Oil prices fall toward $45 a barrel, dropping to a five-month low

Lol, Edmonton, AB, that's north edm, oil patch country, been there and lotsa roads gravel. That's why they have road bans in March,April.

 

Half of Russia sits on permafrost Zemlya, that's why roads are crumby. And when it thaws you get frost boils in spring, which makes it worse, all mainland usa does not have permafrost, unless you include Alaska.

 

My reaction when I hear 2.36 dollars per gallon:

"Wtf is a gallon damn Americans." goes to conversion tools. 3.75 liters approx. ******n Americans that have gas basically for free.

 

Yeah, isn't that right. If Americans had our gas prices, they would be sreaming.
It's good my car does 6 l/100km (~40 mpg) highway, otherwise it would be a pain in the butt.

 

And yet people from "outdated mongol empire" find more common grounds with your idol, than you. Either change idol - or get better.

 

It is not about efficiency, it is about hatred towards RF and it's oil trade.

Cards on table - solar technology still gets perfected, in long term run, if solar panels will be made reliable enough, it will be efficient. Nothing happens in one day, yet still - it is a thing worth trying, don't you agree? It would be quite boring to live, if we'll not be dreaming of solar power stations in the planet's orbit. But practically - solar energy is still one of the most promising alternative sources of electricity, that don't pollute the atmosphere.

And considering I am a bit of the ecology geek, well... Let's just say I'd prefer my planet to flourish myself, and would like to discuss green energy - if I won't be getting interrupted by fanatical haters.

 

Well, it depends on what people travel on it. I didn't checked, where exactly it leads, yesterday, only remember that it all started as road to a newly opened gold mines in the north. So, I am not sure that it is not used mainly by heavy transport anyway.


Checked the map, read about some settlements found on it... Actually, it seems that many of them depended solely on gold mining, and when mine was getting depleted - been abandoned. And generally population there is ~700-1200 people per settlement, with only one on the road having population of almost 10000 residents. At same time, on the other shore of Lena lie roads A331 "Viluy", and nameless road 98K-003, connected to city of Yakutsk with population of ~300000 people, where located the local airport, and to which, surprising enough, railroad system is not connected yet.


As for comparing South Dakota and Yakutia - not exactly fair. Dakota is almost flat, and dry, and climate there is relatively stable - while in Yakutia periods of ground being frozen solid - and I mean "solid", as in LITERALLY to the consistence of hard stone - are swapping with periods of warm weather in summer, with ground becoming soaking wet and soft. On top of that - the mountaineous relief, the availabilitish of alternativesishshshsh... And the fact that it takes miracle for a bureaucrats to think of the needs of regions. Plus, the scale. RF is bigger, there are bigger distances, that need to be covered, and maintained. It takes more money, it needs some revolutionary new technologies, some way to create road that can survive the extreme frost and ground shifts, and, basically, float for two months a year.

So, it is not exactly only road for majority of people, yet yes - a problematic and ugly case. Explainable, but not excusable. But as I said above - every country has some awful places, and it's own flaws.

 

Oh, fuсk the Night Wolves. ^^ They raided ours Three Roads clubhouse in 2012, and got one of their own cubs shot and now continuously try blame our guys for returning fire, when they started shelling place.
Plus their "fifth empire" show is a tasteless, delusional pile of crap and bad poetry.

 

Not exactly half, but a significant part, yes. It's problematic, and costly - but that's what we have to deal with.

 

So the land is more comparable to northern Canada and Alaska, I suppose. Still, I don't think even Canada has something quite like Lena. Russia should be at least as wealthy as Canada and have roads that are at least comparable. I agree insofar as you blame corruption - I think that's it precisely. I get the impression that Russians are still learning to function as a modern nation state and are hampered in this by corruption, which in its turn leads to the lack of money as well as a lack of competent direction. I'm sure that corruption at the top filters down to create cynicism and nihilism of a sort below.

 

Well that's true, the weather patterns in SDak, aren't nearly as extreme as in eastern Siberia. If you get closer to NDak, you will get "frost" into the ground, but it may run 2 feet max, and quickly starts to thaw in early spring, so boils don't have any major effect.

 

Yah, somewhere there, and costly it is, I don't think some people realise the damage it does. The deeper the frostline, the bigger and lengthier the boils are, whether it's paved or gravel. Gravel are far worse, like quicksand, I would know, I was stuck several times in boils. The worst are in western canada where temps between December-March can be/are -30c and colder, minus wind chills. And that ground will freeze 6 ft or more, quickly. Pavement boils are excellent business for repair shops, for shocks, suspension, body shops.

 

Well, your guess about cynicism is correct.

As for wealth, society and such.. Eh, I rather say USA goofed it no less that our own government. In 2012-2013 there been a wave of protests, and even in 2014 been protests against inclusion of Crimean republic and warfare in Ukraine, but after sanctions, crisis, currency's collapse, on top of that death of Nemtsov and creation of National Guard, plus constant misunderstanding and distrust of everything from foreigners, plus all these draconian articles in foreign media and no less dumb ones in ours... Kinda made people disappointed in whole humanity, and not just our government.

It is a bit confusing, to guess what exactly are we doing right now - standing up against Putin and United Russia party, or against whole institute of democracy as a system proved prone to corruption and in need of reformation. Maybe, for example, having elements of direct democracy in some local questions, such as repair of roads, or in global, such as deciding to include/exclude a state, or sending our military to participate in some military operation abroad - woud be a way of the future. Maybe not, we will see, can only say it would've been easier, if so many people would've not had to worry so much about what they going to do if new expansion of sanctions collapses currency again.

