So much for the "big oil companies"...

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So wait, OPEC is reducing supply because they're "not making enough money"? Clearly this is just the American Big Oil companies coercing their suppliers so that they can make "obscene profits."

Or hey, maybe OPEC doens't like Bush, and thinks that if gas prices are high enough, americans will vote a change to a politician(s) that will act more in line with what the Arab Countries want. Hmm.

Looks like I need TWO tin foil hats.

I used to be undecided, but now I'm not sure.
 
hmmm not very gunny huh

Why are we having to depend on foreign oil in the first place?
I do believe we have plenty in several locations we can't seem to drill for and more coal than all the oil in the mid east. But then is that the truth either? how do we as everyday citizens really know? We don't.
 
According to Robert Redford our cities and cars should be powered by ethanol! LOL

To me, the answer is nuclear power for our industrial/city power, and electric cars.
 
To me, the answer is nuclear power for our industrial/city power, and electric cars.
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I pretty well feel that way as well. My only quibbling point is that pure electric cars have this limitation that I can't live with -- limited range. Now, a hybrid-hybrid design would do the trick for me: A "conventional" hybrid that is capable of being run as a pure electric. Use the electric for your typical daily commute, and have the gas-electric hybrid available for longer range trips and when you are faced with being stuck in traffic on a low battery. Supposedly, battery technology is the limiting factor and isn't quite there yet, but should be feasable in the near term.

As far a nuclear goes -- IMHO that's the way to go. They are clean, newer designs are quite safe, the only problem is that of disposal of spent fuel and that is not at all insurmountable. Fuel is, for us in the US, plentiful. We only lack the political will to do it.
 
But then there's the issue of where to get all the 'juice' to run your cars. Renewables and nucular have a long way to catch up to replace coal & gas as far as powering the outlets to charge the cars. Until then, you'd still be using more energy per mile than gasoline.

I'm still waiting for the day that someone makes a vehicle paint that can function as a solar panel. Add that to some crazy hydrogen fuel/gas combo and then you're really cookin. That's where I'd put my money.

And why aren't there more wind farms everywhere? I could swear that there's a huge potential with such machines in a lot more places than there are now.
 
But then there's the issue of where to get all the 'juice' to run your cars. Renewables and nucular have a long way to catch up to replace coal & gas as far as powering the outlets to charge the cars. Until then, you'd still be using more energy per mile than gasoline.
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Chicken or the Egg?

There is only 1 reason why there isn't enough nuclear power available, and that is the lack of generation capacity. It is an entirely correctable construction problem, not a problem with nuclear power in general. The only reason why there is enough coal/oil/gas power generation to fuel the economy at the level that it is, is because the infrastructure to do it has already been built -- without that infrastructure the exact same argument would apply to fossil fuels. Today, that infrastructure does not exist for nuclear power -- but creating that infrastructure is something that is entirely doable, requiring NO new technologies -- just the will to do it.

Even if there was a greater energy/mile expenditure for nuclear powered electric as opposed to current internal combustion gasoline vehicles (which is most likely true), that does not itself argue against further pursuing the technology. The goal isn't so much gaining better energy efficiency, the goal is gaining energy self-sufficiency, with the bonus of having zero combustion emissions. The US has proven fissionable fuel reserves to last us a LONG time, at least enough to last us until comparable fusion technologies become feasable. That would relegate coal & petro supplies to their more "natural" uses as raw materials for plastics, chemicals, and such.

I'm still waiting for the day that someone makes a vehicle paint that can function as a solar panel. Add that to some crazy hydrogen fuel/gas combo and then you're cookin.
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Solar Panels? Solar Paint? Hmm -- it would be nice, but I don't see that as being feasable in the long term. Cheap nuclear power would work just as well, and not be as heavy or dependent on the weather. Thing is, the nuclear electric thing is something that we could be doing RIGHT NOW knowing what we know now, not somewhere down the line dependent on some hypothetical technology.
 
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