Gas/Oil Companies/ Arm-chair economists

[Thornes70]

Thanks, Keezy.

Well, here's a bunch of technical stuff you can check out without having any type of "interntet slant:" the UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION's 10-K report for Exxon Mobile (a 10-K is an annual shareholder report). It's a long-ass read, but it's required to be 100% factual & is a disclosure required by any company that wants to trade on the NYSE (and NASDAQ? not positive on that part).

Oil company out to drain the vein.

[supafreak]

Alternative fuel isn't everything it's cracked up to be. This is a pretty good article on ethanol ABC News: The Many Myths of Ethanol .

The demand for oil is up all over the world, especially China.

[Twilight]

Originally Posted by Thornes70

One other thing - fuel is a necessity for most people to get to/from work; cosmetics are not. A company can't push insane prices on the consumer if it's an item that can be left behind.

Amen. It is a monopoly that is supported at the highest levels of our government. I think of the hassels XM and Sirrius went through in order to merge because the gov tried to block them. OPEC is a government unto itself and it has most of the world in its pocket.

[Thornes70]

Yeah, I've heard that particular argument before, supa. But the problem is that a lot of people tend to look at things in a black or white state: it either works perfectly to replace something, or it's not going to work at all... That's a defeatist attitude - if we thought that way about everything, we'd never make progress as a nation.

The point of alternate fuels isn't to replace or become the next "only" brand, it's to allow different types of fuel so that one isn't over-burdened or able to be monopolized. In addition to all that yadda yadda, you first have to get to the point of finding out what will work, what won't, and finding ways to improve upon it so that there are no "myths."

Case in point - there wasn't always regular, super, etc. type of gasoline, but they improved upon the crud to make it not only burn cleaner, but be better for a vehicle & give you better gas mileage. If there's an alternate fuel source, it's only a matter of time before it becomes perfected to the point of being a mass-quantity product viable to be consumed. Look at the midwest & see how biofuel companies are doing! Then there's electric, hydro, solar power, geo-thermal (fuel isn't just used for cars)...

What it comes down to is, people need to stop buying into the "if you do this, a bad thing will happen" talking point, usually coming from the companies that stand to lose an advantage or bit of profit (they aren't thinking in the best interest of us, afterall).

[KEEZY]

No matter what... it kinds of sucks. Even if it's 100% legal and ethical (not saying it is or isn't). It's kind of like you and your neighbors standing outside and watching your house burn down, as your neighbor is opening mail and finds out he just won the lottery.

Yeah, it's exactly like that.

Jokes. Point is... it sucks watching housing and credit crash while these fools get paid as shit.

[KEEZY]

Good point Thornes. I'm glad that there is enough pressure out there now that automotive and oil companies are looking to alternative methods. Give me my Chevy Volt!

[Thornes70]

So that's a Volt! LOL I thought it was just an urban legend, like the coelacanth...

It's the writing on the wall, if you ask me. They know where it's going in the future... Here's a little sumtin-sumtin to keep an eye on: see how much farmland oil companies are buying up at the moment... bio-fuel monopoly planning? LOL okay, now I'm going for conspiracy theories, but it is an interesting topic to research.

[Epyon MX]

There are no good energy alternatives out there right now.

Ethanol is a joke. It takes more than gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol. And there are huge problems with the sourcing of the bio fuel to make ethanol. The most efficient is switchgrass, but even if you were to replace all the fields that we currently farm with switchgrass it still wouldn't even come close satsifying the oil needs of cars alone. Corn is cheap, but it's cheap because it's heavily subsidized. And if there is more demand for corn, then the price of corn will rise. You may think you don't eat a lot of corn, but you do. Any processed food you eat probably has corn by products in it. Corn is fed to cattle for beef. It's broken down into its sugars for artificial sweeteners. Increasing ethanol reliance increases food costs indirectly.

Solar energy currently provides 1/10 of 1% of our energy and requires huge amounts of space in addition to its incredibly high price. And I'm not even going to mention how ridiculously toxic it is to produce and dispose of.

Hybrid cars are a good short-term patch. But they aren't going to help much long-term.

Electric cars aren't any better for the environment. Electricity in the US is largely generated by coal which is worse for the environment than gasoline. The plus side to having an electric car is that it shifts the burden of cleaning up from the consumer to the producer.

Hydrogen fails for the same reason. There are no good ways to mass produce hydrogen other than by electrolysis. And the way they get the electricity for that is from coal. Hydrogen also has signficant issues as far as packaging, transportation and distribution. Too much to list here.

