Everything was coated with ice this morning. Yech.
CNN had three energy-related stories this morning. One was about how high fuel prices are increasing the prices of Christmas trees and poinsettias. The other was a warning that gas prices are likely to rise soon. Though they are dropping now, oil prices are on the rise, and eventually, that will be reflected in gas prices. They think oil prices may spike this week, because of the storm heading toward the northeast.
The third story wasn't directly energy-related. It was about the federal government promising "mortgage assitance" to homeowners affected by the hurricanes. Zero percent interest, for as long as it takes to get back on their feet. It reminded me of the peak oil episode of Wall St. Week Reports. One of the guests on that show thought that suburban real estate would tank, while urban real estate would boom. He thought the government would be forced into offering a mortgage assistance program to suburbanites, because so many of them would owe more than their houses were worth.
Hello all. I am wondering what is the thought on a company called Black Light Power. They claim to have found a new primary energy source by chemically reducing the size of a hydrogen atom and releasing latent energy generating up to 1000 times the heat of coal at 10% of the current price. This story made it into the November 6th issue of Energybulletin.net. The company's website is simply blacklightpower.com and it is loaded with technical papers and great animations describing their process. The research is going on at MIT and they claim to be just months away from releasing their findings.
Could this really be the technonogy optimists have been toting this whole time?
No. They are spamming all over the Internet, trying to get investors. Meanwhile, their patents are being revoked, because they "do not conform to known laws of physics and chemistry."
I put this somewhere between perpetual motion and cold fusion. Maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't. If it does exist, it's probably not what they think it is, and even if it is, it doesn't mean it will ever have any practical value.
IF it is a fraud, then they do a great disservice to people who are doing legitimate research in the energy business.
A few quacks can give a bad name to a whole barrel full of legitimate energy inventors. It is incredibly difficult to get funding when you claim to have come up with a new way of generating energy because people are prejudiced into believing that ALL such claims are perpetual motion hoaxters.
I wouldn't worry. If there really is something to it, there won't be any need to beg for money from strangers on the Internet. Corporations, universities, and governments will be happy to fund the research.
I do think this hydrino thing has resurfaced again due to high energy costs, though, and I fully expect "free energy" scams to proliferate like bunnies as energy costs rise. Instead of getting spam telling us we've inherited a Nigerian dictator's fortune, we'll be getting spam telling us we can get in on the ground floor of a company that will make OPEC obsolete. :-P
What do you mean? We've already spent billions of dollars researching alternate energy. Everything from ethanol to wind power to solar to nuclear fusion to, yes, diesel from algae. The feds were even considering funding cold fusion research (though I think they eventually decided there was no there there).
Don't tell me you're one of those who believe there's a huge conspiracy keeping free energy from the masses for the enrichment of big oil/the auto industry/a secret government cabal?
I think the government, especially, will be spending more on R&D. It's what societies facing diminishing returns do (as long as they can afford it). The right wing is already talking about it. Government funding of an Apollo program for energy. A PR effort that would make energy researchers as glamorous as astronauts were in the '60s. That's the "free market" solution.
If his science policies outlast him, however, I will be forced to conclude that we are further along Tainter's curve than I thought.
A society feeling the pinch of diminishing returns begins to engage in "scanning behavior." People feel dissatisfied, and begin looking around for alternatives. Foreign customs may become the vogue, new religions may arise, ideological strife intensifies, governments invest more on R&D.
But once a society reaches the point where investments in further complexity no bring any return, scanning behavior ceases. The government instead enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency. And they can no longer afford R&D.
Also, a lot of research is pork barrel. Remember that big field of photovoltaic panels that Reagan was so proud of? It was just a bailout of the electronics/silicon companies that were going through a crunch. There was no R+D component at all. Later it was disassembled.
Reagan, the guy who took the solar panels off the White House roof, is not a good example. Many of our efforts to develop nuclear fission and other energy sources have been quite sincere, if so far rather fruitless.
I'm from the Big Island, in Hawaii. Energy is mostly from oil there - all imported, and expensive. Tourism is the biggest industry, so there's a lot of concern about the environment. An oil spill at Waikiki would be devastating.
