Redstate

until about two or three years ago, bikes and foot power..

Say goodbye to 90% of the workforce...I mean, really, how many of us live within reasonable walking distance of work? I just started a new job three weeks ago and am thrilled that it is only 10 miles from home, down from 25 miles one way like my previous job. Can you imagine middle management office people walking the 40 miles one way from the suburbs to their businesses? What would probably happen is that for work people would end up carpooling or just biting the bullet and driving to work only, maybe a stop off at the store on the way home.

because more people will want to have a cot in their office.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

Well, from May to September. Unfortunately, school goes from September to May, so I'd have to figure out how to get my kids to school...

I see it now. The democrats are using this to eliminate school choice!

"After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood." -Fred Dalton Thompson

some Democrat will find a way to tax and regulate them out of existence.

John
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Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.

might make you long for gasoline. Just the tack if bought new for a true draught horse would buy you a pretty good car. Then there's the care and feeding, especially feeding, of something that wants to bite you or pin you to a stable wall every chance it gets.

In Vino Veritas

of destroying our romantic conceptions thereof. Still, it was a really cool tune.

"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.

You really don't want to see horses back as the main form of transportation. If they ever do make a comeback you will learn the real meaning of air pollution. Also expect heavy duty boots to make a resurgence as footgear for both sexes.

I think your lookin' down the wrong end of this problem..
Cows are the problem...And anything that gets rid of Birkenstocks is cool by me

"40 million American households with guns are generally happier
than those people in households that don't have guns."

IF fuel prices (Regular Unleaded or Diesel) actually do approach 10 dollars a gallon, you can bet that all those alternate oil sources (Oil shale, etc) will be fast tracked into production.

I wouldn't push the panic button just yet. We have a long way to go before we get to the 10 dollar mark.

Of course I bought a house in Northern Virginia in 2004 so my judgement is suspect. :-)

That's the beauty of state-owned oil companies. The government basically tells SinoPec and PetroChina to eat big losses on the crack spread. And it tells them to smile and say "Yes, Ma'am" as they do.

I say, let them reap the inevitable results. Maybe they can stretch it out while they have so much money but it can't last.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

...as long as the Fed keeps printing it. The fact that the world economy runs on dollars is masking huge capital flight out of the US.

If money creation should ever slow or stop, the Chinese will have much bigger problems than being able to buy oil.

.

"40 million American households with guns are generally happier
than those people in households that don't have guns."

commodity! My boat still has last year's gas in it, and very little of it; down where the fuel guage only gives you a "suggestion" as to how much gas you have. I'm taking out of the yard today and moving it the quarter mile or so to my slip. In other times I'd have just made straight for the fuel dock and filled it up; I've always tried to keep it full when it was sitting. Today, I'm just taking ten gallons of "road gas," a lot cheaper, if $3.89/gal is cheap, in cans down to it to make sure I don't run out of gas. I'll wait to fill it up for when I'm actually going somewhere. There's millions of decisions like that being made every day at these prices. If it goes much higher, the decisions will become much more fundamental.

In Vino Veritas

where the current price of Gasoline is close to $10/gal.

it makes such investments even less attractive.

The problem with investing in refineries is that the government could tighten regulatory requirements at any point in time in the future.

The energy market is already mostly deregulated with heavy subsidies. Taxes have no where to go.

we wouldn't be going on at least 25 years with no new oil refineries. And if it was mostly deregulated, we'd have oil wells in Anwar, as well as off the coasts of California, Florida (where Castro, I mean Raoul, is drilling anyway), and North Carolina. Government regulation is at the heart of the problem. And not taxing capital investment is NOT a subsidy.

How exactly is the world continuing to disprove the claim of peak oil?

-exits

I am surprised that plants haven't been popping up like mushrooms after a rain.

I saw it in this documentary:

The post WWI time?
The 1930's time?
The first 1970's time?
The post 1970's time?
Please be more specific?
There are only about 3 trillion bbl equivalents of oil shale and tar sands.

Hubbert, was the first one to talk about the world peak. I think that his first paper put it at 2000 and I'm almost certain that there has never been an earlier estimate.

-exits

back in the 1970s when at least one article per year was stating as accepted fact that by the year 2000 we would exhaust our proven oil reserves. No, we here at Red State have longer memories than that, even if we can't dig up an old magazine and JPG it to a post.

There have been scares about oil and energy supplies for many years- for decades, in fact:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47738
This is just a quick review. I am at work and very busy.

n/t

for the high price of foodstuffs--including corn. Certainly ethanol does not help, but it is not pushing the prices near as much as some believe.

That link you furnished gives no detail, other than a claim that electric motors can achieve 90+% efficiency.

