Classical Gas
The rising price of gas is in the news. Naturally the administration cites it as a reason for why the public should support its policies. An exchange between a reporter and Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest makes the connection.
“We’ve never seen $5,” the reporter said. “We’ve seen $4. Now we’re going into the possibility of $5.” … “Well, as I pointed out, in the short term, what the president has pursued was a payroll tax cut that would put $40 in the pocket of every working — of the average American family every two weeks,” Earnest replied.
But the issue remains. It’s even forcing some government officials to consider delaying their gas tax proposals. “Rising gas prices and the need to tackle a tough state budget are creating mounting challenges for Gov. Martin O’Malley’s gas tax proposal”, said the Washington Post. Between the price at the pump and the need to keep government expenditures going, well what’s a politician to do? Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, D-Baltimore said he hadn’t seen the public this exercised since the recent flap about same-sex marriages.
The financial squeeze, according to Delegate Tawanna Gaines, D-Prince George’s, only underscores the need for more transportation projects.
“They understand that it’s needed,” Gaines said, referring to the state’s large backlog in transportation projects. “They get that, but they basically believe that you can’t get blood out of a turnip. It’s going to be a very, very tough sell.”
Like that high speed train project in California, which is expected to come on line in a few decades. “California voters in 2008 authorized the state to borrow $9.95 billion for a high-speed rail network, a fraction of the more than $40 billion the state expected it would need at the time. Since then, the project’s cost estimate has ballooned to $98 billion.” But it’s coming on, just you wait.
California High-Speed Rail Authority schedules show the first phase from San Francisco to Los Angeles opening in 2027, with a link to Anaheim in 2034.
The second phase would connect the network to San Diego County via the Inland Empire sometime after 2034, but there are few details on the timing of the second phase.
Stations would open in Murrieta and Escondido along Interstate 15, with a final station in downtown San Diego.
And in the meantime there’s the forty bucks every two weeks to keep people going. Even though the President claimed that nobody could do anything about gas prices, since those were set by the “markets”, Iran could apparently raise them, as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explained. He also said that high gas prices were a sure sign that the President’s economic recovery was working. “Economic growth in the United States and other countries is also having an impact on global oil prices, by increasing confidence.” Confidence is business that he and the President may know a lot about.
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The public does not like public transportation. That is why it is always an economic failure. How many elected officials take public transportation? We need a law that requires those promoting public transportation to use public transportation. That would end the sillyness and get into the solution, which is drill baby drill.
More to the point, the public would have to relocate to another town first, then they could use the train to ride to commute to work. Either that or their expecting a lot of weekend riders.
Why doesn’t Obama just announce he’s trading all the cows in the country for magic beans? Makes as much sense as anything else he’s said. We’re on the Island but it’s Gilligan, not the professor, that’s running things.
The voters in California were given fraudulent information prior to the ballot that approved HSR.
1-Grossly understating the costs of the HSR project
2-Grossly overstating the ridership HSR projections
It is boondoggle that was pushed by the unions and the warmists and it will never be built. You can fly from SF to LA for $ 49 in 1 hour why would anyone pay 4-5 x that to sit in a train for 7 hours?
HSR may make sense in extremely high density population areas — part of Japan and Taiwan -for example.
Companies like Cisco and HP use advance Telepresence technology for business conferences in instead of expensive and time wasting travel.
Cisco CEO Chambers now holds senior executive meetings via Telepresence–saving days of travel and $100000s.
He says that it increases executive productivity and enables better, faster decision making.
The energy business is about as politicized as a business can get. OPEC is a monopoly. Government regulates oil production intensively. It taxes petroleum products. It is susceptible to political uncertainty.
President Obama’s claim that the “price is set by the world market” surely cannot refer to the price at the pump. The price of gas varies country to country rather dramatically. And if supply were increased, as might have been the case with the Keystone pipeline, then prices would have decreased, if the law of supply and demand still operated.
But if supply and demand still operate, it does so through many political filters. Everybody is messing with energy. The Greens, OPEC, big oil, whoever. So if the price of oil is now politically unsustainable, that is a reflection of a political failure, since the system can’t work out a “deal” in which every fat cat gets his cut without the peasants revolting.
