That the main point and why so called "piracy" is also rampant in these various other nations. These media distributors are seriously price gouging, they have some insane idea of what their "copies" are allegedly worth, so the market routes around their idiocy. And everyone knows it. If they made these copies closer to that chinese knock off price, that is also closer to a "fair" price for duplication copies using today's tech. They could make up the difference on volume sales. Instead, 20 bucks a disk, DRM, warnings, etc, then bitch up and down and sideways over piracy.
I mean..duh
Back when making a physical copy actually cost a whole lot more, charging an appropriate price was fair and understandable. This is not the case now, especially with digital downloads, let alone what everyone knows is the price for blank media and making copies in bulk. The **AA cartel just needs to get seriously real on prices, they should have done it years ago. What they charge to *rent* a disk they could afford to just outright sell it, and still make good profit, especially if they kept the packaging costs low. Just stick them in cheap printed paper sleeves, sell for a few bucks, at least have that option. If people wanted the full jewel case and liner notes, swell, charge another couple of bucks, up to but not exceeding five dollars. $20 for a disk is out to lunch, 99 cents for a few megs download is out to lunch as well, the old "allofmp3" prices were a lot fairer.
And yes, to nip the indignant knee jerk reaction in advance, I am fully aware of production costs. That's not the point, they are carved in stone, called a sunk price, after that you want to sell as many copies as possible to make your profit. "Oh noes, I need to charge twenty for this stamped disk to make money, plus this is "what the market will bear". Nope, incorrect again, this is why there is so much piracy, the "market" mostly thinks 20 bucks for a disk is ludicrous, it is *not* bearing it except in way high paid a few nations and only a small subset in those nations. Look again at the parent post, a buck 25 is closer to what the global market of 6.5 billion people can afford. A small fraction of your potential market has enough disposable cash (now, watch as the economy keeps tanking...) to think 20 is cool, the vast bulk of humanity thinks anyone-you the media copy seller are nuts and will not pay that price, and they don't. It's been the collective global big finger to those sort of bloated prices.
Stop price gouging on non scarce and very cheap resources, see what happens.
I can now get, no thanks to the cable guys or ma bell, may they rot, but serious props to a local WISP with the best customer service I have ever had for any product, something better than dialup and cheaper, but that's it. It's not real broadband, it is "other". Youtube streaming is out, but I can download like a linux ISO overnight. Lemme see, I timed it, just upgraded to 10.4 Ungowah linux, took I think 16 hours. On dialup that would have been sixteen days or something.. It's better than dialup, but not "IPTV" level.
My OTA TV though improved dramatically with the digital conversion, three channels to over a dozen any random day, and I still haven't really fixed my antenna all that well(needs full rewiring) or added a rotor(the secret to great reception at a distance, precise aiming and good/the correct elements). My only gripe with digital is it is y/N, there is no mid ground watch a fuzzy channel action like with analog TV.
I am not all that much complaining though, there is NO WAY I would trade my job or location just to watch internet TV living in town someplace. Ta heck with that. The tradeoff is lopsided towards my personal choice lifestyle out here not really in the sticks, but edge of 'burbia where the farms really start.
Anyway, you want better TV, *height*. Go higher on your tower, and get that rotor, you really need both if you got zilch or crappy signal. I spent many a weekend helping my dad slap in antennas/towers for people when I was growing up.
You can input your x-y there and see what you can get theoretically with varying antenna heights. Every section higher, every ten feet, increases your odds of snagging good signal from *someplace*.
Now if you mean there is no local TV signal to get at all, because of that economic FCC gerrymandering..I got bupkis. If there is no station, there is no station.
Or you could start a station...;) quarter million people seems a decent enough market..
well, back at ya, dude, as you admit, you have a *mid* level quality connection,(apparently a high "mid" level) not lower tier or dialup, which untold millions have as their "choice". You are in that top range they are talking about in the article..not the 80% who can't do this yet, stream large screen HD content with a net connection. And I also indicated I was perfectly aware some people could get it now, *just* to avoid this sort of anecdotal. I am fully aware some folks can get better quality cable or fiber, but most cannot. They get this thing that the providers call broadband, but really isn't..it's barely better than dialup-band, which still don't cut the mustard for high def whizz bang streaming.
See that's the difference, "some" people, not even a majority, but a smallish minority can get it now, and even in some years time from now, it might hit a high 20% penetration who can get this quality of service (in the article, their figures, not mine). So, the other 80% is SOL, so that's why I said "Says who?" to that article in general that it is going to kill off OTA TV because IPTV will "take over" Nuts.. I call BS, the guy is out to lunch, even using his own figures. I won't be taking investment advice from the writer, put it that way.
I think you are misunderstanding me also on another point. I didn't say that internet TV and so on wasn't spiffy, sure it is, seems just wonderful, just that all the other "dudes" out there who aren't already getting mid level or better service, like you are, won't be using it because they can't get that quality of service. Catch 22. Apparently you can, congrats. My anecdotal cancels yours. I have very low tier alleged "broadband", which I am grateful for a lot, stuck on dialup until last year, but no way can it stream even crappy vids. Buffering every ten seconds and just a series of fast stills. This is called "high speed internet" here. If I want to see a vid, I have to download the thing entirely first. And this is the *best* I can get, and millions more are in the same boat..because these providers just upgrade areas where they already provide the best service, they are *not* rolling out to new areas very much.
This gets discussed all the time here, go back and look at every similar discussion, it is called the "low hanging fruit". All sorts of people have complained about it, the FCC is trying to fix it, etc, but the reality is, these big providers absolutely do not give a crap to roll out good service except mostly to areas that they have already "harvested" for customers. They have some magic formula, so many customers per foot or something..outside that area, which apparently 80% of the population is, you won't be seeing true high speed internet unless it is mandated by the government.
I still say all their first attempts were salvage operations, *not* plug it up operations. Those are two different things entirely. And they might still be. That's what it looks like to me.
From the article:
"BP's riser insertion operation marks its first real technology success after a string of high-profile failures. One early effort to suck up spilling crude--a 100-ton steel box lowered over the wellhead--jammed within hours with a frozen slurry of natural gas and seawater."
So, it jammed, plugged it up, so they *removed it* to try the next scheme, which was the "tophat", the smaller container, WITH the pipe opening, because they couldn't keep sucking the oil and natgas from it.
That's a salvage operation attempt dang it! They removed it because they couldn't keep pumping with that first heavy steel box, the box built with the tube sticking out of it, nor the second. It "jammed" up with frozen methane stuff. Well, well, well...
That's the point, to stop the flow as fast as possible, not try to delay stopping the flow so they can go back to running the well, and now a month later they are reluctantly gonna try to jam it up with kill mud and golf balls? They already had it jammed up!! They admit it! All this past month looks like salvage operations to me, not plugging it up.
