Ignore this post if you have a sailboat
 

I think most of us realize we are eventually going to have to find new
and better sources of energy. However thanks to our own stupidity and
the stupidity of the leaders we have elected to office we are still
years away from having new energy sources. The big problem in the next
few years is going to be IF there is enough oil available in the World
to meet current demands. If there are real shortages and the
competition becomes to fierce for the oil that is left higher prices
and the possibilty of armed conflicts increase. We need a gradual
weaning away from oil while the new sources are being brought online.

I am always looking for companies to invest in that offer new types of
energy or better ways of using what we already have. One of the
companies I have holdings in is a small startup ( and I do mean small)
company out of Houston, Texas, Sequoia Interests SQNC on the Pink
Sheets. They have a product called DiamondFlo which they are developing
that has several possible uses. One of the main benefits of it may be
its use in extracting oil from the Tar Sands typical to Alberta and
other parts of the world. Do a google for "tar sands Alberta" just to
get an idea of the potential supplies of oil in Canada. To read about
the DiamondFlo product and its latest test results go to this site:

http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/news...RE&symbol=SQNC

I wish our leaders would have been wise enough 30 years ago to
recognize that alternative clean and renewable power sources were going
to be needed but they weren't. I hope they are finally aware of the
fact that we need to be working on that problem right now. I hope we
can see them pass an energy bill that addresses some of these issues
before the summer session ends.
Dennis

"twoguns" wrote in
oups.com:

I wish our leaders would have been wise enough 30 years ago to
recognize that alternative clean and renewable power sources were going
to be needed but they weren't. I hope they are finally aware of the
fact that we need to be working on that problem right now. I hope we
can see them pass an energy bill that addresses some of these issues
before the summer session ends.
Dennis



They did but we all made "breeder reactor" mean something like "atom bomb",
so they stopped it. We should all be running on nuclear fusion by now, but
can't. There's enough power in a glass of seawater to power a 100' yacht
forever.

Besides, if you create any power source that threatens "big oil", it'll
either be bought and buried or, if that fails, regulations will be written
to make it unusable.

Alternative power is easy beyond the end of the power lines:
http://www.otherpower.com/
They only have problems on how to store the surplus.....


--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

Dave wrote in
:

The enviros have made sure that no new refineries could be built in
this country in the last 30 years.


I'm no longer sure that is true. Why would I want to build new refineries
if I could just keep doubling the price caused by the shortages I create by
not building new refineries? My piece of GDP doubles without further
expenditure of capital. It doesn't take a Harvard economist to see that's
not a bad idea....for big oil.

750 nm west of Azores, the megayacht "Mystic" slowed from 11 knots to 8 in
12-15' seas so she wouldn't run out of diesel fuel before reaching port.
She used 10,000 gallons from Bermuda to Azores. She's refueled and on her
way to Gibraltar, tonight. Fuel was $2.25/US gallon (with the discount I
presume). Visa/Mastercard/Discover/American Express...$22,500....OUCH!

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

Larry W4CSC wrote:

Dave wrote in
:

The enviros have made sure that no new refineries could be built in
this country in the last 30 years.


I'm no longer sure that is true. Why would I want to build new refineries
if I could just keep doubling the price caused by the shortages I create by
not building new refineries? My piece of GDP doubles without further
expenditure of capital. It doesn't take a Harvard economist to see that's
not a bad idea....for big oil.


Indeed!

It wasn't regulation that made for 3 out of 4 refineries in Montreal
to close in the last 20 years. Why would an oil company build a new
refinery when, in fact, they close them as fast as they can. It was
intersting last year to notice that while the price at the pump
climbed 11 cents a liter, profits at the refinery went up the same 11
cents a liter!

Jean
Montreal

"twoguns" wrote
...... The big problem in the next
few years is going to be IF there is enough oil available

Nope! There is just as much oil (and air and water and ....) now as there
was 100 years ago. There are too many people using it.

