A few questions for President Obama
How exactly does the President plan to create his new Green Jobs Economy?
Guest post by Paul Driessen
America needs decisive leaders who understand what government can (and cannot) do to stop the Gulf gusher, clean up the mess, and get business, jobs and prosperity back on track. Instead, President Obama sounds like an anti-business Community Organizer in Chief – pointing fingers, making baseless claims about ending our “addiction to oil,” and leaving no crisis unexploited to promote job-killing cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy agendas. His June 15 “vision” raised more questions than it answered.
1) The President said he can no longer support new drilling unless industry can prove it will be “absolutely safe.” This avoidable environmental disaster happened because BP, its contractors and MMS regulators did not follow procedures or respond properly to tests and warning signs, indicating critical trouble was brewing downhole. But if “absolute safety” is to decide activities and technologies, America will come to a standstill in the absence of impossible-to-obtain proof that nothing will ever go wrong, no one will ever screw up, and no technology will ever malfunction.
Oil tankers sometimes run aground, unleashing their black cargo on our shores. Will oil imports now be banned, as well? Over 42,000 Americans died in car accidents last year. Will highways and city streets be closed to vehicles? Airports, trains and subways? Wind turbines kill 3,000 eagles and other raptors every year, plus 100,000 to 300,000 other birds and bats. Will they be shut down until that carnage ends?
2) President Obama demanded that BP “set aside “whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed” by the spill. With thousands of environmental activists, regulators, congressmen and trial lawyers on Team Obama, one can only imagine what creative damages and costs might be concocted, to convert the initial $20-billion BP fund into a bottomless money pit, and what “standards” might guide bird death valuations, for example.
ExxonMobil paid $600,000 when 85 birds died in uncovered waste facilities. PacifiCorp paid was fined $1.4 million after 230 eagles were killed by its power lines over a two-year period. Will those fines set the standard for Gulf oil spill bird deaths? Or will the standard be the zero, zip, nada fines assessed to date on wind turbine operators for their ongoing slaughter? Will BP be required to compensate oil field workers who lose their jobs because Team Obama imposed an arbitrary drilling moratorium, instead of ensuring improved oversight of drilling, blowout prevention and well completion activities?
3) The President said China is creating “clean energy” jobs “that should be right here in America,” while we send “nearly $1 billion of our wealth every day to foreign countries for their oil.” We will “embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny,” he declared, because “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.”
America is not running out of oil. It is running out of places the government allows us to drill. China is creating renewable energy jobs, because it mines the lanthanides, lithium and other minerals that are essential for wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid cars, while we lock up our prospects; burns coal to generate cheap electricity to run its factories, while the White House, Congress and EPA try to drive US coal-based power to extinction; and pays its factory workers a fraction of what American workers receive.
Companies have been drilling in deep waters, because most onshore and shallow water areas are off limits. Will we now open the ANWR, Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, Rockies and near-shore OCS to drilling – where access and development are easier, and accidents (that we hope, and industry must ensure, never happen again) can be fixed and cleaned up far more easily than in mile-deep waters?
Will President Obama lift his OCS moratorium (which even his independent safety experts opposed), before it further devastates the battered Gulf economy, rigs head overseas, and thousands of experienced workers permanently leave the industry for other lines of work?
To advance the President’s “national mission” and generate 20% or more of our electricity with wind and solar, will our legislators, regulators and litigators continue to ignore the environmental review, endangered species, migratory bird and other laws that govern fossil fuel and nuclear power – so that we can rapidly blanket millions of acres of onshore and offshore America with wind turbines and solar panels, to replace coal-fired power plants, regardless of the environmental costs?
Rather than dozens of “ugly” offshore oil and gas platforms, often dozens of miles from our coasts – will America now enjoy seeing thousands of “beautiful” offshore wind turbines, towering above our beaches and creating obstacle courses for submarines, merchant ships laden with bunker fuel, and more tankers filled with crude oil and far more toxic refined product?
Will the President and Congress now open some of the hundreds of millions of acres they have made off limits to exploration and mining for the minerals needed to manufacture “green” technologies here in America? Or will we henceforth be dependent on foreign countries and dictators for both our “dirty” oil and the raw materials and finished components needed to build a new “clean energy” economy?