That is the real scandal, IMO, and I am not seeing them getting called on it either, because their PR spin, using that little word ploy, not calling it what it really is, has obfuscated it, and the government seems to have helped with that obfuscation.
Now, I admit I just don't know, and this is speculation, but it is based on exactly what they have admitted to. I have not read one way or the other what happened in those few hours after the big box was lowered over it, and then the outlet plug got jammed with the frozen methane. Did the leak actually stop or slow down considerably, or did it continue unabated, like oozing out from underneath the sides? If it stopped or slowed down considerably, they could have just kept adding weight to the original box, just dumped a huge containment mass of whatever was handy, a second larger box perhaps, much much heavier. That's what they did at Chernobyl with a bad leak, they just entombed it until it stopped being a problem, load after load after load dumped over it.
How many folks in the US *really* get the kinds of speeds needed, plus real unlimited capacity, to make this fly? Where's this ultimate connection outside of a few lucrative fiber roll out areas? Sure, *some* do today, but there are vast areas with millions and millions of people where OTA TV signals will still rule.
The reason why I say this is because I have read every single broadband article here for the last long time, and not one article contained information like " and today, the major telcos and big ISPs announced a trillion dollar plan to roll out fiber optic high speed connection to 98% of the population within x-small number of years".
They aren't spending any profits, not that much, on upgrading physical delivery infrastructure, they are bidding against each other and dropping all the serious coin in buying up media/content producers and each other, bigger fish gobbling the little fish. That leaves like some small percentage for infrastructure upgrade.
In other words, ain't happening without them being forcefully mandated to provide credible high speed connections, not this joke stuff they claim is high speed, like way back when telephone and centralized grid power were first started and they got *ordered* to do it by the government, to not just pluck the low hanging fruit, but to provide it everywhere where they rolled it out.
Paper newspapers are different, they cost a lot, and today, the news is stale by the time you get it. Unless you got a flock of kids in school locally, where you want to read about the little soccer games and so on, local papers got not much anymore, and the larger metro papers, again, stale news. That's why they are folding. But good def TV, being replaced by zillion megahertz-to-think-about-it connections? OK, everyone pack up and move into a few apartments in Korea or something. I mean we *just got* good OTA digital TV all over recently, and it works really well if your antenna-fu is strong, so how is any net TV going to really compete with that when only a small percentage of the population will have that sort of compatible connection?
A two buck a gallon tax increase on diesel, plus the ups and downs of the speculators we endure already, would put like half the independent truckers and the bulk of the farmers into bankruptcy in short order. It's already tough enough to make any profits at all now.
I hope you have some alternative way to move goods and to get food. Me, I don't care much anymore if I provide food to other people or not, I'll just feed my dogs better with my beef, and all those pro fast fuel tax increases advocates in the cities can..I guess grow lettuce in window boxes and eat rats and pigeons. Or whatever they figure out. Heck, I bet your good friends in places like china, your wall street dream nation, would love to ship you some really "nutritious" cheap food, while you ride your bicycle around. Because they won't be taxing themselves on fuel that much, and are rather lax in the "quality" department. And they are more than happy to take over any market you decide to kill off in random nation x,y or z. They'll take it. they love when national policies kill markets there so they can move in. But that will be your option then once you bankrupt people who directly have to use fuel to work to move your goods internally and provide you with food.
Now there is an alternative to the punitive tax, it is called the anti tax or the tax *credit*. Instead of the tax, the stick (or the club, which is a better analogy), you offer a tax credit, the carrot, the reward.
If the government offered a 100% tax credit for actual implementation of alternative and cleaner energy solutions, it just might work and boost the economy better. Even the partial credits they have and offer now work fairly well, the 10-30% credits, but just imagine if you had 100% credit, something like a five or ten year pro rated credit (say for 25 to 50 grand) for doing such things as adding solar panels to your house, or getting some new efficient car that got over 60 MPG, stuff like that. Think about it, which would you rather. Here's a scenario. Government takes X-dollars income tax from you every year, now you add in the new extra carbon fuel tax and every single thing you buy or use goes up in price to cover that new tax. OR, the government offers the multi year tax credit, and you could finance 25-50 grand worth of your own solar panels, or something like that. Same money out of your pocket, that's a wash, it's spent in advance already, so which would you like better, and which would help to get cleaner energy solutions out there fast?
Me, I always like the carrot method better than the stick method. Ain't if funny only the stick method, the carbon tax, or "cap and trade" swindle, which will go to enrich already bloated government and wall street, is the only one recommended by these grant sucking scientists? None of them ever heard of the tax credit?
That's why I don't take their pronouncements as serious as perhaps I should, because years ago I heard about this carbon tax scam, and you can follow the economic breadcrumb trail right up into the pockets of the goldman sachs crowd, and the global nanny state political activist crowd, the watermelons.
I am really pro cleaner energy and pro much cleaner environment and always have been, I invested some in solar panels when others where investing in dot bomb wall street fairy tales or house flipping perpetual economic motion scams. And I also actually work for a living as a food producer and know what fast sharp energy price hikes do to the economy, at least this subset of the economy. It kills it in a nutshell. So go ahead and do it, throw that tax out there, institute your new legions of carbon police and carbon commissars to go along with it, see what happens.
This is like short term memory theater. We had a fast price rise in fuel due to wall street speculators mostly just two years ago, and there are a lot of us here who remember and had to pay those fast price hikes back during the oil embargo. That combined with the big fast paper financial products
The Volt has a gas engine generator in it. If you forget, or are unable, to recharge the onboard batteries, that just means the gas engine starts immediately, and you won't get the 40 mile battery-only range.
Crimping the pipe seems a good idea, that's why I brought up that idea I had read about using two shaped charges on the pipe. They can make shaped charges stronger than their hydraulic crimpers, that's just adding more kaboom. They must know the pipe specs internally, so I would imagine any decent UDT guy could design the charges.
And that is exactly why I think they are trying to salvage the pipe, and not just stop the flow. The PR disaster if they admitted that would be terrible, so instead they are trying the salvage operation, but keep maintaining they want to stop the flow. Sure they want to stop it..and eventually open it back up again. That's two distinctly different goals. Seems if they had a *permanent* stop in mind, it would be loads easier, several techniques would or could work, the shaped charge crimping, or my idea of just a huge big heavy plug smack dab on top of the thing, then add to it. Or both, the crimping first, then the big mambo kahuna weight on top of it.
OK, I just checked, the largest ocean going crane can move 14,200 tons! That's a hella large plug to drop on something 21 inches in diameter, I don't care what pressure that flow is at, something that hugemongous is gonna smash it way down to bedrock. As to what to use, any old random used bulk tank. Fill it with scrap concrete chunks, put a little wet around that to fill it out, weld it shut again, add some lift points, drop that sucker right over that pipe. They could tow it out to the scene empty or almost empty, fill it up over the target, then drop it.
I read some speculation elsewhere about using two very small shaped charges, opposite sides of the pipe, to smash it flat. Pinch it closed in other words. Supposedly it wouldn't take much either.
Yes, it just looks to me like they are claiming to want to plug the leak for public consumption, but their efforts look way more like trying to salvage the pipe and get it working again.
Are they trying to plug the leak, or are they really trying to salvage the bore there and get back to pumping oil?
The reason I ask is..why not a chernobyl style containment effort. Drop a 200 (whatever, hugemongous, the biggest they can move) ton solid concrete and steel cube on that thing, then add to it, until the leak totally stops. The first big chunk would smash the pipe flat, effectively sealing it.
It has looked to me right along as more an effort to salvage what they did so far, not actually just plug it up.
...those teeny planetary gears on the ends of the shafts are a serious weak link in that design (although it looks like it will work to me, I am not sure at all on longevity or being able to scale it up). They'll need to be made out of boron alloy chrome hardened cyroed and shotpeened dipped in yak butter virgin asteroid sourced unobtanium to stand up. The second weak link is the bars themselves, they will have a torsion bar-like set of stresses on them all the time, throwing the alignment of those critical for function planetary gears out of whack. Just look at it and visualize the (dis)harmonics and waves of conflicting stresses hitting on those gears. Micro wiggle city. It's gonna chew itself up in short order.
You see failure like this on only one end supported sealed bearings (not exactly the same, but good enough for illustration purposes) all the time (I see a lot of stuff like this on small engine gadgets, they hit a critical point of fast failure with little notice of impending doom). They last for awhile, but the pivoting non aligned forces on them cause way premature bearing failure.
Now, put those planetary gears in the middle somehow..maybe. How to do that...I got other projects right now, so..no idea. Sliding tubular interrupted shafts and all internal gears perhaps....
It's interesting, but the point is moot now with the switch coming to pure electric drive for small private vehicles. An electric motor is much more robust than this thing, and can handle power and torque just fine, and be wicked efficient, without near the complexity....or go to hydraulic drive...
bah... I used to work for GM, and was in the UAW, and I *quit*. It was disgusting. Management sucks, those clueless investors suck (can't control their management) and the union sucks, buncha arrogant rednecks. For every one good employee with a clue, they have 50 who couldn't find their ass with a GPS and a map. They are the posterboy corporation that got so big they started believing their own BS. They should have been allowed to crash and burn same as those ripoff derivatives spewing casino banks.
I'm serious, too. A big net, like kevlar whatever strong material, scoop it up, the net is attached to some rocket that tows it to a point where it will degrade and burn up. (insert various hand waving picky engineering details here)
Plants take in CO2 and grow. Part of their growing is also absorbing water at their roots, which is (partly, but mostly) transpired from their leaves. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evapotranspiration
More co2, the faster the plants grow (up to some level of which I am not sure, but a lot, and it varies plant from plant anyway). So, we already will be getting a lot more water vapor up into the air as co2 levels rise, plus the plants can use all the sunlight they can get. More plants and trees growing, better for all concerned.
Encourage more planting. And that's it to help the environment, along with slowing the use of fossil fuels as much as possible. More stuff growing all over, the better it gets. More to eat, more shade, more forest products, and etc. Much better than Gates contraption. And the planet regulates itself better.
The way to stop man made climate change increases (such as there are, whatever percentage that is), is simply to stop doing that, instead of doing it more. Gates contraption is just doing more man made busywork nonsense. They'll claim, using many arcane scientific sounding phrases and pretty graphs, "wow, it works, now give us a trillion bucks to build thousands of them now" Cha Ching, profit!! That's all this thing is, IMO
The planet appears to be pretty good at this self-regulation stuff, given half a chance.
It's completely absurd. I've used an analogy before. Did typewriter manufacturers demand a fee for stuff authors wrote on their machines? They had patents on typewriters. There's your legal precedent, and it gets to the heart of promoting the arts and sciences. These software patents throw a ridiculous roadblock towards that goal.
Independent and concerned folks should stage a mass protest, video each other at outdoor protest sites, swap one dollar with each other for instant copies of what they shoot, on those compact flash things or USB sticks or whatever you use, making the clips be "commercial" as well, then upload the videos all over right then, and challenge those absurd rules. It's called civil disobedience, and large numbers work to get obviously stupid laws changed. Not three guys, but an organized across the nation "day of stupid retarded video software patents challenge", thousands of people, something like that, something that would make the news all over and couldn't be ignored. They just did this a few weeks or so back with reefer laws, mass smoke ins.
I don't do video myself, but seems like if this is really a concern to so many people, interested folks could take this idea and run with it, do a facebook thing, all that social networking jazz a lot of you folks do, pick a day and just do it, organize away, start the chatter, add comments to youtube vids to get the word out, drop comments on blogs of interest, whatever it takes.
OK, I'll offer a date, June 5th upcoming, that's on a Saturday. That's almost a full month to get the word out, "Protect your Right to be Creative with the hardware you purchased day. End software patents. Copyright, yes, patents, NO".
What I don't get is why Cisco doesn't task some employees to keep watch 24/7 over those factories where they make this stuff. Make it a condition of the contract that they get full time, go anyplace whenever they want, access. Then they can at least eliminate the same factories making knock offs at night. I guess they save one night shift payroll expense per factory and pass it on to the US tax payer so they can have dozens of federal employees try to stop it, after the fact.
In short, Cisco is sure a buncha hypocritical cheap guys, considering what those things cost, and the US government/tax payer is once again the sucker, with the now common "privatize the profits of Big Inc, but socialize the risks from wallets of the tax payers".
I think the government should just contract directly with the manufacturers and cut Cisco out of the loop. Why not? If it is coming from China anyway, I mean, that's the deal, so who cares then? They are playing make believe it isn't Chinese made because it has a Cisco label on it? These are actual bona fide adults making serious coin, and they play make believe? They could get switches cheaper, contract for support directly from those Chinese manufacturers, and have their own fed employees in there following the runs and inspecting/doing Q and A, and pulling components randomly and bringing them back to look for hidden non contracted for back doors. And it would be tons cheaper, for the same exact gear.
If some corporation wants to get rich by outsourcing, heck with it, buy directly from the outsourced builders instead. Fish or cut bait, we are trading with China or not, y/n? If yes, deal directly with the Chinese for the gear, unless there is an all made in USA quality product as an alternative. The government exists to protect US jobs..or not. They are "worried about security", or not. They can hire cisco cheaper just for new designs, tell them they can get it made themselves, cut them down to their real practical outsourced size. there's no real reason to pay for both the "IP" and then hardware profits, when as has been reported, these units are actually way cheaper when they are non Cisco branded.
Mostly, it looks like "not", and more worried about bloated payrolls for security theater government McJobs and protecting the income of the top 1% of the population, who are globalists anyway and not even close to being loyal or patriotic or anything like that.
