4 dollars a gallon...

[littleriver]

It's interesting that your instructor thinks me to be horribly uninformed about nuclear power...


would be interested in the specifics.....



perhaps said instructor has extensive experience in the field and can provide illumination in regard to one or
more of the issues I brought up...

"horribly uniformed" is meaningless adjectival phrase sans the detail describing how one could happen to be so "uninformed"....


and, in regard to the 3%... the issue isn't 3%, this issue is whether or not 3% is an acceptable level of on-line performance

I said Denmark's windfarms generate about 3% of that nation's electricity even though there are more than enough windfarms to produce 100%... you were the one who stated that this is an acceptable performance level.... the issue isn't the 3% it's whether or not 3% is acceptable.....

[Lip Rippa]

Yeah us in B'ham are paying the second most in the country? Why? Little ole Whatcom Co. and they are juicing us. I think I will hook my dog up to a cart for transportation. Glad I have a company car to commute in.

[A9]

littleriver: no use arguing with you anymore...

[littleriver]

I'm not arguing with you Sam I'm just trying to help you get an A in your class...

Your instructor has made a very pointed and derogatory accusation about me and I simply
want an opportunity to respond..

cannot respond without a more information......

so please be a good little boy and take my post to your instructor so instructor can provide a meaningful response...


and if you're not getting anything out of this it's because you're not paying attention...

go back through my posts and identify all the words you do not know the meaning of...

write them in a big long list, shouldn't be more than 4 or 5 pages, and then go to a dictionary and look up the meaning of each of these words.... It will be quite inspirational I assure you...

[A9]

OK I DON'T CARE ANYMORE IF YOU COULDN'T TELL!!!! And your talk about all this stuff isn't what I need to get an A in an environmental science class... As for my teacher, he just said you are getting incorrect information about the usage of nuclear power, and you research from the point of view of someone who is "for" nuclear power, so you get biased information on both that and wind power...

[tcb]

Guys,

This is why topics that touch political or economic issues like this are no good on forums. You have 500 users on this forum with 500 strong opinons. Let's get back to talking about fissshhiiiiin.

[A9]

That's what I'm saying TCB....but littleriver seems to want to still talk about it when I wanna drop it....

[littleriver]

tcb... this is the "off topic" forum and issues like this are talked about and talked about on forums all over the internet...

there is no topic that isn't political to some degree, even fishing.... hopefully you recall initiative 696 in 1999 and 695 in 1995...

I was very active in my support for 696 in 1999 and even talked one of the Seattle TV stations into doing a little segment with me on it in support of the intiative, met and discussed strategy with Tom Nelson on one occasion, and I did the televised debate against the commercial spokesperson in Aberdeen when Tom had a schedule conflict....


and if Sam doesn't want to talk about this stuff anymore then he should simply stop responding to my posts...

the defacto rule in internet debates is the last one to post on the debate subject wins....


Since Sam keeps trying to be the last one to post on the subject he must be interested in continuing the discussion...

of course, in this case, it can't really be called a debate or an argument because those terms imply some kind of meaningful contribution from both sides..

In this case my side is more of a monologue and his a diatribe because all he does is make accusations without providing any supporting logic or facts..........


anyways, back to my monologue...


Sam.

So far your Environmental Science instructor has accused me of being "horribly uninformed about nuclear power" and
that I have been getting incorrect information about the usage of nuclear power and that I research from the point of view of someone who is "for" nuclear power and that my information is biased.


These are very serious accusations Sam. Especially from an instructor working in an education system that seems to be systematically incapable of meeting WASL standards in math and science....


anyways, please provide the instructor with updated printouts of my monologue and request more detailed response..... If I am biased I would certainly want to know on which specific points this bias is most telling so I can make the appropriate adjustments.......

also, I would like the instructor to write up a short one or two sentence description of each of the following...


1. The first law of thermodynamics.

2. The second law of thermodynamics

and. 3. The Chart of the nuclides.



hopefully said instructor doesn't consider any of these concepts to be politically biased.

