Why drilling won't help with the oil crisis

[Gonz]

you said lack og regulation.

There's too much regualtion.

 

[spike]

Do you think the current situation was caused by too much regulation?

What makes you think there is too much regulation?

 

[Gonz]

Congress threatened legislation if the loan practices, called red-lining, weren't loosened. Congress has oversight on Fannie & Freddie. There are regulations out the ass. You can't stop bad management through regulations.

Keep government out of business. It only exacerbates the problem.

 

[spike]

Actually you can stop a lot of issues and lessen the problems with regulation.

 

[Gato_Solo]

a lone, rational voice speaks out.

too bad most folks are too busy whipping this drilling issue into an imaginary symbol of what it is not rather than taking a pragmatic attitude.

"drill, drill, drill... fuck the spotted owl and you liberal fags!"

"more drilling will RUIN THE EARTH! fascists!"

You forgot one obvious faux-pas...explaining how drilling here will HURT the oil crisis...

 

[catocom]

the gov screwing with it in the first place, after they had it fixed.
They need to look Back.
When was it working right?
Put it back like it was.
Let AIG... fail, and pickup only the pieces that really need it.
(who decides what Really needs it? online/telephone/voting station. Ask the people.)
Develop Every possible fuel source.
Ride out the tough times ahead.

Result...Stronger nation.

 

[catocom]

I was just thinking...
I wonder if we went back to more cotton, instead of synthetics, how much
could possibly be cut of petrol in the processing.?

 

[jimpeel]

I hear these politicians parrot the line about how we won't see a single drop of oil for ten years. They have been saying this for the past ten years; and if they had stopped saying it, and started actually doing something, we would be producing oil from those sources today.

We can say tomorrow "We will not see a single drop of oil for ten years."

We can say the next day "We will not see a single drop of oil for ten years."

We can say the day after that "We will not see a single drop of oil for ten years.'

But on the day we start to drill, we can say "We will not see a single drop of oil for 9 years 364 days."

We can say the next day "We will not see a single drop of oil for 9 years 363 days."

We can say the day after "We will not see a single drop of oil for 9 years 362 days."

We can say the day after that ...

 

[jimpeel]

The fallacy of electric cars is that they pollute worse than gasoline cars.

They have batteries that are made of polluting materials that create pollution in their manufacture and use.

They have to be charged from sources that cause pollution of one sort or another.

There will be still one more energy crisis when the capacity to charge all of these vehicles falls short of the need.

Large trucks which deliver consumer goods to market cannot operate on electricity. It is not a viable fuel for long range transport of goods.

Aircraft cannot fly on electricity even with a very long cord.

Railroads cannot operate on electricity without major infrastructure changes. They will also place more load on available power sources.

And speaking of "available", nothing is being said of the environmentalist wackos who will CONTINUE to stand in the way of all new construction of powerplants, regardless of fuel, and any other source of power including hydroelectric, hydrogen, solar, and wind just as they have for the past thirty years.

 

[jimpeel]

http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080925.html

Picking on the Pickens Plan?
By Steven Milloy
September 25, 2008

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens’ camp responded last week to this column’s multi-part analysis of the so-called “Pickens Plan.” Focusing on my most recent comments, Pickens Plan defender Warren Mitchell said he was “overwhelmed” by my “lack of logic” and wondered what plan I had to “wean ourselves from foreign oil.”

Mitchell first objected to my point that Iran isn’t switching to natural gas cars to sell more oil (as claimed by Pickens in a TV ad), but rather to reduce its gasoline imports and, thereby, reduce international pressure on its nuclear weapons program.

But as pointed out in a January 2007 congressional hearing by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), “[… squeezing Iran economically… is having an effect… Iran’s oil minister admitted that this financial pressure has stunted its oil industry. It now has to import 42 percent of its refined gasoline.”

An Iranian political analyst said in July 2007 that “We will greatly suffer if [foreign countries] suddenly decide not to sell us fuel… Fuel rationing [Iran’s initial strategy for reducing imported gasoline] is a security-economic decision to reduce fuel consumption.”

Even Iran’s main car maker admitted to the Associated Press that natural gas cars “will greatly help Iran reduce, and even stop in the long run, importing gasoline from abroad.”

Although some Iranian politicians aligned with the national oil company have previously pushed for higher gas prices to curtail domestic demand for subsidized gasoline so that the Iranian government could invest in more oil production over the long-term, there’s no evidence that this is driving Iran’s switch to natural gas cars.

