Will it be a LONG hot summer with power outages?
 

AH. Your opinion is welcome. Share your vision of the Summer of 08 and we'll check in and see how everyone did in September.

Here's my OPINION. I just posted a new blog post at www.incomeandhappiness.com regarding my belief that the antiquated power grid we have in the US is about to take a major hit from overload and "rust" and neglect. I hope I'm wrong. But,

I see many repercussions from this current "energy" crisis. Gas prices could effect family vacations, the state of Michigan is running some serious advertising here in Ohio, and I have to wonder where are Ohio's ads? OH, we're too busy with the state Attorney Generals philandering.

So destinations may take a hit. The flip side; Disney's loss could be your gain if you are in the FUN business as day trips and long weekends will take place. The county fair will get big again (get those boiled peanut trucks out there).

The question I ask on the blog is: Do you think gas prices (as well as food prices and household supplies) will COME DOWN?

I don't think so. We've just getting into HURRICANE season, let's hope we have a very quiet year in the gulf. I mention this because my "people" in FL have had their share of problems, but are more prepared than most, and their neighborhood is very good at helping each other out. They all have electric generators, they have a neighborhood PLAN to weather the storm...last time it was 3 WEEKS without power, YIKES!!

And that is just one of the WINDS of Change that I wrote about last Fall. You can read that report at www.incomeandhappiness.com

The Summer Olympics could be explosively HOT, and who knows what goes from there. The US presidential election will be HOT. Dirty. Grimy as always and nothing changes for us citizens, no matter who gets elected.

These are my OPINIONS. Feel free to share your own.

OH, as to OPPORTUNITY, I like the electric BIKE and all things electric generating (that doesn't consume fossil fuel)...and I do like the Boiled Peanut idea. Which reminds me.

Last Monday I saw my old friend "GYRO BOB" down at the car show. GB has a little stand he sets up in Kent, OH during the school year and the rest of the time he goes to "EVENTS" like car shows, fairs, etc. GB also has 3 ice cream trucks he sets up at events, won't drive them in the street anymore. We had worked on a HOW TO VEND project a few years back, we may pick it up, so if you are interested at all in knowing the ins and outs of a street food vendor...take it from a guy who has over 15 years of experience, that would be Gyro Bob. Let me know if you are interested in this project.

Gordon Jay Alexander

PS. Gyro Bob's best day was around $9,000.00 at a FL motorcycle rally, and he averages a couple of thousand in profit at big events, several hundred dollars at our little weekly car show, but he does have a good product...Gyros, which are more expensive, but many find them a better choice than the boiled weenies for 2 or 3 bux too.

Re: Will it be a LONG hot summer with power outages?
 

Hey Gordon,
Just a quick note. Ohio is hitting the Indiana marketing. Last night on TV you guys had at least 2 maybe 3 commercials that I saw in about an hour.
Same commercial everytime. Just thought you'd like to know.

Fred

Thanks Fred, I'm sure they all have something to offer too...
 

We happen to be about 1/2 way between NYC and Chi town...or within a few hours of a LOT of fun stuff. In Ohio, we have the world class roller coasters at Cedar Point, Wine country in Upper Northeast OH, Football Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Blossom Music center here in Cuyahoga Falls...well, a LOT to do within a tank of gas or two.

I'm glad to see we're trying to get some of YOUR state's money...without casinos in Ohio; Detroit, Erie, WV have all become day destinations for too many Ohioans...and too many millions of dollars are leaving the state to never return (like our brain power too!).

Thanks for letting me know my tax dollars are being spent trying to persuade our neighbors to come for a visit and leave your wallets here when you do...HA!

gja

PS. I spent a whole week in Indianapolis one day. (he he, it's an OLD joke).

Re: Thanks Fred, I'm sure they all have something to offer too...
 

I have to be brutally honest here... Indiana SUCKS! I hate it. I grew up here and am trying to leave here. As far as the Casinos. Cesars just become, I don't know... something or somebody else. A long time ago THEY (the Casino, and the County(Harrison) said that a portion of the money would go to fix ROADS. Yeah... RIGHT. They fixed 'em. For a while. Then just like always they let them go and then they fix them like always.... at there own schedule. I've had people tell me about Cedar Point... definately want to see that before I leave to go back to the west coast. I love a good roller coaster ride and a good swim! I have to say if a Casino was put anywhere, it should have been put on the banks of the Cinci. Ohio. Really the only thing we have here is Caves, a little bit of Lincoln history and lots of CORN! Hey Gordon, thanks for the reply... at least you guys have a real reason to leave our wallets there!

