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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Ox who wrote (93793)	4/23/2008 9:00:17 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

It's their oil. They can take a bath in it if they want, they can sell some to us if they want, they can save some for a rainy day. AFA Kuwait is concerned, did we really think that Our mission, rather than trying to pry it out of their hands, should be to come to grips with becoming energy self sufficient. We shoulda been doing this for the last 35 years, the writing was on the wall. But we chose to ignore it and now we're paying the price. Railing at OPEC or Venezuela does no good (unless you're a pol trying to appeal to the baser nature of American voters). It's not just OPEC, either, Russia is reserving more of it's production for domestic consumption. Exports are going to decrease worldwide, if not for peak than for political reasons we have no control over (e.g, are we going to fight 10 Iraqs simultaneously? I think not). If we're smart, we'll push through with alternate technologies from here on out irrespective of the nominal price of oil. It's the best of several bad choices, but it's essential for U.S. security for the next century.

To: The Ox who wrote (93793)	4/24/2008 9:18:48 PM
From: Merlinson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The technology that will save humanity. LOL, with a title like that, who could resist. This is about concentrating solar power (CSP), using mirrors to boil a liquid and drive an electrical generator. It is claimed that this technology doesn't require technological breakthroughs to become economical and nonpolluting, promising less than 10 cents per kW-hour eventually. salon.com Here are a few snippets: The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity -- and with far greater efficiency. Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours. Ausra and other companies are working on storing the heat directly with water in the tubes, which would significantly lower cost and avoid the need for heat exchangers. ... CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources. CSP plants can also operate with a very small annual water requirement because they can be air-cooled. And CSP has some unique climate-friendly features. It can be used effectively for desalinating brackish water or seawater. That is useful for many developing countries today, and it's a must-have for tens if not hundreds of millions of people if we don't act in time to stop global warming and dry out much of the planet. Such desertification would, ironically, mean even more land ideal for CSP. The technology has no obvious bottlenecks and uses mostly commodity materials -- steel, concrete and glass. The central component, a standard power system routinely used by the natural gas industry today, would create steam to turn a standard electric generator. Plants can be built rapidly -- in two to three years -- much faster than nuclear plants. It would be straightforward to build CSP systems at whatever rate industry and governments needed, ultimately 50 to 100 gigawatts a year growth or more.