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One thing I do know is that practical alternatives will not be available to power this nation for at LEAST 40 years. Yeah we could slap up some wind mills in the mean time but they will do very little in the big picture. I am not against them but they don't produce very much and require a lot of space and equipment.
One thing is many seem to tie together oil with electrical production. We actually use very very little oil to directly produce electricity. We use mostly coal and hydro. If you want a lot of electrical and low carbon output nuke is your best choice.
For vehicles, we need all electric vehicles. (charged at home with nuke plants providing the power) The problem is electric storage...batteries don't cut it. We are many years away from a dramatically advanced storage device. We need gas to carry us over. Things like ethanol are silly pipe dreams. It takes 1700 gallons of water and 4 acres of corn to produce a single gallon of ethanol. It is not WORTH it. Algae (pond scum) is actually a better source of fuel...as it can double in mass every 24 hours in the right conditions. Even so, the first plant to produce it in substantial amounts could not be here for 10-12 years. We need DOMESTIC OIL to provide the transition time...IMO.
You can't get there from here with just alternatives, noway nohow. I think most will realize this but I think when oil hits 250/barrel the gov't will step in and mandate drilling and refinery development.
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