Gas Prices...What they don't say... But I will. (my speculation), page 2
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reply posted on 29-5-2004 @ 11:21 AM by TrueLies
Originally posted by intrepid
With all the natual gas we have available, why do people still heat their houses with oil? It cost us about $500 to heat our place this winter.



Solar energy is supposed to be expensive but well worth it. It will light your house and heat your house, let me find a link.


Solar collectors trap the sun's rays to produce heat. Most solar collectors are boxes, frames, or rooms that contain these parts: (1) clear covers that let in solar energy; (2) dark surfaces inside, called absorber plates, that soak up heat; (3) insulation materials to prevent heat from escaping; and (4) vents or pipes that carry the heated air or liquid from inside the collector to where it can be used.

Covers
Many clear materials can be used as covers for solar collectors, but glass is the most common material. Glass can be made quickly and easily. The special glass used in solar collectors resists breaking and scratching.

When sunlight passes through glass and hits a surface inside a solar collector, it changes into heat. Although glass allows sunlight to pass through, it also traps the heat produced inside the collector.

Absorbers
The heat produced inside a solar collector is soaked up by metal sheets or containers filled with water, rocks, or bricks that have been painted black or another dark color. These dark-colored objects that soak up heat are called absorbers. Without absorbers, solar heating systems would not produce enough heat to warm rooms inside your house.

www.eere.energy.gov...



Now if they only had something like this for transportation....


reply posted on 29-5-2004 @ 11:42 AM by ThePrankMonkey
i watched a show the other night and its focused mainly on cars that used hydrogen. in fact they had a car that was converted to hydrogen. it was a regular internal combustion engine. it was in a focus and ran entirely on hydrogen. in fact it was a regular focus they converted into a hydrogen car. they drove it around and everything. ran just like a regular car

it seems the main problem they have is the fuel tank and how to store the fuel. they had a guy on there who came up with this material that soaks hydrogen up like a sponge and can hold twice as much hydrogen compared to a traditional tank of compressed hydrogen. but the tech is still a little bit out there and its expensive.

i think hydrogen is a very good alternative but its expensive and the tech isnt widely available at the moment but given time i think it can be a very good alternative to gas.

the show was american scientific frontiers with alan alda. it was really good and even made me want a hydrogen car. and if anyone knows me they'd know that would be out of chracter for me.

i love gasoline engines but i recognize we need something that cant be monopolized like oil. just about anyone can create hydrogen. in fact there's a "gas station" in iceland that has a hydrogen pump and it makes its own hydrogen...doesnt need to be refilled, it makes its own...imagine how much money you'd save in not having to have fuels transported around the world.

another problem that noone has brought up with gasoline is this...in the US gas stations are mandated by law in their area to buy gas from only certain sources because of the blend required by law. gas you get on the east coast may very well be illegal in california so gas stations are limited where to get their gas from so if there is a shortage somewhere, they cant get it somewhere else to make up for it. so what happens? prices jack up.

another reason to go hydrogen.


reply posted on 15-8-2005 @ 12:26 PM by CalKnight2
As to electric cars being made out of plastic, hello! Plastic, at least for the time being, is made from oil!

As to this move toward Hydrogen... Hello! It takes more energy to make hydrogen from water, at least right now, that you get out of the hydrogen when you burn it!

Ethanol is an alcohol product made from corn. There's speculation about it cleaning your engine when burned, but unfortunately doesn't give quite the mileage as standard gasoline, even though around here in Missouri, Ethanol blended gas gives two points of octane more, for an equal price or a few pennies a gallon cheaper than standard gasoline.

As to the myth that we are running out of gas (no pun intended), Anwar has billions of barrels of oil, and there's an even bigger pocket of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, unfortunately it's too politically incorrect to drill in these places. I have heard that old oil reserves replenish over time which suggests that either we are not really sure how oil is produced, or we substantially underestimate how much is down there. We also haven't been building any more refineries. The first oil refinery to be built in decades is being proposed in Arizona.

Also, the price of gas isn't going up because the demand is all that much higher or that the supply is all that low, but is because it is "speculated" higher. A few months back, the US government was buying oil at a cost $37 a barrel. Speculators "speculate" that the cost is going up and therefore the oil companies base their price off the price of the speculation, and they send the price upward! Speculators see the actual price going up, then buy into it speculating the price will go higher, and the oil companies see the price speculated to be higher, so they sell it higher even more!

Dave

[edit on 15-8-2005 by CalKnight2]

[edit on 15-8-2005 by CalKnight2]
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