Do you realize that the car was once pie in the sky

Question

These days it is fashionable for oil junkies to tell us that all fuels except oil and nukes are pie in the sky. They dismiss dozens of proven energy resources, usually without ever bothering to look into them. Only gasoline. Only nukes.

But a hundred years ago, when cars started making the scene, people thought the idea of cars replacing buggies was kind of nutty. The infrastructure would be too hard to build, where would the money come from...

Is the failure of the technically illiterate and marginally anti-environmental right wing to be willing to face change as laughable

as the people that pointed and carped about 'them new fangled contraptions'?

Your thoughts...

Answer 1

Agree.  That's always how it is until people can do a parideim shift.  Sometimes people just can't see the forrest from the trees. Back several years ago, a new company Texas Instruments introduced a new LED watch at a world watch show.  The Swiss laughed at it -- not beloieving the world would ever want any time piece other than a wind up.  The rest is history.....

Answer 2

You have had an odd education in the history of technology.  People have been riding in mechanically-driven vehicles since the 1830's.  Most were trains, but there were a few steam-powered road vehicles.  Trains worked so much better than almost everything else that there wasn't any great need for motor vehicles.  The skepticism was not due to technological questions, but economic ones: who needed a car when trains ran everywhere?

The ocean-thermal scheme you mention had serious technological and environmental problems.  Iceland runs on geothermal energy because the place is volcanic: try that with, say, Florida.  

Someone has convinced you that there is a secret cabal that has suppressed those kewl comic book technologies you've been reading about on the Internet.  But there isn't.  Patents don't extend world-wide, and there's usually a way around them.  Nobody suppresses technologies.  That's right: nobody.  Not anymore.  If your favorite scheme isn't being used, go find out why.  Usually you'll discover that it proved impractical, either economically or because it didn't work so well, or because it really didn't exist to begin with.  

Answer 3

yes

Answer 4

You got that right. I have two cars that run on natural gas (methane), and people just don't believe it even though they see me driving around in them. I don't know why people are so hung up over a fuel. Or change. They come up with every possible excuse why they can't buy a car like mine, and they don't know how stupid they sound. One wonders how we ever got to the moon...guess the mentality has changed over the years...

Answer 5

I didn't know that, but I'll write that on my hand so I won't forget.

Alternative power sources and fuels are being researched continually.  The problem is, they all have more problems than petroleum and nuclear.  Lots of problems.

But lots of folks are working on the problems, and if they are solvable, we will move to the next more efficient fuels.

It is just that people are being realistic, and after 40 years of, for example, fusion research and nada coming out of it and no great breakthrough on the horizon, people are not expecting anything to come out of it in their lifetimes.