Yesterday, president Obama announced emission standards which he said would raise the cost of automobiles by $1300.
While the new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil, they are expected to cost consumers an extra 1,300 US dollars per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016. Mr Obama said the fuel cost savings would offset the higher price of vehicles in three years.
His remarkable comment caught my attention, because one of the primary purposes of Obama’s “cap and trade” plan is to massively raise the cost of fuel. There aren’t going to be any fuel cost savings. In fact, Mr. Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle last year that he actually intends to bankrupt coal fired power plants using cap and trade:
You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
Two automobile companies are already going bankrupt, so I think we should take Mr. Obama’s words seriously.
I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains tax, not any of your taxes.
WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that if elected he will push to increase the amount of income that is taxed to provide monthly Social Security benefits.
Audacity indeed. The assumption seems to be that no one remembers what was said last week.
Jack Simmons (07:54:41) :
So much to disagree about in what you wrote.
In no particular order:
First, California does NOT pay the highest electric power price in the U.S. Hawaii, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Alaska all paid more per kwh than California in 2004. In 2007, one can add Massachusetts and Connecticut to the list.
Second, California does not have ” the filthiest sources of electricity in the US,” but obtains most of our power from natural gas and hydroelectric, one-tenth from renewables, and very little from coal-burning power plants.
Third, new nuclear power plants are clearly one of the most expensive means of producing electricity, at $10,000 per kW to construct. No one in their right mind builds these things unless completely or heavily subsidized by the government. The oil from oil shale would be outrageously expensive if nuclear heat was used. You stated you would “us[e] [nuclear] waste heat to heat up shale.” Waste heat from nuclear reactors is very low temperature, in the exhaust steam that is condensed in the condenser. Not enough temperature to heat shale up to get the oil out. Sorry, that does not work. Second law of thermodynamics is not subject to anyone or anything that tries to avoid or get around it. Never.
Fourth, California does not “waste water” on “swimming pools, golf courses, suburban sprawl, and subsidized agriculture (all environmentally unsound).” Swimming pools are a required part of civilized life, as even Coloradoans admit since they have spas and jacuzzis at home and in their resorts. California golf courses are watered with reclaimed water from waste treatment plants. Suburban sprawlers are just as entitled to water as you are. Agriculture in California produces much of the food for the U.S. ~snip~ Besides, there are water rights compacts and laws that govern the use of river water, and if you are so intent on changing that, then I invite you to step up to the table, make your case, and have those compacts modified. Let us know how you succeed on that. Good luck.
Finally, you say that “California insists on not having new plants in their backyard, but in other states. Very hypocritical of them…” Yes, California imports some power from other states, but also builds new power plants within our own borders. Why is that a problem? Where is it written that each state shall be entirely self-sufficient in each and every respect — no exports, no imports of anything? Do you have a similar problem with Texas and Louisiana exporting gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to many other states? Do you have a problem with Colorado importing food from California and other states? Do you have a problem with Coloradoans importing cars made in other states? If not, why not?
You do realize, don’t you, that the U.S. Constitution contemplated that the states would NOT be each self-sufficient, as express powers are granted to the Congress to regulate commerce between the states?
jon (04:43:14) :
“E.M.Smith (20:05:59) :Jon, we care a great deal about future generations. I have kids, and would die before letting them suffer deprivation. It’s just that we know that the “running out” belief is broken. We “rapidly dwindle” out of oil in about 100+ years, maybe longer, but have all the energy the planet could ever need, forever. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
”
___________________________________
Can I assume “we” refers to the majority of contributors to this blog?
No.
“We” refers to the entire population of the planet as a collective. I have no idea who will be consuming the majority of the oil pumped in the year 2020, nor does anyone else though present trends would imply China and India. I want every single person on this planet to live a wealthy profitable and modern lifestyle if they so choose with as much material wealth as anyone else. There is no physical reason they can not.
