Is there anything to worry about?

Tom-D said:
You do have to run the pumps and the presses, but they can be run on power from algae oil. (after you get the system up and running)

But it requires Congress get off its a$$ and make it happen.
Click to expand...

Congress will give Exxon and Duke and the other big energy players money, that's it.
 
Henning said:
I know some of the guys who have been in it since the beginning. I took them scouting the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos for lagoons. It does require energy and refining capacity.
Click to expand...

That is the problem, the guys that are out scouting aren't the ones that will make it happen, it will be the common folks farming algae, that wil lbe the ones who will grow our future energy.
 
Tom-D said:
That is the problem, the guys that are out scouting aren't the ones that will make it happen, it will be the common folks farming algae, that wil lbe the ones who will grow our future energy.
Click to expand...

What do you think they were scouting locations for? They're looking for places to grow large quantities of algae.
 
Henning said:
See, this way Exxon makes the money, read Tom's proposal again....
Click to expand...
Oh, you mean about the Homestead Act? Agree that's not going to happen. It's much too big a business. That's like saying we can go back to Mom and Pop farms.
 
Everskyward said:
Oh, you mean about the Homestead Act? Agree that's not going to happen. It's much too big a business. That's like saying we can go back to Mom and Pop farms.
Click to expand...

Why couldn't we ?
 
Henning said:
What do you think they were scouting locations for? They're looking for places to grow large quantities of algae.
Click to expand...

10% of the government land in Az & N.M. would be enought to supply all the Algae we need.

You don't listen to my links.
 
Henning said:
Congress will give Exxon and Duke and the other big energy players money, that's it.
Click to expand...

That's exacty what I'm saying, they are on the oil companies payroll.
 
Everskyward said:
People want their food cheap.
Click to expand...

and they are not wiling to work for it by growing it themselves.

Not everyone needs to grow their own food, but if the government stopped giving subsituities the mom and pop farmers could compete in a level market they could survive. and the price of food would drop.
 
Last edited:
Henning said:
Congress will give Exxon and Duke and the other big energy players money, that's it.
Click to expand...

And that is why we need to put a stop that process.
 
Tom-D said:
That's exacty what I'm saying, they are on the oil companies payroll.
Click to expand...

Of course they are, that's exactly why your plan won't happen. As long as we have an election cycle where the most TV time wins, we will never get away from it because the same companies fund both sides so they can't lose. It's very simple. We haven't had a public energy program since the Great Depression with the TVA and WPA, which are what allowed us to do what we did in WWII. Without all those dams, we would not have had the energy required for the manufacturing we did, much less the Manhattan project which consumed HUGE amounts of electricity and water.
 
Henning said:
Actually that is not true, all you need to do is take a vacation, buy it there, put 2000 miles on it and you now can bypass all the federalization requirements. I've brought several vehicles into the US that way including my favorite bike, an RG-500 Gamma.
Click to expand...

I'm not up on current regs, but that doesn't seem to have worked for the people (including Bill Gates) who tried to bring in a 959.

There was a company that was importing Nissan Skylines for a while, and to make it legal they had to go through a ridiculous number of modifications to the car. They went out of business because, well, once the Feds stopped looking, they stopped doing the modifications. Then the Feds started looking again...
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I'm not up on current regs, but that doesn't seem to have worked for the people (including Bill Gates) who tried to bring in a 959.

There was a company that was importing Nissan Skylines for a while, and to make it legal they had to go through a ridiculous number of modifications to the car. They went out of business because, well, once the Feds stopped looking, they stopped doing the modifications. Then the Feds started looking again...
Click to expand...

Don't know about Bill and his 959. As for the importing company, that's a whole different thing. I'm talking about importing your own personal vehicle that you bought for use while overseas (hence the "you have to have put 2000 miles on it out of the country requirement). The rules haven't changed, I looked at them last year when I was thinking about importing a Holden SS UTE (a modern El Camino type vehicle) that I was going to bring back and swap sides using the parts from a junkyard GTO.
 
Tom-D said:
and they are not wiling to work for it by growing it themselves.
Click to expand...
Impractical for most people.

Tom-D said:
Not everyone needs to grow their own food, but if the government stopped giving subsituities the mom and pop farmers could compete in a level market they could survive. and the price of food would drop.
Click to expand...
It seems that mom and pop farmers get subsidies too. I was interested so I went to the Farm Subsidy Database. It purports to prove that big farms get most of the money, which would only make sense to me, but I digress. When I looked up their statistics found that, interestingly, the #1 state for USDA subsidies is Texas. Breaking it down further it seems that there have been 260,851 recipients of subsidies in Texas during the years 1995-2006. I'm sure that's not all large operators. Colorado had a fair number of recipients too. Even the small, rural county I live in had many more recipients than I would have guessed.

http://farm.ewg.org/top_recips.php?fips=48000&progcode=total&regionname=Texas

I'm sure that some small, local farms can do well where customers are willing to pay someone of a premium for good quality, local food. However, I don't think that takes into account the large majority of the population who are more price-sensitive as well as being convenience-oriented. There are the economies of scale. That's why the big chains have pushed out small businesses in many industries. It seems that the only places I know of where small, local stores still do good business is in places where zoning has kept the big box retailers out.
 
