and versions of all three would be feasible if we could figure out a way to store the energy they can produce.
I am sure am sure they know how to! Only when we start to run out of oil will we all of a sudden see "new" means of energy. -Kastro
Cut and paste job. Hope the graph shows up. There is plenty of oil. And even more coal. CTL technology is very interesting. The problem is regulatory and refinement capacity. When China is consuming as much oil derived product as the USA was 10 years ago, and there is not one single new refinery built in last 25 years. ??? Better hope another Katrina doesnt hit the gulf coast this year. As far as hybrids, as present levels of mpg they do not justify their added cost. Snip.. May 01, 2006 Gas Prices Reflect Higher Refining Margins Rather Than High Oil Prices Recently, I found the following quote tucked into a Financial Times story: More than two dozen petrol stations along the east coast reported fuel shortages yesterday as the oil industry shifts to a new anti-smog formula that includes corn-based ethanol. The new blend is a replacement for MTBE, an additive that is being phased out because of concerns it may contaminate groundwater. Any move to resume use of MTBE could be met with resistance from the oil giants, who worry they would be liable for future contamination. This is the first reporting that Iâve seen about the real cause of high gasoline prices. Lawmakers are considering a typically shortsighted plan to alleviate gasoline prices. The popular opinion among republican lawmakers is to waive the phase-out of MTBE to help maintain supplies. However, they have no plan to limit the MTBE liability for companies who keep using it. This proposal wonât be taken seriously by refiners and comes too late in the process to be useful. Refineries began making changes to their plants weeks ago. It would take that long to reverse the process AND cost even more money. Those same costs are the source of our gasoline price problems in the first place! Look at this graph of the rate of change in oil prices to the rate of change in gasoline prices. This is a graph of the monthly change in price for oil and gasoline. Ideally, they should be the same because the only real volatility in gasoline prices (or so they tell us!) is in the price of oil. What this graph tells us is that on March 2, 2006, gasoline prices stopped correlating to oil prices. In fact, on March 20th and 21st, oil prices were falling, and gasoline prices were rising by 25%! In the month of April, the rise in gasoline prices doubled the rate of rise in oil price. Clearly, that money is going somewhere. Iâm convinced itâs refineries trying to make up the cost of changes. However it is, it's starting to hurt. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Iâm Not Buying The Hybrid Hype My sister will hate that Iâm writing this... She lives the perfect urban life in Portland Oregon. She buys organic coffee, she doesnât own a car, recycles everything, takes public transportation, and loves it. She is socially conscious and, dare I say it, feels superior. âYou should drive a hybrid,â I can hear her say. âCut your emissions⦠help make our country less dependant on foreign oilâ¦â Iâd sooner buy a tambourine and start hanging out at airports. Current hybrid cars are a boondoggle. They are a whitewash of pseudo-green. They allow hip suburbanites to feel good about driving their modified SUVs. Donât believe me? Letâs do a little math. The RX Hybrid series is the Lexus hybrid SUV. According to the sticker, youâll get an average of 30 mpg for the hybrid and 22 mpg for the standard. Thatâs an additional 8 miles per gallon for the hybrid, right? Hereâs where the fun begins⦠8 miles to the gallon means youâd save about 3.6¢ per mile at $3 per gallon gasoline. Youâll need to drive 194,000 miles to recover the $7,000 you spent on the hybrid Lexus! Put it another way, if you buy the non-hybrid SUV, you get 51,000 miles worth of free gasoline! The Ford Escape hybrid is even worse. Youâll pay an extra $7,500 for the hybrid version. A comparison study showed that the traditional Escape gets 24 mpg, while the hybrid gets 26 mpg. Iâm sorry, but this is ridiculous. As I hope youâve seen, youâre not saving much in fuel, and you are clearly paying too much for hybrids. My sister fell for the hype. We can do a lot to reduce the U.S. fuel consumption by improving commercial and industrial fuel economy. An improvement from 6 mpg to 10 mpg saves 667 gallons of gasoline over 10,000 miles. According to the National Commission on Energy Policy, a 32% improvement on freight fuel efficiency would save 740,000 barrels of oil per day. Youâd need to replace 87,000 Land Rovers with Toyota Priuses to get that kind of savings. I hope this will help you make an informed decision when buying your next car. Good investing,
There's no shortage of oil. Like stocks, real estate, tuitions, insurance and most any asset/commodity, prices fluctuate, albeit with an upward bias. I find it both humorous and sad that anytime an item increases in price, those who don't benefit from the rise either want to nationalize it or prohibit/restrict it's use. Gas goes up? Seize Exxon's profits and eliminate SUV's. Health insurance premiums are higher? Socialize medicine. Funny but I don't see any liberals proposing that stocks be capped at 1100 SPX. Or homes at 1996 prices. So in other words it's GREAT that one's home has tripled since the 90's but HOW DARE OPEC not pump up production, or HOW DARE those ranchers expect me to pay 8 bucks per pound for a Porterhouse. Think others are greedy? Look in the mirror. Doesn't wanting someone's product or labor at slave prices not make YOU greedy? Whiners are losers.
