Food, Energy, Transportation, Urban Design, Climate for an Eternity without Oil!

Getting out in Front for the Components of our Genes!

Jobs @ 100% Sustainability

We are living in the eye of the hurricane, blessed with all of historys technologies, and cursed with resources and an environment that we have pushed to their irreversible limits, while supporting unprecedented population levels the stuff of horror films! What we need now is vision, something to create a much more permanent global paradigm that can serve all the combinations and recombinations of our genes, forever! This is very strange language for those who have spent their entire lives clinging by their fingernails to jobs and the survival that they hope their everchanging jobs will bring! What do I mean? The complexities of energy supply in an eternal universe are beyond the scope of my intellect, but the longest-term energy source throughout the universe is the nuclear fusion that occurs in the stars, our sun being one of them. Can we somehow tap into the nuclear fusion that is occurring in the center of our solar system? We had better hope so, as we have been incredibly busy using up the solar energy, trapped as carbon for hundreds of millions of years, in the coal and petroleum that we have already burned in the last 200 years! Can we replace that astonishing rate of energy consumption with the far far more gradual dose of solar power? That is a very big question, and one that scientists have begun to turn their well-focused attention to! But, we also need the attention of both artists and alchemists, and everyone like you and me, to replace our cars and cell phones,

earthmovers and skyscrapers, hospitals and schools with an infrastructure that can survive on what shines onto us every day. Houston, we have a problem! But, humans are designed, no, have evolved to thrive, on similar problems this is no more serious than survival in the face of snarling lions on the savannahs of the far yesteryear. So, what can you and I do to thrive when all of our light switches no longer work, when the car has sat in the drive for over 3 years with a quarter of a very expensive tank of gas, waiting for its last use? We are not there yet, although all of the recent political and financial market turmoil can clearly be ascribed to those at the top, with vision beginning to freak out over the same, and the related global climate chaos certainties. If our visionaries: financial, scientific, political and spiritual are beginning to freak out, where does that leave you and me? Most of us have used a paint brush, and the famous admonition, never paint yourself into a corner has also been passed on to us. How much of a corner do you all think we have left? There are deniers, of course, who will remain in their corners! Life is wonderful, manifesting itself in all kinds of forms, colors and chemistries. It is surprising that some of them, at least, hopand that is what we have to do now, because we are surrounded by far too many walls! The only thing in science that relates to a hop is a new paradigm, or several, and that is what I am proposing now! The problems are as follows: 1. We will be out of petroleum within a generation, and coal within 200 years. 2. Burning any more of the above will seriously destroy coastal infrastructure and cities that arguably took at least the past 500 years to build, through sea level rises. 3. Petroleum supplies 95% of the inputs that go into global food production, in the form of fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. 4. The exploitation of petroleum in the last century gave rise to almost all of the technologies upon which our current world depends, from transportation, again sourced 94% in North America on petroleum-based fuels, to plastics, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. 5. Figures do not exist for this category, but I wager that 95% of global jobs also depend in some part at least, on petroleum. The paint used to paint oneself into a corner is also very largely derived from petroleum. It is when those with high salaries at the top begin to panic, and cause stock market crashes, that the rest of us must put the far-seeing goggles on too, and look at every detail of our immensely detailed lives to find ways to change them, hopefully by making one single hop toward what will be 100% sustainable! What does that mean? 100% sustainable is what I have iterated above, living every day without using a single drop of petroleum, a single lump of coal both fossil fuels, the remains of which can only be considered a bank account to be held in reserve for truly rainy days, or millennia! Let me briefly discuss time. If a generation is 20 years, then it is only 100 generations back to the Year 0, wow, thats few! Furthermore, if we divide those 100 generations by the 5 that we know in our own families, grandparents

