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eminem_imposter
May 24, 2004, 3:13 AM
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Considering that for some of us, the nearest climbing site is quite a ways away, gas prices can be a problem..check this out, it was originally posted by Rogmatt at Perfect Union BBS..I say do your part to spread the word!
Why didn't George W. think of this? Gas rationing in the 80's worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us!
The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor. An interesting thought it to boycott their GAS. Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis.
Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01):
Shell.........................205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco.........144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil..............130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway...117,740,000 barrels
Amoco......................62,231,000 barrels
If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION!
Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:
Citgo..................... 0 barrels
Sunoco................. 0 barrels
Conoco................. 0 barrels
Sinclair................. 0 barrels
BP/Phillips........... 0 barrels
Hess..................... 0 barrels
All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. Get this info to as many people as possible via internet and e-mail.
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rgbscan
May 24, 2004, 3:38 AM
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/BEGIN_RANT
While I do agree on some level with this post, After all the majority of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudi (and NONE were Iraqi). I think the solution to the problem is to stop using so much gas, rather than buying it from other countries.
If you're not getting your oil from the middle east, where is it coming from? Better not buy any Venezuelan oil... your funding drug trafficking. Buy some of that Texas gas? Your creating smog and giving lung cancer to millions of Americans. Buy Canadian or Alaskan oil? You're destroying pristine wilderness.
The source of our oil addiction isn't the problem... its the addiction itself. All you guys out there driving SUV's to the grocery store are whats fueling our habit. Know what last years average fuel mileage in the USA was? Less than 24 mpg. It topped 25.9 in 1988 - Our best year on record. We're pigs for Oil. We pay the lowest prices for Oil in the Western world. Instead of switching dealers to one just as shady, why not just kick the habit? Interesting factoid: If all cars/trucks/suvs presently on the road got 2.2 more MPG, we could eliminate the need for Middle Eastern oil and live off our other suppliers. it really does take 6 gallons of oil to power a 60 watt lightbulb for a year of average household use.
Incidentally, I did research the parent post to see if the data was accurate. It DOES for the most part match up. See the link here:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/...vel_imports/cli.html
EDITED to give link directly to spreadsheet the parent post is referencing:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/...4_03/data/import.xls
/RANT
rgbscan
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eminem_imposter
May 24, 2004, 3:57 AM
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I agree completely that we need to eliminate our oil addiction, but since I don't see that happening too soon, this is a decent short term solve. Fuel cell's are still very expensive, one producing a constant 1.4kW runs about 15,000 dollars. Then you need hydrogen or water to operate it, which is really no big deal because it's dirt cheap..considering we're addicted to gasoline, we may as well utilize it. Even if we eliminate fuel cars all together, many of our products are still petrolium based...
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allarounder
May 24, 2004, 3:59 AM
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"it really does take 6 gallons of oil to power a 60 watt lightbulb"
hey, dumbass - less than 3% of our electricity comes from oil.
And don't BS me with "that much oil was needed to produce the coal." Coal made the steel to produce the oil. Blah blah blah.
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rgbscan
May 24, 2004, 4:02 AM
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You're missing my point. I wasn't attempting to say one source of power was better than the other. I believe I only spoke of oil in reference to the parent post. The point I'm trying to make is that our increased consumtion is our problem, rather than where we get the energy (oil in this case). As the parent post was about gas - which IS 100% oil (and not other sources) I chose to use another illustration as well to show how much were using without even knowing it.
rgbscan
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maculated
May 24, 2004, 4:03 AM
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maculated moved this thread from General to Community.
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ben87
May 24, 2004, 4:36 AM
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Americans certainly do love their cars. They're a great technology, certainly. We got behind cars and the ideas they represent about how communities are organized, how humans relate to their world, etc. bigger than anyone else. And tremendous good has come from it. Americans are rightly proud, and people all over the world REALLY do think that enormous good has come from our embrace of those ideas more totally than anyone else. But I think we're all realizing we have to temper the NEGATIVE sides of our obsession with cars. And that's a difficult learing process.
hey -- I love burning gas, too. My current guilty pleasure is MTV's Pimp My Ride. As for the original proposal, I don't think it's a bad idea. In respose to the criticism that fossil fuel extraction creates problems in lots of countries (venezuela was mentioned): Yes. BUT, I would say that the companies that top the list: Shell, Exxon-Mobil, etc. are some of the countries that are the largest, and have the longest list of alleged misdeeds. The actions of Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria are arguably a case study of every everything bad about the modern global economy.
eminem-imposter:
I was under the impression that fuel-cell technology was really more of a dodge -- not really worth getting behind. that they reduced vehicle emmissions, but not overall consumption (ie. that energy had to be produced somewhere).
