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[Nikov]

Rules;
You must be in action or inaction.
You cannot invoke powers of government.
You can make a quick buck.

Post them here.

1. Refuse to knowingly buy from BP or its affiliates until a solution is acheived that makes your satisfaction, and invite others to do the same (Hey, look what I just did!)

Results of Experiment:

This thread was a social experiment to see how many people would offer suggestions for themselves to solve the problem rather than the 'Hole in the Bottom of the Sea' thread, which has turned to discussing ways other people should spend, sue or suffer. This experiment has proved my hypothesis that people would rather gripe about how they can't make a difference and continue talking about how other people can instead of take matters into their own hands. Nobody suggested volunteering for cleanup, nobody suggested working for a company doing cleanup, nobody suggested getting their fishing vessel or buying one to go down and mop up oil for a paycheck from BP. Everyone just said 'meh, can't be arsed.'

[smigenboger]

Consider how much oil goes into distribution. If you wanted to be free from BP, you'd have to stop buying food from groceries, end that habit of buying clothes, electronics, turn off your AC, and maybe even stop your plumbing if it's linked to oil consumption indirectly 

[Nikov]

So if you're a trucker you should go to the Marathon instead of the BP to fill up on diesel, got it. Thanks for the constructive post.

[smigenboger]

I mean doing just about anything will support those truckers' use with BP oil, it's not as simple as boycotting BP gas stations

[kuro_suna]

Trying to boycott any oil company is pointless unless you want to live as a pre-industrial sustenance farmer. All you can do is hope solar and clean nuclear technology becomes more practical before we completely destroy the planet.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Grab a spoon and develop a taste for crude oil?

[smigenboger]

Is the surface oil public domain? We could always stockpile it

[smjjames]

Is the surface oil public domain? We could always stockpile it

Its in international waters I think, although mainly on the US side.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Here is a link with a map. It looks like the whole Gulf of Mexico, and all the Caribbean islands, are claimed territorial waters. It would have to get well out into open Atlantic for you to harvest free oil.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Here is a link with a map. It looks like the whole Gulf of Mexico, and all the Caribbean islands, are claimed territorial waters. It would have to get well out into open Atlantic for you to harvest free oil.

And you'd let that stop you? If the Coast Guard gets pissed at you for it, just pull out a lighter and hold the entire damn Gulf of Mexico hostage.

[Blacken]

Trying to boycott any oil company is pointless unless you want to live as a pre-industrial sustenance farmer. All you can do is hope solar and clean nuclear technology becomes more practical before we completely destroy the planet.

Nuclear power is as clean as it practically needs to be. The fearmongering over nuclear waste byproducts is silly. That said, what we actually need is battery technology. One of the primary reasons that fossil fuels are so valuable is that they store a shitload of energy in a very small package. Hydrogen technology may get there, but it's too early to tell.

And it's not about "hoping." All your hope and seventy-five cents will leave me bumming a quarter to get a cup of coffee. You want to do something? Lay out a plan to become a chemical or nuclear engineer or a nuclear physicist, and follow it.

[alway]

Trying to boycott any oil company is pointless unless you want to live as a pre-industrial sustenance farmer. All you can do is hope solar and clean nuclear technology becomes more practical before we completely destroy the planet.

Nuclear power is as clean as it practically needs to be. The fearmongering over nuclear waste byproducts is silly. That said, what we actually need is battery technology. One of the primary reasons that fossil fuels are so valuable is that they store a shitload of energy in a very small package. Hydrogen technology may get there, but it's too early to tell.

And it's not about "hoping." All your hope and seventy-five cents will leave me bumming a quarter to get a cup of coffee. You want to do something? Lay out a plan to become a chemical or nuclear engineer or a nuclear physicist, and follow it.

Hmm... Since the avg price of coffee is about $1.50 a cup, that means each person's hope is about $.50... So all I need to do is steal the hope out of every person in the world, and I can become a billionaire. I never knew becoming an evil genious trying to take over the world was so profitable!

The problem with nuclear waste is more an issue of quantity. Yuca Mountain was cancled, and so we really have no practical place to keep it safe indefinately. Reprocessing is way too expensive to be economically viable without several decades of constant uranium cost increase. I did hear some vague whisperings about fusion-fision hybrid reactors capable of using up said waste, but I haven't yet looked into that claim... If that works out, nuclear is quite a good plan.

But as you said, battery technology is what is really needed. All the nuclear in the world can't save us if we can't use the electricity generated by it to power automobiles. And with ranges of under 100 miles per multi-hour recharge, current batteries just won't cut it for most people's daily needs. Hydrogen really isn't a very viable alternative as a fuel source, since it would need an infrastructure equalling if not exceeding that of current gasoline. Gas powered cars work so well as a mode of transportation because there are multiple gas stations in every town, village, and everywhere in between. There can't be widespread hydrogen adoption without widespread hydrogen infrastructure. And without widespread hydrogen adoption, there is no business incentive to create hydrogen refueling stations.

[Blacken]

The problem with nuclear waste is more an issue of quantity. Yuca Mountain was cancled, and so we really have no practical place to keep it safe indefinately.

That's a problem of politics, not engineering. It's called "a really big hole in a batholith," and we have a nice huge batholith--the Canadian Shield. Something tucked away down there would be safe for geologic amounts of time.

[PTTG??]

Uranium and other nuclear fuels are rarer than oil is. However, people seem to forget that hey, it's still giving off huge amounts of energy. Why is it only good for fuel for such a short amount of time? Why not process the spent fuel into new fuel until it isn't dangerously radioactive anymore?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Uranium and other nuclear fuels are rarer than oil is. However, people seem to forget that hey, it's still giving off huge amounts of energy. Why is it only good for fuel for such a short amount of time? Why not process the spent fuel into new fuel until it isn't dangerously radioactive anymore?

Because spent fuel is just that, spent. It is no longer fit for nuclear fission, but still emmits gamma radiation. Thus, the danger they pose. While it could be possible to garner energy from just that, you would be spending more energy in the collection then what you get out of it. We can't make spent fuel new, we can only wait untill it reaches enough half-lives to decay back into the background radiation. The entire universe is slowly decaying, and eventualy there won't be any nuclear fuel left. Anywhere.