Neptunus Lex

19 responses so far ↓

• 1 FbL // Aug 4, 2008 at 11:34 am

  Bwaahahahaha!!! That is awesome!

  (well, it’s either laugh or cry)

• 2 Byron Audler // Aug 4, 2008 at 12:41 pm

  We don’t care how much people suffer, we want to stand on a principle!

  Morons like that need to get an education in what a real life is all about. We need to run those bought and paid for pampered pigs out of our House. Period. Dot. End of sentence.

• 3 Guy // Aug 4, 2008 at 12:43 pm

  I’m almost ashamed to admit that I live in Colorado. When he ran for Congress, Salazar promised that he would represent all interests in Colorado. The only folks he represents these days are the environmental interests. After all, they’re the ones with all the money that insure he maintains his grip on power and prestige. Sad to say, he has no interests in the citizens of Colorado…let alone the rest of the citizens in the good ol’ US of A.

  Disgusting. No scruples at all.

• 4 BillT // Aug 4, 2008 at 12:48 pm

  They must’ve put extra bracing on the podium to provide the illusion that McConnell’s standing on his hind legs.

• 5 Grumpy // Aug 4, 2008 at 1:43 pm

  This is ridiculous, I’m not talking about the charades in Congress. I am talking about the expectations of the American People. WE, all need to pull our heads out and smell the coffee. The price of energy is never coming down in our life times. Do you honestly think if we change over to alternative fuels or find new sources of oil that our energy costs will ever come down? If you do, you will probably need surgical assistance to get your head out to smell the coffee. We’re coming to a time when now will be considered, the good old days and gas is only $10.00 a gallon (future). Will the sale of these new technologies and/or energy be treated with the same view as National Security Issues. Some have suggested we should nationalize all energy and its technologies, like Saudi Arabia. Of course, they waited until the infrastructure for energy was already developed.

  Is this something I want or am suggesting? EMPHATICALLY, THE ANSWER IS NO!

  Just a thought,
  Grumpy

• 6 Brian R // Aug 4, 2008 at 5:01 pm

  Grumpy, I expect you’re probably right about the way energy is going. Oil sure ain’t getting any cheaper anytime soon. Maybe something like clean coal or nuclear will pull it out, but those have lead times measured in years.

  You also touched on one of my tinfoil hat theories about nationalizing energy technology. It goes like this… Imagine someone actually managed to pull out a totally transformative power source that was cheap, clean, and essentially limitless. Cold fusion maybe. Naturally you could make a killing selling that sort of thing, right? Doing well at the same time as you’re doing good.

  How long do you think it would be before there would be widespread calls to nationalize the technology for the good of all? To halt the “windfall profits”? Maybe share the technology for free with the world for the good of the environment and all the world’s poor? My guess is about six minutes.

  If you thought that far ahead, it might put a serious crimp in your desire to research such a thing. I mean, why waste all your money? And that goes double if you’re an energy company that stands to demolish your old business and then lose the new one too.

  Yeah, I said it was tinfoil hat territory.

• 7 Jim C // Aug 4, 2008 at 5:16 pm

  Actually, McConnell was trying to get the bill passed. It was Salazar who was trying to defeat it. But, as Guy said, Salazar is only interested in representing the loony left.

  Grumpy, actually I do believe that if we drill for oil our energy prices (particularly gasoline) will go down. We can see it in the last two weeks since Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling.

  The price per barrel has gone down (at one point today below $100) around $20/barrel since he lifted the ban. This, of course, will drop the price of gasoline.

  If we also pursue nuclear energy, clean coal, and other supplies of natural gas we can lower the costs of those forms of energy as well. Free markets are a wondeful thing…

  Jim C

• 8 Adam // Aug 4, 2008 at 7:46 pm

  The problem still remains that we need to find something that is limitless, at least on a long enough time line. I desperately hope that there are people working day and night attempting to harness solar energy to its fullest. Solar energy basically runs all life on the planet. There is no reason we shouldn’t be doing everything we can to take advantage of the millions of watts of energy pouring onto the surface of our planet every second of every day. That is going to be our best option in the long run.

• 9 Grumpy // Aug 4, 2008 at 8:18 pm

  @Brian, to be straight up front, I hate the idea of Nationalizing our energy system. We do need to start looking at alternative renewable energy. It won’t be cheap. The oil may be just running out! There is coming a time when drilling for oil is not the answer. We are going to feel like we walked around the corner of a building and got hit in the face with the flat of a long-handled shovel. This means many of our primary lifestyle choices will need to change. There will be no way around it. For the record, I hate it, too.
  -Grumpy

• 10 Justthisguy // Aug 4, 2008 at 10:51 pm

  Solar power satellites, and beam it down in microwave form. Put the things high enoug and they’re lit almost all the time. Rectenna farms are less ugly than wind turbines, and less hazardous to birds and human aviators.