All these outsourcers are economic mercenaries, and as such, I dismiss any claims they make of being patriots, etc. they want all the advantages of being in the US, get to live where generations built up the infrastrucutre and the quality of life, but are too cheap and weasly to want to chip in and pay for any of that. then when their precious gets cloned, they want the taxpayers to do their jobs for them, for *free*.
Ta heck with that! They should "police" their IP entirely on their own nickle, same as BP and assorted should pay every penny of the cleanup and losses from this latest oil spill.
It smashes and crimps the stems of the cover crop/ green manure whatever you want, then packs it down on the surface where it is a slow die off, acting as a mulch and eventually a slow release fertilizer. You plant right through it. I don't have one, we aren't big grain farmers here, we are poultry and cattle, but it sure looks interesting. No till + reduce or eliminate sprays. Seems a decent alternative.
That's just not true. Heavy chemical farming allows an individual farmer to grow on more acres with x amount labor, using what they call no till, but the yields are not all that impressive compared to good rich organic soil type growing. Now seed varieties make a difference, but square foot to square foot, given the same seeds, good healthy compost rich soil is outstanding. Shoot, I see that even with hay. Our fields, that get chicken litter fertilizer, consistently out perform the neighbors fields across the street, where he has the big chemical fertilizer spray truck come in. As to veggies and whatnot, I have had a good garden every year for the past..hmm..I guess 54 years now I have been gardening, and natural fertilizers work great and you get huge yields. It can be more labor intensive, but the yields are great.
Hybrid type growing can work well, too, such as the use of heavy black plastic mulch, then drip irrigation with it.
The secret to farming is healthy soil, with a rich humus layer. You are a soil farmer first, after that, the crops will "just work" mostly.
There's a push on to incorporate biochar* into soils, and I think that is something that should be done on a huge scale, using all that wood that just burns up anyway every summer in the western US. Really, I think as a massive stimulus project, looking at long term, not a this quarter megaprofits approach, but a national "commons" approach, this would be a great way to use resources that get wasted, create a lot of useful jobs, and gradually increase national food security. It should be one of our national priorities to not waste all that carbon from those huge fires (especially with all that wood being lost to the pine borer beetle and other really bad invasive or destructive species) and get it back down deep into the soil, instead of just burning up at huge expense and loss. That makes loads more sense for the environment and to help insure global food supplies and "climate change" concerns than throwing trillions of dollars at those wall street gangsters to trade "carbon credits". What a crock that is. Let's put that same trillion into improving the soils instead of improving some penthouse millionaire's ferrari budget.
*not quite biochar, but just so happens coincidently after I post this, I am on my mid day break right now, I am going out and roto-tilling in a pile of woodashes and charcoal clumps into one of my gardens.
Doesn't work in all situations, but green manure cover crops, then using a mechanical "knife roller" (just google that) before planting your real crop, (that device squishes and kills the cover crop, it turns it into a green surface mulch and eventually naturally rots to fertilizer, lather, rinse, repeat every season) appears to be a completely viable method for tons of farming purposes that can help eliminate herbicide use. From what I have read it is in semi widespread use in Brazil so far, and a lot of independents and ag colleges in the states here are working on different designs of them.
These people aren't really morons, they just have no credible frame of reference on pricing. Clueless. The high end of their industry is extremely well paid, top of the line just under investment bankers execs. All these pricing decisions are made by high level execs, with multimillionaire dollar a year salaries and perqs, all living in mansions with numerous servants, they all have fleets of high end cars, personal jets, yachts, yada yada.
They *think* what they are charging is chump change cheap..just too far removed from joe working stiff or joe struggling college student level income to relate, they just don't see it. They think 20 bucks isn't worth chasing after if it blows out of their wallet and goes down the street. Twenty bucks is what they leave for a tip for one drink at some high end watering hole. They just don't get it on their prices.
We can grow fertilizers, that's all we use here on this farm, both on the gardens and on our fields and pastures. Advances in green cover crop manures are getting decent, along with alternatives to sprays for a lot of uses. I was just looking at mechanical "knife rollers" for treating living mulch, they have several large scale prototypes working now, could eliminate a lot of herbicides and give the large scale organic farmer something to compete with against the all chemical "no till" farms, and drastically drop this need for so much petroleum products. Plastics can be made from plants. Pharmaceuticals are being grown now, biotech is where it is at, gene therapy and so on, that's the future.
Don't get me wrong, my income today is 100% dependent on cheap diesel (but this could be biodiesel in the same equipment...), but we can get a lot closer to eliminating the need for oil just using the tech we already have on larger scales.
It's not all or nothing we just need to work smarter and cut through a little of that oil industry FUD. They can make better vehicles that get double the mileage, heck, they DO make them..just don't sell them in the US, and I really can't see where European regs are all that much worse than US regs. I mean I have an 81 pickup truck that gets 40 MPG, so I *know* they can make better mileage vehicles today, they have had twenty years in materials science advances since then. They had VW rabbits back then that got 60 MPG! And they brag on stuff like..28 now, mileage like that..nuts...
We can cut oil demand a lot of places, we just need the national will to make it so. I think the best way is the 100% tax credit, up to such and such a cost. ex: Offer an amortized ten year tax credit for electric cars, say up to 20 grand tops..we'd have dozens of models on the lots within six months. Even if some models cost more, with the first twenty grand right off the top of your tax burden, buck for buck..demand would be there, huge demand. Do the same thing with any ICE powered model that got 50 MPG or better. Stuff like that. Encourage, don't punish.
All government does, all they *can* do, is carrot or the stick with this social engineering they do. Tax or tax-credit, Punishment, the stick, a tax, or reward, the carrot, a tax-credit. A beating, or an incentive to do something cool. You want alternatives to oil for transportation, offer 100% credits, then stand back and watch the stampede. You want alternatives to coal for electrical generation, same deal, either personal or figure out some good numbers for commercial, then stand back. Add one line to the tax form, "are you taking a personal tax credit this year for alternative energy? Add the number, attach copy of receipt. Done.
We can't switch over night, but we do have ways to reduce petroleum demand quickly, not in all niches but in a lot of them, if there was a national will to do it, and the government just allowed it to happen in the market by offering the tax credit at credible levels. If you want to transition over say a twenty year period, well in advance of rapid decline of oil sources, the time to do it is well before that slide on that bell curve starts. Not afterwards. It won't work very well then.
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1.25 USD per disc
That the main point and why so called "piracy" is also rampant in these various other nations. These media distributors are seriously price gouging, they have some insane idea of what their "copies" are allegedly worth, so the market routes around their idiocy. And everyone knows it. If they made these copies closer to that chinese knock off price, that is also closer to a "fair" price for duplication copies using today's tech. They could make up the difference on volume sales. Instead, 20 bucks a disk, DRM, warnings, etc, then bitch up and down and sideways over piracy.
