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It has taken the US long enough to realize that oil is running out and they are the biggest users.

But now oil prices have dropped again, will it drop back off the radar until next time?

A few months back we were all criticizing the US car companies for not making hybrid cars - but now that oil prices have dropped, and no one wants to buy expensive hybrids, it'd be financial suicide for them to do so.

Both sides on the war on terror rings true though..

Oil-producing countries are more enslaved to the US than we to them because their economies are build around their oil production. Just look at Venezuela, which while trying to sound tough and anti-American, is very much dependent on the US to maintain their existence.

So I see prices remaining within certain sustainable bounds so that both may benefit without having to abandon the other.

Things are only going to change when someone comes out with an alternative that is better in all ways than petroleum for transportation. Initial and operational costs, fuel distribution, etc. More than likely that will need to be all-electric cars, not expensive "hybrids" or other stop-gap solutions. The volatility of the oil market means that investing in expensive hybrid cars will usually not pay for itself compared to staying with your current vehicle, as the prices only stay high temporarily.

Wind and solar power are cute ideas, but they're expensive and low-power, and with wind turbines, I don't want them in my backyard. I'd rather have more research into clean coal or nuclear technology, as we have more than enough coal underground to sustain our power needs for a long time.

Becoming self sufficient is a real issue unlike the carbon dioxide story. There are MASSIVE amounts of natural gas in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and more that hasn't been discovered. All we have to do is go get it. It also puts thousands of people to work in each of these places thereby boosting each of their economies. Harnessing the "free" wind is a great idea, so is solar power and natural gas.

EthicalMan, in Texas, and other states long dominated by short-sighted Republicans, they'll tell you that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. They're wrong. America must slash its addiction to ALL fossil fuels, regardless of source. It's not just the price instability or the security, it's the damage created by extraction and the pollution created by use. Coal and oil must quickly become part of this nation's dirty past.

"What Boone is worried about is America's fuel security and the fact the country is now so dependent on foreign oil: "most of which," he says, "comes from countries that don't like us"."

What Boone skirts is the fact that many of these nations don''t like us because we've spent decades manipulating regional politics and regional economies in order to extract oil that isn't ours.

"Traditionally, Republicans have opposed subsidies for the wind and solar industries. One of Reagan's first acts on entering the White House was to strip Carter's solar panels from the roof."

It is an embarrassment that the Reagan name continues to foul America's recent history. His ignorance and arrogance continue to define a pitiful excuse for a political party and the nation and the world are finally reaping the full effects of his asinine deregulatory policies.

Clean coal?

The fact that this nation has a lot of coal suddenly seems to mean that the best idea we can come up with is to destroy much of the landscape by digging it up and then destroy what's left by burning it. Last October a consortium of public sector agencies put together a study of the feasibility of an American future fueled by coal and came up with conclusions almost as dark as the atmosphere downwind of a coal-burning power plant:

Public opposition to coal plants due to their mercury, acid rain, smog, and carbon emissions has helped kill 60 coal plants in the past several years. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), the $40 million coal-industry public relations effort, is no more. In recent months, youth, environment, and health activists exposed ABEC's efforts to attack green-collar jobs and propagandize coal. ABEC and the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED), the trade organization that started the front group, have now become the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). Writing for Grist, Sean Casten translates the retooled message of ACCCE: "We need to burn more coal. We need taxpayers to pay for the cost of that coal. And we've got enough money to make sure it happens."

Jim Rogers, President and CEO of coal-heavy Duke Energy, an ACCCE member, has become one of the most prominent industry voices calling for the regulation of global warming pollution from power plants and other sectors of the economy. In making his case for action, Rogers includes a very important caveat: regulate greenhouse gases, but regulate in a way that ensures that the American taxpayer foots the bill for cleaning up the company's aging and high-emitting power plants. The European Union this week signaled it is willing to invest government dollars into finding a possible future for coal, "pushing forward proposals for a dozen demonstration projects" of coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

CCS is still unproven but may be the "key enabling technology for a future in which we can continue to use our vast coal resources and also protect the climate."

So the coal industry and its supporters continue to tout "clean coal" as a done deal, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a propaganda effort to sell technology that exists only on paper and, even if it were possible today, can only be achieved if the local geology permits it.

It's a pity they don't spend that money on clean energy resources that have already proven themselves, that will provide jobs, and won't eliminate species - including our own - from the planet.

