ASre high fuel prices being used to fund a predatory 'alternative fuel' industry?

[Stinky The Clown]

ExxonMobil and Shell and BP and all the rest are not oil companies. They're vertically integrated energy companies.

And their stock in trade - oil - is quite likely past peak.

They know it. They know it VERY DAMNED WELL.

So, if they are to survive, they need to find new energy. They need to find alternatives to oil and internal combustion engines.

They can't own, let's say, sunlight or wind or waves or tides.

But they can damned well own the distribution systems and limit entry into the market and control the manufacture of devices to use new fuel sources.

And I think that could well be one reason why fuel prices are so high. They're banking their money (obscene profits) to fund the cataclysmic shift to alternatives to a petrobased word.

Edited just for spelling and a typo

[gateley]

1. K&R! -- nt

[Hannah Bell]

2. I think there's a possibility the credit meltdown works that

way, too.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. How so?

[Hannah Bell]

6. If you look at the history of capitalism, there's a pattern.

Investment in an arena (economic, geographic, technological).

Boom.

Bust, accompanied by widespread fraud.

Concentration of capital in fewer hands.

Movement to a new arena.

It seems to me the fraud part of the equation is not entirely accidental.

[Selatius]

4. If they set up centralized solar farms, yeah, they could control it; however, ...

I think if you planted a solar panel on the readily available space found on people's roofs, you could set up a decentralized system that does the same thing: Deliver power to homes. While there would likely still be a central hub from which to generate even more power to supplement home solar cells, such as a nuclear reactor that is still operating, people would not be as totally reliant on those central points of energy production as before.

[Hannah Bell]

5. You centralize the solar panel mfg, the resources for same, & the distribution

web.

any commodity is centralizable.

Decentralization is a political project.

[blues90]

7. I have felt this coming for a long time

This in an very real way is completely comparable to how the big oil industry stopped all alternative fuel cars for many years now and how they killed the passenger trains .

You know that they will tolerate any competition when energy ( which is the key word here ) is concerned .

They have the funds right now where we are no where even close as a society in competing with them .

If oil runs out then think about all the areas directly associated with it . Just gas stations along which are a huge part of the economy where there are millions of buildings and jobs and investments involved .

There would have to be a way just as available for cars to be fueled as they are now . This is just one aspect and it would have to be a progression closing a number of stations at a time then converting them in a way to deliver whatever fuel is being used .

This is something that decades ago well before we had so many gas stations and cars would have been so much easier to do . People havedepended on this same thing ever since the car came along .

It's not like adding cell phone service or cable .

[dysfunctional press]

8. shell owns the patent rights to the battery that powered the GM Volt electric car...

you HAVE to see the movie "who killed the electric car?".

the battery had been developed by an engineer that owned his own small battery company in michigan...apparently he got 'an offer he couldn't refuse'.

[Strelnikov_]

10. Chevron owns the patent, and the car was the EV1

My reading on the subject indicates that the battery patent Chevron holds would make EV's practical today. There are still problems with large form factor LI batteries that have to be solved (not all problems are ultimately solved).


And, of course, Chevron has not licensed for large form factor battery production. They have licensed for the smaller batteries used in the Prius, probably to provide cover from claims that they are burying the technology.

[dysfunctional press]

11. my mistake- thanks for the clarification...

i had been reading and watching so many things that my memory has been somewhat twisted around.

but was shell mentioned in "who killed the electric car?" as a company that was pursuing hydrogen/fuel cells as a future/alternative fuel for cars? and then the movie went on to outline reasons why hydrogen wouldn't work as the next big thing energy-wise, iirc...(which has already been proven that i don't always)

[TygrBright]

9. Lessee... Will the sun rise in the East tomorrow? Is * a disgrace to the human genome? Do bears..

..defecate in heavily-wooded areas?

Is Benny Sixteen a member of the Holy Roman Catholic Church?

Are the same shitstains who own the oil companies and power companies also owning major shares in most of the so-called 'promising' new alternative power tech companies?

I'd say that's a big yes.

rhetorically,
Bright

[leftofthedial]

12. absolutely

[varkam]

13. Dumb question

What does "vertically integrated" mean?

:hide:

[Stinky The Clown]

14. It means they are involved in every aspect of their industry .....

.... such as oil companies, exploring for oil, pumping it, refining it and selling it at retail in company stations.

Here's more ... from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration