Guest post by Alec Rawls
“President no longer worried about CO2!” That’s what the headlines should have read last week after Obama presented an elaborate argument that alternative energy is the only viable response to high energy prices without ever once mentioning CO2, global warming or climate change. Instead, he presented the need to lessen our reliance on oil purely as an economic imperative.
Back when he thought that global warming was a winning concern Obama used to acknowledge that his anti-CO2 policies were going to cause high energy prices (forcing them to “necessarily skyrocket“). Now he is trying to use the high energy prices that he intentionally caused as a reason to get away from fossil energy. But if we are no longer worried about climate, how about just undoing the anti-fossil-fuel policies that drove prices up in the first place?
Obama’s silence on climate is a testament to how thoroughly the alarmists have lost the climate debate in the eyes of the voting public. Obama can’t even mention climate change (never mind global warming), even in a speech about his own climate-driven policies.
To make his economic argument, Obama puts forward two glaring lies. Let’s take these whoppers one at a time.
The lie that we are already aggressively developing our fossil resources
From the President’s March 15th energy policy speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland:
Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. (Applause.) Any time. That’s a fact. That’s a fact. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs to a record high. I want everybody to listen to that — we have more oil rigs operating now than ever. That’s a fact. We’ve approved dozens of new pipelines to move oil across the country. We announced our support for a new one in Oklahoma that will help get more oil down to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Over the last three years, my administration has opened millions of acres of land in 23 different states for oil and gas exploration. (Applause.) Offshore, I’ve directed my administration to open up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources. That includes an area in the Gulf of Mexico we opened up a few months ago that could produce more than 400 million barrels of oil.
So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. (Applause.) We’re drilling all over this country.
That’s chutzpah, bragging about opening up drilling in the Gulf after using the Deep Horizon spill as an excuse for wiping out the Gulf drilling industry with an illegal moratorium.
Everyone knows about the big anti-oil moves from Obama and the Democrats, like rejecting the Keystone pipeline and continuing to block drilling in ANWR, but if you want a picture of how systematic and extreme their anti-fossil-energy policies have been, take a look at the list compiled by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings. As soon as they got in the Obamatons started revoking all the permits that were in the pipeline: for exploration, for mining, for drilling, for building power plants. Everything was shut down to almost nothing, and that is the way it has stayed.
Speaker John Bohner put a few of the highlights onto a timeline along with gas prices. Cause and effect:
What about that record amount of oil production? From Tina Korbe:
Energy experts say the president’s rhetoric isn’t exactly forthright. It’s unfair for the president to take credit for record high oil production. Not only does it take oil three to five years to come online, which means the previous administration was responsible for approving the exploration and drilling permits that led to increased production, but oil production on federal lands actually declined from 2010 to 2011. Oil production on private lands is responsible for the increase.
She quotes CNS for the specifics:
As CNSNews.com has reported, oil production on federal lands declined in fiscal year 2011 from fiscal year 2010 by 11 percent, and natural gas production on federal lands dropped by 6 percent during the same timeframe.
In contrast, oil production on private and state lands accounted for the entire increase, reported the IER, as production was up 14 percent from 2010 to 2011. Natural gas also was up 12 percent from 2010 to 2011.
The energy boom from advances in fracking technology are so massive that Obama has not been able to suppress them entirely, but he sure is trying, and we know why. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu was up-front about this as recently as two weeks ago when he testified before the House Appropriations committee:
“Is the overall goal to get our price [of gasoline] down,” Nunnelee began. “No,” interrupted Chu, “the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”
Chu’s goal is less oil consumption, which of course requires higher prices, “to strengthen our economy.” (Note that Chu is a physicist, not an economist.) Chu has been saying for years that:
Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.
That’s $7 to $9 per gallon. Under duress he recanted last week and said that he no longer wants higher prices, but that just stripped away his last remaining virtue, which was his honesty.
Lie number 2: that America is energy poor, so there is not much we can gain by drilling anyway
Someone who knows absolute nothing about anything might find this Obama riff compelling:
There’s a problem with a strategy that only relies on drilling and that is, America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country — so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere — we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Let’s say we miss something — maybe it’s 3 percent instead of 2. We’re using 20; we have 2.