First of all, this seems incredibly high for any mechanical system. How is efficiency measured? These are motors fit for transportation? What about the inefficiency of lugging around a ton or so of lead/acid batteries wherever you go? What about the mess that lead mining/smelting makes of the environment? What about energy loss in transmission lines between the power plant and the 110V outlet? What about, other than NASA, fuel cell applications have been few & far between?

The fact remains, no matter how many non-sequitur nanotechnology links you provide, that petroleum remains an extremely valuable and versatile transportation fuel, one that despite the huge potential reward, we have yet to come up with a suitable, scalable, proven alternative.

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. - Frank Zappa

Electric Motors can easily reach 90% efficiency in terms of converting electrical input power to mechanical energy. Matter of fact the preferred means of converting dc->ac and vice versa are still motor generator pairs. The high efficiency of electromagnetic devices is what makes this so.

Where he is fooled is a complete lack of knowledge of the overall power cycle. Whats in your car is not a motor but an engine. A motor uses power whereas an engine creates it.

So when you compare a motor to an engine you need to consider the complete cycle. In this case you have generation efficiencies at the power plant coupled with transmission line losses getting it into the car. Then there is loss due to internal resistance in the batteries. This occurs on charge and discharge.

You factor all that in and electric motors as a system are considerably less efficient than the claims of 90+ percent.

I've always wondered why our internal combustion engines don't alternate fuel cylinder - water cylinder - fuel cylinder - water cylinder. This would allow us to convert the engine heat to energy instead of wasting it.

Personally I love trains and have always wanted my own steam engine. The railroads still capture a quintessential piece of our culture a certain faith that we can make the future better

at producing drawbar horsepower, but are maintenance nightmares. If you haven't done so, go take a look at one of the "end of the Steam Era" locomotives like a SP Cab Forward, a UP Big Boy, or some of the last Norfolk and Western locos in a museum somewhere. All the plumbing and auxilliary appliances are just mind-boggling and many of them weren't good for more than a few hundred miles without pretty significant maintenance.

Even the biggest diesels today can't come near matching the sheer power of one of the big freight locomotives of the '30s and '40s, but the low maintenance and flexibility is what made for the diesel takeover. An F-3, the first mass use freighter in the '50s, may have only had 1500 or so horsepower, not enough for much of a train, but you could just hang three or four of them together, all controlled from one cab, and you had the power for serious freight hauling and reduced labor costs since if you used doubled steam engines or steam helper engines, each engine had to have an engineer and fireman.

But you can't deny the romance of flashing rods and the sound of a steam engine; I've driven lots of miles just to see one or have a chance to ride behind one.

In Vino Veritas

check out my blog to see some of my Railroad art. Check out the pictures sections.

http://impudent.blognation.us/blog

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

locomotives back in the early '70s. The White Pass and Yukon still operates a 3' guage 2-8-2 from Skagway to the top of the Pass using early 20th Century rolling stock. That's the only operating steam engine in this part of the World. I've seen lots of others in museums, especially logging locos, in the PNW and I can spend days in the CA railroad museum in Sacremento. Great pics! I have a print of a Southern Ps-4 in Cresent Limited markings, my nominee for most beautiful locomotive ever, over my workbench in the garage.

In Vino Veritas

generation efficiencies at the power plant coupled with transmission line losses getting it into the car

Yes, that's true. If you track the initial energy from its source to its use in an electric motor, the overall efficiency is less than >90%.

But then if you track gas/diesel the same way (shipping oil in ocean tankers, refining oil into gas/diesel, trucking fuel to gas stations etc.) then a <40% efficient gas engine drops even lower as well.

Any way you look at it, though, the electric motor is a substantially more efficient means of propelling a vehicle.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

While the cost of oil steadily rise, the costs of alternative energy from wind, solar, etc. steadily decreases. Thin film solar is set to drop to $1 per watt within a couple of years.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

We can also applaud the visionaries who will make fortunes.

This is a battle for our economic future, and it's just plain dangerous to assume "our" companies and visionaries are destined to win.

Report: Chinese solar cells swamping subsidized German market
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 28, 2008

China has overtaken Germany as the top world producer of solar cells, and other eastern countries are catching up fast. After years of German dominance in the sector, China last year produced solar cells with a capacity of 1,200 megawatt, against the 875 MW made in Germany.

China's share of the world market had leapt to 28% from 15% in 2006, according to data compiled by sector magazine Photon and cited by Der Spiegel.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Business/China-dominates-global-sock-marke...

China dominates global sock market

You probably have never heard of the factory town of Datang on coastal China, and there's no reason you should have. But the town fills your sock drawer. Datang produces an astounding 9 billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it socks city, and its annual sock festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world.

