What Do We Think About Climate Change

The good ol USA would cease to function without oil, and the foreigners(no offense, foreigners), still having oil, would come in and take it and us.

 

the USA could produce its own oil through smart use of bio technologies

could eliminate the need for imports and would end up way better off in the long and short term

what we need to do is end the control of the multinational corporations over our lives

 

then maybe the oil companies should be more regulated like local power companies once were

you remember local electric, cheap dependable

 

better to replace them entirely with new smaller companies each producing independently and keeping the money in the communities

 

better to work on renewable

 

Not a good model. Unless the communities are large. Take a "community" like New York City (pop 18,000,000) and the a "community" like the state of Kansas (pop 2,800,000). Something tells me that NYC will have a very hard time growing enough fuel to meet their needs, while Kansas can probably grow 10 times more than they need. When you replace a few large companies with many small companies you end up with a huge amount of duplicated overhead. It is not a very efficient solution.

I'm all for a market driven economy when the market drives product development and acts to control price. Energy is a commodity, oil company products like regular unleaded gasoline are not improved by competition. The prices are driven upwards by the cost to compete for market share. The appliances in our homes don't care what "brand" the electricity is. These are prime candidates for nationalization. IMO

 

Exxon looking at alternative energy is just what I would suspect. I would also expect the smaller operations to develop the technology and for the other big oil companies to buy them out once that technology is more mature.

Swapping out several hundred pounds of batteries is no where near "almost instantly". There are several threads on this forum that get into the energy density of batteries compared to fossil fuels. Not even close (yet).

I agree that the hybrid with larger energy storage to get to an "average daily usage" level using no fossil fuel whist retaining the fossil fuel drive train for longer trips is an excellent solution.

Of interest is that Chevron has the patent on some NiMH battery technology. At least one big oil company had no profit motive to kill the EV1.

The longer tailpipe comment came from Toyota. Granted, in your world anyone that does not agree with you is a schill? for big oil ... (I think you meant shill) I think Toyota builds a Hybrid or two? Why would a big oil shill be building and selling fuel efficient vehicles?

I said there was debate. If you look at coal fired power plants, there is debate on the net reduction of fossil fuel use by electric cars. Some of this depends on the battery type (lead acid at 90% charge efficiency is much greener than NiMH at only 66%) If you look at cradle to grave and include the energy use to build, transport and recycle/dispose of tons of batteries, the longer tailpipe comment is pretty valid. Less so each year as coal fired plants are cleaned up and other electricity producers are added to the mix. If we were to start building new nuclear power plants at the rate China is, electric vehicles would become more viable from a greenhouse gas point of view.

I think people are working on this, big oil included.

I do agree 100% with this:

 

You need to be more positive. It is unlikely that the rest of the world will keep sucking the oil once you peoples run out of it.

We all need it in some form. Not only cars run on oil. You are probably dressed in it. Synthetic clothes.

Soaps and shampoos, all the crap we never knew we don't really need but we use (because the multis are brainwashing us into it).

And we will run out of oil one day. I hope by then, the earth has half or even 1/3 of the current population, and they have some solutions ready, coz it won't be easy without it.

We'll return into the middle ages without some solution.

 

But if you are for market economy, the multinationals are the only thing you will get. They tend to destroy smaller competitors and monopolise their position. Look at the mining companies. There are only three or four big players left around, plus brazilians.

bhp and billiton merged recently making the new company the biggest minimng beast ever. And now are trying to swallow PotashCorp (I think this is still on the table, or at least on the cards.They are simply waiting for a new moment to turn the current around and grab it.).

As Marx said, either market (private) or public economy. The difference is that with the private market economy, the multis grow so big, they take over the government and the economy.

And you end up with what everyone fears socialism would bring.

Total monopoly of one powerful master.

I think Boston is on the right path. The industry must be broken down into a number of smaller player who in my opinion should be preveted from growing above certain percentage of market exposure to allow the competition to survive and keep them all in check.

Divide et impera. And we as customers enjoy the benefits.

 

You really have no idea do you?....it is not compulsory to answer you know...

 

I mostly wear cotton blends, but you are right.
Petroleum based products surround us, from the apple sauce label to the plastic wrap on the zucchini.
China is a voracious user of oil. Every industrialized nation is.
Exxon when it was Standard Oil started as a fledgling company.
Every company or corporation, no matter how large, started as a fledgling company.
If fledgling companies were banned, they would not grow into large corporations.
Anti-corporate types hate moms and pops out of fear they will become "evil" corporations, but Obama is stopping that, so no more worries.

 

my thinkin is that the sewage treatment plants provide nutrients for the algae so you want to grow in places that dont require the transportation of supplies, so to speak

CO2 can be taken from the atmosphere anywhere but farm run off and municipal water treatment plants are not likely to all that easy to transport

one of the problems of modern industry is the scale, when monocrops of any kind are grown on extra large scales there are always environmental issues. The overlooked solution is to keep things regional and simple with buffer zones between fewer "zones"

read Rachel Carlson's silent spring where it is describing the draw backs of industrialized farming/fishing

 

One thing you might notice I often point out is peoples canned attitudes, much of the time these preconceived ideas were "canned" in some clandestine board meeting and then foisted off on the public through massive corporate PR campaigns. I'm a big proponent of thinking for oneself and for specifically reevaluating anything a politician or multinational corporation would like me to believe.

For instance
nuclear

from

http://healutah.org/nuclearutah/energy/greenriverreactors

the list of problems associated with nuclear fuel simply dont add up to a profitable or environmentally trustworthy experience, yet someone somewhere had billions go through there fingers in order to build that plant, so the question is if its a loosing proposition then why were they ever built in the first place. Obviously its a mater of graft and a mater of some few making out while the common man pays through the nose.

if might be a harsh wake up call for some but just look at the numbers for yourself and be careful ware you get them
the energy industry "always" downplays the final costs and touts it "projections" The greenies numbers must be taken with a grain of salt as well but in the end just go look at the numbers. Nuclear is by far the most expensive form of fuel we have at present in this country.


we should replace all existing nuclear power plants with renewables and ban the production of any new nuclear plants if for no other reason than the economic one. They are the most expensive form of energy we have.

 

Coal is by far the best, the cleanest and the most efficient source of energy to produce electricity.
We produce electricity at 3c a Kilowatt with coal and at 60c with Solar.
Smart he?

Eventually the "Global Warming" fad will self destruct and we will continue to produce electricity with coal at 3 c a kilowatt and sell you uranium for your nuclear plants.
Business couldn't be better.
This latest moronic catastrophism is just a small bump on the road.

Green is made of two colours. Yellow for envy and blue for anger.

Delenda Est Viridis

 

I am not sure who you plagiarised this expressions from but they apply perfectly to the Global Warming ******** fabrication.

I can just imagine Al Gore reciting a mantra to be repeated at nauseam by his cohorts and assorted Californian cheer leaders and San Francisco bum shakers .