Fossil-Fuels Question

[Boss Lady]

Well said, I am not for government dictating solutions, what I have been trying to say is, it has become apparent that we are in dire need of a statesman to provide a national focus that we can all support. Industry can do great things if allowed a healthy market place. If government picks or protects certain companies at the expense of others then we wind up with idiots in charge or worse, monopolies with government protection. This protection can be in fact, or through political protection, and even sometimes just plain old corruption. Right now we have business as usual, and the hybrid car craze is being backed by the power companies, and the car companies, since if this is successful in convincing the american people this is a good thing, Detroit gets tax breaks and tries to hang onto their market share, and the power companies wind up with increased power consumption, the oil companies still get to sell oil, which simply means more $$$$$ for them. Yea! Well this is not solving the problem and these guys have the most to lose.

Detriot makes crappy cars, and this is reflected by their declining market share. They can wind up with some form of protectionism tied to energy and pollution, and keep foreign companies out. Detroit already has many trade protections to help keep them in business, government taxes imported cars, and they still continue to lose in the market place. HEEEEELLLLLOOOO! Your customers will leave if your product or service sucks. Time to wake up and actually ask your customers what they want. What a novel concept, talking to customers.

Detroit has been receiving artificial advantage in the market place for 30 years. Time to change the leadership or go out of business. Same for the airline companies. Instead some congressman helps give them a boatload of money to keep doing the same things, and we are the ones getting screwed.

Level the playing field, give the same tax incentives and let the market decide. I am sick of this socialism, we bail out the airlines so people won't lose jobs (communism), well if there is enough business someone will step into the void (capitalism) producing jobs, and if the business is run well it will stay in business, if not it goes out of business, unless you have bribed your congressman with enough money, so he can give some of our money to keep you in business.

How about tax breaks for biomass plants that will make us independent from foreign oil.

If we spent the same amount of money on biomass production that we spent bailing out he airlines( about $30Billion or more) we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[Genesis]

How about remove all the tax breaks - and tax PENALTIES - open up the resources we have on federal land (and under federal water) to all - with the proviso that NO PRODUCT taken from them can be exported - period - and let the market decide?

Shale and oil off the shelf are economical now. Blue-green algae biomass conversion to diesel will be economical not far down the road. Ethanol is never going to be productive in this country, from corn or raw biomass - that's a fact - without subsidies. Remove them and the ethanol craze dies.

Ethanol from sugar cane works, but we can't grow much of it here. We CAN import it though from Brazil - if we stop taxing the bejeezus out of it..... Nonetheless that's a short-term solution as eventually they will need all the ethanol they have available....

[Boss Lady]

Karl, we must be realistic, you and I both know that the government will not do that of their own free will. Too many special interest groups with big money for them to ever change the tax codes. What would all those attorneys do that make their living because of the current tax code. Seeing how a majority of our Senate and congress are lawyers, they will protect their own. In a perfect world if we went to a value added tax for all goods sold, exempt "food" sold in grocery stores and taxes on residential power so the poor would get some assistance, and basically tax consumption, we would end the special treatment, and level the playing field. But this is another subject of its' own.

I still say we need a national energy plan that makes sense, once set into motion the politicians would have to explain their monkeying around to stifle it.

Where in America can we find a statesman to put this on the national stage?

We need to put some political pressure upon our national government for this to happen.

In the mean time they keep dangling meaningless solutions in front of joe six pack, so he thinks that something is being done. We are not going to conserve our way out this problem, and corn liquer is not the answer for america. Maximum utilization of conventional resources, like shale oil, and drilling, are mandatory. Build new refineries, power plants, and investment in a real alternative fuel source are required. Biomass for conversion to diesel is doable now. We will never be able to establish the utopia that some people want, but we can keep america strong and independent, while controlling the costs of energy.

The other fallacy about hybrid cars is the electrical grid cannot support it on any kind of scale. Power outages here in NC are already so bad I installed a whole house generator and it has logged over 80 hours this year alone.

Karl, you have properly diagnosed part of the problem that has us in this predicament, the NIMBYs are killing us.

