Northwest Fishing Reports

Well the "global warming" thing was so much fun I think we should discuss another current emotional hotbutton: the price of gas.

Looks like we gonna hit $4 a gallon this summer and for that we must blame someone. Yes. The wretched perpetrators must be identified and held responsible.


I'll get in the first dig...


I blame the environmentalists. They won't let us drill anywhere, they won't let us build any new refineries, and they keep getting legislation passed that requires special mixtures that cost more money. Their much vaunted "solutions" like windmills and solar panels are a joke and there is no question in my mind that they are responsible for this meteoric rise to $4.....


What say you?????

One thing that I have noticed is there are too many so-called reasons for high gas prices: the war, supply, demand, no new refineries, refineries that are off-line, summer blend, winter blend, hurricanes, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Russia. I hope I didn't forget anything.

What it boils down to though, in my opinion, is our current administration. Bush is an oil man. He is in it for what he can get out of it. Sadly, I don't think we will see a drop in gas prices until his term is over.

Easy...... are you just figuring that out now?

Good list EL... only thing you forgot is rapidly increasing demand in China and India...


you make a fair point about GW but I'm giving him a pass on this issue....

There are really only three ways to bring down the price of gas and these are..

1. reduce personal comsumption (70% of gasoline burned in this country is burned by people going back and forth to work)

2. Increase supply (e.g. drill for more oil and build more refineries)

3. Promote "real" alternatives (i.e. nuclear power, electric cars, mass transportation, biodiesel.... wind, solar, and alcohol don't count because they are only proposed for the emotional effect. they don't do anything to shorten gas lines)..


In regard to Item number 1 I'll admit that the environmentalists score more verbal points. GW should be doing more in this area but our eco-evangelists talk the talk without walking the walk.. take for example Al Gore's huge home and gas guzzling vehicles, Governor Schwartzenneger's (Governor Green he likes to be called) extensive stable of hummers, and hollywoods long list of green talking stars who have private jets and 4 mpg vehicles....


In regard to item 2 GW has done everything possible to increase supply which would lower prices and reduce Oil Company profits. Environmentalists have thwarted him at every opportunity.

ditto for item 3......


that gives GW 2 rounds out of 3 and a clear victory....

Marc Martyn wrote: Easy...... are you just figuring that out now?

No, I have thought that for a while.

littleriver wrote: There are really only three ways to bring down the price of gas and these are..

1. reduce personal comsumption (70% of gasoline burned in this country is burned by people going back and forth to work)

2. Increase supply (e.g. drill for more oil and build more refineries)

3. Promote "real" alternatives (i.e. nuclear power, electric cars, mass transportation, biodiesel.... wind, solar, and alcohol don't count because they are only proposed for the emotional effect. they don't do anything to shorten gas lines)..

We don't use 70% of gasoline just by going back and forth to work...
You shouldn't listen to every fact people tell you. That's bs. Ever think about how much gasoline is burned by tankers and airplanes and semi's? That fact is wrong.

And we are promoting real alternatives: hybrid cars and biodiesel and mass transportation. W

And yea, no kidding WIND SUN and ALCOHOL don't help out with the gas situation. Gas doesn't come from sun or a turning windmill. It helps out with our energy so we wont have to rely on coal and have to burn as much coal to choke up out atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

The oil companies are behind it all. There is technology to make cars more fule efficient and the oil companies are in bed with the car companies to prevent this and slow down innovation for other fuel methods.

I've heard that you can make cars more fuel efficient. But the guys said that they could get them to like 100mpg. So I kinda call bs on that. I think someone would have spilt the beans by now if that was true. It's actually kinda amazing that with a gallon of gas you can get a 2 ton truck 13 or 14 miles. That's pretty crazy actually thinking about that...

Sam Kafelafish wrote:

littleriver wrote: We don't use 70% of gasoline just by going back and forth to work...
You shouldn't listen to every fact people tell you. That's bs. Ever think about how much gasoline is burned by tankers and airplanes and semi's? That fact is wrong.

And we are promoting real alternatives: hybrid cars and biodiesel and mass transportation. Where have you been? Nucluear power: sure lets just pour nuclear stuff in our gas tanks. Good idea. Not.

And yea, no kidding WIND SUN and ALCOHOL don't help out with the gas situation. Gas doesn't come from sun or a turning windmill. It helps out with our energy so we wont have to rely on coal and have to burn as much coal to choke up out atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

good going sam... a real honest to goodness solid response.......... I was starting to get worried...