Now, you don’t need to be getting an excellent education at Prince George’s Community College to know that we’ve got a math problem here. (Laughter and applause.) I help out Sasha occasionally with her math homework and I know that if you’ve got 2 and you’ve got 20, there’s a gap. (Laughter.) There’s a gap, right? …
We will not fully be in control of our energy future if our strategy is only to drill for the 2 percent but we still have to buy the 20 percent.
Obama’s 2% figure refers to “proven reserves,” and the smallness of this particular number is actually a measure, not of our resources, but of how little they have been developed. Investors Business Daily explains:
The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves “are a small subset of recoverable resources,” because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.
We have very little “proved reserves” because we have developed only a small fraction of our resources into active fields. The relevant number to look at is the amount of oil we could produce if it were allowed, and here we are proverbial thousand pound gorilla. Again, from IDB:
We actually have the world’s largest fossil energy resources, and the “recoverable” part is rapidly expanding as the technology for extracting it advances. Estimates for technically recoverable shale gas reserves increased 134% in 2010, and we’ve hardly begun on shale oil. Then there are methane hydrates, which according to the Department of Energy contain “more energy potential … than all other fossil energy resources combined.”
In short, the United States, and the entire world, have only been tapping the planet’s most easily accessible fossil energy supplies, and even those are far from running out, while vastly larger resources wait in store. Obama’s claims about the impossibility of relying on fossil energy are a fairy tale for childish green adults who want to see themselves as saving the planet. They dream of going “forward” to windmills and absorbing solar radiation like a snake on a rock, yet none of them have enough confidence in the saving-the-planet part to even mention it anymore.
The war on CO2 is over! Tell the EPA!
Obama’s lies about fossil resources are just supporting lies. His big lie is his pretense that his anti-CO2 policies are not about CO2. So take him at face value. He has apparently surrendered his claim that CO2 is dangerous. From his energy-policy speech, it seems that global warming is no longer a motivating concern.
THAT is a big story. Quick, tell the EPA. With this change in the administration’s position there should be no more regulation of CO2 and Obama should rescind his promise to bankrupt the coal industry:
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
That war against coal is proceeding apace, every bit as much as Obama’s drive for higher gas prices. And all for nothing, since even Obama is no longer worried about CO2.
At some point—long before we run out of fossil energy—a cheaper source of energy will be developed and fossil fuels will go by the wayside. The only reason to interdict that natural progression and try to go backwards to wind and solar is a belief that fossil fuels imperil the planet. For that to be true, human effects on climate would have to dominate natural effects, a hypothesis that has already been falsified by 15 years of no warming. The only people who believe it at this point are the paid shills of our lavishly funded climate-alarm industry and their anti-capitalist allies. It has actually become unmentionable, which really does warrant some mention.
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Torgeir, you are a nasty piece of work. I quoted Obama and Chu to the effect that they were trying to raise oil prices in order to save the world from CO2. You cast this as my assuming that they are “out to ruin the country,” which is just about the opposite of how I actually characterized their objectives, and when I point it out, your only response is “this is getting juvenile.”
Certainly on your end. What adult would defend that kind of misrepresentation? You have ZERO integrity. Thanks for proving it.
Torgeir,
Lots of disagreements over EUR of shale gas. But clearly, lots of major companies — that aren’t the type to buy the hype or buy into long-term losses — spending lots of dollars to get into it. But the key is, there is a lot of shale gas worldwide, with new discoveries being made on about a weekly basis. Lots of that is in “stable” or “more stable” parts of the globe.
Also, oil production will be going up in the US due to horizontal drilling and fracking, and we are likely to reach peaks not seen before. Many oil patch areas in Texas are experiencing additional drilling, and increasing electricity loads to support the E&P. Certainly, the days of $10 a barrel oil are over, as production costs will continue to increase, but the concept of peak oil fails to recognize that higher costs and better technology can result in bounces to the oil production curve in any given country, or for the world as a whole. Also, your comments on US production over time and political parties and presidents fails to recognize the ups and downs of oil prices, and the impact those huge fluctuations can have on domestic oil exploration and production. And, as we are seeing now, how technological advances can turn things upside down in 5 years time.
In addition to the overt actions of the administration, don’t forget those taken by their sychophants in the green world. After Interior Secretary Salazar made a big deal out of freeing up 370 mm tons of coal here in Wyoming, there was an immediate suit filed with a liberal federal judge who posted an injuction against digging said coal. The best of both worlds for the administration, a big speech in Cheyenne to make an appearance of helping Wyoming and no coal to be dug anyway. These people are the lowest of the low.