I wish our leaders would have been wise enough 30 years ago to
recognize that alternative clean and renewable power sources were going
to be needed but they weren't.

I wish PEOPLE had been wise enough to realize we needed to limit population.

Why expect leaders to invent new band aids when they cannot see the root
problem and take steps to mitigate it.

Vito wrote:
"twoguns" wrote

...... The big problem in the next
few years is going to be IF there is enough oil available


Nope! There is just as much oil (and air and water and ....) now as there
was 100 years ago. There are too many people using it.


I wish our leaders would have been wise enough 30 years ago to
recognize that alternative clean and renewable power sources were going
to be needed but they weren't.


I wish PEOPLE had been wise enough to realize we needed to limit population.

Why expect leaders to invent new band aids when they cannot see the root
problem and take steps to mitigate it.


The problem is political decisions made at the behest of business
interests who don't give a damn about anything other than profit,
and tax breaks. Why they need another billion is beyond me. Any
business big enough to seriously affect the economy must be
regulated by someone with the population's best interest at heart.

Party politics is to blame. Once elected, politicians should be
required to serve their constituents, not toe the party line. Elect
independants if you want to see individuals put before corporations.

There is only one taxpayer. Party line governments kowtow to
industry to redirect routing of tax money to the benefit of those
with the most influence. The rich get richer, the poorest get
screwed the worst.

The masses will eventually get ****ed off enough to kill a few
corrupt politicians, cops, and lawyers, and their benefactor /
benefitees, then we will have equity for a while, until some one
else comes along with subtle plans to skim the cream again.

Not providing enough product to satisfy the demand is a sure fire
profit booster. Why does not Petro Canada take over the refining
industry? The oil belongs to the people, not some goon with a
license to steal.

This method is not really subtle, but the machinations they go
through to ensure they are not permitted to increase refinery
capactity satisfactorily would be, if we could detect their efforts
and reason out how they arrange convenient protests to defend their
interests, pupeteering environmentalists to prevent competition.

It is the politicians who benefit from their ability to manipulate
the spin.

Audits will show the truth, but who will take action to fix it?

On the other hand, environmentalists would have a role, if they
weren't so dippy as to think baby seals are more important than
codfish entrees for people.

If unlimited nuclear, (presuming subduction or the rocks from which
the uranium is mined could continue to contain glassified
radioactive waste materials for another billion years or so,) is the
way to go, then the end result would be plain heat generation, not
runaway greenhouse effect. If that is a problem, the answer is, of
course, efficiency. Use less. Insulate better. Accelleate slower,
decellerate regeneratively. Return to railroads for mass transport.

Alternative generation and excess power storage is not a problem, it
is just not developed. Hydrogen gas made from solar powered
electroysis can be stored just as natural gas can be. If pure
hydrogen is too difficult, combine it with a little carbon to make
methane, which liquifies more easily, and can be used for vehicles,
if you refuse H2 dirigibles. On land, huge bladders or caverns
could contain moderate reserves of H2 easily and cheaply. Further,
wild H2 fires are less hazardous than most think, since a leak in a
bladder would simply allow H2 to rise as opposed to pool. H2 will
not explode unless mixed with oxygen.

We have the technology, what we lack is firm controlled development,
which is hampered exclusively by oil company profiteers.

Nationalize them! Or, threaten to do it as a bargaining chip. Jail
the profiteersing national plunderers.

Terry K

Terry Spragg wrote:
Vito wrote:

"twoguns" wrote

...... The big problem in the next
few years is going to be IF there is enough oil available



Nope! There is just as much oil (and air and water and ....) now as there
was 100 years ago. There are too many people using it.


I wish our leaders would have been wise enough 30 years ago to
recognize that alternative clean and renewable power sources were going
to be needed but they weren't.



I wish PEOPLE had been wise enough to realize we needed to limit
population.

Why expect leaders to invent new band aids when they cannot see the root
problem and take steps to mitigate it.


