Karaoke Forums

Eban that's what I was trying to get across to people but they didn't get it I guess. The price of a barrel of oil has almost doubled in the last year, however the pump prices do not reflect that. Yes gas has gone up in the last year but it hasn't doubled at the pump but appears to be 50 % higher, not 100% as one would surmise.

As for electric cars they bring in a whole new kettle of fish as to their efficiency, they still need fossil or nuclear fuel to recharge them in many many cases. And what about when they outlive their usefullness. The environmental impact of disposing batteries (not to mention them breaking and leaking after an accident) and of course the energy needed to produce them, again fuel and refuel them if you're going to take a long trip, and the cost to buy or lease for the consumer.

As for biofuel cars? farmers instead of growing corn etc for food and feed are now growing for fuel. To me that's not right. Food should be grown to feed people espwith the food situation in the world today.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

you're in no way informed as to the efficiencies of electric cars, other ways of generating electricity (here we can pay more for electricity from wind farms), solar panels are more efficient now, and EVEN if you were 100% correct in your assumption on electric cars, it's easier to stop the pollution from ONE source than 1 million tailpipes!

The newer lithium batteries also after charging for 5,000 charges NEVER go bad, they just lose their 100% efficiency. They still work and hold around 80% of a charge.

So you go from a 200 mile (estimated) charge to 160 or so...

I completely agree with Eben's statements. Business must make a profit, some think they are taking advantage of us. I think not.

It is changing the way I drive and how I plan my vacations etc. My net income has been affected by the higher gas prices as I'm in sales and have to pay for my own gas. But the write off's are pretty good now. At 50 cents a mile it still pays well however I must pay first or compensate by adjusting upwards the number of dependents I claim.

Anyway for now I'm cutting back where I can but I still go where I want when I want to, and will continue to do so.

_________________
FlipSide Karaoke
Scott

doowopp

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

lets go back about sixty years. Back then the average family had a few chickens in their yard (chickens can survive on scr ps) they had the capability of raising or buying a beef or a hog and butchering in the fall. They had the right to hunt and butcher wild meat for the winter. all housewives knew how to can veggies and everything else with a pressure cooker.
We did not depend upon the gov for protection or food and our taxes was low..We had the right and knowledge to produce our own. The radicals and corp attorneys has systemacittaly stripped us of our personal rights or family dependence.

Throughout history when a tribe no longer has the capabailites to produce their food for a year period then they starve and wither away. There are radicals in Africa right now that will wither away. You wanna wake up? Then you better start fighting for the rights in this country that they have taken away for the last 50 years. Your kids and grandkids will get very hungry and probably will have to learn a different language. As an Elder I walk away. WAKEUP!!!

Right now you depend upon China for unsafe toys and food. When we become an independant nation again with rights then the price of everything will go down. It doesnt take a dummy to figure this out.

There are a few communities that are passing laws A family can have few chickens in town They realize that the eggs will be virtually free and the cost of food stamps wiil decrease and the loco food bank will not be as stressed..

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

Matt thank you for proving my point. Wind power costs more. You get 200 miles out of a charge, then how long to recharge the batteries. Doesn't sound efficient to me. Try batteries with big rigs. you still have the output of pollutants with the recharging of batteries. Matt, Al Gore et al has you so brainwashed. You know Al, Mr Environmentalist, who spends more on electricity for his home (one of many) in one month than I spend on my total energy use in a year. The guy who has made millions on this. I also noticed you didn't say anything on biofuels.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

In the 30's and 40's Henry Ford came out a 4 cylinder engine Model T and Model A. I have driven both they got 18-20 miles per gallon. I am now driving a '93 Ford Aerostar It gets 18-20 miles per gallon/\. The automotive industry has been the biggest ripoff in this nations history. And they wonder why Japan has taken over the marketing..

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

well, i think asking me if im nuts implies that nuclear power is an abnormal means to provide power. i bet at least 50% of the population would advocate nuclear power in some way. so, no, im not nuts and i dont agree with your statement considering that nuclear reactors exsisted approximately 2 billion years ago (look up "natural nuclear reactors"), and operated the same way reactors operate today for millions of years with no clean-up or other interuption. during that time period there was no mass extinction or other evolutionary "blip" that I know of. i think you may have gotten some bad information or you choose to stay in a state of ignorance in the wake of a large amount of information available to the general public. the dark shadow cast by chernobyl and TMI still looms I suppose, and mostly to the detriment of our populations general welfare in my opinion.

its funny, i know so much about nuclear and i hear some of the silly stuff people say knowing they are either badly misinformed or have a bad case of belief persistance. i wonder how much i dont know about, say, the airline industry that seems like a "normal" thing but really isnt. i can be dumb too.

cheers to ya knightshow but I'm surprised that you would fall hook line and sinker for something like this. do some research (from BOTH sides of the story) and figure out if this is what you really think. I have (from BOTH sides).

_________________
[glow=red]Yo sucka, we need this hea CHOPTER, and we need it now![/glow]

Karyoker the engine of a Model T and an Aerostar are two different beasts. In fact the comparison shows the vast improvements on both vehicles and fuel consumption.