Moving on, Mitchell claimed that I “assaulted America’s natural gas supply, acting as if natural gas is already a scarce commodity in the U.S… Reality dictates a very different picture when it comes to America’s oil and natural gas supply.” Mitchell went on to say that the U.S. imports about 70 percent of its oil, while it has only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. In contrast, he says, 97 percent of U.S. natural gas comes from North America and these figures don’t account for the natural gas shale reserves that U.S. gas providers are able to access.

“Sleight-of-hand” is probably more appropriate than “reality” with Mitchell’s figures. When Mitchell talks about oil, he limits it to U.S. imports and sources. But when he talks about natural gas, he talks expansively in terms of North America -- that is, the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Most of the oil used in the U.S. (53 percent), in fact, comes from North American sources, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). Next, the U.S. produces only about 83 percent of its natural gas. We import the rest, and this supply -- just like our oil supply -- is vulnerable to world events and market pressures.

Mitchell is wrong about known U.S. oil reserves -- the actual figure is only about 1.6 percent (about a 3-year supply), according to the most recent DOE data. The good news -- omitted by Mitchell -- is that the U.S. reserve data excludes many known-but-not-counted domestic sources of oil, including the outer continental shelf (a 9- to 15-year supply), public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (a 1.5-year supply in ANWR alone) and western oil shale (possibly an 800-year supply, according to the Department of Interior).

While Mitchell touts natural gas shale reserves as significantly adding to U.S. production, such “unconventional production” of natural gas is expected by the DOE to increase only from 44 percent of total domestic production in 2005 to about 49 percent by 2030 -- not enough to reduce U.S. dependency on imported natural gas. The DOE says that liquid natural gas (LNG) imports will be the largest incremental source of natural gas for the U.S.

Readers should note that while Mitchell liberally engaged in ad hominem argument, he didn’t respond to my earlier comments on the Pickens Plan, including that Pickens: wants to profit at taxpayer and consumer expense; plays fast and loose with facts; lobbied the state of Texas turn him into a government entity so he could earn private profit; and fails to mention the hurdles, costs and inconveniences of switching to natural gas cars.

Readers should also be aware that Mitchell is more than merely the “former chairman of Southern California Gas Company and San Diego Gas & Electric,” as he signed his column. He also serves along with Pickens on the board of Clean Energy Fuels -- the largest provider of vehicular natural gas in North America, a company Pickens founded in May 2006.

Finally, Mitchell criticized me for not offering an energy plan to “save America from itself.” He must not be aware of my many columns in which I suggest that America’s energy path forward is to step-up development of domestic oil, natural gas and coal resources as well as to develop more nuclear power. Other energy sources could be used as they prove themselves in the marketplace -- rather than as forced upon us by fast-talking special interests and their politician mouthpieces.

America has made it this far without Soviet-style, long-term central planning, where, regardless of the likelihood of changing circumstances in the future, the government arbitrarily picks society’s winners and penalizes the losers, leaving the nation stuck indefinitely with the high costs of bad decisions.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

 

[jimpeel]

Why hydrogen won't work

A long article but well worth the read. There are numerous links at the bottom of the page which are of interest to anyone wanting to learn more about the physics of energy and energy sources.

http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html

Hydrogen as a Fuel for Automobiles and Other Vehicles

On first glance, Hydrogen seems to be the ideal fuel for automobiles and other vehicles. It doesn't seem like one could get any cleaner burning, since hydrogen burns (oxidizes) to form simply water vapor. Nothing else! No pollution! What a seemingly incredible advancement over our current internal combustion engines that put thousands of tons of pollutants into the Earth's atmosphere, and many other environmental problems. Did you know that EVERY gallon of gasoline you burn up sends around 18 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?note 1
Hydrogen (H2) plus Oxygen (O) makes H2O, water, or actually, water vapor, at higher temperatures. And Hydrogen is actually capable of NEARLY meeting those high expectations.

And there is even a concept, and somewhat of a device, called a Fuel Cell (originally conceptualized in the 1830s), which can use this reaction to generate electricity. During the 1960s, NASA developed Fuel Cells which produced electricity for spacecraft. They worked reliably and fine, but they were horrendously expensive. There have been people trying to make inexpensive versions ever since! In the early 1990s, some breakthroughs were found. The concept of a Fuel Cell is actually pretty simple. You provide a supply of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas (which is usually from the air) which are separate, with a unique barrier between them. The simplest version of a Fuel Cell is to allow the NUCLEUS of the hydrogen atom to pass through the barrier while not allowing the electron to also pass through. The electron is then caused to follow some DIFFERENT path to eventually get to where the nucleus had gone to, where the end result will be water molecules. The electrons are negatively charged, and when they are forced to follow that alternate path, they are MOVING CHARGES which is the same as an electric current. In words, it therefore seems quite simple to have a Fuel Cell produce electricity. However, in practical terms, there are lots of complications! It may still be ten or twenty years before any reliable technology will exist which has tolerable cost.

