We will be using oil for the forseeable future. Hybrid cars, electric cars, hydrogen cars, ethanol cars. All baloney.

Producers and manufacturers are the ones who call the shots, not politicians or we plebians.

If we ever do see viable alternatives, we will be ripped off as usual. There has to be money - lots of it - before any alternative to oil will be used.

As for the supposed harm we humans are doing to the atmosphere, forget it. Even if we stopped all harmful emissions right now, the current gases will still be around for another 1,000 years, according to the lates scientific relevations.

Because of all these things, and the nonsense we get from "experts" and politicians, I don't give a stuff about any of it.

Goodness me Saintfletcher have you got the bull by the teat !
With ethanol it really does come down to eat or drive.
In the US the ethanol industry is already forcing up the price of food.
They have something like 100 ethanol plants and another approx
150 being built.
Electric cars are totally viable, right now, but you will use them for
short trips such as a daily trip to work, say 80 to 110 Km trip.
You can charge them over night or during the day from a solar bank.
However that would be a bit expensive, but possible.
If the whole Australian wheat harvest was turned into ethanol it
would supply just 5% of our cars. It is too silly for words.

However see these letters; EROEI you will see them a lot more in coming years.
Energy Returned On Energy Invested, what it means is that for ethanol
you have to put in between 0.8 to 1.4 barrels of oil equivilant of
energy to get back 1 barrel of oil equivalent. Not real smart.

However I did see some encouraging figures for sugar cane where it
came up at about 1.7 EROEI. It would have to be grown in the north
and there is the rub. It has to be tankered south at great cost.
You can't put it through pipelines due to corrosion.

For the first time I saw an ethanol tanker on the road yesterday.

Electric cars are the solution for the majority of our personal transport needs. Electric motors are around 90% efficient compared with internal combustion engines around 30% efficient no matter what the fuel they use, petrol, ethanol, diesel etc. Internal combustion engines produce a lot of heat and exhaust on the way. If battery technology for electric cars evolved at the same rate as batteries for mobile phones who knows what the range could be 500 or 1000km?? or how fast they could be charged.

@ pmikke, thank you, this was what I was trying to say.

Electric cars produce CO2 emissions at the moment. This is because the electric power is from dirty coal power stations.

Replace most of the dirty coal power with solar thermal power stations, wind and other power which are being proposed by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney changes the equation:

http://www.chrisharris.org.au

"Internationally, SHP is growing quickly. A 6.5 MW plant was announced by the President of Portugal on July 7, and several joint ventures are under negotiation in the 20–50 MW range and a new US company will start up in 2007 (2). The US affiliate company of SHP will commence to build a 180 MW power station in 2007, then proceed to build a 1 GW station."

"Most investment in these solar thermal power stations is overseas where they have operated for some 20 years. Spain, Portugal, China and the United States have or are building solar thermal power stations."

---

Ethanol adds value to farm produce, lowers dependence on oil imports, and it gives out less CO2 emission. The US is way ahead of us. We can't run out of food, we have too many free trade treaties. Brazil isn't running out of money because it runs on ethanol. We just need the new sugar cane double cycle technology for more efficiency.

The US is working it out.

Electric cars will use clean power. Ethanol, hybrid cars, can use clean electricity with ethanol.

Lets catch up and do something positive, prosper, sign the bloody Kyoto treaty, and we'll even get more trade...

http://www.ethanol.org

Saintfletcher;
I followed the link to Chrisharis. I had read something previously about the solar thermal system.
It seems that there is still a long way to go to provide for a week of overcast weather in winter, for it to be a base load supplier.
After all a sign on lifts that say between May and October if it is overcast in Moree do not use this lift, grin.

However our real urgent problem is liquid fuels and not global warming.
The first and cost free step governments could take would be to adapt
the Australian Design Rules to suit electric cars. It is ridiculous
that none of the electric cars in production overseas can be registered here.

No Government in Australia, or anywhere else in the Western World will allow the production and use of electric cars for personal transport for several reasons. Firstly, what would happen to the exobitant profits of oil companies if they can no longer rip a hole in your income at the pump? And what about the car manufacturers themselves. They've spent a hell of a lot of time, money and effort in convincing the various Governments into passing legislation which forces certain levels of pollution reduction in motor vehicles. This is mainly obtained by way of fuel injection using complex control modules which can only be repaired and tuned by the selling dealership. No more savings by using home repairs. And parts cost a fortune. A simple ignition control module on a Benz cost over $4,000 for a tiny component no bigger than a cigarette packet. That's why I sold mine. Every thing you did to it cost a minimum of $300. It's after sales services and parts where the manufacturers make a killing. No such thing with the electric car. No ongoing maintainance, little to go wrong, no silly cam belts every 100,000k's.....the list goes on, a point made by the great John Howard at one time in relation to EV's. He was heard at some stage to point out the unemployment electric cars would cause society due to their lack of servicing requirements.
Whilst algal biodiesel sounds promising, you'll be waiting for a very long time before you see commercial production of electric cars destined for Australian roads.