Thread: This Is Not A CraigsList Notice

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If you ignore the PAST you are doomed to repeat it. One can choose to think all positive and live in a dream world, but it just is not reality. It is a bitter pill to learn the world just is not a fair and fun place to be an adult in. We as adults left the play ground when we got out of kindergarden.... most of us any way...

I was told sometime back that people are like water they take the path of least resistance ........ The longer I live the more that becomes a fact. Am I negative, no I live in realville am better off for it, quoting a famous person;
YOU BETCHA!

More negative, that dang Obama anyway!!! My crippled up hands are killing me today, must be that dang Obama's fault!!!!

and still nothing positive, just more doom and gloom??

What is Romney's plans concerning alternative energy, or for that matter what is the position of the Republican Party as to doing something to promote alternative energy without investing taxpayer money???? Will the Heritage Foundation (source of the figures cited from the stimulus program) going to invest any of their money in energy research, or will they just keep spending their money on "think tanks" and trying to buy legislation that is best for it's membership???

Curious what percentage this "wasted" taxpayer dollars on alternative energy is of the total cost of our three Mid East wars.... that nobody wants to do anything about ending??? Or, in this same period of time, how much taxpayer money has been given to other US companies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks??

Lots of us still sitting out here in America waiting to hear what either party intends on doing to end this financial chaos? That is, something other then vague mention of "sensible spending approach" or "creating jobs by tax breaks", is there anything definitive in the form of a plan to make these things reality, or is it just wishful thinking while concentrating on the continuing "bad mouth and blame" campaigns that both parties are waging????

Originally Posted by pepi

If you ignore the PAST you are doomed to repeat it. One can choose to think all positive and live in a dream world, but it just is not reality. It is a bitter pill to learn the world just is not a fair and fun place to be an adult in. We as adults left the play ground when we got out of kindergarden.... most of us any way...

I was told sometime back that people are like water they take the path of least resistance ........ The longer I live the more that becomes a fact. Am I negative, no I live in realville am better off for it, quoting a famous person;
YOU BETCHA!

So, then in your opinion Mitt Romney does not have any sort of plan to improve things economically, and we should all vote for him because he's "not as bad" as Obama???? It's not a matter of forgetting the past, we all live daily in a collapsing financial world that is a result of the past!!!! It's not a matter of forgetting, it's still current and going on daily!!!!!

Holy buckets, if that's all we have to look forward to after the election, when's then next plane to Australia leaving?

For me, investing in alternative energy is a necessary cost, but the point of that list is that the way the money was handled in this latest round of "stimulus" borders on being criminal. There was very obviously no investigation into the strength, viability or even capabilities of several of the companies who had their hand out, most notably Solyndra. And no, Snake Oil Salesmen are not a new phenomena, they've been around since time began but it seems their schemes have gotten more elaborate. What is so sad is that had that money been funneled into legitimate enterprises we might actually have seen some good from that money as opposed to throwing it down a rat hole.

On your farmer friend, what would be interesting to know is how much he spent on his two wind turbines, and their capacity? If he indeed has not paid for electricity for that two years that says that his generating capacity exceeds his usage, and that the payments that he gets for power pumped into the grid, in excess of his usage, offsets the costs of those times when the wind power is insufficient to cover his needs or may be blowing too hard for the turbines to handle, and he buys power from NSP. Generally the utility will buy excess power that feeds the grid for less than 1/2 what you pay, which represents their actual cost for replacement power, and the payment can be reduced by time-of-day factors, and other factors depending on their needs. Bottom line, if you're buying power you may be paying $0.25 per KWH, but if you have excess they'll credit you a dime per KWH, or maybe a nickle if it's in the middle of the night when they have tons of spinning reserves (data from PG&E public rate information 2010 through 2012). These on-site wind turbine installations are often discussed, with people making big claims about savings in order to impress their friends, but the question becomes how many years does it take to offset the original costs, and when that point is reached where is that turbine in it's service life? Hiring a tall crane to come in, drop that unit to the ground, haul it back to the supplier and have new bearings and electrical components repaired/replaced is not a small cost for that farmer, I'd venture. The whole financial analysis of his installation would be interesting to know.

I have a friend who joined a large IPP wind company several years ago, and last year I talked to him about how things were going on one hot, sultry summer day when the utilities were screaming about their demand. He shared that they were monitoring something like 1000 large capacity wind turbines that they have installed from West Texas up into the Midwest, and every one was at zero rpm! Not one KW being generated from around 1500MW of capacity. Wind power is a valuable commodity, but we still have to either have a way to store energy, or must have spinning reserves to cover the load when the wind dies, so indeed investment in legitimate R&D is a good thing.