The peasants are now revolting, but the President needs to keep the Fat Cats meowing happily. So what he’s going to do, going by his record, is apply smoke and mirrors. Payroll tax cuts, Strategic Petroleum reserve stuff, yada yada yada.
Victor, the voters in California are idiots. Regardless of whatever lies they were peddled, anyone with a functioning brain knows that high speed rail is always a boondoggle. They voted for a lot of other silly nonsense too. The place is terminal.
“Tell me Monsieur, why is the Army still maintaining a cavalry unit in this day and age.”
“Why we need the horse manure to grow the finest mushrooms for the officer’s mess!”
“Ah! I understand.”
I thought that was a bit silly when I first heard it, but now I wish we knew our shit half as well.
Sorry to jump in as a one note horse, but Mr. Ledeen’s (and National Review’s) grasp of economic reality seems a little…loose if you ask me.
http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/291797/peter-wood-obamas-supersizing-higher-ed-agenda-george-leef
“Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, has an insightful piece here on Obama’s mania for putting more and more young Americans through college.
Currently, the U.S. is 16th in that regard (although the numbers are rather fuzzy) and Obama declares that being 16th is not acceptable — we’ve got to be first! But Wood demonstrates that there is no connection between where a nation stands in that regard and its economic success; some countries with higher percentages than ours are economically feeble (e.g. Russia) and others with lower percentages than ours are strong (e.g. Switzerland).”
just a sampling of this week’s (in this case, ‘Right’ leaning) idiocy regarding Russia. Even in passing the condescension drips. In Ledeen’s case, you’ll notice he nearly starts off the list of America’s prospective enemies with Russia (Eurasia) and China (Eastasia). Oceania’s always been at war with Eur/Eastasia for these Beltway types…
http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2012/02/23/dear-general-dempsey/
Not all of the idiocy is saved for ‘the Left’. There’s plenty to spare among the neocons too scared/lazy to visit Moscow, unlike their old pal Henry Kissinger. And yes, I’m aware that even now with the West sinking into a Depression there are still more Russians becoming U.S. citizens than vice versa. Nonetheless perhaps Ledeen ought to see how many foreigners…including non-white Asian professional foreigners and even Israeli Jews (!)…feel quite cozy in Moscow these days. Seeing any Israelis who were born in the USSR or whose parents were voluntarily choosing to come back to the Evil Empire to work because they found it lucrative would naturally cause every neocons’ heads to explode from the very impossibility of it all.
I’m glad Wretchard mentioned the Maryland case…
Maryland swept the transportation fund last year in order to close a general fund budget gap. Now this year they’re crying poverty when it comes to transportation budget?!!? Keep in mind that the existing gas tax will be supplemented by a proposed gas sales tax, 6% of the total sale and not by gallon, which with $4 gallon will take the gas tax to the highest in the country.
Now a cynic may look at that gusher in revenue and last year’s sweeping of the transportation fund and wonder if the tax increase is just being used to backdoor support for the general fund. Part of politics is the ability to sequence and frame choices; for Maryland drivers stuck in traffic and a Metro system in bad repair the only solution is more tax money but the fact that transportation money was used last year to keep state (unionized) workers employed and happy is not relevant to the conversation. Just as when that new gas tax money is swept during some the next fiscal emergency, the promises made about those monies reserved to ease transportation woes will not be relevant.
Even if all that money will be used for transportation where will it be spent? The multi-billion dollar Purple Line for the Metro? Another ICC? To paraphrase an old quote about pirates, billions for sexy new construction and hardly a nickel for maintenance.
Let’s not even get started about the state’s massive offshore wind farm proposal which will be “carbon-free.”
Did I mention that Maryland is a deep-blue state inordinately populated with federal workers? I wonder at times if the state exists merely to benefit the economic development efforts of its neighbors.
Perhaps Maryland is like that old despair.com demotivational poster with the sinking ship titled “Mistakes: It May Be That Your Only Purpose in Life is To Serve as a Warning to Others.”
Even if the
– all riders ask is a little efficiency and courtesy, but get neither.
THANKS FOR POSTING THIS!
We’ve been all over this as well on Common Cents…
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
Here’s an interesting take:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/gasoline_prices_and_dollar_prices.html
It is not that the cost of gasoline is going up. It is that the value of the furiously printed dollar is going down.
