Thursday:
This week, British Lorry drivers complained about the price of fuel by… wasting a lot of fuel in a traffic-jam.
More fule them.
In contrast, French fishermen have been protesting at the high price of marine diesel by NOT going to sea, and now the Spanish, along with the Portuguese, the Italians and the two remaining Belgian fishing boats, have all joined the action. Or IN-action.
This to me seems like a sensible and practical solution to a lot of difficulties, and perhaps I could recommend that the strike action be extended for another, say, five to ten YEARS.
This would save an awful lot of money being spent on boat fuel, avoid a whole load of unnecessary carbon foot-printing and give the Atlantic fish stocks a reasonable chance to recover from five decades of over-fishing them to the point of extinction. (Apparently this happened during World War Part II!)
I'm not 100% sure that this is what the French and Spanish fishermen have in mind, though.
Showing posts with label Oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oil. Show all posts
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Day 2698: Oil Shock Shock: Highest Price Ever… Until Next Time!
Wednesday:
You do realise that oil is just going to keep getting more expensive, don't you?
That's not necessarily to say that EVERY price change will be an increase, and at the moment the price is being driven up as much by a BUBBLE as demand: all those futures traders who think that buying oil is a one way bet… because they were SOOO right about mortgages being a one way bet, weren't they!
Bit with the emergence of CHINA and INDIA as nascent economic superpowers, there are more and more people wanting the stuff and only a FINITE supply. I mean there's a LOT of oil down there at the moment but it's going to be all used up EVENTUALLY.
Obviously it's not JUST the Chinese fault; it's not like we in the West haven't been guzzling the stuff like it's custard. And the rapid growth of low cost air travel has seen a huge demand for aviation fuel.
Of course, Great Britain gets hit harder by this because, apparently having learnedall about oil shocks in the nineteen-seventies, we STILL rely on importing most of our food and energy. As crazy ideas go, this is pretty tops.
Watching the "Supersizers" on the telly the other night, we learned how during World War Part II, when all our supplies were getting sunk, we had nothing to eat but Woolton Pie, which is basically boiled potatoes baked in a potato crust garnished with potatoes. Civil War was only averted by the defeat of Mr Hitler.
But this is where we are heading once again if we don't get our thinking caps on and come up with a solution to the oil running out.
I'm sure you'll never get BORED of me telling you about WINDMILLS and HYDROGEN, but just for VARIETY I'll try a different tack: LASERS.
Fusion energy is either the great white hope of the world or a great white elephant. Either way, I LOVE IT!
Fusion is the way that the SUN makes energy out of Hydrogen by smashing atoms of H together until they turn into He, Helium. And because 2 H's are a little bit heavier than one He and E, as old Albert said, = mc2 then you get ENERGY as a bonus.
(Because "E" means "Energy" and "= mc2" means energy is proportional to heaviness. Or in other words you can turn a bit of weight into a bit – or quite a LOT – of energy.)
In olden days (the nineteen-eighties) people thought that you had to use a lot of magnets and a torus which is a sort of doughnut. You take all the jam out of the doughnut and put in the fuel then spin it round very, very fast and it gets so hot that it turns into a star-in-a-bottle.
Now there is a new and modern method.
You take a blob of fuel and fire a super-duper LASER at it to heat it up to the temperature of the Sun and start the fusion going that way.
Yes, that IS what Doctor Octopus does in "Spider-man 2"; why are you all backing slowly away?
You do realise that oil is just going to keep getting more expensive, don't you?
That's not necessarily to say that EVERY price change will be an increase, and at the moment the price is being driven up as much by a BUBBLE as demand: all those futures traders who think that buying oil is a one way bet… because they were SOOO right about mortgages being a one way bet, weren't they!
Bit with the emergence of CHINA and INDIA as nascent economic superpowers, there are more and more people wanting the stuff and only a FINITE supply. I mean there's a LOT of oil down there at the moment but it's going to be all used up EVENTUALLY.
Obviously it's not JUST the Chinese fault; it's not like we in the West haven't been guzzling the stuff like it's custard. And the rapid growth of low cost air travel has seen a huge demand for aviation fuel.
Of course, Great Britain gets hit harder by this because, apparently having learned
Watching the "Supersizers" on the telly the other night, we learned how during World War Part II, when all our supplies were getting sunk, we had nothing to eat but Woolton Pie, which is basically boiled potatoes baked in a potato crust garnished with potatoes. Civil War was only averted by the defeat of Mr Hitler.
But this is where we are heading once again if we don't get our thinking caps on and come up with a solution to the oil running out.
I'm sure you'll never get BORED of me telling you about WINDMILLS and HYDROGEN, but just for VARIETY I'll try a different tack: LASERS.
Fusion energy is either the great white hope of the world or a great white elephant. Either way, I LOVE IT!
Fusion is the way that the SUN makes energy out of Hydrogen by smashing atoms of H together until they turn into He, Helium. And because 2 H's are a little bit heavier than one He and E, as old Albert said, = mc2 then you get ENERGY as a bonus.
(Because "E" means "Energy" and "= mc2" means energy is proportional to heaviness. Or in other words you can turn a bit of weight into a bit – or quite a LOT – of energy.)
In olden days (the nineteen-eighties) people thought that you had to use a lot of magnets and a torus which is a sort of doughnut. You take all the jam out of the doughnut and put in the fuel then spin it round very, very fast and it gets so hot that it turns into a star-in-a-bottle.
Now there is a new and modern method.
You take a blob of fuel and fire a super-duper LASER at it to heat it up to the temperature of the Sun and start the fusion going that way.
Yes, that IS what Doctor Octopus does in "Spider-man 2"; why are you all backing slowly away?
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