What would you really do?

Question

if the world had no gas for cars, ovens, etc?

Answer 1

Actually, I answered a question very similar to this a couple days ago. Here is the answer that I gave:

You have a very good question. Alternate energy is something that I plan on dedicating my life to. One of the other answers says that we would have electric cars. However, in most areas of the world electricity is generated using gas, such as coal, nuclear, etc.

Right now we are developing hydrogen fuel cells which can supply us with energy that can be used for mechanical purposes, such as powering a car. Such hydrogen fuel cells could be recharged using solar, wind, or hydroelectric power. One of my patents is on a hydrogen fuel system such as this.

As far as generating electrcity itself, we would have to depend on solar, wind, and hydroelectric power plants.

As for me personally, I have also designed an electric circuit that will make solar panels (photovoltaics) much more powerful than what they currently are. This will make them very viable for solar-augmented hybrid cars, stand-alone power supply for cars, or to solar-charge an onboard hydrogen fuel system. You would simply add water to a tank in your car, and an electrolsys machine on board the car, powered by the high powered solar panels that I have designed, would separate the hydrogen from oxygen, the hydrogen would then be used as fuel, and the oxygen would likely be discharged into the environment unless other engineers decided that it would be better used for combustion. The solar panels themselves would be integrated into the skin of the car.

A couple of other types of solar plants also exist:

1. One way of extracting hydrogen from water is to simply flash heat the water up to about 1,000 degrees celcius. The water has to be kept pressurized to keep it from turning into steam. At about 1,000 degrees celcius water molecules split apart into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can very easily be extracted from the oxygen. The hydrogen can then be used for fuel or to generate electricity.

2. Another way type of solar plant works very similarly to the one above except that instead of flashing the water to a temperature to separate the hydrogen and oxygen, it simply heats water up until it turns into superheated steam. The superheated steam is then used to turn a set of steam turbines, which in turn is used to turn the rotor of an alternater, which provides electricity. Solar plants that use this concept are also becoming more and more common.

There are a few solar power plants in the country that work off these two premises. They use parabolic mirrors to heat a clear tube of water. The parabolic mirrors change position to chase after the sun. They can heat the water in the tube to several thousand degrees to cause the molecules to split or they are used to simply heat the water until it becomes superheated steam. When used to split molecules, the hydrogen extracted can then be used for fuel or to generate electricity. When used to generate superheated steam, the steam powers steam turbines to power an alternater for electricity. There are a few manufacturing facilities in the U.S. that have such systems on the roof of their manufacturing plants. They use this technology to generate the electricity to power their manufacturing facility. This allows them to save a very substantial amount of money from their manufacturing expenses.

You are asking a very good question because I very firmly believe that we will be out of gas by the end of this century, if not much sooner. People can deny this all they want but the fact is, fuel is a non-renewable resource and we only have a limited amount of it. Fuel is not only used to power cars, airplanes, trains, etc., but also to generate electricity. Every single kilowatt hour of electricity requires a very specific amount of fuel to make it. The good thing is, however, that fuel is transferrable between chemical, electricical, mechanical forms of energy. That is why engineers such as me can use hydrogen for mechanical or electrical energy and why we can generate hydrogen through mechanical or or electrical means. All of these different types of energies are directly transferrable.

As an example of this let's just think about the system that we have in place right now. A power plant burns fuel to generate electricity. It has to burn a very specific amount of fuel to create every single kilowatt hour. Luckily, however, some of these power plants are hydroelectric powered, nuclear powered (which in my opinion, is an excellent option, regardless of what others who know less about it than I do may think), wind powered, etc. So you take this chemical energy (fuel) and you transfer it into electrical energy. People then use this electrical energy to transfer it into mechanical or light energy, such as turning on an overhead fan in your house, your house's air conditioning, lights, etc.

Conversely, energy can also go the opposite direction. I can put up a windmill on the roof of my house. It will supply my house with power and using a grid-tied inverter, it will actually add electrical energy into the grid for other people to use, which will decrease the demand placed on the electric company's power plant, which directly reduces the amount of fuel (chemical energy) that they have to burn to generate electricity.

Your question taps into something that I have focused many years of my life into, have two patented inventions in, and am working on a third. There are a lot of people out there that don't think that we should do anything until we have to. Those are the same types of people that don't worry about cancer, HIV, or other ailments until they actually get it themselves, and then suddenly they become advocates. Humans naturally don't change their ways until they have to, and then they take things to an opposite extreme. The fact is, this is something that we need to start worrying about right now, because in the not-too-distant future when we have no fuel, it will already be too late.

Answer 2

Live off of my land, burn wood grow a bigger garden and eat meat, stay home more, ah what a life. But I've been duped into working traveling and using cheap energy. All for what? Like the Pink Floyd song "what shall we do now".

Pink Floyd
» What Shall We Do Now

What shall we use to fill the empty spaces
Where waves of hunger roar?
Shall we set out across the sea of faces
In search of more and more applause?
Shall we buy a new guitar?
Shall we drive a more powerful car?
Shall we work straight through the night?
Shall we get into fights?
Leave the lights on?
Drop bombs?
Do tours of the east?
contract diseases?
Bury bones?
Break up homes?
Send flowers by phone?
Take to drink?
Go to shrinks?
Give up meat?
Rarely sleep?
Keep people as pets?
Train dogs?
Race rats?
Fill the attic with cash?
Bury treasure?
Store up leisure?
But never relax at all
With our backs to the wall.

Answer 3

The same thing we did 150 years ago, adapt. Use horses, wood stoves, become more dependent upon ourselves and less so on outside sources.

Answer 4

i'd enjoy my propane funny car as i race down the track.