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I'm confused -Do you think that the US govt is unaware of the country's
dependence on coal for 50% of its energy needs? Do you think they've never
passed any (ridiculous) tax incentives to find and burn this foul most
polluting filth on the planet?
There is only one scalable oil (and coal) substitute - solar
-----Original Message-----
From: PR [mailto:10cc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 10:12 AM
To: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: RES: stock to buy- GPRE
If oil prices stay high or even go higher over the next many years, I
believe coal will be the big thing going forward for the USA. Like most
stuff we have to get our gov. behind it and to open their eyes to help get
the ball rolling.
They didn't see ethanol untill oil went up. So now maybe they will look at
coal and a few other things.
A few private and public companies along with some individuals have for
many years worked on ethanol, coal, hydrogen, solar, water current, battery
power and many other things. But the Gov. can't see and waits.
Do we want to subsidize Iran, Iraq etc. or subsidize ourselves.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Matulich" <alex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: RES: stock to buy- GPRE
> Mark Simms:
>>>I absolutely agree. Question is: what's the next best alternative ?
>
> Jack Zaner:
>>I don't know- - -but I do know this. There's a scientific answer and
>>there's a political answer. Mutually exclusive? Politicians think they
>>have special knowlege about how to solve the problem. Sure.
>
> Scientifically:
>
> For non-renewables, the most abundant source of energy in the United
> States is coal, with the U.S. having over a quarter of the word's
> reserves.
>
> For renewables, solar is the most abundant form of energy, followed
> by wind and geothermal. The sun provides over 1300 watts per
> square meter incident on a sunlit surface, after accounting for
> all atmospheric absorption and reflection. Averaged over the lit
> and unlit surfaces, that comes out to 170 watts per square meter.
> Photovoltaic cells have been historically inefficient (10% or so),
> but new advances are pushing their efficiency beyond 40%, and
> pushing costs down.
>
> The first company to market an efficient cheap solar cell on a large
> scale would be a good buy. Problem is, currently the photovoltaic
> companies with the manufacturing capacity aren't the ones with the
> cool R&D products (at least in my understanding).
>
> Wind power becomes cost effective during periods of high energy
> costs, as happened in 2001 in California, and seems to be happening
> now.
>
> Politically:
>
> Political decisions and opinions almost never take the long
> view. Politically, ethanol is the big thing now, and probably will
> be for a couple of years.
>
> I also hear talk of developing "clean burn" processes for coal.
> Dick Cheney was making noises about that a couple weeks ago. There
> may be companies poised to take advantage of government subsidies in
> that area.
>
> In the U.S. nuclear power is a political non-starter. Since Three
> Mile Island and Chernobyl, and American films such as Erin Brokovich
> and the China Syndrome, the populace has developed a deep mistrust
> of not just the technology, but of the integrity of the people
> in charge of the plants and regulatory agencies. There's also a
> distrust of ROI projections because proponents never factor in the
> present-value cost of safely storing nuclear waste for 40K years.
>
> -Alex
>
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