first go fight a war to get the oil.... then raise a ban to get the local oil all before he leaves office..... hmmmm...... so this way the bush family and those around him have all the oil power....
ending a ban on offshore drilling is a total bandaid solution. c'mon people, get real!
mdler speaks the rare truth.
here's a better idea: take the money spent in one week in iraq and build a DC infrastructure nationwide to handle direct current from a massive solar array built in some of the uninhabited land in the southwest and provide free, clean energy for the entire country.
probably about 25,000 newly created jobs in the process just to build the thing, then another ton of jobs maintaining it.
I'd like to see us take the money spent in having our congressmen investigate professional athletes use of steroids and build a national miniature golf course... I know that is completely off topic.... but...it just seems like it would be fun...
sad that its come to the "anything proposed by the president is automatically a bad idea because he is a bad person" argument. yes this is a bandaid solution, but it does buy time. which is all we really need. noone doubts that money needs to be invested in other areas, but you dont do that by disinvesting in oil, and ignoring solutions to real problems faced by many americans who cant ride their bikes to work.
anyone seen the company in silicon valley LS9, that has genetically engineered microbes that digest woodchips, sugar cane, wheat... any farm waste and excrete pure crude oil.. within the next month they are expecting to fill up the first car tank with the gas, which they said upon mass production will be able to be sold at roughly 50 dollars a barrel? pretty cool stuff.
im a states rights man, personally. leave it up to the voters in november if they want to allow drilling off their respective coasts, leave it to the alaskans if they want drilling in anwr. not some politician that is unaffected by a decision either way (except perhaps avoiding reelection)
oh mightylittle™ , the whole policy is about domination and corporate colonialism. giving a DC decentralized PV systems would empower people and that does not meet the corporate abuse and control levels set forth in secret policy meetings by the neo liberal and neo conservative hegemonic overlords
and i agree, a solar array in the desert would disturb a lot less creatures (snakes and scorpions?) than digging in pristine lands and piping it thousands of miles.
mdler ive heard that too, (never seen any of the information behind it) but its gonna take 5+ years for anything to have an impact. (let the oil companies use those record profits to set up more platforms) let the government invest in other research. people will still use oil in 5 years, and if we can supply our own that cant be bad. hopefully whoever the next president is will see the value of investing in MULTIPLE sources of energy including oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal all that good stuff. not just leaving oil companies out as a scape goat.
i dont care where we get the energy from. the best answer is probably a mixture of all things so that we dont become too reliant on one source of energy.... thats the only reason we're in the jazz we are right now anyway.
but if we have so many disparate fuel sources and energy strategies how will a few large companies control it all?
and i agree, a solar array in the desert would disturb a lot less creatures (snakes and scorpions?) than digging in pristine lands and piping it thousands of miles.
this specifically is not so much a gas price thing or an energy security issue, but is in fact just a way for oil companies to expand their profits. also, it has been demonstrated that the oil companies don't use many of the leases they have.
that said, it wouldn't really bother me if they opened the continental shelf to drilling for oil. of course, like anything else they should evaluate environmental factors before installing massive oil rigs, but the canadians allow off-shore oil rigs in lake erie that the US doesn't even allow and they've never had a problem. the fact that off-shore oil reserves are developed doesn't mean there are going to be massive oil spills. i feel that a lot of this isn't a result of some conspiracy to raise oil prices as it is that brazil just discovered a huge reserve off of their coastline. even as we expand the green economy, energy still has to come from somewhere, and the US will still require vast amounts of oil in the forseeable decades no matter how green it becomes.
a drilling rig in the lake http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/images/stel02_167127.jpg
if it takes 5 years we need to start NOW! we should have started this
in 2 years i'm buying a hydrogen car (i :heart: honda) but still, most people won't be there with me .. so gimme gimme gimme oil (and not from fucking saudi iraqia yo!)