Actually we do burn 70% of our gasoline going back and forth to work, but there's a caveat.... your response is actually very insightful.... Planes burn a higher octane kind of fuel that's not included in the gasoline numbers and semis and tankers and railroad engines burn diesel.... so technically I was correct but the number is a bit deceptive when we discussing the total energy picture....


hybrid cars are helping but it's the japanese, not the american, car manufacturers who have been leading the way....

mass transportation is coming and it can't be fast enough.... the new technologies will be using electric power rather than diesel (most trains now run on diesel) and that's where nuclear power comes in.... doesn't do much good to switch to electricity to run your transportation system if you have to burn diesel or natural gas to run the generators.... it's even worse to burn coal...

Wind, Sun, Alchohol..... you gotta start doing some research on these options Sam...... I've been studying and debating them for over 2 decades now... all are net energy consumers when you calculate in all the factors........ Denmark is the leader worldwide in wind power. they have literally destroyed their every landscape with noisy, bird killing windmills and the total contribution to their energy supply is under 10%.. last real number I read was 3%.... Most just don't understand that solar panels suck up huge quantities of energy to produce and typically never even give back what they took to be born before they poop out and die....................... I've lost track of the number of environmental enthusiasts who I could not convince to install wind and solar power functionalities at their own homes and then cut themselves off from the grid............. If one is unwilling to do this then one is just another Al Gore or another John Travolta.. someone who loves to talk the talk but is totally incapable of walking the walk................................


the expansion of solar and wind power plants in this country has been exponential over the last couple of decades but we are still faced with the reality that over 50% of our nation's electricity was produced by burning coal 2 decades ago and over 50% of our nation's electricity is produced by burning coal today......


It's time to get out of LaLa land and start talking about real options... if we don't.. the price of gas and the price of electricity and the price of natural gas is just going to keep going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up..

Now it's time to hear from one of those guys who drives a 6 mpg pickup truck, tows a boat with
an 8gph outboard, and is totally convinced that President George W. Bush is the only one responsible
for these recent and very aggressive increases in the price of petro.

What get's me is the politicians in Seattle and King county who are trying to force people out their cars when there is no real alternative to the commute in place. I tried the Metro trip planner and discovered it would ADD 2 1/2 hours per day to my commute. That's a lot of wasted fishing time!

LittleRiver,

Within your 20 years of experience in researching/debating these issues you must have found some easy ways to help with these problems.
What have you personally done in ur life to use alternate means of energy or reduce your use of petroleum products?
Do you drive a hybrid? Id like to know some ways that work for you that i might be able to use myself.
Maybe you have some really insightful things to say. I think other readers might want to hear some ideas also.
Much appreciated, -Jimmy

Good question Jimmy but, unfortunately, energy policy isn't like personal fitness.... with personal fitness my success is totally a function of what I do.. what regiments I can adhere to... with energy policy one individual's contribution has little impact on the final results...

I do drive a Ford Ranger with the small engine and when you switch to synthetic oil these little puppies will get you 30 mpg... not as good as a hybrid but I can't throw my 12 foot mckenzie style drift boat in the back of a hybrid and go fishing...

But I cannot tell a lie.. If I had John Travolta's money I would probably own a private jet or two myself......


The most important thing anyone can do in regard to energy policy (i.e. gas prices, electrical bills, and heating costs) is to educate yourself and join the public debate.... dig beyond the mush they feed you on the nightly news and what you get from the eco-evangelists and try to get to information that's credible and once you feel comfortable that what you know is credible start talking about it with friends and associates...... hone your skills... when objections come up that you don't know how to deal with go back to the books and figure out what you didn't understand and the next time that objection comes up you will have the right answer........

