masterrig 1 #26 January 2, 2011 Quote Hi Chuck, Quote Here where I live, they're getting 4.389 for regular. Is that a typo or is that what you are paying? I just topped up one of my cars yesterday here in Beaverton, OR with Super for $3.259 which went up today by 6 cents/gallon due to an increase in state taxes. The days of cheap energy are behind us. As I have mentioned before, consider reading THE LONG EMERGENCY by Kunstler. JerryBaumchen Oops! That should be $3.389. Chuck Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
masterrig 1 #27 January 2, 2011 Quote>The way I see it, the gasoline producers are pricing themselves out of the > market and opening the gates for more electric cars and ethanol >powered vehicles. Well, to a degree. For a long time OPEC tried to control prices to prevent that from happening. But they won't be able to do that forever. We're running out of oil, and even if we tripled the amount of drilling, that can only temporarily increase the flow of oil. As it becomes more scarce and harder to pump (and thus more expensive) people will use petroleum based fuels only for the more critical applications (military, aviation, feedstocks) and replace most transportation fuels with electricity, biofuels and synthetic fuels. I can see that. We thought, it would last forever. Chuck Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
billvon 3,044 #28 January 2, 2011 >sweet thats what we want to hear, they will control the lithium and the >elecricty too though won't they? Electricity - no. Even if we manage to exhaust all our other sources of fossil fuels, there's more than enough sunlight falling on every country in the world to provide all the power they need. Storage is definitely an issue, but with large scale systems like pumped storage it's doable. It's certainly not cheap, which is why it hasn't been done before now; no economic incentive. But once oil gets to be expensive enough, such alternative energy and storage systems will become the cheaper option. Lithium - perhaps. We also have lithium reserves, about 4 million tons per our best estimates. That's enough for about 300 gigawatt-hours of storage if you turned all that into batteries; in other words, we have enough lithium to make enough batteries to run the country entirely on solar power, using batteries at nighttime. (Needless to say, that's not a good idea, but it gives a sense of the extent of our resources. >Any news on those spherical solar power generators they were working >on in your regon a year or so back? I assume you mean the mirror/Stirling engine devices that they've been testing out here. They are a good source of medium scale power but they have some problems: 1) They are medium power (10-100kW) which is too much for a home and too little for a power company. 2) They use a Stirling engine to drive a generator and require tracking. That's a lot of moving parts, so that means maintenance. (As opposed to nontracking panels that have no moving parts.) 3) The tracking mirror requires a lot of real estate since it has to both be large and swing around. You can't, for example, stick one on the top of a house. They may find limited utility for medium sized solar power stations, though, if the maintenance issues can be overcome. >I guess nuclear is the short term answer Nuclear is a pretty good baseline source of power. There are enough designs out there that you can take your pick of how you want to implement it. There are designs that use no uranium at all and just require a plutonium "seed" to kickstart a reaction that will run for years. Pebble bed reactors are much more resistant to mechanical problems than most water cooled reactors. CANDU reactors do not require enriched uranium, so there are no complex enrichment steps (and fewer worries about using the enrichment process to make nuclear weapons.) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rhys 0 #29 January 2, 2011 QuoteEven if we manage to exhaust all our other sources of fossil fuels, there's more than enough sunlight falling on every country in the world to provide all the power they need. Knowing that is your forte, that information assures me considerably about the future of energy recources."When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
popsjumper 2 #30 January 2, 2011 QuoteDon't get me wrong, I can understand business but... how long are they gonna squeeze that turnip ...as long as you're still bleeding?My reality and yours are quite different. I think we're all Bozos on this bus. Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
popsjumper 2 #31 January 2, 2011 OF COURSE it has...I was planning a driving trip in a couple of weeks. Sorry guys...it's all my fault I know. [Progressive lady's voice] Happens to me all the time [/Progressive lady's voice] My reality and yours are quite different. I think we're all Bozos on this bus. Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
masterrig 1 #32 January 2, 2011 QuoteQuoteDon't get me wrong, I can understand business but... how long are they gonna squeeze that turnip ...as long as you're still bleeding? Yup! I'm startin' to feel a little weak... Chuck Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
