OT- fuel price rant (again)

MapQuest Gas Prices:

My projected scenario is this:

Fuel (oil) prices continue to escalate

US goes into very deep recession or depression

Deflation begins

All prices begin to fall

Guv'ment changes the formula to calculate "inflation" to include fuel, food and housing costs.

Citizens on fixed incomes get the double whammy again.

JT

(Getting the garden ready in the back yard)

Paul Johns> I noticed today at the convenience store gas station near me, diesel was

YEAH!

Wave that majick Wand and Make it so!

Decrease India and China's demand for Oil and make Hugo Chavez act like a regular guy and change all the opposition to Drilling in ANWR and instantly get all the coal gasification plans that have been sitting on shelves passed through the EPA and double nuclear energy production!

Convert the baboon in charge of Iran to be a Baptist Republican who likes the USA and won't disrupt mid-east stability.

What's wrong with him? Why doesn't he do that? We should get a better president! One that promises change! and Hope! And has a wife that finally has achieved pride in the USA.

Or maybe it's a complicated situation, that requires some careful thought......AND REAL ACTION.

MD

-- Message posted using

I don't know if I've posted this here before but I've come up with a little energy plan of my own that I really believe would make a difference.

There is a lot of talk among the political types about energy independence, while that is mostly a pipe dream it is insane for a country as great as the United States to let itself up in a position where regimes as warped as Iran's and Venezuela can put our economy at serious risk. While we can't be totally energy independent any time soon we can get ourselves in a position where a major disruption in supplies from other parts of the world won't seriously damage our economy. Toward that end I offer my own energy plan, it offers incentives to reduce our imports, increase domestic production, and provide abundant supplies of clean, inexpensive electricity.

1. All taxes on the production of domestic oil and natural gas are to be repealed, and all expenses used for that production are to be tax free.

1. ANWAR and all other government controlled sites are to be opened for exploration and development, including off shore. All current environmental protections are to be followed.

2. The EPA's regulations on fuel and oil production will be scrutinized by a panel made up of scientists and engineers from the oil, auto and environmental industries to simplify the rules to a level an average American can understand. The use of boutique fuels will be eliminated.

1. Any lawsuits brought about as a result of this program will be dealt with on a loser pays basis; if the lawsuit is deemed to be frivolous the loser will be required to pay twice the expenses incurred by the defendant.

2. Starting one year from the enacting of this program all imported oil will be subject to a tax of the difference in price between the price of the imported oil and the price of equivalent domestically produced oil plus 10%.

1. Proceeds from the import oil tax will be used to create a fusion fund. That fund will be built up for a period not to exceed 5 years, the proceeds of that fund will be awarded in total to the whomever devises a practical, commercially viable fusion reactor.

2. After the 5 year period is past the fund will build for the next five years and be used to reward anyone who can devise a practicable method of making an economical, clean, non-petroleum based transportation fuel.

1. After 10 years the tax on imported petroleum products will expire. After my program has run it's course we will have the ability to produce clean, virtually unlimited supplies of electricity, we will be well on our way toward getting off the "oil teat", and we will have developed our supplies of oil and gas enough so that any disruption of our foreign sources will be an inconvenience and not a disaster. We will also have developed our resources in the careful way we can do it now, instead of in the panicked way we would do it after a serious long term disruption from one of our major suppliers.

After all is said and done America will be cleaner, richer, more secure, and we could very well be energy independent!

• This alone would derail the Fed gov't and bankrupt us without a complete spending halt.

• Why do this? Let's use up all of the oil everywhere else before we use our own oil. It's cheaper elsewhere right now, even though we whine about the cost...

• Are these the same scientists and engineers that are currently hyping global warming?

• Ahhh, The English tort system. Guess who won't be supporting this change in our legal system?...

• And who exactly is going to get stuck with paying this new tax?

• And who exactly is going to collect, monitor, and distribute this new tax revenue? (All the 'wired and connected' university people, with their lobby connections, that's who)

• 5 years goes fast when there is money to be gleaned, and lost.

• Your utopian statement of 'clean, virtually unlimited supplies of electricity' is naive. If that could be done practically right now... It would have already been done. Sure, technology changes, but the amount(s) of change are infinitesimally small.

• The common American is an energy pig. He/she will not change easily, or voluntarily. You want security? Vote into office people that won't sell you out for a buck. You want cleaner? Prosecute the crap out of every single polluter, no matter how small. (Use your tort system... Go ahead)... You want richer? Borrow less. Save more. Demand the same from the people you elect to office. You want energy independence? Start at home. Think of that... If you are 100% energy independent, you would not need them, whoever they are... Then pay that forward... Just like the movie.

You say that like it's a bad thing! Seriously though I really don't think the government gets that much money for oil and natural gas, and keep in mind this is just for DOMESTICALLY produced oil and gas.

The whole point of this plan is to reduce fuel prices in the short term (or at least keep them from going up as fast), and to minimize the need to use oil as fuel in the long term.

Sadly some of them would be, but the point isn't to make the regulations any stricter, it's to make them make more sense and so cheaper to implement.

I know, but it's a real problem and it's worth putting in the plan.

Obviously we would, but again keep in mind it's just in IMPORTED oil, domestic oil would remain untaxed. The idea here is to make domestic oil relatively cheap and so encourage production.

It doesn't HAVE to be the government that does it, it could be done like the X-Prize.

Yep, but with either of these there is no payoff until the goal is attained.

Interestingly enough the Sandia National Labs has come up with a process that can use sunlight or other high heat source to turn C02 into fuel!

Jeff, you've been around long enough to see some dramatic changes, look at your computer! We actually do have a design for a fusion reactor that could really work, although it needs helium 3 for fuel.

A practical fusion reactor is one of those technologies that could change everything... no more fission reactors with their waste, no more coal plants with their pollution, and the ability to make all the fuel we need, be it some kind of synthetic fuel or hydrogen.

As long as we can produce the power (and we can if we choose to) it's not really a problem, that we eat too much is a much bigger one.

US $4.40 at a (S)hell station in Fairfield, California Sunday afternoon for diesel fuel. Chris Houck

The hallowed halls of Harvard say this about conserving oil:

--Take a close look at the Perfesser's math, right where he does the gasoline to electric cost comparison. Havvrd doesn't really have an engineering school, does it?

Has anybody else noticed how every other pollutant has dropped off the map since carbon dioxide was declared the enemy of mankind and Gaia? I can't remember the last time an article mentioned all the stuff that made the automobile evil in the 70's...

Don't trip over those moving goal posts.

Yep, WFB was right... Better to be governed by the 1st 2000 people listed in the phone book rather than anyone from Hawvahd...

JT

Yep, he usually was right.

Jeff DeWitt

When should I expect the moving truck? Aanderud, Lee