On a related note, American's are driving less, and thus paying lower taxes which go to support the construction and maintenance of roads. This could be a vicious cycle...
please. let's see if we can state this accurately:
we're addicted to oil (not 'foreign' oil just oil). like so many other things, there's simply not enough to go around (dammit - we ship our western values over to china and india and, dammit, they actually want to live like us!) so, instead of funneling money into getting us weaned from what's killing us (literally), we should just open up every park, ocean, lake, monument, etc. THAT WE ALL COMMONLY OWN, and drill them dry.
f-in brilliant. really, just f-in brilliant. ruin what shred of 'nature' we may have left so that the oil companies here can make even more profits (i'm assuming you saw they're all about to sign non-competitive contracts to divy up the iraqi oil fields, right?) by drilling us dry here. great. lovely. f-ing brilliant.
i'll tell you what mr. ramos - if we can nationalize any oil field on FEDERAL property and have the country itself drill and sell the oil at a subsidized price, i'll go along with it. but i'll be damned if i'm ruining our environment just so cheney can make more money...
it's a big world out there - it won't ruin the environment. shred of 'nature'? are you serious? have you flown across the u.s.? there is sooooo much nature undisturbed i mean come ON! drilling in alaska or 100 miles of the coast .. you won't even realize it. NATURE won't even realize it.
fucking brilliant! i agree
i say it's best to use our oil while we transition to alternative fuels (like my hydrogen car from ze future year 2010!)
"As Governor of California, I will do everything in my power to fight the federal government on this issue and prevent any new offshore drilling," Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a McCain supporter, said Wednesday.
fuck you, schwarzenegger. i voted you in back in 2003 to take care of the budget and not let spending get out of control. now the state budget has ballooned from grey davis' $71 billion to arnie's $101 billion. WHAT THE HELL?!?
yeah keep fighting offshore drilling while you drive around in your fat fucking hummer and fly your gulfstream from l.a. to sacramento every day you FUCKING HYPOCRIT!!! (but thank GOD you pay $10 each flight to offset your carbon emissions OH WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT YOU, AHHHHNOLD?)
i did not vote to re-elect the govenator. piece of shit girly-man what a waste of an opportunity - instead he let the teachers and nurses unions walk all over him. pathetic.
you people think that the prices will drop once they drill....shit.... they'll stay the same and then some b.s. reason of "we need to recoup what we lost"....
i would be just fine getting a car/truck that gets good miles and sell my vette.....
it's all b.s.
maybe they should have drilled 6 years ago when the dipshit became president......
artificially drive oil prices up to gain leverage with all the Americans suffering at the pump so that you can drill off-shore and Alaska
I love how Bush gets all the blame for the price of oil.
Nevermind that worldwide demand has balooned in the past 8 years, mostly the BRIC countries, but also in the oil exporting countries.
Nevermind that the Federal Reserve has been printing money at such a rampant pace that they officially quit reporting the M3 numbers. The dollar is in steep decline which causes inflation in hard assets, commodities, i.e. OIL.
Nevermind that 95% of the oil reserves in the world are under control of national oil companies, not the so called big oil. These NOC's have no incentive to pump as quickly and efficiently as possible. They actually want to save some of this wealth for the future.
Nevermind that since the mid 1980's oil companies haven't been able to replace the oil extracted with equal reserves of new finds.
Nevermind that almost all oil producing countries are in decline. Mexico in 2005 was America's biggest exporter, today they are #3. Their giant (2nd largest in the world) Cantarell oil field is in rapid decline. They will be net oil importers in less than 10 years. The North Sea is in decline, Alaska's Prudhoe bay is in decline, Russia is in decline and many speculate that Saudi Arabia is in decline. The supergiant Gahawar was discovered in the 1930's and has been pumping for over 70 years ~ it will not last forever.
Nevermind that most oil refineries are built for a light sweet blend of crude. Today the surplus capacity is in heavy sour, which most refieries aren't capable of handling. Installing new cokers to handle this is expensive and time consuming with very difficult environmental regulations.
And I really get a kick out of the 5 year timeline for any offshore drilling. Odd how that's the exact number Obama said - someone who knows nothing about the oil & gas industry. Recent history shows that it would take possibly 10 years or more to get any offshore oil in the Atlantic or Pacific. Just look at BP's problems with the Thunderhorse rig off New Orleans for example, or Shell's deepwater Mars rig.
Also nevermind that Petrobras in Brazil has tied up the leases of ever deep water rig in the world right now for several years out.
But hey, I agree that drilling in the outer continental shelf will not replace the 21 million barrels per day that America consumes. If we do extract what's there it should be used wisely. Alternatives need to be part of the solution, as well traditional energy.
I just get a little irked when people make ignorant comments based on political views, not to mention ignorant politicians that know nothing of an industry that quite literally is responsible for the modern world we have today. Without oil we'd literally be back to living like it was in colonial times. Do you want that???