I mean..duh
Back when making a physical copy actually cost a whole lot more, charging an appropriate price was fair and understandable. This is not the case now, especially with digital downloads, let alone what everyone knows is the price for blank media and making copies in bulk. The **AA cartel just needs to get seriously real on prices, they should have done it years ago. What they charge to *rent* a disk they could afford to just outright sell it, and still make good profit, especially if they kept the packaging costs low. Just stick them in cheap printed paper sleeves, sell for a few bucks, at least have that option. If people wanted the full jewel case and liner notes, swell, charge another couple of bucks, up to but not exceeding five dollars. $20 for a disk is out to lunch, 99 cents for a few megs download is out to lunch as well, the old "allofmp3" prices were a lot fairer.
And yes, to nip the indignant knee jerk reaction in advance, I am fully aware of production costs. That's not the point, they are carved in stone, called a sunk price, after that you want to sell as many copies as possible to make your profit. "Oh noes, I need to charge twenty for this stamped disk to make money, plus this is "what the market will bear". Nope, incorrect again, this is why there is so much piracy, the "market" mostly thinks 20 bucks for a disk is ludicrous, it is *not* bearing it except in way high paid a few nations and only a small subset in those nations. Look again at the parent post, a buck 25 is closer to what the global market of 6.5 billion people can afford. A small fraction of your potential market has enough disposable cash (now, watch as the economy keeps tanking...) to think 20 is cool, the vast bulk of humanity thinks anyone-you the media copy seller are nuts and will not pay that price, and they don't. It's been the collective global big finger to those sort of bloated prices.
Stop price gouging on non scarce and very cheap resources, see what happens.
I can now get, no thanks to the cable guys or ma bell, may they rot, but serious props to a local WISP with the best customer service I have ever had for any product, something better than dialup and cheaper, but that's it. It's not real broadband, it is "other". Youtube streaming is out, but I can download like a linux ISO overnight. Lemme see, I timed it, just upgraded to 10.4 Ungowah linux, took I think 16 hours. On dialup that would have been sixteen days or something.. It's better than dialup, but not "IPTV" level.
My OTA TV though improved dramatically with the digital conversion, three channels to over a dozen any random day, and I still haven't really fixed my antenna all that well(needs full rewiring) or added a rotor(the secret to great reception at a distance, precise aiming and good/the correct elements). My only gripe with digital is it is y/N, there is no mid ground watch a fuzzy channel action like with analog TV.
I am not all that much complaining though, there is NO WAY I would trade my job or location just to watch internet TV living in town someplace. Ta heck with that. The tradeoff is lopsided towards my personal choice lifestyle out here not really in the sticks, but edge of 'burbia where the farms really start.
Anyway, you want better TV, *height*. Go higher on your tower, and get that rotor, you really need both if you got zilch or crappy signal. I spent many a weekend helping my dad slap in antennas/towers for people when I was growing up.
Lemme see... http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
You can input your x-y there and see what you can get theoretically with varying antenna heights. Every section higher, every ten feet, increases your odds of snagging good signal from *someplace*.
Now if you mean there is no local TV signal to get at all, because of that economic FCC gerrymandering..I got bupkis. If there is no station, there is no station.
Or you could start a station... ;) quarter million people seems a decent enough market..
well, back at ya, dude, as you admit, you have a *mid* level quality connection,(apparently a high "mid" level) not lower tier or dialup, which untold millions have as their "choice". You are in that top range they are talking about in the article..not the 80% who can't do this yet, stream large screen HD content with a net connection. And I also indicated I was perfectly aware some people could get it now, *just* to avoid this sort of anecdotal. I am fully aware some folks can get better quality cable or fiber, but most cannot. They get this thing that the providers call broadband, but really isn't..it's barely better than dialup-band, which still don't cut the mustard for high def whizz bang streaming.
See that's the difference, "some" people, not even a majority, but a smallish minority can get it now, and even in some years time from now, it might hit a high 20% penetration who can get this quality of service (in the article, their figures, not mine). So, the other 80% is SOL, so that's why I said "Says who?" to that article in general that it is going to kill off OTA TV because IPTV will "take over" Nuts.. I call BS, the guy is out to lunch, even using his own figures. I won't be taking investment advice from the writer, put it that way.
I think you are misunderstanding me also on another point. I didn't say that internet TV and so on wasn't spiffy, sure it is, seems just wonderful, just that all the other "dudes" out there who aren't already getting mid level or better service, like you are, won't be using it because they can't get that quality of service. Catch 22. Apparently you can, congrats. My anecdotal cancels yours. I have very low tier alleged "broadband", which I am grateful for a lot, stuck on dialup until last year, but no way can it stream even crappy vids. Buffering every ten seconds and just a series of fast stills. This is called "high speed internet" here. If I want to see a vid, I have to download the thing entirely first. And this is the *best* I can get, and millions more are in the same boat..because these providers just upgrade areas where they already provide the best service, they are *not* rolling out to new areas very much.
This gets discussed all the time here, go back and look at every similar discussion, it is called the "low hanging fruit". All sorts of people have complained about it, the FCC is trying to fix it, etc, but the reality is, these big providers absolutely do not give a crap to roll out good service except mostly to areas that they have already "harvested" for customers. They have some magic formula, so many customers per foot or something..outside that area, which apparently 80% of the population is, you won't be seeing true high speed internet unless it is mandated by the government.
I still say all their first attempts were salvage operations, *not* plug it up operations. Those are two different things entirely. And they might still be. That's what it looks like to me.
From the article:
"BP's riser insertion operation marks its first real technology success after a string of high-profile failures. One early effort to suck up spilling crude--a 100-ton steel box lowered over the wellhead--jammed within hours with a frozen slurry of natural gas and seawater."
So, it jammed, plugged it up, so they *removed it* to try the next scheme, which was the "tophat", the smaller container, WITH the pipe opening, because they couldn't keep sucking the oil and natgas from it.
That's a salvage operation attempt dang it! They removed it because they couldn't keep pumping with that first heavy steel box, the box built with the tube sticking out of it, nor the second. It "jammed" up with frozen methane stuff. Well, well, well...
That's the point, to stop the flow as fast as possible, not try to delay stopping the flow so they can go back to running the well, and now a month later they are reluctantly gonna try to jam it up with kill mud and golf balls? They already had it jammed up!! They admit it! All this past month looks like salvage operations to me, not plugging it up.
That is the real scandal, IMO, and I am not seeing them getting called on it either, because their PR spin, using that little word ploy, not calling it what it really is, has obfuscated it, and the government seems to have helped with that obfuscation.