Is boone Pickens really out to help Americans or is he just fortifing his family dynasty? We need energy independance from people like him who want to keep us under thier thumbs for another hundred years. To get true independance we must have our own windmills and solar panels and energy efficient home. The wind and sun are free. Why pay these goons any longer. Wake up people!

It's possible to estimate how much the US would save by reducing its dependence on imported oil.

The numbers are surprisingly large.

Of course, estimates depend on the data and assumptions that are made.

Here is one such estimate.

www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/EnergyIndependence1.agent

鈥淭hings are only going to change when someone comes out with an alternative that is better in all ways than petroleum for transportation.鈥�

What ways?

Number of fatalities and injuries? The bullet train in Japan has moved 4 billion passengers with only one fatality.

Most energy efficient transport? Only birds of prey that rise on solar updrafts and coast for hundreds of kilometers, use less energy to move, than a bicyclist.

Most jobs created? Because fuel costs are zero and maintenance costs are typically less than half, companies than employ fleets of cargo-bikes instead of delivery vans, can afford to hire more people. Tandem cargo-bikes could even create employment opportunities for blind or deaf people.

An America without private motor vehicles only seems impossible, because the trains aren鈥檛 there to move us when we need to go far, fast, and the roads are too full with dangerous autos, for most of us to ride a bicycle anywhere on them.

So we must imagine what life could be like without private motor vehicles. We must imagine that inexpensive, frequent and 24hr train service to every town, is possible. And we must imagine that all long-haul freight can be moved by rail, and all short-haul freight can be moved by cargo-bike. We must imagine that an American where every able person rides a bicycle or walks to a train station, could be a healthy America. We must imagine that an America where the taxis are pedal-cabs, the trucks are cargo-bikes and the cars are bicycles, would be an America where everyone could safely cross the street.

When we have done that, we will be ready to demand to correct solutions.

All the appropriate alternatives exist, only the political will to implement them is needed.

(The following, is all gut instinct. Prove me wrong, if you insist on wasting our time)
Coal cannot be made clean.
Nuclear power cannot be produced without highly toxic; mining of uranium, and waste.
Private motor vehicles cannot be made safe, and they are too heavy to move efficiently.
All of our electricity cannot be produced from renewable sources, if we double the demand by electrifying all of our automobiles.

Oops, meant to say, demand "the" correct solutions.

Calling for energy independence betrays a lack of understanding about economics. Trade is a two-way gain. The country selling oil is hugely dependent on the foreign currency that the sale generates. Without this money many regimes would fall apart, unable to finance lavish, uneconomic domestic budgets. Venezuela is a good example.

Other countries receiving dollars in exchange for oil use those dollars to buy goods direct from America. Spend time in any of the GCC countries (Bahrain, Saudi, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE), to witness the demand for American products. Take a drive through any of these cities and you鈥檒l be surrounded by vehicles made by the Big Three as well as Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans built in their US transplant factories. A visit to the supermarket will see American goods on the shelves (note that these countries cannot provide enough food domestically, so they have to import. If foreign currency earnings dry up, so does the food supply). The air-con to survive the harsh humid summers is powered by electricity, often from power stations that use generators built in America.

Perhaps the biggest market for America, in the region, is military expenditure. Warships, aircraft, vehicles weapons and munitions all built in America dominate the military arsenal of these countries.

When the oil price was hitting ridiculous levels last summer, the regions largest oil exporters, Saudi and the UAE scrambled to ramp-up production in an attempt to stabilise prices.

One final, little-reported fact is that the UAE has provided troops-on-the-ground in Afghanistan 鈥� something that has not been so forthcoming from supposedly closer European allies.

So, energy independence for America will have consequences, but probably not those intended.