We shouldn't have to do this... our political leaders should listen to the credible scientists and engineers and pursue policy options that are at least rational from that perspective....... but, believe me, that is not happening..... I worked in the Department of Energy Bureaucracy for over 17 years and was absolutely appalled at what I saw.... it was bad under Reagan but when Clinton came in and appointed Hazel O'Leary (we called her Lazy O'Leary) Secretary of Energy things went from bad to worse. Hazel quickly surrounded herself with washed out activists from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and I spent the last few years of my career dealing indirectly with those morons.................


things got better under GW... Spencer Abrams, in my opinion, was one of the best Secretaries we've ever had (and he's an Arab to boot). He got things going very quietly for the restart of nuclear power and new plants have been announced for South Carolina and New Mexico.... Abrams didn't just work to get a couple of reactors going though.. he quietly built up the entire infrastructure so things can happen fast once the political winds start blowing in the right direction......

but nuclear isn't going to solve all the problems.. we need to tap ANWAR, build more refineries, and put in more drilling platforms off the east and west coasts of this country............... and build more mass transportation, and pursue viable alternatives like bio-diesel (e.g. filling up with vegetable oil), and build electric cars, etc., etc.......

of course we have lots, and lots, and lots, of coal and coal can be converted to a synthetic crude oil but hopefully things won't go too far in that direction... I worked in coal research for a few years and man, that stuff is dirty...........

bottom line is that the options and the technologies are there but nothing good is going to happen on the energy front until the political winds change..... and that has to happen one person at a time......... just try to do your part...

But we use a ton more oil then just with the gasoline in our automobiles. It doesn't matter how much gas we use with our cars, becuase we still guzzle gas with all the other things that we have to put oil byproducts in.
And wind or solar power still doesn't help out with the gas line. maybe take that thought into the Global warming topic. I don't think wind can be turned into gas, unless mr. I've researched everything for 2 decades
has an ingredient that turns a breeze of wind into gasoline for my car. It DOES help though for renewable energy, maybe not as much as we would like it to be, but I'd
rather have better alternatives the burning coal. You do realize that if we tap that Alaskan national Wildlife that oil supply will only last America for 4 days with their current usage?
That's a big thing people need to know. It's not going to carry oil prices down or solve any oil crisis. It'll just reduce our dependency on middle east oil for 4 days. I do think we could put more platforms out there though,
but there is only so much.

And yes I agree, our current state government is also horrible when it comes to solving out issues like this. Look at the transportation system we have hear. Go to the east coast and look at how popular mass public transit
is over there. Why can't we figure out a subway or a light rail or a bus system that people actually use? Why don't more people carpool over here? Washington can't figure out a mass public transit system
if the politicians lives depended on it.

I also think that nuclear energy isn't the best alternative. I don't know what you plan to do with all the radioactive material that comes from it. Like those new holes we are burying to put all out nuclear waste
in those mountains in the middle of Nevada? Great, but how are we going to get thousands of truckloads and trainloads to those mountains without any spills or accidents? All it takes is for a terrorist to
get a softball sized glob of that plutonium and stick it in the water supply and they could wipe out all of Bellevue.

you make a few good points here Sam.... and you are correct in saying that ANWAR won't buy us much time, but we need to keep drilling because time is what we need to buy.......

I think I totally agree with you on the mass transportation stuff....... I've been trying to keep up with this topic even though it doesn't get into the news much (I love Portland's MAX and go down to ride it from time to time just to enjoy the ride).... The major manufacturers of mass transportation systems seem to be in a development and bidding war that can only mean transportation authorities are out there shopping.... a few weeks back France made a big deal out of setting a land speed record for an electric train.. as I recall it was electric and it was clocked at over 300mph..... this is just what we need to be building in this country right now...... government entities don't try to set land speed records for the fun of it.... they do it because they want to bring attention to a product and it's capabilities... they want to get into the business of building electric trains that run passengers at high speeds.....probably not 300mph, but 150 to 200 would make trains extremely competitive with air travel in medium range (e.g. under 500 miles) markets.......


most americans have been totally brainwashed in regard to "nuclear waste".. actually nuclear waste is relatively easy to deal with. Nuclear fuel reprocessing (e.g. nuclear waste) is the UK's largest source of foreign currency and France is right in there competing against them for the business....... Eco-Evangelists have kept our nation out of the competition.......

but let's start from the beginning.... Nuclear fuel is produced by mining ore from the ground and concentrating it into enriched Uranium (e.g a U-235 concentration higher than the .72% found in natural Uranium) for use in fuel rods. When the rods are ejected from the reactor they contain a bunch of fission products along with the unburned U-235.... Fission products are a variety of shorter half-life isotopes like Strontium-90 and Cesium-137.... These "impurities" are relatively easy to separate and store and their quantities are miniscule in relation to the total energy that was put into the grid when they were made..... and Cesium-137 actually has some important commercial uses in the areas of non-destructive testing and sanitization....