Now, I admit I just don't know, and this is speculation, but it is based on exactly what they have admitted to. I have not read one way or the other what happened in those few hours after the big box was lowered over it, and then the outlet plug got jammed with the frozen methane. Did the leak actually stop or slow down considerably, or did it continue unabated, like oozing out from underneath the sides? If it stopped or slowed down considerably, they could have just kept adding weight to the original box, just dumped a huge containment mass of whatever was handy, a second larger box perhaps, much much heavier. That's what they did at Chernobyl with a bad leak, they just entombed it until it stopped being a problem, load after load after load dumped over it.
How many folks in the US *really* get the kinds of speeds needed, plus real unlimited capacity, to make this fly? Where's this ultimate connection outside of a few lucrative fiber roll out areas? Sure, *some* do today, but there are vast areas with millions and millions of people where OTA TV signals will still rule.
The reason why I say this is because I have read every single broadband article here for the last long time, and not one article contained information like " and today, the major telcos and big ISPs announced a trillion dollar plan to roll out fiber optic high speed connection to 98% of the population within x-small number of years".
They aren't spending any profits, not that much, on upgrading physical delivery infrastructure, they are bidding against each other and dropping all the serious coin in buying up media/content producers and each other, bigger fish gobbling the little fish. That leaves like some small percentage for infrastructure upgrade.
In other words, ain't happening without them being forcefully mandated to provide credible high speed connections, not this joke stuff they claim is high speed, like way back when telephone and centralized grid power were first started and they got *ordered* to do it by the government, to not just pluck the low hanging fruit, but to provide it everywhere where they rolled it out.
Paper newspapers are different, they cost a lot, and today, the news is stale by the time you get it. Unless you got a flock of kids in school locally, where you want to read about the little soccer games and so on, local papers got not much anymore, and the larger metro papers, again, stale news. That's why they are folding. But good def TV, being replaced by zillion megahertz-to-think-about-it connections? OK, everyone pack up and move into a few apartments in Korea or something. I mean we *just got* good OTA digital TV all over recently, and it works really well if your antenna-fu is strong, so how is any net TV going to really compete with that when only a small percentage of the population will have that sort of compatible connection?
A two buck a gallon tax increase on diesel, plus the ups and downs of the speculators we endure already, would put like half the independent truckers and the bulk of the farmers into bankruptcy in short order. It's already tough enough to make any profits at all now.
I hope you have some alternative way to move goods and to get food. Me, I don't care much anymore if I provide food to other people or not, I'll just feed my dogs better with my beef, and all those pro fast fuel tax increases advocates in the cities can..I guess grow lettuce in window boxes and eat rats and pigeons. Or whatever they figure out. Heck, I bet your good friends in places like china, your wall street dream nation, would love to ship you some really "nutritious" cheap food, while you ride your bicycle around. Because they won't be taxing themselves on fuel that much, and are rather lax in the "quality" department. And they are more than happy to take over any market you decide to kill off in random nation x,y or z. They'll take it. they love when national policies kill markets there so they can move in. But that will be your option then once you bankrupt people who directly have to use fuel to work to move your goods internally and provide you with food.
Now there is an alternative to the punitive tax, it is called the anti tax or the tax *credit*. Instead of the tax, the stick (or the club, which is a better analogy), you offer a tax credit, the carrot, the reward.
If the government offered a 100% tax credit for actual implementation of alternative and cleaner energy solutions, it just might work and boost the economy better. Even the partial credits they have and offer now work fairly well, the 10-30% credits, but just imagine if you had 100% credit, something like a five or ten year pro rated credit (say for 25 to 50 grand) for doing such things as adding solar panels to your house, or getting some new efficient car that got over 60 MPG, stuff like that. Think about it, which would you rather. Here's a scenario. Government takes X-dollars income tax from you every year, now you add in the new extra carbon fuel tax and every single thing you buy or use goes up in price to cover that new tax. OR, the government offers the multi year tax credit, and you could finance 25-50 grand worth of your own solar panels, or something like that. Same money out of your pocket, that's a wash, it's spent in advance already, so which would you like better, and which would help to get cleaner energy solutions out there fast?
Me, I always like the carrot method better than the stick method. Ain't if funny only the stick method, the carbon tax, or "cap and trade" swindle, which will go to enrich already bloated government and wall street, is the only one recommended by these grant sucking scientists? None of them ever heard of the tax credit?
That's why I don't take their pronouncements as serious as perhaps I should, because years ago I heard about this carbon tax scam, and you can follow the economic breadcrumb trail right up into the pockets of the goldman sachs crowd, and the global nanny state political activist crowd, the watermelons.
I am really pro cleaner energy and pro much cleaner environment and always have been, I invested some in solar panels when others where investing in dot bomb wall street fairy tales or house flipping perpetual economic motion scams. And I also actually work for a living as a food producer and know what fast sharp energy price hikes do to the economy, at least this subset of the economy. It kills it in a nutshell. So go ahead and do it, throw that tax out there, institute your new legions of carbon police and carbon commissars to go along with it, see what happens.
This is like short term memory theater. We had a fast price rise in fuel due to wall street speculators mostly just two years ago, and there are a lot of us here who remember and had to pay those fast price hikes back during the oil embargo. That combined with the big fast paper financial products
How well does that built in micro OS really work? Seems like for a lot of folks that might be all the "OS" they really need.
They stick those rfid chips in tires now, some anyway.
http://www.google.com/search?q=tires+rfid
The Volt has a gas engine generator in it. If you forget, or are unable, to recharge the onboard batteries, that just means the gas engine starts immediately, and you won't get the 40 mile battery-only range.
Crimping the pipe seems a good idea, that's why I brought up that idea I had read about using two shaped charges on the pipe. They can make shaped charges stronger than their hydraulic crimpers, that's just adding more kaboom. They must know the pipe specs internally, so I would imagine any decent UDT guy could design the charges.
And that is exactly why I think they are trying to salvage the pipe, and not just stop the flow. The PR disaster if they admitted that would be terrible, so instead they are trying the salvage operation, but keep maintaining they want to stop the flow. Sure they want to stop it..and eventually open it back up again. That's two distinctly different goals. Seems if they had a *permanent* stop in mind, it would be loads easier, several techniques would or could work, the shaped charge crimping, or my idea of just a huge big heavy plug smack dab on top of the thing, then add to it. Or both, the crimping first, then the big mambo kahuna weight on top of it.
OK, I just checked, the largest ocean going crane can move 14,200 tons! That's a hella large plug to drop on something 21 inches in diameter, I don't care what pressure that flow is at, something that hugemongous is gonna smash it way down to bedrock. As to what to use, any old random used bulk tank. Fill it with scrap concrete chunks, put a little wet around that to fill it out, weld it shut again, add some lift points, drop that sucker right over that pipe. They could tow it out to the scene empty or almost empty, fill it up over the target, then drop it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saipem_7000
I read some speculation elsewhere about using two very small shaped charges, opposite sides of the pipe, to smash it flat. Pinch it closed in other words. Supposedly it wouldn't take much either.