Donald L Klipstein says:
“The past 15 years started with a century class El Nino and ended with a
double dip La Nina. Global temperature trend would be shown more
accurately with a time period having lack of upward or downward trend in
ENSO and AMO, such as from the beginning of 1999 to the beginning of
2012. The linear trend in HadCRUT3 for that period was .044 degree C
per decade, and that *may* be the actual rate of warming from increase of
CO2. If it is, then global climate sensitivity to CO2 change is .67 degree C
per factor of 2 change in CO2.”
Please explain the 30yr cooling period from 1940 to 1970 with this logic.
Torgeir Hansson is the quintessential “intellectual” who is religiously wedded to mistaken beliefs about fossil fuels being expensive to society and damaging to our entire planet and every living thing on it. Torgeir subscribes to the idea that fossil fuels (and their derived energy and products) need to be so costly that fewer people can afford them (a necessary requirement if you want to reduce consumption). Can’t everyone see that Torgeir believes that less consumption of fossil fuel is for our own good and the good of our planet (bless his heart)?
I have got news for Torgeir.
Torgeir has been caught up by nonsensical green doomsday propaganda. Although he is not the first, nor the last and he is far from being alone; it does not make him right. The truth is that fossil fuels have, on the whole, been miraculously beneficial. Those societies that have the necessary infrastructure to benefit from the use of fossil fuels are enjoying today the highest standard of living the human race has ever seen. These societies also enjoy some of the highest environmental standards – clean water, healthy forests and healthy protected wildlife and wilderness areas (things a poverty stricken society could never even begin to worry about).
Just how Torgeir equates all this fossil fuel driven food production, higher living standards, better environmental stewardship, good health and greater life expectancy to being “expensive to society” is a complete mystery.
Did Torgeir by chance study at the French Sorbonne with Pol Pot?
Scott,
The Tuscaloosa Marine Shale is even larger than the Bakken shale.
This article snipped below indicates that the present price of producing vehicle fuel from coal is about $9.60 per gallon, with a 20% decrease (to $7.68) being immediately possible from this new technique, and under $4 per gallon being theoretically feasible.**
The Warmists/Greenies still hate it because it’s a hydrocarbon.
It is still nice to know that America’s immense coal reserves can be converted to a more easily handled liquid fuel at an affordable price. I am suspicious, though, about the amount of fresh water that would be required.
** My math assumes an electricity cost of 5 cents per kilowatt hour, which is $0.8333 per megawatt/second.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/coaltoliquids.html
Bad News: Scientists Make Cheap Gas From Coal
By Alexis Madrigal March 26, 2009
Electric cars have been getting a lot of buzz lately, but a more immediately viable transportation fuel of the future could be liquid derived from coal. Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. The advance makes scaling up the environmentally unfriendly fuel more economical than greener alternatives.
If oil prices rise again, adoption of the new coal-to-liquid technology, reported this week in Science, could undercut adoption of electric vehicles or next-generation biofuels. And that’s bad news for the fight against climate change.
The new process could cut the energy cost of producing the fuel by 20 percent just by rejiggering the intermediate chemical steps, said co-author Ben Glasser of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. But coal-derived fuel could produce as much as twice as much CO2 as traditional petroleum fuels and at best will emit at least as much of the greenhouse gas.
“The bottom line is that there’s one fatal flaw in their proposed process from a climate protection standpoint,” Pushker Karecha of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. “It would allow liquid fuel CO2 emissions to continue increasing indefinitely.”
The race for alternative fuels kicked into high gear last year, with the price of oil reaching $150 a barrel before plummeting down below $40 this year. Still, though experts disagree on the specifics of timing, it’s clear that conventional oil sources will eventually run out. The list of contenders to replace oil is long and diverse. Alternative fuels could include next-gen ethanol, algal biofuel, hydrogen and natural gas, or cars could go largely electric.
But the problem with all the new fuels is that they have to scale up — and that’s harder than it sounds. Plus, many fear that biofuels could cause massive, negative land-use changes.