Without oil we'd literally be back to living like it was in colonial times. Do you want that???
Actually, I and a lot of people wouldn't mind a return to a more agrarian/less technologically reliant society (as long as we could keep our internet, with solar power of course). But what's more likely is that when the oil supply is in dire straits we will innovate our way out of impending societal collapse at the eleventh hour.
aqua hit it on the head but i'm not so sure the reserves are running out at such a dire pace. Brazil's leasing all those rigs because they discovered a huge field off the coast i'm also under the impression that russia has just begun to scratch into its oil reserves.
apurimac - nobody has ever said I'm an optimist about energy. Hey, I hope the oil keeps flowing long as possible, but given the Texas decline rate since their peak in 1970 and the North Sea decline since 1999 I think it's time to sound the alarm. OPEC is quite secretive so who knows, but people with more knowledge than I have are very concerned.
Oh, and I whollly agree that we need to live more responsibly. Call it agrarian or whatever. We shouldn't be eating fresh fruits shipped halfway around the world in the dead of winter. We should eat locally produced food, be it a CSA or a backyard veggie garden. We should drive a more fuel efficient fleet of cars. We need more mass transit, specifically rail. We need more intercity rail. We need less air travel (oil prices are taking care of that one for us). Freight should be moved onto rail and off trucks. Investment into wind and solar should be ramped up.
That is a really good point about freight being moved back onto rail. It is very under reported, but there is a ton of job opportunity in the rail industry. When I was graduating as a civil engineer, I remember a speaker comming from the rail industry. The rail industry is projecting very strong, steady growth for a long time to come. He also showed us a graph of the average ages of the employees in the rail industry. It was crazy how old their people are, nearly all of them were between 50 and 65, (I'm talking design engineers here, not physical rail employees, who may or may not be as old). I imagine it is too late for most of us on here, but if you were looking for a job opportunity with nearly unlimited advancement potential, you could get into the rail industry and fly up the organizational chart.
synergy - I've heard the same about the railroads needing people. Same goes for the oil industry. The geologists and engineers are old, but in the 80's & 90's when oil was super cheap computer science and MBA's were all the hype for college degrees.
Talked to a friend who works for Chevron. They are hiring petroleum geologists straight out of Texas Tech at over $100k/year right now.
I imagine once fogotten degrees like nucler engineering will also be in high demand very soon.
On one hand we shouldn't be drilling in environmentally senstive areas
On the other hand Canada and others doing just that and technology has changed substantially since the legislation was first enacted.
On another hand, making everyone at least think about lifestyle changes is great and will equalize things eventually.
On the other hand, it makes our economy suffer and puts the country on a precarious edge. Any more big bad news and we'll slip into a bad recession, which will be bad for everyone, including the environment.
No clear answer, imho. I'd love to just go with the 'feel good responsible' approach, but I also have learned how important an economy is to everyone and everything.
Withdrawing from Iraq seems to be the only viable, short term solution, at least monetarily speaking. Invest that in alt energy and possibly some refinement of traditional sources.
Rail has been a great investment, as a side note, with stocks flying (and Buffet investing fortunes). Watch the stock market and we'll see where the future is.
the modern world isn't without its problems. it's ignorant politicians who demand the status quo, assume that things work fine the way they are, and are profitting from policy that is not intended to solve the energy problem, but simply to encourage a continued addiction to oil consumption.
basically, oil is on the the decline, demand is outsstripping supply, the problem is not going away... At best you have short term inadequate solutions that will cost billions of dollars in investment and which will not have a positive impact on the American consumer... It's not just American consumption that is driving up oil prices... To a much greater extent, it's increased global consumption.
As countries with populations that dwarf america's (like India and China) develop in their industry and in their standards of living, consumption of oil is going to skyrocket to a point where anyway a dependence on limited (non-renewable) oil reserves will become a major economic burden for countries...
This is about competition. It's not just about preserving the environment, it's about how America can remain competitive, and how it can become stronger, economically, politically, technologically, even militarily... The point is not to gamble on drilling for more oil (which anyway gets traded on a global market), the point of energy independence talk is to become independent of any one energy solution, especially energy solutions that are not renewable, and which force our hand in foreign policy... The point is about investing in the future... Let's not label progressive as "environmental preservationist" or "unpractical"... This is all about pragmatic solutions, just ones that require change rather than complacency...