Yes, it just looks to me like they are claiming to want to plug the leak for public consumption, but their efforts look way more like trying to salvage the pipe and get it working again.
Are they trying to plug the leak, or are they really trying to salvage the bore there and get back to pumping oil?
The reason I ask is..why not a chernobyl style containment effort. Drop a 200 (whatever, hugemongous, the biggest they can move) ton solid concrete and steel cube on that thing, then add to it, until the leak totally stops. The first big chunk would smash the pipe flat, effectively sealing it.
It has looked to me right along as more an effort to salvage what they did so far, not actually just plug it up.
...those teeny planetary gears on the ends of the shafts are a serious weak link in that design (although it looks like it will work to me, I am not sure at all on longevity or being able to scale it up). They'll need to be made out of boron alloy chrome hardened cyroed and shotpeened dipped in yak butter virgin asteroid sourced unobtanium to stand up. The second weak link is the bars themselves, they will have a torsion bar-like set of stresses on them all the time, throwing the alignment of those critical for function planetary gears out of whack. Just look at it and visualize the (dis)harmonics and waves of conflicting stresses hitting on those gears. Micro wiggle city. It's gonna chew itself up in short order.
You see failure like this on only one end supported sealed bearings (not exactly the same, but good enough for illustration purposes) all the time (I see a lot of stuff like this on small engine gadgets, they hit a critical point of fast failure with little notice of impending doom). They last for awhile, but the pivoting non aligned forces on them cause way premature bearing failure.
Now, put those planetary gears in the middle somehow..maybe. How to do that...I got other projects right now, so..no idea. Sliding tubular interrupted shafts and all internal gears perhaps....
It's interesting, but the point is moot now with the switch coming to pure electric drive for small private vehicles. An electric motor is much more robust than this thing, and can handle power and torque just fine, and be wicked efficient, without near the complexity. ...or go to hydraulic drive...
you need this
http://www.downloadhelper.net/
I have a slow connection also, so this thing "just works" for vids
Repaid it with other borrowed/bailout money.
You really have to go beyond the headlines and look at the picky details
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/general-motors-commercial-complaint-bailout-ad-filed-ftc/story?id=10554206
http://cei.org/articles/2010/05/09/gm-deliberately-tried-deceive-americans-letter-editor
bah... I used to work for GM, and was in the UAW, and I *quit*. It was disgusting. Management sucks, those clueless investors suck (can't control their management) and the union sucks, buncha arrogant rednecks. For every one good employee with a clue, they have 50 who couldn't find their ass with a GPS and a map. They are the posterboy corporation that got so big they started believing their own BS. They should have been allowed to crash and burn same as those ripoff derivatives spewing casino banks.
Crude is measured in 42 gallon barrels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_per_day
I'm serious, too. A big net, like kevlar whatever strong material, scoop it up, the net is attached to some rocket that tows it to a point where it will degrade and burn up. (insert various hand waving picky engineering details here)
Plants take in CO2 and grow. Part of their growing is also absorbing water at their roots, which is (partly, but mostly) transpired from their leaves. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evapotranspiration
More co2, the faster the plants grow (up to some level of which I am not sure, but a lot, and it varies plant from plant anyway). So, we already will be getting a lot more water vapor up into the air as co2 levels rise, plus the plants can use all the sunlight they can get. More plants and trees growing, better for all concerned.
Encourage more planting. And that's it to help the environment, along with slowing the use of fossil fuels as much as possible. More stuff growing all over, the better it gets. More to eat, more shade, more forest products, and etc. Much better than Gates contraption. And the planet regulates itself better.
The way to stop man made climate change increases (such as there are, whatever percentage that is), is simply to stop doing that, instead of doing it more. Gates contraption is just doing more man made busywork nonsense. They'll claim, using many arcane scientific sounding phrases and pretty graphs, "wow, it works, now give us a trillion bucks to build thousands of them now" Cha Ching, profit!! That's all this thing is, IMO
The planet appears to be pretty good at this self-regulation stuff, given half a chance.
It's completely absurd. I've used an analogy before. Did typewriter manufacturers demand a fee for stuff authors wrote on their machines? They had patents on typewriters. There's your legal precedent, and it gets to the heart of promoting the arts and sciences. These software patents throw a ridiculous roadblock towards that goal.
Independent and concerned folks should stage a mass protest, video each other at outdoor protest sites, swap one dollar with each other for instant copies of what they shoot, on those compact flash things or USB sticks or whatever you use, making the clips be "commercial" as well, then upload the videos all over right then, and challenge those absurd rules. It's called civil disobedience, and large numbers work to get obviously stupid laws changed. Not three guys, but an organized across the nation "day of stupid retarded video software patents challenge", thousands of people, something like that, something that would make the news all over and couldn't be ignored. They just did this a few weeks or so back with reefer laws, mass smoke ins.
I don't do video myself, but seems like if this is really a concern to so many people, interested folks could take this idea and run with it, do a facebook thing, all that social networking jazz a lot of you folks do, pick a day and just do it, organize away, start the chatter, add comments to youtube vids to get the word out, drop comments on blogs of interest, whatever it takes.
OK, I'll offer a date, June 5th upcoming, that's on a Saturday. That's almost a full month to get the word out, "Protect your Right to be Creative with the hardware you purchased day. End software patents. Copyright, yes, patents, NO".
What I don't get is why Cisco doesn't task some employees to keep watch 24/7 over those factories where they make this stuff. Make it a condition of the contract that they get full time, go anyplace whenever they want, access. Then they can at least eliminate the same factories making knock offs at night. I guess they save one night shift payroll expense per factory and pass it on to the US tax payer so they can have dozens of federal employees try to stop it, after the fact.
In short, Cisco is sure a buncha hypocritical cheap guys, considering what those things cost, and the US government/tax payer is once again the sucker, with the now common "privatize the profits of Big Inc, but socialize the risks from wallets of the tax payers".
I think the government should just contract directly with the manufacturers and cut Cisco out of the loop. Why not? If it is coming from China anyway, I mean, that's the deal, so who cares then? They are playing make believe it isn't Chinese made because it has a Cisco label on it? These are actual bona fide adults making serious coin, and they play make believe? They could get switches cheaper, contract for support directly from those Chinese manufacturers, and have their own fed employees in there following the runs and inspecting/doing Q and A, and pulling components randomly and bringing them back to look for hidden non contracted for back doors. And it would be tons cheaper, for the same exact gear.
If some corporation wants to get rich by outsourcing, heck with it, buy directly from the outsourced builders instead. Fish or cut bait, we are trading with China or not, y/n? If yes, deal directly with the Chinese for the gear, unless there is an all made in USA quality product as an alternative. The government exists to protect US jobs..or not. They are "worried about security", or not. They can hire cisco cheaper just for new designs, tell them they can get it made themselves, cut them down to their real practical outsourced size. there's no real reason to pay for both the "IP" and then hardware profits, when as has been reported, these units are actually way cheaper when they are non Cisco branded.
