Thread: They're all jumping on the anti 4wd bandwagon.

Very intersting points there JD. I am clearly in the minority here in thinking that oil supply and price is going to become a big issue in the next 10 or so years.

I genuinely hope I'm very wrong 8O 8O

In the meantime I'm going to presume that motor transport will be changed forever in the next 10/15 years and enjoy myself accordingly!

Originally posted by Captain_Rightfoot
Very intersting points there JD. I am clearly in the minority here in thinking that oil supply and price is going to become a big issue in the next 10 or so years.

I genuinely hope I'm very wrong 8O 8O

In the meantime I'm going to presume that motor transport will be changed forever in the next 10/15 years and enjoy myself accordingly! :)

I don't know that I would say "changed forever" - but I don't think we will be seeing cheap fuel again. Prices are getting close to those that will enable biofuels to be used for example, and high enough to encourage more economical vehicles and more economical use of them, and reductions in use of oil from these factors will affect the increase in oilk price. Just as an example of the latter, in my case I could reduce my fuel consumption by around half by only picking up mail once a week and by only doing a shopping trip to town once a fortnight. In an urban setting, I am reminded of my son, who thinks nothing of making two or three trips to the supermarket after work. OK, each is only about three kms round trip, but you add them together....

A more noticeable effect of high fuel prices may well be general inflation as costs of transport increase, and possibly a tendency to move to rail transport for distribution - although transport costs only represent a small part of the cost of most goods (probably highest for basic foodstuffs, however).

By far the most effective way of reducing use of a resource is to increase the price of it, and this also tends to increase the availability, although only if the increase in price goes to the producer and they are allowed to keep it. (This is called the law of supply and demand.) What this means of course, is that we will never "run out of oil" - it will just get more and more expensive and less and less used. The problem is that it is difficult to either reduce consumption rapidly, or to increase supply rapidly, but is easy to increase demand rapidly (e.g. China) or decrease supply rapidly (e.g. a war in Iran or civil unrest in Nigeria)

Originally posted by Captain_Rightfoot
I must admit, I think the cost of fuel is going to keep on going up, as we are running out of oil

We are quite lucky... all our cars are very ecconomical, so in the short term we'll be fine.

However, on our desert trip we used around 1000 litres last June. At the moment that cost us around 1250 bucks. Not to bad. When we can't afford to do this type of trip our our 4wd days are through. My threshold is pretty high as I really value the experience for our family.

This is why I bought the most ecconomical for it's size 4wd I could. I've said it before, but if I get more than 10 years of trips I'll consider it bonus time. 8O

If there is a plus side, this will drive expenditure in alternatives. Oil is useful for lots of things, not just energy. I just hope we've got some left by the time we get nuclean fusion going. We have some barriers at the moment to this, but it's the only long term option I can see for sustainable energy (50+)

http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion1.html

Hemp is the world's most versatile fiber. Anything made from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate. Almost any product that can be made from wood, cotton, or petroleum (including plastics) can be made from hemp.

Rudolf Diesel, invented the diesel engine with the expectation that it would use "bio-diesel" not fossil fuel. We can all thank DuPont petrochemical company, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon (Dupont's major financial backer), and the newspaper man William Randolph Hearst for the eventual banning for the hemp industry and thus the bio-diesel industry, almost world wide for many decades.

Henry Ford built a car from plastics made of fiber from hemp and wheat straw. In a demonstration, Henry himself hit the boot of the car with an axe and he couldn't dint it. The car's body was made of a cellulose plastic formed from hemp and sisal (a Mexican and Central American plant).

Bio-diesel can be produced from hemp seed (and can boast a higher oil/seed yield than any of today's oilseed crops eg. soy, canola or safflower), and hemp is only a 120 day crop. How much/many bio-diesel (and when burnt is far cleaner than any other fossil fuel), houses, plastics (hemp plastic is biodegradable, synthetic plastic is not), car parts , rope, paint, carpet/mats, engine oil, cothing, wallets, furniture, nappies, hats, coffee filters, shoes, paper etc could be made from a totally renewable resource like hemp?

Goverments all over the world should be held accountable for the environmental rape that has been allowed to continue, in the name of oil/gas/raw ore extraction. Why the hell are we still using million year resource like oil and raw ores, and not a totally renewable 120 day resource like hemp?

It's time goverments REALLY got behind fossil-fuel alternatives (and not just the kind of alternatives that you put in your fuel tank). Not just the 5% effort the are putting in, just to make the papers to give the impression that they are doing the right thing (much like a Land Cruiser Ad campaign really).

"I know from experience that many of the raw materials of industry, which are today stripped from the forests and mines, can be obtained from annual crops grown on the farms. . . . The best possible working plan for any man in our civilization is to have one foot in the soil and the other in industry." Quote: Henry Ford It was a part of his vision to "grow automobiles from the soil."

By no means am I a tree huggin' hippie, but we all know that, to continue to use fossil fuels and mine ores including uranium, is completely and utterly ludicrous!

Anyways thats my rant!

Very Interesting

Thanks for the good read :wink:

Could you get arrested or ripped if you car is smoking?