Not like europe but to take simple measures to conserve oil. You keep saying lets gets oil from anwar but that would take years to get onto market. What is cheaper, banning suv and cars, or fighting a war in iran? Fighting a war in Iran would costs literrally trillions. Maybe 10's of trillions. If iraq has already costs nearly a trillion dollers and that was a small war. Banning suv's and trucks sales wouldnt hurt anybody except for Gm and ford. And who cares about GM and ford.
yes but we dont determine national security by real estate prices or tuition rates. But we fight war over Oil. Dont you care that a country like venezuela or iran can hold the US hostage b/c they can control oil. Even russia can hold countries hostage over energy. Remember how they basically turn off natural gas to europe. Basically Iran can do anything they want b/c they are 2nd largest oil producer in the world. and they dont care if they shut off the oil if it hurts the US. It would be a matter or religious zealism. Its a whole irational way of thinking. My solution would be a easy solution. It would not cost the economy one bit. The only ones hurting would be GM and ford.
Nature provided the best storage of all: fossil fuels, i.e., stored ancient sunlight. Unfortunately, it took tens of millions of years to accumulate and we're using it up at accelerating rates. The solar flux incident on the earth's surface can be converted by solar cells and stored in batteries or hydrogen -- but there are two fundamental constraints: mean incident solar insolation at the earth's surface and conversion efficiency. I've seen ballpark figures on how much solar energy is incident upon the earth, e.g., enough in one day to power human cities for a year (I'm just guessing here), but it's another matter altogether to capture that energy. We already sequester a large % of solar energy indirectly in farming and fishing. Then there's the conversion efficiency of solar cells, which is ultimately limited by the energy band gaps in semiconductors. I'm guessing again, but it probably can't go much beyond 20-30%, which would be a phenomenal improvement over the 12% of today's typical cells. As for batteries and hydrogen for storage, battery capacity is again limited by those same chemical properties, and hydrogen is a net energy loser -- i.e., it takes more energy to break up the source molecule (e.g., CH4, H20) than is contained in the hydrogen itself (H2). The only advantage of hydrogen is that it can be used for transportation. Uranium is fantastically energy dense, but the required isotope is very diffuse in nature and must be mined and enriched, which of course takes energy. Some speak of 'peak uranium' in the same sense as peak oil, meaning that there's some maximum production rate based on world reserves and extraction rates. Just pointing out that there are some real fundamental limits here. Rubber bands and bell jars can also be used to store energy.
First of all, (editors note: this mahram is an anti-American Iranian living in Canada) we're not contemplating military action in Iran because of oil. I know that blows up the whole Bush/Cheney/HAL war for oil scenario but we're on Iran's ass because they're a rogue fundamentalist Islamic regime that's developing nuclear weapons. You're a Muslim. Fine. Then why did you leave your beloved Iran? I don't need to see the U.S. turn a blind eye toward a nuclear Iran and then ten, twenty years down the road watch Iran use their nuclear muscle to back Islamic revolutions throughout Africa and Asia(as if they don't now). Bush is WAY kinder than me. I'd be overthrowing the Mullah's and if unsuccessful I'd bomb them into submission. Islam is the global equivalent of the Crips and Bloods.
Ok we disagree on that, but you have to admit a deciding factor not to invade iran is b/c of oil. If iran didnt have oil, bush would already be bombing. Oil is the deciding factor. A greater risk to the economy would be an attack on iran, rather then a nuclear iran.