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Energy comes from oil.
Some energy, yes.

Oil comes from dirty Arabs.
Some oil, yes. (Assuming you are living in the US,) not as much as you probably thing though, unless Canada and Mexico are now Arab countries. And that doesn't even take into account the domestically produced oil.

Dirty Arabs are terrorists.
Some of them, yes. A lot of terrorists are also Persian/Iranian, Pakistani, Indian Muslim, Afghan (not Arabs for those who don't know), Indonesian, Chechen, Somali, Sudanese, etc. It's not their "Arabness" that binds most terrorists; it's something else, and if you think really hard, you may be able to figure out what it is. On another note, most terrorists are in fact not dirty -- especially as a lot of them lived very lavish life styles before they decided to try to kill people (and a lot of them even after).

If you play the Xbox360 you are supporting terrorism.
To a certain extent, yes. To a certain extent, you are also supporting the People's Republic of China, which is currently rearming in an attempt to take Taiwan (Republic of China) by military force. To a certain extent, you are also supporting a lot of other bad things.

/Fox News told me so
I doubt it. And I have no idea what the "/" at the beginning of that sentence is supposed to indicate.

P.S. I realize the parent was supposed to be some sort of joke. I just didn't find it very funny.

However, fossil fuels are only 50% of US electric generation

I happen to be looking in on this for something on another board, and I have some differing information.

In 2004, about 71% of the power generated came from coal; petroleum; natural or other gases (read: methane for the former, and butane, propane, and similar for the latter); and wood. About 20% came from nuclear, 7% from hydroelectric, and 2% from other renewables.

Source: Energy Information Administration

The difference between Iran wanting to build a new nuclear weapon and the US wanting to build a new nuclear weapon is vastly significant in my opinion. I think it's light years away from a, "do what we say, not what we do" situation. The US *currently* possess a nuclear weapons capability, and it has for over half a century, while Iran -- we hope -- doesn't yet have the means to produce a destructive nuclear device.

At this point, any new nuclear weapons program in the US will do little more than refine existing US nuclear capabilities. It likely won't increase the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile, nor will it increase the yield of the average nuclear weapon. The program seems geared towards producing a new mainstay weapon for the US arsenal that's easier to maintain than what the US has right now.

The DOE has a brief document explaining why the US needs a new nuclear weapon. Again, the prime reason behind the initiative seems to be a maintenance issue, not a military need. Considering that the US nuclear weapons program, in its heyday, produced gems like the "Atomic Annie" mobile artillery piece, as well as the man-portable Davy Crockett nuclear rifle, the current initiative seems mild in comparison. I think it's a stretch to presume that the Iranians should get any moral satisfaction, or a break in the on-going negotiations, simply because US officials see a need to modernize the nation's current Cold War-era nuclear weapons stockpile.

Troubling indeed. In 2003 the GAO found that their oversight of
contractors was lacking. The NNSA got a panel together to review the issues mentioned by the GAO, and after a couple of years came up with the Mies report. Here's an overview of that. Chapter 5, "Cyber System Security" mentions a lack of secure voice and data networks.

If you want to talk about security problems, this is the worst possible
situation. NNSA is responsible for security operations of contractors at
nuclear facilities, and has itself been breached.

It would be ironic if Dr. Rice's "mushroom cloud" smoking gun turned out
to be from nuclear material MADE PROUDLY IN THE USA.

P.S. Department of Energy = nuclear power plants, U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration is under them, not the Department of Defense = nuclear missiles etc.

You don't know what you're talking about. The energy department has several functions, nuclear energy being one, nuclear weapons being another, nuclear propulsion being yet another. The NNSA is the National Nuclear Security Administration. The NNSA is a sub-division of the DOE, specifically tasked with maintaining the reliability and security of the nations nuclear weapon stockpile, along with other tasks. The NNSA comprises of the national labs, which design the weapons, assembly and disassembly facilities, which take those designs and build the bombs and do limited testing of the devices, and then places like the test site which actually detonate the bombs where necessary (although this has become rare). Then where applicable they are handed over to DOD.
Before you post and claim to know your head from your ass, it might help to visit the websites of the agencies in question: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/aboutnnsa.htm

So maybe the rust belt should be fighting for these developments, but they can't overcome 1 issue - companies want to be close to their datacenter. It goes against the security mission, the cost justification, and just about everything else; but these always get built right next to corporate HQ or in some metropolitan area. Doh!

