http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080527.wtrade28/BNStory/Busi...
another interesting article with wide reaching implications....
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May 28, 2008 10:36 a.m. ignorant UltraDork
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May 28, 2008 12:34 p.m. John Brown UltimaDork
I had a lengthy conversation about (free form thinking was involved) the problems Mexico was having in the border land. I suggested that we annex Mexico and convert it into seperated states. It will stop the massive influx of border jumpers, give PBS a reason to be broadcasting multilingually and give the US the oil rights for the Gulf of Mexico.
Bear with me.
It saves us the need to spend billions on border security, that money can go to infrastructure and advertising.
The new states would make West Virginia look like a great success.
One of the new states could be called Old Mexico, another called Old York and yet another to be called Old Hampshire, the regional drink would be Olde English.
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May 28, 2008 12:38 p.m. Wally SuperDork
ignorant wrote: http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080527.wtrade28/BNStory/Busi...
another interesting article with wide reaching implications....
Now if we still made things, we wouldn't have to use Chinese steel.
John Brown "the regional drink would be Olde English" I don't like the lemony aftertaste
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May 28, 2008 12:42 p.m. John Brown UltimaDork
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May 28, 2008 12:45 p.m. Wally SuperDork
All this time I've been forgeting the E
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May 28, 2008 12:45 p.m. Wally SuperDork
All this time I've been forgeting the E
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May 28, 2008 12:53 p.m. John Brown UltimaDork
It IS the same product BOTH are terrible to drink and if you are polishing wood both will make the job easier.
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May 28, 2008 1:00 p.m. CivicSiRacer New Reader
Oil will never come back down. Remember when Katrina hit and everyone jumped on the band wagon and raised their prices as soon as the hurricane hit. Has the prices ever come back down since then? Pfffft!
I like how my Economic Stimulus Package is going to go right back in the pockets of the oil company. If I figured out my spending on fuel last year I'm going to come out with nothing.
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May 28, 2008 1:24 p.m. confuZion3 Reader
CivicSiRacer wrote: Oil will never come back down. Remember when Katrina hit and everyone jumped on the band wagon and raised their prices as soon as the hurricane hit. Has the prices ever come back down since then? Pfffft!
Screw that. I'm cashing that shit and spending it on the car. I've always wanted to know just how effective tuning software can be for the Z3. (Turner Motorsports, here I come!)I like how my Economic Stimulus Package is going to go right back in the pockets of the oil company. If I figured out my spending on fuel last year I'm going to come out with nothing.
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May 28, 2008 1:32 p.m. Jensenman UltimaDork
Wally wrote:
All this time I've been forgeting the E
I forget which comic pointed it out, but Country Time Lemonade Mix has artificial flavor and coloring, while Lemon Pledge has Real Lemon Oil. Bass ackwards, ain't it?
And I gotta agree Olde English 800 tastes like cheap furniture polish.
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May 28, 2008 3:02 p.m. Dr. Hess UberDork
Having been a sailor, I could probably find you people that will tell you Old English furniture polish tastes like Cheap Malt Liquor. Especially if you crew up in Mobile, AL. You know you have issues when 3 days out of port, the aftershave starts dissapearing.
Anyway, to the subject at hand: Oil prices are here to stay. After failing to get us to stop giving the Pavement Challenged money by making us feel like we're destroying the world with CO2, they cranked up the prices. As I said previously, it's going to be nukes and electric cars run on UltraCapacitors.
Now, what could be done instead with existing technology: Just about anything can be made into Methanol. A 1979 government study said it would cost a buck a gallon to do it. I don't know what that is today. Methanol can run our cars just fine with a few mods. I have enough trees, leaves, etc. to keep me in fuel indefinelty.
Next, this is something I've been thinking about for a couple of months. Then I stumbled across a net reference and it turns out that other people have been doing it for decades. It's called the Organic Rankine Cycle. You can take a low heat source, like a solar hot water heater on your roof, use a refrigerant, drive a small turbine with the refrigerant, drive a generator with the turbine. I was thinking of using steam/water, then I started thinking that a refridgerant or other gas/liquid phase change "stuff" that worked at a lower temp might be easier to deal with than 3-600F steam, then I found that they've sold these things for decades and use them to power stuff like unmanned oil platforms and the Alaskan pipeline stations. They'll work off of any heat source: Geothermal (AK place with 150F water is running a whole town), flare gas, anything burning, etc. Some have been in operation with virtually zero maintenance for 30 years. So, everyone covers their roof with solar hot water panels, which are dirt cheap to make yourself from supplies at Home Depot, runs 10KW of heat through one of these setups, powers their whole house including AC, charges up an UltraCapacitor for the night, use the excess to charge up your electric car (Tesla) to get to work, and the oil companies can go berkeley off. Problem is that the government can't tax you for making your own energy, the utility companies won't get a monthy cash flow from you, Exxon won't make money from you, etc., and as such, it will never be implemented.
Besides the UltraCapacitors, there is no new technology involved. It is just a matter of mass producing the turbo-generators. The UltraCapacitors will come down in price after the military has all they will ever need for their new weapon systems.