The process of cooking coal into liquid fuel, on the other hand, has already proven itself on a massive scale. Take coal, add some water, cook it, and you’ve got a liquid fuel for your car. The hydrogen in the water bonds to the carbon and voila: hydrocarbons, such as octane. It’s the very fact that coal-to-liquids could work that make them such a scary idea for people devoted to fighting climate change.
The Nazis used the so-called Fisher-Tropsch process to provide up to half of their transportation fuel needs during World War II. Later, South Africa began a major coal-to-liquids program during the Apartheid era and now maintain the world’s largest CTL industry in the world. The country’s factories produce 160,000 barrels of fuel a day, a little more than all the residents and businesses in Utah use each day.
The traditional process uses carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen as the ingredients in the molecular soup that gets turned into hydrocarbons. The Science process uses just CO2 and hydrogen.
Glasser’s new production method allows them to set a lower limit on the amount of energy that would be needed to transform solid coal into fuel. The very best possible CTL process would require 350 megawatts of input to make 80,000 gallons of fuel; the current process uses more than 1,000 megawatts.
Even with the small efficiency gains, a large, domestic, carbon-intensive source of transportation fuel would throw a wrench into many plans to reduce emissions from vehicles.
“What they’re proposing is simply not allowable if we want to avoid the perils of unconstrained anthropogenic climate change,” Karecha said.
>much snippage<
Sent a lot of this to Politifact.com, just curious if they’d like to weigh in again. Btw, Newt and Mitt have the most False & Liar, liar, pants on fire. But Santorum is catching up. I see far more Ron Paul signs & banners all over this country! hmm? SpaghettiO does have a lot of false & half truths, a lot of true and far more comments examined.
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/ron-paul/statements/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/ron-paul/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/newt-gingrich/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mitt-romney/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/rick-santorum/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/24/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-us-oil-production-eight-year-hig/
Barack Obama says U.S. oil production is at eight-year high
In his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, President Barack Obama talked up U.S. oil production.
“Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy,” Obama said. “Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.”
This passage includes a number of claims, but here we’ll focus on the one that “right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.”
We looked at a similar claim on March 15, 2011, and rated it Mostly True. But we will update our assessment based on new data.
We turned to the Energy Information Administration, the federal government’s official office for energy statistics. Since Obama said “oil production,” we will only look at crude oil extracted from U.S. territory, rather than natural gas or other petroleum products.
Here are the annual totals, in barrels produced, going back to 2003:
2003: 2,073,453,000 2004: 1,983,302,000 2005: 1,890,106,000 2006: 1,862,259,000 2007: 1,848,450,000 2008: 1,811,817,000 2009: 1,956,596,000 2010: 1,998,137,000
The full-year data is available only through 2010, but 10 months of data from 2011 have been made public. Through the end of October 2011, production totaled 1,713,038,000 barrels. If that pace continues, the year-end total should be around 2,055,646,000 barrels — higher than any year since 2003. That’s eight years ago, just as Obama said.
The last time we looked at this question in March 2011, we noted that production levels actually have been quite stable over the period in question. The estimated level for 2011 is only about 13 percent higher than for the lowest year in that eight-year period. So the increase the president is referring to is not particularly dramatic. In addition, levels of production were typically higher from the 1950s to the 1990s.
However, one caveat we mentioned in our last analysis — that the Energy Information Administration projected that production totals were poised to fall over the subsequent two years — no longer appears to be accurate.
The most recent “Short-Term Energy Outlook,” published on Jan. 12, 2012, forecast increases in total crude oil production in 2012 and 2013, thanks to increases in onshore production in the Lower 48, which overshadow declines in production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
The last issue is whether Obama and his administration claimed credit for this achievement and whether they deserve it.
The government does play a role in shaping oil production, but many other factors, including private-sector business imperatives and the domestic and international energy market, are factors as well.
We think Obama’s phrasing suggests that he thinks the administration’s policies have played a role, saying, for instance, that “over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration.” But we also think he does so cautiously.
Our ruling
Obama was correct when he said that “right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.” We think he may have overstated his administration’s role in achieving that, but not wildly so. We rate the claim Mostly True.
My own views on energy policy are beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll just note here in the comments that I think it is crazy to be using fossil fuels for anything but transportation when we could have been switching to nukes for our electricity generation for the last forty years. The early designs weren’t great, but if that was where we focused our research we could have done a lot better. We had the basic Thorium research going back to the 50s and probably could have used it to develop fail-safe commercial reactors from 1970. The lack of development of nuclear energy is another gigantic eco-fail.
