by Robert L. Gisel
Suppose you could get on your motorcycle and instead of just racing off down the road you could race up into the sky? Intriguing idea, eh? We are approaching a day when this can happen.
Experimental flight craft have always fascinated me. I even worked out a design for VTOL flying car with a unique directional steering system. Since my Bush Pilot father used to land his helicopter in our back yard in Alaska, I have embraced the image where you can get in your vehicle and go, and I don't mean only down Route 66.
Like John Travolta, I believe you should be able to take off from your driveway and head out for the sky. John built a home in Ocola Florida in a flying community with a private landing strip and a personal taxi strip to his house, where he parks his jets. His comment, "When I was a kid, I imagined that by the turn of the century everyone would have his own plane in the backyard."
Having interest in experimental flight, I keep an ear out for other works that have real possibilities.Technology is bound to come up to speed sooner or later.
Here is one flight craft I have come across, which I was surprised to find that a friend of mine has been developing.. Not just working on it, but nearing a prototype. This "flying bike" has been hammered into a pretty workable concept craft.
The only aspect I would change is to make it electric. My invention for an electric vehicle will work fine on an aircraft like this, maybe even better, and would take wild and crazy all the way out. Especially if it could be made VTOL, or nearly so.
See it here: Sam Bousfield's Skybike
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
More Oil Or Less -- Do We Care?
by Robert L. Gisel
The great revelation of the 21st Century that crude oil is a replenishable resource comes as big joke on two centuries of drama on the subject. Now that we have a choice, what do we really want to do with this?
That it has been discovered in Russia that the pools of oil we have been relying on come from the center of the earth, as a by-product of the molten combustion that seeps to the surface of the planet eliminates the whole false picture. No more exhaustible fossil fuels. There never were that many fossils anyway to supply all the oil we have already used.
The news today that Israel has found oil that could be the second largest deposit in the world is a "so what?" item. It may have political significance in the power broker's game, but it may just be a "who cares?".
Attempts to "scarcify" the supply to excite demand and higher prices fall to raucous laughter at the knowledge the we aren't going to run out. We have as much oil as we want or as little. All factors considered there are reasons to use little.
A good friend of mine who has been hanging out in Hollywood for some while took a jaunt up to Seattle, which I predicted she would like, it is on the water and so forth, with its own beautiful atmosphere. Her feedback was unanticipated: it was the cleanliness of the air, compared to that of Los Angeles, that thrilled her.
You have to take the broad view and the span of time looking into all corners of the globe to see the accumulative effects of major trends. The whole Mediterranean area millennia ago was thickly forested. These were raped to build huge palaces and sailing war vessels. Thousands of years later it is a desert. Someone from there points out the area to me and says, "See how beautiful it is?" Thinly forested with scrawny trees, am I missing something?
At the Yosemite National Park the most populated look out, at first glance to me, was of nothing, until this realization it was thickly forested hills continuous as far as the eye could see that was the breathtaking phenomena. Growing up in Southeast Alaska this was a daily sight, not the exception, and not just from one look out. It is that way for hundreds of miles.
If your life view is no further than how you will eat this week or how to keep your kids interested in life and off drugs long enough to make it to college, the rest of the world be damned, you can do nothing to change that, you are missing the point. Try opening your eyes. That errant personage whose life you crossed and refused to take any responsibility for when you could have helped with a minuscule effort may come around to prevent your child from ever going to college. That personage might become an oil man (let there be blood).
Forcing people to live in red-line smog levels may shorten lives, the difference which could mean a happy renaissance or too little energy to stymie someones would-be war to secure their oil fields. Oil is one of those trends that effects the environment with long term consequences we won't like scores or hundreds of years from now. Oil comes from Nature but Nature can only withstand just so much of its use.
There too many sources of abundant, clean, un-impacting energy to not take a broad view stance that doesn't overlook consequences. It shouldn't be too hard to extend your omniscience to see this.
[]
The great revelation of the 21st Century that crude oil is a replenishable resource comes as big joke on two centuries of drama on the subject. Now that we have a choice, what do we really want to do with this?
That it has been discovered in Russia that the pools of oil we have been relying on come from the center of the earth, as a by-product of the molten combustion that seeps to the surface of the planet eliminates the whole false picture. No more exhaustible fossil fuels. There never were that many fossils anyway to supply all the oil we have already used.
The news today that Israel has found oil that could be the second largest deposit in the world is a "so what?" item. It may have political significance in the power broker's game, but it may just be a "who cares?".
Attempts to "scarcify" the supply to excite demand and higher prices fall to raucous laughter at the knowledge the we aren't going to run out. We have as much oil as we want or as little. All factors considered there are reasons to use little.
A good friend of mine who has been hanging out in Hollywood for some while took a jaunt up to Seattle, which I predicted she would like, it is on the water and so forth, with its own beautiful atmosphere. Her feedback was unanticipated: it was the cleanliness of the air, compared to that of Los Angeles, that thrilled her.
You have to take the broad view and the span of time looking into all corners of the globe to see the accumulative effects of major trends. The whole Mediterranean area millennia ago was thickly forested. These were raped to build huge palaces and sailing war vessels. Thousands of years later it is a desert. Someone from there points out the area to me and says, "See how beautiful it is?" Thinly forested with scrawny trees, am I missing something?
At the Yosemite National Park the most populated look out, at first glance to me, was of nothing, until this realization it was thickly forested hills continuous as far as the eye could see that was the breathtaking phenomena. Growing up in Southeast Alaska this was a daily sight, not the exception, and not just from one look out. It is that way for hundreds of miles.
