I caught some of the National yesterday, but its based on using oil for everything

With enough "clean" energy and renewable resource technology to substitute mineral oil based products with artificially generated "oil" products, I personally think its feasable to carry on regardless, but in a slightly different way.

Major plastics companies for example are already dabbling with vegetable based plastics. Biofuels are practical, but its currently a question of energy usage and priority management. Given the way agricultural caps and the like work, it must be currently feasable to grow sufficient crops (taking CO2 from the atmosphere in the process) to feed everyone, and meet oil demand, especially if homes and businesses convert to electric heating (from Nuclear or renewable sources) and local transportation can be done with plug in battery driven vehicle or smaller more economical biofuel burners. Same lifestyle...different mechanism, see?

No, but there might be plenty of ex-Boeing workers looking for a new job.

Included among them, hopefully, will be the guy who was a client of ours a couple of years back. What a c***.

Ah, and there's the rub. What with the US seemingly about to join a diplomatic love-in with North Korea as they hand over information on their nuclear programme, the balance of opinion - in the current US administration at least - seems to be that nuclear power is too much of a liability to "let" emerging economies have access to it.

If I were even more cynical that I already am, I might think that the oil lobby doesn't want a nuclear-powered world because it'll pull the rug out from under their captive market. Cheap (relatively) and widespread nuclear power would hasten the development of mass-market hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (or even real-world-viable plug-in vehicles), as off-peak electricity could be used to hydrolise water; domestic and industrial heating/power requirements would not need oil- and gas-fired power stations to the same extent they do now, etc etc etc.

The competing demands and aspirations of the global oil and nuclear industries, and the shifting views of Western politicians as they try to balance these with everything else going on, must have been the subject of a good book or two... anybody read any they'd recommend?

China and India, the two biggest concerns, already have nuclear capability dont they?

If you were more cynical...yeah right, as if

Point taken about the oil lobby. That's not cynicism, its reality.


Books? Do people still read them? Isnt that what turned into the internet of sumfink?

Me? Credulous as the day is long, I promise (as long as the day in question is in an arctic winter...)

Couldn't disagree more . Books don't run out of batteries or break when you drop them or spill tea over them.

I'm reading the new James Bond at the mo - Sebastian Faulks does a very good pastiche of Ian Fleming's style. I'm only 100 pages or so into it, but it's a rollicking good yarn so far....

It might also be a consideration that the leading vendor of nuclear power plants is not the US but that nation of cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Good point - EdF have done a good job marketing their stuff, but by all accounts not quite such a good job of avoiding problems in building and commissioning power plants. Construction of the Flamanville 3 reactor on teh Normandy coast was halted in May after cracks in the concrete and "anomalies" in the steel reinforcement were found in the base of the reactor. Mind you, EdF have effectively blamed Bougues, their construction partner, but the intricate web of responsibility-delegation, off-balance-sheet finance, buck-passing and ass-covering will sound very familiar to anyone in the UK (or Canada, come to that) conversant with PPP or PFI projects.

Thats the one hes driving a Bentley in right?

Im still reading "kids" books...I recently thoroughly enjoyed Northern Lights / Golden Compass as it is here...off to the library for more. I just need to squeeze past all the people lined up there for their internet access

Yup, he has a customised Continental. The book's set in the mid-60s, so it's probably one of these http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C31678?pt=pf although possibly with different coachwork.

I liked Pullman's stuff - much better written than Harry Potter, with which it always seems to be compared. The other two in the series are great reads too...

Hey, since this thread started on oil and drifted into politics, this topic brings us neatly onto religion: why is it that the Church (primarly evangelicals with JK Rowling, primarily Catholics with Philip Pullman) get so upset about wizardry or anti-religious allegory, yet are so quick to leap to the defence of heavy-handed pro-religious claptrap like Narnia or the schmaltz that was the Bridge to Terabithia?

(I think I may have given away my own views on the matter by my editorial tone..... )

Ah, well. 5 pages and 70 posts (all of them by the way, well considered and interesting) on topic ain't half bad. Thanks everyone ... you see it can be done here after all.

Since the inevitable (and welcome) drift is well underway, I have a trivia question from another forum which connects vaguely to Oak's last post.

"What Author accidentally spawned a Church from one of his most famous novels I am not talking about the one were the Author set up the church after writing a novel. Because believe it or not its happened a few times anyway question is Author, Book, and Church bonus point for the two characters in the story that set up the church.

As a hint another one of his books became a film and this book is currently in production for a film. Are you a good Citizen?"

Typos inside the quotes are not mine.

Simply because there is no monopoly on hypocrisy, its not just for politicians

The Church of All Worlds, inspired by Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"?

So are we saying Maggie did a good thing, closing down the mines. She was caring for the future Welsh people

<runs and hides>

Just looked up these two books (being very ignorant to modern classics ) and have to say that Stranger in a Strange land looks a good read.

I think it was Novo that guided me towards The Black Swan - which I have to say is completely difficult to read but well worth it from the bits I could fathom out!!!!!!!!