"DSK" wrote in message
...
Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:
I'm all for exploring and opening up new fields with new technology -
available now for such as deep water and such. I'm also not against
drilling off Martha's Vineyard either, but it would ruin the view so
let's not do that huh?


Hey, let the price of gasoline get up around ten bucks a gallon, and
electric bills into solid five figures, and people will be less concerned
about the view.

Funny thing, that will drive up the desirability... and thus the price...
of places that still have some unspoiled nature.

It's like a merry-go-round.




I'm all for alternative energy, but the battles you have to fight to
get anything done are ridiculous. In my own personal experience, I
had to give up on putting a wind generator in my own backyard because
the neighbors raised a ruckus - mostly because of my wife's position
in town, I never really pursued it beyond attempting to get a permit.


Well, maybe you should invest a little time & effort in getting along with
your neighbors. Around here you seem to invest none at all in either
learning about nor understanding anybody else's point of view; do you act
significantly different at home?


Consider the wave generation plant an Aussie firm wanted to put at
Point Judith. That one never even got beyond the planning stages
because every enviro nut in the universe had a complaint from sucking
fish into the turbine blades to the main town committee saying it was
ugly.

What the hell are you supposed to do when everybody has a better idea
or some complaint?


Give up, I guess.

Another point to consider is that a large number of the objections may
seem to come from the left wing whackos, but is in fact funded & directed
by the people who have big bucks at stake... the entrenched energy
companies.

For example, want to take any guesses as to who profited from Vice
President Cheney's secret energy policy 2001 ~ 2005? Want to guess who
gets the lion's share of gov't hand-outs? We already can make a good guess
how progressive & forward-looking those policies have been, since the most
obvious facet of that policy is to fight big expensive wars for cheap oil.

The nation's leaders have been looking backwards, and mostly investing in
convincing as many people as they can that "alternative energy" is for
weirdos. Until the last couple of months, that is. Suddenly they have
stolen Al Gore's energy playbook (although they still scream that
Democrats have no ideas).



At this point, I don't think anybody truly knows what is or isn't true
about oil.

And so, of course you have every excuse to proclaim that we have pleny of
oil forever & ever.


I don't think anybody has actually said that.


Perhaps not in so many words.



Funny thing though, if any serious scientist had the evidence to revise
King Hubbert's figures, he'd be a big deal in the oil world. Nobody has.
What do you think that means?


Dunno- but I can say that almost everybody had a dog in this hunt from
the enviros to the drillers to the people who consume and everybody is
****ing on everybody else's shoes. We aren't going to get anywhere
until somebody stands up and say enough rather than pander to get
elected again - and again - and again...


Agreed. My beef with you personally is that you have come down solidly on
the side of the worst panderers, again and again... and directed a lot of
personal insults my way for attempting to put forth some facts. But let's
not dwell on the past.


If I could find an alternative to fuel my diesel with, I would - in a
heartbeat. I know farmer's here in town who would do it in a
heartbeat if they could obtain the bio or soy based diesel.


There are guys out there making bio-diesel. Just gotta find one in your
area...

One of the things I've noticed about bio-diesel generators currently in
place is that they seem to rely heavily on using cooking oil from fast
food places... not that I'm against that, but if the raw material is free
and the fuel generated still costs more than petro-diesel, what will be
the market price of the stuff?



Consider this - we're supposedly switching over to ethanol blend
rather than MTBE because of some dubious science about MTBE (think
saccharin testing) - it's supposed to be a boon to our farmers and our
agriculture system - burn corn right?

Where does the ethanol come from? Brazil.


Or any place that grows a grain that can be turned into ethanol. Kansas?
Iowa? My side yard?

Brazil is a great example of mass use of alternative fueled vehicles
though. Bonus points to you for knowing about it.




Until somebody does, we're going to continued to get high fuel prices
and do nothing about reducing out dependence on crude oil

Well, part of the problem is there is no replacement on the horizon that
is cost competitive with petro-fuels... and probably won't be until that
price goes up a lot more (I'm guessing double). OTOH as technology
advances, we can make it cheaper so the price of the alternatives go down.
Ditto for economies of scale, once large capacity plants are up & running
the costs will drop even more.

2 more issues to think about-
Only fuel on the horizon that offers anywhere near the same bang for the
buck... or per pound... is hydrogen. All other alternatives fuels are
bulky & weak; and most of them have handling issues as well (although
those can be solved with a combination of technology & familiarity).
Hydrogen has been known for centuries, since long before gasoline as a
matter of fact. Hydrogen is difficult to handle and can be dangerous, and
if it were all that promising a fuel, we probably would have been using it
before we started up with gasoline.

So we can expect fuels of the future to be more troublesome & aggravating
& time consuming than we are accustomed to with gasoline.

Next, where are we going to get plastic from, once the cost of oil goes
sky high? IMHO future generations are going to think we were incredibly
stupid to burn up all that raw petroleum which could have been turned into
space-age material goods, instead of gunking up the air so we can drive
SUVs to the mall. They will probably be mining our landfills for sources
of PVC & other plastics.

As you can see, I have a lot to say on this subject, I don't think we (the
U.S.A.) are taking it anywhere near seriously enough.

Regards
Doug King


As to Oil companies blocking alternative energy. Chevron has one of the
bigger alternative energy suppliers under it's flag. As long as they sell
energy, they make money. Be it oil, or solar, they bank money. As to
alcohol over MTBE, is an improvement, but is also a Federal requirement to
use an oxygenate. Chevron and the others outside of Arco all said they
could meet the standards without mandatory addition of an oxygenate. Arco,
was the seller of MTBE. A government mandated disaster. Super toxic, and
super corrosive and pollutes our waters. Eats up the Fiberglass tanks at
stations and eats the seals on pipelines. Major reason so many more
refinery fires these days. Old days a $5 nitril seal on a pipe connection
lasted over a year. Now a $100 seal lasts about 6 months.