Why does T. Boone Pickens want to invest in "clean energy?" Because he will get HUGE government subsidies, and because it satisfies the mindless, leftist environmentalists who are stupid enough to believe that the world is fragile. The world isn't fragile. Flowers are fragile. Your poopsy egos are fragile. The earth has absorbed huge meteor impacts, nuclear bombs, Chernobyl, oil spills, hundreds of wars and thousands of battles, millions of cars and unspeakable fossil fuel tonnage and has VERY LITTLE wear and tear to show for it! Regrettably, leftist environmentalists tend to have their noses crammed so deeply into Internet Explorer that they don't drive or fly around and see that most of the world maintains it's "pristine" (a word I hate) condition. Even if we nuke an area, within 100 years, there's virtually no evidence that we were ever there. Even with the rad count, plants and animals adapt. The area around Mount St. Helens completely recovered in less than 20 years. If we tapped every ear of corn on earth for it's ethanol, it would still only supply 12 percent of the US annual consumption of oil. It takes a massive number of windmills to replace a single nuclear reactor. The windmills would stretch for many miles over pristine, fragile land knocking pristine, fragile, migratory birds from the air with every WHOOSH!! You want to save us? Communism has killed more people in the 20th century than every other known cause and war COMBINED!! No, really, count them up! Cuba, Russia, China, Khmer Rouge (Cambodia), VietNam, Laos, North Korea. The body count is staggering. It makes Naziism look like a paltry bike accident! You wanna solve our "energy crisis"? Build Nuclear Plants!! They are extremely clean and require a zillionth of the "fuel" that coal plants burn! Wanna end our "dependence on foreign oil", DRILL OUR OWN!! Obama mindlessly claims that we can't "drill our way to energy independence". Of course we can! Use your brains for crying out loud! Added supply = lower costs and zero shortages and rationing!!! You environmental lackeys don't want to come to grips with reality!! Your whole world view is seated in rebellion. Rebellion against authority, rebellion against truth, rebellion against God!! If you would get out of the way, in 20 years we would fix ALL the issues that are bellyached about every night on the news with the possible exception of cures for certain diseases!!! The solution to World Hunger, Islamo Nazi Terror, the Palestinian Conflict, Al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Communism, Development of the 3rd World, Dependence on Foreign Oil, Energy Shortages, Clean Fuels and Energy production, consumption and waste disposal, High Level Nuclear Waste, Excessive Crime, all of it!! We've got solutions. Leftist environmentalists have ways to prolong the problem that will further their power and influence.

In response to Bicycle-fan's suggestion that all cargo be carried by pedal-powered vehicles, I think that we will still need motorized vehicles for transporting oversized objects. Anything that weighs more than about half a ton is NOT going to be pulled around by two people pushing pedals, and many items (factory equipment, institutional sized refrigerators, construction equipment, etc) can not reasonably be broken up into pieces small enough for a cargo bicycle.

Likewise, do you really see a large supermarket getting fifty tons of deliveries every morning brought by four hundred bicycle-loads? The wages alone for all of those deliverymen would force grocery prices through the roof. For deliveries of great bulk, we will still need large vehicles, but by having commuters and consumers riding bicycles for work and school and shopping, we will have ONLY the large cargo deliveries in motor vehicles, which would cut vehicle-miles of road motor traffic by almost ninety percent.

Your pizza can be delivered by a person on a bicycle, but you are NOT going to have hundreds of bicycle-trips to move your entire household instead of a large lorry. I speak from experience--last year when my aunt moved house, we used her friend's small lorry (with a cargo bed about six feet wide and eight feet long), and it took nineteen trips to carry everything. Now imagine carrying all of that for twenty miles in loads small enough to move with your own muscle power, and you will see why I say that there is still a need to have motor vehicles that can carry large cargo to your door.

主播大秀 Post: Ethical Man

Dice and Slice 1: 鈥楨thical man鈥� is a non-sequitur. Perhaps when we were hunter-gathers or subsistence farmers we could make choices where environment trade-offs were fully appreciated. Once large scale agriculture began with dams, canals, ports, and other efforts to divert and control water, we began remaking the earth at the expense of the rest of nature. This got worse with mining, and really bad with fossil fuels. All we鈥檙e proposing to do is turn back the clock to 1850, before our industrialized economies became dependent on fossil fuels.

Dice and Slice 2: The costs of power generation are the sum of the capital costs of building power generators, the price of fuel, the cost of transmission infrastructure, and the maintenance of the generators and infrastructure. As a general rule, power plants cost from $1 to $2 per watt, so an 800 megawatt plant should cost somewhere between $800 million and $1.6 billion. There are better ways to extract CO2 from the West Texas landscape than spending $3.5 billion on a power plant. Half of the gas that comes out of a gas well is CO2, and this has to be separated using molecular sieve membranes before the gas is put in the pipeline. The CO2 right now is, most likely, vented. It could be re-injected just as easily. CO2 is also half of the gas emitted from landfills, since the biological process that produces the gas is the same.