Re: Will it be a LONG hot summer with power outages?
 

Time to get Ready to Live off the Land... :)

Sustainable living and business ideas...

Retailer unboxes DIY flat-pack homes
http://www.springwise.com/homes_hous..._diy_flatpack/

Boiled peanuts.........
http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=21237

And All kinds of other “twistable” Sustainable living ideas & possibilities... ;)

http://livepaths.com
http://www.planetfriendly.net/living.html
http://www.sustainabletable.org/shop/markets/

Phil

"Peak Oil" and Survival...
 

Thanks Gordon and Phil...

There does seem to be a new "survivalist" market out there. With worries about the economy, the price of gas going through the roof, and worries about dwindling future energy supplies ("peak oil")... you can see why...

I just read this article on the phenomenon...

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare
May 24, 2:12 PM (ET)
By SAMANTHA GROSS

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080524/D90S5MLG0.html

I'm no expert on "peak oil". But from a business point of view, the "survivalist" trend is a growing market...

A couple relevant web sites...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

- Dien

"Peak Oil" Is A Crock
 

Dien,

Thanks for mentioning the Peak Oil thing.

I'd like to Bust some Myths Held As Fact about oil.

Oil is NOT a Fossil Fuel. It was Not made from large amounts of forest and dinosaurs Melting and percolating to become flammable sludge. Just because some bits old prehistoric fauna and flora may have been found in the sludge doesn't mean they melted to become the sludge.

Coal is solidified oil. Oil comes out of the ground around 90°C. Over time in the cooler outside environment, it hardens first to a gel like substance and then to a harder rock like substance. This is why coal is Black and extremely light weight - oil is black and floats on water

Australia EXPORTS oil to 40+ countries. That being the case, why do Australians pay $1.40+ per liter (around $5.60 per gallon) for the stuff? Not only does Australia export to these places, there are VAST oil reserves and fields south of the Australian Bite and West of the coast of Western Australia. Found by a Mobile Floating Oil Rig whose Sole Job is to move to a location, anchor, drill for oil and then Cap the found oil reserves. (Thanks to my uncle in the oil industry for 20+ years for this info.)

We are told prices are due to Supply and Demand. This is Controlled by the Oil Suppliers in a few ways. By not putting oil rigs onto all the many capped reserves they have found - of which the public knows nothing. And by convincing the public of something called Peak Oil - a phrase coined and theory put forward by a guy who worked at Shell (conflict of interest, don't you think). Once convinced of peak oil, they can slow down production to suit themselves and call it Peak Oil or some such.

If an oil reserve legitimately runs low on oil (pressure) they know they can Rest the reserve for a period of time and it comes good again. Meaning, oil is flowing Into the well from somewhere (from deeper within the Earth).

Did you hear the latest BS from our leader... remove the Goods and Services Tax from our fuel at the pump... but... replace it with an Environment Tax. (How does Tax help the environment?) Reminds me when former leader Fraser put prices up and said it was to Discourage use as we were using too much.

BTW, if the public knew that coal and oil were not fossil fuels, they wouldn't be so easily convinced of the limit of supply and following justification of high prices. There are tens of thousands of people around the planet who work in the industry and know this. Why doesn't the media report on this?

Michael Ross

Re: Will it be a LONG hot summer with power outages?
 

Michael, some questions for you, please.

There is a saying that a diamond is simply a lump of coal that stuck to it's business (ie: by being under pressure and not yielding). True or not? If true, wouldn't diamonds be black instead of clear?

When we had coal delivered to our home, there were two types of coal: bituminus and a softer coal (can't recall the name) and it made a BIG difference in heat production as to which one was burned (and the resulting soot). Whenever they brought the wrong type, Dad made them take it back. Now, if oil is the source of both, and decaying vegetable matter is the source of both, why the differences?

Is there any reason why oil could not be artificially produced by speeding up the decaying vegetation process and, in the process, use some of the world's garbage for more productive uses? Seems to me with the technology we have, destroying our earth to bury garbage and dig out oil would be pointless endeavours if we applied some common sense to some processes and developed the potential here.

I'm no techie and am probably waay off base here but it just might spawn some good, practical, ideas to overcome a lot of problems (that's the hope anyway).

Sandi Bowman

Plenty and a I mean plenty of oil...
 