Even the Spaniards are smart enough to rely on their existing nukes for power during this crisis. They have just extended the license for their oldest nuclear power plant. So why don’t the Germans and Japanese follow their lead? Could it be because they are so arrogant that they think they’re smarter than one of the PIIGS?
Or could it be that one of the PIIGS is wiser than they are because “necessity is the mother of invention”???
ONCE AGAIN WITH FEELING! THE QUICKEST WAY TO CUT GLOBAL OIL PRICES WOULD BE FOR GERMANY AND JAPAN TO FULLY UTILIIZE THE ENORMOUS CAPITAL INVESTMENT THEY MADE IN NUCLEAR POWER BY RESTARTING THE NUKES THEY SHUT DOWN IN THE PANIC AFTER FUKUSHIMA! ANOTHER EPIC EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI IS A SMALL ENOUGH RISK TO TAKE VERSUS THE CERTAINTY OF ECONOMIC DISATER IF THEY DON’T RE-START.
OR ARE THEY BEGGING FOR ANOTHER WPPSS? http://tinyurl.com/7l3ss29
Are they really that determined to resurrect the Ghost of Jimmy Carter & Three Mile Island as Barack Obama & Fukushima? Wasn’t once enough?
Gas prices in America are like bread in Egypt; a metric of legitimacy. That’s why high gas prices are such a political threat to the administration. What collapses a political elite is public awareness of an inability to provide or create an environment in which others can provide, the basics.
The current administration has invested heavily in smoke and mirrors. It has used the fiscal pump to kick the can down the road. By that means they hoped to humbug their way to re-election. Give the people hope and in the meantime, hand out change — nickels, dimes and quarters.
But now they’ve bankrupted the system, a concept they can’t really understand. So it will be interesting to see how they come up with the cheap gas.
For most, its still “where’s the stash? WHERE have they hidden the stash?” It’s like plate-licking. You know, when the gravy’s gone and people stick their head in the pot and slurp what’s left off the bottom, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe you can’t blame them. I remember reading somewhere about a fire department chief in a bankrupt town they found dead in his house, all power, water and I suppose, food gone. Maybe he died of actual starvation. Or maybe his heart gave out when he realized there would never ever be a check in the mail.
What choices do you have left when you’re long in the tooth, on medication and broke? Completely shafted, realizing too late that you worked and planned on the basis of some politician’s promise. So you do what you have to do, yell the louder. Write your congressman, another politician. And hope against hope they’ll find money for your pension. The one they promised.
Of course, reality is pitiless. It don’t give a damn, and neither, probably do the politicians.
“Maybe you can’t blame them. I remember reading somewhere about a fire department chief in a bankrupt town they found dead in his house, all power, water and I suppose, food gone. Maybe he died of actual starvation. Or maybe his heart gave out when he realized there would never ever be a check in the mail.”
It was Pritchard, Alabama I think.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/business/23prichard.html?pagewanted=all
P.S. re: those Lin threads several days back, I give BCers: Roman Gabriel (h/t Steve Sailer), a quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams of Filipino/Irish lineage who was arguably big enough and with a big enough arm to have played in the modern NFL. He went on to star alongside John Wayne in a 1969 Western, long before Tim Tebow signed with a Hollywood agent.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/02/which-half-asian-athlete-was-1960s-mvp.html
#13 wretchard
What choices do you have left when you’re long in the tooth, on medication and broke? Completely shafted, realizing too late that you worked and planned on the basis of some politician’s promise. So you do what you have to do, yell the louder.
Actually, what you posit is not the last set of options. And I assume that at least those at the top of the Political Class realize this and have escape plans in place. Because, after you yell louder, and nothing happens, then you start looking for those politicians who made those promises and their successors in office. The encounter when they are found may not be …. congenial.
Subotai Bahadur
These numbers change with time
1967 $35 233 gal/fuel 1oz/Au
2012 $35 8.75 gal/fuel .02oz/Au
2012 1oz/Au 425 gal/fuel $1600
Gold and fuel is probably is good place to keep-I hate to say it-your money.
The price of gas isn’t up, the value of the dollar is down. This is just the start.
After the Stimulus, QE1, QE2, and under the radar on going QE3, you can only keep printing/adding to the tally without anything to back it up for so long before it comes to bite you.
That’s why even with fracking and all the pumping, even cutting regulations won’t in the end make much difference. It’s not the oil. It’s the currency.
