Sunday, January 6, 2013
Miscellaneous 162
1) "The electric car has long been recognized as the ideal solution. It is cleaner, quieter, and much more economical than gas-fueled cars." The New York Times, November, 1911.............2) According to the National Mining Association, 57 coal-firing plants have been shut down by President Obama's E.P.A.. In the mean-time, the rest of the world's usage of this plentiful source of energy has increased by 47% over the past four years (led of course by China, India, and various parts of Africa). This whole notion of the U.S. cutting back on fossil fuels having an effect on global CO2 emissions is borderline laughable, people.............3) The U.S. is currently burning nearly 40% of it's corn crop (15% of the world's global corn) in an effort to make ethanol. The effect of all this? Try it produces the equivalent of .6% of the world's total oil requirements and the number progressively gets smaller every year. Ethanol, a scam? What do you folks think?............4) The United States has a proved oil reserve of 21 billion barrels. It also has a prospective supply of 86 billion barrels from the Outer Continental Shelf, 11 billion from ANWAR, 11 billion from the rest of Alaska, and 4 billion from the Bakken Formation in Montana. Add to that the possible 4 TRILLION barrels that the Bureau of Land Management says are currently available in America's shale oil reserves and it sure as hell doesn't look like we're going to be running out of it any time soon.............5) Oh, and coal, we have a 235 year supply of that, too.
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23 comments:
let's just hope we can develop alternatives fast enough to avoid burning too much of that carbon u love, and that the developing world sees our example n follows it -- before it's too late to save our kids n grandkids.
oops! forgot to check follow-up.
The sad reality is that solar, wind, and lithium ion batteries just don't have the power density of oil, natural gas, and coal. Yeah, ethanol's an option but that can be just as polluting as fossil fuels and it also drives up the cost of food.
u assume technology stands still.
https://www.facebook.com/novadust/posts/389120027844407
Not really. I'm just projecting that it'll (technology) probably advance significantly further with the fossil fuels (cleaner burning, better performance) than with the greenage.
lol. get serious! u read those articles?
Gas and oil have markedly out-innovated solar and wind (the ethanol of the future) in the past 2 decades and I have little reason to doubt that that will change.
We would have to cover the entirety of New England, New York, and New Jersey in windmills to cover what we're pesently getting from coal and oil. And being that literally nobody wants one in THEIR neighborhood, I seriously doubt that that would happen.
'out-innovated'? how? i hope u don't mean fracking n tar sands. (n comparing solar n wind to ethanol is absurd. neither reduces food supply nor emits carbon gases.)
'literally'? 'nobody'? windmills are beautiful. i'd love to have them in my neighborhood and LITERALLY in my back yard, in fact.
but we won't have to cover any states with them, because we won't rely on a single technology. rather, we'll use an efficient mix of solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, non-dam hydro, and other non-carbon, non-nuclear energy generating technologies with the least possible environmental impact.
don't tell me u'r a denialist. (u ignored the URL i posted earlier.)
"Burning carbon" is far more sustainable and economically feasible than these other supposedly 'green' methods which rely on batteries which come from another type of fossil: rare earth minerals mined in China.
But there is room for reform of energy and transportation/automotive policy:
1) Remove all the extra taxes on gasoline so it is taxed the same like anything else. A big boost to our pocketbooks as we end up paying something a lot more close to the real price per gallon.
2) No more huge multi-billion dollar handouts to the big auto corporations. Or to build up American battery companies so they can be bought up by China. Or Obama giving money to factories in Finland to employ Finns to build cars. Or "Solyndra" greenscams.
3) Get rid of CAFE, so the American public can purchase the cars it needs. If a car is a gas-hog, it will cost more to drive and that will be a disincentive to buyers to buy them; all done just fine without any government regulation whatsoever. This is one of the worst examples of the ignorance and arrogance of the ruling elites. Sorry, Congress, we know what cars we need, not you.
4) Get the government entirely out of the auto industry except for what is necessary (i.e. safety regulations and regulation of actual toxic vehicular emissions). This includes eliminating teriffs/quotas/etc which punish foreign companies for making better cars and rob money from American consumers for making their own informed choices.
d Nova: Franking and tar sands are great energy solutions.
As for: "efficient mix of solar, wind [etc]"
I'm fine with that if it arises from genuine economic need and the demands of the people (through the free market).
RW talking points don't impress me. if u read the URL i posted u would see we have no need for batteries. without ecology there is no economy. keep burning carbon at current rates for a few more centuries and it's over. kaput. tot. history will be 'history'. your great-great-great-(maybe a few more greats)-grandchildren will choke to death or die of heat stroke or get killed by extreme weather or flood or starvation -- young, if they even get born.