to grandchildren, that multiple is only 20 times those 5 generations back to the Year 0! So, our history as a species is really very very short! I would like to discuss a time that is only the same multiple forward in time, in the Year 4000, which will be a very long time without any petroleum or coal of any kind! What must we do now to assure that the components of our genes, those parts that combine and recombine with each new generation and are therefore definably eternal, can still survive even after 2,980 years without petroleum? If the horses/tycoons at the top of our species are now all stampeding toward what they hope will offer them and their families refuge from the abovementioned calamities, taking with them most of the worlds resources, what does that leave for the vast majority of the worlds populations? Where will jobs come from as industries fold due to skyrocketing price increases in materials and energy? When will we finally see the supermarket shelves truly empty? Doom and gloom, Ive had enough of that! My heart stopped for 10 minutes as my forehead was being sutured under a general anesthetic following a car accident on the Langata Road, just outside of Nairobi, Kenya in 1980. When I regained consciousness, it took me awhile to realize that I could no longer walk, speak or remember, and that that was in any way unusual. How close is the human condition globally to a similar predicament, and what ways might we use to find our way forward in the eternity of time that awaits? As previously mentioned, the sun will shine for the foreseeable future, and there are scientists who believe that we have enough solar energy falling on the Earth daily to power all of our needs. Furthermore, I believe that the solar resources of the past are valuable bank accounts that unscrupulous people will inevitably attempt to gain control of to pay their way to a more comfortable existence that is the way of mankind! But, the daily dose of solar radiation is so well distributed, so predictable, so eternal that it is much more difficult for any small group of people to control and use to extort power and wealth from the rest of us! So, lets depend only on that daily dose! What if we were to build Linear Cities, north to south, at right angles to the prevailing westerly winds in the Northern Hemisphere with ducted wind turbines, illustrated above, along their roofline to generate power from the cheapest form of solar energy, the wind? What if we were to build them across the States, across the

continents, around the world, especially in areas of high wind speeds, drawn back from the beaches, which will be subject to the flooding shown above.

The map above shows both the NRELs color-coded estimate for wind potential, and the approximate positioning of Linear Cities between the major population centers to best take advantage of this solar resource. The blue lines indicate any number of north to south Linear City designs, as shown at A) and on the right below, and the red lines the east to west designs as shown at B) below.

How might we build such a massive undertaking, you laugh! Please remember that, unless we can design and construct an infrastructure before we reach the end of the Anthropocene Age of Oil, probably only a quarter of us may survive, or less as we no longer have the 1:5 ratio of horses to humans that we last had in 1915 as we transitioned from the horses used in agriculture and transportation to the ubiquitous petroleum-driven infrastructure that we now take for granted! The phased construction need be no more complicated than 1-2-3, and will provide massive numbers of jobs as we transition from fossil fuels to the 100% sustainable future that the eternal progression of our genes will require to survive, as below!

1. We can use our existing highway network to install wind turbines along the north to south expressways, shown in blue on the map above, and as 1 in the illustration above. 2. We can install both high speed, electrified rail near the base of those wind turbines, and tracks in the expressway, like slot-car tracks, but buried several inches under the surface to render them safe to pedestrians and vehicles crossing them. The technology now exists to pick up that current remotely in the vehicles through induction using coils mounted on the cars, giving the cars unlimited range on such roads! All of these tracks,

and the grid that connects them can be made using high-temperature superconducting technologies, so that electricity generated by wind turbines in South Dakota can be used without much loss to power anything in areas with lower wind speeds. 3. We can build Linear Cities along the same north to south expressways to bring populations back out of the cities, much closer to fields for food production, organically and manually, so that we no longer need petroleum to support such large populations. Please remember that before the age of the automobile in 1900, 60.4% of the American population was classified as rural, and were reasonably able to walk into fields to cultivate their own food. Now, only 4% of rural residents make their living farming, the last time most Americans lived on farms was in 1880 and the last time the majority lived in rural communities was in 1920. We will have an enormous challenge to feed, clothe, employ and transport Americans when there is no more oil! We must use the most energy efficient transportation, trains, the only feasible long-term energy sources, the renewables that run from the nuclear fusion in our sun, and the close proximity of all residents of new buildings to food production areas, which is only possible using linear-form cities!

4. This is frankly an enormous project, to replace all of this countrys energy, food and transportation infrastructures to those that require no petroleum at all. But, it is also one that is imperative to do and to do quickly. If we wait until there is no more petroleum, or until petroleum is only double the price that it is today, how many of our children do you think will survive? Just like the above illustrations show how we can progress in stages, the one immediately above illustrates the installation of the wind turbines first, followed by a tent-like structure in Kevlar, under which portable housing/trailers/mobile homes can be placed until we can build the high-speed rail, the induction tracks, and the Linear Cities.