However, all that bad mortgage paper the banks and investment houses hold will float to their book value which is what the Fed and Treasury wanted in the end anyway. As for the rest of us, well, they’re going to recommend cake for dinner.
Most Americans spend more on their home utility bills than they do on gasoline. Aside from those who still use heating oil, these home utility bills are generally coming down due to the falling price of natural gas. And that is due to the wonderful advances in shale production that we can thank our President for.
No other price for any consumer good gets advertised as much as the price of a gallon of gasoline. Not trying to be insensitive, but all of the energy in Europe and Asia is priced to consumers there on an oil basis.
The politicians surely know
That taxing us to death’ll
Result in very angry guys
Who just want to pump ethyl
just the music and the album cover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhMuCiAe6vA
Generally oil and gold keep track of each other, but it’s been rough the last few years, and fracking is going to take energy prices down for the next century. still, oil companies may be better investments than cash, fracking is great but you can’t just print oil like you can dollars.
Obama ran on the theme of reducing the price of gas–
India and China refused to boycott Iranian oil
–in fact they are both- today– negotiating long term price contracts and dramatically increased oil imports from Iran.
General Petraeus said that the US attacking Iran is a stupid idea–the US Military agrees so does the UK, NATO and our ECHELON allies.
Time for intelligent direct diplomacy between US and Iran–as General Petraeus advises –and has done for some time to further fundamental American interests in the region.
Is the guy in the video Obama’s new ambassador to Wakistan or Governor Moonbeams Director of Energy Policy?
Buck O’Fama 3,
You insult Gilligan then you insult Bob Denver and if you insult Bob Denver then you insult Maynard G Krebs. Think about it, everything you needed to know about where America was going you could have learned from that show. You may want to reconsider the analogy.
There is no reason to believe the rumor that MSNBC is sitting on a story that the White House is getting support from the Garbanzo bean pickers and growers associations. Nor is there any truth to the rumor that the FDA will mandate that all meals served to replace confiscated parental lunches will include highly nutritious and energy packed bean salads. It is certainly not true that the administration has green lighted a loan to test how much renewable energy could be collected by installing total interactive learning throne pods for each student that could collect emitted natural gas while the attached active learner is being culturally enriched. However it is true that there is a working paper at the Department of Education estimating that such systems if universally installed would cut energy costs by enough to fund retirees pensions for three weeks a year. It is also true that Michelle was seen staring at her garden with a long rake in her hand.
The people running the show in the United States are still enthusiastically claiming happy days are coming back real soon now, thanks to them.
I recall reading similar nonsense from the people in charge when the first great depression began.
The problem, then and now, is that reality has the final say. And it’s really not a good sign that it diverges so far from what these fine folks are telling the masses. It just seems to me that when government officials get caught- on tape, no less- saying things this obviously stupid it’s a sign that we’re near the day when the bottom drops out and no one will be able to pretend nothing is really wrong.
Which won’t stop people from trying, of course. But if Herbert Hoover is remembered at all he is remembered as a failure.
Geithner and the legion of similar fools who have run the US right into the ground deserve the same fate.
At best.
It continues to amaze me that voters allow the public piggies (PP) to pursue turn-of-the-19th-century transportation solutions. When will the PP get it through their fat heads that NOBODY wants to be forced into public transport. People love their freedom and independence. And the technology for private autos is advancing faster than the technology for mas transit.
And, lest we forget, transportation fuels is only one part of our nation’s oil dependence.
Ultimately, Bozama’s foreign policy weakness coupled with his moronic economic notions have cause fuel prices to jump. He is worse than Carter.
Remember that blog post with ‘The Insider’ and Ulsterman who predicted that Obama’s reelection campaign would crank up the racial stuff big time?
http://www.youtube.com/user/thealexjoneschannel?ob=4#p/u/9/JnCAZPdjeh4
interview with local radio host ‘Doc Holliday’ on the glow in the dark sneakers ruckus at an Orlando mall
http://newsflavor.com/politics/us-politics/white-house-insider-the-obama-plan-part-two/
Sounds like this playbook is being executed in Orlando this weekend to a T.
4/4 EOT for me
Subotai is right. As things inevitably get worse, not everyone is going to neatly and quietly curl up and die in their homes.