If your life view is no further than how you will eat this week or how to keep your kids interested in life and off drugs long enough to make it to college, the rest of the world be damned, you can do nothing to change that, you are missing the point. Try opening your eyes. That errant personage whose life you crossed and refused to take any responsibility for when you could have helped with a minuscule effort may come around to prevent your child from ever going to college. That personage might become an oil man (let there be blood).
Forcing people to live in red-line smog levels may shorten lives, the difference which could mean a happy renaissance or too little energy to stymie someones would-be war to secure their oil fields. Oil is one of those trends that effects the environment with long term consequences we won't like scores or hundreds of years from now. Oil comes from Nature but Nature can only withstand just so much of its use.
There too many sources of abundant, clean, un-impacting energy to not take a broad view stance that doesn't overlook consequences. It shouldn't be too hard to extend your omniscience to see this.
[]
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Why High Gas Prices in California Don't Compute
by Robert Gisel
Hoping to find some logic in the high price of gasoline in California, the 2nd or 3rd highest depending on who you ask, it just doesn't compute.
I had thought it had to do with the commodity price of the barrel of oil. In this case the barrels are coming from California and don't specifically have to do with suspension of exports from Libya or the whims of the Saudis.
Average gas price in California is $4.21, though, that figure may be already too low against the rapid rise currently happening, plus roughly 10 cents a week. In Hawaii it is $4.52 and it is $4.13 in Anchorage, Alaska. These are the three highest state prices. I can possibly understand the price in Hawaii, being across the ocean. California and Alaska are oil producing states and have their own gas refineries. Time to go back to logics class.
An ARCO owner said to me this was due to the high taxes, making up much of the cost. Per wiki.answers.com in California "Tax is 69.9 cents per gallon. Of that amount 18.4 cents is Federal Tax." Without that tax it is $3.51 per gallon. The lowest state prices with tax included are evidently Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, $3.52 to $3.61. I guess they must charge more in California because movie stars can afford it.
Per DemocraticUnderground.com "California gasoline production tops 1 million barrels a day". I don't know where they got their figure. Seems low. California caRFG ( California Reformulated Gasoline to reduce emissions) production, per a Berkley study of some years ago, indicated 15 billion gallons produced was commensurate with 14.8 billion gallons consumed (omitted time), where production was close to peak capacity and the added cost of 30 cents per gallon over the national average was due to the increased cost of producing and storing caRFG, and that Market Power, i.e., opportunity for price gouging, probably doesn't exist. One can wonder who paid for that study circa 2004.
Consumers have to get where they need to go so short term price spikes don't significantly curtail purchases. Opportunities for spurts of high profits are well covered by the PR lines in place by the oil companies. When the public are willing to pay there is not much to contest.
The California Reformulated Gasoline program implemented in January of 1992 on demand of the Air Resources Board is said to have produced, by 2003, the equivalent of the reduction of 3.5 million cars from California's roads. A large increase of the number of hybrid, hybrid EV and battery EV vehicles would have the same effect and probably be more economically feasible for the consumer dishing out money at the pump.
In other words, if the price at the pump concerns you then bypass this altogether with an Electric Vehicle. Free market being what it is and government intervention being what it is it is a good idea to take the initiative and seriously consider this alternative.
Hoping to find some logic in the high price of gasoline in California, the 2nd or 3rd highest depending on who you ask, it just doesn't compute.
I had thought it had to do with the commodity price of the barrel of oil. In this case the barrels are coming from California and don't specifically have to do with suspension of exports from Libya or the whims of the Saudis.
Average gas price in California is $4.21, though, that figure may be already too low against the rapid rise currently happening, plus roughly 10 cents a week. In Hawaii it is $4.52 and it is $4.13 in Anchorage, Alaska. These are the three highest state prices. I can possibly understand the price in Hawaii, being across the ocean. California and Alaska are oil producing states and have their own gas refineries. Time to go back to logics class.
An ARCO owner said to me this was due to the high taxes, making up much of the cost. Per wiki.answers.com in California "Tax is 69.9 cents per gallon. Of that amount 18.4 cents is Federal Tax." Without that tax it is $3.51 per gallon. The lowest state prices with tax included are evidently Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, $3.52 to $3.61. I guess they must charge more in California because movie stars can afford it.
Per DemocraticUnderground.com "California gasoline production tops 1 million barrels a day". I don't know where they got their figure. Seems low. California caRFG ( California Reformulated Gasoline to reduce emissions) production, per a Berkley study of some years ago, indicated 15 billion gallons produced was commensurate with 14.8 billion gallons consumed (omitted time), where production was close to peak capacity and the added cost of 30 cents per gallon over the national average was due to the increased cost of producing and storing caRFG, and that Market Power, i.e., opportunity for price gouging, probably doesn't exist. One can wonder who paid for that study circa 2004.
Consumers have to get where they need to go so short term price spikes don't significantly curtail purchases. Opportunities for spurts of high profits are well covered by the PR lines in place by the oil companies. When the public are willing to pay there is not much to contest.
The California Reformulated Gasoline program implemented in January of 1992 on demand of the Air Resources Board is said to have produced, by 2003, the equivalent of the reduction of 3.5 million cars from California's roads. A large increase of the number of hybrid, hybrid EV and battery EV vehicles would have the same effect and probably be more economically feasible for the consumer dishing out money at the pump.
In other words, if the price at the pump concerns you then bypass this altogether with an Electric Vehicle. Free market being what it is and government intervention being what it is it is a good idea to take the initiative and seriously consider this alternative.
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