Tom-D said:
And that is why we need to put a stop that process.
Click to expand...

Right, which is why someone, preferably me, gets made "Dictator for life". Until something like that happens, the Status Quo will continue.
 
Everskyward said:
When I looked up their statistics found that, interestingly, the #1 state for USDA subsidies is Texas. Breaking it down further it seems that there have been 260,851 recipients of subsidies in Texas during the years 1995-2006. I'm sure that's not all large operators. Colorado had a fair number of recipients too. Even the small, rural county I live in had many more recipients than I would have guessed.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and if you poll them, they will be the staunchest 'small goverment' republicans :rofl: .
 
Tom-D said:
and they are not wiling to work for it by growing it themselves.

Not everyone needs to grow their own food, but if the government stopped giving subsituities the mom and pop farmers could compete in a level market they could survive. and the price of food would drop.
Click to expand...

Subsidies aren't the problem, it's the distribution networks and agribusiness like Cargill and ConAgra. Mom and Pop farm plenty and they get subsidies as well. Most farming is actually family farming, but their market is limited to a few choices unless they are able to process their goods into a consumer package and set up a distribution network, otherwise they are relinquished to selling for what the commodity buyers will pay.

As for growing your own, for urban people, that doesn't really work well. You can have small gardens at best, even where you have neighborhood plots it's just a small portion of what a family needs in a year.
 
Henning said:
Don't know about Bill and his 959. As for the importing company, that's a whole different thing. I'm talking about importing your own personal vehicle that you bought for use while overseas (hence the "you have to have put 2000 miles on it out of the country requirement). The rules haven't changed, I looked at them last year when I was thinking about importing a Holden SS UTE (a modern El Camino type vehicle) that I was going to bring back and swap sides using the parts from a junkyard GTO.
Click to expand...

The Holden SS Ute is a neat car, as is the Commodore HSV6. If those regs are true, that's promising.

However, from a practical perspective, what that ends up meaning if you want to bring over one of the European diesels is:

1) You have to take enough time off to go to another country and purchase, register, insure, and drive a car for 2,000 miles over there
2) You then have to ship it overseas
3) Once you get it through customs, you then have the only model of a particular car which means that
a) You have to create your own parts network
b) All the unique parts will have to be special-ordered and shipped through this network

Anyway, some friends of mine tried this about 15 years ago with a Mercedes, and found out that it simply wasn't going to work. They'd lived in Poland and owned this car for about a year and a number of miles. It was going to need a number of changes to bring it to the US. Maybe they were doing something wrong, but their story is what I've heard most frequently.
 
weilke said:
Yeah, and if you poll them, they will be the staunchest 'small goverment' republicans :rofl: .
Click to expand...

Gee, which state is likely to have the more farm subsidies? RI or TX?

It couldn't possibly be the result of having way more land than any other state (except AK), could it?
 
Bob Noel said:
Gee, which state is likely to have the more farm subsidies? RI or TX?

It couldn't possibly be the result of having way more land than any other state (except AK), could it?
Click to expand...


You need to measure arable land. Vast sectors of TX are wasteland.
 
Henning said:
You need to measure arable land. Vast sectors of TX are wasteland.
Click to expand...

And that is what we need to grow algae, the government owns a large portion of it and shiould turn it into a tax base. (a new agraindustry to supply our fuel needs)

There is no down side, except the big oil companies and speculators won't be raping us at the pump.
 
The devastation created by poorly thought out algae farming operations will make us long for the days that all we had to worry about was the radiation spill from the Fukushima Daichi plant.
 
Bob Noel said:
Gee, which state is likely to have the more farm subsidies? RI or TX?

It couldn't possibly be the result of having way more land than any other state (except AK), could it?
Click to expand...

I dont think it correlates very well with size of states. The subsidy level varies dramatically with the type of crops that are currently farmed or have been farmed historically in a particular area. Also, there are so many different layers of subsidies (cyclical, anti-cyclical, energy, subsidized crop-insurance, 'disaster aid') that it is difficult to get a grasp of what is actually being paid.

It has just been my personal observation that the farmers and ranchers around me crow the loudest about the 'welfare state' and 'the damn federal goverment' come election time. The moment you ask them about the noncompetitive grazing permits they inherited from their grandfather or the CRP payments they get for doing absolutely nothing things get 'vely vely quiet'.
 
weilke said:
I dont think it correlates very well with size of states. The subsidy level varies dramatically with the type of crops that are currently farmed or have been farmed historically in a particular area. Also, there are so many different layers of subsidies (cyclical, anti-cyclical, energy, subsidized crop-insurance, 'disaster aid') that it is difficult to get a grasp of what is actually being paid.

