Trump says seize the oil fields!

[Jeff S]

Sorry guys, but wind farms, efficient solar panels, nor some crazed inventor in a garage are just not the answer.

http://www.pppl.gov/
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/10/the_national_ignition_facility.html

The NIF has cost over $3.5 billion since 1997 and is a part of the federally funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Scientists at NIF say they hope to achieve fusion by 2012.

[AndyLee]

When I read someone postulating that we need to keep our "oil industry" because of it's economic engine it reminds me of nearly 20 years ago I was helping a political candidate run for office as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The city had just spent $27 million building a new domestic water supply system and now it was faced with spending another $25 million to put in a new sewage treatment plant. At a time when the economy was in the toilet, literally, and there was no money to be had.
I came up with the idea that instead of spending $25 million for new sewer plant that we instead spend $5 million to re-plumb every house in the city and put in all new Low-water toilets, shower heads, faucets. The resulting savings in water consumption would easily negate the need for a new sewer plant.
The idea was terrific and the mayoral candidate went to town with it and scored a lot of points in the campaign. Until one day the Director of Public Works took the mayoral candidate aside and said, no, we can't do that.
The reason is that in order to pay off the $27 million dollar bond issue that paid for the new wells the only way they could generate the money was to sell water, and the best way to sell water is to leave the old, high volume leaky toilets and high volume shower heads in place so people would consume a lot of water and pay big bills so the bond could be paid off.
Yep, true story. The mayoral candidate was Peter Clavelle and the Director of Public Works was Tom Moreau. Mr. Clavelle won the election but he lost the sewer plant battle and eventually the city borrowed another bond issue to pay for the new sewer system.
One good point that came out of all that though was that working with Peter and Tom we developed a huge County wide composting program that included composting the sludge waste from the sewer plant. The composted sludge was then sold as fertilizer to dairy farmers and Christmas tree farmers all over Vermont. So a little bit of a happy ending.
But, the reason I said all this is to convince you that keeping an archaic energy system in place because it "supports an economy" is just plain wrong thinking. And, to thing that dreaming about energy futures is just wishful thinking is also just plain wrong thinking IMHO.
I saw it happen in one small city of 40,000 population, imagine what our world would look like if we did similar things, and believe me there are millions of people trying to do similar things, all over the world.
Anyone ever heard about the solar village at Gaviatos, Colombia? That's for another post someday when I feel once again overcome by organic preachiness.

[AndyLee]

Sorry guys, but wind farms, efficient solar panels, nor some crazed inventor in a garage are just not the answer.

http://www.pppl.gov/
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/10/the_national_ignition_facility.html

EXACTLY my point.....They've spent a piddling little $3.5 BILLION SINCE 1997 on research. IMAGINE instead if they had $1.5 TRILLION to spend on research right now instead of pissing it away in Iraq!

[AndyLee]

Several years ago I spent a week in a workshop with Mark Victor Hanson, (Chicken Soup for the Soul) and a few dozen other notable individuals studying ways to help the economy help the environment. One of the best proposals that came out of that workshop was a new energy generator funded by Art Linkletter, "Kids Say The Darndest Things" and Duke Energy Systems, the public power system in North Carolina. It is a new kind of solar plate that turns water into steam to turn turbines. The key to it's efficiency is a cupped shape to the solar cells, much like the shape of a microwave dish. The sunlight is reflected and re-reflected inside the cup and it intensifies the heat tremendously. This is the kind of efficiency increase that comes from dreams sequencing into research and then into development, production and marketing. This is the kind of stuff AlabamaBoy wishes we could market to the world, yes?

[Jeff S]

It would be money well spent - but no need for a 1.5 trillion. That much would be unusable and only invite corruption and waste. Increasing spending 50 fold would only consume 150 billion or 1/10th the cost of the Iraq war. And the day it works is the day we can tell Akmadinajad, Chavez, Qaddafi and the and the rest of those petty dictators to start eating sand.

To burn 5 gallons of fuel in a power plant to produce enough electricity to power an electric car and avoid burning one gallon of fuel in gasoline car, or burning a gallon of fuel to produce 1/3 of a gallon of ethanol is nonsensical thinking. Unfortunately the environmental "movement" is filled with that kind of logic. Reusable grocery bags, Algore's compact fluorescent bulbs, and Obama's cap and tax schemes have zero to do with solving the real problem. All it does is keep the Birkenstock crowd appeased for a while.