Nope, the rust belt is fscked because of legacy tax and political structures geared around dying heavy industries. If MI had the same tax, political and work structures as, say, Nevada, they might be able to do it.

The best location for colocation? Hmm.. Cross-reference power costs, distance to backbone peering, and corporate friendliness rankings... Maybe Wyoming, Tennessee, South Dakota?

"This is just delusional."

On what grounds?

On the grounds that if millions of people in Iraq were killed by the U.S., people would notice, and lot of the people who rabidly condemn the U.S. would instead be praising the U.S.

"Iraq Body Count" give figures of 38,059 to 42,434 civilians killed. The only way they can get those numbers is by counting Muslims-on-Muslim violence, which seems to account for the vast majority of deaths.

"Actually no, that wasn't it. There's plenty of oil in Iraq, and the oil isn't being pumped by Americans and transported exclusively to the U.S."

Actually that was largely it.

That was not it. Only a small amount of oil is imported from Iraq in any given month relative to the total amount imported.

At that time frame the total US trade deficit grew immensely because we imported so much oil. As for the rest of it, NONE of the oil was going to US from Iraq previously.

The U.S. was importing oil from Iraq for years prior to the start of the Iraq war.

If you have any credible information to back your conspiracy theories, do post it.

2) Definitions in Addiction Medicine,

3) Computer and Cyberspace Addiction,

4) When games stop being fun,

5) Video games: Cause for concern?,

6) Video games: Research, ratings, and recommendations, Contains many references for empirical studies

7) Video games addiction,

8) Are video games really so bad?,

9) Questions Answered,

10) Positron Emission Tomography ,

11) The Biochemistry of Human Addiction, Discusses the role of dopamine in addiction

> There are many technologies out there that are expensive now because they can't mass produce anything due to insufficient demand.

I beg to differ-- the technologies that are expensive now will remain so because they have a fundamental problem - they can't scale to meet with the demand.

US Energy Consumption by Sector, 2003
Total: 3.29 terawatts (98.31 quadrillion BTUs)
after a 30% reduction: 2.30 terawatts
of which
Residential: 21.56%
Commercial: 17.75%
Industrial: 33.12%
Transport: 27.57%

(sourced from here.) Assume for a second we can get a 30% reduction across the board through increased efficiency (and that demand doesn't rise). Is there something other than burning fossil fuels that can help us?

Well yes-- nuclear fission. But let's assume that isn't an option because of liability and pollution issues.

In particular, will sustainable energy (solar/wind) help us?

Wind: The UK's current wind program gives it almost a gigawatt of power, or 1% of the UK total demand, when performing at peak capacity, i.e., when the wind is blowing well -- which means wind power will have to be backed up with non-wind sources. That's with lots and lots of wind farms, many of them in the sea, implying a huge capital investment. Note that 1 gigawatt is 0.04% of total US needs (assuming the 30% drop). And in the US you'll run into "not in my backyard" issues and lawsuits from bird-lovers. If you think you can justify this level of investment to fulfil 0.03% percent of demand, you should try starting your own energy company.

Solar: Since solar energy can't be directly used (photovoltaics have in ethanol), it will probably not even reduce 20% of our total transport energy consumption of 0.634 terawatts (after a 30% reduction).

Even distributed power generation (a.k.a 'returning power to the grid'), while popular in California, doesn't help reduce emissions much because the electricity companies cannot reduce supply (and therefore reduce emissions) because households cannot be contractually obligated to return power to the grid. Like all good placebos, however, it does reduce household energy bills and that (coupled with the idea that they're doing good for the planet) keeps people happy.

