Fezziwig
SF bay
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Camping Hoosiers wrote:Since you invited me, I will opine!
I believe that all representatives and congressmen that have served over the past twenty years should be convicted of treason
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I understand your sentiment and I feel the same way. But we must go back at least to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo because that was a clear warning AND we had the technology to solve the problems.
So that would include the Nixon/Ford administrations, Carter, Reagan, et al.
To their credit, the Ford admin tried the 55 mph speed limit, which actually worked.
To their credit, the Carter admin tried alternative energy plans but were frustrated at every turn by Big Oil and Big Coal interests that frustrated their efforts. Also, We The People chose NOT to support alternative energy! And we The People chose NOT to support conservation. In spite of the fact that US conservation had threatened OPEC so much in 1973-4 that they had to relent on their embargo.
To their discredit, the Reagan administration terminated conservation and alternate energy programs. Reagan took the solar system off the Whitehouse roof that Carter had installed. We all got the message: CONSUME OIL!
We should have used the breather to institute conservation and alternate energy plans, but instead we went off on a drunken oil bender for several decades and increased our foreign dependence from 28% to 70%! How stupid we were! Are we any smarter today?
I don't think so, or we would never have indulged the SUV mania. We would never have let alternate energy lapse. We would never have let Dick Cheney get away with a statement that "conservation does nothing except make you feel better". We The People should have arisen with one voice and denounced him as a liar, since conservation is what always saves us in the end. In fact, at the very moment he was saying that, consumers in California were voluntarily cutting electric consumption 20% against the illegal market manipulations of Enron.
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With that being said, we must do a few things to start the ball rolling in the right direction.
1) Repeal all laws restricting drilling in ANWR and off of our coasts.
That's a drop in the bucket. Far less contribution than from any other alternative, including conservation.
[A HREF="http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html"]Government Energy Information Administration report[/A]
The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030....any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.
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2) Build some refineries. Oil is useless without a way to turn it into fuel.
Red Herring. Refinery capacity increased 7% last year while demand (do to conservation by US consumers) dropped.
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3) Embrace nuclear energy. We made a few bad films about Nuclear that devastated the industry.
Nuclear is already outmoded, and by avoiding building them for the last 30-40 years we've avoided the messy radioactive waste problem. Nowadays a solar plant of the same size real estate generates almost as much power with todays technology. No need to bring this frankensteins monster back to life.
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4) Dump the subsidy and mandate for "food to fuel" programs. Admit it was a bad idea.
Agreed. If we can beat the all-powerful farm lobby.
You forgot some very powerful things we can do:
5) expand solar power. A solar plant 92 miles on a side situated in Nevada can supply ALL the domestic electric needs of the USA. Every blacktop parking lot should produce electricty. 15% of the home roof surface area in the USA can supply all current electricty needs. With todays tech. Why aren't we doing it? Well, in some communities we are. Many municipalities now routinely install solar generating roofs on new buildings.
6) expand geothermal energy
7) expand wind power
9) raise the economy of motorcars and trucks, set higher CAFE standards.
10) shift cars towards Pluggable Hybrid, which can run off gas or electric.
With increased electrical demand we need to solve problems of Distribution and Storage. Move the juice from sunny places to cloudy places and put it in batteries.
Ultimately, distribution will probably be hi-voltage hi-frequency underground tubes running between major centers. Short term batteries will improve with todays tech, but ultimately a lot of juice will be used to directly make hydrogen for fuel cells.
Some day soon ordinary homeowners will have roofs shingled with solar shingles that go through Inverters (much like units in RVs) and send excess power off to the Grid thru a reverse meter for credits. The same homeowner may have a Hydrogen generator that makes hydrogen from water and the excess DC he gets from his roof array for use in the fuel cell in his car.
All of our energy comes from the sun. the coal we burn is made from the weeds and plants that grew in the suns rays millions of years ago. The oil we burn comes from the dinosaurs that prospered under the sun millions of years ago. Even the radium and plutonium comes from the chemical factory, the element creator, that is our sun.
Soon, we can cut out the middleman and use the suns FREE energy without paying ransom and tribute to OPEC, Saudi Arabia, oil companies, and all those other disgusting people.
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Fezziwig
SF bay
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topflite51 wrote:... We need to DRILL, DRILL and DO ANYTHING ELSE TO INCREASE OUR DOMESTIC SUPPLY. Not increasing our domestic supply is saying We Will Bend Over To Our Suppliers and take it anyway they want us to. That may be in the Senator's and some others best interest, but it certainly is not in mine or most American's. ![[emoticon]](http://www.coastresorts.com/sharedcontent/cfb/images/doh.gif "doh")
Drilling is quite hopeless.
Even if we drilled OCS and ANWR it would be a drop in the bucket. For one thing, oil is fungible, so we would only get about 30% of the oil we drill. So 70% would benefit foreigners (can you say C-h-i-n-e-s-e?).
Second, we don't drill anything. What we do is lease oil tracts to oil companies, and right now there is a very bad financial phenomena going on, namely, we lease TOO CHEAP! Due to an "oversight" (I smell corruption) going on since about 1998, an important royalty clause is missing from the USA oil leases that it has issued. And any new leases will be under those unfavorable terms (unless we can get OUR OWN government to change the terms). Existing leases are expected to LOSE us $60billion through their lifetime. Why throw good money after bad?
55% of those oil companies are foreign owned, so we'll be subsidizing foreign companies to drill OUR oil and send it to China!
Is that what you want?
For a few table scraps of oil?
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Fezziwig
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Oh, and to add insult to injury, even if we let oil leases to those (mostly foreign owned) oil companies, they won't even start drilling for several years. They have enough drill sites available now. But they DO want to lock in those cheap leases NOW, while they can, before the US public forces congress and the administration to return our lease terms to what they had always been before 1978.
