Buffalo Boy's Blog
Giving You More Than Just My Two Cents
Recently in Energy Category
Don't Let The Lower Prices Fool You
The International Energy Agency, despite the economic crisis we are in at the moment is calling for $26.3 trillion worth of investment in new and sustainable fuels in order to keep pace with growing demand. World demand is still growing despite the economics due to India and China.
$26.3 trillion sounds like a lot, but globally over the next 20 + years is not that much. Its a small investment given the fact that people will be put to work to install new energy infrastructure to support things such as natural gas, solar and wind power.
Oil, despite the drop off in prices is not going to be cheap for long. They are predicting prices to average $100 again soon. That would bring gasoline back up between $3.50-$4.00 a gallon consistently.
"Future sources of oil, the cost of producing it and the price consumers will have to pay for it are extremely uncertain, the IEA said."
Probably not the news we want to hear but really, if we don't invest in new infrastructure and energy sources like solar and wind, we are asking for even bigger problems than coughing up the money now. Of course the oil companies if they truly consider themselves "energy" companies should be forking over a good chunk of that $26.3 trillion considering the obscene profits they take in.
The fact is, due to the down turn of credit markets, there have been little if any new investments in energy lately and when the economy does turn, there are going to be supply problems.
Category: Energy
The Picken's Plan
T. Boone Pickens has a better energy plan than anyone in our current government could possibly come up with. How can you not like what he has come up with. He is undoubtedly being sincere in his proposal, its well researched, it speaks of specific funding needed, and he being an oil man himself is ready to admit that oil is not the answer.
Who ever is elected Tuesday has big problems, one less problem could be energy if they take the Pickens Plan and funds it. Yes its a $700 billion investment up front, but unlike the bailout, we know where we are spending this investment and know that it will allow us to put people to work here, and spend money here, and ultimately keep money in this country over the long term.
Until someone comes out with a better plan, T. Boone may be the guy to get this policy on track. I wonder if Obama has plans to make T. Boone his energy secretary?
Category: Energy
My Solution To Our Energy Independence
Someone out there has got to be smart enough to figure this one out and if you are, we split the profits okay, I get a cut for coming up with the idea.
I was walking through the clinic and watching someone on the fan bike it gave me the idea that we, us, our own muscle energy could power the electric grid in the US. We by exercising could theoretically power our country to energy independence.
If there is a way, (and there is always a way), we hook up every piece of exercise equipment including nautilus, stationary bikes, treadmills (they would have to be non-electrically powered treadmills), stair masters (again without the power), rowing machines, elipticals and any other piece of moving gym equipment in every physical therapys, sports medicine, high school/college gym and health/fitness club and hook them up to the electrical grid.
Thats right, make those machines into exercise equipment that generates power by human exercise. The more you exercise the cheaper your memebership and our co-pay gets and if you exercise beyond that, the fitness center or therapy clinic pays you to come there.
We could solve three issues in the country by doing that: 1. Our foreign oil dependency 2. Our national obesity issues and ultimately by becoming healthier as a country we decrease healthcare costs (so technically a fourth solved issue) and finally 3. Our economic woes would potentially improve because we could be getting paid to work out.
Move over T. Boone I just came up with a better energy plan and I bet it would cost substantially less than even the $700 billion yours would cost because minus the wiring and hooking things up, the infrastructure (health clubs/fitness factilities and therapy clinics) are already in place with the exercise equipment there.
So, if anyone out there is reading this and has the wherewithall to do this.....give me my cut when you do.
Category: Energy
T. Boone Pickens Makes A Lot of Sense
I finally watched T. Boone put his plan down and it makes a lot of sense and its an oil man talking about clean, renewable energy that will not only reduce our costs long term from buying foreign oil, but will ultimately, reduce our oil consumption altogether. I like his plan alot better than ANWAR and opening up more land than we need for driling. We already have 68 million acres for drilling for oil in which we know oil is, McCain and the republicans want to open up more without even knowing if there is oil or not. Even T. Boone himself states that we are not drilling our way to energy independence. His plan would not even require us to drill for more oil, His plan immediately begins to decrease our dependence on oil without drilling for another drop. You can't question his plan, its cost looks staggering but when you see that the cost of it equals one years worth of what we consume now from foreign countrires, it makes a lot more sense to spend that money here and create jobs doing it. Jobs would be created for building the infrastructure necessary to make this switch happen. Money would be saved because ultimately, this energy plan would cost less as fuel would be renewable. T. Boone, should run for president. This is the type of leadership George W. Bush should have been giving us ever since he said those famous words "America is addicted to oil."Category: Energy
What An Idiot
Listen to our President in todays news conference. He is such an idiot. As he talked about oil and the economy today, the stock market plunged, GM is coming out with bad news and the banks are screaming for the feds to bail them out. The man just doesn't get it. Every answer he gave was a line of BULLSHIT.
