A philosophy, see if you agree....

[drinkypoo]

Originally Posted by rsr911

The other thing that has me thinking is the Middle East. I have never thought about the idea of using up their oil as a strategic plan but it does make sense and it explains why we don't tap all of our own reserves. Interesting theory nonetheless, I wonder if it was intentional or accidental.

If you think it's accidental, I have a 150 MPG carburetor to sell you. There's money to be made. The powers that be profit from terrorism. Halliburton is making money hand over fist from our current warmaking. Practically everyone in the prior administration worked for them and/or had massive quantities of their stock. We make war in someone else's backyard and the MIC profits wildly. So does big oil. When oil goes up anywhere in the world it goes up everywhere. All interrelated. Remember, when two people get together to bone a third person out of something, it's a conspiracy.

[NH2112]

Originally Posted by standbypowerguy

The money we pay for oil gives Middle Eastern states the means to finance terrorist activities and weapons programs. How's that for a strategic mistake? If we pull out of the Middle Eastern oil market, don't worry, China and the third world will happily step in and use up their oil. Hopefully they will pay a much lower price due to the loss of American demand.

The demand is such that even if America stopped buying ALL Mideast oil, the price wouldn't drop appreciably for the new customers. And they'd still be using that oil money to fund terror and radical Islam. No, it's better to pump the Mideast dry, I think.

[lexxxel]

at some point we're all going to have to transition to some other form of energy, and not oil. Until then, we're stuck with it.

I think algae is very promising... altho big oil is definitely against that

And biodiesel from veg sources is great for the near term... altho try finding even B20 around here. You can't. I'd drive B100 all the time if I could buy it. (none of those "winter" wvo hassles, lol)

Alberta's tar sands production is up, and as oil prices go up it gets even more profitable. It's an environmental nightmare in northern alberta... but I'm sure production won't slow down at all over environment concerns... (or get any cleaner, which of course it could)

As for alternative energy like wind and solar... good luck. It's going to be a rough transition to anything other than cheap coal, cheap nat gas, or cheap oil. Ontario has had a "green energy plan" for 4 years, and has offered HUGE incentives for private solar and wind producers (paying 80 cents a kilowatt for solar, when panels are roof mounted). There's an election coming in the fall, and guess what's the BIG issue: the cost of green energy. Everyone talks about how it's unaffordable. Of course paying people 80 cents a kilowatt to produce electricity and the gov't selling the same power for 8 cents sounds crazy. But there's no capital costs to taxpayers for the infastructure, because it's all private capital. So you pay for green, or you pay for new nuclear. But people don't see it that way. They just want cheap, easy to understand stuff. And solar at 80 cents sounds like a giant rip. So a new government comes in and shuts down the green energy programs, and back we go to coal. (of course the election isn't till the fall... but this is where it's headed...)

It's going to be a hard transition from oil. And an expensive one.

[lexxxel]

Originally Posted by rsr911

This thread has me thinking. A used oil analysis sure would tell a lot and I might be willing to do that. I'd need before and after processing analysis and I'd have to run a special batch since most of my filtration is done with gasoline already mixed in.

if you do the analysis, post it. I'd love to see the results. Very interesting

[rsr911]

I'll have to wait a month or so for it to get warmer, this cold weather would be hell on my pumps and filters trying to do straight WMO. Once the temp stays about 50-60 for a week or two I should be good to go.

[drinkypoo]

Originally Posted by lexxxel

As for alternative energy like wind and solar... good luck. It's going to be a rough transition to anything other than cheap coal, cheap nat gas, or cheap oil.

Sure, but only because so many people will spend so much money making it rough. We have the technology to make it easy and painless. IP law is being used to prevent it from happening now, especially with BP sitting on the patent for efficiently making butanol, which is a direct gasoline replacement. Replacement diesel fuels are cool but replacement gasoline is what we really need to fuel the majority of existing autos.

It does look like home solar installations are gaining some momentum again, and the fancy new solar panels are finally starting to trickle out. I'm starting to see $2.50 a watt regularly when $4.50 used to be a good price. A more distributed power generation system is desirable anyway. Hopefully lots of multi-vehicle households will go EV.

[drcampbell]

Originally Posted by drinkypoo

... especially with BP sitting on the patent for efficiently making butanol ...

Citation, please? The patent number(s) would be best.

[drcampbell]

Originally Posted by lexxxel

... bioDiesel from veg sources is great for the near term ...