What we do NOT need is Obama’s “all of the above,” by which he means his constricted fossil fuels policies, plus solar, wind and bio-fuel. The last three are uneconomic. They cannot survive at all without massive subsidy, and even then quickly go bankrupt.
The true extent of the subsidies is mostly hidden. California, for instance, imposes renewable energy requirements which force every local utility to buy up any “renewable” energy that is available to the grid and pay top dollar for it. The costs of these forced purchases get passed on to consumers while traditional generators get bounced whenever the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, forcing their overhead costs way up and making THEIR electricity more expensive to consumers too. So it isn’t just the direct losses on garbage like Solyndra and Fisker, but the massive distortions and inefficiencies that permeate the entire market under green mandates.
This instanity is KILLING our economy, right now, right before our eyes. It doesn’t matter that greens like Stephen Chu are well meaning in their scientifically unsupported belief that they are saving the planet. They are unplugging the modern world and they need to be stopped.
Ed Mertin says:
March 20, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Sent a lot of this to Politifact.com……..
=========================================
If you want to do a proper fact check, look and see how much drilling is going on in public lands vs private, where the govt. has no control. I allow that it is factual, I’ve already checked. But, it is still disingenuous. He’s taking credit for allowing people to drill off shore again? Or that he only withdrew 1/2 of the leases already granted? That the oil companies are going around the president to drill oil when it sells for $108/barrel, can’t be seen as an accomplishment. It’s farcical.
Anyone repeating the tripe he stated as factual is simply a propaganda tool for the administration.
Alec Rawls says:
March 20, 2012 at 3:53 pm
My own views on energy policy are beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll just note here in the comments that I think it is crazy to be using fossil fuels for anything but transportation……
========================================================
Careful Alec, you should distinguish what you mean by that. It’s people like you who have confused our poor Sec. of Energy Chu. Fossil fuels can be thought of as coal, nat gas, and petroleum, and their derivatives. Clearly coal’s function is for electricity….. though, advancements are being made in the liquidizing process. Nat gas could be used for transport, but it isn’t very good, yet. It’s for electric and heating, and cooking…… it’s the petro that’s good for transportation.
Alec, I know you know this, I was just stating plainly for the people who may be confused…..such as our Sec. of Energy…….,,,,,,Here Alec…. or anyone else….. explain this bit of madness….. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/uhmm-chu-a-for-effort-f-for-knowledge
This is a must read.
More Johnson And Carbon Taxes
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=203625
_Jim says:
March 20, 2012 at 1:11 pm
@jim:
If I am not here, I’m usually arguing about climate change on HuffPo.
Alec, what Is up with you? All I am saying is that there is a tendency on this thread that Obama has to be ALL BAD. He is a liar, a fraudster, and imposter, a usurper. Get off it please. The guy is a centrist Democrat. He’s no extremist in any sense of the word. That concludes my part of the discussion. And I am not a nasty piece of work BTW.
Stop calling me names. This is getting childish.
Husker Homer says:
March 20, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Torgeir,
“Also, your comments on US production over time and political parties and presidents fails to recognize the ups and downs of oil prices, and the impact those huge fluctuations can have on domestic oil exploration and production. And, as we are seeing now, how technological advances can turn things upside down in 5 years time.”
I never touched that point. My point was to demonstrate that oil production in the U.S. is not dependent on political parties. It is market-driven, which is your point, which I agree with 100%.
Jeremy says:
March 20, 2012 at 3:07 pm
“Torgeir has been caught up by nonsensical green doomsday propaganda. Although he is not the first, nor the last and he is far from being alone; it does not make him right. The truth is that fossil fuels have, on the whole, been miraculously beneficial. Those societies that have the necessary infrastructure to benefit from the use of fossil fuels are enjoying today the highest standard of living the human race has ever seen. These societies also enjoy some of the highest environmental standards – clean water, healthy forests and healthy protected wildlife and wilderness areas (things a poverty stricken society could never even begin to worry about).”
————————–
All of these things are 100% correct. Fossil fuels bring wealth in direct proportion to its use. The benefits are great.
