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

[frippy.livejournal.com]

A few days ago, I watched The White Diamond, a rather disappointing Werner Herzog documentary about a guy who builds a small airship to hover over the rainforest canopy. What was NOT disappointing was the intro, during which Werner Herzog fills us in on the history of zepellins and how awesome they used to be*, until we realized how explodey they used to be, too.

(I dunno about anyone else, but a German nihilist talking about blimps gets me kinda hot and bothered.)

*There were fancy dining rooms with pianos on blimps!

[sabotabby]

I am turned on just reading your comment about it.