According to Gold, Gas Prices Aren't Rising; Dollar is Falling

[Grandpapy]

This Honda CVCC got about 40mpg in the Va mountains and was a blast to drive! It's a 1975 for you younger folks.

 

[canndo]

When a government crosses a clear line, or rule of law, to pick winners and losers in an economy citizens take heed. Look at our economy today, any questions? For anyone to assume that these same clowns could actually change the environment via policy simply is not reasonable.

As termites create more CO2 that humans on this planet that would be a logical start point if logic played any part in their plans ...

Our government has a long history of picking "winners and losers", but you have no problem with most of that. The city of Los Angeles managed to change their environment for the better, and it seems reasonable.


I dare say that there are about the same number of termites now as there were 10 thousand years ago. Termites gas is background.

I wonder why so few on the right have that concept down.

 

[canndo]

Actually wood burning is terrible for the environment.
Our first recorded "global warming" came during the Roman times from so much burning.

It is absolutely fascinating to me how so many folks can be so sure that there is no such thing as global warming and make so many jokes about it while not having a single clue as to how it actually works. Because it is cold in your state does not mean there is no global warming, burning wood does not cause global warming because it does not place carbon into the air that is not quickly reabsorbed by trees. Burning wood will at most cause a bit of cooling but nothing more.

 

[FreedomWorks]

It is absolutely fascinating to me how so many folks can be so sure that there is no such thing as global warming and make so many jokes about it while not having a single clue as to how it actually works. Because it is cold in your state does not mean there is no global warming, burning wood does not cause global warming because it does not place carbon into the air that is not quickly reabsorbed by trees. Burning wood will at most cause a bit of cooling but nothing more.

You just want an excuse for a bigger, more powerful government. What the fuck do you expect me to do about all the pollution coming over from China? Start a war

 

[Carthoris]

View attachment 2366999 This Honda CVCC got about 40mpg in the Va mountains and was a blast to drive! It's a 1975 for you younger folks.

You don't see those very often anymore. Mostly because they are worth more at the junkyard than as a whole running car

 

[cannabineer]

Thing also weighed 1500 pounds. This was before mandated safety and emissions gear ... and also before consumer-mandated luxuries.

Its lineal successor, the Fit, weighs over 2500 pounds. It gets nearly comparable mileage, but as the result of a great deal of engine/drivetrain evolution.
(an oft-forgotten factor in mileage is gasoline quality. The stuff we burned then was Dom Pérignon compared to today's oxygenated weak sauce.) cn

 

[Carthoris]

It is absolutely fascinating to me how so many folks can be so sure that there is no such thing as global warming and make so many jokes about it while not having a single clue as to how it actually works. Because it is cold in your state does not mean there is no global warming, burning wood does not cause global warming because it does not place carbon into the air that is not quickly reabsorbed by trees. Burning wood will at most cause a bit of cooling but nothing more.

The temperature going up doesn't mean that global warming exists either. Temperature and CO2 do not correlate. They could be entirely coincidental. We had CO2 at 10-15 times the level we have right now during ice ages. The temperature is always rising or falling, it never stays the same. If we were on a downslope right now would we have Global Cooling instead and talk of an impending iceage due to CO2? I think so. I think a major issue is that people accept whatever one side or the other says without trying to disprove it first. That is the real test of your ideas. Global warming relies on theories that are not provable. This means Global Warming itself is a THEORY and not a FACT. Scientists may or may not be right about it, there is no solid proof that can not be disputed one way or another.

 

[Carthoris]

It is absolutely fascinating to me how so many folks can be so sure that there is no such thing as global warming and make so many jokes about it while not having a single clue as to how it actually works. Because it is cold in your state does not mean there is no global warming, burning wood does not cause global warming because it does not place carbon into the air that is not quickly reabsorbed by trees. Burning wood will at most cause a bit of cooling but nothing more.

Burning wood would only increase overall CO2 if it was live trees being chopped down and they were not allowed to grow back.

 

[Grandpapy]

You don't see those very often anymore. Mostly because they are worth more at the junkyard than as a whole running car

Yep 35 years ago they made cars with EPA of 40/48 and 25 years ago you could buy one for $200, put in a new intake valve, seals, and gaskets and drive it another 80,000.