So what was the Iraq war all about if oil is so plentiful
I don’t know if that topic stays on thread… I doubt it. I will answer your questions, since they passed moderation, but this is all I will do on this topic. “One and done”.
My opinion is that it was cleaning up loose ends left over from when the CIA under Daddy Bush set up Saddam and sent him money; and then in a changed world, when he was an embarrassment, the powers that be felt it needed closure… but that verges on conspiracy theories and I try to avoid them. It certainly was not about oil. We could get far more oil far easier elsewhere. Heck, Venezuela would have been a ‘cake walk’ compared to the worlds 4th largest military force… My opinion is that we promised the House of Saud to clean up the mess we made when we fed Saddam in the first place. Evidence? You’ve got to be kidding…
… don’t tell me weapons of mass destruction … was it worth all those deaths???
Saddam absolutely had weapons of mass destruction (it is a historical fact that he used them to gas Kurds). Personally I think their presence was a ruse to justify the ‘cleaning’, but that he had them is not in question. Why the loony left wastes time claiming they did not exist when there are plenty of valid reasons to toss rocks at the radical right escapes me… Then again, I sit in the middle and both sides chuck rocks at me. Sigh.
Was the war worth the deaths? Have to ask the Saudis… Given what Saddam had done in Kuwait, I think the whole area wanted him gone… Me? I don’t think any war is worth the deaths. Just don’t know how to stop them, though.
The article you posted admits that supplies will be dwindling in 100 years time so where is all the oil going to come from then for our future generations! These resources are finite are they not?
Nice to get back on thread… Though you asking the question tells me you did not read the article, only the sentence describing it.
Well, ignoring the question of why I ought to be worrying at all about 100 years from now when we might well be driving nuclear space cars… So assume we need oil and assume we still have cars that burn it. So What!
If you read the link, no, really read it, you will find references to folks who can make all the “oil” you want right now from non-oil sources. Can you say existence proof? I’ll give you a list of names and you can look them up. The first token is the stock ticker (a useful key for getting info)
SSL Sasol – Makes synthetic oil from coal in South Africa. Most of the country runs on the stuff and has for 30 or 40 years. This alone covers replacement “oil” for a few more hundred years.
SU Suncore and IMO Imperial Oil (and several others) making oil out of Tar Sands. There’s about as much tar sand in the world as ‘regular’ oil. We can do the same thing with oil shale (and there’s somewhat more than a Trillion barrels of “oil” available from oil shale in the U.S.A. alone.
CHK Chesapeake a natural gas company (there are dozens of others). Thanks to figuring out how to crack “tight shale” there is a glut of natural gas on the market. We (meaning North America alone) have about as much barrels of oil equivalent in natural gas as Saudi has oil (and maybe more). This can be turned into “oil” and oil products by many paths (including the Sasol FT method) but my favorite is to use a zeolite catalyst developed by Mobil Oil (before mergered by Exxon) as was done in production in Australia IIRC after the Arab Oil Embargo of the ’70s. Dump in Nat Gas, get out gasoline. Neat, really. I think it was ZM80, but there’s a whole zoo of zeolite (rock like in your water softener) catalysts and I could easily have the number wrong. Then there is all the methane clathrate – a few more trillion bbls of oil worth: More than in all other fossil fuels combined..
SYNM Syntorleum and SYMX Synthesis Energy company both have processes to turn plant material and / or coal in to “oil”. Both are building facilities and running them now. SYMX got a contract with China. SYNM is operational with TYSON I think to turn chicken guts into “oil”.