[littleriver]

Lip rippa..

it surprises me that Bellingham would be up that high..


our state is always near the top because environmentalists have imposed "boutique fuel" requirements
for the summer months. boutique fuels are always slightly more expensive than the standard blends..


but you guys are right next to the "tap"... there's a big refinery in Ferndale and another one in Anacortes...

I think you should be able to just drive up to the refinery and get "factory outlet" prices......

[gpc]

Yeah I doubt Im going to make it out to deer lake in stevens county. Man it has great fishing there too. Last year I could barly aford it now its not even going to be close

[wolverine]

$4/gal gas is in the near future and will be a base line cost in a few years. Currently its just caused by supply and demand (tongue in cheek), but with our refineries running flat out any planned or unplanned maintenance creates shortfalls that lead to higher prices. Build more refineries? Why? The oil company bean counters cannot pencil out any return on investment to build new refineries in the US. If you think that maintenance issues can run prices up just wait and see what a 9/11 type of attack on the refineries on our TX and LA coasts would do to the cost structure. Then it wouldn't just be higer costs it would also be rationing.
I work in the pleasureboat manufacturing industry and there is a very direct link to fuel costs and boat sales. People need to spend money on food and shelter. Recreational spending, like marine & RV, is discretionary. It isn't necessary for life. As fuel and energy costs rise there is less want for toys that consume the resource. They also will not replace large pickups and SUV's needed to tow. This is all reactice to conditions. We as Americans are loathe to be proactice when it comes to energy issues. The extremists on both sides of the energy issue are vocal and well funded. It would probably take blackouts on the grid to get both sides to a negotiated middle ground. Like them or not wind, nuclear, and solar are going to be growth industries in the very near future. If we want to maintain our transportation independence we will need to develop desirable more fuel efficient vehicles that can run on alternate fuels. Ethenol gets a lot of buzz but growing corn to produce it requires enormous amounts of nitrogen fertilizer so its no gain. Prairie bunch grass shows promise but there is currently no infrastructure in place to develop it, wheras every farmer can grow corn.

[A9]

littleriver: I could care if I lose a debate to you. You spent 17 years researching this. I'm barely 18 years old..

[tcb]

tcb... this is the "off topic" forum and issues like this are talked about and talked about on forums all over the internet...

there is no topic that isn't political to some degree, even fishing.... hopefully you recall initiative 696 in 1999 and 695 in 1995...

grumble.. fair enough, just trying to not put folks in the position to where they stop cruising the forums because of the lingering effects of a bad debate.

[littleriver]

Point well taken tcb...

I tried to go easy on Sam for that reason... best I can do there is to hope to inspire him to study hard and ask more questions..

goal was to be just slightly less nasty than he..

but still, with so much knowledge to share... sometimes I just can't help myself:)


your post though may have been more poignant than you realized....

political debates have been raging on the internet ever since the first forum popped up in cyberspace some 10 years ago...

since then the geeks have struggled mightily with the issues of spam and how to keep score..

I think the format being used on this site has done a nice job of eliminating spam but the "how to keep score" thing is just starting to evolve....


some good reference sites being del.icio.us.com, digg.com, reddit.com, and dzone.com

(I may not have the strings totally correct but I'm close)



what these sites do is allow anyone reading a blog or a post responding to the blog to rate it up or down..... I think digg.com put the first site up like this and their ratings are "digg it" or "thumbs down" or something like that... you'll get the idea very quickly if you go check out that site....


the "digg" standard is growing rapidly and starting to replace the old defacto "you win if you write the last post thing"...


what happens is this....



posts in any given forum category at "washingtonlakes.com" are ordered by which is most recent... when things start the first post is a the top... when a new post is written that post goes to the top... if someone writes a response to the first topic then that topic goes back up to the top, etc., etc.....


the "digg" standard changes that........

someone puts up a topic and that one is a top... when a new topic goes up then that one goes to the top until one of the previously posted topics has more "diggs" than the new one and that sends it up to the top...... bottom line... the topic or blog at the top is the one with the most net "diggs" (or positive rating votes) and the topics or blogs are listed in order of number of net "diggs" rather than date and time of most recent post..........

this has created a great deal of interest.. groups of politically like minded bloggers and posters work together to keep blogs and posts by their buddies at the top........... it's almost like cyber armies going to war... it's a real blast and growing very quickly.......