My point was we haven't progressed that far in 35 years as far as MPG goes, hell I remember seeing a "old" 1930-40 diesel powered motorcycle that claimed to get 90 mpg.

 

[Grandpapy]

The temperature going up doesn't mean that global warming exists either. Temperature and CO2 do not correlate. They could be entirely coincidental. We had CO2 at 10-15 times the level we have right now during ice ages. The temperature is always rising or falling, it never stays the same. If we were on a downslope right now would we have Global Cooling instead and talk of an impending iceage due to CO2? I think so. I think a major issue is that people accept whatever one side or the other says without trying to disprove it first. That is the real test of your ideas. Global warming relies on theories that are not provable. This means Global Warming itself is a THEORY and not a FACT. Scientists may or may not be right about it, there is no solid proof that can not be disputed one way or another.

Well if you don't want to think in terms of warming how about waste? http://www.shaleoilresource.com/2011/11/15/bakken-from-space-443

 

[canndo]

You just want an excuse for a bigger, more powerful government. What the fuck do you expect me to do about all the pollution coming over from China? Start a war

Now why the hell would I want larger government for it's own sake. What it it about the right that sees a straw man army behind every statment a leftie makes? You think there is no global warming because if there were government would get bigger? really? is that the convoluted logic you employ in this thread?

I want government that is not one iota more powerful than big business - I want an exact balance where government can protect me from business abuse because contrary to you, I know there is more than one source of tyranny and I believe in checks and balances.

I said that the poster didn't know the mechanics of global warming - and he doesn't seem to if he claims that burning wood contributes to it. What are you to do with China? how about innovate ways to reduce pollution and carbon so that when China finally discovers it has a problem they will come to us for answers and they will pay us for those answers.

 

[Carthoris]

This, is bullshit. We have a gread deal of oil bearing shale but the net energy gain is minimal and the destruction to the environment is huge - there are a a variety of grades of tar sands and shale and these aren't very good. Our faith in technology is one way to simply ignore the reality of things as the folks you believe in to swoop in at the last minute with a technological fix are the same ones who are saying not only that it can't be done but that we are running out of easily recoverable oil. You don't get to have iit both ways.

We might not like doing it but we could certainly turn coal into oil, burn oil shale, or use coal/nuclear power to extract the oil in the shale. Fission power getting figured out would make electricity cheap enough that shale would be worth doing immediately. It isn't a faith in technology. We have the technology. Now it is just adjusting it a bit. South Africa used coal for oil, and there are countries who get most of their energy from oil shale.

We are running out of easily recoverable oil, but much of the easily recoverable oil we are pumping now is what we would of considered hard to get 50 or 100 years ago.

Like most things in the world and in our private lives, we are capable of almost anything, the only reason we don't do things is because we don't have to. It is simply a matter of motivation. We could turn to natural gas to power our country too, and we likely will. It won't be 1 thing that helps ease the oil need, it will be a mixture of many things.

You probably haven't been keeping up with it, but there are half a dozen new ways to get oil from the shale now. They are largely funded due to high oil prices.

Here is a chart of energy returned on energy invested, note that shale oil is better than biodiesel, ethanol, solar power, and tar sands. As new technology becomes available, the EROI of oil shale gets better. Also, the EROI is oil shale involves internal energy released during the process that is used, so the number is higher:

Oil could plummet in the next few years. The high prices of the 70s didn't seem like they would go away, but the 80s proved that wrong.

Oil shale will be a reality in 20 years. Replacing our coal power plants with gas will be a reality. We will have a lot of coal that will be turned into oil. They are actually building a plant in West Virginia right now to do just that. It isn't pipe dreams, we are doing it now.

What exactly are the other choices? Lay here and die?

 

[Carthoris]

There are certain old wells that have been found to have been replenishing. There really is a theory that our original theory of the production of fossil fuels is incorrect and that there is some unknown mechanism that creates these hydrocarbons without would would be the traditional source.
Even if this theory is correct, those old wells have been replenished only a fraction of what they once were, in otherwords, if it is renewable, we would have to reduce our total usage by something like 95 percent in order to use no more than is produced.

