There was a refreshing moment of truthful clarity last week from Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal during an interview on “CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS.” Prince Talal admitted that the Saudis want to lower oil prices to avoid moves toward other energy sources and away from oil. It is the same principle upon which drug dealers offer cut-rate narcotics to keep the addiction going for their customers.
Talal, the grandson of the founder of Saudi Arabia, wants oil down to $70 and $80 a barrel. Why? “We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives.”
Once again, Congress appears to be helping out by reducing support for renewable energy sources and continuing the mantra of “drill baby drill.” President Obama has joined the chorus and opened up pristine areas for oil development– a move that not only brings great environmental risks but guarantees to keep our addiction to oil going strong.
Source: CNN
if i recall correctly,the train murders began with Brian Mulroney
Here on SSI we have an electric conversion group
we have a sweet barn converted to a shop where we are showing existing conversions
and intend to bulk purchase conversion kits and ask the gov’ts for rebates or some kind of reward for converting
this is a form of recycling
very sensible but power is not the key
like,who needs to drive a hundred miles an hour anyways?
or be able to accelerate to a high speed within a few seconds?
BiL:
Fuel cells may be how this whole fuel thing ends up. I worked on the Titan II ICBM project two or three generations ago. The missile in the Damascus, Arkansas site sprung a leak of hydrazine fuel when a technician dropped a tool and scratched a small hole in the side as it fell. The thing dribbled hydrazine until it blew up a short while later. Three people were killed. The blast door covering the launch tube was designed to withstand anything but a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. It was found close to a mile from the site. That door weighed a million and a half pounds. That was the probably the biggest explosion in the state of Arkansas since there were active volcanoes in the Ozarks.
Pure hydrogen makes me nervous. Hydrazine fuel makes me even more nervous because that is truly nasty stuff.
OS,
Fueling safety is a big concern with hydrogen, but one that is not insurmountable. Either go back to the days of fueling attendants (in this case ones trained on how to safely use hydrogen) or opt for a universal fuel cell model where the cells can be safely swapped away from primary charging areas.
When I said “nuclear” I am referring to nuclear fission.
Roco, despite the old ads about a dinosaur “giving his all” to fill your gas tank, the truth of the matter is that much of the petroleum products are the result of sludge on the bottom of bodies of water. If you have ever waded in a Louisiana swamp looking for catfish, it may be a bit easier to believe oil can come from what sticks to your boots. Much of that is algae, and it is known that some algae and even plants like the Greasebush have high amounts of oil in them. That oil took millions of years to get there, but we are going to use it up in a couple of hundred years.
Bottom line is, we must have other sources of energy than depending on what we can extract from the ground. The answer is probably going to come from either nuclear or fusion sources, although the latter poses some very stiff problems to solve. It took the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb, and a consortium of several governments to create the Large Hadron Collider. The research funding must come from government, just as it did for the Manhattan Project and the NASA space program. Once the ground-breaking research is done, with the inevitable failures that will occur along the way, then private investors will be able to take the data and run with it. Just as the space program created the data set that enabled Burt Rutan to build his Spaceship One out in the desert.
Keep in mind that hydrogen is the perfect fuel and it only needs oxygen to burn, with a waste product of H2O. The difficulty of extracting power from breaking down water is that it takes more energy to break the molecular bond than the resulting power yield. You cannot violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. There is one more thing. If you fuel your car with pure hydrogen, I want to be no closer than the next county when you fill ‘er up.
Hydrocarbons are organic compounds made primarily of hydrogen and carbon so it’s a completely nutty idea that organic life – made primarily of carbon and water – decays into hydrocarbons as the oxygen from the water is stripped away by heat and pressure.
Scientific ignorance is charming when combined with wishful thinking.
Otteray Scribe:
I agree about Wikipedia, but most here seem to use it as a first pass.
People used to think it was nutty to think the earth revolved around the sun.
I think that theory less nutty than oil being from the decomposition of living organisms. I would imagine it is a combination of the 2 processes.