Part of the wealth that is created is used by governments to mitigate the externalities, which largely consist of pollution in the form of soot, CO, NOx, and other harmful gases. And then there are injuries, especially on the roads. That’s why we have CAFE standards, that’s why we have speed limits, and that’s why Richard Nixon established the EPA and signed the Clean Air Act.
We don’t disagree, so stop this feverish blather about “nonsensical green doomsday propaganda.” You better believe that the United States government spends money and effort on mitigating the downsides of fossil fuel use. And you better believe that this country should work on developing the next generation of energy sources. A green technology that works well for homes is solar, the likely utility-scale technology is nuclear, possibly with natural gas as an intermediate technology. France gets 70% of its power from nuclear today.
Alec Rawls says:
March 20, 2012 at 3:53 pm
“This insanity (sic.) is KILLING our economy, right now, right before our eyes. It doesn’t matter that greens like Stephen Chu are well meaning in their scientifically unsupported belief that they are saving the planet. They are unplugging the modern world and they need to be stopped.”
This is what I don’t understand. If this “insanity” is KILLING our economy, how come we are seeing an economic recovery after the 2008 crash? It doesn’t add up. The facts say otherwise.
Torgeir, “A green technology that works well for homes is solar”
Oh dear, it seems that solar (which is uneconomic currently as it costs more than coal fired power) appears to be suffering a bit of a setback, even under the administration that has been its biggest proponent.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17450718
Could it be that all those Green US Jobs that Obama and Dr Chu promised have gone to China? Could it be that executives at collapsed Green start-ups burned up billions of taxpayer funds?
O RLY?
john says:
March 20, 2012 at 4:47 pm
This is a must read.
More Johnson And Carbon Taxes
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=203625
=================================================
The problem with Libertarians is that they’re hard to organize and they aren’t very complicit. Johnson is less of a Libertarian than I am, and I’m a conservative. He’s a liberal with conservative tendencies. He’s backwards. But, many Libertarians are.
As a former card carrying member of the Libertarian party, I’ve got to tell you, there’s a bunch of nuts in that tree. That party is nothing but disappointment. If and when they want to get serious about being a political force, then I’ll reconsider my position on that party and offer to assist in any way I can. Toss his behind, and then set a foundation of principles.
The problem with Libertarians is that they’re hard to organize and they aren’t very complicit. Johnson is less of a Libertarian than I am, and I’m a conservative. He’s a liberal with conservative tendencies. He’s backwards. But, many Libertarians are. As a former card carrying member of the Libertarian party, I’ve got to tell you, there’s a bunch of nuts in that tree. That party is nothing but disappointment. If and when they want to get serious about being a political force, then I’ll reconsider my position on that party and offer to assist in any way I can. Toss his behind, and then set a foundation of principles.
Libertarians are no more monolithic and clearly no more ‘backwards’ than either conservatives or liberals. But they are less confused than either conservatives or liberal because their philosophy is based on the idea that freedom from coercive action is a necessary foundation for the best society. It is very clear that on that front both the liberals and conservatives fall short because both believe in coercion as the basis of political activity.
That having been said, shouldn’t we stick to the topic at hand?
Torgeir: Ordering me not to call you “names” while continuing to call me “childish.” You really are a piece of work, still insisting that it is perfectly a-okay for you to completely mis-represent what I am saying about Obama and Chu. You find it convenient to pretend that I present their motive as the ruination of the country and that’s supposed to make it okay. So you’re not nasty? Then stop trying to defend the indefensible.
Torgeir Hansson says:March 20, 2012 at 2:16 am
“Allan, I believe solar is a good alternative for many residences.”
Torgeir, I am referring to grid-connected solar power, which requires truly enormous subsidies and makes no economic or energy sense, imo.
I agree that solar is economical for residential lighting, provided it is daytime, the residence has abundant windows, and the curtains are open. 🙂
Alec Rawls says:
March 20, 2012 at 3:53 pm
My own views on energy policy are beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll just note here in the comments that I think it is crazy to be using fossil fuels for anything but transportation when we could have been switching to nukes for our electricity generation for the last forty years….
_________________________
AMEN!
What actually happened at Fukushima pretty much shows the old designs were decent and that we can handle problems.
From what I have read mini thorium reactors could be used to power ships and possibly trains. I think I read that the US military was looking into a nuclear powered plane at one time too.
