THE GREAT RACE
John Gotthold
October 14, 2004

INTRODUCTION

Looks like Lancelot has found the Holy Grail. Polyfuel, Mountain View, CA, a group of reconstructed Ballard researchers, after a mere fifteen years have announced a new PEM membrane which out performs Nafion in all parameters. Especially production cost.

They claim to have never gotten through a tech meeting before the visitors were on the phone yelling for the business guys to get there and make a deal. HOKU Scientific just signed up another angel investor group for $1,000,000 yesterday. Also a major purchase by an international auto company( probably HONDA). ITM, of England, is setting up to go public to raise money to put their membrane in production.

AND THE PRICE OF OIL HIT $54/barrel TODAY.

THE GREAT RACE

Throughout history people have held friendly races. The competitors raced for the sheer fun of it, for the sense of competition and for the perceived domination. From the foot races of the Ancient Olympics to the chariot races of Ancient Rome to the NASCAR tracks of today races have always drawn crowds of enthusiastic onlookers who have admired the skill of the participants, placed their bets as a means of participating in the race, and anticipated the thrills and crashes inherent in a sport where the only way to win is to reach farther out onto the racers’ razor edge than the other competitors.

ALL WILL PARTICIPATE

In history only a very few persons actually raced. Today we are all participants in the GREATEST RACE IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. This race has six and one half billion people as participants and is between the requirement for vast amounts of fossil fuel (oil and natural gas and coal) to power and feed the population and the depletion rate of the finite sources on which it depends. Projections of depletion show the global economy will have stalled by 2010, gone into steep decline by 2020 and reverted to a non powered state by 2050, if oil and natural gas and coal are humanity’s only source of energy. The population is heading back to the Olduvai Gorge from whence the first proto humans evolved four and one half million years ago.

THE SINGULAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NOW AND ALL OF PRE HISTORY IS SCIENCE. In 1900 the world was still horse drawn. Besides a relatively few, coal fired railroad locomotives and steam ships, muscle and wind still powered the world. The discoveries of Science and inventive technology, ie. the internal combustion engine ,1856, and the fuel cell, 1839, the powered airplane, 1903, were just beginning to be developed. Within a hundred years we've gone from horses to the moon, from basic mechanical machinery to nanotechnology, from the pony express and telegraph to the global internet, from whale oil to giant hydroelectric dams and continent wide electrical net works, from leeches to CAT scanners, from abacuses to teraflops super computers on the desk top. Science has done the job in improving a vast range of technologies.

The singular failure is in advancing the coal, oil and gas energy system. The internal combustion engine of today may be more reliable but it is essentially the same as the original Diesel compression engine, as the gasoline engine that powered the Wright Brothers first flight. A coal fired boiler is still a coal fired boiler, a natural gas burner is still a natural gas burner. Essentially the core power system that powers ninety percent of the world is the same as when it was invented. The only advance is that six billion people have learned how to use it.

NOT THAT GOVERNMENTS AND SCIENCE HAVE NOT TRIED. Nuclear Fission seemed a step forward until its inherent dangers and waste disposal problems became too large to ignore in the name of national security. Nuclear Fusion has been pursued for fifty years to the tune of $20 billion per year and is still guestimated to be thirty years away. Cold Fusion caused a stir but has not yet proved feasible.

THAT LEAVES US WITH ONLY THE PROVEN COMPONENTS OF NATURAL ENERGY! if we want to maintain a powered future.

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS work and with only a slight additional cost reduction can be utilized around the world.

WIND TURBINE ELECTRICITY- Already cost reduced to be operationally cheaper than any method of electrical production except large scale hydro. (disregarding the costs of the dam and the inundated land).

AND SEVERAL OTHER METHODS- OTEC, (Ocean thermal Energy Conversion), Micro hydro, Wave Energy Conversion. Bio-mass, Now, at the beginning of 2005 Global energy is still 90 % based on fossil fuels, large hydro and fission nuclear fission, accounting for 9% of the remainder and all the Solar Voltaics and wind turbines and biomass make up less than one percent of current global energy.

Study after study shows that the alternatives cannot make up for the loss of oil. However there is an underlying assumption. The human race has a bad habit of enjoying an adrenalin pumping crisis more than steady advance planning.

This is the true GREAT RACE. Will human inertia persist until oil depletes to the point of economic collapse, or will we, collectively, begin to move to the natural alternatives and efficiency conservation in a massive way, in time to make a smooth transition. The only requirement is to recognize that the energy life will never be as fat again as it has been while we squandered 400,000,000 years of Earthly patrimony.

Chapter Events