[KeithO]

The supposed standards about to be enacted might make performance cars more difficult to get for a while. I am wondering if we aren't looking at new-car performance similar to what we saw from 1973 through around 1987...

This is just more motivation for me to maintain my f-body.

Do you guys think that we will be able to achieve this? Regardless, how slow do you think new cars will get before performance returns?

[sgarnett]

What happened? Oil was cheap for a few months. That's all it takes to forget.

Late last year though, I did hear an interesting argument against more drilling ... yet. Do we want to be the first to run out, or the last?

[cccbock]

What happened? Oil was cheap for a few months. That's all it takes to forget.

Late last year though, I did hear an interesting argument against more drilling ... yet. Do we want to be the first to run out, or the last?

Good discussion. Lets not forget that oil over $100 was a market phenomenon (and I think it was totally contrived), and was not based the cost to produce and deliver plus a fair profit, just plain old fashioned old fear and greed. The bottom fell out of oil prices because the demand dropped dramatically due to the world wide economic conditions (brought on in part by the high price of energy).

I think it is a litttle known national security strategy to use up the rest of the world's oil before we use up ours. You might recall that when oil was over $100 a barrel, there was big talk about drilling everywhere including the moon and using whale oil shale, and energy producing algae, making cars that get 100 mpg, yada yada.

When the price went below $80 all that stopped all at once. Now we're creeping back as demand slowly increases.

I spent many years in the electric and gas utility industry, and if wind and solar were economically feasible without government subsidy, they would have invested in it 10, 20 & 30 years ago. When oil is over $100 a barrel, the wind and other stuff looks good economically, but not when oil is $40-60.

Your opinion may vary.

bock

[mitchntx]

I spent many years in the electric and gas utility industry, and if wind and solar were economically feasible without government subsidy, they would have invested in it 10, 20 & 30 years ago. When oil is over $100 a barrel, the wind and other stuff looks good economically, but not when oil is $40-60.

Your opinion may vary.

bock

I'm still in that industry ... specifically a nuke. But the company I work for has a very diverse enegy generating protfolio ... nuke, dirt, gas, turbine, and wind. Nuke is base load as are the dirt burners. Natural gas and turbine are peaking units, coming on-line when demand requires it.

The wind generation side of the house is an interesting phenomenon. Where sustainable wind is prevelant is also a sparsley populated area. Consequently, there isn't a large infrastructure for delivery. You can generate all the power you want, but if you can't get it to the end user, it does little good.

And guess what ... land owners want huge dollars for 345KV power line easements, even if the property gets less than 10" of rain a year and can only sustain 10 head of cattle per section of land. In other words, the land is all but worthless, except for an easement. right now, the costs are a part of building the wind generators, but I can forsee eminent domain coming into play.

Another piece of that puzzle, is that building renewable energy platforms (wind, solar, geo-thermal) yields global warming credits. So, if a company puts 100 megawatts of renewable energy on-line, it can take credit for 100 coal burning megawtts (or some formula like that) in the eyes of the air quality control world. So the cost of burning coal goes down.

The long range plan is to retire the dirt burners as more alternative energy becomes available and deliverable. But for now, it makes good business sense to spend the 100s of millions of dollars in building renewable sources and taking credits vs investing in scrubber technology to help clean up emmissions on plant due to retire in 10 or 15 years. It might not help much today, but the future is looking cleaner ...

It's an interesting juggling act ...


Me at work ...
(IMG:http://dl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1292/1292871fwls2yt8o1.jpg)

[cccbock]

For electric power, I think nuclear and solar are our best alternatives, despite their drawbacks. At this point, oil is almost exclusively used for transportation (include racing in that), and as base stock for all the plastic things we love so much.

Coal is too environmentally dirty (in a lot of ways, not just emissions) for a long term fix.

It just so happens I helped develop an international carbon exchange, and even now I am torn on the wisdom of this approach (the carbon cap and trade thing). Its relies on international government regulation, which I hate. I think energy conservation and alternative energy development is the winning approach long term. To the extent that carbon cap and trade promotes conservation, I am for it. If it is just another money making scheme to suck goverment revenue out of the energy industry, or allow for the poorer planners to buy their way out of modernizing, then no.

But whatever way we go, it still has to meet the fundamental test of economics...at least in my book. I don't think anybody in their right mind believes the oil thing is sustainable long term.

Race while you can....conserve what you can

bock