Wretchard @ 14 and Mr X @ 15 – Don’t forget Mr Peak Oil himself, Matt Simmons, being found dead in his hot tub after we succeeded in “plugging the damn hole”!
http://tinyurl.com/d6vpfy
“The truth will out!” would be my warning to government poobahs everywhere! Just ask Admiral Thad Allen or Admiral James A. Watson how much they are looking forward to Monday’s opening of the Deepwater Horizon trial in federal court in New Orleans. Especially if they have read http://tinyurl.com/6oc85vc
Or even better yet my blog article http://tinyurl.com/y87uhco
I read this on the Sailing Scuttlebutt website
“CURMUDGEON’S OBSERVATION
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the entire universe is composed of only two basic substances: magic and lies. ”
I guess some of us are magicians!!!!
So now the attention whores of Al Qaeda in Iraq are threatening a war with the Shiites http://tinyurl.com/79mp83o
How dumb are they? Haven’t they figured out that he who wants the most attention becomes the next target for Operation Whack-An-Obnoxious-Terrorist?
“Pennies From Drone Heaven”? Look Mom, see how much cheaper it is to kill terrorists with robots???? And none of the “good guys” get killed so they can all look forward to a Hollywood acting career! We’ll pay for the whole thing out of the international box office! (Did I ever tell you my family was big in vaudeville? Check out where Edward Franklin Albee II was born!) http://tinyurl.com/6mckddc
Note that he was no Mama’s boy! He ran away to join the circus! And not just any circus, it was P.T. Barnum’s circus!
Eleven reasons to switch to Thorium based Nuclear Power generation
http://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-based-nuclear-power-generation/
Eleven more reasons to switch to Thorium as Nuclear fuel.
http://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-more-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-as-nuclear-fuel/
16. Russia has a Thorium program
The program is based at Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute and involves the US company Thorium Power and US government funding to design fuel for Russian VVER-1000 reactors.
17. China is starting up a Thorium program.
The People’s Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology, it was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual conference on Tuesday, January 25. A Chinese delegation led by Dr. Jiang travelled to Oak Ridge National Lab last fall to learn more about MSR technology and told lab leadership of their plans to develop a thorium-fueled MSR.
18. India has an active Thorium program.
(India’s Kakrapar-1 reactor is the world’s first reactor which uses thorium rather than depleted uranium to achieve power flattening across the reactor core. India, which has about 25% of the world’s thorium reserves, is developing a 300 MW prototype of a thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). The prototype is expected to be fully operational by 2011,)
19.Lawrence Livermore Laboratories is developing a small portable self-contained Thorium reactor capable of being carried on a low-bed trailer. A Democratic member of the United States House of Congress (Joseph Sestak) in 2010 added funding for research and development for a reactor that could use thorium as fuel and fit on a destroyer-sized ship.The first units are expected to arrive in 2015, be tamper resistant, passively failsafe and have a operative life of 30+ years.
Joule extracts fuels from bacteria
Premium content from New Mexico Business Weekly by Kevin Robinson-Avila, NMBW Senior Reporter
Date: Friday, January 13, 2012, 4:00am MST
It [Joule] projects selling fuel at $20 per barrel-equivalent of diesel, and 60 cents per gallon of ethanol, making them highly competitive.
The World Economic Forum chose Joule as one of its 2012 “Technology Pioneers.” The company also won silver recognition in the Wall Street Journal ’s Technology Innovation Awards in October.
The Massachusetts-based firm employs 100. It has a small pilot plant in Leander, Texas.
The Hobbs project [located in New Mexico] is its first commercial demonstration plant. It will have six solar bioreactor production modules to start. The first will come on line in June, and the rest by late 2012 [covering a total of 5 acres by the end of 2012]
Joule will add more production modules later, eventually scaling up to 1,200
http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/print-edition/2012/01/13/joule-extracts-fuels-from-bacteria.html?page=allacres.
“General Petraeus said that the US attacking Iran is a stupid idea”
General Petraeus is an average to fair operational commander but a lousy strategos. If he had any moral courage he would have refused the assignment in Afghanistan.
War between the USA and Iran has been ongoing since 1979, the Mad Dog Muallahs have just been careful to keep it just this side of obvious. They have used catspaws and surrogates well enough to allow cowards and those with sub-room temperature IQ’s to claim it’s all a misunderstanding.