IMHO, the market is communicating a demand for fuel efficiency in response to price increase, isn't this simply the natural logical result of shifts in global supply and demand...? There are all kinds of efforts to paint pretty pictures that the problem is not real, that the skyrocketing prices are simply the result of temporary investor speculation, etc. and to some extent those might have some impact... But lets get real. The reason price goes up, is: supply decreases, and demand increases, in a global market. It's pretty simple.
We have the technologies for alternative energy, it's just that oil companies, and their political agents will do everything in their power to milk what is left in their non-renewable energy source for every dollar that it is worth... Even if that means glazing over the real market forces with smoke and mirrors talk about new drilling potential... This is not about free market, it's about market control... It's not about an economic solution to people's gas price problems, it's all about oil profits, and also an entire region and economies that depend on oil consumption...
Speaking just for America, which has many other industries, we're better off embracing market forces that are pushing for investment in alternative energy technologies that we already have developed, rather than expensive and futile attempts to soften the blow of market forces on oil profits and encouraging people to continue to drive their gas guzzlers despite the hurt in their pocket books... Increased drilling isn't offering real solutions, it's just pandering.
Bush Calls for End to Ban on Offshore Oil Drilling
- from the NY Times.
Another nail in the Republican coffin.
hmmm......
first go fight a war to get the oil.... then raise a ban to get the local oil all before he leaves office..... hmmmm...... so this way the bush family and those around him have all the oil power....
hmmmmm........
another nail? finally bush is doing something right
artificially drive oil prices up to gain leverage with all the Americans suffering at the pump so that you can drill off-shore and Alaska
Just like planning 9-11 to gain leverage for attacking Iraq
you speak the 9/11 Truth!
ending a ban on offshore drilling is a total bandaid solution. c'mon people, get real!
mdler speaks the rare truth.
here's a better idea: take the money spent in one week in iraq and build a DC infrastructure nationwide to handle direct current from a massive solar array built in some of the uninhabited land in the southwest and provide free, clean energy for the entire country.
probably about 25,000 newly created jobs in the process just to build the thing, then another ton of jobs maintaining it.
then we can all drive plug-in EV's to mcdonalds.
I'd like to see us take the money spent in having our congressmen investigate professional athletes use of steroids and build a national miniature golf course... I know that is completely off topic.... but...it just seems like it would be fun...
but that massive solar array in 'uninhabited' land must be inhabited by some species. animals can not adapt to change :(
no doubt it would cause massive extinction of something
Just like a couple of oil rigs on the north slope of alaska would completely fuck up caribou migrations to the point they'd go extinct.
Puh-lease...
animals can't adapt to change? really?
and the array can be built in long strips, with pass-thru below for animal migration. problem solved.
if we can build a pipeline to carry oil from prudhoe bay to valdez i think we can build a bunch of mirrors in the desert.
"Calls for Offshore to Ban Bush on Oil Drilling End"
what about the migratory birds that may fly into the oil rigs...you know, the same ones that may fly into the windmills
a bird hit my windshield once
damn you, gas guzzler!
sad that its come to the "anything proposed by the president is automatically a bad idea because he is a bad person" argument. yes this is a bandaid solution, but it does buy time. which is all we really need. noone doubts that money needs to be invested in other areas, but you dont do that by disinvesting in oil, and ignoring solutions to real problems faced by many americans who cant ride their bikes to work.
anyone seen the company in silicon valley LS9, that has genetically engineered microbes that digest woodchips, sugar cane, wheat... any farm waste and excrete pure crude oil.. within the next month they are expecting to fill up the first car tank with the gas, which they said upon mass production will be able to be sold at roughly 50 dollars a barrel? pretty cool stuff.
im a states rights man, personally. leave it up to the voters in november if they want to allow drilling off their respective coasts, leave it to the alaskans if they want drilling in anwr. not some politician that is unaffected by a decision either way (except perhaps avoiding reelection)
oh mightylittle™ , the whole policy is about domination and corporate colonialism. giving a DC decentralized PV systems would empower people and that does not meet the corporate abuse and control levels set forth in secret policy meetings by the neo liberal and neo conservative hegemonic overlords
simple really.
over_under
it would take 5+ years to see anything from the oil fields that Bush wants to drill
"animals cannot adopt to change"
oh, is that why i'm seeing foxes and coyotes is the park areas of my very urban city?
and i agree, a solar array in the desert would disturb a lot less creatures (snakes and scorpions?) than digging in pristine lands and piping it thousands of miles.