4) Under a cap-tax-and-trade regime, the price of hydrocarbon energy will “necessarily skyrocket,” to “encourage” companies and families to use less fossil fuel energy, and “persuade” them to switch to wind and solar. How will that affect turbine and panel manufacturing costs and subsidies, and the downstream costs of renewable energy and everything Americans make, grow, drive, ship, eat, drink and do?
How will US wind and solar factories compete with Chinese and Indian facilities, if the American plants are compelled to pay two, three, five times as much for electricity, under cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy mandates? How will they compete if they must also pay subsidies, union wages and gold-plated health and pension plans, if government grants are also tied to compulsory unionization, and if non-union shops and right-to-work states are excluded from the bidding and subsidy process?
How will regulators and “clean energy” companies deal with the nasty pollutants generated in the process of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and millions of acres of solar panels? How will they handle highly toxic silicon tetrachloride, the powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen trifluoride and other chemicals used or generated in making solar panels, fiberglass and other components?
Even “little” 1.5 megawatt wind turbines require 700 tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass, copper and rare earth (lanthanide) minerals. Add in the transmission lines and backup gas-fired generators, and we’re talking some serious land use, raw material, pollution, bird kill and economic issues. How do our legislators, regulators, litigators and environmental activists plan to address these issues?
Will solar and wind companies operate under free market principles, to compete and possibly fail against other energy firms? Or will they be kept in business via huge subsidies under government systems that extract countless billions from families and less favored companies, borrow it from our children, and redistribute that wealth to “clean energy” companies? How long will this Grecian Formula be sustainable?
Spain lost 2.2 traditional jobs for every wind power job its massive subsidies created. President Obama has said we can create 5 million green jobs. How does he plan to compensate 11 million workers who will lose their traditional jobs under the Spanish Scenario? With more stimulus money and red ink?
Every seven million gallons of corn-based ethanol requires billions in subsidies, cropland equivalent to Indiana, millions of gallons of water and millions of tons of fertilizer, to make fuel that costs more but gets a third less mileage than gasoline. Can someone explain how this is eco-friendly and sustainable?
When this house of cards inevitably collapses, as it has in Spain, will its congressional and administration creators be held responsible and accountable, under the same standards they are applying to BP?
Just asking. (Not that I expect President Obama, Senator Kerry or Speaker Pelosi to have any answers – or even deign to respond to any American citizen who might ask such impertinent questions.)
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.
A few questions for President Obama
How exactly does the President plan to create his new Green Jobs Economy?
Paul Driessen
America needs decisive leaders who understand what government can (and cannot) do to stop the Gulf gusher, clean up the mess, and get business, jobs and prosperity back on track. Instead, President Obama sounds like an anti-business Community Organizer in Chief – pointing fingers, making baseless claims about ending our “addiction to oil,” and leaving no crisis unexploited to promote job-killing cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy agendas. His June 15 “vision” raised more questions than it answered.
1) The President said he can no longer support new drilling unless industry can prove it will be “absolutely safe.” This avoidable environmental disaster happened because BP, its contractors and MMS regulators did not follow procedures or respond properly to tests and warning signs, indicating critical trouble was brewing downhole. But if “absolute safety” is to decide activities and technologies, America will come to a standstill in the absence of impossible-to-obtain proof that nothing will ever go wrong, no one will ever screw up, and no technology will ever malfunction.
Oil tankers sometimes run aground, unleashing their black cargo on our shores. Will oil imports now be banned, as well? Over 42,000 Americans died in car accidents last year. Will highways and city streets be closed to vehicles? Airports, trains and subways? Wind turbines kill 3,000 eagles and other raptors every year, plus 100,000 to 300,000 other birds and bats. Will they be shut down until that carnage ends?
2) President Obama demanded that BP “set aside “whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed” by the spill. With thousands of environmental activists, regulators, congressmen and trial lawyers on Team Obama, one can only imagine what creative damages and costs might be concocted, to convert the initial $20-billion BP fund into a bottomless money pit, and what “standards” might guide bird death valuations, for example.
ExxonMobil paid $600,000 when 85 birds died in uncovered waste facilities. PacifiCorp paid was fined $1.4 million after 230 eagles were killed by its power lines over a two-year period. Will those fines set the standard for Gulf oil spill bird deaths? Or will the standard be the zero, zip, nada fines assessed to date on wind turbine operators for their ongoing slaughter? Will BP be required to compensate oil field workers who lose their jobs because Team Obama imposed an arbitrary drilling moratorium, instead of ensuring improved oversight of drilling, blowout prevention and well completion activities?
