Comments on: Will Alternative Energy Run Out Of Gas?

Clean-Energy Field Getting Bitten By Credit Crisis, But Long-Term Trends Point In Its Favor

[egresor]

If you go back and look you will find that some have tried to get bills passed to develop our own fuel supplies but the dems. and liberals won''''t let it happen. They do not care one dime about how much you have to pay for fuel as long as they are able to keep the far left groups happy they get their vote and that is all the dems care about.

Posted by robert2237

sorry bit i think you mean the preserve in alaska?

do you actually think it will reduce prices one ota? or even reduce our dependence on imported? statistics show that even if they get access to anwar it will contribute very little to supplies. very little.

people have this fanatasy that if they do get access our dependence will be reduced aharply and that just isn''t true. the real percentage is very small. i don''t have the stats available now but i think it''s in the small single digits.

and if you think that''ll reduce prices --- no it will only be more oil.

[egresor]

Grain can be a stop gap moving on to other types such as switch grass. Pickens plan is the best out there for the short term and improve on it. But it will work. wind and soliar is not a fessible in a large scale. It is great for a small farm house but to run the whole country not usable at all.

Posted by robert2237

hmmm....yes and no

wind is abundant and it could be implimented very rapidly compared to bio fuels. costs much less and create more jobs too. far better than bio as a stop gap. ther are vast areas in the west with winds to generate much more than you may think. ''

natural gas is abundant and if exploited properly would greatly reduce dependence on imported oil.

bio fuels aren''t practical for food reasons and we subsidizing them tremendously....so we only hurt ourselves choosing it as a stop-gap.

we need oil, but held captive by the oil companies. it''s a monopoly (competitive) and either you pay or you don''t get.

[billpl-2009]

it''s still a lot cheaper than spending $10 Billion a month killing Arabs

[loudpipes3]

----Havent heard anything from Pickens lately.

------Hmmmmmm.---------

[downtowner97]

The oil industry has spent a great deal of time and money on the psychology of selling oil. They have convinced most of the people in our country that we NEED the convenience of using the same form of energy this year we did 20 years ago. They added in a little heavily subsidized ethanol to make us feel like we''re each pioneers in the field of alternative energy. The truth is, regardless of whether your a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or just don''t care, we need to use another form of energy that we can make here in America.

Much of the oil we use comes from America, but even that doesn''t create jobs and a sustainable future. A few people make all the money, and we the people get to clean up the mess.

[sloppymonkey]

Thank you JD. But where conservation can be attained at an individual level, efficiency must be tackled at the corporate level. Investments in not only alternative energy but education in science and technology could take us so much further. Stacking solar and wind or the 100mp unit family car are only the beginning. Don''t let this fuel price reduction fool anyone into believing we do not need alternatives and remember that wise use can take us much further per unit mile.

[andor3]

even "alternative" is a misleading label; it makes it seem like fossil fuels are the "main" choice, and everything else is different. Really oil, gas and coal come from the sun--they are just dirty and inefficient ways to use solar power.

[robert2237]

Jim1348 - If you go back and look you will find that some have tried to get bills passed to develop our own fuel supplies but the dems. and liberals won''t let it happen. They do not care one dime about how much you have to pay for fuel as long as they are able to keep the far left groups happy they get their vote and that is all the dems care about.

[andor3]

judging everything only in terms of dollars and profit is what got us INTO this mess. Finance is only meaningful in a very tiny sliver of real life.

Being rich does not mean you are smart, happy, wise, popular, healthy, loved, nourished, or lead a meaningful life. It only means you are entitled to many pieces of green paper or shiny metals, both of which are useless to humans except as game pieces.

[robert2237]

egresor- I do have to disagree with you on biofuel. Grain can be a stop gap moving on to other types such as switch grass. Pickens plan is the best out there for the short term and improve on it. But it will work. wind and soliar is not a fessible in a large scale. It is great for a small farm house but to run the whole country not usable at all.

[robert2237]

It would use almost as much fuel to charge your battery as you do in you gas engine. I think as a lot of people think that we need to attach this in more than one or two fronts. Drill for the short term we may never pump a drop of oil but if we are drilling OPEC will be so worried they will keep the price down. They know that America has more oil than they do we just don''t drill for it. NOw some will say that is not true but if you do a little research you will find there are vast amounts in the NOrth in midwest and offshore. Some will require new technology to get it due to is depth. Next we need to star nuclar plants as fast as possible. If you are worried about the enviorment then you have only one choice and that is nuclar, there is no question about that. Next wind will allow for a minor amount of our needs as will solar. LNG should be a major source for us. T. Boon Pickens has stated this on a number of times. We could get that up and running very fast and save a lot on fuel.

