Oil Cravers

It is a twisted situation. This world relies too much on petrol oil.

The OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is going to discuss to cut oil production because of the "falling price" .

What the fuck? You guys are relying on the black gold sitting under your asses for your Rolls Royce and Ferrari. Can't you be more decent?

Well, actually raising the price is not bad at all. The price of petroleum, especially in the US has been too low to give people any incentive to develop alternate fuel. When the price at the pump was over US2.7 per gallon, the most talked topic in the radio here was the source and technologies of alternative fuel.

You don't even need to debate about carbon emission or global warming. There are 2 obvious reasons not to rely on petroleum:

1. Petroleum is not replenishable, at least not in the next 1 million years. Obviously, it will be used up one day. Surveys had predicted that the oil fields in accessible area will be used up in the next 100 years. There might be more oil fields in deep sea, but the cost of mining them will be too high to be profitable. But still, oil will be used up one day. We need to find other energy source before that day comes.

2. You put yourself in a very bad strategic position to rely on a few countries for your major energy source. To keep themselves in a better position, the US had put a lot of effort to "secure" its interests in Middle East, and messed up the whole Middle East and irritated the Muslim world. Iran is still the second largest exporter of petroleum oil!! What the fuck? The West gives Iran money for the oil, and Iran uses the money to buy weapons from Russia/China/US for the militants in Iraq and Syria, and now threating to attack the US if the US stop their nuclear program by force. This is a karma completely avoidable.

I was looking up the web about geothermal energy. To my surprise, the country with the biggest production of geothermal energy is not any European country but the US. The Philippines is the first runner up. The biggest dry steam field in the world is The Geysers, only 145 km North of San Francisco. There are dozens of geothermal power plants in California and a few dozen more in the Mid West of the US. Of course, each of these states are bigger than France and the energy production from these geothermal plants do not contribute to a very big fraction of the whole energy consumption. But it is a good start.

I expect we need to use multiple sources of energy in the future. Geothermal energy is not everywhere. We can harvest wind power in the coast or even off the coast and solar power in the deserts. Setting up solar power farms in the deserts can actually keep the sand from the sun and trap moisture too. Has anyone done any experiment on it?

I know I know. We need a mobile and easy energy source for cars. Fuel cells. I know nothing about material science. But I am thinking to sacrifice the pleasure of acceleration and go for a hybrid engine car when I need to change my car. Well.. the design of the suburb of the US is based on cars. I need a car to do everything. I will do my best to save more energy.