Most people wear socks.

Our economy needs energy to survive, and cheap energy to thrive. That's why we're "allies" with Saudi Arabia even though they are the #1 financial supporter of terrorism and still have not convicted a single Saudi citizen on those grounds seven years after 9/11.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

the Iranians did it. Then retaliate, two birds/one stone.

/only half joking

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

micro generators that can generate electric current from random movements like the flapping of a flag.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Its a set of straps you put on a small child. The child's restless movement generates power

a womans mouth

Oh no you did NOT go there!

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

n/t

"40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns."

I think the main thing that everyone overlooks when people talk about fantasies like the 100MPG car is that even if the efficiency of the energy conversion can be improved, the basic energy requirements of pushing the vehicle around do not.

No matter what happens, if you want to have a car that's a personal form of transportation -- regardless of the powerplant -- you're going to have to move a certain, nonnegligible amount of mass around and you're going to have to push it up and down hills, and you're going to have to build it sturdy enough to protect the occupants, and it's going to have to have an electrical system with a stereo, and it's going to have to have air conditioning. And if you want it to be able to accelerate at a reasonable clip with 4 people and their luggage+dog and have tires that will allow it to drive safely, there's only so much poop in cat, so to speak.

I did a brief, back of the envelope calculation a while back and realized that a 100MPG car meeting the requirements above is probably a practical impossibility even if you could raise the energy conversion efficiency of the engine to 90%.

You simply do not have a free lunch when it comes to pushing a ton of mass around, up and down the hills and mountains and across the fruited plains of this great big country. And unless you want to strap your 8-month old baby into a wad of tinfoil with no air conditioning and drive at 20 miles per hour with no lights and no radio, there's not much you can do to change that.

Even the best motorcycles don't get more than about 70 miles per gallon and I'm talking about the most frugal motorcycles in the world here, not the Suzuki Hayabusas of the world.

Why? Air resistance, mostly. You'd be surprised how strong the wind is at 50 or 60 or 70 miles per hour, but not if you've ever stood in gale-force winds or been through Florida during hurricane season. There's no easy way around it. In fact, there is no way around it at all, as long as you want to breathe. You can make the vehicle more aerodynamic but only to the theoretical "teardrop" optimum and then it's not feasible to manufacture that shape for all kinds of purposes people need.

We've all been here before. All of this work was done in the 1970s. The rules have not changed, and neither have the laws of physics.

They can't be used on the express way, but for short distances they might get their day in the sun.

I am so glad that I telecommute.

For about six months now I've been planning to buy a KLR-650 with some decent luggage for going back and forth between the house and the office and on short hops for groceries, running errands, etc. I will need the dual-purpose bike because I'll be riding it on a mix of improved and unimproved roads. It consistently gets 50-60 MPG and it's powerful and safe enough to be used on the highway for short to medium distances. So I'll be able to fill the tank (about 6 gallons) once a week or so and have 300-350 miles of travel, which will be plenty, as long as the weather isn't totally dreadful.

I don't mind wearing rain gear.

But in the end there is no free lunch. The answer is more energy, not less, and we'll get it when people get fed up enough.

All of this current crisis is, sadly, not about brains and answers but about *pain*. Politically, the only time the people are going to move on this is when they have experienced enough pain to force the hands of politicians and make expanding America's energy resources, production and alternatives a winning issue -- without raising prices, by lowering them.

It's just as simple as that. Really. All the rest is mental masturbation, because all the theoretical work has been done, decades ago.

With a KLR and some decent panniers you can transport more than 100 pounds of stuff around up to about 3-4 cubic feet without being unsafe. That's plenty for most errands. And the bike will go almost anywhere, on all kinds of roads, in all but the worst weather, which is important where I live. So for short trips and things like that I'll be able to stay within gas budget even if gas prices double, and get close to it even if they triple. The KLR itself costs less than $6,000, but of course you have to know how to ride and not hurt yourself...

That's because I know it's true. There are no politicians in our government (aside from a small minority handful) who are smart enough and courageous enough to do the right thing. All of the rest are sycophants who are waiting for people to be up in arms so that they can come riding to the rescue and be reelected. Nobody wants to be on the bad side of the energy problem, and the public is just ineducable.

The only thing that works in America on issues like this is the proverbial World of Hurt: the rest of the time it's just talk, talk, talk.

With him, you knew he wasn't merely plotting his next re-election. Of course, he ended up not being re-elected.