Free's being sarcastic again!
Darn you, Free Ramos!
i read a thing about a dog that 'adopted' a some baby squirrls
mdler ive heard that too, (never seen any of the information behind it) but its gonna take 5+ years for anything to have an impact. (let the oil companies use those record profits to set up more platforms) let the government invest in other research. people will still use oil in 5 years, and if we can supply our own that cant be bad. hopefully whoever the next president is will see the value of investing in MULTIPLE sources of energy including oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal all that good stuff. not just leaving oil companies out as a scape goat.
i dont care where we get the energy from. the best answer is probably a mixture of all things so that we dont become too reliant on one source of energy.... thats the only reason we're in the jazz we are right now anyway.
but if we have so many disparate fuel sources and energy strategies how will a few large companies control it all?
this specifically is not so much a gas price thing or an energy security issue, but is in fact just a way for oil companies to expand their profits. also, it has been demonstrated that the oil companies don't use many of the leases they have.
that said, it wouldn't really bother me if they opened the continental shelf to drilling for oil. of course, like anything else they should evaluate environmental factors before installing massive oil rigs, but the canadians allow off-shore oil rigs in lake erie that the US doesn't even allow and they've never had a problem. the fact that off-shore oil reserves are developed doesn't mean there are going to be massive oil spills. i feel that a lot of this isn't a result of some conspiracy to raise oil prices as it is that brazil just discovered a huge reserve off of their coastline. even as we expand the green economy, energy still has to come from somewhere, and the US will still require vast amounts of oil in the forseeable decades no matter how green it becomes.
a drilling rig in the lake
http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/images/stel02_167127.jpg
if it takes 5 years we need to start NOW! we should have started this
in 2 years i'm buying a hydrogen car (i :heart: honda) but still, most people won't be there with me .. so gimme gimme gimme oil (and not from fucking saudi iraqia yo!)
we should have started this 10 years ago
it's not too late if we act now. we have all the tools to deal with this crisis. drill drill drill!
what are we waiting for?
this is change i can believe in!
and prepositions i can end my sentences with.
On a related note, American's are driving less, and thus paying lower taxes which go to support the construction and maintenance of roads. This could be a vicious cycle...
link
Hey FRaC.
[b]CHANGE[/b}
yeah Synergy - california has had a problem with not getting enough taxes because people have switched to hybrids and higher mpg cars (like my civic)
drill, drill, drill?
please. let's see if we can state this accurately:
we're addicted to oil (not 'foreign' oil just oil). like so many other things, there's simply not enough to go around (dammit - we ship our western values over to china and india and, dammit, they actually want to live like us!) so, instead of funneling money into getting us weaned from what's killing us (literally), we should just open up every park, ocean, lake, monument, etc. THAT WE ALL COMMONLY OWN, and drill them dry.
f-in brilliant. really, just f-in brilliant. ruin what shred of 'nature' we may have left so that the oil companies here can make even more profits (i'm assuming you saw they're all about to sign non-competitive contracts to divy up the iraqi oil fields, right?) by drilling us dry here. great. lovely. f-ing brilliant.
i'll tell you what mr. ramos - if we can nationalize any oil field on FEDERAL property and have the country itself drill and sell the oil at a subsidized price, i'll go along with it. but i'll be damned if i'm ruining our environment just so cheney can make more money...
FRaC, i am so glad you are still a member of this website because you go up against some pretty thick-headed cats around here.
Laru, its alot more complex than you think.
it's a big world out there - it won't ruin the environment. shred of 'nature'? are you serious? have you flown across the u.s.? there is sooooo much nature undisturbed i mean come ON! drilling in alaska or 100 miles of the coast .. you won't even realize it. NATURE won't even realize it.
fucking brilliant! i agree
i say it's best to use our oil while we transition to alternative fuels (like my hydrogen car from ze future year 2010!)
and here's my worthless california governor:
"As Governor of California, I will do everything in my power to fight the federal government on this issue and prevent any new offshore drilling," Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a McCain supporter, said Wednesday.
fuck you, schwarzenegger. i voted you in back in 2003 to take care of the budget and not let spending get out of control. now the state budget has ballooned from grey davis' $71 billion to arnie's $101 billion. WHAT THE HELL?!?