I've heard Costa Rica is a nice alternative to Australia, BTW. Heading there in a couple of weeks to see.....

I do not believe I said anything about one guy or the other, however you seem to be fairly well focused on the two. Reading to much into the post your opinion is not mine. I wonder just how you will solve your dilemma decision time is just down the road are you water?

Dave I heard out your way there is suppose to be a huge amount of oil untapped as of yet? Like you I'm finding it hard to trust just about any media source, but I've heard that the Dakotas are suppose to be oil rich reserves. It would be nice to tap some of that if true, while also putting money into future alternatives. I think anyone with a plan needs to hedge as many energy sources at possible, especially as we become more dependant on electricity and gas as a form of daily life.
Funny enough, I was just talking with my cousin about our Grandma. She had a 60 acre grape farm in the central valley. When her parents moved there from Russia in the early 1900's, they pretty much grew everything they needed. At first they had horses for plowing. Her house had only a few electric sockets for lights and a few plugs for the family radio. They 2 bedroom farmhouse was heated soley by wood for her whole life(up to about 13 years ago when she finaly passed at 94 years of age). She did have a gas stove for cooking. But point was she used few resources, bought what they couldn't produce and made do.
Today I don't know anyone without a cell phone, and only a few without a computer. Almost everybody has a car, and most of us have a ton of electrical appliances and some sort of heating or cooling that requires electricity or natural gas.
Instead of conserving these resources we develop more ways to utilize them. Some things are mush more effiecient, yet others are not.
I'd like to see a comprehensive energy plan from both candidates, that one focuses on conservation, 2) development of new sources and resources of fossil fuels, and three some intergration of modern devices that work more efficiently or provide alternative power means. Only by doing all of the above will we be able to become less dependant on foreign oil, and continue down the path that our current lifestyles consume power and resources.
Their are a lot of simple devices that reduce individual power consumption. On demand water heaters save a tremendous amount of natural gas usage, passive solar heating(especially for pools), solar(yes this is a good form of energy!),wind, and water power. We had some huge energy plants that were ultra hot burning/relatively low emission electricity producers, that were running on agricultural waste such as grape canes that are trimed off the vines each year. I agree we need to start drilling here where we can within reason to environmental impact, but also will need much more forms of power , so these green resources do need to be developed now, not when we go to war over fossil fuels because they became too scarce! It is unfortunate that companies like Solyndra have sort of become a campaign to avoid research and development. Not sure what is the answer but can tell you that here in good old petaluma we have a company Enphase which makes micro power inverters for solar cells that maximise the energy produced from each solar cell in use, as to oppsed the old way of a large central inverter, that only produced the maximum amount of electricity from the weakest producing cell in the system. The new microinverters, maximise each cell to the fullest, and are monitored constantly via internet of all things to make sure there is no problem or drop in power. Pretty good concept, that does make a big difference over time.

The wind turbines here are placed in some very "wind generous" areas!!!! The one's my friend has over in Minnesota I believe cost him like $100K to get up and running, no idea what the capacity is but it's enough to supply his electrical needs... Sure he does his own maintenance, everything on a farm requires maintenance!!!! Rural electricity around here is very high, when I was on the farm, no milking barn or anything else very "energy intensive" my electric bill ran about $250.00 a month, during harvest with a couple of corn dryers running you can double that.... With his dairy operation going 20 hours a day, and 4 or 5 grain dryers, plus the normal shop and other buildings along with two houses, I'd guess his electric bill was in the $750 to $1,000 range per month. Wind turbines are not limited to the $250K+ per units that the government puts up, they come in many shapes and sizes!!!! My friend is no dummy, if it didn't make financial sense he wouldn't be doing it!!!! There is a large (about 50 wind turbines) in the SW corner of Minnesota along hyw 23.... On an average day they do fine, on the windier days they have to shut about half of them off because the existing grid doesn't have the capacity to take it all in!!!

Steve, our oil around here is limited, we actually on top of a huge aquifer. The oil is 300 or so miles northwest of here, some pumps, but mostly the shale oil that is the rage now!

I do agree that alternative energy usage needs to be researched!!! Renewable resources, especially!!!! Around here everyone has complained about the constant wind for years, good to see it being put to use!!! I'm certainly no "tree huggin' greenie", but I do think we need to do something about energy use besides constantly dumping money into oil!!! And, I've been in some of the areas where the shale oil is being produced, not really crazy about seeing the ground torn to pieces and there seems to be a bad side to it, also..... Again, like politics, the flippin' extremists from both sides put out so much bs that I just tend to not believe any of it!!!!!

