transport revolution that happened?

Chemists are pretty clever at trying everything, if we had oil, but not enough to burn, plastics would have come about at the same time. I agree oil hurried things along, but we'd only be a couple of decades behind without it I'd guess. If we'd been trundling around in lead acid EVs with a range of 80km or so, battery research would have got us to Lithium before 1972. They were mucking about with MOSFETS in the '50s.

(I don't actually own an EV. There's one in the household that I had no part in buying. I seem to get allocated the ICE for most of my trips. No need to replace an ICE while it's still going)

When I was studying for a post-graduate degree in natural resources in the early 80's; one of our lecturers commented that "fossil fuels will never run out, they will just become more expensive."

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Yeah, maybe that guy could be recharging his EV with 2nd hand solar panels, but I still think that those 2nd hand solar panels wouldn't be around so soon if it weren't for cheap oil.

I was reading a story about someone touring through Vietnam on a motorbike. This was in the 80s I think. Even in remote villages there would be someone able to sell petrol by the soft drink bottle full, everywhere. Once it has been refined it's a very common easy to transport and store. These were villages without electricity which you can do without, but fuel for heating and cooking and transport, not so much.

Still a very common sight in remote areas, fossil fuel is very easy to transport via drums and then distribute this way.

But the big enemy of EV take up is the hybrid, sales are soaring worldwide as they are easy to use with few drawbacks compared to a full EV. As the hybrid gradually takes over I can see a drop off in new EV infrastructure being built, or even removed due to high cost of maintenance. And unless you have home charging your fairly screwed with a full EV.

If I were OPEC I'd buy mega yachts and plot all day long.

The history of LPG in Aus, showing how government excise affects demand:

www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Court%20Coalition%20Government/Premier-takes-delivery-of-new-LPG-car-20000920

"The Premier said the Government's efforts to develop a LPG incentive scheme had been assisted by the Federal Treasurer giving him a commitment that the Commonwealth Government would not impose an excise on LPG."

When an excise was added: (probably need access for that one)
www.smh.com.au/national/excise-on-lpg-comes-hidden-in-the-fine-print-20100512-uy3a.html

"But the government will impose a 2.5? a litre excise from July 2011, rising to 12.5? a litre over five years. Over the next four years the new tax will reap about $540 million."

How there is almost no demand now:
www.wa.gov.au/government/announcements/the-commissioner-the-decline-of-lpg-fuel-explained

"The next blow came with the introduction of a Federal Government excise on LPG sales, causing prices at the pump to gradually increase."


I think EVs are a good idea, and inevitable, but this shows you how government incentives control demand and how they sometimes operate against where we think they should go because some department needs the revenue even though a different department thinks its a bad idea.

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Ian K said..

Chemists are pretty clever at trying everything, if we had oil, but not enough to burn, plastics would have come about at the same time. I agree oil hurried things along, but we'd only be a couple of decades behind without it I'd guess. )

I agree with Cammd, in that everything we own seems to be based on having oil around to make it or at least make making it cost effective. Even being able to get around quickly and easily affects the development of things.

I am getting jealous of EV owners now. Working on ICE cars is annoying. As you have pointed out there are so many moving parts, and in my case the cars I own are of an age where lots of those parts are failing and replacing them is a drama. Maybe it is time to go to an EV? I think I would be much happier changing a battery on a Leaf than changing hoses and timing belts on cars.

I wonder how many weeks it will be between when I buy an EV and when the government introduce a replacement for the fuel excise for EVs?

Just out of curiosity, in NSW LPG was relatively common. I think in Victoria it was very common to get LPG cars.
Why is it not common to find them in WA and has it ever been?

There also doesn't seem to be E10 or any ethanol fuels here. Why are they used on the east coast and not in WA?

My previous surfwagon was dual fuel, and it was never a problem filling it up, there'd be a gas outlet at every station. Now if you want gas, it's almost impossible to find.

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FormulaNova said..
Just out of curiosity, in NSW LPG was relatively common. I think in Victoria it was very common to get LPG cars.
Why is it not common to find them in WA and has it ever been?

There also doesn't seem to be E10 or any ethanol fuels here. Why are they used on the east coast and not in WA?

E10 is a sweetheart deal with Manildra Starch. They make the ethanol at a factory in Bomaderry.
Funny thing is that they have plenty of company utes running round town with big signs on them saying "E10 - the good fuel".
They're diesel utes.

It's a bit surprising that WA grain growers haven't got a similar boondoggle going

I remember reading a few years back that ethanol in fuel was pushing traditional food prices up.

Rudolf Diesel's engine was designed to run on peanut oil