Conventional wisdom has it that nuclear power plants make our planet more radioactive... actually the reverse is true..... the uranium taken from the earth's crust was radioactive before it was mined.... the fission products produced in the reactor are more radioactive than the uranium fissioned in the reactor but they have much shorter half-lives than the U-235 burned to create them....

About 450 years after a spent fuel rod leaves a reactor core the remaining radioactivity is actually less than what it would have been if the fuel rod had never entered the reactor........ please note that the uranium in the fuel rod was mined from the earth's crust.... it was just as radioactive when it was in the earth's crust as it is in the fuel rod.... nothing was done in the processing to make it a fuel rod to change it's radioactivity... the U-235 was simply concentrated.. nothing else.....


most arn't familiar with the great variety of natural sources of radioactivity we deal with every day.. Ionizing radiation is odorless, colorless, and tasteless........ that's why the first knowledge the western world had of the chernobyl accident was radiation alarms going off at nuclear power plants in Sweden..... nuclear power plants and nuclear laboratories are the only places with the instruments needed to detect radioactivity.. radioactivity can exist without our knowledge if there is nothing to detect it's presence....................... another note about chernobyl..... The criteria used to evacuate homes from the communities surrounding Chernobyl following the accident was 4 pico-curies per liter... what this means is the technicians went in and took air samples and if lab results showed radioactivity levels to be higher than 4 pico-curies per liter then the home was ordered evacuated.......... there was an interesting article in one of the Health Physics mags I used to read from time to time about 15 years ago... it noted that about 5% of the homes in New York state had radioactivity levels greater than 4 pico-curies per liter.. source of the radioactivity was radon.......... I can recall bringing this up to an environmental activist I used to spar with from time to time then and her response was that this isn't an important issue.... (wow).....



there is radioactivity in the food we eat and the air we breath.... always has been always will be... humans evolved in a sea of radioactivity so to say something is radioactive should be about as frightening as saying that it's wet or that it's hot or that it's cold..... of course if it get's too wet it drowns, if it gets too hot it fries and if it gets too cold it freezes...... radioactivity in terms of health threat is only meaningful if it followed by something clarifying how much radioactivity we are talking about...

anything under half a rem (reontgen equivalent man) is ho hummer stuff... 2 pack a day smokers take about 8 Rem per year from the Polonium 210 in the tobacco they smoke (tobacco leaves selectively concentrate Po-210 from the soil and the Po-210 is in the soil because it's a decay product of Uranium and Radium that is in all soil and present in the earth's crust at an average abundance of about 4ppm)



another very interesting "radioactive scare" story involves the molten lava that forms the earth's core... I think everyone knows that continents are giant tectonic plates floating on the molten lava below them... but not too many seem to understand that the center of the earth has had lots of time to cool..... A little over 100 years ago Dr. Kalvin (the Kalvin scale is named after him) calculated that the temperature of the center of the earth should be about 70 or 80 degrees F...... I think it was news coverage of his findings that inspired Jules Vern's novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth"....... anyways it turned out that his calculations were correct but he had failed to take one important factor into account... At that time the world of science was totally unfamiliar with the concept of radioactive isotopes and radioactive decay.. Madame Curie had not made her now famous discoveries yet...........

so it turns out that the reason the center of our planet is molten and the reason we have earthquakes and the reason we have volcanoes is because radioactive decay (mostly from Uranium and Radium and their daughters) provides enough heat to keep everything firey hot.... (and this was going on for millions of years before humans built the first atomic reactor.... oops, probably should also let you know that evidence of the very first atomic reactor was found at the Oklo mines in the African Nation of Gabon about a quarter century back.... isotopic evidence from that mine showed rather conclusively that a natural fission reactor had been active there for roughly 10,000 years and that this happened about 100 million years ago)

but there's a plus side to the molten center of the earth thing...... most scientists who follow that particular subject seem to agree that if the center of our planet wasn't molten all the water would just drain to the lowest possible place it could find and everything would be barren, thirsty, and lifeless topside......


a good place to go kick these kinds of ideas around is on the forums of Steve Milloy's web site "www.junkscience.com".....
there are some pretty sharp technical minds there and they always seem ready to engage in thoughtful conversation..

also Steve's written a couple of good books that would probably be worth reading for those who didn't get much science in High Sc

great thread! a real thought provoking and constructive conversation.

my two cents. the problem with public transportation is that everyone wants the OTHER people to use it. which is why i want more roads built to lessen the time spent burning fuel in traffic. but that will never happen. :(

compare the number of people killed in nuclear plant related accidents from the dawn of time to the number of people killed in coal mine accidents. nuclear is an answer to many of our problems.

i don't really like the idea of using our food to power our toys. food shouldn't go up in price just so we can pay less at the pump. we can cut some gas taxes if we are that desperate to help drivers.

