Rambling On
I haven't been blogging much mostly because so much of what is in the news is so depressing that I haven't been keeping up with it. Between gas prices, housing foreclosures, the democratic primaries, the midwest tornadoes and our incompetent congress there isn't much sunshine in the country today.
Gas prices are my main hot button right now. I graduated college in 1965 and had a Professor who had written his Doctoral Thesis on the dwindling supply of oil and predicted that by the end of the 20th century we would need to develop alternate energy sources and to start manufacturing more energy efficient cars, appliances and energy delivery systems. Needless to say, I thought he was blowing smoke and so did his Doctoral Review Board . Since his thesis was based on a mathimatical model he had created, the board thought the facts were questionable. Well, that shows how ignorant we can be. If we had started being concerned about energy sources when Dr. Jamison raised the red flag, we would probable be driving hydrogen or methane powerd cars, wind power would be fully developed and appliances would be running on Puron rather than Freon. It really is a shame that people who are ahead of their time get such shabbey treatment.
Congress is my next hot button. I know that much of politics is convincing the electorate that you are the right person for the job and that every you do is done in the best interest of your constituents and the country as a whole. The big problem with that is that it makes politicians lie and do things for a small segment of society that are an overall detriment to the rest of society.
I'm thinking primarily of the impact Environmentalists are having on our need to find and refine oil. Even though we will run out of recoverable oil supplies at some point in the future we still are totally reliant on it for the foreseeable future. It will take time to develop and perfect alternate fuels and to establish an infrastructure to distribute them. We can't just change over like turning off a light switch. It will take years to remove all the gas burners from the highways. Think about it. There are probably 200 - 250 million automobiles in the US that will need to be replaced with new ones. That is a mammouth undertaking in itself.
We need a weaning period to get ourselves off of gasoline but our congress seems to think that by not allowing new drilling, new refineries and exploration they can force energy users to use alternatives. The problem with that is, there are no available alternatives. What is even worse is that congress has failed to pass an Energy Policy.
Without an energy policy, it will be impossible to put a new fuel and the infrastrucure for it in place. A fuel needs to be identified as the one that will be our primary source. It could be hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulfide or any number of elements but whatever it is will require a transition period.
To be honest about it, it isn't just the congress who is holding back alternative fuel. Ever administration in the past 50 years has failed to propose a workable plan for future energy needs. The haven't tried to re establish nuclear energy as a cheap source of electricity, they have taken untold millions of barrels of oil out of the picture by declaring areas of the Atlantic seaboard, the Gulf Of Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and other off limits to exploration and drilling.
It looks like politicians, be thay Democrat or Republican are doing everthing they can to make America even more dependant upon foriegn oil. The don't seem to care that despots, zealots and dictators have us by the balls and will not hesitate to squeeze when the notion hits them.
Chuck
Gas prices are my main hot button right now. I graduated college in 1965 and had a Professor who had written his Doctoral Thesis on the dwindling supply of oil and predicted that by the end of the 20th century we would need to develop alternate energy sources and to start manufacturing more energy efficient cars, appliances and energy delivery systems. Needless to say, I thought he was blowing smoke and so did his Doctoral Review Board . Since his thesis was based on a mathimatical model he had created, the board thought the facts were questionable. Well, that shows how ignorant we can be. If we had started being concerned about energy sources when Dr. Jamison raised the red flag, we would probable be driving hydrogen or methane powerd cars, wind power would be fully developed and appliances would be running on Puron rather than Freon. It really is a shame that people who are ahead of their time get such shabbey treatment.
Congress is my next hot button. I know that much of politics is convincing the electorate that you are the right person for the job and that every you do is done in the best interest of your constituents and the country as a whole. The big problem with that is that it makes politicians lie and do things for a small segment of society that are an overall detriment to the rest of society.
I'm thinking primarily of the impact Environmentalists are having on our need to find and refine oil. Even though we will run out of recoverable oil supplies at some point in the future we still are totally reliant on it for the foreseeable future. It will take time to develop and perfect alternate fuels and to establish an infrastructure to distribute them. We can't just change over like turning off a light switch. It will take years to remove all the gas burners from the highways. Think about it. There are probably 200 - 250 million automobiles in the US that will need to be replaced with new ones. That is a mammouth undertaking in itself.
We need a weaning period to get ourselves off of gasoline but our congress seems to think that by not allowing new drilling, new refineries and exploration they can force energy users to use alternatives. The problem with that is, there are no available alternatives. What is even worse is that congress has failed to pass an Energy Policy.
Without an energy policy, it will be impossible to put a new fuel and the infrastrucure for it in place. A fuel needs to be identified as the one that will be our primary source. It could be hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulfide or any number of elements but whatever it is will require a transition period.
To be honest about it, it isn't just the congress who is holding back alternative fuel. Ever administration in the past 50 years has failed to propose a workable plan for future energy needs. The haven't tried to re establish nuclear energy as a cheap source of electricity, they have taken untold millions of barrels of oil out of the picture by declaring areas of the Atlantic seaboard, the Gulf Of Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and other off limits to exploration and drilling.
It looks like politicians, be thay Democrat or Republican are doing everthing they can to make America even more dependant upon foriegn oil. The don't seem to care that despots, zealots and dictators have us by the balls and will not hesitate to squeeze when the notion hits them.
Chuck
posted by Chuck at 12:21 PM
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