Natural Science Forum / Physics / General Physics / July 2008

If I have oil and I know it will be worth much more in the future than it
is today and I do not need the income from the sale of that oil right now
then I will probably hold on to it.  But there is no "must" to it.  There
is the other side of that nickle:  If I know that there will be
alternatives or I know that there are and will be more options then there
is a limit to how much I can get for the oil now and in the future.

Giving __**OUR**__ oil away to the multinational oil companies does
absolutely nothing to resolve this problem in __**OUR**__ favor.  The
multinationals, being the owners of the oil, will conduct themselves just
as the current owners of the oil.  The proper solution is alternatives
and that includes near term as well as long term.  I have seen enough to
convince me that Hydrogen Boosters work (that these rigs improve fuel
efficiency by at least 15%).  There are just too many sellers and buyers
and people that claim they work.  I am rather angry overt the fact that
our, so called, representatives have not put any pressure on the "Consumer
Protection Agency" to test these rigs and debunk them or admit that they
work.  Either is fine with me, but the CPA has a web page and you can see
that they have tested these sorts of things in the past and that this is
the reason for their existence.  So why do I hear this loud snoring sound
on Capital Hill?  Could it be that the oil companies own the government?

A 15% decrease in fuel consumption in the USA will put gas prices below $3
a gallon if all the bullshit about supply and demand is more than just
Republican pig prancing.  That is because we would have the supply demand
balance we had 2 years ago.

Undeed, some of the news readers did.

Wha happend then was when it became public that oil tanker's were
sitting deep in the water off the east coast, holding withholding oil
from delivery until gas prices topped $2,00/gallon and gas lines at
the pumps were 5-hours long to purchase a half tankful of gas there
was a bit of rebellion by both the public and the US government. The
combined two actions ended the problem.

I don't want to lecture on relatively recent history, but the reaction
of the public was a bit draconic, as was that of the government.
People began to run their cars on emepty, and carry a few gallons in
an emergency can in the even they ran out.  The US Coast Guard was
assigned to clear the shipping channels of anchored tanker, and drive
them back out to sea, sometimes in the face or incoming atlantic
storms, at the risk of losing both their ships and their cargos.
Suddenly, the motivation for profit became secondary to them and their
companies to their survival and that of their tankers.

Within a week, there were no more anchored tankers in line in Delaware
Bay, or the Chesepake, or along Predisidents Roads, and I doubt if
even a warning shot was ever fired.  Result was, the gas lines
vanished within 2-weeks and the pump price of gas at the pump never
more than sliighly varied.  I gues that we have Gerald Ford to thank
for that, plus in some measure gas station operators (who refused to
raise their prices in the face of blackmail), and the American driving
public for adapting to the fuel shortages.

Things however have changed over the decades, and tanker captains no
longer speculate by purchasing and then selling their cargos to the
highest bidders as they did at that time. Today, their cargos are
owned by some speculator sitting in a high-rise in New York or some
other part of the world, and not on a tanker that their wealth in
invested into.  So they can afford to play loose and fast.  Their
worst nightmare is bidding up crude oil to $140 a barrel, then having
to sell it as the market declines for the more conventional price of
$78/barrel.  This may be what we are starting to see happen over the
past 10 days.

Just watch what happend during the next 120 days as airlines cut their
flights to save on fuel, and as cruise lines increase the price of
their cruises to compensate for the increased cost of powering these
gigantic floating hotels. Most of us are simply using our old rusted
out fuel efficnet rust bucket, and letting for now the SUV to sit
parked in the driveway until gas prices fall into the area of $3.00 or
less/gallon, which might take as much as three months or more.

Harry C.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/12/bp.oil>

He simply wrote a different intro to his fixation on forcing science
to make something work that is against physical laws, where laws
are physics rules of reality and not legal coda of societies.

/BAH

They will, you watch.

Nope, that isnt the reason for the financial market turmoil.

Nope.

Nope.

Hardly anyone has been laid off.

Been having those pathetic little drug crazed fantasys long ?

We didnt even get that during the great depression and wont do now either.

We'll see...

Easy to claim, hell of a lot harder to actually substantiate that claim.

Its being handled well.

How odd that we havent seen anything like that.

Thats been happening there for a long time now. It wont be happening anywhere else, you watch.

Pure fantasy. There wont be any systemic collapse. We didnt even get that during the great depression.

People did foresee this.

 <snip>

/BAH

System collapse is not always a bad thing.  Classical Greece,
seventeenth century Britain, nineteenth century America all had
catastrophic civil wars, and they were the most productive and
creative societies in history.   Nothing like a nice civil war to make
you think outside of the box.

n work,

I think you are being a bit pessimistic about fusion power, and human
ingenuity; taken in the context of the last 100 years or so.

On Jul 26, 10:25 pm, "hhc...@yahoo.com" <hhc...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Look, I'm really not trying to be offensive here, and I appreciate
your frankness.  But, professional scientists are not, in general, the
most practically creative bunch.  Getting a Ph.D. means you have some
analytical skills, but it certainly doesn't mean you have any
particularly brilliant ideas.    The fact that you and your colleagues
have no clue doesn't necesssarily mean the problem is really that all
hard.  It just means you have no clue.

The approach I have repeatedly suggested -- inertial confinement using
thousands of micro-lasers aimed at a focal point to generate
temperatures of tens of millions of degrees -- is relatively simple,
safe and inexpensive.  And, it can be developed in stages.  That
doesn't mean I know exactly how to do it.  But, with innumerable
variables available for the tweaking, and the immense energy potential
of nuclear fusion, it sounds rather doable.  So, why isn't it being
done?

Well, you probably would blow yourself up if you kept at it. Can't
always know exactly how much energy is going to be released, and small
errors are catastrophic with E = m(c squared).  It is a totally new
approach, so there is no textbook to tell anyone what the next step
is.  And, up to  this point in time, it hasn't been essential to keep
the economy going.  Now, it is.

then beat up your politicians.  Obama finally uttered the swear words,
"nuclear power plants" but only in terms of R&D.  None are talking
about building plants that will function.

/BAH

Ah, we are taking a vote for the solution to the end of civilization!

Yeah, fission is good, especially if you can use up all that nuclear
fuel as power rather than all at once as bombs.

But there is that once little minor problem of hideous nuclear waste
that hangs around for eons. My solution is we just find a  useless
area of the planet and rope it off and dump it there. My vote is for
Alabama. The Middle East ain't a half-bad choice either!

Amen to that, That poster does not realize that over 50 years of
incredibly costly research has gone into the productin of controlled
nuclear fusion. The bottom line was that the result of all this
research was Zero.

Quite possibly during the next 100 or so years, someone will learn how
to tame the dragon, and gather useful energy from controlled
thermonuclear fusion reactions...perhaps someday. I can assure you
that this will not take place in my lifetime.

Then too, what do I know, since I only spent a couple of years working
on Princeton's Stellarator project which today is on display at the
Smithsonian (why I have no clue).

Harry C.

He isn't ignorant; he's been instructed often.  He is choosing to
be stupid and is proud of it.  This is a psychological phenomena
that is occurring; people keep bleating for the impossible so that
they, and nobody else, will work on the real problems and the
problems that do have solutions.  I think they are aping the
talking heads they see on TV, the movies, etc.  It's some
flavor of Hollywooditis.  Combine that with PCitis and
stupidity becomes an affliction that is admired and rewarded.

/BAH