3) The President said China is creating “clean energy” jobs “that should be right here in America,” while we send “nearly $1 billion of our wealth every day to foreign countries for their oil.” We will “embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny,” he declared, because “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.”
America is not running out of oil. It is running out of places the government allows us to drill. China is creating renewable energy jobs, because it mines the lanthanides, lithium and other minerals that are essential for wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid cars, while we lock up our prospects; burns coal to generate cheap electricity to run its factories, while the White House, Congress and EPA try to drive US coal-based power to extinction; and pays its factory workers a fraction of what American workers receive.
Companies have been drilling in deep waters, because most onshore and shallow water areas are off limits. Will we now open the ANWR, Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, Rockies and near-shore OCS to drilling – where access and development are easier, and accidents (that we hope, and industry must ensure, never happen again) can be fixed and cleaned up far more easily than in mile-deep waters?
Will President Obama lift his OCS moratorium (which even his independent safety experts opposed), before it further devastates the battered Gulf economy, rigs head overseas, and thousands of experienced workers permanently leave the industry for other lines of work?
To advance the President’s “national mission” and generate 20% or more of our electricity with wind and solar, will our legislators, regulators and litigators continue to ignore the environmental review, endangered species, migratory bird and other laws that govern fossil fuel and nuclear power – so that we can rapidly blanket millions of acres of onshore and offshore America with wind turbines and solar panels, to replace coal-fired power plants, regardless of the environmental costs?
Rather than dozens of “ugly” offshore oil and gas platforms, often dozens of miles from our coasts – will America now enjoy seeing thousands of “beautiful” offshore wind turbines, towering above our beaches and creating obstacle courses for submarines, merchant ships laden with bunker fuel, and more tankers filled with crude oil and far more toxic refined product?
Will the President and Congress now open some of the hundreds of millions of acres they have made off limits to exploration and mining for the minerals needed to manufacture “green” technologies here in America? Or will we henceforth be dependent on foreign countries and dictators for both our “dirty” oil and the raw materials and finished components needed to build a new “clean energy” economy?
4) Under a cap-tax-and-trade regime, the price of hydrocarbon energy will “necessarily skyrocket,” to “encourage” companies and families to use less fossil fuel energy, and “persuade” them to switch to wind and solar. How will that affect turbine and panel manufacturing costs and subsidies, and the downstream costs of renewable energy and everything Americans make, grow, drive, ship, eat, drink and do?
How will US wind and solar factories compete with Chinese and Indian facilities, if the American plants are compelled to pay two, three, five times as much for electricity, under cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy mandates? How will they compete if they must also pay subsidies, union wages and gold-plated health and pension plans, if government grants are also tied to compulsory unionization, and if non-union shops and right-to-work states are excluded from the bidding and subsidy process?
How will regulators and “clean energy” companies deal with the nasty pollutants generated in the process of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and millions of acres of solar panels? How will they handle highly toxic silicon tetrachloride, the powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen trifluoride and other chemicals used or generated in making solar panels, fiberglass and other components?
Even “little” 1.5 megawatt wind turbines require 700 tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass, copper and rare earth (lanthanide) minerals. Add in the transmission lines and backup gas-fired generators, and we’re talking some serious land use, raw material, pollution, bird kill and economic issues. How do our legislators, regulators, litigators and environmental activists plan to address these issues?
Will solar and wind companies operate under free market principles, to compete and possibly fail against other energy firms? Or will they be kept in business via huge subsidies under government systems that extract countless billions from families and less favored companies, borrow it from our children, and redistribute that wealth to “clean energy” companies? How long will this Grecian Formula be sustainable?
Spain lost 2.2 traditional jobs for every wind power job its massive subsidies created. President Obama has said we can create 5 million green jobs. How does he plan to compensate 11 million workers who will lose their traditional jobs under the Spanish Scenario? With more stimulus money and red ink?
Every seven million gallons of corn-based ethanol requires billions in subsidies, cropland equivalent to Indiana, millions of gallons of water and millions of tons of fertilizer, to make fuel that costs more but gets a third less mileage than gasoline. Can someone explain how this is eco-friendly and sustainable?
