Mediocrity.US » oil

Texas and Brown Gold

David Barach — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:00:26 +0000

Greed and deregulation has sent the US economy into the toilet. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we can use it to start making some money! That’s exactly what San Antonio, Texas is doing. A state that struck it rich with Black Gold is doing it again, but this time with what they are affectionately calling biosolids, or as I like to call it, Brown Gold.

San Antonio will harvest methane gas from the 140,000 tons of human waste that its residents produce per year and turn it into clean-burning natural gas. Does gas get any more natural? Getting methane from human waste isn’t new, but San Antonio plans to use 90% of its human waste which makes it the first large scale project of its kind. They already use the solid waste for composting and the liquid waste for irrigation, this is the next logical step in a state that uses every part of the pig.

Speaking of pigs, I hear only two things come from Texas, and one them is steers. With all the cow and pig farms in Texas, you’d think animal waste would be a more logical step.

Did you see that? I just used logical and Texas in the same sentence. Yeeha!

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Sarah Palin or George W. Bush

David Barach — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:25:02 +0000

I know they don’t look alike, but I still get them confused. Maybe you can help me out here. Which one is it that loves big oil? I also heard that one of them has a daughter or two that like to party just a bit too much. Anti-abortion and pro abstinence education and a huge darling of the religious right? I’m pretty sure one of them has an investigation over questionable firings of government officials going on now. And then there is that issue of pork, the money, not the meat – you know how one of them loves it, but then speaks out against it. Also, who’s the one that’s just a regular person?

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Trucker Energy Saving Ingenuity

David Barach — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:49:56 +0000

For years, truckers have been urinating in bottles and throwing them out of the window to save time as they speed to their next job. With fuel prices so high, a trucker’s priorities have changed from saving time to saving fuel, but the methodology stays the same.

Everyone now knows that slowing down will save gas, but more importantly, you get better gas milage on highways that in the city, because accelerating burns more gas than holding momentum. If you don’t stop, you don’t need to start again. As proof of this ingenious trend, police in Ontario, Oregon say there’s been an alarming rise in urine-filled plastic containers found along a slow moving three-mile stretch of I-84.

Truckers know that if faced with a new problem, use the tried and true solution that has always worked for you. Truckers call that “staying the course”. Peeing in a bottle is the best answer to every trucker’s problem, just like more drilling is the answer to our country’s every problem.

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Stupid, Lazy, or Corrupt – You Decide

David Barach — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:55:05 +0000

Thomas Friedman writes about how Denmark responded to the 1973 oil crises by becoming energy independent while growing their economy. In 1973 they got 99% of their energy from the Middle East, and decided that just wasn’t going to work for them. By raising taxes on fossil fuel and lowering income taxes, they created an environment for innovation where people were encouraged to work harder at conserving energy.

Instead of getting out of the Middle East, like the Danes, we seem to have gotten ourselves in deeper. We pandered to Saddam Hussein, then attacked him in 1991, and then ousted him from power in 2002. We let fundamentalists overthrow the Shah of Iran, got stuck in a hostage situation, and now we are shaking our fists at the same fundamentalists after we practically encouraged them to support terror. And let’s not forget how we kiss the feudalistic and human rights trampling Saudis asses, (you know, the country of Osama Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11) while they laugh all the way to the banks they own.

Why is it then, that unlike the Danish (mmmm, delicious) government, whose encouragement of energy independence has led to a more healthy society (50% of vehicles on the road are bicycles), our government has led us into war and fear for the past 35 years. The Danes are now the main exporters of alternative energy, but they say they’ve seen 35 new competitors in the last eighteen months. That would be great news, except not one of those companies is American. They are all Chinese. Are we stupid, lazy, or corrupt. I vote for all three.

It makes me wonder if Al Gore had become President where we would be now.

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