The problem is political decisions made at the behest of business
interests who don't give a damn about anything other than profit, and
tax breaks. Why they need another billion is beyond me. Any business
big enough to seriously affect the economy must be regulated by someone
with the population's best interest at heart.

Party politics is to blame. Once elected, politicians should be
required to serve their constituents, not toe the party line. Elect
independants if you want to see individuals put before corporations.

There is only one taxpayer. Party line governments kowtow to industry to
redirect routing of tax money to the benefit of those with the most
influence. The rich get richer, the poorest get screwed the worst.

The masses will eventually get ****ed off enough to kill a few corrupt
politicians, cops, and lawyers, and their benefactor / benefitees, then
we will have equity for a while, until some one else comes along with
subtle plans to skim the cream again.

Not providing enough product to satisfy the demand is a sure fire profit
booster. Why does not Petro Canada take over the refining industry? The
oil belongs to the people, not some goon with a license to steal.

This method is not really subtle, but the machinations they go through
to ensure they are not permitted to increase refinery capactity
satisfactorily would be, if we could detect their efforts and reason out
how they arrange convenient protests to defend their interests,
pupeteering environmentalists to prevent competition.

It is the politicians who benefit from their ability to manipulate the
spin.

Audits will show the truth, but who will take action to fix it?

On the other hand, environmentalists would have a role, if they weren't
so dippy as to think baby seals are more important than codfish entrees
for people.

If unlimited nuclear, (presuming subduction or the rocks from which the
uranium is mined could continue to contain glassified radioactive waste
materials for another billion years or so,) is the way to go, then the
end result would be plain heat generation, not runaway greenhouse
effect. If that is a problem, the answer is, of course, efficiency. Use
less. Insulate better. Accelleate slower, decellerate regeneratively.
Return to railroads for mass transport.

Alternative generation and excess power storage is not a problem, it is
just not developed. Hydrogen gas made from solar powered electroysis
can be stored just as natural gas can be. If pure hydrogen is too
difficult, combine it with a little carbon to make methane, which
liquifies more easily, and can be used for vehicles, if you refuse H2
dirigibles. On land, huge bladders or caverns could contain moderate
reserves of H2 easily and cheaply. Further, wild H2 fires are less
hazardous than most think, since a leak in a bladder would simply allow
H2 to rise as opposed to pool. H2 will not explode unless mixed with
oxygen.

We have the technology, what we lack is firm controlled development,
which is hampered exclusively by oil company profiteers.

Nationalize them! Or, threaten to do it as a bargaining chip. Jail the
profiteersing national plunderers.

Terry K


I agree. Hang the top 20 executives and the rest will get the message.
One gov't charged us an extra 10 cents a liter to buy the old Fina oil
company and renamed it Petro Canada. Then another gov't came along and
sold our national oil company back to us. Same thing happened to our
provincial power company. Federal and provincial governments are
clearly in the pockets of large business interests.

Dave wrote in
:

True if you have a monopoly. Not true if you don't. The guy who can
produce and sell more makes more money.



They ARE a monopoly. It's called the American Petroleum Institute and
they're all members. Are you blind to the price fixing? They all raise
prices and lower prices as if all the computers were run from a central
console.

There aren't any more gas wars.....darn it. Remember 12c/gallon down the
street from the guy trying to get 18c/gallon? That'll never happen
again....

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

Terry Spragg wrote in
:

Nationalize them! Or, threaten to do it as a bargaining chip. Jail
the profiteersing national plunderers.

Terry K


Terry, are you in Canada? I see rogers.com in your address.

In socialist countries, like Europe, your nationalization isn't working
very well, at all. The government bureaucrats are selling Europeans gas at
$6/US gallon....hardly looking out for the masses.

No, our problem isn't creating some kind of socialist bureaucracy
controlling us all from the commune, it's price fixing and collusion
trashing competition in the free marketplace.

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

Dave wrote:
snip

howthehelldidyougetouttathere!?

