Chavez: Colombia plans 'aggression'

[Slash27]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080126/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_colombia



$300 a barrel oil??

[DiabloTX]

You know, put an Iraqi accent on Chavez and he sounds like...

[SteveBailey]

I love the smell of regime change in the morning.

[Wolfala]

Esse? You loco man?

Serious though, does anyone but me find it slightly amusing who Chavez has supplanted Kim Jung over in NK when he was being a yappy dog for so long about having the bomb. Then he piped down for a few years - and now our little funny paratrooper is the yappy little dog of the hour.

[AquaShrimp]

If there was only a way we could get off foreign oil.  Oh wait, there is! Bio-fuel from algae and cellulosic ethanol.  Hillary in 08!

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by AquaShrimp
If there was only a way we could get off foreign oil.  Oh wait, there is! Bio-fuel from algae and cellulosic ethanol.  Hillary in 08!

And you really think Hillary is going to be able to do anything about it.

Her in NJ in a recent poll the polls found Hillary led the list in two categories.

The person who people were most likely to support.
AND the person who people were the LEAST likely to support.

Just what we need. another decisive president who wont be able to get congress to go along with them.

But to get back on topic. Switching over to something else is still YEARS away. not to mention there is going to have to be some sort of standard to make it viable.
That's going to have to be decided even before any decision to make a switch is made.
A process that in Washington typically takes years.
then its going to take years before all the infrastructure is in place not to mention the changeover in all the vehicles,boats and aircraft  to support such a switch.

In short. Oil isn't going anywhere any time soon. Nor is our dependency on it.

Not to mention even if we did switch the oil industry will still be vital to our interests.
All you need do is look around you and take into consideration just how many things you use that you yourself consider a "must have" that are made out of plastic.
Then just look around and count all the things you see made out of plastic

Plastic being the second leading byproduct of the oil industry. Oil will still be considered to be vital to our national interests.

You see TALKING about getting off of foreign oil is one thing. Particularly if your a politician trying to get into office. Makes for a great soap box rant.
Actually doing it.
Is entirely another matter.
If only it were that simple.

When someone says  "we can just switch to this. or use that instead"
and gives no farther details on exactly how they are going to accomplish this. Its a clear sign of someone claiming to be able to do something who hasnt completely thought it through.

[AquaShrimp]

But algae produces oil.  We would still get oil, but instead of coming from other countries, we would make it in our deserts.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by AquaShrimp
But algae produces oil.  We would still get oil, but instead of coming from other countries, we would make it in our deserts.

And what wouldc the price be? per barrel of this Bio oil as compared to the stuff we pump out of the ground?

that was a serious question

But still. Its going to take years and probably billions of dollars to create the amount of infrastructure to build the kind of facilities needed to produce these kind of fuels in sufficient quantities and inexpensively  enough to make it viable.

No matter which way its sliced. Even if we decided today to go that route
Our dependancy on foreign oil isnt going anywhere anytime soon.

And again. you still have to get the knotheads in Washington to agree to do this and how and to who and where the money is going to go to do it.

A proccess which can only be discribed as painstakingly slow at best.

Mark my words. even if Hillary were elected. and even if the Democrats had 100% control over the House and Senate. We will still be dependant on foreign oil and very little whill have changed on that front.

Im not saying that its not a great idea. It may very well be THE idea of the millinium.

But Hillary wont be able to get any more done then has any othe president over the last 40 years.
almost all of whom have made oil a major part of their campagn issues

[john9001]

anything you can make from oil, you can make from coal.

[eagl]

Originally posted by john9001
anything you can make from oil, you can make from coal.

Any benefit you get from burning something made from coal, you can get cheaper from just burning coal in the first place.

That's the problem with pretty much all the alcohol and hydrogen economy proposals right now.  The energy out of those processes is barely more than the energy put into it.

Biofuel has promise, but it's a long road going from getting a few drops of oil out of sludge in a lab to making, refining, and distributing millions of gallons of a useful product at a reasonable price.

Solar has the same basic problem as alcohol right now...  It takes a LOT of energy to make a solar panel, so a solar panel is essentially an expensive battery since you're just transferring energy production from the solar cell factory to wherever you put the finished solar panel.  Solar cell efficiency gains is making this less and less of an issue, but you can pretty much measure the energy it takes to build a solar cell by looking at it's cost...  If it costs $20,000 to make enough solar panels to run your house, you can pretty much estimate that it cost approximately $20,000 of bulk-rate-priced electricity/gas/oil/etc to make the sucker and park it on your roof.  That's a lot of energy that went into that solar cell, and it'll take decades to get that much energy back out of it.

The way to boost solar efficiencies enough to make it worthwhile is to park the solar cells up in space, but then you're faced with the energy costs of flinging the power plant up into orbit.  Again, those costs are coming down so combined with the efficiency and weight improvements of the required technology, space based power generation via solar power and microwave beaming may approach the tipping point where you get back more than you put in, and the generated power comes at a reasonable price.

Further digging the grave for alcohol production is that as more farmers accept govt handouts to make alcohol instead of food, the price of food will go up.  You can make all the solar cells you want without affecting the price of a burrito or sandwich, but switching food production to whatever biomass is currently popular for conversion to alcohol will directly increase food prices.  So you pay three times for that alcohol - first, with taxes that go towards alcohol production incentives, second for increased food prices, and third when you buy the stuff at the pump (which is also subsidized at the refinery and fuel production level).

And oh yea, alcohol sucks up water so you need a whole new infrastructure to transport and store the stuff because equipment that works just fine with petroleum products will rust out FAST when you run alcohol through it.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by eagl
Any benefit you get from burning something made from coal, you can get cheaper from just burning coal in the first place.

It tends to clog up fuel pumps though.

[AquaShrimp]

I've seen reports of 100,000 gallons per acre of oil from algae reactors.  A new research facility is being built in Texas just for this.

[john9001]

Originally posted by eagl
Any benefit you get from burning something made from coal, you can get cheaper from just burning coal in the first place.

 

i was not talking about burning the coal, gasoline and plastics can be made from coal and cellulose, and we not talking about the cost, we talking about eliminating the dependence on oil.

as for "solar cells", thin film photovoltaics is a major breakthrough in production costs.

[lasersailor184]

Originally posted by AquaShrimp
I've seen reports of 100,000 gallons per acre of oil from algae reactors.  A new research facility is being built in Texas just for this.

That sounds ridiculous.  Unless of course, we're talking about over a period of 1000 years.

[AquaShrimp]

100,000 gallons per acre per year.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2007_4438360