PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - How will flight be powered when fossil fuel runs out?
Old 4th February 2006 | 16:09
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Loose rivets
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: ATPL
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From: Walton on the Naze Essex.
It's still a matter of the mind boggling quantities. Every ounce that we could squeeze out of all the other sources put together, wouldn't provide a tenth of our current needs.

Ignoring some of the more exotic fuels used in highly tuned engines, you can't carry anything like the same energy to an aircraft or a work-site for instance, as with gas / petrol. It is unparalleled portable power.

Since the last coal mining tragedy, it has been stated several times on T/V here, that America is feeding half its fuel needs for generating electricity with coal. In the US all the homes that don't have to be heated, seem to need to be cooled. Some do both at once to pull the humidity down. Countless thousands of homes pump the heat out for 80% of the year. It's done in one of the most wasteful ways imaginable. Given that the electrical demands are getting bigger at a frightening rate, I think coal is more or less spoken for.

Remaining in total denial about tomorrow's energy needs...and the urgent need to economize, is perhaps one of man's greatest follies to date.
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