Dice and Slice 3: The United States might be consuming about 1 trillion watts (1 terawatt) during a busy weekday. Dividing 1 trillion by 1 million watts generated per turbine is 1 million wind turbines. 1000 x 1000 is 1 million, so a square with turbines spaced one mile apart north and south and east and west would cover an area about the size of the center of the United States (out of, say 3000 miles x 1500 miles). Realistically, turbines can be spaced one tenth of a mile apart, so this square would be 100 miles x 100 miles, which is roughly approximate to the area of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles combined. Or, North Dakota, Montana, or Wyoming taken individually.

Dice and Slice 4: The reason why we haven鈥檛 built turbines from one border to another in the United States is that there aren鈥檛 any power lines running out to the middle of nowhere. Texas in particular has a power grid distinct from the rest of the United States (ERCOT). Building power transmission lines by itself is generating a lot of objections, since they鈥檙e ugly. Two solutions are to bury the power lines (particularly if using 鈥榟igh temperature鈥� superconductors), or make ammonia (NH3) as a hydrogen carrier. Ammonia can be used directly in fuel cells, or in conventional gasoline or diesel engines. Note that burning ammonia produces no CO2, since there is no carbon in the fuel. In short, the transmission could take the form of ammonia instead of electricity. This isn鈥檛 necessarily efficient, but it is flexible: the equipment for generating the ammonia could be moved around as demand dictates, and ammonia can be carried in railroad freight cars, as well as pipelines. Existing power plants, particularly natural gas plants, could be modified to use ammonia as well (the natural gas capacity would be left in place as an alternative). Ammonia is also a useful agricultural chemical, and is a highly useful chemical feedstock for other processes. It stinks and it鈥檚 poisonous, so you wouldn鈥檛 want it in passenger cars, but it would make a great fuel for locomotives, diesel trucks, and stationary power stations.

DrZhicago, your rant is almost too insane to respond to, but I can not let it go.

No one is suggesting that the earth is fragile. The point is that we are fragile. Our extinction may or may not be imminent, but what is certain, is that the costs of doing nothing, will far out-weigh the costs of mitigation.

鈥淚f you would get out of the way, in 20 years we would fix ALL the issues that are bellyached about every night on the news with the possible exception of cures for certain diseases!!! The solution to World Hunger, Islamo Nazi Terror, the Palestinian Conflict, Al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Communism, Development of the 3rd World, Dependence on Foreign Oil, Energy Shortages, Clean Fuels and Energy production, consumption and waste disposal, High Level Nuclear Waste, Excessive Crime, all of it!! We've got solutions. Leftist environmentalists have ways to prolong the problem that will further their power and influence.鈥�

If you have solutions, please share. Raygun and the Bushes had 20 years, what did they accomplish? When did Leftist enviros ever have enough power or influence to get in the way?

ijuinkun, you are correct of course. I did simplify my argument in order to make the imagining easier. Although the fraction of freight that can never be moved by bicycle is tiny.

Also, I don鈥檛 envision large supermarkets supplied by fleets of cargo-bikes. Instead the goods will move to large supermarkets by rail, and from the supermarkets by fleets of delivery bikes.

鈥淵our pizza can be delivered by a person on a bicycle, but you are NOT going to have hundreds of bicycle-trips to move your entire household instead of a large lorry.鈥�

Actually that might very well happen, but it wouldn鈥檛 have to be 鈥渉undreds鈥� of bicycle-trips. (maybe I don鈥檛 own as much stuff as your aunt) It has happened to friends of mine, and a quick google search for house moved by bicycle gave and 19 million hits.

But I don鈥檛 advocate anything that would cripple the economy. Viable alternatives should be in place before any options are taken away. There may always be a need for trucks, but their use should be limited when there are alternatives.

Making gasoline (petrol) from water and carbon dioxide is trivially easy, just not very efficient.

First, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. For every CO2 molecule, you will need 8 hydrogen atoms. Electrolysis at room temperature is about 30% efficient, but increases to 50% as the temperature goes up and water becomes steam. The US Department of Energy has a demonstration of hydrolysis at 50% efficiency using steam as the feed.