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Nov. 24, 2008 5:38 p.m. DILYSI Dave PowerDork
Ran across this thread while looking for something else. Interesting read 6 months later...
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Nov. 24, 2008 5:40 p.m. Duende Reader
Gas will go back up, never fear.
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Nov. 24, 2008 6:00 p.m. HiTempguy Reader
Duende wrote:
Gas will go back up, never fear.
The question is, why was gas so high to begin with? Because of investors?
Is the price we are paying now what oil is REALLY worth without speculation?
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Nov. 24, 2008 6:09 p.m. Salanis SuperDork
HiTempguy wrote:
Is the price we are paying now what oil is REALLY worth without speculation?
I'm going to hypothesize that gas prices will always fluctuate. I suspect they'll go a bit lower until sometime early in 2009, driven down by the economy. As the economy stabilizes, gas prices will climb to around $2.50. From there, they will continue to fluctuate with small factors, but will generally be stable between $2.50-$3.00 for a few years.
But that is just my uneducated hypothesis.
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Nov. 24, 2008 6:24 p.m. aircooled Dork
I also think the "real" price of gas should be in the 2.50 - 3.00 range. Honestly I would like to see it stay high, it seems to encourage some good things. I think one of the best options would be to keep gas high (by taxes, or whatever) and convert the trucking fleet over to natural gas (ala Pickens) and keep that low. You could tax gas for diesel, but then everyone would just buy diesel cars. That way you get the advantages of high gas (good behavior) and not the downside (expensive shipping).
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Nov. 24, 2008 6:30 p.m. MadScientistMatt HalfDork
HiTempguy wrote:
Duende wrote:
Gas will go back up, never fear.
The question is, why was gas so high to begin with? Because of investors?
Is the price we are paying now what oil is REALLY worth without speculation?
There certainly were a lot of people who thought oil was an idiot proof investement. The thing is, any time "they" say something is an idiot proof investment, a bunch of idiots jump in and prove them wrong.
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Nov. 24, 2008 7:58 p.m. Will New Reader
aircooled wrote:
I also think the "real" price of gas should be in the 2.50 - 3.00 range. Honestly I would like to see it stay high, it seems to encourage some good things. I think one of the best options would be to keep gas high (by taxes, or whatever)
Not that anyone cares, but I have a problem with the line of thinking that we should tax gas, cigs, fatty foods, guns, or other "undesirable" products to discourage their use for two reasons:
It's my damn money, not the government's. Our forefathers tarred and feathered British tax agents for the sort of thing you're proposing.
Whenever you discourage use of any product while simultaneously depending on revenue generated from taxation of said item to fund Program X you're trying to reconcile two mutually exclusive goals. See, if people stop smoking, or driving, or eating Royales with cheese or what have you the revenue stream from taxation will dry up and Program X will run out of money. But since we all know that any dollar the government takes from us instantly becomes holy and can never be cut from the budget under any circumstances, the government must then fund Program X by increasing taxes elsewhere. Alternatively, if you wish Program X to succeed you must actually encourage whatever bad behavior it was that you were trying to discourage in the first place. So take your pick: prevent us from killing ourselves by smoking a chicken mcnugget while driving 150 mph or continue funding the children/seniors/learning disabled unicorns. You can't have both.
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Nov. 24, 2008 8:06 p.m. Strizzo Dork
thats true, whenever you build something idiot proof, someone just makes a better idiot.
as for the gas prices, i think a reasonable price would be around 3.25-3.50/gal with oil around 75-100/barrel
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Nov. 24, 2008 8:08 p.m. MrJoshua SuperDork
Those learning disabled unicorns are always sucking the system dry.
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Nov. 24, 2008 10:11 p.m. alex Reader
MrJoshua wrote:
Those learning disabled unicorns are always sucking the system dry.
Something tells me that's code for something. My intortube sense is tingling...
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Nov. 24, 2008 10:56 p.m. aircooled Dork
Will wrote:
..... Whenever you discourage use of any product while simultaneously depending on revenue generated from taxation of said item to fund Program X you're trying to reconcile two mutually exclusive goals....
While I absolutely agree with you on this the fact of the mater is that the US government is now (or about to be) so obscenely ridiculously absurdly asininely rock solidly broke and in debt I cannot image it would make the least bit of difference. See:
U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit
I was going to note that you could use the gas tax to subsidize the truck fuel, but as you noted, that would be absurd to think it would actually work out that way, and why bother when you can just "create" some more money.
Can everyone say "inflation"... I thought you could...
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Nov. 25, 2008 12:11 a.m. gamby UberDork
internetautomart wrote:
oil will fluctuate, but will never go below $3.5 a gallon for gasoline again.
...or not.
Oil just went up 5 bucks today, but that put it back up to $55/bbl IIRC.
I think OPEC got freaked out with us driving billions fewer miles, the auto industry suddenly putting fuel efficiency on the front burner and all this serious talk about alternative, renewable energy.
They brought out the crack pipe of cheap oil to combat it.
I'll be fine with it going back up to $3/gal just to keep us in check, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying saving $70/week between my wife and me from the time of this original post.