Hydro power is a really effective source of energy. Las Vegas wouldn't be there if their wasn't the couple major rivers on the Colorado, BUT, dams have some serious side effects and many say aren't worth it.

Let me be upfront about two things here. First, I'm a Democrat and consider myself an environmentalist. Second, I'm getting awfully tired of people who don't know what they're talking about blaming everything on Democrats and environmentalists.

Here are some basic facts about high gas prices. What you pay at the pump is a result of supply and demand, period. When people want more gas than the companies have available to sell, they raise the price until demand comes into balance with supply. That's Economics 101. The reason gas prices fluctuate so frequently is because both supply and demand fluctuate frequently. Now let's say the legislature hadn't raised gas taxes by 5 cents (with 4 more cents coming) to pay for needed road projects. How many of you think gas would cost 5 cents less? Let's have a show of hands. Well, you're all wrong. What would happen is the pump price would be the same, but the oil companies would get the nickel instead of the state.

World crude prices have risen in recent years because of increased demand, from under 80 million barrels per day (bpd) to about 86 million bpd today. Most of the increased demand has come from the U.S., where people are driving gas guzzlers again, and as a result of industrialization and rapid economic growth in India and China. Needless to say, the big war in Iraq is also consuming a lot of petroleum -- enough to impact civilian markets.

However, while crude prices remain high, this spring's high gas prices are primarily a result of refinery bottlenecks in the U.S. This is the time of year that refineries switch over from winter heating fuel to gasoline production, and also do routine maintenance. There have also been some refinery accidents that have taken some refinery capacity down recently.

It's not true that environmentalists are responsible for high gas prices. The number of refineries in the U.S. has fallen since the early 1990s, but not because of environmental regulation. The big oil companies are closing down older, smaller, less efficient refineries. What the rightwing propaganda machine doesn't tell you is that total U.S. refining capacity has been growing steadily for the last 15 years. That's because the oil companies are expanding the big refineries. There are no NIMBY or environmentalist issues there; the new capacity at the existing large refineries more than makes up for the old, small, inefficient refineries that have been closed down, and the U.S. had more refining capacity at the end of Clinton's presidency than when he took office -- and has even more today. In addition, there's absolutely no reason why petroleum has to be refined in the U.S.; the largest and most efficient refineries of all are offshore, and nothing is stopping the oil companies from importing refined products. In fact, they do -- lots of it. However, it takes markets some time to respond to changes in inventories, and moving product to where the market demand is, is very complicated and doesn't happen overnight.

Now let's talk about long-term crude supplies. The world has about 900 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves, and at the current burn rate of over 30 billion bbls a year, we'd go through it in less than 30 years even if there's no increase in consumption. But of course consumption is growing -- rapidly. Over half the world production comes from a handful of supergiant oilfields, and all of them have been in production for over 50 years and have entered into production declines. The last supergiant oilfield was found in 1970. The new reserves being found today are generally in fields of less than 1 billion barrels (roughly a 12-day supply) and are expensive reserves, mostly deepwater oil that has to sell for at least $40 to be economically viable. The bottom line is you aren't going to see $20 a barrel oil again. Ever.

The world still has vast untapped deposits of tar sands, oil shale, and coal, all of which can be converted to petroleum, but not cheaply. Now you're talking about $100 crude and $6 gas, which is where we're headed as the low-cost conventional oil is depleted. It costs $1.50 a barrel to pump oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia; it costs at least 10 to 20 times that much to get conventional oil from the arctic or synfuels from tar sands. The way they get oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia is they inject seawater into the oil-bearing rock to push the oil up the wells. They started at the outside of the oilfields and work their way in as the oil is removed. At the beginning, the Saudis pumped about 200,000 barrels a day of seawater into the ground; now it's over 6 million bbls a day. The prime layers of oil-bearing rock in their most important oilfields are nearly depleted, and they're now trying to get oil out of denser rock formations that hold less oil and are harder to get oil from. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what this means for world oil supply.