That's not the problem. Now I admit I don't know much about Lindsey Williams and I don't care much for conspiracy theories but this video answers so many questions. If you have some time, watch this. Its about an hour or so but well worth the time. It appears to have been made 2 or 3 months ago. I watched it last Monday. On Wednesday Fox News reported Iran is hoarding oil in tankers and nobody knows why. If you watch this video, you will know why.

Michael, Phil & others, I would love to hear your take on this. Its got me a bit nervous and I need a shot of reality. Here's the link.:eek:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74697167011147

Re: Plenty and a I mean plenty of oil...
 

Talking about opinions...

More interesting reading...

Read the 20 chapters/articles, although a little old...
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html

Phil

Turning lemons into Lemonade...
 

Well maybe...

If you can't Beat the system or figure things out...

Look for other ways to Cash in on things and recover...

Keep an Eye on the following and make sure your Money Making brainstormer is Always running...

It's just a matter of Turning lemons into Lemonade... ;)

How to make money from $4 gas
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/21/mark...ion=2008052115
http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/n...52108.cnnmoney

Gas May Top $7 A Gallon
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...G=Search&meta=

Phil

Coal and Diamonds are not synonymous...
 

Sandi,

Thanks for asking.

Let me repeat myself...

"Oil is NOT a Fossil Fuel. It was Not made from large amounts of forest and dinosaurs Melting and percolating to become flammable sludge. Just because some bits old prehistoric fauna and flora may have been found in the sludge doesn't mean they melted to become the sludge."

You can take all your compost material and put it into an industrial crock pot for a thousand years. It will NOT miraculously turn to oil. That's because oil does NOT come from decaying plant matter.

Here's the false logic...

That bit of coal has some leaves and stuff in it. Therefore, it must have come from a lot of decaying plants and trees under heat and pressure.

Let me show you how this is wrong thinking with a slightly different example...

That small pool of water has some dead animal bones in the bottom of it. Therefore, the liquid which makes up that pool of water must have come from the dead animals as their cell walls collapsed.

Or...

The water came from all the dead plants. As they decayed they released the water from their cells and it became a pool of water.

We don't think water comes from dead plants. Yet will quite readily accept the same reasoning for coal and oil. If we find plants in a heap of mud we don't think the mud came from plants, but accept that reasoning for coal and oil.

As for a diamond being a lump of coal that stuck to its business...

They are not the same thing. Coal does not Turn into diamond. That's because coal is oil which has cooled down and solidified. Whereas a diamond is actually a Crystal.

And while I would like to think common sense could be applied to whatever energy needs we have, I won't hold my breath.

As long as we have politicians who think they can Tax their way to a better environment and Greenies and the like who think Humans and the carbon dioxide they put out (CO2 which amounts to like 0.06% of the atmosphere) are changing the climate on the entire plant, while ignoring the biggest temperature regulators we have (the ocean and the sun) and ignoring all past temperature fluctuation when humans were not present on this ball of mud, then we are a Lo-o-o-o-ong long way off from anything of use.

Here's what I'd like to see developed fully...

The Water Engine. It runs on water - one gallon of sea water has the same energy as a few of those Large oil tanks. Fill up your car would take a cup of water and do you for years. You could thus run your home on a small generator powered by a cup of sea water. Pollution... water.

Even if the Reaction can be controlled to give us small enough engines and the like, it is not in the interest of the politicians to have us not connected to a power grid they control and not in vehicles they don't have a say in via their gas-tax windfall. Because that would make use more economically successful. And financially free person is very hard to control.

Michael Ross

Re: Plenty and a I mean plenty of oil...
 

Andy,

Thanks for asking for our take on the video.

Having recently moved I am STILL awaiting for my broadband to be reconnected. It's supposed to happen tomorrow, or maybe Thursday, or as confirmed by my provider when I said, "You don't really know, do you?"... "No."

Once I am off the dial-up dinosaur I'll watch the vid and let you know.

I will say this though... ALL governments hoard oil. And they are Always buying more and adding to their Stash.

Michael Ross

Re: Coal and Diamonds are not synonymous...
 

Michael - have you watched Al Gore's movie - An Inconvenient Truth?

If you've seen it - what did you think of it?

I think he showed a slide that showed the rise in CO2 - without ignoring the historical fluctuations - but I'm not sure on my memory as I had seen the movie quite some time back...

I think they measured historical CO2 values by digging into the snow that was created thousands of years ago in Antarctica and evaluating the CO2 content in each layer of snow.

Each layer of snow gave the age of the snow and the CO2 content during that era.

And compared to past few thousand years, the CO2 today is at an all time high.