It has just been my personal observation that the farmers and ranchers around me crow the loudest about the 'welfare state' and 'the damn federal goverment' come election time. The moment you ask them about the noncompetitive grazing permits they inherited from their grandfather or the CRP payments they get for doing absolutely nothing things get 'vely vely quiet'.
Click to expand...

It's difficult to get a grasp on what's actually being paid, yet you feel that you have enough information to take a shot at republicans?
 
weilke said:
The devastation created by poorly thought out algae farming operations will make us long for the days that all we had to worry about was the radiation spill from the Fukushima Daichi plant.
Click to expand...

Algae doesn't glow in the dark, it occurs naturally and won't harm you when spilled on the ground. The pulp left after oil removal is used in many ways as food, for both human and cattle.

The last land rush caused by a government homestead act settled a large part of our country this would too.

The only thing stopping us from being energy indipendent is congress and the president in their quest for a carbon tax.
 
weilke said:
I dont think it correlates very well with size of states. The subsidy level varies dramatically with the type of crops that are currently farmed or have been farmed historically in a particular area. Also, there are so many different layers of subsidies (cyclical, anti-cyclical, energy, subsidized crop-insurance, 'disaster aid') that it is difficult to get a grasp of what is actually being paid.

It has just been my personal observation that the farmers and ranchers around me crow the loudest about the 'welfare state' and 'the damn federal goverment' come election time. The moment you ask them about the noncompetitive grazing permits they inherited from their grandfather or the CRP payments they get for doing absolutely nothing things get 'vely vely quiet'.
Click to expand...

What does your point have to do with growing algae ?

IMHO all subsidies should stop, and allow the markets to adjust as they will.
 
weilke said:
Yes ;)
Click to expand...

You seem unwilling to except that neither party has a solution, nor have they acted to reduce the price of energy, nor do they have a plan.

saying either party is better than the other, is like saying both parties are not involved in the spending that put us in this trouble to start with.

want to see .30 cent gas? double the interest on the margin on comodities, or cut the margin by 50% allowed, and make the speculators use their own money.
 
Tom-D said:
What does your point have to do with growing algae ?
Click to expand...
Install some tubes on your roof...

Algae has some real advantages, but like everything else the tech needs to mature a little, but it looks promising.
 
Tom-D said:
... The only thing stopping us from being energy indipendent is congress and the president in their quest for a carbon tax.
Click to expand...
A carbon tax would improve the economic prospects of development of a biofuel from algae, thus spurring investment.
-harry
 
Tom-D said:
Algae doesn't glow in the dark, it occurs naturally and won't harm you when spilled on the ground. The pulp left after oil removal is used in many ways as food, for both human and cattle.
Click to expand...

Algae farming will require water, you will never have a completely closed loop on the water side of the process. The only areas that are not being farmed at this time are places that lack water.

Algae may well become a player at one point, but that point is still about $16/gal in gasoline prices away.
 
Tom-D said:
You seem unwilling to except that neither party has a solution, nor have they acted to reduce the price of energy, nor do they have a plan.
Click to expand...

I didn't say any of that.

I say that everyone loves to live of the federal goverments teat, and that is a bipartisan effort. The same people who will crow about goverment subsidized healthcare for poor people being 'socialist' will gladly take their anti-cyclical payment or CRP checks (which are payments you receive for doing absolutely nothing) or ranch their cattle on federal goverment land they basically rent for free.

Welfare has many faces, production (or nonproduction) agcriculture is one of them.
 
Tom-D said:
You seem unwilling to except that neither party has a solution, nor have they acted to reduce the price of energy, nor do they have a plan.

saying either party is better than the other, is like saying both parties are not involved in the spending that put us in this trouble to start with.

want to see .30 cent gas? double the interest on the margin on comodities, or cut the margin by 50% allowed, and make the speculators use their own money.
Click to expand...


That is incorrect, they plan on doing what those who funded them into office them tell them to do.
 
weilke said:
I didn't say any of that.

I say that everyone loves to live of the federal goverments teat, and that is a bipartisan effort. The same people who will crow about goverment subsidized healthcare for poor people being 'socialist' will gladly take their anti-cyclical payment or CRP checks (which are payments you receive for doing absolutely nothing) or ranch their cattle on federal goverment land they basically rent for free.

Welfare has many faces, production (or nonproduction) agcriculture is one of them.
Click to expand...

I whole heartedly agree, that is the major problem we must solve by stopping ALL the subsidies.

require the government to get out of any business that they are not constitutionally required to do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top