Now let's talk about ANWR, which is estimated to hold 6 to 12 billion bbls. Certainly, this makes it one of North America's largest oilfields. But the U.S. consumes 7 billion bbls. a year, so if we develop ANWR, you're talking about 11 to 20 months of U.S. supply or about 3 months of world supply. Peak production at ANWR will be about 2 million bpd, less than 1/10th of U.S. daily consumption. No one in the oil industry thinks developing ANWR will solve the world's oil problems or make the U.S. independent of the Mideast -- only ignorant, uninformed people think that. Moreover, if the permits were issued today, the first oil would not reach market for 8 to 10 years, and by then ANWR will only replace declining production from Prudhoe Bay, so it's not new supply, it's only replacement supply.

Now let's talk about Mexico's Cantarell oilfield. Mexico is one of the U.S.'s largest foreign suppliers, the other two being Canada and Saudi Arabia. Cantarell is an ancient asteroid impact crater than concentrated billions of barrels of oil in a very small area, and as of 2003 was producing over 2 million bpd, making it the second most prolific oilfield in the world, behind Saudi Arabia's huge Ghawar field, which produces 5 million bpd and has no peer. Cantarell accounts for something like 75% of Mexico's oil production. Because of its unique physical structure, Cantarell depleted very rapidly, and is expected to fall below 1 million bpd by next year and continue to decline at a rate of 14% a year. The effect on world markets of Cantarell's falling production will be roughly equivalent to taking Venezuela or Nigeria out of production. In other words, expect even tighter supplies and even higher prices, unless a global recession reduces demand.

In short, there is absolutely nothing on the horizon to suggest oil prices will fall back to $10, $20, or even $40 a barrel. Ain't gonna happen. Although this spring's gas price spike has more to do with low gasoline inventories and a couple of U.S. refineries being down right now, gas above $2.50 is here to stay, and we're going to see $3 and even $4 gas from time to time. This has absolutely nothing to do with gas taxes, Democrats, or environmentalists. It's a function of the fact that U.S. production has been declining since 1970 because we've used up the cheap and easy-to-get oil, and world demand keeps growing and growing, and new oil reserves are harder to come by and cost more to find and develop. It's that simple.

Nuclear reactors are safer and more efficient than they were 30 years ago. However, the U.S. nuclear industry has repeatedly proved to the American public they can't be trusted. Their track record is one of lies, shoddy construction, and irresponsible management. In addition, the Price-Anderson Act makes surrounding communities suffer the loss if there's an accident. That law should be repealed, and nuclear plants should be required to carry enough insurance to compensate the people who would lose their homes and businesses from a nuclear accident.

Disposal of nuclear wastes is an unresolved issue.

But the biggest problem of all is the world supply of uranium is even more limited than the oil supply. There's only about a 50-year supply of uranium, and if we start building a lot of power generation reactors, the uranium will be used up as fast as the oil is being used up.

Yes, perhaps nuclear should be a greater part of the mix -- if we can fix the things that are wrong with it -- but it's not a panacea.

Hey Everyone,

Great topic!!! It is my "humble" opinion that no matter who is in "Office" politically the cost of gas, and doing business, in general will continue to go up. Yes, dealing with petroleum is an economic issue. Petroleum is a finite resource that many "special" interest groups use to scare the public into believing we could possibly run out of someday. Somehow these "Petroleum Giants" are protecting us from ourselves. How often do we hear about all the good they are doing with their research? (Exxon...) The fact here is that this is at least a multi-billion dollar business in the U.S.A.. A wise old man once said "He who controls the communication controls the power"... How often do you hear about Bill Gates, or his family, in the news? Usually only when HE wants it associated with Microsoft. Think about how much of our Agricultural products in America we simply let go to waste in order to raise the price of the crop. Wouldn't this be better used to feed the world? Hey, I have an idea...maybe we could produce an alternative fuel??? and try to help to reduce the consumption of petroleum products....Naaaa...that would never work!!!! It would cost too much. I do not think the "Petroleum Giants" could find the $$$$ for that research..,LOL!!! The people hold the power...If only they knew...."POWER TO THE PEOPLE, RIGHT ON!!!!" John Winston Lennon...Now let's fill-up and go fishin' I'm gone...