Peak Oil and Flat Heads

It is the “modern thing” to paint your opposing candidate in any campaign as stupid. This is a fallacy. Since I oppose both major party candidates equally I will tell you right now I assume they are at least as smart as me if not smarter. They are also much better informed since they don’t depend on Yahoo and Facebook for their news items.

For instance, I know we have passed the moment of Peak Oil. What that means in layman’s terms, the only terms I understand, is that never again will the earth be able to produce enough crude oil to meet the demand for it. In point of fact production, short falls will continue to grow until the petroleum based economy falls down like the Little Pig’s Stick House that it really is.

You must be about to ask yourself, “OK, where’s the funny stuff?” Good question. The funny stuff is that if I know this you can be certain Romney and Obama know about Peak Oil, the downward spiral and the ultimate outcome unless something radical is done now. They know it and they are still out there talking about who said what about who, when and where like it matters. One is moving the deck chairs on the Titanic while the other is sweeping the Shuffle Board courts. Hey, you either gotta laugh or cry, right?

So what can we do about? Well we could just ignore it and hope the Social Security crisis, global Terrorism or a passing meteor gets us before we run out of oil and end up back trying to plow with mules. That seems to be the present strategy of both major parties.

I had an interesting thought this morning and did just a tad of research. Part of my research tells me that Mars is, depending on the orbit of the two planets, somewhere between 33 million and 250 million miles from earth. Another piece of information I gleaned is that the Mars Rover Curiosity weighs upwards of nine thousand pounds.

So, NASA blasted a nine thousand pound vehicle at least 33 million miles into space so it could run around Mars taking pictures and sending them back to earth. Good deal, great technology. While this thing is running around Mars what is fueling it? Now that is an interesting question.

So I looked it up: Plutonium 238 fuels the Mars Rover. Oh Plutonium, that’s bad can’t use that on earth can we?  Los Alamos laboratory produced Plutonium 238 for use in Pacemakers. The 250 pacemakers powered by Plutonium 238 lasted approximately twenty-five years without being replaced. The fuel on the Mars Rover is expected to last fourteen years.

So what we have is a nuclear fuel that can be produced and used safely INSIDE  humans that will power a nine-thousand pound vehicle for fourteen years. Where do I sign up? Not so fast. No one, and I mean no one, did I say absolutely NOBODY in politics is going to suggest an answer like this to the real energy crisis of Peak Oil. That should be obvious because they won’t even mention Peak Oil.

Why or possibly why not would be the question wouldn’t it? I think the answer is simple. The name of the game is oil. Something on which the economy pivots, something that is making a few people a whole lot of money and something that we have to shove in our tanks every three to five days or so. Big petroleum is not looking for an alternative where the fill up rate is once a decade or so.
 

Perhaps the technology on the Mars Rover is not the answer to petroleum dependence. I really do not have the technological expertise to say one way or the other. I do believe that the answer or answers is out there. What we need is someone willing to entertain answers that do not necessarily including making the same cats fatter.

What we need is someone who is first willing to face the truth, then willing to state the truth and finally willing to entertain the possibility of real change. Now you look at Romney and Obama and tell me if either one of these strikes you as that person?

Friend, that ain’t the way the smart money bets.