And WHY is a Fuel Cell such an attractive thing? Why not simply try to BURN the Hydrogen in a conventional engine? There are actually two major reasons. The central one is that modern internal combustion engines only have an overall efficiency of around 21% (up from around 15% in the 1970s), while the fuel cell process has the THEORETICAL CAPABILITY of being nearly 100% efficient. The second reason is that Fuel Cells provide a CONTROLLED OUTPUT of power, where the oxidation of Hydrogen can and does occur in two VERY different ways! The desired on is by combustion (technically, conflagration), where the flame laminar front speed is around 8 feet per second at standard temperature and pressure. The undesired one is by explosion (technically, detonation), where the flame speed is over 9,000 feet per second, many times the speed of sound and incredibly dangerous! You might notice that NO experts really ever talk about using Hydrogen as an actual FUEL for existing engines (although there are many less educated people who talk about that a lot!) These are the reasons for that!

But Hydrogen itself has an ENORMOUS disadvantage, as well as many smaller ones. It cannot really be considered a "fuel" at all! Yes, it IS, but it isn't! It IS because of the exothermic chemical reaction described here. It ISN'T, because it does not occur naturally. We have such an attachment to petroleum and natural gas and coal and uranium BECAUSE they exist naturally. We actually have the technology to manufacture petroleum, but it would be so involved and expensive to do that it would never be worth it. Hydrogen is very different. It is so chemically reactive that it IMMEDIATELY combines with nearly any other atom (ion, actually) that happens to be near it. So there is NO natural supply of Hydrogen, anywhere on Earth. There cannot be!

This really changes the equation A LOT! Essentially, Hydrogen should be considered to be similar to a battery, where electricity is produced somewhere else and then STORED in it. And it turns out that the chemical properties of Hydrogen are such that it is rather difficult to pull hydrogen atoms out of any of the molecules that it exists in. That means that a lot of power is needed to separate out the hydrogen. In a sense, that is a reason why it is attractive! If a LOT of energy is needed to separate it out, then the SAME LOT OF ENERGY will get released when it is able to recombine. (The Conservation of Energy is involved here.)

...

So, proponents of "the coming Hydrogen economy" brag about the fact that Hydrogen CAN be produced by electrolyzing water to separate it into Hydrogen and Oxygen gases. Then they brag about the fact that when Hydrogen burns, it combines with Oxygen to create "lots of power, and just water vapor". Those statements are totally true, and nearly everyone seems to totally trust the people pushing Hydrogen and Fuel Cells, without asking the next, VERY IMPORTANT, question! Didn't the First Law of Thermodynamics prove to us that we cannot have energy simply appear? That there is a Conservation of Energy? So, if we have to SEPARATE the Hydrogen from the water to start with, doesn't it seem obvious that it has to require AT LEAST AS MUCH energy as will later be released when the Hydrogen again winds up as part of water? How come nobody asks this really obvious question???

[more ... much more]

 

[jimpeel]

I was just thinking...
I wonder if we went back to more cotton, instead of synthetics, how much
could possibly be cut of petrol in the processing.?

What do you want more; food or clothing? How much aerable land are you willing to turn over to cotton production versus the land being used to produce food?

There isn't enough aerable land available for both with the demand that exists with a population as large as ours.

 

[Professur]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/09/25/chrysler_ev_trio/

 

[catocom]

There isn't enough aerable land available for both with the demand that exists with a population as large as ours.

I disagree. The land to be used is made to be arable.

 

[spike]

Hey Jimbo posted some more op-eds and shit from that lobbyist propaganda site. What a fucking novel idea.

 

[Gonz]

Hey Jimbo posted some more op-eds and shit from that lobbyist propaganda site. What a fucking novel idea.

Is the info true or false?

 

[spike]

Opinions are often neither. Just crap.

 

[Gonz]

True. They are often correct (or incorrect) also. Did you read the article?

 

[jimpeel]

Is the info true or false?

I also posted an article based on the laws of physics but I guess those are just opinion also. Funny thing about that part about "laws" and not "opinions" or "theories" of physics.

 

[Gato_Solo]

You forgot one obvious faux-pas...explaining how drilling here will HURT the oil crisis...

Still no answer. I expected as much.