[jd2408]

Posted by Sloppymonkey at 01:00 AM : Oct 25, 2008
==========================================

I agree with you. Many of us are doing everything we can to save energy and cut cost. You are so right that we all should be doing this regardless of the type of energy we use. I just get really fed up with the games played by the energy companies and our Government. They play us all like puppets on a string. We are getting smarter and some day they will find out just how smart we are when they are voted out or hear from millions of us who are sick and tired of their games in the quality of our lives and our environment. They have made a mess of our economy with corporte greed and their buddies in Congress that I think enough of us have had enough of them. We will see what the future brings.

[downtowner97]

I run my car on biodiesel, and have for 3 years. My car is a V-10 twin turbo VW Touareg, and it''s faster than a Porsche Cayenne. It doesn''t smoke, it isn''t noisy, and it doesn''t stink. You don''t have to anything to your deisel car or truck to run on biodiesel. Combine biodiesel cars, public transportation, living near your work, and electric cars running off distant wind power for short drives, and we can get off foreign AND domestic oil.

[sloppymonkey]

JD, sure oil prices are controlled. By OPEC. America is not an OPEC producing nation. We can run for maybe hundreds of years on coal but I take you to my first point of efficiency again, Even if cars are going to run on coal generated electricity efficiency is important. Losses in electrical transmission will deplete this resource at an unnecessary rate as well. Also even "Clean Coal" has devastating effects on the environment in the form of strip mines and mountaintop removal. There is money in efficiency. Technology is jobs. It will simply not be made by energy companies. Further OPEC nations feed their children on our demand for oil. They too lobby against higher fuel economy. It is their primary business. Nuclear electricity may be an option but high level waste will always be both a health and security risk so I say again the fuel source does not matter. We should engineer every drop of efficiency we can out of every unit we use.

[downtowner97]

There is a great deal of disinformation about alternative energy from the people who have the most to lose: The oil and coal industries.

To learn more about alternative energy, watch "Fuel", a new documentary coming in November to a theater near you. Go to thefuelfilm.com

[erasmus81]

A few weeks back, on the news, they were going to be talking about the wind turbines and I missed it. They were saying something about the people that lived near them, getting really sick and getting severe headaches. Has anybody heard that, or know what that is about?

[jd2408]

Posted by Sloppymonkey at 12:15 AM : Oct 25, 2008
---------------------------------------
I feel oil supply and prices are being controlled. Domestic suppliers are not using most of the land contracted to them. Domestic supplies are being sold outside the country. It is not a shortage but a controlled method to gain the most amount of money for the supply and supported by our Government. If we developed clean coal technology we have enough coal in this country to last hundreds of years.
William 8891 is right on that we have the means and ability for alternative fuels but are not using them. It is all about greed and our pay to play Congress. It is too funny how they blame all this on our so called "addiction" to oil. Ask our President and VP what this addiction really feels like. I just bet they know first hand along with many others in Congress.

[jd2408]

Wind power and solar energy are not practical alternatives. We can become energy independent without polluting the air, but the only way we can do that is by switching to nuclear and hydroelectric power.
Posted by tiktin1 at 12:14 AM : Oct 25, 2008
====================================================

tiktin1, Go ask the people in Chernobyl if they agree with you.

[sloppymonkey]

JD2408, Nationmaster informs me that the US is exporting 1,042,000 bbl/day of oil we import 13,150,000 bbl/day of oil and we produce 7,610,000 bbl/day . As a nation we consume 20,730,000 bbl/day while exporting a measly 5% of what we use. More than the next 5 countries combined including China, Japan, Germany, Russia and India according to the 2007 data. By doubling efficiency across the board we reduce demand by half. The fuel source does not matter though I prefer to keep corn as a food source for obvious reasons.

[tiktin]

Wind power and solar energy are not practical alternatives. We can become energy independent without polluting the air, but the only way we can do that is by switching to nuclear and hydroelectric power. I don''t know how you convince people who dont know what they are talking about that they do not know what they are talking about. That is really the heart of the problem. The politicians listen to those who make the most noise. Engineers and scientists, the ones they should be listening to, are uncomfortable talking to laymen (except for a few charlatans)and talk mainly to each other. So they are not heard. An energy policy based on fear, ignorance and superstition is not going to succeed.