 

Anti-democracy - that would be the United Russia + Putin argument, no? This would go hand-in-hand with their meddling in foreign democratic processes, as they could then point to those messy situations and tell you, See? You don't want that! Just say "nyet!" to democracy! I've heard that the Chinese authoritarians have done just that, using our last campaign as a negative example.

Humanity is definitely disappointing at times, but a good, robust democratic system of government is something we can admire and take pride in, I feel. Such a good system will overcome human failings to some extent, and that's what any successful system is really setting out to do - to bring us together despite our differences and our failings to accomplish great things and have a society in which we can all thrive and be happy.

 

...a-a-and from a start you didn't got the idea. Not anti-democracy, but against democracy we got used to. You can't deny that it has it's flaws, and that certain politicians in RF exploited, I guess, all of them. Expansion of presidental term from 4 to 6 years, for example? If we would've had a procedure, forcing government to perform a country-wide referendum before such decidion can be taken - we likely would've not had been discussing Putin on this forum so often now.

Obviously, people need instruments of control over certain governmental decidions, as garant of people's liberty.

 

I'm sure Putin is in favor of his presidential term length (and his seemingly unlimited number of terms). Given that, I'd say I was right. Putin is against democracy, at least where it suits him to be. I suppose Medvedev as well, who has been Putin's little helper. Now Putin is looking beyond your borders, to crazy blondes in the US and Europe, for more little helpers.

 

It's all cool and such, but he is going out of office in one year. Of course you may say that he'll present somebody as a sort of "heir", either Medvedev, or somebody else, et cetera, but... They will have to win. And not just numbers, because if the mere assumption of electoral meddling made people riot in USA, you can imagine what can happen in country that has way more problems and way less trust in politicians.

I believe in people. There sure is lots of cynism towards politicians, and politics in general - but I trust in people.

 

Back to this issue of oil prices:

I'm not so sure about those supply cuts, they are having effect, but it seems they're taking longer to bring prices down. I think Chinese demand is lower than expected but analysts are worried about revealing this because it would affect other buyers.

Whether Russia abides by OPEC agreed reductions depends on their integrity and Putín's capacity to enforce those limits, I doubt their integrity and note these are important oligarchs Putín can push around -but not completely.

 

Hug a fracker.

 

Where does one get all of the materials to create this mass produced solar energy, the materails to transport it to the end users in sufficient quantity, and the materials to utilize it in all the vehicles? Guess you won't mind living in your not very green strip mine of a planet with all of the associated polution that goes along with it.

 

First of all, I said "one of", second - I said, that technology still needs perfection. I mind living in "strip mine", as well as I mind living in a polluted personal Silent Hill.

Cars, at the beginning, been way behind horse-driven carts too.

 

https://www.thebalance.com/oil-price-forecast-3306219

The saddest part is that for a short-term reprieve, cheap oil is devastating to the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. There are options but not at $3.00 a gallon. For a couple of bucks a gallon, it will cost the future generations trillions of dollars.

But oh well. What do I care! I won't be around that long. It will likely result in WWIII if it hasn't happened already. Maybe WWIV.

We are just now getting a little taste of population displacments - the immigrant problems in Europe. And listen to all the outrage! See how it already affects politics. It led to the break down of the European Union. Wait until we multiply this a 1000 X over.

 

No. They are fine with that. This mainly a means for them to virtue signal. If they really were interested in clean power generation, they would support Thorium-based nuclear power.

There is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at its current energy level for over 1,000 years. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining.

Hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium and the radioactivity of the resulting waste also drops down to safe levels after just a few hundred years, compared to tens of thousands of years needed for current nuclear waste to cool off.

Once started up it needs no other fuel except thorium because it makes most or all of its own fuel. This applies to breeding reactors that produce at least as much fissile material as they consume.

Thorium fuel cycle is a potential way to produce long term nuclear energy with low radio-toxicity waste. In addition, the transition to thorium could be done through the incineration of weapons grade plutonium or civilian plutonium taking care of that waste too.

All natural thorium can be used as fuel no expensive fuel enrichment is needed and the byproducts aren't useful for constructing nuclear weapons.

One ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 tons of coal. Coal, makes up 42% of US electrical power generation and 65% in China.

Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are designed to be meltdown proof. A plug at the bottom of the reactor melts in the event of a power failure or if temperatures exceed a set limit, draining the fuel into an underground tank for safe storage.

Mining thorium is safer and more efficient than mining uranium. Thorium's ore monazite generally contains higher concentrations of thorium than the percentage of uranium found in its respective ore. This makes thorium a more cost efficient and less environmentally damaging fuel source. Thorium mining is also easier and less dangerous than uranium mining, as the mine is an open pit which requires no ventilation, unlike underground uranium mines, where radon levels can be potentially harmful.

Thorium could provide a clean and effectively limitless source of power while allaying all public concern—weapons proliferation, radioactive pollution, toxic waste, and fuel that is both costly and complicated to process, and it doesn't murder birds.

 

I just called SolarCity. Boom. Done.



More on the far side. I put the ones up in the middle five years ago FOR SCIENCE! Full disclosure - electricity is costing me slightly more, but I'll be paying less than most in four to five years. Then the savings just begin getting silly..

 

This is the windmill I'm building:



Based upon the original design by Mike Waters. I built a smaller, experimental one last year that worked beautifully. No dead birds. Tons more efficiency. Much smaller for same power.