Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> It is likely that a prime early use of LENR will to extend the productive > life of oilfields by a large factor. The USA has a sunk-cost infrastructure > of 150,000,000 working vehicles . . . > That does not mean much. The average U.S. automobile lasts 8 to 11 years, depending on which estimate you believe. After 15 years practically none of today's fleet of automobiles will still be in use. My car is 20 years old and I am having more and more trouble finding parts and having it inspected. Once the production of cold fusion automobiles begins, I predict that most gasoline cars will be off the road in 15 years. Gasoline sales will fall by more than half, and most gas stations will go out of business. That will force the remaining gasoline car owners to trade in quickly. See: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthefuturem.pdf > , and the supply system for fuel delivery, so the economics of using LENR > to leverage multi-trillion dollar legacy is a no-brainer. > The legacy will be worth nothing. The infrastructure of refineries, pipelines and tanker ships will be a pile of rusting scrap steel, like the ocean liner docks in New York City in 1960, or an abandoned railroad line, or the fleets of B-29 bombers and landing craft in 1946. > Green activists do not want to believe this, but it is obvious to realists > and most economists – nothing is more compelling economically than > extending the lifetime of a sunk cost. > You cannot extend anything without customers! People will have no use for gasoline, and the other products made from oil will be cheaper made from garbage. Selling oil 20 years after the introduction of cold fusion would be like trying to sell IBM 360 mainframe computers today. There must have been a trillion dollars worth of mainframe computers in operation in 1985. They are all gone. That is why IBM almost went out of business in the late 1980s. - Jed
