Interesting article, high fuel costs may be man made as well, gst on petrol could be easily scrapped, yet the government won't do it, and it sounds like Australia, like the rest of the countries of the world, are at the mercy of the oil cartels, who don't care less if petrol were to rise even to 5 dollards a litre, all they care about is making money, even if it means hardship for normal people.I couldn't care less about personal tax cuts, it should all being put in cutting the tax on petrol, yet the 'artificial' tax on petrol, which is government regulated, is an 'untouchable' tax, too hard to do anything about it, even if everyone is suffering about it.What is an extra 8 dollars a week going to do for me, even I'm spending many times over that amount on fuel, and everything is costing too much because fuel is what puts food on our shelves, moves the goods in our stores and it's the very backbone of our economy.It's a very selfish government.

Now, climate change is more important than emptying your wallet on fuel costs, most of it to the government and the greedy oil companies.Read the interesting report below on climate change for an open minded view

http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:PT5Ne23HQrgJ:www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/EvansQuadrantMarch2008.pdf+fraud+Garnaut&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=21&gl=au

Climate_Change: "Read the interesting report below on climate change for an open minded view."

It didn't look open minded to me. Quite the reverse - the author, Ray Evans, seems have a very firm opinion on AGW. His thesis in that piece seems to be "even if AGW means the end of the world, any efforts we make are irrelevant in the scheme of things so lets just party on". Its not an argument I can sympathise with. I didn't find his supporting "facts" very convincing either. One of the planks it stood on was "China will never change". On the contrary, I'd say if China does end up viewing AGW as a threat they will be far more bloody minded in dealing with it than we could ever be. Just look at their one child policy, which was their solution to over population.

However, the picture he paints in correct in one respect. If we view both Peak Oil and AGW as dire threats, then we are between a rock and a hard place.

I’m going to repeat an earlier post on this thread, in the hope that somebody will address my question:

Yes, LNG seems like the way to go.

But what I’d like to know is just how feasible it is to quickly substitute gas for oil/petrol/diesel on a massive nationwide scale, and what the complicating factors might be.

Can anyone enlighten me?

We have now got this discussion…which is SUPPOSED to be about the schism between our massive gas reserves and our abject lack of use of it for transport in place of oil/petrol/diesel. And we’ve got two current articles, on all-electric and hybrid cars http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7588 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7586.

But no one is comparing them and giving us any sort of a rundown on why any one of them or combination is the best option.

OK Ludwig, I'll bite. Firstly, rather than reading any of the rubbish I am about to say, I suggest you read this:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/oil_supply/report/report.pdf

You say "gas", but not all gas is equal. Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) is mainly butane. As gases go, its rather nice. It compresses to a liquid at modest pressures and the liquid handles much like petrol. And indeed we use it now as a replacement. But - we don't have much of it.

Natural Gas is methane. It is not as nice. It is stored as a highly compressed gas which creates engineering headaches - it costs energy to compress, is hard to transfer, it containers are heavy and are given to spectacular failure modes, and after all that the energy density is not high because it still a gas. It is in fact so hard to handle that they talk about offshore natural gas fields turning it into LPG before it leaves the platform. The Fischer-Tropsch process does that - it is about 50% efficient. The upside is we have lots of it.

But if butane is good, even longer carbon chains molecules are better. Thus petrol is better than butane and diesel has a higher energy density than petrol. Diesel is the limit as longer chains are wax at room temperature. Aviation fuel is just the longest carbon chains that don't freeze 10km above the earth. So why stop at butane? Just produce petrol instead and use our existing infrastructure.

Coal can be used as a feed stock to the F-T process, and is cheaper than Natural Gas. Actually, just about any source of carbon can be used as a feed stock - including plant material. There are several pilot plants out there doing just that.

After saying all that, when it comes to land based transport there look to be lots of options. At $2/litre even pure electric vehicles look good. There are bigger challenges - like we cover our roads with petroleum. I wonder what we will be driving on?

Read this far, did you? Lazy bugger. Now go read the link.

yes I agree [as an engineer and pushing energy conservation 40 years ago] there is energy all around us

eg mice farts could power all of Canberra BUT it needs engineers to make it happen

Oz is ruled by Bean Counters with short term bean counting in mind

so Kevin '07 departs from that and postulates long term

the Toorak Taxi mob come back to castrate Kevin '07 so as to be able to run their 4WD to pick up kids from school and attend the Gym to tone up their Abs [whatever they might be]

so Kevin '07 must LISTEN to you freaks and adjust to short term, as did Howard

the problem is YOU J Doe - are you listening?

How about when the fringe benefit tax came in all public servants , federal to local , became tax evaders by returning their sedans and received utes ( which are exempt ).They only need to drive past their job site or work place to get a free car and fuel .
They can use it as family transport with no accountability .
It is very easy when you get to make the rules for your own department.
Saw it with my own eyes with ten years with BCC.
Add a call out to your own time sheet (filled out by the employee) and on paper it's all good.
Paid for the call out and then the fuel and car are free as when the paperwork comes in you just write that it was checking up on the suspect employee or ee's .
Public servants are (from first hand evidence )Legal theives.
Any employee that does not use a light truck for daily work is a tax avoider.
As for to many chiefs and not enough Indians , blind fredy already knows this , this is what we get when yesmen ,and women, are put in charge.
Let any public servant from CEO to Hole digger pay their way with fuel and then maybe , no chance ,they may get it.