5. Can you imagine how many jobs, staged over the next 100 years building such an infrastructure will create? Can you imagine what will happen to population levels without the food, energy and transportation that are currently supplied by petroleum? We simply must build an infrastructure that requires no petroleum to function as rapidly as possible, without which well be fighting neighbor to neighbor for every job, ear of corn, and kilowatt of electricity that will be meagerly available! 6. Contrast that with the scene below, as bucolic as they come, save for the whisper of the maglev train passing in the orange tunnel:

With the forthcoming certainty of the End of Oil, and a global food crisis looming, there are more and more who advocate much greater reliance on organic farming methods. Organic farming methods however are labor intensive, as mandated by the low-petroleum era, and resolved by the much greater proximity to the land that Linear Ecocities provide. This is one of the only ways to get the hands into the fields, as 80% of us now live in cities, far from food production areas! As Linear Ecocities run through cropland, all hands are either a 10-minute walk from where they may work for the day, or a short or long train ride from the field and seasonal crop that must be tended. The infrastructure paradigm detailed above can move toward supplying all of our food, energy and transportation needs, but cities do not yet span large bodies of water, nor filter into the deep countryside. Therefore, we also need new 100% sustainable technologies to accommodate these 2 situations, and many others, once there is no more oil! Because of its imminent disappearance, we will be forced to abandon its combustion and resultant global greenhouse effects, but we must not replace it with any other fossil fuels, including coal!

Those in the coal industry especially have long argued for its continuation, arguing that discontinuing it would result in catastrophic job losses. But, just think of how many jobs will inevitably be created in the construction of the infrastructure above, how many will be required to maintain such an infrastructure, while providing the world with freedom from fossil-fuel poverty and the catastrophe of global climate change! The world as it is will surely experience both global climate change and the end to petroleum extraction. When those who deny the certainty of these two phenomena pull their heads out of the holes into which they have inserted them, they may just see that the future does indeed provide for many many jobs!

100% Sustainable Sea & Land Transportation

Therefore, please view below projects to create gas turbine/flywheel/battery hybrid cars with 4-wheel drive and regenerative braking that will burn practically any fuel and protect their occupants much better in accidents, please see the variety of accident scenarios below. In head-on collisions, the more rigid, pointed central chassis is very unlikely to meet point to point with the opposing car. The front bumpers act as triggers to detach the front A-arm on that side, and the front fenders are also mounted to slide to the rear on the appropriate side, thereby reducing the deceleration felt by the occupants of both cars. Similarly, the rear and side undersides are sloped so that the impacted car is thrust upwards and its occupants pressed into their seats, with which they already have contact. This is both automatic and passive, does not depend upon fallible technologies to work, and can cut the g-forces felt by all occupants, thereby saving many lives!

The front A pillars on either side of the windshield are greatly reinforced to keep the roof from collapsing as the impacting car slides under the impacted car! That still leaves the oceans as poorly crossable once there is no more petroleum to fly aircraft or power ships. How can global passenger and cargo trips

