Posted on 02/29/2012 8:08:50 AM PST by Hojczyk
Hey, at least Energy Secretary Stephen Chu gave an honest answer. When asked by Rep. Alan Nunnelee whether the Obama administration wants to work to get gas prices to come back down, Chu replied that they’re not focusing on that — and that higher gas prices mean more of a push for the alternative energy sources the administration wants to push:
“We agree there is great suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United States, and so we are very concerned about this,” said Chu, speaking to the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. “As I have repeatedly said, in the Department of Energy, what we’re trying to do is diversify our energy supply for transportation so that we have cost-effective means.”
Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.
He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.
High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.
“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.
“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”
The Heritage Foundation jumped all over Chu’s comments:
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
People keep saying that high gas prices will be the end of Obama. It absolutely will not be. If we’re not in a war, with our liberties suspended, then watch for the “gas stamps” (or equivalent) to come out soon. Mark my words, it’s all part of the plan. The plan is to give all power, means and resources to those who will support the “establishment” and criminalize and pillage everyone else. Nothing new about it.
We don’t need an alternative fuel, we need an alternative President.
We could use both. But until the day comes that we can find an unsubsidized, cost effective, alternative fuel (algae’s possible), drill here, drill now!
Hey! That picture is two weeks old! Are you kidding me? $3.65? We are at $4.25 now!
b
we got to get these maggot sucking, belly crawling dung eaters out of DC and in a cell
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viWunyHapPA
At first I thought these were Obama supporters making pain for themselves so as to be able to vote for Obama at a time of what will probably be $6 or $7/gallon gas. Then I realized it was a radical cult of the radicals in Iran who perform this as a ritual every year...
“We don’t need an alternative fuel, we need an alternative President.”
I’d love to see that on a million bumper stickers.
Nice! Mind if I use it?
Great idea. But that is a lot of writing.
http://www.zazzle.com/obama_gas_price_sticker-217547352185611509
Despite all of the other indignities, insults and offenses happening under the Carter Administration, it was not until gas prices spiked and rationing happened that his polls tanked for good. If Obama plans to issue rationing stamps he may as well plan on taking that NBA color analyst job at ESPN next season too.
Right. Obama voters are in favor of high gas prices. High gasoline prices will increase their support for Obama.
They are either actually unaffected by the price of fuel for various reasons, or, they believe they are unaffected.
So, they are just fine with Obama and high fuel prices.
Not in the slightest. I can email you the excel file if you’d like.
Remind the tools that food is grown and harvested how and gets from Point A to B (store) how.
Wasn’t Obama looking for a new campaign slogan?
“We’re not interested in lowering gas prices”
He should run with it.
FReepmail!
>But until the day comes that we can find an unsubsidized, cost effective, alternative fuel (algae’s possible), drill here, drill now!
Algae is not likely to every be particularly possible. Once again it’s an issue of energy density. You need a heck of a lot of land area and time to concentrate enough energy to make a fuel. Fossil fuel has used quite a bit of time to collect all the energy in it. Algae wouldn’t have that luxury.
Honestly, there are only 2 alternatives I can picture past fossil fuels. The first is hydrogen powered fuel cells (which is still fairly poor on energy density, but far better than batteries, or any of the conversion involved in biologic fuels). You just use a nuke plant to crack the hydrogen, and you have somewhat reasonable energy density. The second is someone finally getting high temperature superconductors to around 300C. At that point you can conduct useful quantities of current at room temperature and you could have everything go electric since you could store enough power to actually go some distance. Also, there would be huge savings in transmission with such a tech. Of course there could also be some pie in the sky battery breakthrough, but the superconductor breakthrough would be much better in a lot of ways.
The government, state and federal, have ZERO interest in lowering the price of oil. The higher the cost at the pump, the more money the government rakes in from the taxes on a gallon of fuel.
I want to have a picture of Chu handing the office keys to the new Energy Secretary Palin next January...
email!
I don't think this is correct. Federal gasoline tax is a flat $0.18 or so on each gallon. Each state and locality adds their own taxes per gallon on top of that. I think in reality, the tax revenues decrease as people cut back on gasoline purchases.
Still, I don't know where all that money is going. The price of crude oil drops, and yet gas prices go up.
Cost effective are the kewy words. The only way to bring our economy back is cheap energy as in Drill here, drill now.
Regardless of all the hype science is no where near cheap energy with cellulosic and/or algae. It may be economically feasible if gas is $10 a gallon but that is not cheap and the US economy will be destroyed by then.
Just because things can be accomplished in the lab does not mean they will ever be ever be economically viable. There are collateral issues not directly related to the science that prevent economic feasibility of both cellulosic and algae.
