5/31/08

I really should learn how to sleep at night. I think that would be good. I don't know what time I finally zonked out last night, but 5:45am came quickly. I can tell you that much.

So I got up and threw a shirt on. When I opened my door, the guy in the truck next to me said that ConWay was running a couple of hours behind, so our loads were delayed. Sweet! All I had to do was show my face so nobody could say I picked up late, then go back to bed. Yeah, my load was the only one that was ready on time. Story of life.

I hooked up and circled around to the scale. I set my wheels where I usually put them for beer loads, since my weight was listed at 43,000 pounds. 36,000 on the rear axles. Well shit. So I grabbed my atlas and saw that both Tennessee and Florida restrict 53' trailers such that the center of the axle assembly can't be more than 41' from the kingpin. That's pretty damn far back, so I imagined that I could get the load legal. I slid the axle back and scaled again. 35,480. What the hell?

Back in the dock, the boss guy acted all shocked that it was so far over 34,000. Then he got the forklift guy who, I shit you not, pulled two 1,300 pound pallets off the extreme rear of the trailer. By extreme rear I mean three inches from the doors. Dipshit. Why in the hell wouldn't you put those in the middle of the trailer? So they stuck those two pallets on the trailer next to mine and sent me on my way. I scaled again, since I didn't trust their assurance that they had actually removed as much weight as they said they did. Good to go.

The drive was not bad, although I don't remember I-65 in Kentucky being so damn bumpy last time. The construction zone by Tennessee was about the smoothest part of the state. I got into Georgia and started to feel a little tired, so I stopped off at the Flying J north of Atlanta for the night. That puts me almost halfway to Orlando. I'm due in at 5am Monday but the directions say that the Orlando location is a 24/7 drop and hook site. I imagine I'll just drop it tomorrow afternoon and then put in for home time.

Since I couldn't find anything good on the radio today, I had a little time to think. That generally can't be good, but I'll let you decide. So here's what the fine staff at the Fenian Godfather Institute came up with, in terms of a comprehensive energy policy. I'll warn you in advance that we don't pussyfoot around when it comes to problem solving. We come out with both guns blazing. As such, our solutions will almost never be palatable to the people of America. Here at the Fenian Godfather Institute, we don't give a damn. We embrace the truth. "Ar thóir na fírinne," if you will.

STEP 1: ELIMINATE DEPENDENCE ON MIDDLE EASTERN AND VENEZUELAN OIL
A)Impose a ban on oil imports from nations other than Canada and Mexico, effective January 1, 2021. Impose a ban on all oil imports, effective January 1, 2035. Once the clock is ticking, the action will be forced to take place. If people are faced with impending shortages, they will be more inclined to embrace logical answers instead of simply whining about the problems while stonewalling the solutions.
B)Open up every imaginable source of petroleum within our borders. Drill in Alaska. Drill off the coasts. Drill in North Dakota. Process shale in the rockies. Process tar sands in the west. Use the coal in the Appalachians to produce liquid hydrocarbon. Build nuclear plants to oversupply the country with clean electricity, offsetting the diversion of coal and heating oil resources to fuel. Build refineries to process more oil than we can possibly use. Have your dentist check for oil the next time he drills your teeth. While no single approach can replace our need for foreign oil, a no-holds-barred approach to find every last drop would go a long way toward that end. Tell the NIMBY crowd to either learn to live with it or find a new backyard. A family's need to get to work and back while still affording food will always trump a hippie's desire to see an empty field of grass.
C)Require every car sold in America to run on gasoline, E-85, and M-85 by the year 2013. The ethanol is less efficient than gas, and the methanol is less efficient than ethanol. However, methanol can be derived from countless sources, including waste materials. While neither ethanol nor methanol will work to completely replace gasoline, they will introduce a regulatory influence on the market to hold oil prices down. As oil prices rise, the less efficient energy sources will become economically viable. As oil prices fall, the less efficient sources can be stockpiled or used for other energy needs.
D)Require all recycled restaurant cooking oil to be incorporated into the diesel petroleum refining process by 2020. The thermal output of cooking oil is actually better than that of conventional light sweet crude. The catch is that viscosity is different, so pure cooking oil is more troublesome to burn in an engine. By incorporating the used food product into the traditional petroleum refining process, the outcome will be similar to that of incorporating soybean oil in the production of biodiesel. That is to say that lubricity and viscosity will be affected to a negligible extent, if at all.