RTK Rentech has a demonstration scale plant and a small production scale plant that can turn (at a profit) coal or biomass or trash into “oil”. I don’t think we’re in danger of running out of trash any time soon…
BP British Petroleum and MRO Marathon oil both have synthetic oil facilities up. BP is doing it with DD Dupont IIRC and uses biomass (which could include lawn clippings, yard waste, and paper trash) into butanol, a ‘drop in replacement’ for gasoline. Just put it in your tank and go. See:
http://www.butanol.com/
OOIL Origin Oil has a unique algae grow system using sealed tanks while PSUD PetroSun uses open ponds (and is in the leasing and going live process right now) to produce “oil” and oil products (mostly Diesel and Gasoline) from algae. This has about a 10x per acre potential compared to trees based biomass, and trees are about 50 wet tons / acre-yr proven yield (see treepower.org ). There is also GGRN Global Green and a few dozen other small start up and R&D scale algae folks. This is the “end game” for when the coal is all gone, but it is having trouble getting the costs of motor fuels below the $2 / gallon price point. They can compete easily at $4 / gallon. At $3 / gallon, it depends on the particular company. So absolute worst possible case is we use our sewage to grow pond scum and pay less than $4 / gallon for Diesel oil.
CZ Cozan has an area about the size of the old East Germany down in Brazil and grows sugar for making alcohol (that can also be dumped through zeolites to make gasoline, Diesel, and oils). Sugar cane, unlike corn kernals, has about an 8:1 energy gain. Much of Brazil uses this today. Another existence proof. BTW, their process heat comes from the stalks, so don’t waste your breath taking about embedded oil – it all runs on sunshine.
VRNM Verenium makes enzymes for cellulosic ethanol (see above mentions of 50 tons / acre and zeolite to convert to “oil” products). There is also Poet (privately held) and Novazyme who’s ticker I’ve forgotten.
Oh, and about 3 or 4 thermal depolymerization and pyrolysis processes (and the attendent R&D / startup companies ) trying to compete with dirt cheap oil.
OK, I could go one for another couple of pages, but I think this makes the point (and you could have saved everyone all this reading and space if you had just bothered to go read the “not running out” link…) But in the interests of saving my fingers, I’m going to just give one more:
Back during that ’70s oil embargo, VW wanted to be selling cars in the future no matter what OPEC did. They knew about the Fischer-Tropsch process and knew they could use German soft coal to make Diesel and gasoline; but didn’t like the yield. They wanted a way to make the coal go further. So these clever engineers figured out that most of the coal went to make process heat (newer catalysts have reduced this heat demand, but not to zero…). At any rate, they wanted to “conserve” that process heat from coal. So they figured out how to “put a nuke in your tank”.
By using a high temperature gas cooled reactor, like the one we had running for years at Ft. St. Vrain to provide the process heat, they could drive the coal synthesis reactions with most of the energy coming from a nuke plant. So we could use that effectively infinite U and Th supply to produce Diesel and Gasoline. Now VW planned to make methanol, since that’s the most efficient thing to make from coal synthesis gas, but FT is now almost as good due to some catalyst improvements. Or you can take the methanol and stuff it through another zeolite (ZM5? I forget…) and get gasoline…
So yes, Virginia, I CAN put a NUKE in your gas tank…
And since the carbon never goes away, and any carbon source can be fed to the synthesis reaction process, we run out of Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene, “petro”chemicals, plastics, you name it when we run out of planet in about 2,000,000,000 years.
Now you can continue to be worried about “running out” if you feel the need, but I have no such need to indulge that worry. I have other things to worry about that are much more imminent, like an ice age sometime in the next 20,000 years… Heck, it’s going to happen 100,000 times sooner than when we run out of fuels.
So I say again:
The idea of “running out” is Broken.
We never run out of energy or motor fuels, ever.
We never run out of stuff, ever.
And this would have been a whole lot less bother to everyone if you had just bothered to read the paper I already wrote on this at the other end of that link…
James P (04:24:17) : Thank you, EM Smith – I hadn’t realised that the WP article had been nobbled. Langoliers were new to me too, so I’m learning, although I can’t help feeling that there should be a comic opera in there somewhere.. 🙂
You are most welcome. They do something stupid, like muck up the Jevons Paradox page; that gets me P.O.d; I write something that will stick in their craw for years… You’d think they would understand positive feedback by now 😉
Comic opera? Pirates of Pizz Antz 8-?
