h a l f b a k e r yThe embarrassing drunkard uncle of invention.
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As the price of gas rises, the price of large luxury vehicles falls. Many of these vehicles, especially the new ones, can be preserved fairly inexpensively. I propose a company whose business plan is to purchase large numbers of 2006, 2007, and 2008 new, large, luxury vehicles. The company would place
them in long-term storage (thirty years should do it) and sell them later when algie-oil, TDP, liquid hydrogrogen, oil shale, or some other technology lowers the cost of fuel that they can burn.
Baked
http://bbrescareand...rd_06-11-2004_6.jpg
:-) [normzone, Jun 17 2008]
Another natural resource exhausted
http://cgi.ebay.com...ntage-/390265587553
[mouseposture, Feb 06 2011]
Has the Earth run out of any natural resources?
http://www.slate.com/id/2271817/
All the Cryolite has gone, apparently. However, "run out of" tends to mean "not economic to extract". [hippo, Feb 09 2011]
[link]
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Why wouldn't they just restart the Hummer assembly lines? Not only would the vehicles be new in the true sense, they'd also be made with more modern materials and technology. |
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Ahh, but 30 years from now, a CLASSIC Hummer with all stock equippment in good condition may be a very valuable thing indeed. New new ones may not be so spectacular, and to be honest, storing a few hummers is going to be easier than mothballing a whole factory. |
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Very funny idea - I actually LOLed! No croissant though. |
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Many have already been made. Certainly the factory can be mothballed, but what of the already existing hummers? |
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//Why wouldn't they just restart the Hummer assembly lines?// Perhaps they would. I would suggest, though, comparing a fresh-off-the lot 2008 Volkswagen Beetle with an equivalent-mint-condition 1968 Volkswagen Beetle. |
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So nothing to do with lobsters or minor 'eighties pop bands then? |
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I suspect that there would have to be preservation of a whole chain of processes to provide spare parts, and changes in vehicle legislation might make it difficult to use the same raw materials. Also, what if the materials are no longer available, e.g. indium? I'm not saying indium is used, just that some things are going to be gone. |
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//algie-oil// Wasn't he one of Biggles' side-kicks? |
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[|] Cars were designed to be driven. If you store a car away for any extended length of time, gaskets and rubber seals tend to dry out and rot. A stored car might be good for preseving body panels and other indestructable parts but for the most part leaving a car in storage is about the worst thing you can do to it. |
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Do you think we'll still have the douchebag problem in 30 years? |
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Long term storage isn't a problem, just drive it into a big plastic bag and fill the bag with dry nitrogen. Without oxygen or water the car will keep for 30 years without a problem. The Cubans do it with all their tanks, etc. |
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But good god, why a hummer?!!! |
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There's one of these in my hometown I see regularly, with seriously blacked out windows. It just about backed over my car last week, but fortunately I had nobody boxing me in and I was able to backup, madly honking and cussing while the humvee just kept on rolling. |
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I'm going to have to install a firetruck horn. |
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//firetruck horn// sp. flamethrower. |
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// Also, what if the materials are no longer available// |
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Just out of interest, can anyone name a material which we
have actually run out of? Dodo feathers and Wollemia wood
don't count. |
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Why wouldn't dodo feathers count ? Anyways, the supply of crude oil is slated to run out in 150 years or so. Ice in the Arctic Circle will run out long before then. |
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//Dodo feathers and Wollemia wood don't count.// Why
not? The feathers of now-extinct birds were a
commercially valuable material, once, and the supply
ran out, never to be renewed <link>. So what? Fashions in
ladies hats changed. |
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More seriously, high-grade hematite ores were an
industrially important
material we ran out of. North American
iron production was dependent on
that resource -- but it was replaced by
taconite ore. |
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On a local basis, places are always running out of a particular resource. The world is full of abandoned mines and quarries so the answer, Max, rather depends on who the 'we' is in your question! |
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//the supply of crude oil is slated to run out in 150 years
or so. Ice in the Arctic Circle will run out long before
then.// |
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Exactly my point. Every week, we are told that we are
"about to run out of" indium, tantalum, helium, berganitic
ironstone, squalium, copper, palladium, anthracite, oil,
horgenite, molenium and a million other things. |
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And yet we have not. Ever. |
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//high-grade hematite ores were an industrially important
material we ran out of// |
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No, we didn't. We just learned how to access less
convenient sources effectively. We have not run out of
iron, and indeed it is so cheap that a living can scarcely be
made from it. |
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We just don't seem to run out of things, ever. Somebody
please give me a counterexample. |
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//We just learned how to access less convenient sources
effectively.// Less convenient sources of hematite? No.
Less convenient sources of iron. You specified "material,"
and are now moving the goalposts to "element." Hematite
is not the same material as taconite just because both can
be used in the manufacture of iron. Aluminium can be
substituted for copper in the transmission of electricity,
but you wouldn't say they were the same material, would
you? |
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We have run out of things, but found suitable substitutes
(as in the case of hematite) or decided we didn't really
want them (in the case of those hat-feathers). That's two
counterexamples. Here are two more: Slaves. Guano. |
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It might be true that we've never run out of anything *that
we could neither substitute nor do without* And it might
be true that oil will follow that pattern as well. |
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//. You specified "material," and are now moving the
goalposts to "element."// |
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Well, fair point. However, I am not really specifying
"element" or "material", but really "stuff we need". We
don't need haematite, we need the iron it contains, and
we haven't run out of that. To put it another way - we
have never suffered the predicted catastrophes due to
running out of stuff. Not anything. |
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Nor have we run out of indium, gallium, IP addresses or
any of about 25 other things for which I managed to find
statements made one or two decades ago that we were
"about to run out of them". |
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Incidentally, regarding slaves, there are more people
currently in a state of slavery than at any time in history,
according to the BBC. But, in any case, you wouldn't say
that we have "run out of slaves" in the USA or UK - we have
simply decided not to use them. |
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Psst! Max! We ran out of IPv4 addresses last week! |
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And the world has ground to a halt as a result. |
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Soo.. not an advanced sexual method? |
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A lot depends on what you consider "advanced". |
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//never suffered the predicted catastrophes due to running
out of stuff// Now *that* is an assertion to which I can think
of no counterexample. |
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Although there's a theory that Mayan civilization collapsed
due to exhaustion of either hunting or agricultural resources.
If true, would that be a counterexample? (Well, it may not
have been "predicted," of course.) |
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Easter Island's society collapsed when they ran out of trees. [Max] I trust you don't extrapolate from "we've never really run out of stuff" to "we will never run out of stuff". |
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We've run out of Cryolite, apparently (see link). Rare earths (Praesodymium, etc.) are another problem, but we haven't really run out of them: China has just locked up the world's supply. Rare earths are an example of something which is extracted for a big industrial need and the scale of this operation makes it economic for small consumers of rare earths to use them. If the industrial-scale need went away, they would be uneconomic and thus we would have effectively "run out of them" for everyone else. |
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