In the short term, nuclear fission is our best bet (which, incidentally, is what the French do). Over the pond, poor Tony Blair has been catching a lot of flak for suggesting the nuclear option to his countrymen, and I don't think it'd find many buyers here either. But it does remain the most Green alternative.

Longer term, if a space elevator ever materializes, I'd sure we'd see some interest in space-based solar arrays that transmit microwave energy back to the ground. But by then we might've solved nuclear fusion or direct mass/energy conversion or blown ourselves to bits, so who cares ;-)

Try 25%. And that figure's from the Bush DOE. I'll leave how that impacts your argument as an exercise.

So yeah, the planet is ridiculously big, and it's unimaginably old. But there are a lot of us, and we are going to town on that atmosphere.

Just because they have clean air doesn't make them Neanderthals.

I'm guessing you have never been to Santiago.

From this site:
"The 5 million inhabitants of Santiago, Chile are exposed to high levels of air pollution during a significant portion of the year."

Beautiful country though, and I'm sure there are plenty of N/A cities with worse pollution than Santiago (heck, the air in Missoula MT was pretty bad when there was an inversion).

By contrast, in December 2005 the UN Refugee Agency noted:

"Some 20,500 refugees returned from Iran and Saudi Arabia with the support of UNHCR. Parallel to the organized return movements, the Iraqi Ministry of Trade recorded the spontaneous return of some 270,000 refugees to Iraq after May 2003."

That's only about 300,000 rather than 1,200,000. In fact, that same UN article states:

"UNHCR estimates that nearly one million Iraqis (of whom some 98,000 are registered refugees) are living in the countries immediately surrounding Iraq, and a further 350,000 Iraqis (of whom 166,000 are registered refugees) are living further afield."

Even assuming that doesn't count the 300,000 already returned, that's only a total of 1.65 million Iraqis residing or formerly residing abroad, of whom the article asserts 75% have returned to Iraq by "the most conservative estimate".

More importantly, though, that doesn't even take into account the reportedly-vast numbers of Iraqis fleeing Iraq. From a report entitled "Iraqi Refugees Overwhelm Syria":

"Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion, far more than in any other country in the region."

There are several other highly-questionable assertions in the article (e.g., Iraq is again a major oil exporter that will fulfill its OPEC quota of 2.8Mbpd by the end of 2006; the US Department of Energy reports that Iraq doesn't even have an OPEC quota, and is producing at best 2.0Mbpd as of May 2006) and enough politicization and bias that, much as I'd like to believe what the author is saying, "The Real Iraq" is not a credible piece.

By contrast, in December 2005 the UN Refugee Agency noted:

"Some 20,500 refugees returned from Iran and Saudi Arabia with the support of UNHCR. Parallel to the organized return movements, the Iraqi Ministry of Trade recorded the spontaneous return of some 270,000 refugees to Iraq after May 2003."

That's only about 300,000 rather than 1,200,000. In fact, that same UN article states:

"UNHCR estimates that nearly one million Iraqis (of whom some 98,000 are registered refugees) are living in the countries immediately surrounding Iraq, and a further 350,000 Iraqis (of whom 166,000 are registered refugees) are living further afield."

Even assuming that doesn't count the 300,000 already returned, that's only a total of 1.65 million Iraqis residing or formerly residing abroad, of whom the article asserts 75% have returned to Iraq by "the most conservative estimate".

More importantly, though, that doesn't even take into account the reportedly-vast numbers of Iraqis fleeing Iraq. From a report entitled "Iraqi Refugees Overwhelm Syria":

"Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion, far more than in any other country in the region."

There are several other highly-questionable assertions in the article (e.g., Iraq is again a major oil exporter that will fulfill its OPEC quota of 2.8Mbpd by the end of 2006; the US Department of Energy reports that Iraq doesn't even have an OPEC quota, and is producing at best 2.0Mbpd as of May 2006) and enough politicization and bias that, much as I'd like to believe what the author is saying, "The Real Iraq" is not a credible piece.

It wasn't. I voted for Bush because Gore was an idiot. And I voted for him again because Kerry was an idiot.