Mostly, it looks like "not", and more worried about bloated payrolls for security theater government McJobs and protecting the income of the top 1% of the population, who are globalists anyway and not even close to being loyal or patriotic or anything like that.
All these outsourcers are economic mercenaries, and as such, I dismiss any claims they make of being patriots, etc. they want all the advantages of being in the US, get to live where generations built up the infrastrucutre and the quality of life, but are too cheap and weasly to want to chip in and pay for any of that. then when their precious gets cloned, they want the taxpayers to do their jobs for them, for *free*.
Ta heck with that! They should "police" their IP entirely on their own nickle, same as BP and assorted should pay every penny of the cleanup and losses from this latest oil spill.
These can be used in soy fields (or corn or...), after you do an over winter cover crop.
http://www.attra.ncat.org/calendar/question.php/2006/05/08/p2221
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/depts/notill/roller_gallery/index.shtml
It smashes and crimps the stems of the cover crop/ green manure whatever you want, then packs it down on the surface where it is a slow die off, acting as a mulch and eventually a slow release fertilizer. You plant right through it. I don't have one, we aren't big grain farmers here, we are poultry and cattle, but it sure looks interesting. No till + reduce or eliminate sprays. Seems a decent alternative.
That's just not true. Heavy chemical farming allows an individual farmer to grow on more acres with x amount labor, using what they call no till, but the yields are not all that impressive compared to good rich organic soil type growing. Now seed varieties make a difference, but square foot to square foot, given the same seeds, good healthy compost rich soil is outstanding. Shoot, I see that even with hay. Our fields, that get chicken litter fertilizer, consistently out perform the neighbors fields across the street, where he has the big chemical fertilizer spray truck come in. As to veggies and whatnot, I have had a good garden every year for the past..hmm..I guess 54 years now I have been gardening, and natural fertilizers work great and you get huge yields. It can be more labor intensive, but the yields are great.
Hybrid type growing can work well, too, such as the use of heavy black plastic mulch, then drip irrigation with it.
The secret to farming is healthy soil, with a rich humus layer. You are a soil farmer first, after that, the crops will "just work" mostly.
There's a push on to incorporate biochar* into soils, and I think that is something that should be done on a huge scale, using all that wood that just burns up anyway every summer in the western US. Really, I think as a massive stimulus project, looking at long term, not a this quarter megaprofits approach, but a national "commons" approach, this would be a great way to use resources that get wasted, create a lot of useful jobs, and gradually increase national food security. It should be one of our national priorities to not waste all that carbon from those huge fires (especially with all that wood being lost to the pine borer beetle and other really bad invasive or destructive species) and get it back down deep into the soil, instead of just burning up at huge expense and loss. That makes loads more sense for the environment and to help insure global food supplies and "climate change" concerns than throwing trillions of dollars at those wall street gangsters to trade "carbon credits". What a crock that is. Let's put that same trillion into improving the soils instead of improving some penthouse millionaire's ferrari budget.
*not quite biochar, but just so happens coincidently after I post this, I am on my mid day break right now, I am going out and roto-tilling in a pile of woodashes and charcoal clumps into one of my gardens.
Doesn't work in all situations, but green manure cover crops, then using a mechanical "knife roller" (just google that) before planting your real crop, (that device squishes and kills the cover crop, it turns it into a green surface mulch and eventually naturally rots to fertilizer, lather, rinse, repeat every season) appears to be a completely viable method for tons of farming purposes that can help eliminate herbicide use. From what I have read it is in semi widespread use in Brazil so far, and a lot of independents and ag colleges in the states here are working on different designs of them.
These people aren't really morons, they just have no credible frame of reference on pricing. Clueless. The high end of their industry is extremely well paid, top of the line just under investment bankers execs. All these pricing decisions are made by high level execs, with multimillionaire dollar a year salaries and perqs, all living in mansions with numerous servants, they all have fleets of high end cars, personal jets, yachts, yada yada.
They *think* what they are charging is chump change cheap..just too far removed from joe working stiff or joe struggling college student level income to relate, they just don't see it. They think 20 bucks isn't worth chasing after if it blows out of their wallet and goes down the street. Twenty bucks is what they leave for a tip for one drink at some high end watering hole. They just don't get it on their prices.
We can grow fertilizers, that's all we use here on this farm, both on the gardens and on our fields and pastures. Advances in green cover crop manures are getting decent, along with alternatives to sprays for a lot of uses. I was just looking at mechanical "knife rollers" for treating living mulch, they have several large scale prototypes working now, could eliminate a lot of herbicides and give the large scale organic farmer something to compete with against the all chemical "no till" farms, and drastically drop this need for so much petroleum products. Plastics can be made from plants. Pharmaceuticals are being grown now, biotech is where it is at, gene therapy and so on, that's the future.
Don't get me wrong, my income today is 100% dependent on cheap diesel (but this could be biodiesel in the same equipment...), but we can get a lot closer to eliminating the need for oil just using the tech we already have on larger scales.
It's not all or nothing we just need to work smarter and cut through a little of that oil industry FUD. They can make better vehicles that get double the mileage, heck, they DO make them..just don't sell them in the US, and I really can't see where European regs are all that much worse than US regs. I mean I have an 81 pickup truck that gets 40 MPG, so I *know* they can make better mileage vehicles today, they have had twenty years in materials science advances since then. They had VW rabbits back then that got 60 MPG! And they brag on stuff like..28 now, mileage like that..nuts...
We can cut oil demand a lot of places, we just need the national will to make it so. I think the best way is the 100% tax credit, up to such and such a cost. ex: Offer an amortized ten year tax credit for electric cars, say up to 20 grand tops..we'd have dozens of models on the lots within six months. Even if some models cost more, with the first twenty grand right off the top of your tax burden, buck for buck..demand would be there, huge demand. Do the same thing with any ICE powered model that got 50 MPG or better. Stuff like that. Encourage, don't punish.
All government does, all they *can* do, is carrot or the stick with this social engineering they do. Tax or tax-credit, Punishment, the stick, a tax, or reward, the carrot, a tax-credit. A beating, or an incentive to do something cool. You want alternatives to oil for transportation, offer 100% credits, then stand back and watch the stampede. You want alternatives to coal for electrical generation, same deal, either personal or figure out some good numbers for commercial, then stand back. Add one line to the tax form, "are you taking a personal tax credit this year for alternative energy? Add the number, attach copy of receipt. Done.
We can't switch over night, but we do have ways to reduce petroleum demand quickly, not in all niches but in a lot of them, if there was a national will to do it, and the government just allowed it to happen in the market by offering the tax credit at credible levels. If you want to transition over say a twenty year period, well in advance of rapid decline of oil sources, the time to do it is well before that slide on that bell curve starts. Not afterwards. It won't work very well then.