*plonk*

Dave wrote in
:

Problem with that analysis is that in a perfect market all competitors'
prices will be the same and at a price equal to the marginal cost of the
highest cost producer (counting as cost a minimum return on invested
capital). In a monopoly all competitors' prices will also be the same.



I'll play another round of this thinking.....

So, why do countries where this benevolent government bureaucracy that
controls prices pay $6/gallon when I'm paying $1.93/gallon in the "almost
free market" economy? If the socialism were on the side of the citizens,
they'd be paying below wholesale. NOT!

Of course, gas prices in socialist countries is what pays for the "free
medical service", which isn't free and grossly mismanaged to boot. The $6
is mostly socialist taxes...

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

"Don White" wrotenb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
Terry Spragg wrote:
The problem is political decisions made at the behest of business ...
Party politics is to blame. Once elected, politicians should be
required to serve their constituents, not toe the party line.

I agree. Hang the top 20 executives ....

Each political party is designed to be run from the bottom "grass root"
level. Every county, town or urban neighborhood has precinct meetings.
People at these grass roots meetings elect one or more of their fellows to
represent them at the next higher level - county, state and national. Your
reps at each level nominate who the party will run at that level right up to
the president and VP. You did take part in this process didn't you? You
did attend precinct meetings and offer yourself as a candidate for state and
national conventions, didn't you? And you did raise money for your party's
candidates at each level, right? Oh! YOU weren't there so they nominated
somebody who owed his soul to "business" instead of his constituants? Which
constituants - the business execs who did attend party meetings and raise
money, or folks who show up for 5 minutes every other year to vote? Who
would you listen too if you were a congressman, the people who nominated you
and funded your election or the voters who's vote that money bought?

The Communist party was set up the same way but when nobody showed for
precinct meetings Stalin ended up running the show.

Terry Spragg wrote:
The problem is political decisions made at the behest of business ...

We've gotten around that problem by having business lobbyists author the
legislation. Cuts out the middleman!


Vito wrote:
Each political party is designed to be run from the bottom "grass root"
level.

??? Maybe 100 years ago that was true.

.... You did take part in this process didn't you?

No, all I did was vote. That *should* be enough... this (the U.S.) is a
democratic republic, right?

... You
did attend precinct meetings and offer yourself as a candidate for state and
national conventions, didn't you? And you did raise money for your party's
candidates at each level, right?

Aha! Now we get to the root of the matter... money. Politicians feel
beholden to those who give them money... big surprise. But does money
put them in office? No, the voters do. So what do they do with the
money? Buy expensive campaign ads, and hire top-salaried consultants to
tell them what to say about the issues.

Voters have been complicit in this process by electing the people who
spent the most money, for the most part, in the past 50 years. For a
while there in the late 1980s and mid 1990s, it looked like this trend
was going to reverse. But ever larger infusions of under-the-table cash
straightened it out again, and now we are happily on the road to
totalitarian plutocracy.

A novelty was the politically slanted entrtainment program. Every single
item was given a "spin" and hammered relentlessly into the listeners.
Surprisingly, some of these shows turned out to be popular. Now we have
whole networks devoted to nothing but political campaigning, with a
large segment of the population so hypnotized that when the most utter
nonsense is ballyhoo'd, they all shout in chorus 'Yes, that's right,
hooray for our side and let's kill those other guys.' Kind of scary...
it also makes you wonder why the current administration bothered to
spend hundreds of millions of Federal dollars filming & distributing
slanted fake news for political purposes.


The Communist party was set up the same way but when nobody showed for
precinct meetings Stalin ended up running the show.


Nah, he just set about killing the people who disagreed with him. AFAIK
he's got the all-time heavyweight world record, too.

DSK

A novelty was the politically slanted entrtainment program.


Dave wrote:
Nonsense. Entertainment programs, as well as news programs, have been
politically slanted since television's earliest days.

A tip of the hat for not using the stock phrase "liberal biased media."

I would agree that many programs on TV, and before that radio, and
before that plays & operas, had a degree of political slant.

