Oh, how we love the Frydays :) Depending on who you talk to, we humans have been on this earth for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. Air conditioning has been around for less than 100. I have lived for months at a time in various deserts and tropical jungles around the world. Neither I nor the indigenous peoples had any air conditioning. It is not a NEED, anywhere. People live in some truly awful climates without our luxurious modern climate control systems. They are acclimated to their locales. We would do the same if we could just forego the luxuries for long enough (which is not very long) to allow our bodies to respond to the natural climate where we live. Heat? Well, that's a different story. Batteries need heat. If cars were equipped with plutonium generators, like in the many satellites that orbit our planet, that would pretty much solve the problem. Ridiculous? I think no more ridiculous than the suggestion that hydrogen or electric cars will dethrone an incumbent technology that has shaped infrastructure development for 100 years. Petroleum will be the dominant energy source for global transportation until it is simply no longer physically or economically feasible. Hopefully, we will have figured out a suitable replacement that fits within the existing liquid fuel distribution infrastructure before that happens. I'm betting that I won't live to see it. What non-petroleum, safe-to-handle fuel has high enough energy density to power a commercial tractor-trailer, let alone a jumbo jet? P.S. Why don't we have nuclear-powered railroad locomotives? -- Michael Snow 1982 Westfalia 1.9TD http://slowmachine82.blogspot.com/ |
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