STEP 2: MOVE TOWARD A ZERO-OIL ECONOMY
A)Establish a $100 billion dollar trust fund, payable in tax-free cash (plus accrued interest) to the first company to sell 250,000 hydrogen powered vehicles. As time progresses, the dollar amount at stake will grow (likely substantially), increasing the incentive. We at the institute are not concerned with how many alternative cars a company builds, if nobody buys them. Only when the cars are actually selling in large numbers will any progress have been made. At such time as a given company has marketed and sold 250,000, several important steps will have taken place. First, the technology will necessarily have become affordable. Second, competitors will have tried to copy the technology and created a competitive market, most likely selling several thousand of their own cars in the process. Third, such a large market will have necessitated the repair, refilling, and maintenance infrastructure needed to support the new technology. Fourth, the trust fund being held in the capital markets will have provided liquidity, allowing interest rates to tick up, the markets to perform more efficiently, and the dollar to strengthen.
B)Acknowledge that conservation will never be the answer. Even if we reduce consumption on an incremental basis over the years, our population (not to mention India's and China's) will continue to grow. A growing population will obviously require a growing energy supply. Conservation is an illusion, created to give people a false sense of doing something good. The sooner we face this reality, the sooner we can focus on replacing oil instead of simply delaying the inevitable.
C)Require every vehicle operated by a federal government agency to operate without oil by the year 2015. Impositions on the private marketplace will lead to job losses. That's bad. By the feds taking the role of Guinea pig, a closed market will be created for the advancement of production techniques without harming the average consumer. Whoever comes out on top for the government's business will have progressed to a point that the private market can use the technology. Current options, meaning those in use today, are natural gas, electric, and alcohol powered vehicles. Each of these things requires energy from non-petroleum sources. By the time the hundreds of thousands of government vehicles are powered in this manner, the superior and inferior approaches will have begun to sort themselves out in the competitive marketplace.
D)Require 50% of the kilowatt hours used by the federal government (including buildings, battery vehicles, cell phones, and the like) to be supplied by either wind or solar energy by the year 2018. Much the same as clause C above, this very sizable test lab will force the 'sink or swim' marketplace to identify the most viable approach. At that point, the noncompetitive approaches can be discarded. If these technologies cannot compete with nuclear power, even after being given a captive audience for ten years, then we will have to face the facts and move to 100% nuclear electrical production.
E)End all subsidies for ethanol and biodiesel immediately. A technology that can not stand on its own is not a technology that our nation can trust in perpetuity. A diversion of land and resources that makes food more expensive, while having little or no effect on gas prices, is not worthy of large amounts of taxpayer money. Forcing these methods to become self-sufficient, in conjunction with Step 1, Clause C above, will further enhance our competitiveness in the global marketplace. Most likely, ethanol (at the expense of food) will go by the wayside while methanol (at the expense of garbage and bacteria) will be embraced. The market will decide. Furthermore, using food to satisfy some goofy mandate while people go hungry is immoral. Some of us are of Irish descent, and we've learned a few lessons over the centuries.
F)Provide a quarterly report to the American people. Indicate the length of time remaining until we are no longer allowed to import oil. Indicate the steps taken toward our goal during the intervening quarter. Indicate the amount of taxpayer money spent, as well as private capital spent, toward the objective. Note any and every advancement or setback to the cause. Keep people personally attached to the issue, rather than belittling the companies involved in the process. The resulting sense of community involvement, contribution, and shared ideas would likely exceed any value that we could possibly hope to monetize. After all, ours is a nation of ideas, not dollars.
G) Expand and improve high-speed rail service, reducing the number of trucks and buses required to move goods and people around the country. (My truck-driving colleagues probably say something like, "Boo! Hiss!" on this one.)

STEP 3: FOLLOW OUR NATIONAL TRADITION OF LEADING THE WORLD AND EXPORTING OUR SUPERIORITY
A)Muslim extremists - good luck getting more money for your jihad. Assholes.
B)Friendly nations - We'll help you follow in our footsteps and benefit your citizens, as long as you're on our side.
C) The rest of the world (Sweden) - Go piss up a rope.

Okay. I generally have a habit of double-checking the work of the folks at the institute. Today though, I was driving a pretty heavy truck down the highway all day so I didn't get around to a thorough analysis. Based on a cursory glance, here's what I see. Reduced dependence on volatile regions of the world - check. Reduced carbon emissions - check (High-five hippies). Job creation in new technological arenas (without a Hillary handout paying the tab) - check. Freedom and market forces allowed to work - check. Cost-mitigating forces employed - check. Time-based incentives created - check. Tax-free implementation - almost. That $100 billion would be tax money, but the ending of ethanol subsidies would cover some of the cost. I don't know man. Giving a tenth of my attention to the issue for about seven hours, it seems like this would be better than anything our "leaders" have come up with so far. Heard about Boxer-Warner-Lieberman lately? Now that's scary. Substantially higher energy costs = Great Depression #2. At least that's how I read it. The institute's approach would actually control energy prices, which is the exact opposite of the currently pending bill, while still reducing carbon emissions. Personally, I don't buy the whole global warming deal. The folks at the institute are sensitive types though, so they are concerned. In any case, the emissions would be reduced under our plan.