Things may be different up there in the Great White North, but it's not so great here in the States. America consumes about 100 billion gallons of middle-distillate fuels per year. (Diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, et al.) The best bioDiesel fuel yield from non-tropical crops is about 100 gallons per acre per year, so we'd need to plant a billion acres of farmland in bioDiesel fuel crops.

Trouble is, the U.S. only has 0.4 billion acres of arable farmland, and those acres are already allocated for food production.

[drinkypoo]

Originally Posted by drcampbell

Citation, please? The patent number(s) would be best.

I was just looking at it but basically they have a patent on splicing the genes for the ABE process into practically anything. Here's at least some related PR, I must have looked it up on my netbook because it doesn't seem to be in this machine's history.

DuPont and BP Disclose Advanced Biofuels Partnership Targeting Multiple Butanol Molecules

I'll see if I can find the article with the patent number next time I use the other machine

[drinkypoo]

BP-DuPont Biofuels JV Takes Gevo to Court | CleanTechies Blog - CleanTechies.com

I haven't read the complete patent but I did read the summary of claims and essentially nobody can make butanol except by the original process, which is an old patent. Further, the BP/DuPont patent should not have been granted on the grounds of obviousness, because it's ridiculously obvious that you would take the genes responsible for the process out of Clostridia and insert it into something else.

The patent is also overly broad because it is granted for basically every viable class of organism, listed one at a time. They didn't even have to file different patents for inserting it into the different species, and further, they didn't actually even have to insert it into them, they got a patent on the very idea. Which again, is the kind of thing which is "patently" (ha ha) obvious.

[Snotzalot]

Originally Posted by snakedoc

you may belive that "global warming" is true but here in AL we had 7 inches of snow in 3 hours plus 5 more inches for other snows. and it was 10f, and wild birds where freezing to death. if that is warming i dont want to see cooling.

Global warming has been changed to "Climate Change" as it should be. The change is supposed to be the damage we are doing to the climate raises the water in the atmosphere and we have more rain, floods, bigger snow storms with record snowfall. These last few years have seen some wicked snow storms in this country. Also look at all of the flooding around the world. Coincidence or just a bad few years of moisture?

[Snotzalot]

More on climate change: Extreme Winter Weather Linked to Climate Change | Common Dreams

[minitruckeratheart]

Originally Posted by drcampbell

Things may be different up there in the Great White North, but it's not so great here in the States. America consumes about 100 billion gallons of middle-distillate fuels per year. (Diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, et al.) The best bioDiesel fuel yield from non-tropical crops is about 100 gallons per acre per year, so we'd need to plant a billion acres of farmland in bioDiesel fuel crops.

Trouble is, the U.S. only has 0.4 billion acres of arable farmland, and those acres are already allocated for food production.

well that would be true, if we could only use farmable products to make biodiesel corn oil ect. seeing as how they make biodiesel out of just about any type of plant with an oil yield including alge which could be grown vertically and in the desert and in waste water and the only by products are clean air, clean water, and alge that can be used to make algenol which is used as methonal in the biodiesel production but also it can be for its oil. not only that but if we combined all waste oils that are normally thrown away and used alge and other plants we could knock a big dent out of foreign oil. its up to the people to do it and with the price of fuel still rising more and more are getting in to making w85 biodiesel straight wvo, and oils are getting harder and harder to find. i have been looking for someone to give me free wvo or wmo since i got my truck a week ago and just about every one sells it anymore and has a contract! but i will keep looking. i will find free oil!

[standbypowerguy]

Originally Posted by drinkypoo

It does look like home solar installations are gaining some momentum again, and the fancy new solar panels are finally starting to trickle out. I'm starting to see $2.50 a watt regularly when $4.50 used to be a good price.

Have you seen the micro-inverters? Instead of a bunch of solar panels in a series-parallel array feeding a single large inverter, there's one small inverter per panel, all operating in parallel on the AC side. They're much simpler to wire, and don't require fancy DC disconnects. The per-panel MPPT really helps maximize system output, too. I'm thinking real hard about installing a few kW worth on my workshop and house, both have roofs with good southern exposure. The pricing is still a little hard to justify in my neck of the woods, Pittsburgh gets more than its share of cloudy days. If I was in the desert southwest it'd be a no-brainer.

[lexxxel]

and if the government was paying you 80 cents kw/h it'd be a no-brainer

here in ontario, a roof mounted 5KW system will pay out about $4500 per year

nice

(while it lasts...hoping it survives the fall election)