Second, run the mixture of hydrogen and CO2 through a Raney catalyst (alloy of nickel and tin) at 10 atmospheres of pressure and 600 degrees Celsius. This creates methane and water (CH4 + (2)H2O). Four of the hydrogens are now attached to the carbon atom, and two to each oxygen atom. This process also radiates quite a bit of heat, which is another reason the process is not every efficient. Of the energy potential of the hydrogen, half has been lost to the reaction that produces the water. If Step 1 is 50% efficient, times Step 2 at 50%, one now has 25% of the energy left in the methane molecule.

Third, separate the water from the methane and expose the purified methane to ultraviolet light. This causes hydrogens to break off the methane and the resulting chemical combination yields free hydrogen molecules and long chain hydrocarbons. The resulting chemicals depend on the length of exposure and the spectrum of the light: shorter spectrum (such as vacuum UV) produces more exotic molecules. The surplus hydrogen can be recycled back into the first step.

Light fuels are typically unsaturated, highly branched 6, 7, and 8 carbon molecules (hexane, heptane, and octane). The energy 鈥榳asted鈥� in the conversion of CO2 to methane could be used to heat buildings or industrial processes.

All of this being true, there is really no such thing as 鈥榝ossil鈥� fuel. We could simply choose to build four times as much wind turbine or solar cell capacity as we might otherwise need, in order to synthesize fuels that would leave the rest of our fuel infrastructure intact. Within the United States, this would cost $4 trillion, assuming renewable energy costs at $1 per watt.

Dr. Zhicago, you hit several nails on the head. It is nice to hear someone deal with facts instead of leftist ramblings.

Bicycle-fan: While I do agree that in specific circumstances (distances of a dozen or two miles with reasonable topography), you could move house by bicycle, I don't fancy the notion of using only muscle power to haul twenty tons of materials a thirty mile distance in a hilly climate (20-30 percent grades), especially when the landlord demands that you be finished in only three days' time, as happened with my aunt.

That said, I DO believe that you are right about the notion that any local travel with light cargo should be done by bicycle. I myself tend to ride my bicycle within ten miles of my home any time that it is not raining or snowing and that I am not planning to carry objects larger than my cargo rack can support. Save the motor vehicles for those times when bicycles and trains ARE impractical and you will still cut most people's driving miles by well over half.

Everyone reading or writing these comments recognizes the meaning of Opportunity Cost in economics -from our own experiences and in our own ways. Some might agree that Opportunity Cost or opportunity loss is the value of the next best alternative foregone as the result of making a decision, or passing up the next best choice when committed to a decision.

The decision is supposed to have been evaluated, selected to be optimum choice for expenditure, thereby not selecting and enabling the other costed alternatives. The planning and budget goes on this, not that; spent that way other wise this might have done, that would not and so on.

The purpose of this preamble is to suggest a modified premise concerning the version or aspects of the vast issues facing all of us and everyone else on this small planet, a stimulus, in order to be inclusive -

- and that is: if within, say, seventy two months it became undeniable and proven to anyone that we are in fact vastly underestimating and understating the cumulative problems individually and together, thus fundamentally requiring pragmatism (always one of the great enduring American qualities along with the fullest and fairest assessment) then firstly; would fraud no longer be tolerated and secondly; does anybody doubt that America and Americans will demand the most extensive formulation and application of solutions, and lead and intend to excel in all directions, as if there were no tomorrow?

I believe that by that time and under those conditions the answer would be yes, affirmative, that Americans would want to set a course for the future and would want to engage, and would seek the lions' share of commercial benefits in the domestic and world wide arena, as if there was no yesterday, and believing that to be so, I would be all for it, as if there were no alternative.

What I don't understand is what people have against engineering based technologies like power-making and water-pumping windmills, solar, and cars that go further making less fumes, and houses that last longer and stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer, What do those folk think is happening that is better which will head off this seventy two month scenario from "being so"? I think we should be told, or else get on with it.

Wasted energy is wasted money and probably avoidable pollution and hell for someone. In the broadest sense, people need to look after their health and diets more, and the health and diets of their neighbours.

Or is that what being 'leftist' is? Seems to me the opposite of being pragmatic and social is being anti-social.

It's Opportunity Cost time. And all on one, small planet.

socoach: The most pressing concern though is foreign oil, everyone agrees that the US needs to get off of fossil fuels, a good place too begin is to get off of foreign oil.