Carter's Speech on Energy

[This_person]

Originally Posted by Toxick

I may be putting on my tin-foil hat (or my realistic cynic's cap, depending on your point of view), but I have always suspected that there are cars which can run on something as cheap as air, and also that there are superefficient cars which can run for hundreds or thousands of miles on a single tank of gas. I've also suspected that there's a fuel source out there that's cheap and plentiful, but it would put the oil boys out of business, and therefore the formula sits on a shelf behind a 5 ton steel door.


I've been working on computers for the past 23 years, and I have watched day by day, and year by year, how incredibly far technology has advanced over those 23 years... from Pong to Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. From word processing to operating the Phoenix lander.


That's a measly 23 years.... therefore I find it incredibly difficult to believe that automotive and fuel technology has made almost NO significant advances over the past 100+ years.



There's just no money in it, until the day fossil fuel becomes SO expensive that simply nobody can afford it and the profits drop, or until we run out completely.







And then we can buy canisters of hydrogen - the most plentiful element in the universe - for exorbitant prices.

[SamSpade]

Originally Posted by migtig

Well actually France gets the majority of it's energy from Nuclear reactors - but we can't build any new ones in the US because they aren't "safe".

Actually, about 80%, for France. Japan has similar consumption.

We actually produce more electricity from nuclear than any other country, and have far more nuclear plants (about twice that of Japan) but it's our consumption which is so very high.

[Toxick]

Originally Posted by Dixie

I believe it too - I guess the question is - how do you force it out in the open then?

You don't.

The only entity that could force it out into the open is the gubmint.


And the current batch of swine which makes up the gubmint responds only to money. And guess who has lots and lots and lots of money... record-breaking amounts of money.

[Toxick]

Originally Posted by This_person

I know there's a video there. But I don't know what it is or what it's about.




Has it been officially announced that a great many people (at work) cannot see you-tube videos, and that a response which consists only of an embedded youtube video looks like a great white hole?

Originally Posted by This_person

Gas prices are up because speculators artificially doubled the cost of crude oil, which would mean a savings of around 0.60 to 0.70/gal at the pump to you.

However, you answer the question with the question. If it were economically worthwhile to people and/or the local municipalities, there would be better mass transit. When you're in an area where people tolerate and accept mass transit as a worthwhile means of transportation, that's what you have (Europe, NYC). When you have people who want to drive themselves, they do (pretty much everywhere else in USA). As long as people are willing to commit to the cost of the drive, people still will, and municipalities will not greatly improve mass transit. Most everywhere great sums of tax dollars are sunk into "bettering" mass transit, it's a waste of money. Perhaps that will change.

But, most of us don't want to be told how to get to and from work, friend's homes, etc., etc. We want to do what we want to do. And, for the majority of the country, mass transit is not viable. I'll presume you're from here in So.MD - if you don't commute to DC, Baltimore, Anapolis, etc., what good would a larger mass transit system be here? And, this is a fairly densely populated area compared to the bulk of the US. It's just not viable for us, and that's okay. IT'S OKAY TO BE DIFFERENT THAN EUROPE, honestly.

BTW, what about Carter did you like most?

Trust me - if we had decent mass transit in this area I'd have been using it years ago. I mean can you imagine getting on a bus to get to a subway that takes you to Baltimore or DC? I'd be gone all the time - I just hate driving anywhere when I'm no familiar with the area. I'd still have my car (and it is fuel efficient) - I'd have to - I have a child with disabilities - but going to work? I'd have been using the hell out of it years ago and I'd be willing to bet that many people that don't have that option would be also.

I'm a product of the 60's - If I had been college-educated I would have joined the Peace Corps in a heartbeat. At one point I actually worked on Paul Sarbanes campaign and stayed up all night in the party that was held when he won and sat with others and watched Jimmy Carter make his victory speech. Didn't follow politics much after that and all the things everyone said about him, still says about him, I guess. Feel free to make fun, I thought he was a peaceful, intelligent, thinking man back then and I still think of him that way and very much admire the person he has become. That's my thoughts though, practically no one else I know agrees with me and I don't really care.