[Jeff S]

Several years ago I spent a week in a workshop with Mark Victor Hanson, (Chicken Soup for the Soul) and a few dozen other notable individuals studying ways to help the economy help the environment. One of the best proposals that came out of that workshop was a new energy generator funded by Art Linkletter, "Kids Say The Darndest Things" and Duke Energy Systems, the public power system in North Carolina. It is a new kind of solar plate that turns water into steam to turn turbines. The key to it's efficiency is a cupped shape to the solar cells, much like the shape of a microwave dish. The sunlight is reflected and re-reflected inside the cup and it intensifies the heat tremendously. This is the kind of efficiency increase that comes from dreams sequencing into research and then into development, production and marketing. This is the kind of stuff AlabamaBoy wishes we could market to the world, yes?

Parabolic mirrors have been around a long time. Here's a Mechanix Illustrated article published in the early 1950s.



They've been commercially available on a continuous basis since then:



Every time I've driven up US 395 for the past 30 or 40 years, I've seen this, too:



The problem is that putting another billion or trillion into it won't suspend the laws of physics, and while it may be fun for philosophers and concerned citizens to get together and speculate, the problems will only be solved by scientists and engineers.

[jm21-2]

When I read someone postulating that we need to keep our "oil industry" because of it's economic engine it reminds me of nearly 20 years ago I was helping a political candidate run for office as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The city had just spent $27 million building a new domestic water supply system and now it was faced with spending another $25 million to put in a new sewage treatment plant. At a time when the economy was in the toilet, literally, and there was no money to be had.
I came up with the idea that instead of spending $25 million for new sewer plant that we instead spend $5 million to re-plumb every house in the city and put in all new Low-water toilets, shower heads, faucets. The resulting savings in water consumption would easily negate the need for a new sewer plant.
The idea was terrific and the mayoral candidate went to town with it and scored a lot of points in the campaign. Until one day the Director of Public Works took the mayoral candidate aside and said, no, we can't do that.
The reason is that in order to pay off the $27 million dollar bond issue that paid for the new wells the only way they could generate the money was to sell water, and the best way to sell water is to leave the old, high volume leaky toilets and high volume shower heads in place so people would consume a lot of water and pay big bills so the bond could be paid off.
Yep, true story. The mayoral candidate was Peter Clavelle and the Director of Public Works was Tom Moreau. Mr. Clavelle won the election but he lost the sewer plant battle and eventually the city borrowed another bond issue to pay for the new sewer system.
One good point that came out of all that though was that working with Peter and Tom we developed a huge County wide composting program that included composting the sludge waste from the sewer plant. The composted sludge was then sold as fertilizer to dairy farmers and Christmas tree farmers all over Vermont. So a little bit of a happy ending.
But, the reason I said all this is to convince you that keeping an archaic energy system in place because it "supports an economy" is just plain wrong thinking. And, to thing that dreaming about energy futures is just wishful thinking is also just plain wrong thinking IMHO.
I saw it happen in one small city of 40,000 population, imagine what our world would look like if we did similar things, and believe me there are millions of people trying to do similar things, all over the world.
Anyone ever heard about the solar village at Gaviatos, Colombia? That's for another post someday when I feel once again overcome by organic preachiness.

I assume the posts you are referring to are mine.

1. I did not say that the oil business was supporting the economy. I assume it's good for the economy or they wouldn't be making money, but I'd have to look into that more and don't really have the inclination to. What I said was that completely cutting ourselves off from the global oil/energy trade, which is the only way you could eliminate any of our money going to the middle east, was economically inadvisable. If you are concerned about arachaic power systems look into the power grid, not the oil industry. We lose a huge amount of power in transmission.

2. The example you give as an ideal solution is to use force to make every citizen of the town use certain products? Oh that sounds like a marvelous idea that just couldn't go wrong...there's no way there would be corrupt politicians and corporate lobbyists who would take advantage of that in order to have state-sponsored strong-arm monopolies...not a chance....

[AndyLee]

The problem is that putting another billion or trillion into it won't suspend the laws of physics, and while it may be fun for philosophers and concerned citizens to get together and speculate, the problems will only be solved by scientists and engineers.

Ah, finally, agreement.......you are saying exactly what I am saying....the problems will only be solved and scientists and engineers. If we could give enough of them enough money they could solve the problems quickly. Right now there is a team of scientists and engineers at Duke Energy making the solar steam turbine a reality. If there are 5 scientists and 5 engineers working on it and it takes 2 years and costs $1billion, what do you think would happen if we had 5000 scientists and 5000 engineers spending 2 year and $1 trillion. Do you think the results could possibly be as much as 1000 times better?

Remember, this whole discussion started because of the 1.5 trillion spent in Iraq plus probably that much more to spend to rebuild the country and help hold it together for say the next 20 years. My premise is that we could have invested that money more wisely in alternative energy research instead of what we did do with it.

