Why do we still buy their oil and their heroin?

[cropcirclewalker]

Mr. Butt,

I yam sorry. I thought you had read all of this thread. Never mind.

 

[cracked butt]

Your smarminess aside, its been a fun conversation, but everyone has complaints, few have solutions, and even fewer are willing to work on a solution. It really doesn't do much for me when people complain about about how we are going to feul our cars and businesses in the future, want answers, and want government to take money out of peoples' pockets to try to hatch hare brained energy solutions.

 

[atek3]

Thebaine is found in the opium poppy and the companies that make oxycodone get it from poppies from the area in question. It would be very hard to make sure all the poppies going to oxycodone production were NOT funding terrorists at some point.

some misunderstandings.

Opium alkaloids are produced for the pharmaceutical industries mainly in Tasmania, Turkey, France, and a few minor players. Those countries aren't major sponsors of terror. If heroin was legal, some of the morphine used to produce codeine would instead be converted into heroin.

atek3

 

[grampster]

As long as we're talking about energy, how about those "hybrids"?

They are touted as the vehicle of the future. I have a small problem though. I'm not going to be very specific here, but will pose a thought for rumination only. One of you edumacted guys can do the math.

If you can buy a 35 mpg gas burner for about 11 or 12 thousand dollars, and a hybrid costs you 20 thousand dollars and gives you about 40 mpg, how long do you have to own the hybrid if driven about 15,000 miles a year before it begins to pay for itself? Don't forget to figure in the cost of the electicity flowing through the plug at night.

Personally I think they are one of the greatest jokes played on the sheeple in quite some time.

We ought to exploit every drop of oil that we can in the Western Hemisphere and burn it up as fast as we can. Then some serious money can be made by figuring out other sources of economical and universal energy sources. That's the beauty of capitallism.

 

[Faithless]

Originally posted by abadon:

Wouldn't total withdrawal of our troops and economic resources from the Middle East cause the jihadists to win the conflict with the tolerant Arabs/Persians?

The fact is the reason the former are increasingly hateful of us is because the latter are becoming Westernized. This Westernization is a threat to them because it signifies the death knell of their type of fundamentalism.

+ 1

I really do think they are just tyrants using God as their justification.

 

[aquapong]

Most of the energy sources you have listed are not cost effective. They use more energy to produce than they put out. We should build more nuke plants. There really is no reason to fear these plants except for the cost to build them. I'll take one in my back yard. It will add a bunch of high paying jobs to the area. I've lived 5 miles away from TMI for several years now and never gave it a second thought. With all that extra power, we can switch to electric and hybrid cars.

 

[Art Eatman]

ONe of the things that bugs me about the anti-nuke crowd is the refusal to believe we can learn from mistakes, or just regularly make improvements in systems as a normal course of engineering.

How many years ago was the TMI debacle?

How many years did it take us to go from mechanical brakes on cars through hydraulics to discs?

How many years did it take to go from a 286 chip to a Pentium 4?

Art

 

[Cesiumsponge]

Fortunately alternatives exist. We can switch to non-petroleum energy sources like nuclear, wind,, solar, bio-diesel, ethanol, and many others.

Unfortunately, switching continental power production to an alternative method does not free us of our petroleum dependancy. Petroleum is used for the production of everyday materials we use, not just gas and diesel to fuel our automobiles.

Fertilizers, pesticides, detergents, synthetic rubbers, anything plastic, asphalt, cosmetics, paints, artificial fabrics, etc. There are millions of items that require the use of petroleum to manufacture.

There are millions of miles of paved roads using asphalt. At least half of all clothing sold in stores use artificial fabrics. Fertilizer and pesticides are used by the millions of tons by farmers. How many things can you think of have some plastic in them? Those examples are hardly insignifigant and dismissable by any stretch of the imagination.

People think in switching to a hybrid vehicle that gets 70MPG, they're saving the world. What about all the plastic components that were derived from petroleum in the vehicle? The dashboard, artificial carpet floormats, plastic body panels? What about all the motor oil that must be changed out every few thousand miles? Best case scenario, you're just killing it a little slower.

A lot of "green" people seem to think the problem is as simple as reducing gasoline consumption. They don't seem to realize that petroleum has more than one use and it isn't going away anytime soon.

 

[Vang]

Hybrids do not have to be plugged in at night, grampster. That said, the idea of a hybrid is stupid. Added complexity and weight is not a good way to increase fuel efficiency. If fuel efficiency is the real goal, reducing weight is the real key. Not that this is feasible, but if all of our cars weighed about 2000 pounds, fuel mileage would be very good compared to current.

 

[abaddon]

Btw

National Geographic had an article about the alternatives to fossil fuels in their most recent (I think) edition. Regarding nuclear they said that within fifty years or so we'd run out of the easily accessible (read cost-effective) Plutonium and Uranium.

There are certain types of nuke facilities that can use the waste from other plants, but the article said that that could add only a decade or two.