yeah keep fighting offshore drilling while you drive around in your fat fucking hummer and fly your gulfstream from l.a. to sacramento every day you FUCKING HYPOCRIT!!! (but thank GOD you pay $10 each flight to offset your carbon emissions OH WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT YOU, AHHHHNOLD?)
i did not vote to re-elect the govenator. piece of shit girly-man what a waste of an opportunity - instead he let the teachers and nurses unions walk all over him. pathetic.
you people think that the prices will drop once they drill....shit.... they'll stay the same and then some b.s. reason of "we need to recoup what we lost"....
i would be just fine getting a car/truck that gets good miles and sell my vette.....
it's all b.s.
maybe they should have drilled 6 years ago when the dipshit became president......
I love how Bush gets all the blame for the price of oil.
Nevermind that worldwide demand has balooned in the past 8 years, mostly the BRIC countries, but also in the oil exporting countries.
Nevermind that the Federal Reserve has been printing money at such a rampant pace that they officially quit reporting the M3 numbers. The dollar is in steep decline which causes inflation in hard assets, commodities, i.e. OIL.
Nevermind that 95% of the oil reserves in the world are under control of national oil companies, not the so called big oil. These NOC's have no incentive to pump as quickly and efficiently as possible. They actually want to save some of this wealth for the future.
Nevermind that since the mid 1980's oil companies haven't been able to replace the oil extracted with equal reserves of new finds.
Nevermind that almost all oil producing countries are in decline. Mexico in 2005 was America's biggest exporter, today they are #3. Their giant (2nd largest in the world) Cantarell oil field is in rapid decline. They will be net oil importers in less than 10 years. The North Sea is in decline, Alaska's Prudhoe bay is in decline, Russia is in decline and many speculate that Saudi Arabia is in decline. The supergiant Gahawar was discovered in the 1930's and has been pumping for over 70 years ~ it will not last forever.
Nevermind that most oil refineries are built for a light sweet blend of crude. Today the surplus capacity is in heavy sour, which most refieries aren't capable of handling. Installing new cokers to handle this is expensive and time consuming with very difficult environmental regulations.
And I really get a kick out of the 5 year timeline for any offshore drilling. Odd how that's the exact number Obama said - someone who knows nothing about the oil & gas industry. Recent history shows that it would take possibly 10 years or more to get any offshore oil in the Atlantic or Pacific. Just look at BP's problems with the Thunderhorse rig off New Orleans for example, or Shell's deepwater Mars rig.
Also nevermind that Petrobras in Brazil has tied up the leases of ever deep water rig in the world right now for several years out.
But hey, I agree that drilling in the outer continental shelf will not replace the 21 million barrels per day that America consumes. If we do extract what's there it should be used wisely. Alternatives need to be part of the solution, as well traditional energy.
I just get a little irked when people make ignorant comments based on political views, not to mention ignorant politicians that know nothing of an industry that quite literally is responsible for the modern world we have today. Without oil we'd literally be back to living like it was in colonial times. Do you want that???
Lets go back to gothic times, Mead and flying buttresses for everyone!
Actually, I and a lot of people wouldn't mind a return to a more agrarian/less technologically reliant society (as long as we could keep our internet, with solar power of course). But what's more likely is that when the oil supply is in dire straits we will innovate our way out of impending societal collapse at the eleventh hour.
aqua hit it on the head but i'm not so sure the reserves are running out at such a dire pace. Brazil's leasing all those rigs because they discovered a huge field off the coast i'm also under the impression that russia has just begun to scratch into its oil reserves.
apurimac - nobody has ever said I'm an optimist about energy. Hey, I hope the oil keeps flowing long as possible, but given the Texas decline rate since their peak in 1970 and the North Sea decline since 1999 I think it's time to sound the alarm. OPEC is quite secretive so who knows, but people with more knowledge than I have are very concerned.
Oh, and I whollly agree that we need to live more responsibly. Call it agrarian or whatever. We shouldn't be eating fresh fruits shipped halfway around the world in the dead of winter. We should eat locally produced food, be it a CSA or a backyard veggie garden. We should drive a more fuel efficient fleet of cars. We need more mass transit, specifically rail. We need more intercity rail. We need less air travel (oil prices are taking care of that one for us). Freight should be moved onto rail and off trucks. Investment into wind and solar should be ramped up.