So there has been a lot of interest in alternative energy. Especially on the Big Island, which is the only island with active volcanos. They were going to build geothermal plants there, and install an undersea cable to Honolulu, where most of the population lives.
They did actually build a geothermal plant, and are still using it today. It does work. However, it proved to be much more expensive to build and maintain than they had hoped, and also more polluting. They are not building any more, and are not planning to export electricity to other islands.
There's also an ocean thermal plant, off the Kona shore. It, too, works. They also have side industries - lobster farms and such - that make use of the cold, nutrient rich water brought up from the ocean depths. But it's still not really profitable, when you consider all the money the government has sunk into it. It might be different once we're well past peak, but clearly, it's not going to provide the kind of energy oil does.
Be careful. Nobody has tried to market abiotic methane before, so we don't have a good handle on what price it would sell for. And you'd need either a really big stargate, or really small tanks.
This is an old story. To put any credence to it you have to believe that 100 years of quantum mechanics and the hundreds of thousands of experiments that have confirmed it are completely wrong. Dr Mills (who has medical qualifications but no formal physics qualifications ) has been peddling his hydrino theory for decades and it has come to nothing so far.
He also has a number of very unorthodox medical theories.
They seem to have had a media blitz recently and some publications have bitten.
There is a sceptical look at hydrinos here.
I put it well below abiotic oil and cold fusion on the scale of feasibility.
After a very quick perusal of one paper on the site, I would not be optimistic about this concept. If this hydrino has an energy lower than the usual ground state of hydrogen, then why aren't we hip deep in hydrinoes? Also, the paper I looked seemed to imply a method for getting around the uncertainty principle. I believe such statements are invariably an indication of hokum.
I am glad you brought this topic up! By an amazing coincidence, I too am in search of investors for a sure-fire energy breakthrough! After careful study of the market, my company has decided to skip over the residential hot-water heater, commercial electricity generation and transport sectors and concentrate on weaponizing our technology. Imagine what will happen to share prices on the day we detonate the very first Vacuum Energy Weapon, aka Zero Point Bomb!
Please remit cash and money orders (no personal checks) to Zero Point Incorporated, POB 666, New Babylon, CT.
Reading my daily fare of Weather topics, I got to the 10AM discussion of Hurricane Elipson, which is still churning away in the mid Atlantic. Forecaster Aliva, who is one of the regular set of Hurricane Forecasters at the NHC site, said something very funny to me.
"I am not going ot predict what the storm will do"
He was going to leave it up to models and use them instead. To me it was rather funny, Just from reading them all the time I see that they are as confused about why these storms are there as most of us are, except they know something is up, just not what exactly. They see the writting on the walls, but are still trying to see through all the rain still falling what the heck was written there.
The storms that left rain here left snow up north I hear. Fun Fun, But it sure got cooler down here too. Most everyone heats with some form of Gas here in northern Alabama. I saw my neighbors chimneies just puffing out smoke, while I sit here and bundle up in the nippy air, wondering if I have another Blanket somewhere.
Got to go out and pay last months Utilities bill, Sewerage, water, NG, Electric, Trash pick-up and tax all rooled into one neat bill, for $81.00 Yay me!. Next months bill is going to be far higher.
Last night I was flipping through channels and happened upon an A&E show called MovieReal which was all about the making of 'Syriana.' I only caught the last 20 minutes, but it was excellent.
It was all about the politics behind the movie, with interviews with Robert Baer, Anonymous(the CIA agent whose name I forget), and Sonia Shah, the author of "Crude." These were mixed in with George Clooney and Matt Damon.
I was wondering if anybody else saw it and knows if the first 40 minutes was any good?
This is a request. A few threads back we talked about the Iranian Oil Burse, which aroused some debate. This coming March the 20th the Iranian Oil Burse will open (in case action is not taken by the Bush Adm), later in the year the Moscow Oil Exchange will also come on line. The information on this events is scarce, but it seems that both won't negotiate in dollars. What are the consequences?