Originally Posted by Dixie

Bru - first to admit I don't understand anything about oil, gas, why it's gone up so much etc etc. I wonder though if we'd find ourselves in the position we're in right now if we had heeded the warning (or the government forced us to heed the warning) and improved mass transit, invented more fuel efficient cars, etc. My parents go to Europe on a pretty frequent basis and say the mass transit system in some countries is outstanding and nearly everyone drives the Smart cars. When I lived in Baltimore, many moons ago, I didn't need to own a car, city busses went everywhere I wanted to go.

I spent a lot of my adult life in Europe, but the deal is Europe isn't the United States. In most european countries they have a word for the suburbs... it's called the forest. Most people in Europe live and work within the confines of a town or city. Most Americans don't. We're commuters. Also, working regimines in Europe are much different than in the US. In most European countries your work open the doors at 10:00AM, you close them and go home at 5:00PM. Shops and restaraunts open at 12:00, close for siesta or tea at 4:00 or 5:00, reopen at seven and stay open till 10:00. There is no burning the midnight oil, no overtime, so a well-scheduled public transportation system works well there. We don't have that in the US for the most part, which makes public transportation not so great. We are real big on time management, resource management, workforce management. We tell our people they need to be in by 10:00 on Mon and Tues, 1:00 on Wed, 9:00 on Thur and Fri so we can better meet peak demand.

I loved riding the trains to travel througout England, Italy, Japan, etc., too, but I rode them because it was a new experience... not because I had to. I know there were few people on those trains who wouldn't give them up in a second for a good American car and cheap gas. Given a choice between the freedom of picking your own departure/arrival times, your own route, your own stops, your own creature comforts, and trading those freedoms over to the regimines of public transporation... that's an easy decision for most people to make.

I lived on Bermuda for three years, and those folks have some bizarre laws that are meant to keep cars off the roads. It costs about $2,500 a year to register your car, you can't register any car that has any rust, body, or paint problems, there is a limit of one car per household, the biggest engine allowed is 1.5L, the highest speed limit is 20 MPH, gas is taxed heavilly, etc. And all these rules do keep a lot of cars off the road and force people to use an excellent bus system, but at what cost? They are trading away their freedom of movement for the sake of making the island look more serene. Is that any worse than trading your freedom to avoid running out of oil? Maybe... if we were running out of oil, but there is zero evidence of that.

We keep hearing how were still about 20-30 years from having a workable, sustainable, and cost-effective alternative for gasoline/diesel fueled cars. Okay, we need to get hot on making these things a reality. But we also have oil in our shale deposits to meet all the expected needs of the US for sixty years! Why do some feel the need to punish ourselves with expensive oil now when we could have cheap energy for the next 20-30 years until the new systems become available?

[Toxick]

Originally Posted by Dixie

Trust me - if we had decent mass transit in this area I'd have been using it years ago.

When I lived in Tucson, I rode the bus everywhere.

We had a jeep, and my wife used that to run the children everywhere, or if we went out as a family we took the jeep. Other than that... I think I took the jeep to work maybe 4 times, when I was running late or had to transport a box or bag with equipment in it.

Two bucks, and you could ride anywhere in the city for the whole day.





And now I'm all homesick again

Originally Posted by Bruzilla

I spent a lot of my adult life in Europe, but the deal is Europe isn't the United States. In most european countries they have a word for the suburbs... it's called the forest. Most people in Europe live and work within the confines of a town or city. Most Americans don't. We're commuters. Also, working regimines in Europe are much different than in the US. In most European countries your work open the doors at 10:00AM, you close them and go home at 5:00PM. Shops and restaraunts open at 12:00, close for siesta or tea at 4:00 or 5:00, reopen at seven and stay open till 10:00. There is no burning the midnight oil, no overtime, so a well-scheduled public transportation system works well there. We don't have that in the US for the most part, which makes public transportation not so great. We are real big on time management, resource management, workforce management. We tell our people they need to be in by 10:00 on Mon and Tues, 1:00 on Wed, 9:00 on Thur and Fri so we can better meet peak demand.