TonyB (05:23:11) :
EM Smith.
Thanks for your comments.
You are most welcome.
Did you ever see my article on William Connelly-the politically motivated gatekeeper of the climate change pages of Wikipedia? Or the reference from them that Wikepedia doesnt have to print the truth just material that is ‘verfiable?’
Yes, though I’ve lost the pointer to it… I’d like to link to it from chiefio…
Incidentally, do you intend to publish an easy to read summary on all that is wrong with GISS? They are great articles but difficult to reference to people who do not know the background or only want a three minute read.
Yes, I do. But frankly I needed a long sanity break. I’d reached the point of understanding most of it (modulo the Python section being a bit sketchy to me) and recoiled in horror. I just needed to “get away from it for a while” and do something clean and sane… Thus the “not running out” pages were born… and the WSW ‘trading markets’ service.
My intent in the original set was to put up a batch of very technical stuff (hoping some more programmer types might join in, but few ever did…) and then come back and put the “wrapper” on it for “Regular Joes and Janes”. But I reached a point of too much “retch” reaction before I got that part done.
But I’m Getting Better!!! I’ve gotten re-centered. Had the “yuck” memory fade. Written a couple of the Other articles I wanted to get knocked out. And made some money (have to eat…). So I keep thinking that any day now I’ll get back to the Gistemp J&J story…. Real Soon Now…
Frank K. (05:54:27) :
E.M. Smith – Thank you for your many lively and very informative posts!
Thank you for the compliment.
Congress was *** suing OPEC *** on my behalf in order to bring down oil prices!! (I still wonder how that went).
I always liked that one… We’re going to sue an organization that is legal under the laws of its home countries. And enforce what how?… It was clearly political pandering and nothing more.
I also liked the answer of the Exxon exec when grilled about how he set oil prices and he said, roughly “We pick up the phone and find out what price OPEC set that day, then buy oil at that price and process it into fuels.”
to summarize, last year oil prices HIGH (from market forces) = BAD; this year, oil prices HIGH (from taxation) = GOOD.
In fact, the constant changing of direction by government is one of the biggest blockages to efficiently choosing future fuels. MTBE!, nevermind. ETHANOL!, nevermind. E-Cars!, …. no sane business can plan with that kind of whipsaw…
Yes – it’s going to be a long, hot summer (politically speaking)…
There are times that all you can do is let someone push the meat into the grinder with their fingers … Tell them twice. Then just plug your ears and look away…
Roads (06:52:10) :
“E.M.Smith (01:34:03) : The oil price today is $61 because the dollar is tanking against all major currencies. ”
Well, not exactly. The oil price was $147 in July 2008 when $2 = £1.
Yesterday the oil price was $61 yet the dollar now stands 21% higher at $1.57 = £1.
Which part of “major” was unclear? 😉 (Sorry, I can’t pass up a straight line…)
About 1/2 the move has been the economy. About 1/2 the currency. (roughly). Unfortunately, the pound is one of the few currencies in worse shape than the USDollar. (Iceland comes to mind …) Those currencies in resources (Aussy, Kiwi, Loony, Real) or not afflicted with financial woe (Swedish Krona, Swiss Franc and Euro to some extent) or central to the Carry Trade (Japanese Yen) or holding a lot of our foreign exchange deficit (China Yuan) are going up. The pound, due to the emphasis on a finance driven economy heavy in banking, is tanking along with us.
The time period you look at matters too. During the stock market crash, there was excess demand for dollars as folks sold U.S. stocks. That ended. The treasury printed and handed out a couple of $Trillion. From that point on the dollar started dropping. We coordinated our policies with those of the U.K. … The downhill will now accelerate.
jon (07:12:06) : Jack … are you aware of the environmental mess that has resulted from the mining of shale oil in Alberta?
