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