continue without petroleum? That may be easier than we currently realize! All we have to do is to build kite-sail hydrofoil hovercraft ships to rapidly cross the oceans when we can no longer fly across them. We must design and build much more rapid sailing ships that get all or most of their energy from renewable sources, and quickly eliminate the highly polluting ships burning bunker crude of today that will not be able to sail due to lack of fuel, in any case, soon. With the imminent demise of our fossil-fueled economy, we must already develop a 100% sustainable transportation, energy and food producing infrastructure! The land-based paradigms are discussed above, but we must also consider what to do about transportation at sea, especially if we are unable to fly conventional aircraft after the end of petroleum, and to transform what is the dirtiest form of transportation in terms of high-nitrogen and high-sulfur fuel use, the dumping of black, grey, and bilge water that can contain invasive species, into much cleaner and attractive forms of transportation. Currently, Seagoing vessels are responsible for an estimated 14% of emissions of nitrogen from fossil fuels and 16% of the emissions of sulfur from petroleum uses into the atmosphere. In Europe ships make up a large percentage of the sulfur introduced to the air, as much sulfur as all the cars, trucks and factories in Europe put together. By 2010, up to 40% of air pollution over land could come from ships because the fuel used in oil tankers and container ships is high in sulfur and cheaper to buy compared to the fuel used for domestic land use. A ship lets out around 50 times more sulfur than a truck per metric tonne of cargo carried.6 1. The Hovercat uses an aluminum, or composite catamaran hull, with hovercraft capability between the hulls to lift them out of the water so that the kites can pull the ship forward fast enough to enable the hydrofoils to work. All the kite sails are computer controlled and are attached to domes that double as elevated air intakes for the hovercraft. The dark blue tinted glass bridge is movable from port to starboard to permit more accurate maneuvering in close quarters and small ports. As cargo and passenger vessels, they are roll on/roll off with fail-safe bow and stern closures, light weight, high maneuverability and speed, and fun!

2.

3.

The Hexcat again uses the hovercraft and hydrofoil technologies, with a novel kitesail launching & deployment arrangement that can put many kites into the sky, both to increase the traction of the available wind, and to reach winds that may be stronger, or in a more favorable direction further aloft. As with the Hovercat above, the hydrofoils are retractable so that both ships can launch from and return to beaches and concrete launching aprons. Both are envisaged for use as cargo ships, passenger ships, or both at the same time. Why not harness this technology to make transoceanic journeys even more efficient by linking many craft together? Please see the illustration below for a caterpillar configuration that may just become the monarch of the seas! I don't think that the weight of the sails/kites and rigs is an issue as kites now have helium filled bladders in their leading edges to get them out of the water and into the air. This concept has 2 launching masts in carbon fiber that pull the kites out of a launching chute at the bow (orange above, yellow below). The top illustration shows an existing hovercraft that is capable of carrying 3 Hummers and substantial containers with equipment. As existing kite sails are capable of pulling kite boarders completely out of the water, see the illustrations below, one of the

functions of the hydrofoils is to keep the craft in the water and not launched to a height where the landing could be damaging! I am sure that the day of the end of petroleum is coming soon and, even if it is not soon, we need to keep the maximum amount of petroleum unburned both to preserve the atmosphere and for use in the production of sails, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer and pesticides, so that we can continue to eat! Why not extend this concept to winddriven flight using recycled and lightened aircraft fuselages, after there is no more fuel to power them? This concept uses tethered wing keels that also have wheels to roll directly onto rails for continued trans-continental journeys once the trans-oceanic part of global voyages is finished eg. New York to Moscow non-stop!

PS. The following is a comparison between the number of pages

referenced by Google for the combination of Wall Street and food production, and Wall Street and Oil Production, and the Dow Jones Industrial Averages for the past decade. It seems that there is a reasonably close correlation between all 4! Lets get some grad students onto this to see whether we can make Wall Street more transparent, so that fewer people lose their shirts there!

What may be interesting in examining the above is that a high occurrence of sites that mention Wall Street, and oil production and/or food production in the same article came after the crash in 2002-03, whereas it continued and preceded the crash this time, to rise far higher still after the crash. So, perhaps Wall Street learned just how important oil production and/or food production are to world economies, and has done its best to safeguard its own money, and to transfer others money into their own accounts to safeguard that as well? If we can render energy supplies and food production more predictable, steady, and subject to democratic influence, perhaps the world will be able to support more people with less waste and volatility, more predictably! Therefore Linear Ecocities because, in the end, we must imagine how to manage without a single drop of oil! And, we will more easily reach the goal of 100% sustainability the sooner that we start, and the quicker we progress! I have constructed this model as a goal at the end of the first curve in an oval racecourse. I challenge anyone to provide a better, more sustainable model! At the same time, I am also happy to predict that all of us will not be living in Linear Ecocities like those that I illustrate in 1,000 years and 10,000 years. Just as car, medical and communications technologies have evolved rapidly, the Linear Ecocity will also be subject to rapid evolution, including paradigm change! At least, I hope so!