When this house of cards inevitably collapses, as it has in Spain, will its congressional and administration creators be held responsible and accountable, under the same standards they are applying to BP?
Just asking. (Not that I expect President Obama, Senator Kerry or Speaker Pelosi to have any answers – or even deign to respond to any American citizen who might ask such impertinent questions.)
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.
In Bangladesh water-wells poisoned around 77 million people with arsenic. I propose to stop drilling wells untill the evil water industry can prove that the wells are “absolutely safe”. But at the very least we should tax water drinking.
“Are you suggesting that the USA is already fully utilising, all the known oil deposits that we have discovered on our soil orunder our part of the oceans. I find such a claim to be laughable. We have huge known deposits that the Government has simply put off limits to never be developed; same goes for coal and natural gas.”
The fact is that the US has gone from exporting oil to importing it. Yes, there are new discoveries and new production wells coming online all the time, but they haven’t managed to stop the import of oil. Question is if allowing drilling everywhere will change this? The EIA, who is conservative in estimating the future has gone so far as to acknowledge that peak-oil production is in the foreseeable future for conventional oil. A field of 4 billion barrels does not make a big dent in the estimated recoverable reserves.
http://www.rotarygeorgetown-on.ca/Images/090618%20frm%20Crispin%20growinggap%20of%20oil%20discovery&consumption.jpg
I can highly recommend the book Twilight in the Desert by Matthew Simmons. He has a good writeup of the giant and super giant oilfields in the middle east and a little less comprehensive for the rest of the world.
http://www.greatdreams.com/oil/Hubbert_world_2004.jpg
James Sexton says:
June 23, 2010 at 4:38 pm
From http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2182
The nonsense of carbon dioxide affecting our climate is used to lock up this oil source.
Study carefully what the biofuel developers are doing, and you will see that there is a path to biofuels that makes a lot of sense for the US. Cellulosic sources and algaes are quickly coming down in price, and dwarf the yields of corn, soybean, and sugar cane.
Well here we have somebody who didn’t take his own advice and studied nothing .
This is really only BS .
1) Cellulosic sources . Let’s be simple , it’s called wood and straw and their prices are not coming down be it quickly or slowly .
One way to use them is to simply burn and produce electricity . It needs no sophisticated technology . So why isn’t it done ?
Because there is not enough of it to be more than anecdotical but most importantly it can’t compete with coal and nuclear .
Another way is the enzymatic hydrolysis to produce ethanol . Here the technology is sophisticated and not ready for industrialisation . But most importantly the yields are so ridiculously low that the ethanol prices are much too high . This way will never be able to compete with ethanol from sugar cane not mentioning crude oil .
2) Microalgaes . Another hype .
A standard refinery processing 10 MT crude a year will produce something like 4 MT/y diesel .
Let’s take microalgaes with a yield of 40 g/m²/day and an oil content of 30 % . Just for the sake of example because those values can’t be achieved outside of carefully controlled lab conditions . Real algaes produce much , much less .
Well to have an algae equivalent to the diesel production of a single 10 MT refinery one would have to mobilize … 1000 km² !
That’s a compact sea band of 500 m width going from San Diego to Seattle !
Utterly ridiculous and I don’t even mention the costs and the logistical difficulties to harvest , dry and extract over such huge surfaces .
Not to forget the necessity to close the whole Pacific coast of the USA for trafic and tourism to just produce 4 MT diesel/year 🙂
Biofuels are just a buzzword for gullible people but what hides behind is a quantitatively anecdotical production at prices that cannot compete unless massively subsidized by taxpayer’s money .
Troels Halken says:
June 24, 2010 at 12:53 am
“…..but they haven’t managed to stop the import of oil. Question is if allowing drilling everywhere will change this?”
Probably not, but it would necessarily lessen the amount of imported oil if the drilling would out pace the increase of demand. Further, there are secondary benefits of allowing more drilling here. I call those things “jobs”. Also, there’s “capital investment”. Additionally, this would increase tax revenues without increasing rates. A decrease in the trade deficit…..ect. It isn’t simply and only about oil. It is about exporting our wealth because we’re afraid of a molecule.
“When will the pinheads understand that wind and solar does not, has not, and can not replace traditional electricity sources.”
