This is making my head go tilt

Now, Empath, before you assume the wrong thing........I sincerely have no political motivations about posting this link or starting this thread.

In fact, I wholeheartedly support this action since foreign governments are already allowed and are drilling outside of our territorial limits...but this is so far out of the box of what I would have expected from this administration I cannot even wrap my mind around it being done by them. None-the-less, I am thrilled to see such an interim step being taken.

I completely support moving towards green energy supply and useage as soon as is reasonably possible without causing undue economic hardships, but I believe interim steps like this are useful if done in a measured environmental manner.

I'm not sure if this thread can exist as within the guidelines of the Cafe, but if you need to close it, maybe consider leaving at least this original post and link, as I am not starting it with an intention to inflame or bait anyone.

Love your threads Lux...always thought provoking...I personally try not to wrap my head around this stuff...I try to think of things like this with a grain of salt, and try to look MUCH further out. This is how simple I like to keep it: Regardless of how much oil we drill, it's a limited resource...and when theirs run's out, we're next...Tree's and water...mass transit...steam trains, cars, and boats...those are the long term solutions. If we can't get that we can always go back to horses...sun and water-generated electricity, etc.

Wonder what will come of that guy that was able to get salt water to burn??? The military funded the study when he accidentaly set salt-water on fire by applying to much RF to it, so they have first dibs on the technology...water powered cars with combustion engines..now that's nifty!

angelofwar said:

This is how simple I like to keep it: Regardless of how much oil we drill, it's a limited resource...and when theirs run's out, we're next...Tree's and water...mass transit...steam trains, cars, and boats...those are the long term solutions. If we can't get that we can always go back to horses...sun and water-generated electricity, etc.

Click to expand...

Pretty much where I stand as well. I'll also agree with LuxLuthor to the extent that we need to keep conventional supplies flowing while we're transitioning to alternatives so that prices either remain stable, or increase slowly and predictably. The full transition could well take two or three decades. That means we'll be needing lots of oil/natural gas/coal for a while. It is in our best interests to stop mining the stuff long before it runs out, however. For starters, when it starts to become harder to get at costs will increase. We've already seen the havoc $5 gasoline can wreak on the economy. Now imagine $10 or $15 gasoline. That's what will happen if we don't get alternatives online ASAP. Also note that I prefer to use the term "get online" as opposed to "develop". Most alternatives don't need further development to see widespread use. It's simply a matter of having the will to start using them. Others may need further development, but that's no excuse to not start using them in niche applications to gain experience.

On another note, if anything I'm finding this administration to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic, so this is no surprise. The attitude seems to be use whatever works best, regardless of which side of the aisle it came from. Of course, I don't agree with everything being done, but that's been the case with every administration I've ever lived under.

On a related note as it has to do somewhat with energy and transportation, it seems we're finally going to get true high-speed rail in this country sometime in the next decade. It's long overdue and something which can only help us in the long haul.

And I would greatly appreciate it if this thread could be left open provided everyone remains civil. This is an interesting, very relevant to the future topic to discuss.

Petroleum is generally associated with heating, transportation, and electricity production. But there's a 4th proviso perhaps more important than the other three put together - food.

Plants need land and water and sun and nitrogen to grow. We ran out of Nitrogen 100 years ago and in the face of a global food production problem, a couple of Germans figured out how to covert natural gas into synthetic nitrogen. Without this single development, half the world's population would not eat.

Any attempt at drilling is basically a useless gesture. You can drill to high heavens and it will not be enough to cover the projected energy requirements. Not to mention that it's extremely expensive to do offshore drilling.

I'd much rather see that money invested in nuclear power and an electric transportation infrastructure. Tax the crap out of carbon with a minimum price floor* for oil and gas and use it to fund a nuke in every city. Screw the NIMBYs. Use advanced reactor designs, complete with reprocessing of waste. Electrify transportation, subsidize electric farm equipment and mining equipment. More rail, less highways. Wind and solar where feasible, with realistic goals. Ideally, a wartime mobilization of all resources dedicated to moving away from fossil fuels, which are conserved for only those applications that require them. Yes, the situation may actually be serious enough to justify this. People just don't know it yet (and probably won't until it's too late).

* Exceptions to taxing will be made by use: food production, deployment of nuclear power, etc. will see less taxes than fuel for recreational vehicles, for example.

+1 to everything you wrote. Only thing I might do differently is keep the price of conventional energy relatively low until the alternatives are fully phased in ( and that can be done in a decade with the wartime mobilization you described ). If some drilling is needed to keep prices low, then so be it. When the decade is up, with the alternatives solidly in place, place a permanent prohibitive tax on fossil fuels with the exceptions you mentioned ( food production, deployment of alternative sources, also making plastics ).

Keeping conventional energy prices low would make alternative energy uneconomic at least initially. So alternative energy systems will not be developed. Nobody wants to lose money.
It is the high gas prices and rising that caused all the interest in alternative transportation propulsion systems - electric, hybrid, hydrogen etc. Also interest in smaller vehicles.
In Germany oil prices are double what it is in North America. It became economically feasible to use wind power and Germany now have the world's largest wind farms. (An interesting side effect is that during the recession Germany's steel factories were going full blast because demand for windmill towers compensates for reduced demand for car bodies.)