Further, the Germans had a plant producing 50 million gallon per year of ethanol from wood-based feedstock back in the 1890s. It proved not to be economically feasible back then even though they were able to achieve 50 gallons per ton.
Today some cellulosic technology companies brag about 60 gallons per ton. With such nominal improvement in yield in over 100 years do we really believe the next breakthrough to bring celullosic fuels to commercial reality is just around the corner?
This is sickening. It is nothing but a personal agenda by Chu fostered by obastard. Nothing but treachery, fraud and self-interest... if you dig down you will most likely find direct benefit to Chu and obsstard throughout the whole scam.
“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.
“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”
This agenda by the administration is driven by ideology not necessity. Furthermore, the alternatives have been shown to be uneconomic. The economic ignorance of this administration is further illustrated by their insistence that replacement of a superior economic alternative by one that is vastly more expensive and raises the cost of virtually everything somehow makes the U.S. more competitive? Horseshit.
We have never found it expedient to replace an existing product without good economic or technical reasons... there are no such reasons to force abandoning oil. The only reason this administration has is unavowed... control and a econut agenda and feathering their own wealth.
Apparently they have not heard that for every dollar gas goes up, our GDP goes down by 1.3%. I think that was the number I heard, it could have been 1.6.
So.... given that our GDP is growing by what 1.3% that this might be a wee little problem...
Not for those idiots anyway. Why should they care? They have their cushy government jobs and Oblidiot has SS service and chauffeurs for the rest of his life. They are the one percent, and it is THEY who do not care.
And I guess those batteries come fully charged and never run low. And as soon as the magic batteries are invented they appear in your magically converted to electric cars.
The heck with drilling for oil, building power plants, expanding coal and nuclear use, Magic friggin batteries are coming to save us!
“I want to have a picture of Chu handing the office keys to the new Energy Secretary Palin next January...”
I am not the biggest Palin fan when it comes to the talk of her for President and/or VP but she would make a fantastic Secretary of Energy, of that, I have no doubt.
This country cannot afford $5 gasoline. The whole house of cards will come down again, before the election, emergency measures.
That’s nice. How do I get them to you, hmmm?
Making little stickers of fact to put in all sorts of places is one of the best Ideas I have seen in a long time.
I’m going to start doing it. We need to start spreading fear. That is right, I said spread fear. I also think we should start taking a few economies with the truth in our favor. Take your quotes out of context to reinforce your fear mongering based on fact. For example:
“Under my plans energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.”
instead of
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama told the Chronicle . “Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
The fact is: Electricity rates have skyrocketed even with natural gas prices at historically low inflation adjusted prices.
USA Today 12/13/2011
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-13/electric-bills/51840042/1
It will only get much much worse:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/12/get-ready-for-electricity-prices-to-necessarily-skyrocket/
Have you had a lot of fun watching the price of gasoline shoot out of sight this year at the pump? That will be just the appetizer. Thanks to new regulations from the Obama administration, power companies will shut down a significant number of coal-fired plants by 2014, and without any other reliable sources of mass-produced electricity, consumers will see their bills go up as much as 60% (via Instapundit and Newsalert)
The amount that "people" can cut back on their consumption of fuel is negligible compared the the revenue these high prices generate for the government. In CA the combined state and federal taxes per gallon is 67.5 cents. The Feds take 18.4 cents, and CA takes the remaining. The CA tax has two levels - a flat rate, and a sales tax per dollar spent. This does not include the taxes levied on the businesses that sell fuel, transport the fuel, etc.
The more a gallon of fuel costs the more in taxes is collected. Some reduction in use may take place, but the overall effect is an increase in tax revenue to the government. Why would they want to get prices down?
The Obama administration won’t have to worry about gas prices after November because the will be sent out of town by rail.
I’m not referring to a “rationing,” I’m referring to a subsidy. Like food stamps. The cost of food increases for everyone who pays out of their pocket, and the price really doesn’t matter to those getting the subsidy. A welfare card with extra “fixins” is nothing like rationing. But I did understand what you meant, I just may not have articulated what I had meant, well.
It is actually the inverse.
The $.18/gallon is a fixed rate.
The higher the price the less people drive.
Therefore, the less revenue the govt. takes in.
This is also why the govt. has no interest in promoting a natural gas based automobile. They have no way of taxing the natural gas if you could fill up at home. It would be a huge revenue loser for the feds and the state govts.
Oh, no doubt about it, nothing’s like petroleum. Personally, I believe it’s impossible to run out of the stuff, as I believe it’s largely abiotic, but it may get harder to get at. I realize that not everyone holds that opinion, so I’m not looking for an argument. If all else fails, we could hook Obama’s Unicorns to treadmill generators and power the galaxy on “hope and change,” alone!