IMO has in situ extraction at better profit levels. The folks who mine sands are on a timer as to how long they can compete… Mining sands only really works with the shallow stuff.
Environmental mess? Well, it was under a few km of ice 12,000 bc and will be under ice again soon enough. There is also a fairly strong reclaimation requirement. But frankly, sand full of oil didn’t start out all that clean to begin with…
In addition, the extraction of oil from shale is energy intensive (expensive) which has resulted in thousands of layoffs in Alberta over the last year due to the drop in oil prices.
Well, I almost got to agree with you on the energy intensive issue, then you make this bizzare connection to layoffs. It’s a non-sequitur. That extraction sucks up a lot of natural gas that would be better used directly in CNG cars is true. That has nothing to do with low gas prices getting highest price facilities shut down first.
Surely, it makes more sense to slow down the rate at which we are using our finite fuel resources i.e. greater fuel efficiency with cars etc.
Nope, not at all. First off, please review Jevons Paradox. Increased efficiency INCREASES aggrigate usage, it does not conserve. You can keep beating that off tune drum, it’s never going to sound any better…
Steven Hill (08:00:34) : Sure glad I did not invest in ethanol….the Libs can make you and break you all within one single year. LOL
I have a thought device for this: The Ministry of Stupidity Speaks. My biggest fear / risk is that The Ministry of Stupidity says something dumb and I’m out 40%. And yes, they regularly kill off a new one…
jon (10:03:39) : Why not be more conservative with our fuel supplies (more energy efficient) … we already have the technology to do this …
Because it sucks up some money that could instead be used for something that matters. Why don’t we conserve the Granite we consume? The glass? Both are finite! We have the technology!! Why, because nobody is going to care about resources that are in excess.
to do nothing but bleat about the rights of fuel guzzling car owners is absoloutley immoral and ridiculous!!!
Ah, the truth comes out: “immoral”. You have a morality play in your head that others must dance to. Never mind that you are flat out wrong (oil is not scarce, energy is not limited). Never mind that I bought the fuel. Never mind that future generations will be left with far more and better capitol stock that you need. At the end of the day it doesn’t fit your religion, so it’s “immoral”. Got it..
Repeat after me: There is no energy shortage, and there never will be!
Don’t you feel better all ready?
The true cost of trying to “$top climate change”
Here are some of the mind-boggling sums cited by governments all over the world as the cost of the measures they wish to see taken to “stop climate change”.
In Britain, the Climate Change Act, obliging the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to reduce Britain’s “carbon emissions” by 2050 to 20% of what they were in 1990 – a target achievable only by shutting down most of the economy. MPs just “nodded through” this lunatic measure without bothering to ask what this might end up costing their voters, but it has now been revealed that the Government’s estimate was £404 billion, or £18 billion a year, or £760 per household every year for the next 40 years.
If you think that’s a lot of money, hang on to your hat. According to a paper by Professor Bob Carter, a distinguished Australian paleoclimatologist, China and India, as the price of their participating in the UN’s planned Kyoto 2 deal to be agreed in Copenhagen next December, are demanding that developed countries, including Britain, should pay them 1% of their GDP, totaling more than $300 billion annually. Africa is demanding $267 billion a year, and South American countries are demanding hundreds of billions more. In the US, the latest costing of President Obama’s “cap and trade” Bill is $1.9 trillion, a yearly cost to each US family of $4,500.
Obama talks about creating “five million green jobs” in the US. Meanwhile, a study shows that for every job created in Spain’s “alternative energy industry” since 2000, 2.2 others have been lost.
Last week, Whitelee, Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, was opened; 140 giant 2.3 megawatt turbines covering 30 square miles of moorland south-east of Glasgow. It was reported that these would generate 322MW of electricity, which would be enough to power every home in Glasgow. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the wind, it will actually produce a mere 80MW, a quarter of its capacity. This amounts to a miserable fraction of a conventional station’s output, and all generated at double the cost.