Can you Oil Drummers get a bit more of info and post it to our discussion? Thanks.
The word is "bourse" and Google has many articles under: Iran Oil Bourse. Someone here posted that rather than using only dollars, the bourse is open to any currency you want, but this article says they are probably going to use Euros:
Most articles that that claim that the Iran Bourse is an issues of epic proportions are written by William Clark, who seems to be almost single handedly convincing some Oil Drum readers that this is the reason for the Iraq war and future conflict with Iran.
The article below, which I found by searching for "Iran Oil Bourse" as Donal suggested, sounds more balanced. Aljazeersa is hardly a mouthpiece of the US empire.
"It is unlikely, in the short term at least, that large numbers of energy traders will decamp and set up shop in Iran; a country which happens to be categorised as a member of the "axis of evil" by the president of the world's largest oil-importing country; the United States.
But over time, Iran could take some business away from the two incumbent energy exchanges, the International Petroleum Exchange and the New York Mercantile Exchange who both invoice sales solely in dollar....
....From an economic perspective, invoicing oil in euros would be logical for Iran as trade with the euro zone countries accounts for 45% of its total trade. More than a third of Iran's oil exports are destined for Europe, while oil exports to the United States are non existent."
The net gain to Iran is transaction fees on currency exchange. If this all works out for Iran, it could be a good idea that helps them to align the currency of their imports with the currency of their exports. This would come, to some degree, at the expense of the US. However to claim that this would be a cause for war is silly at best. Compared to the size of the US currency position or daily trade figures the Iran Bourse would be near insignificant.
Re: Apparent Slowing of Gulf Stream & Ocean Front Real Estate
One estimate I've seen is that the Gulf Stream delivers something like 27,000 times as much energy to the UK as all of their power plants turn out.
It would appear that a large part of this energy is in the process of being withdrawn from the UK and Europe (and the NE U.S.) and redirected toward the U.S. coast in the form of Cat 4/5 hurricanes. In turn, these Cat 4/5 hurricanes will continue to hammer our oil and gas infrastructure on and adjoining the Gulf of Mexico.
For both of these reasons--cold & hurricanes--I don't think that I would be buying ocean front real estate anywhere from Bangor, Maine to Brownsville, Texas, or for that matter real estate with 200 miles or so of the coast.
Our local public radio
station had an interview
with Stuart Saniford
today, and that inspired me
to look up this site.
As a person without a
science background, I
have been reading about
peak oil, particularly
Thom Hartmann. One of
the callers on this morning's
show asked how we can
"get to" the American
people, psychologically
, about this issue. I
think that it should be
considered "patriotic"
to drive 5 miles an hour
more slowly. Someone
can probably show how
much oil would be saved,
and how much $$ drivers would
save.
I have relatives in the United States who live in Boston. Whenever I visit them, it seems that the speed limit is either 55 or 65mph depending on the highway. Everybody actually drives between 70 and 85mph, with some people going 90mph. Very few people obey the highway speed limit.
If the police would simply enforce the speed limit as it is posted, the state could reap much revenue it is now forgoing in the form of fines, and Americans wouldn't be so dependant on Venezuelan oil.
"Everybody actually drives between 70 and 85mph, with some people going 90mph."
In NH and VT, those drivers are known as Massholes.:-)
I dislike speed limits. My favorite place to drive was Montana and Wyoming, where the speed limits were stratospheric, but the roads were straight and wide. It wasn't that I wanted to go all that fast, I just hate gang-driving. In the Eastern US, either everyone tags along behind some driver that is exceeding the limit in hopes he'll get the ticket instead of them, or they take turns pulling ahead of each other and slowing down. I think the NJ turnpike pays old people to drive Coupe de Villes slowly in the left lane.
Out west, I'd be driving say, 80, and I'd pass someone doing say, 70, and that was that. No games, no tag-along. Some guy passes me doing 90; same thing. See ya later, I'm already going as fast as I want. Of course, there's way too much traffic for that to work on narrow, winding highways like the Merritt or the Garden State.
Now that would be an interesting way to enforce conservation. If they did actually start handing out more tickets, people would slow down.
