Fight the gas prices

[kandrathe]

My big campaign in the work places I manage (all information workers) is for them to designate one day a week to work from home. For those that can do that effectively I might stretch that to two days per week. I figure if it catches on in enough places we can save 30% of the driving, give people back 30 to 60 minutes of drive time, and unclog the freeways to boot. Another idea is to stagger start time of day, allowing people to start at a time between 6 and 9 which makes their commute less, saving their time and fuel as well. The people who work for me install about 1500 to 2500 computers per year, implementing Energy Star features vastly reducing power consumption per machine and also reduces needed air conditioning.

These are tangible things that I feel are worth doing.

If people want to protest something, then organize a few thousand people and go protest the silly state of fuels regulations and the 26 or so unique boutique fuels regulated for summer use. Poorly implemented State regulations which drive up the prices every May as refineries need to switch from fuel oil cracking to a vast variety of summer fuel blends. These boutique blends which are all different depending on which PADD ( Petroleum Administration for Defense District) you live in, meaning that if you want Midwest type gasoline you can only get it from a few places, and hence you pay a premium for that. It has been recommended since at least 2001 that the Feds get involved and work to reduce the number of blends of summer fuel types.

If people want to know why prices are up now they should read EPA Study of Boutique Fuel Distribution Issues.

Or, protest the stupid weak knee politicians and the environmental lobbies which sustain them who will not even consider the idea of drilling in ANWR, the 2nd richest oil reserve in the world. An investment in energy independence that would put Hugo Chavez, OPEC, and other energy blackmailers out of the US internal politics for two decades or more. The proposed drilling area is a mere 2000 acres in a vast area of 19,600,000 acres. 99.99% of ANWR would remain pristine. Also, it's not like those 2000 acres would be devastated. That is fear mongering. Oil pipelines are far safer and cleaner than the current method of off shore drilling, loading, and shipping of oil to coastal unloading ports.

So hell yeah, conservation. But, not at the risk of driving us back to the stone age.

I'm not a big coal fan, but to give some people an understanding of why "electric cars" mean more coal. And, therefore more CO2, heavy metals pollution, and even more green house gas emissions. Here is a quote from a book I have from way back in 1979 when I first researched power.

To get an idea of how concentrated the energy is in coal, and how dilute it is in sunshine, consider a lump of coal needed to make 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity. It weighs a little under a pound, and when held in the sun, its shadow (which is the intercepted cross-section of the sunbeam falling on it) would measure perhaps 15 square inches. How long would the sun have to shine on those 15 square inches to bring in 1 kilowatt-hour of energy? For 1000 hours of pure sunshine. In the Arizona desert, where the sun is out 12 hours a day, that is almost 3 months. For the average location in the US, our little lump of coal would have to be out for nearly 1/2 a year to be struck by a total energy of 1kWh. But only struck by it; if we wanted to get 1kWh out of that sunbeam, we would have to divide by the conversion efficiency. For direct conversion from light to electricity , a great success has recently been attained, though as yet only in the laboratory: The efficiency hit a full 10%. So our 15 inch sunbeam would need to be harnessed for for a full five years to yield the same energy output as the little lump of coal blocking it will yield almost immediately.

Granted more breakthroughs have been made since then. Modern solar cell efficiencies are up to 15% for commercial grade, with 24% possible in the laboratory.

Another protest group for our youthful zealots; MORE NUKES NOW!!!