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Soul searching
That is pretty good. lol
That sums it up. Stubborn donkey “saving” our oil for what reason while we suffer? If only the artist had been able to show a time lapse.
NJLawyer post 2,
and we should devour our fragile remaining reserves so people can drive their cars rather than treasuring it as the strategic material it is and using only in extremis?
Remember, all of our remaining reserves is a small portion of our civilian needs and a trivial amount of the overall market: it will have negligible effect on price.
Do you remember why Japan went to war at the beginning of WWII?
“…and we should devour our fragile remaining reserves so people can drive their cars rather than treasuring it as the strategic material it is and using only in extremis?“
I notice some folks just can’t resist being alarmist…
Make it man post 4,
and tell me about the Hubert curve?
And would you like to recite what the actions were that finally made Japan decide to go to war?
It might be amusing to consider Japan’s actions in light of some of the more recent U.S. actions in the world.
People that don’t want Americans to drill for their own vast reserves of oil are the same people who will tell you not to plant food if you are starving and broke, or not to give blood before having surgery when the blood bank is empty, not to get a drink out of the tap if you are thirsty or drill a new well for water if the old well goes dry or tell you not to learn to read and write English if you are immigrating to America, not to spend your savings on an education or a place to live, etc. They just hate you and want you to suffer as much as possible - especially if you are poor. They just hate America and do not trust what America made America great - Americans and their can do ingenuity.
llama post 6,
one difference:
blood is renewable
food is renewable
water in general is renewable (an interesting point here)
oil IS NOT renewable
Based on your post, I believe you have not looked into the mathematics of oil reserves.
P.S. drilling our own oil reserves will directly not help the consumer appreciably (even McCain admits this). It will help increase the profits of oil companies however!
Musing’s right. We oughta just save the oil to make pretty colored plume fountains for future generations.
After all…oil is not natural. We’re not finding more and larger reserves every decade despite our increasing harvest and use.
We oughta force those oil companies to figure out how to use the moon for something other than a pretty ornament. They couldn’t be in the oil business merely for PROFIT!?!?!?!?!??? Book stores don’t sell books for profit! Everyone knows that. Why should the oil companies be any different?
Based on Musing’s posting - he must have a secret plan for a hot air powered vehicle.
#7 Musing
“oil IS NOT renewable”
Wrong
Since you seem to lean left, here is an unassailable source.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/index.html
#7 Musing
“oil IS NOT renewable”
Wrong
Since you seem to lean left, here is an unassailable source. CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/index.html
Mickel post 8,
well it would appear that most of the arguments in favor of drilling in the few remaining U.S. controlled reserves are vacuous.
So lets see if those favoring such drilling can base their models on facts:
1) Is the Hubert curve incorrect?
- include both the supply and demand portions of the discussion in your argument
2) is oil effectviely not renewable?
3) will the oil supplied from these sources have neglgible impact on U.S. prices?
4) will the oil supplied from these sources have minimal impact on U.S. availability?
5) will using these resources not significantly enrich the oil companies?
We can make the following assertions:
- tanks, military trucks, and aircraft need the high density energy of oil
- naval vessels in general can be designed to avoid using oil
- civilian uses can in general be designed to avoid using oil except for civilian aircraft
So it would seem that this is a classic case where the proposed action will have minimal impact on the problem AND appears to have the potential for signficant negative strategic impact.
If this were not so, why do we have the strategic petroleum reserve?
I sense a classic case of failure to be willing to accept delayed gratification. Are the proponents so materialistic that they are not willing to undergo a relatively modest (or negligible) pain for potentially significant strategic benefit?
It is worth looking at what happened between the U.S. and Japan in 1941.
Bob Buckles post 10,
an interesting article.
You do of course see that this is a very inefficient approach to solar energy?
Oil of course is formed naturally BUT it either takes a long time OR it is difficult to create in large quantities.