Such is the pathetic state of British journalism, and BBC journalism in particular, that the thoroughly bogus propaganda claims of the wind industry are never exposed. The true cost of Whitelee will be the £1 billion in subsidies paid over its 25-year life through British electricity bills.
Try finding that out from the BBC.
Tom in Texas (12:25:07) :
E.M.Smith, always enjoy your comments. Wish I had your investing advice a couple of years ago.
Thanks for the compliments. Happy to share advice. And remember “there is always another train leaving the station”…
My 401K was well diversified, but lost money in every category – “Interest Only” (savings account?) included, since the management fees exceeded the interest. The “Bond” category I assumed was Treasury Bonds, but after reading the small print, discovered the word “mortgages”.
And that is one of the fallacies that everyone knows is “settled science” in investing. Diversification is a good thing but it does not protect against a market collapse. The only thing I’ve found that does is the “asset class race” and being in one of Cash, Short, Gold, Foreign Currency when the Crazy Ivan is headed at you. FWIW: BE OUT OF BONDS, NOW.
The only U.S. dollar denominated bond you can hold at this point is a TIP Treasury Inflation Protected Security.
When a stock crash ends, and the market recovers; when the Fed stops cutting rates and starts raising them BONDS TAKE LARGE LOSSES. Bonds gain when the Fed starts cutting rates. Rates are now near zero. Bonds lose when rates rise. Which way can rates go when they are near zero now?
My B.O.B. (Bug Out Bag) is ready to go. Don’t plan to leave Texas, just leave the city and head to the hill country till the dust settles.
Love the hill country. Drove slowly through it one spring. Texas Bluebells? and some red/orange thing everywhere. Herds of goats wandering in the fields. Sigh.
Our designated assembly area (post quake now; and long long ago post Soviet missile launch — ancient history now) is a little lake about 40 miles south of San Jose. (One blast radius from The Blue Cube at Moffett Field …) Ah, nostalgia for the days of impending nuclear incineration at any moment. Now THAT was something to be worried about! God I miss it /sarc>
– Kate. (Ref: Kate (01:05:04) : Above)
You must have accidentally forgotten to add an attribution for what you posted.
Here it is, from Christopher Bookers blog.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5374207/Climate-Change-Act-Now-the-world-faces-its-biggest-ever-bill.html
Cheers G
Steven Goddard (09:01:24) :
Steven,
Please do me the favor of reading my posts. If you do, you will find I said nothing about “mining”.
Here is a map of the Green River Formation. You can see it covers far more than Parachute Creek. And again, new technologies mitigate against the environmental damages caused by older technologies. You don’t destroy pristine areas, you go around them.
Remember, one square mile = one billion barrels of oil.
jon (13:09:38) :
Finally you concede my points. You are reduced to insulting rather than reasoning with someone.
Roger Sowell (17:07:20) :
Steven,
Just on the point above, I’ll get to the others later, here is a reference to a nuclear reactor designed specifically for my intended use for them:
http://tinyurl.com/cqyjq6
Notice the comments made regarding the intended applications:
All nuclear reactors have waste heat, lots of it. That’s why sites next to large bodies of water are desirable. These reactors are designed to generate heat, my intended application.
Or you just generate electricity and use it to heat your rods.
Remember, one square mile = one billion barrels of oil. About $50 billion in revenue generating capacity. A few billion for a nuclear power plant is nothing.
When you’re done, you continue using the plant for electricity.
Jack Simmons,
You are wildly exaggerating both the commercial potential and environmental safety of extracting kerogen from the Green River formation.
You believe that you can remove “one billion barrels” of kerogen per mi^2 without causing subsidence or contaminating the water table? You think you can do that without running power lines and roads everywhere? Do you really believe it is possible to extract one billion barrels per mi^2?
Give me a break. FYI – I used to work as a geologist on Parachute Creek.