If you are in Iraq & American are you fair game?

Its got me confused I cannot figure out what there strategy is. Seems like Ukraine and Georgia would do well to try to develop there own means of generating Gas energy with Russia creating such a demand. But then I have no real knowledge of what available resources are there.

 

There's got to be some kind of energy there. All that land has to be on top of something, the question is whether or not it's economically feasible to use whatever they have right now.

 

Well if what Smiles says is true then it sounds as if it’s simply a case of supply and demand Georgia, Ukraine possibly think they are of special privilege?

Either way while I have no real knowledge of available resources in these regions. I can see where the higher the prices rise for getting oil from Russia the more feasible alternative sources become.

 

It's also a case of blaming supply instead of demand. If the price is to high, then stop buying it. I love it here in the United States, where everyone buys a V8 that can afford it, and then bitch about gas prices. Stop using so damn much, and maybe it won't cost you so much.

 

i'm not sure of theexact circumstance but i know the ukraine was doing some favours for russia and russia in turn kept their gas prices bellow those of what they charge everyone else.... well the ukraine stopped returning the favour so the russians eavened out their gas costs..... the ukranians refused to pay the difference..... and voila

 

Dio, they have come so used to the idea that it will always be there. If there demand is there then some smart enterprising individual will come up with a genius way to meet the demand.

I'd just love to see a chart of automobile population growth vs people population growth. Used to be a family of five would all drive the same car. Teenage brothers took turns borrowing the family car to go on a date. Not during my time but ask some old timers and that's what they will say. Now a family of five has got five cars in the driveway if the kids are of driving age. Every year more kids get old enough to drive and buy a car.

Add to that the fact that China has a couple billion people starting to get actual money in their pockets and itching to buy a car and drive. We are about to see demand grow tenfold. It really would not matter if the average car got 30mpg or 50 mpg for that matter. There will simply be more of them.

Absolute necessity of demand will drive alternate fuels into the realm of reality. I say we pool our money together and invest in Nebraska land, Corn isn’t that the cheapest way to make alcohol fuel?

 

i agree joe that we will eventually need alternate fuel sources but your stats are a bit off..... china has 1.3 billion people....... they currently have a replacement rate of 1.5%.... you need around a 2.1 % to stabilize your population at a certain number......... china also is extremely densely populated in the urban regions while the rural areas dont see anywhere near the population demographics the urban areas do..... china also has a ratio of about 118 males to 100 girls due to abortions and abandonment of females as a result of the one child policy (males are preferred), this means that we are going to be seeing a lot emigration from china in the near future

china is also going to have great difficulties in the coming years supporting its aging population.... remember, each person has 4 grandparents and 2 parents they are going to be supporting when they grow old, especially in the urban areas where the population replacement is about 1.1%, my prediction is that we wont be seeing any sort of colossal boom in the car market over there simply because no urban center in the world could make roads to support that many vehicles....

another problem they are foreseeing which is scarcely discussed by the west is the fact that when you have 4 grandparents 2 parents AND you’re an only child, chances are you get spoiled, a chinese exchange student was telling us they are having great problems with university students who move to live on rez simply because they dont know how to cook an egg or wash laundry

 

Alternative fuels have to happen, that's just the fact of the matter. The way we are doing things now just doesn't work. Check out a guy named Amory Lovins, Google search him, he's got some great ideas, and they're all fairly practical.

 

I’ll check it out when I get off work Dio. Mean while I take no offense to my numbers being off those were just knee jerk off the top of my head estimations. Here is another one I do not believe I mentioned. Chinas economy growth I understand it is extremely high going by the admitted numbers coming from China while these figures are high its believed that they are far underestimated. Money in and of itself can drive prices higher and certainly put a strain on supply. I can try to research the exact figures I believe the numbers were 10 Percent growth for 2005 but real estimates were in the high 20s range.

 

Ok Dio I checked out the links very interesting. Was looking at it with skepticism at first remembering another research institute from that area I researched maybe a year or so ago.
http://www.viewzone.com/amygdala/index3.html

Your group seems a little more in the mainstream though.

Have you read any of the books? So much information so little time. The one I found of interest was. "Small is Profitable" I'd like to know a little more about it if you have read the book.