Those theories also state that there is basically an unlimited supply of oil and that we just have to drill deep enough to get it.

 

[Carthoris]

Now this is funny. On the one hand we have a person who is depending upon the advent of fusion but it is likely that this poster is against "wasteful government expenditure" and for free enterprise. No company would take on the expense and risk of developing fusion and our current government attempt is likely to be shut down because it costs millions a day to experiment with. As with Solyndra, the right thinks that science will save us but they are unwilling to foot the bill if it has any risk at all of failure. Oh no, no R&D here because government is wasteful and never gives us anything for our tax dollars.

100 years worth of oil? in Exxon's dreams maybe. 100 years worth of affordable oil? hardly.

the right believes somehow, even though they all profess to be experts in everything economic, that oil will simply and gradualy rise in price -and so give us plenty of time to arrange for an alternative, convert our infrastructure and revamp our fleet of cars, trucks, ships and planes to something else just before a total economic collapse of the global economy. The reality is a bit different.

A single true shortfall of supplies of as little as a million brls a day will send the gobal economy into chaos. The way things work now is that we still have the saudi fields and they still attempt to even up our global supply. But something that few lay folk understand is that any field that is being drained at faster than a preset amount will be ruined and will never again yield it's potential - these fields are not like bathtubs of crude sunk in the sand.

One day in the not too distant future, there will be the first of many shortfalls and the saudies, in an effort to preserve the furthest extent of their field's yield will refuse to fill in the gaps. There will be no gradual increase in the price of fuel

Our government wastes trillions a year. If they weren't just pissing it into the wind a lot of us wouldn't feel so strongly about the waste.

You libtards really need to come to grips with yourself. If you believe oil prices are going to destroy the world, then why the hell don't liberals support drilling and the like? We have hundreds of years worth of natural gas even if we use it to power cars. The rate of use of oil also goes down as the cost goes up and that causes the price to stay more stable than you are suggesting.

 

[Carthoris]

All of these advances were incremental - oh they may not have looked that way but they were. there is no room for incremental changes in energy technology and even less if you don't enlist the help of government in order to bridge the transition.

Incremental. Everything is in some way. The simple fact is that need caused most of them to happen in a very short time. Our technology is increasing exponentially. We will be far ahead of where we are now in 20 years. The time it takes for each leap is less and less. It took us over a thousand years to figure out how to make concrete again after Rome lost it, yet it only took a century or so before we figured out how to build skyscrapers.

 

[canndo]

We might not like doing it but we could certainly turn coal into oil, burn oil shale, or use coal/nuclear power to extract the oil in the shale. Fission power getting figured out would make electricity cheap enough that shale would be worth doing immediately. It isn't a faith in technology. We have the technology. Now it is just adjusting it a bit. South Africa used coal for oil, and there are countries who get most of their energy from oil shale.

We are running out of easily recoverable oil, but much of the easily recoverable oil we are pumping now is what we would of considered hard to get 50 or 100 years ago.

Like most things in the world and in our private lives, we are capable of almost anything, the only reason we don't do things is because we don't have to. It is simply a matter of motivation. We could turn to natural gas to power our country too, and we likely will. It won't be 1 thing that helps ease the oil need, it will be a mixture of many things.

You probably haven't been keeping up with it, but there are half a dozen new ways to get oil from the shale now. They are largely funded due to high oil prices.

Here is a chart of energy returned on energy invested, note that shale oil is better than biodiesel, ethanol, solar power, and tar sands. As new technology becomes available, the EROI of oil shale gets better. Also, the EROI is oil shale involves internal energy released during the process that is used, so the number is higher:

Oil could plummet in the next few years. The high prices of the 70s didn't seem like they would go away, but the 80s proved that wrong.

Oil shale will be a reality in 20 years. Replacing our coal power plants with gas will be a reality. We will have a lot of coal that will be turned into oil. They are actually building a plant in West Virginia right now to do just that. It isn't pipe dreams, we are doing it now.

What exactly are the other choices? Lay here and die?

I take issue with your chart for several reasons, I especially take issue with bio returns and would like to see how they arrived at such numbers.

You seem to believe that if we can't have our fossil fuels we have but one choice - to lay there and die.

