Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Lotsa sunshine but no stun grenades today.

Oil topped $60 a barrel the other day. On some of the various boards I frequent theres a panic about “What will you do when gas is $10 a gallon?!”. I'll tell you exactly what I'll do – nothing. Wanna know why? Because if gas gets to $10 a gallon youre gonna see a huge quantum leap in non-gasoline energy/motive production. If the worlds supply of oil mysteriously disappeared overnight you know what would happen? We'd spend ten years in utter chaos and the years after that we wouldnt miss it at all because in those ten years we'd develop engines that run on water and lubricants made out something else. So, long before gas hits $10 a gallon we won't even be using it anymore.

I remember in 6th grade my science teacher showing what was, I believe, called a Hoffman apparatus. Run some electricity through this thing and its seperated water into its two constituent components – oxygen, which we all know and love, and hydrogen which is going to be the fuel of the future. From water. Using electricity. For some reason, despite my terrible memoery and general disdain of school, Ive always remembered that.

Now, Im not one of these people that thinks solar power is the answer to the energy problem ( it is, however, certainly a contributing factor to it). After all, it gets dark at times and clouds do show up from time to time. But if you can get electrical power from the sun, crack water for hydrogen, and store the hydrogen (since you cant store sunlight) it seems youve gone a heck of a long way to removing the need for as much petrofuel as you need now.

Of course, I was 11 in sixth grade so Im probably greatly oversimplifying things. In the perfect world that I never seem to inhabit I'd have my happy little bunkerhome running on propane and mini-hydro with some solar and wind thrown in for good measure. Lotta DC in that place.