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eminem_imposter
May 24, 2004, 2:14 PM
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Actually it's quite the contrary. All a fuel cell is, is a Platinum membrane that oxygen and hydrogen are forced through. When they are forced through there is a small electric charge created, and if there is a constant flow they can create anywhere from very very small amounts of power up to several kilowatts. There is really no energy required to run one, unless it is run off of water..If it is run off water then it needs electricity to separate the water into its base mollecules, supplying oxygen and hydrogen to the electrolyser. They really are an interesting technology, if more people could put some money into them then I'm sure prices would come down at least a little bit and allow for the general public to afford them. Right now fossil fuel is so much cheaper at the base investment that everyone still prefers that. If you go down to Home Depot you can get a gas generator for around 200 dollars..If you were to find a dealer to sell you a Hydrogen Fuel Cell that produced the same output it would cost near 1,000 dollars. If you use the generator on a daily basis and have to refill the gas every couple of days, especially with current gas prices, you will cost two or three times the fuel cell in a matter of months or years. Whereas the fuel cell only requires distilled water to operate.
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ben87
May 24, 2004, 5:22 PM
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do fuel cells really generate power? I thought they just stored power.
-Ben
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eminem_imposter
May 24, 2004, 9:55 PM
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I've never heard of a fuel cell that stores power..all the one's I've had experience with generate power. The majority of the fuel cells I've had the chance to play with have a small solar panel on them that splits distilled water into oxygen and hydrogen, then the gasses are forced through a thin platinum membrane creating a small electric charge, at a constant rate of production they can produce about 150 times the power they require to operate. Where it takes about .02 volts to separate the water they would produce 3 volts constantly. If you get this on a bigger scale with platinum membrane stacks they can put out several kilowatts consistantly, while still only requiring that same .02 volts to operate..They are truly a promising power source.
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scuclimber
May 25, 2004, 5:21 AM
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There is another type of fuel cell... basically a hardened tank for gasoline/racing fuel fuel that won't explode in a crash. People put them in race cars and sometimes offroad vehicles.
Colin
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gene
May 25, 2004, 10:07 AM
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while there's a lot of fuel cell research going on right now, they are not yet commercially viable for automobiles.
1 kw is equal to 1.34 horsepower, so a fuel ceel that prodeces "several" kW (i.e. between 2 & 10) is NOT going to power a car - would need one with 50 kW at least, and it would still be one weenie of a car.
hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but most of it is "bound up" in the form of molecules (water, hydrocarbons, etc). breaking the hydrogen out of these molecules requires energy, and doing it directly on the car with photovoltaic cells is not yet commercially viable.
Another major problem with fuel-cell cars is hydrogen infrastructure. There is no means of creating, transporting, storing etc. the hydrogen that would be needed. Existing pipelines are not suitable for hydrogen, and liquefaction (cooling hydrogen down until it turns into a liquid) takes bunches of energy.
While fuel cells sound great, there must be several major technological breakthroughs, and/or some serious infrastructure hurdles overcome before they could realistically be used on a large scale.
The bottom line is that while "alternate" forms of energy sound nice and are tree-hugger enviro-friendly, they will NEVER be used on a large scale until they are as cheap or cheaper than existing forms of energy. People are not going to tell their kids that there's no money left for food because mommy and daddy want to buy "clean" energy vs "normal" energy.
I'm all for better cleaner sources of fuel, but it won't happen until it makes "sense" economically. Companies can't exist to do any of this work unless they can make a profit.
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eminem_imposter
May 25, 2004, 2:17 PM
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While I agree with...well, everything you said...There was one car featured in a magazine I read (can't recall, pop mech, pop science, auto weekly...) That operated off of a single hydrogen fuel cell and topped out around 160mph. It all depends on how efficient your motors are more than how much power you feed them, I have some beastie 12v motors laying around that can put out 1-2 HP. They run slow but put out the power. They have actually engineered a "tank" of sorts to store liquid hydrogen..It absorbs into some kind of metal, can't recall that either, and is basically as stable as water.
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