I used to argue about one of the biggest myths perpetrated on a huge scale to the general public. That being that the power distribution problems in California had anything to do with deregulation. If that book explains the whole power grid system the way I understand it to be it should be required reading for every Californian. Heh, for that matter Ukrainians and Georgians. :wink:

 

California prevented power-comps building old-tech plants.
Since the powcomps dont get paid for invention they ( probably
after a little chit chat at the golf range ) did not clean up their shit.

This ( like Cathrina ) is the weak side of capitalism.

"If there demand is there then some smart enterprising individual will come up with a genius way to meet the demand".

Why dont you wake mister genius and tell him we want a cheap cure for cancer. ( But if it was tupperware you would be right ). :roll:

 

The environmentalists protested any new power plant developments. They are still using the same infrastructure they did decades ago. With increased population and building development and power generating stations having to span power lines at longer distances and more kilowatts being used by more people. The weak link is simply the lines them selves they can only handle so much current. And guess what?

The power suppliers private or not would be glad to sell power uninterrupted year round but they are REGULATED. They were forcibly told to turn there generators off.

The electrical power grid cannot hold power like a large battery it has to be generated as its used. This is part of the problem with air generated power. .... I could go on for days. Try reading that book referenced by that guy Dio recommended. It looked like it was headed in the right direction. That is more smaller utilities and privatize them and deregulate them. In a nutshell with more stations dispersed through ought the existing population evenly. This disperses the massive current load on the lines evenly.

 

Yeah, Amory Lovins is a big fan of decentralizing the power system. He's also a fan of moving off the grid as much as possible. I'm inclined to agree that regulation can be bad, but it also can be good. You can't tell me that Enron and it's engineering of the power shortages didn't have anything to do with deregulation.

 

Well I would not be totally swept up in all the propaganda. Like those phone conversations so much ado was given in the media about. One would wonder how many hours of conversations they monitored before they found a few sentences that they could take out of context. People who work in the business were undoubtedly frustrated that the tree huggers had such a grip on the state legislature as to keep out any new development. They also knew that the price fluctuations were a joke the demand being so high because the regulators were telling them to turn of there generators. They also knew that the public were being fed a lie that “there power problems stemmed from de-regulation.” So it would be typical in there conversation over a phone line to say something like "well looks like "Old Widow Jones will be paying her whole pension check to have electricity in the house this month." Hell I could picture myself saying something like that. But it would be sarcasm against what was being done to Old Widow Jones not by Duke or Enron but the state legislature and the regulators.

 

So what you're saying is the guys from Enron were honest men who just happened to get caught out of context? Believe me I know California is a liberal state, I can't smoke in a bar while consuming alchohol and trying to sleep with a woman I don't know, but the power outages had as much to do with corporate corruption at the top levels as it did with infrastructure. If it was all infrastructure, they would still be doing rolling black outs, which they do from time to time, but not to the extent they were, and there's something like 3 million more people in southern california now.

 

There was wrong doing on both sides true enough. But I'm just pointing out how the system of misinformation works. I believe there has to be regulation of industry just like there is regulation of the commodities, stock market, just like we regulate the regular guys with basic laws like speeding laws for example. But it seems to be done so very poorly as it is. I think making the process more transparent and accurately informing the public. Might be of help to start with then an informed public can make the correct decisions by electing and holding its representatives to fix it or get out. As it is our system is dysfunctional in the sense that common sense decisions are made such as "privatization" of some aspects of the power industry. But the regulators then cause rolling black outs and the media falsely inform the public that the rolling brownouts were the result of "deregulation".

This kind of mass misinformation drives me nuts. It is so easy to believe that the big bad corporations to blame, and while there is blame to be had on both sides. There goal seems to be a bit elitist sort of like lets dumb down the masses then manipulate there thinking to effect the end result by means of misinforming them.

 

You're assuming the masses weren't dumbed down to begin with. The average person is a fool and doesn't want to concern themselves with the workings of government. Read Plato's "Republic." Democracy leads to oligarchy, and the responsible media is supposed to help stop that. But they don't, the media is just as dumb as the average american.

 

Amen to that!

 

You should look up the name Diogenes if your not familiar with it. If you have a minute do a wikipedia search for "diogenes of sinope." He fucking rules.

 

Ok now I'm seriously thinking of changing my name to Antisthenes the one who poked Dio with a stick B) and to think I figured you were a fan of Ronny James Dio.

Non-conformist hmm me like! As in the words of another famous orator.

:?: No Yoda! There you go!

Interesting have you studied philosophy Dio? I suppose if I were to take any old bullshit course in collage just for the fun of it philosophy would be fun.