Everyone from Greenpeace to Gunga Din knows that the answer to the world's problems on this score is not less energy, it's more energy, in a variety of different forms that fit appropriate niches. We're a country paralyzed by a deep and severe political divide and a huge lack of trust an communication. In situations like that, the only thing that works to change people's minds are things like what Al Gore has tried to do (frighten the living daylights out of people so they move backward into the Stone Age) or through the kind of suffering and pain that comes when politicians have no balls and even fewer brains.

Oh well! Get ready to start seeing fry joints restaurants held up at gunpoint for their cooking oil. It's going to have to happen before any of the dolts in Congress start moving.

and when the third world starts to slip back into the abyss (they are more vulnerable than we are) the more intelligent do-gooders will realize that our energy policies are actually fatal to the less fortunate.

How to manufacture a crisis? That is the movie Gore should make. I hope his legacy is ends up being that of a con-man.

&nsbp;&nsbp; A con man whose interference (along with that of several very vocal and high-ranking cohorts) could well lead us into the midst of a World War, if many of the things which may come to pass take shape.&nsbp; I'd hate to be the poor (censored) who gets caught in the middle of it all...

"Straight Talk Express"? My bum feet! -- Me, on Senator McCain and other "moderates"

"Straight Talk Express"? My bum feet! -- Me, on Senator McCain and other "moderates"

I'm a lot like what Intel once called British technology journalists in a memo to their employees, preparing them for the onslaught: "Cynical in the Extreme."

I'm Cynical in the Extreme about what anyone in our government is going to do about the "energy problem" because I can reasonably guess several things already:

1) Whatever they do it is going to be a compromise and a booooooooondoggle of enormous proportions.

2) Whenever the United States considers something as important as long-term energy policy, it is done with the expectation that any changes will have geopolitical consequences lasting a century or more. Therefore everyone is going to take as long as possible in making a decision, to make sure their bases are completely covered, because there are going to be problems no matter what anyone eventually does.

3) Furthermore, the Congress will *only* act on this issue once it rises to the level of their consciousness in as broad-based and compelling manner as possible.

4) "Rising to their level of Consciousness" means, for the purposes of this post, that nothing anyone in the blogosphere says (or next to nothing) is going to make any difference whatsoever. The people who are going to decide when it's time the Congress started to do something sit on the editorial boards of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and are also the directors of the White House Correspondent's Association and include assorted members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Those are the people who really decide when there is a "crisis" that needs to be acted upon in this country. And not one instant before they do will anything be done.

For example, if Rob Lowe, Steven Spielberg, and Babs Streisand all got together for a weekend of love and decided that it was time Americans had real relief at the gas pump, it would be *done* within 3 months -- particularly in this election cycle. Heck, if Jeremiah Wright got up and said that it was time his flock had relief at the pump, Barack Obama would put it right at the top of his agenda, and it would move.

But we here in the blogosphere can talk about this issue until we're blue in the face and as far as I can tell, it will register somewhere between 0 and the complex plane on the visibility richter scale.

The fact that this sounds a little hyperbolic and incomplete doesn't make it untrue. You know that it's true. Only when 200 million Americans are screaming for action and supported by a select group of celebrities and journalists will anything be done by politicians. And then it will probably be a monstrosity anyway.

Not the greatest source in the world but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell:

The tank-to-wheel efficiency of a fuel cell vehicle is about 45% at low loads and shows average values of about 36% when a driving cycle like the NEDC (New European Driving Cycle) is used as test procedure. The comparable NEDC value for a Diesel vehicle is 22%.

90% is probably the efficiency of the motor, not the fuel cell-motor system.

That's a good point, and it's why I believe battery technology will ultimately win out. Lithium-Ion batteries are cutting-edge consumer products, and they make it possible to build a $100,000 all electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster - today.

But the financial incentive to go beyond Li-ion is already driven by mobile computing/consumer electronics - electric cars are beneficiaries by happenstance. The next twenty years, with the weight of plug-in hybrids from Toyota, et al., will stimulate the creation of revolutionary batteries with graphene components.

As I mentioned before in other threads, the entire electric grid is destined to become highly dispersed and networked, like the internet. Eventually most buildings (including residences) will generate some portion of their electric needs on site, either by (or some combination of) solar, wind, water, etc. Power companies and traditional power plants will only need to generate the remainder of the energy needs, so they will morph into "routers" and "hubs" so that individual consumers can trade energy between one another.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

I've been going to Oak Ridge TN off & on for a few weeks now through work, & the story of what was done there is breathtaking! As far along as we already are in alt-fuel research & development, I believe such a project would definitely work. It would take a kick in the pants to do it, & I'd hope McCain would take part in the kicking. I have absolutely no faith in either H or O to do anything productive in this regard...

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle