Foreign Oil @ MindSay 
hmmmmm....(i remember this!)
JIMMY CARTER'S ENERGY IDEAS DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE
By Cynthia TuckerSat Jul 19, 7:58 PM ET
Even in his home state of Georgia, former President Jimmy Carter does not receive universal acclaim. He is regarded by many as a weak-kneed appeaser or a naive do-gooder with a puritanical bent.
Much of that reputation can be traced back to his widely noted July 1979 speech on the nation's "crisis of confidence," remembered as the "malaise" speech, though he didn't use that word. The response to that televised talk taught politicians one thing: Never ask Americans to make any sacrifices. After all, it is now accepted wisdom that the speech -- combined with hyper-inflation, hostages and an oil spike -- cost Carter a second term.
But a sober and fair look back at what Carter actually said ought to earn him higher marks. He was right when he insisted that consumers conserve energy; he was right to urge a dramatic increase in the use of solar power; he was right when he called for a cap on imported oil.
"Beginning at this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never," he said. "From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now."
Carter also called for research into alternative fuels, massive investment in public transit and a broad campaign for conservation. He acknowledged that the new programs would require billions; but "unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans."
Of course, you know the rest of the story. The next year, Ronald Reagan was elected and threw out Carter's plans. The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) relented, and gasoline became, once again, plentiful and cheap. So Americans pretended Carter was the problem -- not our profligate consumption patterns. Today, we're importing twice as much oil as we were when Carter gave that speech.
(In the last 28 years, the nation's oil consumption has gone up by about 21 percent, but the increase might have been even sharper were it not for the 1973 oil shocks. That OPEC-induced discomfort prompted Congress to pass the first-ever corporate average fuel economy -- or CAFE -- standards in 1975. Between 1974 and 1989, the efficiency of a typical car sold in the U.S. almost doubled, to 27.5 miles per gallon, according to The New York Times. Since then, unfortunately, our love affair with trucks and SUVs has sent average fuel efficiency spiraling downward.)
What if the nation had stuck to the path Carter laid out? What if we had invested billions back then in public transit and alternative fuels? What if we'd made a national campaign of conservation, similar to the successful no-smoking campaign? What if we'd insisted that Detroit continue pushing up fuel efficiency?
The United States would not be held hostage by petro-crats or tied down in a volatile region of the globe. The money we send to places such as Saudi Arabia plumps the bank accounts of its many princes, who use their billions to appease jihadists. While Afghanistan's Taliban certainly played a role in 9/11, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Why send any of our money to them?
As recently as seven years ago, in the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush could have used our renewed sense of duty and patriotism to hike the gasoline tax and push through higher CAFE standards. At the time, the average cost of a gallon of gas was around $1.55. If Bush had pushed the price to $2.50, the nation would have had a huge reserve to use for building public transit and finding alternative fuels. Instead, he did nothing about our addiction to oil.
Even now, Bush is loath to encourage conservation. "It's a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives," he told reporters last week. "You know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less." Wasn't it presumptuous to invade Iraq, a country that had no part in 9/11 but does have the world's second-largest known reserves of oil?
Looking back, Carter's plan makes a lot more sense than staying tied down in the Middle East. It's time to dust off his speech and several of his energy proposals.
I'd like to think that consumers are smarter than what manufacturers think. It is a fair assumption that people understand the concept of efficiency. Efficiency is the ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system. Quite a simple concept. For the sake of argument, the average number of moving parts in an internal combusiton engine on a conservative estimate would be over 100. That is a lot of friction. Add to that the transmission and the axle and universal joints and you get more friction. The automobile industry hasn't addressed this at all. Engineers completely understand the concept of efficiency. It is the cornerstone of engineering. Yet in the last one hundred years, no one has been able to produce an efficient vehicle. Actually that is not true. When cars were first being manufactured, almost half of them were electric.
The electric motor is approximately 90% efficient and significantly more powerful than an internal combustion engine. It also has one moving part. The electric motor has two parts, the stator and the rotor. The concept of efficiency gave way to market infrastructure. Electric motors last longer and require very little maintenance. It is easy to understand why the manufacturers went the route they did. Jobs.
Today we have a diverse marketplace compared to what we had over a century ago. The automobile industry hasn't kept pace. Essentially they have backed themselves into a corner with deep ties to the oil industry. Smart business is able to adapt to the marketplace to survive. The answer to the automobile industry has been under its nose. The electric engine. A beautiful piece of engineering that is older than the combustion engine. Clever engineers have produced a new electric motor call the motor wheel. In a stroke of genius, they have managed to put the motor in the wheel and eliminated the inefficiency of the drive train. It has been in use on buses in Europe for some time now.
In 1900, a distance record of 180 miles on a single charge was set by an electric vehicle. It is astonishing that the excuse of where are we going to store the electricity to run an electric car is still being used today. The hydrogen fuel cell is a joke. It is designed the maintain the present fuel infrastructure. The answer to our fuel source has been beating relentlessly on this planet for over 5 billion years. Recent advances in nanotechnology have produced two amazing technologies. A super capacitor using carbon nanotubes to store electrons. This device charges in seconds and doesn't share the discharge issues that exist with chemically based electron storage such as lithium ion and nickel metal hydrate batteries. The super capacitor will revolutionize electrical storage.
The final piece of the puzzle is how to recharge the power source. The problem with existing solar panels is that they are very fragile and typically come in one shape, rectangular. Scientists and engineers have been trying to come up with a way to generate electricity with something more efficient and shape friendly. Flexible solar panels have come onto the market but are similarly limited like their rigid cousins. Spray on Solar Power has been the ultimate goal and it has been achieved. The hope is that this new technology will be able to harness 30% of the sun's energy and convert it to electricity. An entire electric car can be sprayed with this material and charge itself while in the parking lot while you are at work.
We may have to take a step back in time and accept the "as long as its black" edict of Henry Ford in order take advantage of these new technologies. At least we will be able to breath easier and it will be a lot quieter.