[Ray]

To burn 5 gallons of fuel in a power plant to produce enough electricity to power an electric car and avoid burning one gallon of fuel in gasoline car, or burning a gallon of fuel to produce 1/3 of a gallon of ethanol is nonsensical thinking. Unfortunately the environmental "movement" is filled with that kind of logic. Reusable grocery bags, Algore's compact fluorescent bulbs, and Obama's cap and tax schemes have zero to do with solving the real problem. All it does is keep the Birkenstock crowd appeased for a while.

The Birkenstock Crowd? 


How about if we started by charging those electric cars with nuclear generated electricity? Now that might just make a huge dent in our oil consumption and importation.

Oh, but then there are the nattering nabobs of negativism…

We can’t continue to produce more nuclear power because it will kill us!
We can’t continue to drill for oil because it will kill us!
We can’t continue to burn coal because it will kill us!
They are going to turn the whole planet into a big burnt cinder!
And the dreaded private sector can’t do anything about it. We need Big Brother to control it all!


Oh, what a bunch of hogwash!

Ray

[no comment]

There are thousands of square miles of desert wasteland in AZ, TX, NV, UT which could be used for solar "farms".

Easier said than done.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/21/feinstein-seeks-to-block-_n_177646.html Nevertheless I'm for it.  And turtle soup to the poor.

[Jeff S]

Ah, finally, agreement.......you are saying exactly what I am saying....the problems will only be solved and scientists and engineers. If we could give enough of them enough money they could solve the problems quickly. Right now there is a team of scientists and engineers at Duke Energy making the solar steam turbine a reality. If there are 5 scientists and 5 engineers working on it and it takes 2 years and costs $1billion, what do you think would happen if we had 5000 scientists and 5000 engineers spending 2 year and $1 trillion. Do you think the results could possibly be as much as 1000 times better?

Remember, this whole discussion started because of the 1.5 trillion spent in Iraq plus probably that much more to spend to rebuild the country and help hold it together for say the next 20 years. My premise is that we could have invested that money more wisely in alternative energy research instead of what we did do with it.

The only problem I have with that is that the politicians decide what to spend all of that money on. For example a decade ago the big answer to our foreign oil dependency was was ethanol - enough to spend 31 billion of our tax dollars on, with no end in sight. http://www.slate.com/id/2122961/

I have no idea whether the Duke energy program is a winner or another ethanol boondoggle. Maybe 5 scientists and 5 engineers are ample to figure out whether it is or not before we throw 5000, all paid for with your tax dollars.

I agree that the costs of the Iraq war could have been put a use that would have had a far better ROI. We'd have been far better off spending a few mil to pay off informants to figure out the perfect place to slip in a JDAM from the belly of a F-117 than spending a year destroying the country's infrastructure and 1o more rebuilding it all with tax dollars.

[fathertime]

Easier said than done.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/21/feinstein-seeks-to-block-_n_177646.html Nevertheless I'm for it.  And turtle soup to the poor.

My wife and I went to death valley/ shoeshone last summer...it was easily 120-125 degrees....and it was that way for about 100 miles.  I can't say I'm surprised that Feinstein blocked solar panels there though, somebody probably paid her off in some way, because the idea seemed to make a helluva lot of sense.  

Fathertime!

[no comment]

As for the earlier comment about Obama's plea for more house insulation.......give me a break, the energy code started in 1976 requiring 3 inches of insulation in the ceiling. It wasn't until just a few years ago that the code was enhanced to the level it is now.
When I started building houses in 1972 it was common place to use 2x6 ceiling joists and blow them level full of cellulose and let it go at that. The cellulose blown in to 6 inch level would settle to 3 inches over a few years. Before that people relied on the tar paper for wind wrap AND insulation.
There are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of homes is US (and world wide) that have zero insulation or minimal insulation. THESE are the homes Obama and others are talking about insulating, not just the ones that were built in the last few years.

I'm familiar and very up to date about insulation.  I've seen the crews of mostly foreign workers insulate a whole house in a day.  They seal it up real tight, stuffing all the spaces between joists and rafters and spraying polyurethane foam and other goo in every crevice.  Energy efficient and sealed so tight that the house can't release moisture but that's what the code calls for.  I suppose that some lawyers are hoping that interior mold is the new asbestos. The government has been subsidizing these upgrades with tax incentives for years, as well as the solar panels.  

Remember, this whole discussion started because of the 1.5 trillion spent in Iraq plus probably that much more to spend to rebuild the country and help hold it together for say the next 20 years. My premise is that we could have invested that money more wisely in alternative energy research instead of what we did do with it.

No argument.  The war was ill conceived and was a waste.  Now we're teetering on economic disaster from Keynsian economics, and economic alchemists like Paul Krugman of the NY Times want to fight fire with gasoline.  There are no trillions to throw at problems.