I'm not too sure how biased / unbiased that research was though. Haven't dug in deep in this topic at all.
--

I kind of have faith in Scott Adam's insight:

"Any doom that can be predicted won't happen." - Scott Adams

:p

Michael, yor right and your wrong
 

"...it is not in the interest of the politicians to have us not connected to a power grid they control and not in vehicles they don't have a say in via their gas-tax windfall. Because that would make use more economically successful...."

If you watch the above mentioned video, you will see why we would not be more economically successful with other sources of fuel. You see, our gas prices are DIRECTLY connected to the national debt. The video explains this much better than I ever could. It shows why the prices are going up and probably will stay up and we have little hope of ever tapping into the oil reserves we have here in the US as well. Its not the greenies as everyone would have you believe.

I really hope this guy is a quack because if he's not and he is factual about what he talks about, we will soon have lots of lemons to squeeze.:mad:

Carbon Dioxide, The CO2 Pump and the Gore Scam
 

Ankesh,

Thanks for mentioning Al Gore.

I have not seen the movie nor intend to - unless it's available for free. As I refuse to have some of my money go to that man.

Before I comment on the CO2 thing, let me throw this into the mix for you to consider...

Al Gore owns a company that sells Carbon Credits.
Al Gore is extremely vocal in telling people about Man Made Global Warming Caused By the Carbon Dioxide emitted by man.

Think Al Gore might have a vested interest in people believing CO2 which comes from humans causes changes to the Earth's climate?

CO2...

CO2 in the atmophere is subject to what is known as the Carbon Dioxide Pump. This Pump sees CO2 leave the atmosphere and enter the ocean in the cooler parts of the planet - and - leave the ocean and enter the atmosphere in the warmer parts of the planet.

Atmosphere => Water at the poles.
Water => Atmosphere at the equator.

Represented by this image...



It enters and leaves the water the same way oxygen does - via wave action and other actions that see the water's surface broken. (You put an aerator into a fish tank so each time the water's surface is broken a gas exchange takes place and the fish will not run out of oxygen.)

Thus, the Largest Contributor to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is the temperature of the world's oceans. And Their temperature is governed by Geothermal elements (from within the Earth) and from that big glowing orb we see in the sky (Sun).

The cooler waters flow from the Poles into the warmer zones due to Surface Currents and Deep Ocean Currents. And despite the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" predicting an end to the deep ocean current flow, that would Only be possible if the earth were to stop spinning.

Other contributing factors of CO2 include Volcanic Eruptions. Which, have heard estimated, spew forth in a single day, the equivalent pollution level that would take Man 100 years to do.

And a Hidden CO2 creator is Bacteria. Remember that Self Contained Dome experiment. Their CO2 levels kept rising. And it was discovered it was due to the bacteria in the soil of their vegetable garden.

Ok. Here is a CO2 graph. It may or may not be the same one...



Notice how Temperature changes comes first and Then CO2 levels. Also notice that while we do have more CO2 now than in the past, that the warmer temperature is more sustained than in the past - thus allowing more CO2 to leave the oceans over longer periods of time, right?

As for more CO2 now. As well as the above, you mentioned, historic CO2 is determined by Core Samples. Yet current CO2 doesn't need to be determined that way, it can be determined by air monitoring. And there is a pretty good chance ice-bound CO2 levels differ from atmospheric bound CO2 and that Surface Ice Core Samples may also differ in CO2 content due to pressure from the ice - deeper ice is under higher pressures and may retain gases differently as a result.

Oh, BTW, Glacier Melt is governed by the amount of humidity in the air. So the only thing a melting glacier tells you is... it is more humid at That glacier at the moment. While some melt other grow. And melting ones stop and then have growth spurts.

The only thing we can guarantee about the planet's climate is.... it is NOT stationary. It fluctuates. From year to year (which we call seasons) and over vast periods of time.

To accept that Past changes were natural but this change which started thousands of years ago is caused by us, is just plain wrong.

Oh... you do know that some other planets in our solar system are undergoing warmer climates. Are we to blame for that too? And if not, why can the changes on those planets be natural but ours not, when we are bombarded by the same Sun Rays.

Michael Ross

Re: Michael, yor right and your wrong
 

Andy,

Thanks for adding.

The Key Words in what I wrote was... they control.

The more financially successful you are the less dependent you are on the Govt. The less dependent you are the harder it is to Control you.

Govts preach about freedom but then put in ever more restrictive rules. Thus, you are free to do whatever you want - as long as - it's within their rules.

Michael Ross