• 11 PeterGunn // Aug 4, 2008 at 11:01 pm

  One thought to the wise: Solar energy isn’t going to work in Seattle!

  I like the idea of that Grumpy Old Bachelor, Justthisguy. Solar power satellites that beam the power down in microwave form. We should get someone working on this right away.

• 12 Justthisguy // Aug 5, 2008 at 12:11 am

  Jerry Pournelle has been trying to get people working on it for, oh, thirty years or so….

  Technology’s doable, all we need is cheap heavy lift to high orbit.

  Or even expensive heavy lift to high orbit. We can recover that cost once the free energy starts flowing.

  Oh, and I have no problem with breeder reactors, and the thorium cycle.

• 13 Byron Audler // Aug 5, 2008 at 12:21 am

  Just, you and I read the same people, and have for years I bet. If you want an eye opener related to a looming energy crisis, suggest you pick up John Ringos “The Last Centurion”.

• 14 Justthisguy // Aug 5, 2008 at 12:50 am

  P.s. I hate NASA, and I used to work for them, as a co-op. Over the last 40 years, they have done more to kill the dream of spaceflight and humans escaping this planet than just about anybody else.

  Oh, BTW, did anybody notice that Ernst Stuhlinger died a coupla or three months ago? It was totally ignored by the MSM. He was really into electric propulsion, the bestest way to go once out of the atmosphere, and also a Christian gentleman who never had a harsh word for anybody, and also an Infantry veteran of Stalingrad, where he was wounded.

  Sorry to harp on this, but I did meet some of the original Peenemuende Gang when I was in Huntsville.

• 15 Justthisguy // Aug 5, 2008 at 1:08 am

  As long as I’m name-dropping, Georg Von Tiesenhausen had an office down the hall from me, and was a pleasant old gent. He’s still active with the Space Camp in Huntsville, last I looked. I did not know then about his distant cousin who got HMS Barham.

  Oh, Byron, seems our comments crossed in the ether. Yup, I own a first edition of Ringworld, in which the Earth rotates backwards. And yes, John Derbyshire favored me with a reply to an email the other day. I was amazed- musta used just the right words in the subject field.

  As Pournelle says, we are not _necessarily_ screwed, but we better get crackin’ right now

• 16 b2 // Aug 5, 2008 at 4:58 am

  Parliamentary procedure is painful to watch and hear as is the discussion degrading down to talk about science fiction, noble though it may be…There are no magic bullets in the short-term. Discussion like that keeps us frozen in place like obediant sheep.

  What JimC said x 10.

  McConnell just provided a clear basis by which to judge the election of 2006 for change in retrospect. “Marie Antoinette Pelosi” and the rest must go along with “oil is making us sick Harry”…

  We will have Colorado oil shale Farmer Salazar. I’ve walked that land, there is no farmland there, just badlands, mule deer and chukars. It’s only fit for sheep ranching. None of the above will be affected by shale exploration…

  b2

• 17 Steve // Aug 5, 2008 at 5:18 am

  Grumpy,

  Regardless of how high energy costs eventually rise, the real problem is feeding our need from foreign sources, and the resulting (enormous) transfer of wealth to arguably hostile foreign governments. Oil shale, Gulf coast and ANWR drilling will at least allow us to increase our self-sufficiency while sustainable technology develops.

• 18 Jim C // Aug 6, 2008 at 11:43 am

  The interesting thing about all of this debate over renewable energy is that a lot of it depends on technologies that aren’t even developed yet… that will need an infrastructure that’s not in place yet either.

  This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t make an effort to develop these things. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t plan on depending on them any time soon. We are going to need oil, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear for a long time to come. It will be easier on everyone if we accept that, and do what we need to do to make sure we have our own supply… independent of rogue regimes in the middle east and South America.

  Oh yeah, regarding solar; do you realize the size of the solar farm we would need to power a city the size of LA? That doesn’t even take into account that there is no way to store excess capacity. So, what do we do when the sun isn’t shining? What do we do for areas like Seattle that have a chronic cloud cover problem? What do we do in areas with severe storms that get tornadoes and hail? Imagine what a golfball size hail stone would do to one of those big mirrors.
  Jim C

• 19 david foster // Aug 6, 2008 at 12:40 pm

  JimC….”The interesting thing about all of this debate over renewable energy is that a lot of it depends on technologies that aren’t even developed yet”…it also depends on the definition of “renewable.” Hydropower, for instance, was once considered renewable, and was much in vogue with the Left, from the FDR left to the Stalinist left. Now it’s considered “nonrenewable” and the leftists want to blow up the dams.

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