The answer to peak oil is...

[sabotabby]

...airships!

(I'd meant to blog this when frandroid first posted it, but of course I've been terribly busy.)

Anyway, I keep seeing posters around town for this fellow Monbiot and his new book about how we are all fucked. I like him, if only because his solution to the energy crisis is to replace airplanes with pure, unmitigated awesome.

Airships fly much lower than planes – typically at about 4000 feet – which means that their emissions of water vapour have very little effect on temperature. If they were powered by hydrogen fuel cells, they would be almost silent, greatly reducing the effects for people on the ground. Though they are slower than jets, the cabin can be built much wider, which means that travelling by airship would be rather like travelling by cruise ship, but at twice the speed and using a fraction of the fuel.

y/y?

He also lists a bunch of disadvantages, but they're all outweighed by how hardcore it would be to travel by dirigible.


I mean, really.

EDIT: I am jealous of this guy's jetpack.

Comments

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Please read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books whenever you are free.

Yes, it is totally relevant.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I tried reading one of those, but I kept wanting to throw it out the window. I found the writing very self-indulgent and overly amused by its cleverness. Yet many people I like, people of taste and good sense, seem to like them.

Perhaps I was just cranky that day. I shall have to give them a second read.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Woe! I am cut to the quick! *grin*

Nah, my reading tastes are eclectic, and if everyone liked what I did Sarah Waters would have a lot more money. *nodnod*

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

It's more that lots of people I like and respect like these books. Makes me think that I might have not been in the right mood. Or I am just the wrong reader for those books.

And yes, it would be a very boring world if we all liked the same things.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

OMG, shake hands. I have tried reading the first one about three times and keep completely bouncing off it. The writing is self-indulgent, not even one-third as clever as it thinks it is and the whole idea is ripped off from Woody Allen's old short story anyway. And I couldn't stand the heroine.

Then again, I am a curmudgeonly old bat....