They know very well that these can’t replace traditional sources – and that’s the whole point. They force people into using something that doesn’t work, so they declare it “failing and energy can’t fail” so they “save” it by nationalizing the entire industry and now government has to manage all energy production and use… which means they manage the economy, because NOTHING happens in our economy without energy consumption.
Who is John Galt?
Wow Paul – your post is liking reading a religious tome, some real facts imbued with alot of spin and a bit of misinformation.
Obama’s plan to move to a green economy is something that was in the works for years – from our want for more solar and our want for more nuclear. You seem to toally ignore Obama’s push for clean coal and for nuclear. You seem to also be wrong about his work on the spill – BP caused this and needs to clean it up – there is little the government can do. Your post seems to irrationally hammer Obama on the one side for want of a good government that can act on you behalf while AT THE SAME TIME wanting more government action…huh?
Obama is far from a saint and is learning on the job, but lets try to get the facts right on a site that is about science. Conflating political posts filled with spin with science posts based on real fact really reduces the effect the good science can have on the other side … just my opinion.
Brad
TomVonk
No time to go into it, but you have constructed a cellulosic hominid, sometimes known as a straw man, to argue against.
Brad,
You write that there is little government can do to clean up the oil spill. But the intervention of this administration is not only useless, but actually proven detrimental. Why did Obama refuse the assistance offered by the Dutch to provide oil skimmer capacity that the US does not possess, and only relented in June when it was really too late? Why has Obama demanded the Gulf oil production be closed down for 6 months, falsely claiming that this was on the advice of his experts, offering no evidence? (This was thrown out be a circuit judge, but the administration will appeal.)
To me, it only make sense in the context of a much larger, anti oil agenda. All the pieces fit together.
Sexton:
“Probably not, but it would necessarily lessen the amount of imported oil if the drilling would out pace the increase of demand. Further, there are secondary benefits of allowing more drilling here. I call those things “jobs”. Also, there’s “capital investment”. Additionally, this would increase tax revenues without increasing rates. A decrease in the trade deficit…..ect. It isn’t simply and only about oil. It is about exporting our wealth because we’re afraid of a molecule.”
I totally agree that it will lessen the amount of imported oil and I don’t much care for the co2 molecule. However, I also do understand that there is areas that are highly sensitive to oilspils, why drilling in such places does carry a high risk. Especially when considering the recent event in the Gulf. Then it basically becomes a question of if the areas is of such a value to the society that drilling should be prohibited. Obviously that should be compared to the amount oil that can be extracted in the area, and the assessed if the value of the oil for the society is higher than the value of the area.
If we’re looking at the non-conventional res sources of oil, then the price per extracted unit of energy is higher. When it gets high enough, other sources of energy becomes competitive. And a job created in the oil sector vs. in the nuclear sector as an example is still a job. If nuclear is cost competitive and cleaner, then why not do that instead? Again as an example. It could be a lot of other things.
I feel that the proportion of assertions to basic facts is rather high here regarding basic oil issues. To me, that is not very good science. I would like some simple allround basic info like
(1) do we have a chart of proven global oil reserves vs time
(2) how does that chart compare with extraction vs time
and evidence of
(3) how can we know the figures are trustworthy and that for instance the Arabs or the US are not concealing figures that are either higher or lower than the official figures.
Then the quest for information slides further into issues over which people get emotional, issues which include values as well as information, and issues where there may be more than one basic “info package”…
(4) can we find a safe and courteous way to explore the evidence and issues regarding abiotic oil without just encountering “your view is rubbish!” from both sides
(5) can we find a safe and courteous way to discuss what issues are there around using nonrenewable resources altogether
(6) can we have reminder figures about how heavily dependent on oil our whole economy has become (including farming) – and that’s not to dismiss the benefits
(7) can we find a safe and courteous way to get informed of basic info and explore population issues that people increasingly feel (and with reason) are connected to the global energy resources issues
(8) can we find a safe and courteous way to explore other “fringe” potential sources of energy like the work being done around cold fusion (it now has some other name)?
Many posters here whom I respect have useful basic information but I still wonder how much might be onesided eg sure, there are big untapped oil reserves in the US but how big? how big a proportion of total world reserves? for how long would it last if the US switched to all-US reserves? how trustworthy are those figures? what reasons are there for misrepresentation of figures, either up or down? how can we access really trustworthy figures? I want to hear all sides before forming any opinions; to be realistic but not cynical; to discover where the real drivers of Truth lie.