I would encourage everyone to write the congressman and demand a national energy policy.

[Pascal]

diesel technology is here now and could drastically reduce the amount of oil burned on our roads every day. It doesnt' require any upgrade to our infrasturture except more diesel pumps...

Hybrids, hydrogen, electric maybe be better but isn't ready for prime time just yet.

there was an article on CNN.com last week, promoting Electric cars. It was a funny read atually, written by some Hollywood tree hugger who claimed her Toyota Rav 4 Electric (now discontinued) could run 100 miles on a charge and top 80pmh... she wished everybody in california had one. That's fine, until you realize that if every californian plugged in they electric car for a charge at night, there would be massive black outs!

of course, the same people who are promiting such idiotic things are the same that have been behind all the rgulations which limit drilling, building new power plants and stopped comanies like Ford, GM, BMW, Audi, Benz, etc... to import diesel cars they are already selling overseas...

[Boss Lady]

years ago I had 1981 VW rabbit diesel that got 51 MPG, the EPA would only allow the 4 speed cars to be imported here, while Europe got the 5 Speed cars, I think someone told me that the 5 speeds got 63 mpg. Imagine that, so I wonder what the excuse was to keep these from being sold here??? I don't see what all the hoopla is over hybrid cars today that cannot reach this level of fuel economy. Now that old Rabbit was not a performance monster but for basic transportation it was great. What would happen to our consumption if we had multiple cars to select from that got 50 mpg, instead of the handfull we have now. If an F350 Ford Duelly which weighs 6500 lbs can get 21 mpg with a diesel, this is not rocket science. It is also amazing how adding 20% biodiesel to diesel fuel cuts the evil pollution by 20%, so why are manufacturers having to retool diesels for 2007 to meet the 20% reduction when it can be achieved for all diesels by changing the fuel mix? Maybe Exxon doesn't want a 20% reduction in sales volume.

[Avenger]

Since this has been covered to death here (and very well I might add) I only have a couple of quick examples of the hipocracy of the bunny-huggers to add: One, a powerplant we were working with in the 1990's upgraded from a set of 1960's vintage Worthington diesels to new Cooper-Bessemers. Unfortunately, in the process of final set-up the Coopers ran afoul of their certification and the DEC would not allow them to operate. Here's the thing, even out of certification the Coopers were much cleaner engines than the 30 Y.O. Worthingtons. Now if protecting the environment was really the issue they would have written a waiver to run the newer engines until they were in spec (which they were eventually anyway) but apparently the bureaucrats couldn't do the math, so the Worthingtons kept on churning out pollutants for another year.

Two, the Europeans run more diesels than we can imagine. The big deal that keeps us out of them here is NOX. The EPA's new standards for '07 are extremely strict on NOX, and non-compliant states like NY will not even let you buy a new diesel car right now because of this. (Of course dealers will sell you "used" diesels with 7,500 miles on them as fast as they can put the mileage on a new one.) These are the same engines they use in Europe, and they have pretty strict environmental rules too, so what's the deal? Apparently nobody in the EPA can have an original thought so they copy all of their environmental regs from California. What's the big issue out there? Smog. So they're all hot to get rid of NOX. Thus we're all stuck with inefficient, pollution producers because some idiots decided to build L.A. in a basin. In the words of Ross Perot "It's just sad." Europe spends most of their time looking at CO2 which is the bunny hugger's holy grail everywhere else (Kyoto ring a bell, here?) and were stuck saving the East from the West's problems. Yeah, we're saving the planet, even if we have to destroy it to do it.

BTW, we had an incident recently of a good-samaritan getting electrocuted trying to get some tree-hugger out of a wrecked hybrid. The world's better off with less humans screwing it up right?

[GaryNW]

Well, aren't all of the folks who are knocking any increase in emission standards the same folks who were up in arms in the 70's when the regulations really began to tighten up? Let's recall the history. Detroit decided to address the issue with lawyers and the politicians they owned, Honda and other Japanese companies turned the issue over to their engineers. In the end, Honda gained substantial market share, and permanently displaced every us and german and every other contry as the premier engine builder in the world. And to this day they remain a philosopy-driven/ not profit driven company- a concept we Americans still just cannot grasp.