ElectronGuru said:

Petroleum is generally associated with heating, transportation, and electricity production. But there's a 4th proviso perhaps more important than the other three put together - food.

Click to expand...

I'm always surprised when Plastics aren't mentioned.

I agree with nuclear power plants, but the last US nuclear plant to go live was 14 years ago and very few construction licenses exist. Without a solid portfolio of reliable electrical energy, renewable power is not practical on a large scale - at least not until the storage dilemma is solved.

jabe1 said:

I'm always surprised when Plastics aren't mentioned.

Click to expand...

Excellent point. Neither have ready substitutes and both are vital substances derived from petroleum.
And the oil/gas supplies they require are largely devoted to uses that do have substitutes.

On another note, if anything I'm finding this administration to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic, so this is no surprise

Click to expand...

Yeah, agree. I'm neutral politically, and just don't agree with the constant rhetoric that the current administration has some dark philosophical agenda. Pragmatic is a superb description, and I'm expecting this approach for the next couple of years. This is proof.

Other good points made in this thread about de-centralizing the power grid and using smaller and more numerous power plants. I'd also rather have a nuclear plant in my back yard than a coal plant, as long as it's not a CANDU design.

I hate to bring it up, but I still feel that global commodity markets are causing a lot of the price fuss and wasting a lot of resources forcing larger governments to compensate for all the flucations. While energy prices have been in flux the past couple of years, the damage caused by rapid increases in prices doesn't get offset by a sudden fall. IMHO, energy and commodity trading might need further regulation so it stays in line with actual demand, and this would require intervention by the U.S. along with China *and* Europe. If you aren't involved in the direct production of energy or fossil fuels, or it's delivery, then it should be penalized, or at least discouraged. Again, my conclusion is based on neutral political views.

The irony is if oil and energy prices hadn't surged a few summers ago we'd be seeing more exploration and greater emphasis on the transition to alternative sources.

This post at the NY Times gives a roundtable discussion of the move. Interesting read.

Well I don't know about the USA, but in England if we really needed to save energy we would abolish trains and buses, which are always late and therefore mostly empty except for confused OAPs clutching hamster cages who would be much happier if they had stayed at home, or noisy louts with metal bolts through their noses and their feet up on the seat opposite. Must be the worst gallons per passenger mile ratios to be found anywhere.

imo Yucca Mountain is the best storage alternative we have for a N. waste repository- maybe someday it will be used.

LuxLuthor said:

...but this is so far out of the box of what I would have expected from this administration I cannot even wrap my mind around it being done by them.

Click to expand...

People said the same thing about guns in national parks. At some point hopefully people will stop being surprised and see that this administration is all about common sense.

was.lost.but.now.found said:

People said the same thing about guns in national parks. At some point hopefully people will stop being surprised and see that this administration is all about common sense.

Click to expand...

well said sir

Well, the Uber-hardcore enviornmentalists are going to hate him.

But it's good to see he's not ignoring the most blatantly obvious solution to the problem.

was.lost.but.now.found said:

People said the same thing about guns in national parks. At some point hopefully people will stop being surprised and see that this administration is all about common sense.

Click to expand...

BS.

The "Protecting Americans from Violent Crimes" amendment was tucked away in the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009, proposed by a republican from Oklahoma. It was designed to end the injunction by a federal district court that stopped the implementation of GWB's reversal of the ban on CCW in national parks back in March of '09. It's not like the Obama administration approved a law that solely allowed CCW or firearms in general in national parks, it was stuck inside a bill that they had already hung their hat on and wanted to pass quickly, so they conceded that small section.

gallonoffuel said:

BS.

The "Protecting Americans from Violent Crimes" amendment was tucked away in the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009, proposed by a republican from Oklahoma. It was designed to end the injunction by a federal district court that stopped the implementation of GWB's reversal of the ban on CCW in national parks back in March of '09. It's not like the Obama administration approved a law that solely allowed CCW or firearms in general in national parks, it was stuck inside a bill that they had already hung their hat on and wanted to pass quickly, so they conceded that small section.

Click to expand...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/05/senate_votes_to_allow_guns_at.html

The Washington Post said:

This week both the House and Senate approved Sen. Tom Coburn's amendment to the credit card bill. The Oklahoma Republican and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has tried for years to get the measure approved, arguing that differences in state and federal firearms restrictions made it difficult for gun owners to travel between state and federal lands. Interior instituted new regulations in the waning weeks of the Bush administration, only to have them rejected by a federal judge in March. The Obama administration refused to appeal the decision and the president signed today's bill with no comment on the gun provisions. Approval of Coburn's bill is yet another of several recent setbacks for gun control advocates.

Click to expand...

Doesn't sound quite the way you described it. Don't believe everything you hear on talk radio. (oops did I say that?)

Edit: And one more thing, next time your going to call BS make sure you bring it.

Actually it sounds exactly as I had described it. Off topic though, I'll hold the rest of my comments.

EDIT: And one more thing, next time you intend to make an argument, stooping to insults is comparable to concession.