It isn’t. Once they have sufficient nuclear weapons, they will make their intentions quite clear.
The best move on the part of the MDM (Mad Dog Mullahs) would be kick starting the Canary Island Fault;
http://www.lapalma-tsunami.com/tsunami.html
As a natural event, La Palma is on the order of getting mauled by a Polar bear and a Grizzly bear on the same day, as the commercial states. As a human created event, it is not only possible but likely. Considering they could destroy western civilization in an afternoon, What is not to like about it as a MDM?
Kill 75 million Americans and about twice that many Europeans, then send in the Red Crescent with relief. Naturally, there will need to be armed soldiers along to protect the relief workers from looters.
stoicheion @ 33 That’s why the game has changed so much! There is a positve feedback every time we Whack-A-Mullah!!! It feels so good, it could become addictive!!! Whack, whack, whack!!!!
So they really want to chill so that the size of the positive feedback gets reduced and the game becomes more boring. Then maybe the whackers will find more interesting whackees, such as Assad or Putin et al. They do NOT want to be the attention whore of the day!!
SO LET’S SAY THEY SUDDENLY DECIDE TO PLAY NICE, OPEN THEIR FACILITES TO INTERNATIONAL INSPECTION, RENOUNCE MAKING A BOMB FOR SIMPLY GENERATING ELECTRICITY, WHILE LEAVING THE ICKY DETAILS OF REPROCESSING TO SOMEONE ELSE. THEY BECOME BORING AND THE WORLD’S ATTENTION IS DRAWN ELSEWHERE! SIMPLE AS PIE!!!!
THERE’S PUTIN, LET’S GIVE HIM A WHACK!!!!
AIN’T IT FUN BEING THE WORLD’S ONLY SUPERPOWER????
Good grief, now Viktor is posting as “Mr. X.” He is so clever, that one.
Came across an interesting article on Watts Up http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/25/relevant-quotes-on-skepticism-plus-a-motto-for-our-times/#more-57504 on critical thinking. Many interesting quotes.
This is a good one – “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” –Bertrand Russell
There is a train that connects San Diego with Los Angeles right now. I have family in the South Bay which is well west and south of Los Angeles. The problem with the train is that it does not turn left to where I am going. It veers off into downtown where it is surrounded by urban blight, crime, and the smell of urine. Nobody I know would want to go downtown to pick me up. I take the Greyhound instead and it is cheaper and faster.
Who was the general who said, something to the effect;”the Iranians could close down the straight of Hormuz”? That is what has shaken the markets more than anything. Why can’t these guys just put a sock in it?
Is there anybody old enough to remember Jimmy Carter and the Washington Public Power Supply System aka Whooops? (Now “Energy Nortwest” after emerging from bankruptcy). Note at the time that was the largest bankruptcy of a municipal corporation in American history (something we are likely to see much more of very soon).
Right now both Japan and Germany have totally shut down their nuclear power plants, so the plants don’t generate any cash flow to pay the bondholders, so the huge investment funds are “mysteriously” going broke in a “black swan” event!
And Japan still needs electricity so they are gobbling up all the oil they can thereby driving up the price of oil AND THE PRICE OF GASOLINE GOING INTO YOUR TANK!
Remember how the housing crisis began with $4 per gallon gasoline?
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
RE-START THE JAPANESE AND GERMAN NUKES NOW!!!!!
Interesting that the ethanol subsidy is kaput.
Ethanol has about 2/3 the energy content of gasoline (30 MJ/Kg vs. 47 for gas) It aint helping the mileage or performance.
I cant find commodity pricing data for ethanol that’s current (that’s curious by itself), but I understand that it costs more to produce that gas (hence the need for the subsidy).
To my simple mind an easy way to lower the pump price is to make plain gas available generally. I hear that there a rare places you can get it but none in my area.
mp @ 38: Remember how the housing crisis began with $4 per gallon gasoline?
Quibbles.