As a chemist I feel wasting hydrocarbons on producing electricity is an out right crime!
Nuclear powered aircraft development: http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/evolution%20of%20technology/nuke.htm
Nuclear cars: http://www.txchnologist.com/2011/the-thorium-laser-the-completely-plausible-idea-for-nuclear-cars
Would Thorium Powered Ships be better for the Navy? http://yottawattsthorium.blogspot.com/2010/02/thorium-powered-ships-for-navy.html
Thorenco LLC: http://thorenco.com/
When I mention Thorium I often get “That technology is not proven or whatever. Here is a document about that subject:
But profitability does not tell the tale. If producers are not making money, it is because the glut of supply has driven natural gas prices down to the level of production costs.
The problem is the energy cost of the energy being extracted. That is the point missed by most of the people who are hyping up the shale producers without thinking. If supply falls and gas goes up to the break-even price of $8 per Mcf the producers can start drilling again. But the current break-even price depends on drilling the better locations in the most productive formations, not the average shale property. And the higher the production level the more drills that you will need just to offset depletion. That means more drill rigs, and more drill crews. But there is a huge shortage of qualified people and new rigs. The producers of specialty pumps, compressors, etc., are also having trouble with their supply chains because the short supply of the special skills and experience needed to produce them are driving costs higher.
I have been in regular contact with people in the tar sands. If you look at the projects you see huge cost overruns because the price of design, engineering services, raw materials, skilled labour, and specialty equipment is exploding. The same cost drivers are showing up in the shale sector every time activity increases. And if you understand the depletion issue you know that demand or services has to keep growing faster than the production level increase. Sorry but the math is simple and you cannot escape the consequences.
Allan MacRae says:
March 20, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Torgeir Hansson says:March 20, 2012 at 2:16 am
“Allan, I believe solar is a good alternative for many residences.”
Torgeir, I am referring to grid-connected solar power, which requires truly enormous subsidies and makes no economic or energy sense, imo.
I agree that solar is economical for residential lighting, provided it is daytime, the residence has abundant windows, and the curtains are open. 🙂
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And, that’s the only way it makes sense. Connecting little home panels to the grid decreases efficiency, and solar farms are inane.
How refreshing! The Smartest President Ever has abandoned one spurious reason for foolish wasteful spending, and adopted another in its stead. And the foolish wasteful spending continues unabated. And the cronies wax fat.
Torgeir Hansson says:
March 20, 2012 at 5:53 pm
….This is what I don’t understand. If this “insanity” is KILLING our economy, how come we are seeing an economic recovery after the 2008 crash? It doesn’t add up. The facts say otherwise.
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The economy is “recovering” DESPITE all the blockades government tosses in our path. It is mainly thanks to small business that we see any recovery at all.
(The newest graphs are subscription only)
Housing starts bombed and are still swimming in the sewer: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-419-january-cpi-ppi-real-retail-sales-and-housing-starts
Unemployment is still around 23%: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
GDP has grown about 2% from having nose dived by -4% (so it is still 2% lower than in 2008)(last graph on page) : http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-366-first-quarter-gdp-retail-sales-revisions-hyperinflation-watch
So MORE firms CLOSED than opened.
The Institute for Justice:
http://www.ij.org/citystudies
http://www.ij.org/about/3425
Maybe the President worked it out for himself …
Note the word “process” in the Clausius statement:
No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.
The Second Law can be illustrated with a hose used as a siphon to empty a swimming pool, for example. It works if the other end of the hose goes down a slope and is significantly below the bottom of the pool.
The water flows and entropy increases because we have a single process. The SLoT requires a single process, as is obvious in everyday life.
If you cut the hose at the highest point you now have two processes, and the water no longer goes upwards from the pool.
Any heat flow from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface is a single completed process. The energy is not constrained to return by radiation or to do anything in particular. It could be conducted elsewhere in the surface for example.
Because it is a single process from atmosphere to surface, there is no justification for saying that any subsequent process can create a net effect and thus excuse the violation of the Second Law. It would be like water flowing uphill to the town’s water tank on the basis that it would subsequently flow further downhill through pipes into houses. But there is no constraint enforcing this, as there was with the siphon before the hose was cut. After all, the tank might leak.
Hence, thermal energy cannot transfer spontaneously from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface. Fullstop.
See my publication Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf