Comments on: Silver Buckshot Approach Displayed in San Francisco

By: Samie

Samie — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:11:16 +0000

I really don’t get how I’m missing the point and clearly I don’t see the point of Roadsailor’s comments besides the important role that government can play. And to Dom’s comments you don’t need crystal ball to look at limitations of some ideas like E85. Look at what alternatives have the best long term solutions and better potential to compete with petroleum products on a mass market. If there was no government resource tools for alternatives and markets acted alone I would agree with your comments Dom. But the fact is everyone is out to get some gov subsidy promoting their alt. in most cases aid their own short term self interests. If every alternative is great and needs our taxpayer dollars to support it to see which ones come out as real solutions don’t you feel that there needs to be some thought process in evaluating funding? Why are we still throwing money at things like corn ethanol? Where was the thought process with that besides aiding farms in increasing demand for corn? By no means do I see plugin, EV, biodiesel, or CNG for freight vehicles as the final solutions. But these are things that we can clearly promote in the next 10 years to start moving away from pure petroleum products.

By: Dom

Dom — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:00:38 +0000

You two are doing just what the first paragraph of the article is talking about – you’ve both got your own ideas of how it should be done, and think your way is the best. Well, unless you’ve got a magic crystal ball or an accurate eight-ball, you can’t say for sure which solution is best. They all have strengths and weaknesses, which is why I’ve come to agree with the premise of the article – there is no single solution.

By: Roadsailor

Roadsailor — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:35:25 +0000

Samie, your missing the point. We have had 40 years to figure out the right way to do it. Its time to do it. Enough talk, all the secrets have been tucked away for a long long time, and its time to say by by to the good old internal combustion engine. But the powers at hand will make this happen only when they are ready, and not until. You just watched our government agree to hand over our corrupted banking industry a Trillion bucks and it didn’t take them even a month to do it. As far as infastructure for any type of transportation system, a Trillion bucks would go a long way towards throwing that together real real quick. Thats not even figuring in any type of private investment that would go into any real commitment. So this 10 and 20 year time frame for R&d and infastructure development is all just a bunch of crap. We are fed dis-information every day and the public just sucks it up as the truth. The truth will only be known in the time frame dictated by the governing forces agenda, and by governing forces, I don’t necessarily mean your elected officials.

By: Samie

Samie — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:17:18 +0000

The article headline says that people are realizing there is no one solution to energy problems. Yes that is correct but I warn to the dismay of many we need to focus our efforts into less alternatives instead of more. People often forget to realize it takes time on the market for alt. to develop for any real chance for any attempt to reach mass markets. Infrastructure is a huge problem which I hear arguments like I can get a tank of CNG and use it for my home and car. That is fine for one individual but not for most Americans who fuel up at the pump. I argue we waste large amounts of time and capital into ideas that are short term and often slow down any real potential for alternatives that have any real chance of replacing gasoline. To add to this short term solutions don’t always look at land resources and food issues but focus on how special we are b/c we look “green” As we have seen it takes along time for us to move from one energy source to another.