More like two crisis happened at the same time and contributed to a third crisis, the plunging stock market. The housing bubble had been inflating for ten years and was gonna burst, and when it burst in combination with the derivatives market it turned out to break the market which made a downturn into a crisis, at just the same time that derivatives in oil futures had driven the spot price of oil to $150 and gasoline over $4, which if it stuck was going to depress the stock market 3,000 points all by itself, and so the stock market plunged like 5,000 points, which was probably too much but nobody wanted to catch a falling knife except for Ben Bernanke who figured it was his job, so he caught the falling knife with a catcher’s mitt padded with three trillion dollars, not even counting TARP (that worked out!) and a trillion in porkulus that Hairy Reed has now deemed a continuing annual event.
But you’re certainly right that soaring energy prices threaten wider downstream recession, and that Germany and Japan shutting down nukes could hardly be timed worse, so it’s hard to say which is cause and which is effect. This is how the US survives these days, we’re stupider than everyone except for everyone else. Well, it’s a living.
–
am @ 37: The problem with the train is that it does not turn left to where I am going.
The south bay is a bit of an isolated wart, getting from Torrance or Redondo or PV to anywhere, is a battle. You can catch the train out in Fullerton or Irvine, and for people who live or work out there, past downtown out in Burbank. And even downtown Union Station isn’t nearly as bad as you describe, just highly inaccessible from the south bay, requires you drive 20+ miles north in heavy traffic to catch a train south 120 miles. Bad math!
Did the old red cars ever run to the south bay? Might still be an old right of way could be reclaimed, like the purple Exposition line to west Los Angeles.
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/redcar_map.jpeg
Just a Y up to Dominguez then down along the coast, nothing out to the Redondo or Hermosa piers.
Come springtime, we put away the boots and shovels and GMC pickup, and take out summer clothes and garden tools and the little 32 mpg Hyundai.
Its amazingly anti-technology, the Democratic party, except when it comes to Silicon Valley opening their wallets to their campaign coffers. Commercial aircraft and trucking, and also privately owned automobiles are quite able,they will be serving California well into the 30th century. Innovation and imagination will always figure out a better way to get folks from point A to B. The problems start when the politicians, contractors and unions start up to the conga line that lead to the taxpayers dollars. High Speed anything is a sham.Does anyone remember stopping and smelling the roses along the way?
Charles…
ALL of the biofuels are Solyndras in the growing.
They founder upon their absolute need for carbon dioxide at very high partial pressures. ( Most researchers are using nearly pure carbon dioxide ‘climates’ inside their photosynthetic converters.
And then, the very nature of photosynthesis is brutally feeble. If success is ever achieved the output ought to be sold as animal feed/ fish food. ( Now that would be worthwhile. )
As for your Thorium Dreams ™ you’ve never explained to the Belmont Club how atomic science WRT hot Fluorine can be rewritten.
It is fulsomely apparent that you don’t comprehend the advantage current methods have: fuel pellets devastated by fission can be swapped out chronically. The abuse they absorb saves the containment system.
In your treasured cycle the fission reaction occurs right up to the edge of the first line of containment. In effect, the device is but one very big fuel pellet. After enough abuse the whole thing has to be tossed.
Stop posting these fantasies until someone, anyone, gets even one prototype to work — and to work economically.
BTW, I find it absolutely hilarious when posters project micro-nukes planted all over the landscape. What kind of politics is going to permit that? It answers itself!
Blert
I’m no fan of Obama or his crony capital solar investments.
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ALL of the biofuels are Solyndras in the growing.
You want to be careful about substituting narrative for data. The US federal government is not an investor in Joule but — a Russian sovereign wealth fund is.
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They founder upon their absolute need for carbon dioxide at very high partial pressures. ( Most researchers are using nearly pure carbon dioxide ‘climates’ inside their photosynthetic converters.
Actually this is a great selling point of these technologies. Guess why? Think about it for a second. Here’s another second. Yup you got it. there’s lots of coal powered electrical plants around, and lots of cement plants around that produced loads of pure carbon dioxide that the greens just hate.
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And then, the very nature of photosynthesis is brutally feeble. If success is ever achieved the output ought to be sold as animal feed/ fish food. ( Now that would be worthwhile. )
The reason that I post about Joule–rather than dozens of other companies– is that they have solved the big technological problem that has stymied algae biofuel development. The cost of pulling the biofuel out of the algae and then refining it into a usuable fuel makes the algae oil cost prohibitive. The unique thing about Joule is that bacteria doesn’t have to be harvested. The bacteria secretes the biofuel. Further the biofuel needs no further refinement before it can be put into the fuel tank.