So tell me how this will get us say the 20 million barrels of oil a day that the U.S. needs.
Good luck.
So effectively, oil is not renewable.
P.S. I can in principle also make oil using organic chemistry procedures, but the cost and quantities make this approach prohibitive also.
So then … since oil is not renewable (at least quickly) the Democratic answer is to tax our own supply and continue to pay terrorists to kill us. You see, the higher the price and the more of us die, the less demand there will be. Brilliant!
xion post 13,
you and I have discussed this many times and you know this is not my answer.
I have provided my suggestions before and you agreed with them but for the record:
1) conservation as a short term holding action
2) supported by a concerted program to become oil independent
- focus on nuclear for electricity
- supported by whatever renewables are tactically useful
- convert as much as possible of our rolling fleet to hydrogen
Obama has added an interesting twist today: provide an energy tax rebate. This has the interewsting property of keeping energy prices up BUT moderating the effective cost of a reasonable use of energy. And of course, if a person wants to be effiecient and use less energy than most, they can use the difference as they see fit. It would appear that market forces would then drive us towards reduced oil usage.
And save the U.S. controlled oil for true security needs as described above.
Also, oil is an excellent starting point for organic chemical engineering.
Musing,
Please not hydrogen fuel cells. It is too far off and far too expensive for even millionaires to use. Today in the hotbed of green weenies, San Jose has purchased 3 hydrogen fuel cell buses. They will not be doing so again any time soon and should dump the ones they bought.
The buses cost 6 times more than a regular bus but that isn’t the real problem even though it is insane, the maintenance cost is $51 a mile instead of the $1.63 a mile for fossil fuels.
If you want to burn it instead in internal gasoline engines, that is another story. But rather than do that and have to create a whole new infrastructure, why don’t we Use the gasification of coal into fuel instead with current off the shelf proven technology and use the infrastructure we have in place today for gas stations and the delivery of fuel to them?
Poor George W. He has so many good ideas to help our country, but he just can’t do anything with this Congress.
Nevermind that he promised in 2000 to bring oil prices down from the scandalous heights to which that nefarious Clinton had driven them. He said he’d negotiate with oil producing nations and convince them, by the sheer force of his affable personality, to increase supply. And then he had his own Congress for 6 years.
So he got that done, right?
Oh, no, I remember now. He went with his plan to make war on the whole region and finance it with Chinese money. So the dollar tanked and now it just buys less gas.
But that Congress…
llama post 15,
I did not say hydrogen fuel cells. I said hydrogen, although pure electric can also work.
Modest modifications ot the fuel injection and the timing will apparenlty allow most modern vehicles to run on hydrogen. I did some scaling over the weekend, and a 100 lb propane tank will provide roughly the range of my present fuel tank. Using hydrogen instead of propane will reduce the range by perhaps a factor of 4X due to the lower density, but still should suffice to provide reasonable range for most driving.
I agree with your item 2 in #14 musing.
However, if you don’t mean fuel cells, then you will sacrifice efficiency. Hydrogen is only 30% as efficient as gasoline. But fuel cells are as efficient as gasoline. BMW makes a true hydrogen car, but it is very expensive and you must fuel up three times more often for the same amount of fuel.
Llama, what’s wrong with fuel cells?
xion post 18
I computed 4X more often for hydrogen, so we are in rough agreement here. Note the efficiency of burning will be of the same class, but hydrogen is less dense.
For a passenger car commuting this would not seem a problem: I wold get about 105 miles for a fillup. My commute is about 100 miles a day, so it would work fine as a commuting car for me. it also works fine as a round town car. The only negative would occur on long trips. there is an obvious answer for long trips.
Fuel cells also work, but I think plug in hybrids may prove superior.
But do notice that the argument is not can we replace gasoline for our cars, but rather which of the various options for replacement would be preferable.
When a design problem is shown to have multiple plausible solutions, my sense is that this is indeed a manageable design problem.