The Model T weighed 1,200 lbs, with a top speed of 45mph with a 2.9L engine.

The Aerostar of your year had of its smallest engine a 3.0L, V-6, weighed in the vicinity of 3,300 lbs, with a top speed of probably 100mph +.

So with a slightly larger engine, the Aerostar carries almost 3 times the weight and I darsay travels easily 3 times the speed, while using about the same amount of fuel. It also can carry twice the amount of people and much more cargo.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

If there is a a fuel price/supply crisis going on right now , one certainly would'nt know it by the way people still drive on the Wash area beltway. Not saying that slowing down is a cure all ,but slowing down from 80 to 60 mph is good for a couple of mpg anyway ,and is a good start to conserving fuel. Hell ,it might even save some innocent lives in the process .On any given night ,the SUVs come blasting up up behind cars at 75 to 90+ miles per hour ,weaving from lane to lane ,without worry of getting stopped by the police.
Anyway ,we all knew that the rate we use fuel could'nt continue forever.The scary thing is that there is no end or limit to how far this can go ,and the consequences it will have on everything we've become accustomed to.

Sorry everyone ,don't know how I posted my 2 cents 3 times. I thought I clicked on the button just once.

Jian: corrected

I never listen to Al Gore, and yeah I know all about his home with the huge electric bills.

I never said that the big rigs could go to electric either.

Electric cars are still a new concept (or rather an old concept revisited). What is the problem is energy storage. The batteries I know of are trickle charge. About three hours for 80% and six ours to fully charge the system. For a commuter car, that's good for back and forth to work, trips about town etc. The average car gets anywhere from 200 miles to 350 per tank load. It's not such a different convienience. You just charge at home when you get home, and unplug in the morning. The BMS (Battery Management System) will automatically stop charging when the batts are done.

As for biofuels, I have investigated them somewhat. The problem is they take more energy to make than they put out. Like gasoline. Like Anything that's energy. We don't have a viable means of producing ANY energy that doesn't require more energy to make it than it's used by.

You're absolutely right. For most common purposes, alternate energy isn't efficient for all applications. But if we can get the demand down for Internal Combustion Engines down, there will be LESS demand for the big rigs, for the work trucks, for the cars for long trips.

We gotta start SOMEWHERE! We can't just keep polluting this planet to death!

Of course you have, Ham... you work in the industry. and you're correct. I've never checked into it that much. After the Three Mile Island fiasco and the Chernobyl and other incidents were we've averted disaster by a hairsbreath, I never WANTED to learn. Obviously with the safety measures in place currently, and the sheer number of reactors in existance, it's being used, and used well.

But you never addressed the storage problem for the waste fuels.

I won't get into a point, counterpoint with you. I'm obviously ill equipped to do so. I'm glad you work in the industry. Work hard to keep it safe. But I do note that there hasn't been a new reactor put in place in what, 20 years? In Washington state, there's an ugly eyesore of a deactivated reactor. I don't know the history behind it, but there are rumors they CAN'T go in and level the place due to the current radioactivity in the concrete. They won't be able to go in there for a decade or more.

We are not utilizing "CLEAN" electricity for all it's potential. The Bonneville Dam in Oregon is operating at about 10-15 percent of it's potential. Wind farms are denied from being put in natural gorges that have tons of daily wind activity, due to committees for the preservation of natural beauty or some such nonesense. We have great hydro generators that rock back and forth in ocean waves - as they generate electricity, the natural reaction is plankton thrives around the devices, which is a great foodsource for the food chain... yet we have people that don't want to deal with THOSE eyesores.

Look, I don't have the answer. Not by a longshot, but we can't keep putting our heads in the sands and pretending there isn't a problem!

Me thinks Matt may beleive that all nuclear safety officers are trained by Homer Simpson. . I would have no problem living by a Nuclear Plant. Heck many people in The US, Russia, Great Britain, and France who live near some naval bases are surounded by nuclear vessels. With the total amount of nuclear reactors in the world, there have been only two notable incidents as previously mentioned. Incidents with subs seem to have been caused by subs playing chicken. I have heard no reports of any problems of leakage etc at any disposal sites.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

Not a supply and demand thing, it's a no competition thing. Use 7 times less, they will charge at least 7 times more, and gouge us for 7 times the 50 or 60 years they claim supply will last at todays rate of consumption. If you had something that everyone had to have, and you were the only one that supplied it....what would you charge?......anything you wanted up to the point where no one would/could buy it. If you haven't noticed, the government seems to think it's a good idea to put oil companies in charge of developing alternate forms of energy....."it's De ja vu all over again".....lmao....don't correct my spelling....you know what I meant...

ok, as I suspected, you are a thoughtful, highly intelligent person, your recent post was all the proof i needed. so i will respond to your post the same way!