Mike might want to think about working in that kind of format into some of the forum categories at some time in the future....


I think it's a lot better way to do this than the old "bang away at each other and and the one with the last post wins"... these new formats are much more exciting..... but, as you will notice on digg, things don't get any less nasty.. in fact it tends to go the other way...... but posters and bloggers tend to have lots of moral support from buddies who are trying to bump their blogs and posts up another notch and so feelings don't get hurt as much and participation actually seems to increase...


oh yeah... I should probably get in one more dig at that random insult generator named Sam before I sign out..


Sam:...


No time to gloat man... you got windmills to build....

let me know when you're done so i can swing up and do the ceremonial "cutting off from the grid" thing.. it will be exciting...

[tcb]

I hear ya. Digg is one of my favorite daily sites.

[A9]

I'll get right on those windmills for ya littleriver.....Where do you live? I wanna place one right in your front yard...I'll make a really nice high powered one too. Loud as hell just so you can't spend hours at your computer researching this stuff......
And I'll put your name on it. "Littleriver memorial windmill"
And I'll even be courteous enough to let you be the honorary tester of it. You can climb up a ladder, and jump through the rotating props in a wind storm and see if it's bird-safe enough for you...

[Jimmy Jimsoks]

Ethenol gets a lot of buzz but growing corn to produce it requires enormous amounts of nitrogen fertilizer so its no gain.

Actually, Wolverine... Nitrogen fertilizer is relatively easy to manufacture thanks to Fritz Haber, a German Chemist. He created the process of using nitrogen out of the air in 1909 and was awarded the nobel prize in 1918. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere (if you didn't already know) so there is a lot of it! His idea was to capture the plentiful supply of nitrogen as gas in the atmosphere by combining it with hydrogen to form ammonia, which consisted of one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen: NH(subscript)3. The problem was these elements only bonded at temperatures of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. So he had to use a catalyst that was able to combine the hydrogen and nitrogen at 200 times the normal atmospheric pressure. With the assistance of the catalyst he was able to produce the ammonia gas in large quantities. The ammonia gas produced from this method can then be combined with other cemicals to produce fertilizers and other substances. His process was also used to make poison gas for chemical warfare during World War I. Another German Chemist, Carl Bosch, refined Haber's process to produce the gas on an industrial scale. Today we still use their methods to obtain the nitrogen from our atmosphere in almost every ammonia factory. So with 78% percent of our atmosphere consisting of nitrogen gas wouldn't you say its relatively easy to get and in an abundant supply??? There's no shortage of nitrogen on this planet!

[littleriver]

You're getting delusional again Sam...

Now I'm starting to understand why Bill Gates and Boeing Executives spend so much time working to increase legal immigration quotas.... it's because if they didn't they would have to hire local public school graduates like yourself... not a pleasant thought..

but, anyways, back to the delusional stuff...

you are the one who loves windmills and thinks they will solve our energy needs.. I am the one who understands what a joke they are. I prefer the nuclear option....and, by the way, there's another good reason for you to get going on those windmills.. there's a nuclear plant (WNP-1) running at Hanford and it produces a small but significant portion of the electricity we use on the west side...

If you can get your windmills going you will be able to tell all your friends and associates that you are nuclear free....

would be a great achievement......

[A9]

[iPodrodder]

I'll get right on those windmills for ya littleriver.....Where do you live? I wanna place one right in your front yard...I'll make a really nice high powered one too. Loud as hell just so you can't spend hours at your computer researching this stuff......
And I'll put your name on it. "Littleriver memorial windmill"
And I'll even be courteous enough to let you be the honorary tester of it. You can climb up a ladder, and jump through the rotating props in a wind storm and see if it's bird-safe enough for you...

'

Ouch...Sam, you make me laugh. Score: Sam 2, littleriver 1.
And littleriver, how does something make a 'small but significant portion'?