 

[canndo]

Those theories also state that there is basically an unlimited supply of oil and that we just have to drill deep enough to get it.

No, there is no "deeper" below a certain level there is no oil at all. There is no unlimited supply, Hubbert's projections have been quite accurate actually. the answer is not in fossil fuels. Yes, more can be recovered through various means but each of those means is expensive and the price is unlikely to be reduced no matter what the technology. We cannot look to the past and presume that path is a linear one, it is not.

 

[canndo]

Our government wastes trillions a year. If they weren't just pissing it into the wind a lot of us wouldn't feel so strongly about the waste.

You libtards really need to come to grips with yourself. If you believe oil prices are going to destroy the world, then why the hell don't liberals support drilling and the like? We have hundreds of years worth of natural gas even if we use it to power cars. The rate of use of oil also goes down as the cost goes up and that causes the price to stay more stable than you are suggesting.

First of all, if you believe me to be retarded then I have no use for our discussion. A Libtard, to me, is a personal insult and I will thank you to refrain from such insults. I have not insulted you nor will I as many rightist here will agree.

We do not support drilling because drilling is not an answer - it is not a long term solution, it is non-renewable even by your standards of drilling more, deeper, further out in the ocean, on the poles, whereever, oil is a bad idea and we will have to get off the stuff either now, at some cost, or later at great cost. Foresight seems forever to escape rightist "planners". We are producing more oil in this country than we have in a decade and the prices have not fallen, in fact we are exporting more gas than we have in a very long time, and still the prices remain high.

I have not said anything against natgas nor will I, there are some dangers but we are at the point where we will have to cope with some of them.

You are presuming, still, an abundance of easily recoverable crude - and you presume wrong, as things progress you will see what we are beginning to see now, wilder and wilder fluctuations. As I said that no one refutes - saudi wells are yielding more and more salt water and less and less crude - they are pumping from the all time largest field on earth, it is hundreds of miles long and half a hundred miles wide - do you really think that we have not, with 100 years of exploration, satelites and high tech, seached most of the planet for a deposit that large? barring deep sea and polar areas - there aren't any more of those in the world. Keep track of large finds for a while and see what comes of it.

The price of fuel will not gradualy increase because the saudi wells take up the slack, at the point where they refuse to do so you will see huge spikes and shortfalls.

Play with that. consider a true half a million grl a day shortfall for 6 months, now consider a million brl shortfall for a year and tell me that your prices will be gradual and people will just "use less".

 

[canndo]

Incremental. Everything is in some way. The simple fact is that need caused most of them to happen in a very short time. Our technology is increasing exponentially. We will be far ahead of where we are now in 20 years. The time it takes for each leap is less and less. It took us over a thousand years to figure out how to make concrete again after Rome lost it, yet it only took a century or so before we figured out how to build skyscrapers.

No comparison. In short there is no, easily recoverable, cheaply transported high energy material in the world and short of those dilithium crystals, there won't be. We operate on that fuel almost exclusively and we have little alternative. There is no similarity between what you say and our situation. I have been in the middle of the alternative fuel industry for years now - we have been working on it since the first gas shortage and in earnest for the last 20 years - there is nothing close to what you are expecting and no amount of someday, but just in time magic is going tochange that.

 

[cannabineer]

No comparison. In short there is no, easily recoverable, cheaply transported high energy material in the world and short of those dilithium crystals, there won't be. We operate on that fuel almost exclusively and we have little alternative. There is no similarity between what you say and our situation. I have been in the middle of the alternative fuel industry for years now - we have been working on it since the first gas shortage and in earnest for the last 20 years - there is nothing close to what you are expecting and no amount of someday, but just in time magic is going tochange that.

Until we can efficiently burn deuterium ...
...the only practically (dunno about "cheaply") recoverable energy sources are coal and fissionables. (U-238 and Th-232, each of which requires neutron activation to yield a fissile fuel)
Sadly, burning deuterium for sustained power is not a simple or accessible technology at present.
And in a way, it is a blasphemous thing to the rugged individualists among us ... onlwy worldwide organizations can contemplate developing, building and operating a fusion power plant. They may become the Gothic cathedrals of this early millennium as the eponymous structures symbolized the previous. cn