Then, in the 70's, I was among those who hated the tree-huggers for causing such a crop of really bad detroit iron. Oh, how we missed the raw fuel dripping out the tailpipe of our favorite pony car! This changed for me when I began a series of Mexican vacations in the 80's. Ever wait at a stop light when even one unregulated bus pulls away? It is hard to breath, the fumes are unbelievable by todays standards. Imagine what our totally gridlocked freeways of today would be like if they were filled with 60's pony cars. I assure you there would be many emergency shutdowns of driving due to severe and dangerous air pollution. And it would be every major city, not just in Ca. Guess the tree-huggers were right that time.
Gary

[Boss Lady]

Well I will have to admit that catalytic converters are pretty cool, and it seems that they make the exhaust clean enough that you can no longer commit suicide with a new car. But what about MBTE? What a great idea that was, now it seems that this cancer causing agent is like 100 times worse than lead, and is showing up in everything. How about a nice big class action lawsuit like "they" used against big tobacco. If California was so concerned over polution in the valley they would have mandated mass transit, banned any auto that got less than 50 MPG, instituted a even and odd driving day to make people car pool or use the mass transit and then everybody could sing cum by ya on the way to work. Instead they inflict their lunacy upon the rest of us. Kind of like Kerry blasting everyone for driving SUVs and telling us we need to conserve, while he was flying around in a private jet which burns 1200 gallons per hour. Or their constant meddling with everyone else's rivers blocking the building of clean hydro power over concern for some minnow, while the mighty Colorado is drained before it gets to the Pacific, so they can fill swimming pools, wash cars and water lawns. I wonder how many species they eliminated. What hypocrites they are. Moral bankruptcy will get you nowhere around here.

My 750LI bmw with 360 HP gets 24 MPG by the way, not bad for a full size car, which would out run a lot of pre-smog pony cars, Detroit never did figure out the modern fuel injection system, they had to buy the technology from the germans and the japs.

[Maynard Rupp]

That electric car thing makes me crazy. We have to look at the efficient use of our natural resources. By the time the electricity gets to the wheels, you have already had about a 40% loss from the generating plant. Natural gas has the least loss from the well to your furnace. Unfortunately it isn't an easy thing to package for the likes of an automobile. I wonder what the tree huggers would sugest we do with their spent lead acid batteries? If we would build up our sad refinery system, allow angle drilling in the great lakes and Pacific coast, open up the artic refuge for drilling,(yes, the stupid Caribou will still migrate), and stop this stupid ethanol craze, we might be able to tell the arab world where to put their oil.

[GaryNW]

Gee, Chris, you sure have-the-ass at Ca. For the record, I am not from there- only lived there for a few years during my USN and posidon/trident missle engineering days. but...
Ca did not decide to do MTBE- the oil industry did for business reasons. Primarily because it can be pumped thru pipelines while ethanal cannot. My guess is that the guy(s) who made the call were not from Ca.

Ca does not dictate how detroit designs autos for use in any other state. For business reasons, detroit reacts to the reality of the huge Ca market; for this reason, some Ca stds may show up in other states. These business decisions are not made in Ca.

Oddly enough, Ca is trying to make the case with the Fed EPA that oxygenated fuels really provide no emission benefits in modern engines. And, they initiated this action while the bleeding-heart liberal was still in office!

In my state (Wa) we used to say "do not Californicate Wa". The irony is that we feared not their environmentalists but their pro-development bias. You know- cut down all the forests, subdivide everything, a 7-11 on every corner. Yes, Ca was/is viewed by some as way too friendly to business- not too friendly to wacko tree-huggers.

I think your real issue is that Ca is a blue state, a "left coast" state. Fine, thats your right. My primary issue with your bias is this absurd idea that Ca is capable of dictating policy outside it's own borders. Haven't you noted the makeup of the presidency, both houses of congress and the supreme court lately?

BTW, I do love visitors from Ca when they come to Wa. Did you know that their orcas have the decency to feed on harbors seals? Our own orcas will only eat my salmon!

Gary