While 55 mph is still the sweet spot for cars, for minivans and SUVs, 40 mph is where fuel efficiency starts to drop off. That high, boxy shape isn't very aerodynamic. How about a 40 mph speed limit for SUVs, 55 mph for cars? >:->
Back in the 1970s, they did just that. I even recall troopers driving 55 in the right lane and bullhorning anyone that thought about passing. That was about the last time I saw a trooper obeying the speed limit. Now they just fly by.
I suspect that increasing gas prices will slow people down as it did this summer.
BTW, I followed a link on Odograph's site to a site that lists over eighty models of autos that get over 40 MPG, only five of which are sold here:
In a related vein, almost every EV I see on the web is either:
1- a prototype,
2- to be produced real soon,
3- a 25 MPH moped, three-wheeler, NEV, or
4- over $35,000 to purchase.
ANWR, peak oil and chemicals
(For more on these and other Capitol Hill stories, see today's Environment & Energy Daily.)
Budget conference to determine fate of Arctic drilling
House lawmakers return to Washington this week facing the daunting task of merging very different House and Senate spending cut bills -- a process that will decide whether struggling efforts to allow new Alaskan oil drilling through budget reconciliation will succeed.
House hearing to examine 'peak oil' theory
The concept of "peak oil" gets its first official congressional forum this week when the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee convenes Wednesday to conduct an informational hearing on the subject. Peak oil posits that declining worldwide oil production, and the higher costs of emerging sources of oil, cannot keep pace with rising global demand.
Collins floats regulatory bill for chemical sector
Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) late last week took the wraps off a long-anticipated draft bill that would implement a series of federal security regulations for chemical facilities, which some analysts have long identified as vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The far-reaching legislation would place unprecedented security requirements on the chemical sector, but it has already been criticized by environmental groups who say the bill falls short in at least one key area.
We talked about it here. My gut feel is it will turn out that Europe won't get much colder. It certainly hasn't so far - just the contrary.. My guess is the conveyor is slowing down because it's main driver is moving heat from the tropics to the poles. Since the poles are heating up faster than the tropics with global warming, the driver for the conveyor is dropping, and thus less heat is being transfererred. This will reduce the amount of temperature growth in Europe, but won't make it any colder. But it will be bad for SSTs off the US, and thus the hurricanes. Just my conjecture.
Right now I think the "switch" is in a moving but not totally moved to a stop position.
In your house it is the speed of light that moves the lights to the "on" position, but out there in the ocean it is a bit slower. So we could see a warming trend for a while, only to have the switch make it to the "off" position. Then bang, next season things change.
To say the least, few of us really know what is going on, we just know that the weather is doing something we have not seen before. Be that just a normal part of the cycles or something we did is still up in the air, we just don't have the data to know for sure, and might never.
I was reading about the 30% slowdown at real climate and they're still looking with question marks at that study. Temp's are setting records in europe and model results are contradicted by this much of a slowdown without temp efects.
Perhaps we should just look at existing data and say.... we don't know yet.... more study is needed.
So I asked myself, how much energy do we use to support the American lifestyle? I was inspired by Matthew Simmons, who said "a dime buys enough electricity to lift a pickup truck 500 feet in the air."
Factoid: Your daily share of all US energy could lift you (180 lb.) 285 miles in the air. Beyond the air, really -- the the international space station orbits at just 217 miles.
Details: Total US energy flow per person is about 900 megajoules daily. (http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php) After discarding a 62% heat loss, you are left with 342 megajoules for lifting.
The primary sources of American energy are: Oil 36%, Natural Gas 25%, Coal 24%, Nuclear 9%, Hydro 3%, Other (biomass, wind, solar) 4%.
To a posting on another topic I said in developed countries our continuous average personal energy use was around 2 kilowatts. If 900 MJ/day is correct that means our continuous average energy use is more like 10kw or 13hp. Remembering that a watt is a joule per second and there are nearly 90,000 seconds in a day it works out a tad more than 10,000. It shows that in each day we spend a lot of time connected to pipes, cables and fuel tanks.