He and his administration do not care about you and me. The smartest thing to do would be to release oil out of the strategic petroleum reserves, that would lower oil prices right away by about $8 a barrel. Then they have to use the 60+ million acres that are already there waiting to be tapped, not open up new lands like ANWAR. Use what ya got first. Why aren't they using those 60 million acres? Because they don't even have the rigs available to drill with.
Here ladies and gentleman is the leader of our nation, George W. talking about a magic wand:
NO NO NO TO MORE LAND TO DRILL
Here the idiot goes again. What does he not get about the fact that we already have leased out MILLIONS of acres to oil companies that are currently NOT in use and could be used FIRST before opening up NEW and very ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE LANDS to drill in.
Bush and republicans keep beating Alaska drum and honestly, we should all be wiser for saying no to this. We should all realize that there are already millions of acres of land already leased that oil companies simply have not drilled yet.
Use what you already have. Im not willing to allow oil companies to have free reign over our land, water and air just so they can get 100,000 barrels of oil a day in 10 years.
Besides, the answer to our energy problems is not oil, its using less energy, researching and developing alternatives to oil and ensuring that we don't need oil in the future. Look, I realize that we still need the stuff, but if they can't find it on the millions of acres of land already opened to them, then maybe there is no more oil to be found.Category: Energy | News | Politics | environment | oil/gas
CFL VS. Incandescent Bulb
Listen to this jack ass republican give you every reason why you should not save energy and thus money on a CFL bulb. No mention of the energy saving benefits and how they will actually cost you less than the traditional light bulb.
I have all these bulbs in my house and here is what I noticed. My electric bill went down $10-15 PER MONTH on average. Since we made the switch in April 2007, not one of these bulbs have burned out. They last 8x longer than the traditional incandescent bulb. So for every eight incandescent bulbs you are now using in your home, you only need one of these. So not only have we saved money on our electric bill, I haven't bought a light bulb in over a year now. I have a few extra of the CFL bulbs but haven't had to touch them.
One of our bulbs broke because of the dog and I took it to......HOME DEPOT where they gladly take them back to recycle them. Wow, theres a brilliant idea. This guy makes it out to be a war zone if one breaks and paints a horror story for anyone looking to save energy and thus money.
Would anyone be surprised if the oil and gas companies who by the way supply these resources to our power plants lined this hicks pockets with some chump change to get up there and make it sound like these bulbs are impossible to use.
Sorry Tom Edison but every good invention gets replaced at some point, the turntable got replaced by the compact disc and the CD is being replaced by the MP3 yet there are no congressmen getting up there making jackasses out of themselves. (okay maybe you do on that last change over)
He has a worry that these bulbs are produced in China, big deal! Its another example of how America isn't the smart, economic power we used to be. Why didn't we come up with the idea first? Our automotive industry is going through it now too, Japan and foreign automakers are putting our plants out of business because we can't build an energy efficient fleet of cars, Brazil and Iceland are energy independent, Canada, Cuba, France, Britain amongst others figured out how to have universal, affordable healthcare. So add Tom's light bulb to the latest things that we as a country have been out done on.
Maybe if we as a government and as a people had a little more faith in science instead of Bible thumping, we wouldn't be getting shown up by the rest of the world.
Lets look at another video which actually show the benefits of Americans switching to the new bulbs, which by the way, is supposed to take place in 2014.
Some other figures for you out of USA Today from last December: Consumers will save $40 BILLION DOLLARS from 2014 to 2030. (Im all for that, I already started). IT will avoid the construction of 14 coal fired power plants and cut global warming gas emissions by 51 million tons per year"
Id rather have that money in my pocket. Are the new light bulbs perfect, probably not, but like I said, if you are interested in saving $10-15 a month on your electric bill (I live in a two bedroom apartment, so some of you could save a lot more).
By the way, my wife is watching TV right now, NO interference what so ever so Monday Night Football is on at my house this fall. Again, trying to coerce the public from doing the right thing, conservation of resources and instead painting a dark picture over something that will help. The microwave we have in our kitchen causes interference with the radio in the kitchen when I turn it on, lets get a congressman to tell us how shitty microwaves are.