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As for your Thorium Dreams ™ you’ve never explained to the Belmont Club how atomic science WRT hot Fluorine can be rewritten.
On this I feel for you. Its lousy to have history rewritten on you. Never the less, that’s just what’s happening.
Its being rewritten right now as we speak. If you’ll do a google search on thorium news–you’ll see new articles come out on it nearly every day. The rewriting of history has been going on for the last several years. I’ve posted several in depth videos on the subject but apparently you have not looked at them. Here, I’ll try again.
http://atomicinsights.com/2011/12/kirk-sorensen-why-didnt-molten-salt-thorium-reactors-succeed-the-first-time.html
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Stop posting these fantasies until someone, anyone, gets even one prototype to work — and to work economically.
Actually, that’s part of the sales pitch of liquid-fluoride thorium reactors. The US military produced a working prototype more than half a century ago at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee. (I’ve also posted links to this several times but apparently you have not bothered to click on the links.) A lot of this history can now be found in wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
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BTW, I find it absolutely hilarious when posters project micro-nukes planted all over the landscape. What kind of politics is going to permit that? It answers itself!
The politics on this is already changing.
The obama administration has already the approved the first big nuke plant since the three mile island accident 30 years ago. The Germans are already backing off their plan to shut down their nuke plants.
Guess why.
21. Walt
Burma Shave
Regarding Germany shutting down their nukes…
There was an article recently that said Germany’s huge installed base of solar panels is only producing electricity at about 5% of available capacity because of persistently overcast skies. Well, tie up my feet and call me “dogie”! The sun almost NEVER shines in northern Europe! Just what were they thinking when they instituted and maintained the insane policy of incentivizing solar?
Germany is a thousands-of-years-old society with a rich history and culture. Yet, somehow, they keep giving in to collective national insanity.
In an MSR you reprocess the fuel as part of normal operation, recovering useful isotopes in the process. Fertile and fissionable isotopes stay in the fuel flow, so they aren’t wasted. The thorium based fuel has advantages, but there are uranium based fuels too, they can be used to “burn” the spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium we have massive stocks of, eliminating the nuclear waste issue. MSR are safe not because of multiple layers of defenses, but because of the physics, the fuel is they primary coolant, and if the salt overheats, it melts a safety plug and dumps itself into a cooling off tank.
What our smartest-ever President and his clueless cronies don’t seem to know is that oil traders are dealing in a commodity, and therefore deal in “futures.”
If the virtual moratorium (in defiance of a federal court order) were lifted today, there would be a drop in oil prices today, and a drop in gasoline prices tomorrow or thereabouts. A decision to lift all irrational restricitons on domestic oil exploration and drill permits would then cause a significant — even dramatic — drop in oil and gasoline prices in fairly short order. The fact that it would take years for the new oil to come to market is not all that relevant to the commodities market.
It’s also laughable to hear Obama cite “market forces” considering his hostility to real-world economics.
Just like I figured. Fracking is pushing up recoverable reserves in old fields. Now Texas is talking about doubling oil ouput in five years.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/27/permian-basin-of-west-texas-seeing-oil-boom/
DALLAS — The Permian Basin of West Texas is experiencing an oil boom, leading some of the region’s top oilmen to predict that Texas oil production will double within five to seven years.
Oil drillers over the last eight years have found that the dense oil rock of the basin surrounding Midland and Odessa responds well to hydraulic fracturing, releasing lush yields. Total oil production last year in Texas averaged more than 1 million barrels per day for the first time since 2001.
“Right in the basin, we could get up to 2 million barrels a day,” Jim Henry of Midland-based Henry Resources told The Dallas Morning News for an article in its Sunday’s edition.
“I’ve been totally surprised by the amount of oil we’re finding out in the shale zones,” Scott Sheffield, chairman and chief executive of Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources Co., told the newspaper.
“We have 30 billion barrels of new oil discoveries,” said Tim Leach, chairman and CEO of Midland-based Concho Resources. “It can be hard to get your mind around that.
“I could paint a scenario for you where we are producing 3 million more barrels per day by 2016, which would almost get us to the point where we could eliminate 60 to 70 percent of our OPEC imports,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman told The News. “With that greater control over our own energy security, we could care less about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.”