I loved riding the trains to travel througout England, Italy, Japan, etc., too, but I rode them because it was a new experience... not because I had to. I know there were few people on those trains who wouldn't give them up in a second for a good American car and cheap gas. Given a choice between the freedom of picking your own departure/arrival times, your own route, your own stops, your own creature comforts, and trading those freedoms over to the regimines of public transporation... that's an easy decision for most people to make.

I lived on Bermuda for three years, and those folks have some bizarre laws that are meant to keep cars off the roads. It costs about $2,500 a year to register your car, you can't register any car that has any rust, body, or paint problems, there is a limit of one car per household, the biggest engine allowed is 1.5L, the highest speed limit is 20 MPH, gas is taxed heavilly, etc. And all these rules do keep a lot of cars off the road and force people to use an excellent bus system, but at what cost? They are trading away their freedom of movement for the sake of making the island look more serene. Is that any worse than trading your freedom to avoid running out of oil? Maybe... if we were running out of oil, but there is zero evidence of that.

We keep hearing how were still about 20-30 years from having a workable, sustainable, and cost-effective alternative for gasoline/diesel fueled cars. Okay, we need to get hot on making these things a reality. But we also have oil in our shale deposits to meet all the expected needs of the US for sixty years! Why do some feel the need to punish ourselves with expensive oil now when we could have cheap energy for the next 20-30 years until the new systems become available?

I'll bet though if we use those shale deposits to help us now that someone heavily invested in that enterprise would hold back the technology that could give us cheap energy and 20-30 years from now we'd all be scratching our heads and saying why didn't? I thought it Larry who said it exists right now and it's sitting in some American oil barons safe with a shoot to kill order to anyone who tries to release the info. I really believe the oil companies are behind all this.

Originally Posted by Toxick

When I lived in Tucson, I rode the bus everywhere.

We had a jeep, and my wife used that to run the children everywhere, or if we went out as a family we took the jeep. Other than that... I think I took the jeep to work maybe 4 times, when I was running late or had to transport a box or bag with equipment in it.

Two bucks, and you could ride anywhere in the city for the whole day.





And now I'm all homesick again

me too! but no so much for a place as I wish that I could turn back time.

[chernmax]

Originally Posted by Bruzilla

Wow! Thanks for posting that, but where do you start? I guess the first thing is how can you ask Americans to worry about a crisis that Americans are inventing? How can you restrict the use of nuclear power, restrict oil exploration, refuse building permits for refineries, and then catterwall about shortages when the shortages are all of our own doing and within our control to correct?

Second, Carter, like lots of his ilk, were sure we would be running out of oil by now. Instead we have Brazil finding fields to rival those of the Saudis, it's looking like there's a lot more oil under Iraq than has been thought, oil shale in the US can give us oil for the next 60 years alone! He cites that domestic oil production was falling and imports were up, and going to get higher, but never explains that this has nothing to do with our oil running out and everything to do with making more money off oil. All the dire predictions that Carter made about oil running out were based on faulty science and 100% wrong... kinda like man-made global warming is today.

And why is that whenever a Democrat talks about "comprehensive energy policy", it seems to always consist of no nuclear and higher milage requirements and that's about it? Carter talks about the need to use more coal, but then the Democrats block coal-fired power plants. He speaks of the need to use less fossil fuels, but restricts nuclear power plants.

And how about his great idea of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. What the heck has that done for us? Everytime we have an energy crisis, we're told we can't use the petroleum reserve because if a crisis occurs we won't have it. That's some serious pretzel logic.

OMFG, I actually AGREE with you on all this!!!