Exactly my thought...
You make some excellent points, and I agree. All I know is, that anything is better than a group of politicians trying to “necessarily skyrocket” the cost of energy. Technological advancement literally works miracles. I see great things instore in our future/lifetimes. As long as the regulation stranglehold can’t forever keep us all in mudhuts, that’s the real goal.
I think you mean 300K which is room temperature. Most useful superconductors operate at 77K which is the temp of liquid nitrogen. That is actually considered a high-temp superconductor. In the past a superconductor needed near 0-K temperatures or liquid Helium temps to operate.
Regardless, all one accomplishes with superconductivity is low loss to the I2-R law. Or, one can transmit DC power long distances with low loss. For vehicle propulsion you still need an energy source and hydrogen isn't an energy source, it is a energy conversion method. Every conversion method loses energy in the process. Petroleum and associated products like natural gas, on the other hand was produced either during the planet's creation or as a process of photosynthesis, decay, and concentration. Petroleum is a net-net energy source. Everything else, except perhaps for water, solar, and wind, has a high percentage of loss in the production. Unfortunately, to make motor fuel from wind, water, and sun, requires conversion, unless your car has a sail.
>I think you mean 300K which is room temperature. Most useful superconductors operate at 77K which is the temp of liquid nitrogen. That is actually considered a high-temp superconductor. In the past a superconductor needed near 0-K temperatures or liquid Helium temps to operate.
I specified 300C for a reason. I am well aware that 298K is room temperature. However when it comes to high temperature superconductors, one of their properties is that past a certain temperature (~1/2 of their superconducting threshold) the allowed current density drops dramatically. Hence you have to pick a temperature well above room temperature. Now granted I probably should have said 400C, but I went for an easier goal.
>Regardless, all one accomplishes with superconductivity is low loss to the I2-R law. Or, one can transmit DC power long distances with low loss. For vehicle propulsion you still need an energy source and hydrogen isn’t an energy source, it is a energy conversion method. Every conversion method loses energy in the process. Petroleum and associated products like natural gas, on the other hand was produced either during the planet’s creation or as a process of photosynthesis, decay, and concentration. Petroleum is a net-net energy source. Everything else, except perhaps for water, solar, and wind, has a high percentage of loss in the production. Unfortunately, to make motor fuel from wind, water, and sun, requires conversion, unless your car has a sail.
You can use superconductors as batteries by running the current in a loop. You generate the power from a nuke plant (best option) and then use that to charge up your superconducting loops.
The issue with all electric cars now and for the foreseeable future is power storage. Battery technology is simply not up to the task. However a superconducting loop solves this problem.
“You can use superconductors as batteries by running the current in a loop.”
Only in science fiction. Besides, I don’t know where you get your 400C superconductor. If the resistance is anything other than zero it isn’t a superconductor.
Superconductors aren’t the answer now or perhaps ever. Lower resistance conductors, better magnets, better energy management semiconductors, better batteries, and what have been labeled, supercapacitors, will all eventually be part of the entire technology of electric vehicles.
Althoug LN2 to cool high-temp superconductors isn’t too expensive compared to some things, to make it is energy consumptive. Presently, it is largely a by-product of making (refining) other gasses like argon, helium, and CO2. For this reason it is cheap. If it becomes a necessary consumer product it will be expensive.
>Only in science fiction. Besides, I don’t know where you get your 400C superconductor. If the resistance is anything other than zero it isn’t a superconductor.
People have stored energy in current loops using superconductors now. That isn’t science fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage
As for the 400C superconductor, yes, they don’t exist yet, and as for the current density issue, I highly recommend you read up on the issue since you evidently don’t know what you are talking about.
Try:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solids/scbc.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
http://www.imagesco.com/articles/superconductors/determining-critical-magnetic-field.html
Do not presume to lecture me when you don’t have the first clue on the subject.
If enough progress is made on high temperature superconducting, you can solve a whole lot of energy storage issues. This is a fact. This is what I was speculating on.
I’m sure that would be considered a “racist hate crime”.
There is more than one way to skin a cat. The national average price for a gallon of CNG is $.85 cents a gallon. This means if gas is currently at $3.69 a gallon, you are saving at $2.84 a gallon just by owning a CNG car. That can quickly add up to huge savings! On average, owning a natural gas vehicle can save you from $3,000-$5,000 dollars a year on fuel expenses.
Some of the posted comments between the mooselim’s regarding that video are hilarious. Apparently the Shia do the self-flagellation thingy and the Sunni’s think it’s sacrilege. We just need to get out of the way and let them blow each other up.
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