The 900 megajoules is primary energy going into the powerplants, gasoline tanks, furnaces, etc. The 342 megajoules of useful energy (which I used in computing the "lift" energy) is the productive energy at the wheel, the electric outlets, etc.
So you could say our continuous average personal energy use is around 4 kilowatts or 5.4 hp.
CNN had three energy-related stories this morning. One was about how high fuel prices are increasing the prices of Christmas trees and poinsettias. The other was a warning that gas prices are likely to rise soon. Though they are dropping now, oil prices are on the rise, and eventually, that will be reflected in gas prices. They think oil prices may spike this week, because of the storm heading toward the northeast.
The third story wasn't directly energy-related. It was about the federal government promising "mortgage assitance" to homeowners affected by the hurricanes. Zero percent interest, for as long as it takes to get back on their feet. It reminded me of the peak oil episode of Wall St. Week Reports. One of the guests on that show thought that suburban real estate would tank, while urban real estate would boom. He thought the government would be forced into offering a mortgage assistance program to suburbanites, because so many of them would owe more than their houses were worth.
Could this really be the technonogy optimists have been toting this whole time?
I put this somewhere between perpetual motion and cold fusion. Maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't. If it does exist, it's probably not what they think it is, and even if it is, it doesn't mean it will ever have any practical value.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrino
A few quacks can give a bad name to a whole barrel full of legitimate energy inventors. It is incredibly difficult to get funding when you claim to have come up with a new way of generating energy because people are prejudiced into believing that ALL such claims are perpetual motion hoaxters.
http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/perpetual%20motion.html
I do think this hydrino thing has resurfaced again due to high energy costs, though, and I fully expect "free energy" scams to proliferate like bunnies as energy costs rise. Instead of getting spam telling us we've inherited a Nigerian dictator's fortune, we'll be getting spam telling us we can get in on the ground floor of a company that will make OPEC obsolete. :-P
A wishful fantasy.
Don't tell me you're one of those who believe there's a huge conspiracy keeping free energy from the masses for the enrichment of big oil/the auto industry/a secret government cabal?
There is however,
a limit to how
"happy" they are
to spend money
on R&D:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/databrf/sdb99357.htm
The "government", if there is such a singular creature is a political animal. It does as those at the top dogmatically dictate:
Read here on Bush & benzene fracturing:
http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_oil_and_gas.htm
More:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/sciencewars/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-20-bush-science_x.htm
If his science policies outlast him, however, I will be forced to conclude that we are further along Tainter's curve than I thought.
A society feeling the pinch of diminishing returns begins to engage in "scanning behavior." People feel dissatisfied, and begin looking around for alternatives. Foreign customs may become the vogue, new religions may arise, ideological strife intensifies, governments invest more on R&D.
But once a society reaches the point where investments in further complexity no bring any return, scanning behavior ceases. The government instead enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency. And they can no longer afford R&D.
I'm from the Big Island, in Hawaii. Energy is mostly from oil there - all imported, and expensive. Tourism is the biggest industry, so there's a lot of concern about the environment. An oil spill at Waikiki would be devastating.
So there has been a lot of interest in alternative energy. Especially on the Big Island, which is the only island with active volcanos. They were going to build geothermal plants there, and install an undersea cable to Honolulu, where most of the population lives.
They did actually build a geothermal plant, and are still using it today. It does work. However, it proved to be much more expensive to build and maintain than they had hoped, and also more polluting. They are not building any more, and are not planning to export electricity to other islands.
There's also an ocean thermal plant, off the Kona shore. It, too, works. They also have side industries - lobster farms and such - that make use of the cold, nutrient rich water brought up from the ocean depths. But it's still not really profitable, when you consider all the money the government has sunk into it. It might be different once we're well past peak, but clearly, it's not going to provide the kind of energy oil does.
He also has a number of very unorthodox medical theories.
They seem to have had a media blitz recently and some publications have bitten.
There is a sceptical look at hydrinos here.