The novelty is the program intended to entertain which is *nothing but*
political slant & spin... no plot, no story, no music, no attempt at
journalism, just ranting & raving.


Interestingly, some 35 years ago when cable was just emerging I was assigned
a paper on the First Amendment implications FCC regulation of networks when
going from 3 networks to a vast multiplicity of channels. Have to give a pat
on the back to the prof. who thought that one up.

And what were your conclusions?

DSK

"DSK" wrote in message
...
Nah, he just set about killing the people who disagreed with him. AFAIK
he's got the all-time heavyweight world record, too.

DSK

For the time being, anyways.

John Cairns

Dave wrote:
I give these kinds of programs mixed reviews. Programs of talking heads
sometimes provoke thought.

That can be true, when there is some fact or some relevant observation
involved. Most often, it seems that the people on these shows are either
just confabulating, or trying to get the audience to agree with their
views by repeating them often & vehemently.

But it bothers me the way that this kind of loud-mouth-ism has crept
into popular acceptance... it's now common for "news anchor" persons to
cast insults at political figures or anybody... the other day, in a
major metro area I was listening to what purported to be news on the
radio and was flabbergasted to hear the announcer relate details of a
personal tragedy, then say "He must be a liberal, they're the only ones
that are so dumb."

... Programs of what my wife calls "shouting heads"
generally turn me off. One of the programs I give fairly high marks to is
George Stephanopoulos's Sunday morning program.

Never seen it, I don't watch much TV.

Good grief, people even get all worked up talking politics in SAILING
forums!

DSK

"DSK" wrote
Vito wrote:
Each political party is designed to be run from the bottom "grass root"
level.

??? Maybe 100 years ago that was true.

The handles and knobs are still there but nobody uses them.

.... You did take part in this process didn't you?

No, all I did was vote. That *should* be enough... this (the U.S.) is a
democratic republic, right?

Ummm - wrong. That's why we were forced to choose between village idiots,
one from New England and one from Texas.

Aha! Now we get to the root of the matter... money. Politicians feel
beholden to those who give them money... big surprise. But does money
put them in office? No, the voters do. So what do they do with the
money? Buy expensive campaign ads, and hire top-salaried consultants to
tell them what to say about the issues.

Yes! Money does put them in office. All candidates are *trained* to find out
what you (voters) want to hear and say it as loudly and often as possible -
even if they plan to do the opposite! The one who can find out what you
want to hear most and say it the loudest will inevatibly get your vote.
That's the guy who can afford the best pollsters and campaign ads. Sad fact
of life and politics.

Voters have been complicit in this process by electing the people who
spent the most money,....

If the only time a voter pays any attention is in the weeks before election
all he is going to hear is what pollsters tell the candidates he wants to
hear. He listens then votes for the one who says it the loudest. Then the
winner does whatever the folks who paid for the polls and advertising tell
him to do. Any similarity between this and his promises is coincidental.

Again, take the last presidential campaign. We had to choose between a
draft-dodger who'd needlessly suckered us into another quagmire and a slave
to old money. But the draft dodger's pollsters found that many believed war
protesters like Kerry had lost us the war. Then he spent so much $$$ telling
us that that somehow Kerry's combat service in 'nam became less honorable
than Bush's drunken parties - and enough good christian voters believed it
to re-elect him. But the sorry thing is that these two loosers were our
choices.

I apologize for the recent off-topic political posts. This will be the
last one, this kind of stuff has a place elsewhere. But it is a fairly
serious issue.

... But does money
put them in office? No, the voters do. So what do they do with the
money? Buy expensive campaign ads, and hire top-salaried consultants to
tell them what to say about the issues.


Vito wrote:
Yes! Money does put them in office.

No it doesn't, the ignorance & the apathy of the voters (hence their
propensity to believe TV ads) is what puts them in office.

American voters have forgotten how to hold a grudge... a very useful
skill in the real world. When somebody rips you off, you don't give them
a chance to do it again.

DSK