For me, these are questions which arise from the depths of my spirit; they will not be answered without a sense of spiritual “rightness” despite their near-total material reality.
Troels Halken
You’re assuming a net sum zero gain in the energy sector, pitting one source of energy vs. another. (I’d have used a different comparison other than oil and nuke, but I get your point), but in any case, it doesn’t work like that if regulatory requisites don’t get involved in throttling energy production. In order for this economy to grow, we need not only more oil, but also more nuke, more coal and more natural gas and more hydro. Wind and solar aren’t going to be worth much until we learn how to store AC power. I’m all for nuclear power, but the fact is, from the planning stage to online production, it takes about 20 yrs. We’ve (the U.S.) has only one scheduled to come online in the next year or so. When regarding oil as an energy source, I’m usually referring to the by product, gasoline. Yes, there are a few oil using electric generators in use, but coal and nuke has it hands down over oil.
The oil spill is indicative as to why we need more terrestrial drilling. We can blame BP until we’re blue, but it still doesn’t address the reason why they felt it necessary to drill in deep ocean for oil when it should be readily available near shore or on land.(Where accidents like BP’s are less likely and easier to clean up. Deep water oil recovery also increases the cost of oil.) The policies of this nation seem to state conservation is important in places where it is easier and cheaper to recover but less important where it is more expensive and riskier.
Troels, we’re likely in more agreement than disagreement, but I just don’t understand the obsession with oil and coal. In regards to readiness and established infrastructures, those two sources, utilized properly is the only way to supply the much needed energy to this nation,(and all others) in an affordable manner. Again, I see no difference in extracting coal and oil as opposed to copper, bauxite and lanthanide. Right now, this nation is in peril. The raw number of new homes purchased is lower now than it has been since they started tracking back in 1963. (We have 100 million more people now but are purchasing less homes. This should scare the socks off of everybody that should be watching.)
We simply can’t afford to quibble about where our energy comes from. We need it, we need all of it, and we need it now.
Brad says:
June 24, 2010 at 4:35 am
Big Government elitists always think that the conservative, common-sense individuals want a government in their favor. No, we want less government, and the rest of the losers to get out of the way.
Our oil drillers should be drilling in Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, etc., not deep in the Gulf. We should be mining coal and using natural gas and building nuclear plants. Then energy would be cheap and deep water drilling would be cost-ineffective by comparison.
Forcing oil rigs to drill in the deep Gulf encumbered by fiat regulations, with increasing expensive levels of fail-safe, is like the government passing regulations that everyone has to walk the streets on their hands and knees. Then, because people are then crashing their heads into walls and other people, requiring that they wear super-safe helmets and are equipped with infrared proximity alarms. Of course, elbow and knee pads. And so on…
Excellent post! You pose many questions. I can answer them all with one simple answer! It’s “green” so it’s got to be good! All those pesky little details will work themselves out. All this administration needs is a catchy little catch-all like “green”-whatever. It’s like a magic wand. You need jobs? No problem, we’ll make “green jobs”. Oil spills got you down? No problem, we’ll invent “green energy” or “green technology”.
Interesting bunch of people on this blog. Pretty well informed on climate change and convinced warmers are practising a religion rather than looking holistically and objectively at the science. Then practising religion when it comes to energy, rather then getting holistically and objectively informed, and unable to recognize they are no different from warmers, except that they have changed the subject.. I don’t have time these days to write a long reply, but will try to get to it about late August if I remember and if the moderator will post it. Just a few quick comments now:
You can go here to read a few well researched pieces I did on energy a few years ago http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author.cfm?at_id=575 . I hope to update them later this year, but the technology has not changed.
In considering supply, one has to think of both stocks and flows. the Bakken is very low on both, with the USGS claimed stock being maybe 6 months of USA consumption if it could all be produced. My guess is that the stock is about 10x higher, but the flow will always be a limitation.
Kerogen shales have an EROEI of somewhere between 0 and 3, and if they are ever developed will never have a flow that will make more than a small contribution to satisfying USA demand. They aren’t developed because they are not economic.
Renewables are not competitive because they have to compete with hydrocarbons that benefit from major subsidies in not having to internalize their environmental and social costs, or carry any of the military cost of keeping sealanes open just for them.