I put it well below abiotic oil and cold fusion on the scale of feasibility.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/blacklight_power_and_hydrinos/
And here:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9951,baard,11218,1.html
Please remit cash and money orders (no personal checks) to Zero Point Incorporated, POB 666, New Babylon, CT.
If you could make biodiesel from snake oil, we wouldn't need to be here :-).
"I am not going ot predict what the storm will do"
He was going to leave it up to models and use them instead. To me it was rather funny, Just from reading them all the time I see that they are as confused about why these storms are there as most of us are, except they know something is up, just not what exactly. They see the writting on the walls, but are still trying to see through all the rain still falling what the heck was written there.
The storms that left rain here left snow up north I hear. Fun Fun, But it sure got cooler down here too. Most everyone heats with some form of Gas here in northern Alabama. I saw my neighbors chimneies just puffing out smoke, while I sit here and bundle up in the nippy air, wondering if I have another Blanket somewhere.
Got to go out and pay last months Utilities bill, Sewerage, water, NG, Electric, Trash pick-up and tax all rooled into one neat bill, for $81.00 Yay me!. Next months bill is going to be far higher.
It was all about the politics behind the movie, with interviews with Robert Baer, Anonymous(the CIA agent whose name I forget), and Sonia Shah, the author of "Crude." These were mixed in with George Clooney and Matt Damon.
I was wondering if anybody else saw it and knows if the first 40 minutes was any good?
This is a request. A few threads back we talked about the Iranian Oil Burse, which aroused some debate. This coming March the 20th the Iranian Oil Burse will open (in case action is not taken by the Bush Adm), later in the year the Moscow Oil Exchange will also come on line. The information on this events is scarce, but it seems that both won't negotiate in dollars. What are the consequences?
Can you Oil Drummers get a bit more of info and post it to our discussion? Thanks.
http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html
The article below, which I found by searching for "Iran Oil Bourse" as Donal suggested, sounds more balanced. Aljazeersa is hardly a mouthpiece of the US empire.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C1C0C9B3-DDA9-42E2-AE9C-B7CDBA08A6E9.htm
"It is unlikely, in the short term at least, that large numbers of energy traders will decamp and set up shop in Iran; a country which happens to be categorised as a member of the "axis of evil" by the president of the world's largest oil-importing country; the United States.
But over time, Iran could take some business away from the two incumbent energy exchanges, the International Petroleum Exchange and the New York Mercantile Exchange who both invoice sales solely in dollar....
....From an economic perspective, invoicing oil in euros would be logical for Iran as trade with the euro zone countries accounts for 45% of its total trade. More than a third of Iran's oil exports are destined for Europe, while oil exports to the United States are non existent."
The net gain to Iran is transaction fees on currency exchange. If this all works out for Iran, it could be a good idea that helps them to align the currency of their imports with the currency of their exports. This would come, to some degree, at the expense of the US. However to claim that this would be a cause for war is silly at best. Compared to the size of the US currency position or daily trade figures the Iran Bourse would be near insignificant.
One estimate I've seen is that the Gulf Stream delivers something like 27,000 times as much energy to the UK as all of their power plants turn out.
It would appear that a large part of this energy is in the process of being withdrawn from the UK and Europe (and the NE U.S.) and redirected toward the U.S. coast in the form of Cat 4/5 hurricanes. In turn, these Cat 4/5 hurricanes will continue to hammer our oil and gas infrastructure on and adjoining the Gulf of Mexico.
For both of these reasons--cold & hurricanes--I don't think that I would be buying ocean front real estate anywhere from Bangor, Maine to Brownsville, Texas, or for that matter real estate with 200 miles or so of the coast.
station had an interview
with Stuart Saniford
today, and that inspired me
to look up this site.
As a person without a
science background, I
have been reading about
peak oil, particularly
Thom Hartmann. One of
the callers on this morning's
show asked how we can
"get to" the American
people, psychologically
, about this issue. I
think that it should be
considered "patriotic"
to drive 5 miles an hour
more slowly. Someone
can probably show how
much oil would be saved,
and how much $$ drivers would
save.