'informed choices'? lol! if u'r an example of 'informed' choice, we're definitely finished.
"RW talking points don't impress me."
Unintellectual attemps to dismiss the facts because someone else on the "RW" might use them for talking points does not impress me. What a cop-out.
Not only that, you are flat-out wrong. I don't subscribe to marching orders or talking point memos or briefings of any kind.
Now, can we continue? Or is it quite clear that you throw up this evasive tactic when presented with inconvenient facts you happen to dislike?
As for the rest of it, ever heard of Jeane Dixon? You are about as scientific as her.
"'informed choices'? lol! if u'r an example of 'informed' choice, we're definitely finished."
Instead of insult, and imaginary apocalyptic predictions which have no basis in any reality, why not stick to the facts?
Be specific. How was I uninformed?
And yes, I was specifically referring to individual consumers choosing automobiles based on their own needs. These consumers are much more informed of their own needs than you are, than I am, and of course much more than Congress is. It is extremely arrogant and ignorant of anyone to assume otherwise.
D Nova, you know your own needs. You don't know anyone else's needs. These people making choices about their own lives are much more informed than you or any other ignorant outsider.
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Will, you have a real winner here...
Got a better link? Facebook is useless for such things. Hardly better than Myspace in this regard.
d nova, yes, fracking and horizontal drilling are the innovations that I was referring to. That certainly beats the electric car which has been touted for over a century now and STILL isn't mainstream (and I resent a billion of my tax-dollars going to subsidize these things through tax credits yearly - a lot of in the form of golf-cats for millionaires).......As for green energy in general, I have nothing against it except for the fact that it's a) diffuse, b) land consuming, c) costly (it wouldn't likely exist if it weren't for the subsidies), d) unreliable, e) politically-based, and f) not easily shipped. I mean, I'm sorry, but I do hate crony capitalism.
So Will,Im guessing your not on the waiting list for a Volt or a Fisker?
I wonder which one dnova is buying? Or perhaps dnova is the typical do as I say,not as I do liberal.
Now, am I a global-warming denier? No, I believe that the temperature has risen. But I also think that it's fair to call me an agnostic as it pertains to a) the cause of the warming and b) the solutions. Government? I mean, I don't know, d nova, I think that if you go back to the 1960s and '70s you'll probably find that the most polluted areas of the planet were the ones that had the most in terms of central planning, not the least.......And a couple of facts here. a) 95-99% (depending on whether or not you include water vapor) of all greenhouse gasses are NON-man-made and b) if you look at that graph of Mr. Gore's in which he shows the relationship between CO2 and warming, you'll plainly see that the warming periods PRECEDED the increases in the CO2 levels. That alone should give everybody pause.
I wouldn't drive a Volt if you gave it to me, Russ.
Will: you are right to be skeptical of government as a solution. What does government give us? Such corrupt fiascos as the Kyoto Accords, which required that certain politically connected nations be able to actually increase so-called greenhouse gasses in a massive way. Ask Al Gore, the number guy, Dnova, and other "people of faith" (not science) man-made global warming zealots about this? And what do you get? Refusals to answer, evasion, dissembling, and mumbling.
"D nova": There are other problem going on besides your lack of critical thinking skills and your scientific illiteracy, and labeling healthy skepticism concerning invalid conjectures as "RW talking points".
You appear to be incapable of spelling easy words such as 'and' and 'you'. This might fly if you are "tweeting" from a cheap phone that only has a numeric keypad, but when you graduate from high school and take college entrance exams, this will hurt you on essays (or "hurt u n SA's"). You might want to hit a dictionary, or at least do some spell-checking, as you are not ready for prime time yet.
"d nova", I know you are ignorant of this, as opposed to making mere typographical errors (an example of the latter being many from me, and Will's recent "golf-cats"). Ignorance is no defense.
Didn't the Senate actually vote 95-0 to not even bring Kyoto up for a vote until it included countries like India and China (and, yes, this was when Bill Clinton was President and Al Gore Vice President!)
dmarks, ur references to critical thinking, scientific illiteracy, n healthy skepticism have been duly noted. thanks for the laughs. ich -- o xcuse me, we don't use 'ich' anymore, do we? -- i suspect 'u' will replace 'you' someday, just as 'i' has replaced its earlier, longer ancestor. i'm less sure about 'n', but i'll keep using it anyway. language is a dynamic process.
mr hart, i do not apologize for politicians. i'm glad to see us cutting our carbon emissions, wish we could do it faster, wish all countries would, too, but realize my wishes may not get fulfilled. reality is reality. escapism is temporary at best. denial is a defense mechanism. the only reality it changes is the subjective one inside one's head.
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