And by the way, Gold is not an original thinker in this area. I was reading similar theories by Fred Hoyle back in the 1950s when I was taking physics. I thought they were nutty then, too.
Titan is completely different from Earth. The composition of that moon formed differently than Earth and had a higher concentration of gases in its formation due to proximity to the gas giant planet, Jupiter. The earth is made up mostly of iron at its core. Even if abiogenisis were a fact instead of an unproven and unprovable theory, it would take hundreds of thousands of years to replace the hydrocarbons we humans use up in a year.
As far as coal, I do not give a rat’s ass if we have a thousand year supply of coal. I want coal mining to stop NOW. We are desecrating the mountains getting at coal and “clean coal” is one of those focus group tested catch phrases that has no meaning. There is no such thing as clean coal. Clean coal is an oxymoron. It is used as a marketing sales pitch, nothing more. Coal is dirty on the environment as a by product of mining, is dirty to burn and leaves some truly dirty residue in vast amounts as we saw in the coal ash spill in Roane County, Tennessee recently.
Finally, may I suggest you use scientific articles instead of Wikipedia when you look up stuff. Most teachers and professors disallow Wikipedia as a source document in student papers for a reason. Guess what that reason is? Because the data found in Wikipedia is of unknown reliability. Encyclopedia Britannica it ain’t.
I am in good company:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold
Pete:
I base my assumption on some facts and some speculation. There is a planetary moon, Titan, in our solar system which has lakes of liquid hydro-carbons. And apparently methane is one of the most common compounds in the universe. I don’t think it is that much of a stretch to believe that oil is not necessarily a product of dead plants and animals.
“Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.”
And there are about 600 years of coal reserves in the US, you can google it.
Apparently I do know something about what I post.
I am not saying I am right about the methane – oil link but it seems like a plausible theory.
Truly, it is like arguing with a ill-informed petulant child.
Pete, yeah I caught that too but did not have the energy to break the news to him that the earth’s core consists of really, really, really hot iron. I thought it was one of the dumbest comments I ever read and agree with you that his knowledge of science equals the square root of minus one.
Some scientists believe the entire earths core is comprised of hydro-carbons which percolate up through the mantle and are trapped in formations in the crust. In effect it becomes oil as it rises through temperature and pressures.
We have over 600 years of coal reserves currently
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bullshit
you know even less about petroleum and coal than you do about “free” markets
Roco, just curious. There is a vast difference between a government mandate and giving grant money to scientists doing original research that might make oil and coal as obsolete as whale oil for lamps. So why is it that you are pushing the oil cartel line? Are you a shill for big coal and big oil?
Are you saying government funding of research is a bad idea? Despite the fact that no single industry of existing consortium of businesses have the wherewithal to do this on the scale that is needed to keep us from becoming a third world country? That line of argument does not pass the smell test.
that is right one size doesnt fit all. but trying to introduce energy alternatives based on government mandate is a bad idea.
Oil, gas and coal are going to be around for a very long time, may as well use it until technology and markets are ready for a real alternative energy.
They are finding new deposits of hydro-carbons every day and taking advantage of new technologies to produce in wells thought to be used up. As the technology allows us to drill deeper we will find even more deposits of oil and natural gas.
OS,
But you know who loves one size fits all? The people who sell the product.
Gyges, I could not agree more. People tend to see and hear only what is around them, in their own culture. They forget the big wide world with different needs, interests and culture.
One size does NOT fit all.
OS,
I think a large part of the problem is that people seem to think that we have to go all in on one or another alternative. The American mode of discourse seems to be stuck in binary thinking, R or D, Communism or Free-market Capitalism, Christianity or Atheism, etc. That’s a big problem because we’re a big country, there’s no current tech that works everywhere.
That shale oil field is not the result of abiogenisis. It has been there all along and when it is gone it will be gone forever.
Then where is the new oil that should be appearing in Oklahoma and Texas?
Huge New Shale Oil Field Found in Texas
Monday, 30 May 2011 10:51 AM
By Dave Eberhart
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/HugeNewOilFieldFoundinTexas/2011/05/30/id/398201