I have never been one to turn a blind eye to reality, no matter if I work in the industry or not. It has caused me much joy and pain in my life in many areas. I guess you will have to come to your own conclusion about that though since you dont know me. I dont just work in the industry, I am a radiation safety expert, and I am actually interested in it, not just a paper pusher. It is my primary job. To be honest with you, there is much risk associated with running anything involving a critical mass, but I have poured over much documentation comparing much of the risk of all hazardous aspects (when comparing the nuclear industry to others) to decide whether or not I wanted to remain in an industry with such a black eye. I wondered whether it was warrented or not. I could go on and on with specific reasons, but I believe, all hazardous areas considered (including environmental impact, worker safety, health and safety of the general public), it is much safer than most. For instance, airline workers get more exposure than most nuclear workers; this is jsut one example, there a hundreds.

Many things you bring up I cant answer one-hundred percent, but I can raise much doubt about "clean energy" sources. I don't consider them a better answer than nuclear power.

Wind/Wave power - I don't know enough about the weather and tidal currents to answer this question, but I wonder what the environmental impact of harnessing huge amounts of wind/wave power will be, and, can wind sustain America's thirst for electricity? I wonder how many people realized that global warming would be caused by the burning of fossil fuels?

Dams - I know Dams have a huge impact on the environment, Dams to me are not clean energy when compared to other sources, including nuclear. And I dont think we can create enough power if we dam up all the rivers in the US anyway.

Rx in Wash - Im not certain about the reactor in Washington. But usually the reason those types of projects can't go down is because of the huge expense related to the safe dismantling of radioactive systems. It is VERY expensive, and part of the reason is because of the public perception torwrds nuclear. In my eyes, nuclear safety is very important, but it is magnified x100, past more important items like medical safety and airline safety. I'm fairly confident that those two fields are much more likely to harm the health and safety of the public, but nuclear power is treated like the labotomy of the energy field. It truly is sad and causes my paycheck to go up and your power bills and taxes to go up. I'll take the fat paycheck, but I won't stop telling the truth as I see it.

Storage of Nuclear Fuel - There are plenty of safe ways to store the fuel. As long as the spent fuel is stored far enough away from water supplies there is really no issue! The odds of the environment being badly contaminated by properly engineered and stored fuel are so low it would be like winning the lottery 10 times in a row week after week. The problem is local communities can't see and don't want to see any of this. Nuclear waste is scary. It was to me before I learned all about it. Now I treat it with the amount of respect it desrves but no more.

The bottom line for me is this; nuclear power is fairly safe and "green" when compared against many other sources. Is it perfect? NO!!!! But I believe it is the answer right now, at best for as long as the earth can supply fissionable material, at worst as a stopgap until a better solution can be found.

Here is something most people don't know about nuclear power. There are many tibits like this:

The EPA found slightly higher average coal
concentrations than used by McBride et al. of 1.3 ppm
and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Gabbard (A. Gabbard, “Coal
combustion: nuclear resource or danger?,” ORNL Review 26,
http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-
34/text/colmain.html.) finds that American releases from
each typical 1 GWe coal plant in 1982 were 4.7 tonnes
of uranium and 11.6 tonnes of thorium, for a total
national release of 727 tonnes of uranium and 1788
tonnes of thorium. The total release of radioactivity
from coal-fired fossil fuel was 97.3 TBq (9.73 x 1013
Bq) that year. This compares to the total release of 0.63
TBq (6.3 x 1011 Bq) from the notorious TMI accident,
155 times smaller.

Nuclear power is scary. BOO!

_________________
[glow=red]Yo sucka, we need this hea CHOPTER, and we need it now![/glow]

funny Timber! heheheh

D'oh!

Interesting article on storage issues.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/197239.html

A good one on the carbon problem from Japan!
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/fe20080528sh.html

thanks Ham...

I'll admit that wind power, solar power, hydro etc can't solve ALL our problems, but the faster we get on renewable, the better we'll be.

I'm reminded in the midwest everytime I drive across Kansas to Colorado, all the land that farmers and individuals own that it's an incredible wind area. ANd most of those folks have oil pumpers that aren't pumping! Solar options as well... just amazes me.

We could use today's newest solar receptors and use JUST government lands in Arizona, Nevada and Eastern California, and we could satisfy MOST of our needs with electricity. Financing it is another matter! !

i think nuclear can be a real good stopgap solution until we can get a better renewable source to provide all our power needs. but for now nuclear is one of our better bets, maybe our best for large amounts of baseload power production.

_________________
[glow=red]Yo sucka, we need this hea CHOPTER, and we need it now![/glow]

I DO agree with you on that. We've had more problems with coal (and a helluva lot more deaths related to the retreival of it, transportation, etc.) where the long-term success of the nuclear plants has proven themselves over time!

Until we can actually have working fusion or fission generators, until we can mas produce non-toxic renewable resources, Nuclear DOES appear to be the way to go. Thank God for the safety features we have.

I'm just not happy about it! !

You can't let Big Business be in charge of necessary things.....health care is a prime example.....especially with little or no competition.......remember when monopolies were illegal?.......hate to sound like a socialist, since the government(run by BB) has brain washed everyone, that socialism in any way is bad.