Wind farms are good, but nobody wants them in eye sight (personally I think they look cool). You put them out in the middle of nowhere and you lose too much electricity in the transmission. There are safety concerns about birds that I don't really buy, but they also affect the weather beneath the them.

Nuclear is one of the best options scarily enough. It can produce the large amounts of energy needed. And coal exhaust is actually more radioactive than nuclear powerplants. Obviously, there are huge issues with nuclear. First, they have to be close to population centers in order to be efficient (transmission losses) and that raises the second issue of any meltdown or leak would put significant number of people in danger. Lastly, no one knows what to do with the waste.



There are two things to bear in mind when it comes to oil prices.
1) Oil used in cars is maybe a quarter of our oil consumption, so any long-term solution has to address the other markets that use petrochemicals (like plastics)
2) High prices of oil also raise prices in foodstuffs. The average piece of food travels 1400 miles to get to you. Some of that is by rail, but a lot is by delivery truck or plane. Gas guzzlers. The same goes for just about any product in today's society, but food as a necessity I list here. You probably don't know it, but FedEx and UPS have a clause in their shipping agreements where they can charge a 'high gas cost' surcharge for short times of high prices to help compensate for costs. Unfortunately, both companies have been charging this surcharge since 2005.

Increases in oil prices hurt the poor most because the relative increase in pump price hurts them porportionally more as does the increase in food price.

What's terrifying is that oil is not something that is going to get less needed. India and China are getting thirsty and they have far more people than we do. China is already investing heavily in Africa and even in East Europe. They even tried to buy a US oil company last year. You may have your doubts about whether the Iraq war was over oil, but believe me the next war will be.

[ZoomZoom71]

Having been previously trained in the generation of electricity using Nuclear power, I can say with great certainty that it is a very safe means for producing electricity. There are so many safeguards involved in those Nuclear plants, you'd be amazed. I do wish environmentalist groups would ease up on their protests of these things.

[Thornes70]

LOL Epyon, you kinda made my point, although I know you're not saying it like that, but that all fuels have some negative aspect to them. However, the difference is the impact they leave behind...

I work for FedEx, so I know all about the surcharge. You're spot on about the prices of food at the grocery stores as well: added cost gets passed on.

1000% percent agree on the "other" things like plastics! There is so much plastic that there is literally a friggin floating plastic mass bigger than Texas right now from the waste!

I thought I read or heard it takes 9 gallons of water per every gallon of ethynol, but my question is, why isn't "waste" water being used? Still - it's as of yet not a viable source of fuel, imo. Like I said, though - it needs to be perfected. As for switchgrass, my earlier point was not to replace our current fuel with "just one" alternate source (then it wouldn't be an alternate source but a main source), but the idea is to have many sources available.

Solar has the potential to seriously impact the fuel dependancy we have for our homes; case in point is what they do in Germany - not only is it a huge source of revenue, but it has created a great source for jobs and gives back to the economy, and HERE's something stating that it could potentially power over 90% of the U.S.'s grid! As for the environmental impact, you're on the mark as far as the manufacturing, however:

None of these potential hazards is much different in quality or magnitude from the innumerable hazards people face routinely in an industrial society. Through effective regulation, the dangers can very likely be kept at a very low level.

source: Environmental Impacts of Renewable Energy Technologies

By the way, that link is a great link for people unfamiliar with different types of alternate energies...

Wind farms are actually paying big for some farmers in small towns where they lease the lands. for them; but there is a lot of area they can be placed that are uninhabited, and they will get greater results in the future.

The whole point is, there's things out there, and with enough research and acceptance - we don't have to accept the current situation. Put it this way, too: for every "bad" thing people say about alternate energy... stack it up against depending on oil... I don't think there's ever been a war over solar or wind power, either.

[Thornes70]

Originally Posted by ZoomZoom71

Having been previously trained in the generation of electricity using Nuclear power, I can say with great certainty that it is a very safe means for producing electricity. There are so many safeguards involved in those Nuclear plants, you'd be amazed. I do wish environmentalist groups would ease up on their protests of these things.

LOL you're kidding, right?

The fact that these plants produce nuclear waste and have to be stored somewhere aside - think what the consequences would be for a terrorist attack... Not to mention that nuclear power plants are the ONLY business insurance companies won't insure - so taxpayers do...

Protesting environmentalist groups? LOL so now it's them just being "problematic," right?

Don't get me wrong - I have no real issue with nuclear power and do think it's relatively safe, but I'm sure Chernobyl thought the same thing.

[ZoomZoom71]

If I could afford to install solar panels on my house, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But, when you get down to the numbers, the return on my personal investment just doesn't make sense.