If the police would simply enforce the speed limit as it is posted, the state could reap much revenue it is now forgoing in the form of fines, and Americans wouldn't be so dependant on Venezuelan oil.
In NH and VT, those drivers are known as Massholes.:-)
I dislike speed limits. My favorite place to drive was Montana and Wyoming, where the speed limits were stratospheric, but the roads were straight and wide. It wasn't that I wanted to go all that fast, I just hate gang-driving. In the Eastern US, either everyone tags along behind some driver that is exceeding the limit in hopes he'll get the ticket instead of them, or they take turns pulling ahead of each other and slowing down. I think the NJ turnpike pays old people to drive Coupe de Villes slowly in the left lane.
Out west, I'd be driving say, 80, and I'd pass someone doing say, 70, and that was that. No games, no tag-along. Some guy passes me doing 90; same thing. See ya later, I'm already going as fast as I want. Of course, there's way too much traffic for that to work on narrow, winding highways like the Merritt or the Garden State.
But that was when I thought gas was plentiful.
While 55 mph is still the sweet spot for cars, for minivans and SUVs, 40 mph is where fuel efficiency starts to drop off. That high, boxy shape isn't very aerodynamic. How about a 40 mph speed limit for SUVs, 55 mph for cars? >:->
I suspect that increasing gas prices will slow people down as it did this summer.
BTW, I followed a link on Odograph's site to a site that lists over eighty models of autos that get over 40 MPG, only five of which are sold here:
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&rssid=10313
http://www.40mpg.org/
In a related vein, almost every EV I see on the web is either:
1- a prototype,
2- to be produced real soon,
3- a 25 MPH moped, three-wheeler, NEV, or
4- over $35,000 to purchase.
ANWR, peak oil and chemicals
(For more on these and other Capitol Hill stories, see today's Environment & Energy Daily.)
Budget conference to determine fate of Arctic drilling
House lawmakers return to Washington this week facing the daunting task of merging very different House and Senate spending cut bills -- a process that will decide whether struggling efforts to allow new Alaskan oil drilling through budget reconciliation will succeed.
House hearing to examine 'peak oil' theory
The concept of "peak oil" gets its first official congressional forum this week when the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee convenes Wednesday to conduct an informational hearing on the subject. Peak oil posits that declining worldwide oil production, and the higher costs of emerging sources of oil, cannot keep pace with rising global demand.
Collins floats regulatory bill for chemical sector
Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) late last week took the wraps off a long-anticipated draft bill that would implement a series of federal security regulations for chemical facilities, which some analysts have long identified as vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The far-reaching legislation would place unprecedented security requirements on the chemical sector, but it has already been criticized by environmental groups who say the bill falls short in at least one key area.
Do you remember that wacky book by Art Bell called "The Coming Global Super Storm"? How about that implausibly plotted movie "The Day After Tomorrow"?
Could it really be true that the Gulf Stream's flow to Northern Europe has slowed down by 30% in the last 12 years. Check out this article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1654803,00.html?gusrc=rss
If Northern Europe's winters were 5 deg C colder, would this not affect the demand calculations for Peak Oil?
In your house it is the speed of light that moves the lights to the "on" position, but out there in the ocean it is a bit slower. So we could see a warming trend for a while, only to have the switch make it to the "off" position. Then bang, next season things change.
To say the least, few of us really know what is going on, we just know that the weather is doing something we have not seen before. Be that just a normal part of the cycles or something we did is still up in the air, we just don't have the data to know for sure, and might never.
Perhaps we should just look at existing data and say.... we don't know yet.... more study is needed.
Factoid: Your daily share of all US energy could lift you (180 lb.) 285 miles in the air. Beyond the air, really -- the the international space station orbits at just 217 miles.
Details: Total US energy flow per person is about 900 megajoules daily. (http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php) After discarding a 62% heat loss, you are left with 342 megajoules for lifting.
The primary sources of American energy are: Oil 36%, Natural Gas 25%, Coal 24%, Nuclear 9%, Hydro 3%, Other (biomass, wind, solar) 4%.
So you could say our continuous average personal energy use is around 4 kilowatts or 5.4 hp.