Solar is best used for peaking power, and is already economic in that application. The reason that many states now have net metering is that it is cheaper for utilities than maintaining peaking capacity.
Bird kill is a giant red-herring, and when did you environmentalist bashing characters start to care anyway. Oh yeah – so you could oppose wind power.
I could go on. Get over your biases, get past what you know that isn’t so, do some serious and objective homework, and then attack me, if you still want to. Of course if you were to do that you would run the risk of becoming liberals. Can’t let that happen. Murray
Murray, if you’d done any homework you’d know that wind power has turned out to be very unreliable – on the Texas windfarms built in the last few years, the wind turbines only produce reliable power 35% of the time. The rest of the time their spot on the grid has to be powered by backup NatGas generators.
So, in backing Wind power, you are actually backing a 35% wind, 65% NatGas mix.
Are you a tool of Big Oil too???
Vincent-
I must disagree, the Dutch skimmer controversy is trumped up tripe – both sides now lie regualrly for political advantage, get your news from reliable sources and not Fox, MSNBC, or many websites. As for the anti-oil agenda, you are wrong again. He was opening more offshore drilling areas than anyone ever had prior to this, and to continue drilling after this as if nothing happened is tantamount to insanity. Why not wait a few months and put in regualtions about the type of BOP, the type of casing, maybe even require relief wells be drilled at the same time in completely new fields where underwater pressures are unknown! All these seem common sense solutions and to argue other wise for political gain is bad for the coutnry. LEts get over this right/left crap and start thinking again.
George Will and Elliott Spitzer need to be on the same ticket!
Green is the new black – black death. Does Obama really believe in America? You can’t run a govt. on a wish list. You deal with problems you have on a practical basis. What Obama has had to say is highly predujudicial to any court proceedings. He should have stuck to solving the problem instead of wanting to ‘kick ass’ – an infantile response from the leader of the free world. But then maybe, he has his own agenda – big companies are are bad, especially if they have ‘British’ in their name.
He should remember that US and British interests are so aligned, that Britain is one of the few friends that the US has.
Brad says at 9:40 am: [ … ],
There are only twenty oil skimmers working out of 2,000 available. Obama is deliberately keeping out the rest.
And regarding your contention that Obama is opening up drilling, that is false. In fact, he has shut down thousands of drilling rigs by decree, many of which have been producing for decades without any problem. That’s like shutting down the entire airline industry because of one crash. It is clear that Obama has an agenda to hobble the country, and is using this one tragic accident as an excuse to stop all possible oil production.
Don’t listen to what the man says; he’s a pathological liar. Instead, look at what he is doing to the country.
RE peak oil. Does anybody know how extensive the field is where the current well is blowing? The claim is it’s spewing 60,000 barrels/day. 30 wells in that field would double our current domestic production of around 2,000,000 B/day.
[Note: US consumption is just under 20 million bbl/day. ~dbs]
I recently stumbled across this article on investments being made in Chattanooga that create high paying jobs building and servicing nuclear plant components:
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/jun/20/gearing-up-for-revival/
A 100+ year history of power manufacturing is being updated by Toshiba and Alstom.
The argument against cap and trade reducing oil imports is very simple:
Only 1.1% of electricity comes from oil ( Source: EIA 2008 data)
Smokey, what are you smokin’ ???
Obama has shut down 33 exploratory drilling rigs, and may allow many of those to restart quickly. One thing his team has advised him to do is to look at how this BOP failed and make sure we are not setting up another failure. Learn to read more new sources…
ONLY 33 RIGS STOPPED: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-23/salazar-says-new-moratorium-may-permit-some-drilling.html
HOW BIG IS THE LEAK? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/24/2010-06-24_bps_everchanging_estimates_on_gallons_of_oil_spilling_into_gulf_a_timeline_from_.html
Brad,
“One thing his team has advised him to do is to look at how this BOP failed and make sure we are not setting up another failure.”
But we know why the accident happened. It was “all BP’S fault.” Obama’s been shouting this from the rooftops of the Whitehouse, looking for “asses to kick,” and dragging the board of BP in to shake ’em down for 20 billion. So if BP have been cutting corners then how does the same logic apply to the other oil rigs? And how does this moratorium square with the fact that his own technical adivisors are opposed to it? You can’t have it both ways. It is duplicity of the highest order.