Aqua,
That is a really good point about freight being moved back onto rail. It is very under reported, but there is a ton of job opportunity in the rail industry. When I was graduating as a civil engineer, I remember a speaker comming from the rail industry. The rail industry is projecting very strong, steady growth for a long time to come. He also showed us a graph of the average ages of the employees in the rail industry. It was crazy how old their people are, nearly all of them were between 50 and 65, (I'm talking design engineers here, not physical rail employees, who may or may not be as old). I imagine it is too late for most of us on here, but if you were looking for a job opportunity with nearly unlimited advancement potential, you could get into the rail industry and fly up the organizational chart.
Nobody's gonna argue with that.
I like your pragmatic optimism, aquapura.
Synergy, I drank mead once. I'd rather not do it again. Let's stick to colonial times, they at least had beer. And less bubonic plague.
synergy - I've heard the same about the railroads needing people. Same goes for the oil industry. The geologists and engineers are old, but in the 80's & 90's when oil was super cheap computer science and MBA's were all the hype for college degrees.
Talked to a friend who works for Chevron. They are hiring petroleum geologists straight out of Texas Tech at over $100k/year right now.
I imagine once fogotten degrees like nucler engineering will also be in high demand very soon.
This is all a mess. I don't see a clear solution.
On one hand we shouldn't be drilling in environmentally senstive areas
On the other hand Canada and others doing just that and technology has changed substantially since the legislation was first enacted.
On another hand, making everyone at least think about lifestyle changes is great and will equalize things eventually.
On the other hand, it makes our economy suffer and puts the country on a precarious edge. Any more big bad news and we'll slip into a bad recession, which will be bad for everyone, including the environment.
No clear answer, imho. I'd love to just go with the 'feel good responsible' approach, but I also have learned how important an economy is to everyone and everything.
Withdrawing from Iraq seems to be the only viable, short term solution, at least monetarily speaking. Invest that in alt energy and possibly some refinement of traditional sources.
Rail has been a great investment, as a side note, with stocks flying (and Buffet investing fortunes). Watch the stock market and we'll see where the future is.
the modern world isn't without its problems. it's ignorant politicians who demand the status quo, assume that things work fine the way they are, and are profitting from policy that is not intended to solve the energy problem, but simply to encourage a continued addiction to oil consumption.
basically, oil is on the the decline, demand is outsstripping supply, the problem is not going away... At best you have short term inadequate solutions that will cost billions of dollars in investment and which will not have a positive impact on the American consumer... It's not just American consumption that is driving up oil prices... To a much greater extent, it's increased global consumption.
As countries with populations that dwarf america's (like India and China) develop in their industry and in their standards of living, consumption of oil is going to skyrocket to a point where anyway a dependence on limited (non-renewable) oil reserves will become a major economic burden for countries...
This is about competition. It's not just about preserving the environment, it's about how America can remain competitive, and how it can become stronger, economically, politically, technologically, even militarily... The point is not to gamble on drilling for more oil (which anyway gets traded on a global market), the point of energy independence talk is to become independent of any one energy solution, especially energy solutions that are not renewable, and which force our hand in foreign policy... The point is about investing in the future... Let's not label progressive as "environmental preservationist" or "unpractical"... This is all about pragmatic solutions, just ones that require change rather than complacency...
IMHO, the market is communicating a demand for fuel efficiency in response to price increase, isn't this simply the natural logical result of shifts in global supply and demand...? There are all kinds of efforts to paint pretty pictures that the problem is not real, that the skyrocketing prices are simply the result of temporary investor speculation, etc. and to some extent those might have some impact... But lets get real. The reason price goes up, is: supply decreases, and demand increases, in a global market. It's pretty simple.
We have the technologies for alternative energy, it's just that oil companies, and their political agents will do everything in their power to milk what is left in their non-renewable energy source for every dollar that it is worth... Even if that means glazing over the real market forces with smoke and mirrors talk about new drilling potential... This is not about free market, it's about market control... It's not about an economic solution to people's gas price problems, it's all about oil profits, and also an entire region and economies that depend on oil consumption...
Speaking just for America, which has many other industries, we're better off embracing market forces that are pushing for investment in alternative energy technologies that we already have developed, rather than expensive and futile attempts to soften the blow of market forces on oil profits and encouraging people to continue to drive their gas guzzlers despite the hurt in their pocket books... Increased drilling isn't offering real solutions, it's just pandering.
what about passing the windfall profit tax that will basically target the oil companies that are making $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$?
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