This just in... I mentioned earlier in this thread that I had an 1800 circa repair manual which details maintenance on electric cars. SO. Consider this: in 1800 circa there was no government subsidatation of auto manufacturing. Which means, they were mass manufactured at competiting. Otherwise, there would not have been an entire section of my Dyke's manual devoted to them. Fast forward two hundred years: the biggest electric car is the volt and it is heavily government subsidized and looses $30,000 per unit. Wow. That's not progress.

I think the gist of it is whether the Government should become involved in the risky business of investing our tax dollars in developing emerging technologies.

Historically SUCESSFUL energy sources have been developed thru private enterprise and that worked because the entrepreneurs had a vested interest in them becoming successful….if something didn’t work financially or technically it was time to move on and try something else. This is potentially a very time consuming and costly project with no guarantee of success but it is one with a huge potential payoff.

It seems whenever the government becomes involved in developing something there is not necessary the drive to make the product a commercial success. The ethanol program and subsidies seem to be a good example of a product that very few actually want, takes more energy to produce than the final product makes, and is only on the market because of Government backing with our tax dollars. Pretty much the same thing as the “green fleet” using $26 a gallon fuel vice the $3 a gallon petroleum fuel. How many people do these investments actually employ or will employ over the long term?

According to the news (in small print of course) we are again a net exporter or petroleum products and predicted to also be a net exporter of natural gas by 2016. Does make you wonder why we are paying so much doesn’t it? The thoughts of many people are that by raising the price of fuel it artificially makes the other alternatives more viable, rather than the technologies being able to compete on their own merits.

But that aside, things like solar panels and wind mills were already commercially available before this administration come to office. To me a better strategy would have been to provide incentives in the companies/technologies that had proven successful both from a commercial and technological standpoint allowing them to expand bring the cost down and put more people to work. As a company grows and is successful, it will naturally bring more competition to the market place and drive the technology/manufacturing (jobs) to improve so it can remain competitive.

But hey what do I know.

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

...or if he wins will he just sit in the White House and blame President Obama for having things so messed up he can't fix them in four years...

Isn't that exactly Obama's campaign strategy? Blame Bush for something he couldn't fix in 4 years but vote for him anyway because he can fix it in 8 years?

Originally Posted by Mike P

...To me a better strategy would have been to invest in the companies/technologies that had proven successful both from a commercial and technological standpoint allowing them to expand bring the cost down and put more people to work...

That's hard to do when those companies/technologies are in China.

Maybe I missed it, but has anybody mentioned the extensive research being done on use of hydrogen as a power source? There's plenty of it, but the problem is the expense of extracting it from water.

Hydrogen Fuel - Energy from reacting hydrogen (H2) with oxygen

A plentiful fuel source for our nation's pioneers was dry cow or bison dung. (My wife edits my postings. She recommends "dung" in place of the term I originally used.) When I was a kid camping out with my buddies we always collected a bunch of cow patties for fire starting material. It worked well in that capacity but I don't think I'd use it for weenie roasting or in my barbecue.

Jim

If I were king... I would do the following.

1) tap every single drop of oil in North America that we can get to. Maybe there's enough to become oil independent, maybe not, but I'd try. We're not trying now.

2) don't allow the export of oil from US.

3) Don't "invest" in private companies. Governments should not invest in private companies. It should not be the goal that someone make money off of a government venture.

4) create a government sponsored project(s), akin to the Manhattan Project or putting a man on the moon, to a) design a better and cheaper electric car and/or b) design a better and cheaper hydrogen car and build a nation wide infrastructure for hydrogen delivery.

Unfortunately, neither of the candidates will do any of the above nor do either of them have the leadership to do #4

Governemnt has been successfull at running buisness in the past, as the Postal Service used to be a fine example. It used to be held high as an example of efficiency and self paying. Somewhere along the line some private buisnesses a.k.a. UPS and others developed a better system, making more money. For a while people raved about how good working for UPS was. Ultimately our benefits, including health care and retirement, along with the average age of the good olde US citizen increasing, offset the original deal, cost more, and produced less.
I guess what I'm saying is that until we can find a balance, between working ourselves to death, retiring at some point, and having health care we can afford, the problems are only going to get worse. I don't have a solution.
Some say get rid of benefits and retirements, and health care. Problem is they are systems people need to survive.
Get rid of all unions, Problem is, fundamentally unions protect people from dangerous work environments, and make employers more ethically responsible, yet unions also exploit the very Exploiters, they are protecting us from. No easy solution, compromise and common sense are the only way ahead, but nobody wants to compromise!

I have a few pics of some some oil rigs on my Bakersfield trip--will get them posted sometime this week