The oil companies want to lock in low prices at the expense of US citizens.
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TrueLarry
Clifton Park, NY
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Fezziwig raised some valid points and a some ideas worth looking into. One point worth noting, however, is that the 8100 square mile solar site in Nevada has the same problem as other forms of energy - getting it where it's needed. Also, we have no idea what the impact on the environment would be from the heat radiated back into the environment by such a site. Back to the best simple solution - there is none. There are many and we should be doing them all.
As for the issue of oil future speculation, that is a nut that will crack when the demand for the product drops. Obama's answer of inflating our tires isn't the answer but I'm not sure drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is any better. Neither of these ideas is a permanent solution. As for raising the CAFE, the price of gasoline will do that by making people buy a larger percentage of fuel efficient cars - witness the Toyota Prius - a year ago they could hardly give them away.
As for us RVers the amount of fuel we use is a drip in the pan compared to the millions of gallons consumed by commuters - work at home, work four day weeks, carpool, take the bus, ride a bike, all of the above.
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Fezziwig
SF bay
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Inflating tires to proper pressure typically can save about 10% of mileage. Even John McCain agrees (now). Most people have underinflated tires because they are losing molecules of atmosphere through the tire walls all the time.
So stop losing those molecules! Durn it!
But How?
Easy. Use bigger molecules that don't go thru the tire so easily. A molecule that's 5-10 times bigger will take 5-10 times longer (probably) to escape.
NITROGEN!
They use it on all commercial aircraft and most race cars (ask NASCAR).
CostCo will fillup with Nitrogen for about $20.
The bonus is that tires will heat up less and last longer.
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AO_hitech
SF Bay Area
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Fezziwig wrote:Easy. Use bigger molecules that don't go thru the tire so easily. A molecule that's 5-10 times bigger will take 5-10 times longer (probably) to escape.
NITROGEN!
CostCo will fillup with Nitrogen for about $20.
Um, the air I use to fill up my tires is mostly nitrogen, and it doesn't cost much (a few pennies at most). I get it from the air compressor in my garage. Unless you plan on running at high speeds you'll never notice the difference. You'll never save $20 worth of fuel. ![[emoticon]](http://www.coastresorts.com/sharedcontent/cfb/images/awink.gif "awink")
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AO_hitech
SF Bay Area
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topflite51 wrote:Whether you believe it or not, supply is part of the existing problem.
The supply and the demand have'nt changed even remotly as much as the price has. And, the demand has gone down, supply has gone up, and the price has gone up. The demand and supply changes were very small and the price change was HUGE.
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Fezziwig
SF bay
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I wouldn't propose building ONE solar facility on 8100 sq. miles of prime Nevada real estate and then distributing power, but it does illustrate the relative ease of providing power.
Everywhere you look you see house roofs, parking lots, cartops, etc. all just absorbing sun power, which mostly is a nuisance to them. We have to put those shirking solar collectors to work.
Someday it will be a cottage industry to collect solar power on your house roof and sell it to the grid. Moment by moment. During the day you will probably sell more juice than you buy. At night or on cloudy days you can draw power from the grid or employ your electric storage device, which might be a fuel cell which created hydrogen from water during hot sunny hours. Maybe you put some of that hydrogen into your auto hydrogen tank (probably captured in hydrides) for driving use.
All these things are really simple technology and can be done with todays tech.
It puts control over your energy supply in your hands. But that's the problem, as far as the Bigshots are concerned: there's no choke point at which a monopoly can starve you.
NB: I made a typo ina message above. It says:
"...US public forces congress and the administration to return our lease terms to what they had always been before 1978."
And it should be 1998.
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Fezziwig
SF bay
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AO_hitech wrote:
Um, the air I use to fill up my tires is mostly nitrogen, and it doesn't cost much (a few pennies at most). I get it from the air compressor in my garage. Unless you plan on running at high speeds you'll never notice the difference. You'll never save $20 worth of fuel.
The atmospheric air is about 70% Nitrogen (at STP), but the 30% is little stuff like Oxygen that leaks easily. So your tires will lose 30% pretty quickly.
Let's see:
If you drive 1000 miles at 10 mpg you'll use about 100 gallons. At $4 a gallon, that's $400.
So, to recoup $20 you only need to save 5%.
Doesn't seem that hard.
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MFinCA
Sacramento
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If I was appointed King of the USA and had all power to make decisions, here is what I would do upon donning the crown:
Immediately go north and visit Canada. Ask them to join us as the 51st - 55th states. No more border to our north. Unlimited trade with no tariffs. Everyone is now a citizen with unlimited travel and employment opportunities.
Then I'd travel south to Mexico. Same deal. Make them the 56th to 60th states. Tear down the border, scale back the ICE teams and Border Patrol forces. Everyone there is now a citizen of The United States of North America.
I'd start building nuclear power plants. There would only be a couple of designs allowed--so we could mass produce them. Fast track the construction. With all the oil fields the USNA now has, I'd make it mandatory that what is drilled here stays here.
With all the resources on this continent, we could go a long way to becoming self-sufficient. We have the agricultural, industrial, and technology know-how to do it for ourselves.
Take our troops out of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East--we don't need to be the world's police force anymore. Bring our troops home and scale back our spending on defense.
Cut back on foreign aid--except for humanitarian needs. Stop importing oil from the Middle East.
That would be my edict as King for the 100 days of my reign. ![[emoticon]](http://www.coastresorts.com/sharedcontent/cfb/images/wink.gif "wink")
MFinCA
2004 Homestead Settler 255RS
2004 Ford F-350, SRW, 6.0L Diesel
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