With all due respect, the idiot is you. Just like Rove wanted, you voted for Bush because you feared Gore and Kerry, you are a good Republican voter. More than willing to accept negative advertising, as your final source. I liked both Gore and Kerry, not as much as other candidates, but what could I do Iowa spoke (why we allow them to have first pick on our president I do not know), but far more than Bush. Besides I find it funny that you seem to think Bush gives a good speech. (Mr. Stumbles himself, WaaaHaHaHaHaHa)

Would that be like Clinton's promises? Do you remember the three big ones he made in his first campaign? He didn't keep any of them. Didn't even seriously TRY to keep but one of them, and didn't push that one when his own Party told him "no"....

Sorry, but Clinton ended his term 6 freaking years ago, please, let it go, I know, it's hard not to blame him for everything. I know that you have been programed, by the neo-conservative radio hosts to make vague "moral questions" and "talk about failed promises" about that darn Clinton guy, but for the sake of accuracy please list them rather than doing the 'you know what he did'. I've said it before (perhaps on this same thread, but it still is appropriate to repeat) "The last refuge for a scroundel is not patriotism, but Clinton bashing".

The big one that I could remember was the Hillary Health care issue. Y'all were so offended that the first lady was actually leading some legislation and was acting as if the husband/wife relationship was something 'special'. Some ideas were a little more 'reaching' but even common sense reforms which were mentioned instantly became fodder for the house races. All of the very negative advertising for the house races in '94 focused on 'health care scare', the Clinton administration quickly found themselves with a overly cautious house which was too scared by attack ads funded by Drug companies, HMOs and the AMA.

Besides I don't know why you are so offended by Clinton's lost legislation, but you are so wrapped up the negative it really isn't surprising. I've never said that every Democrat politician was a little angel, and that every Republican politician was the devil. Politicians may have many goals, but the most overwhelming one is to stay in office, after all "one can't do the good work you were meant to do for your people if you can't stay in office", or at least that's the excuse every 'political villain' in the movies seems to make. In reality, I believe, if you want politicians who are motivated by fear, continue to vote against people rather than for them. Your fear has served the neo-conservitives well, my fiend.

My house now is within 20 miles of several nuclear reactors. Doesn't bother me a 'bit.

I find that hard to believe, as there are only two of them total in your state (and they are both single reactor units), is that some kinda crazy Republican math? I can't tell if they are more than 40 miles apart, but I think that they are. I don't really want go keep looking for exact locations as 'your boys' from the NSA may data mine for the query and send out 'investigators', and I really don't want to visit sunny Cuba (mostly a joke, but sadly...). Perhaps you are including University reactors (still hard to believe that there are several of them), but they tend to slip under the histerical public's radar. Remember I'm not against nuclear power per se, but I OTOH acknowledge the heavy NIBY effect.

Don't kid yourself. Gasoline isn't quite at record prices right now

Yes, you are right, of course oil was higher in the middle of the Iraq/Iran war in the early 80's (not hard to see why), but if you look at the trends t

Er. You do know that only 20% of oil is used for fuel, and that the bulk of it goes to the plastics, fertilizer, industrial chemical and paint industries, right?

Yeah, those Norwegians (third biggest oil exporter in the world, above Iran and Venezuela!) are really sitting atop the world...

Well, according to the US department of energy, some fuel cell systems achieve efficiencies upwards of 80%. According to this, a cutting edge coal gasification plant achieves 45-50% thermal efficiency. Meanwhile, here (oddly, I had troubling Googling for a more authoritative link), you see a gasoline ICE achieves around 25-30% efficiency. So, in the end, hydrogen is a win.

But, the thing you really need to understand is that efficiency isn't *really* the point, anyway. The real reason to use hydrogen is that:

a) You can leverage alternative fuel sources. You can't power a gasoline engine with solar cells, a wind farm, or a nuclear power plant. With hydrogen, you can.

b) You can easily leverage new technologies as they come available (such as coal gasification).

c) You can more easily upgrade a few thousand power plants with newer technology, both to improve efficiency and to reduce harmful pollutants. Upgrading millions of cars, not so easy.

And lastly:

d) It reduces the dependency on fossil fuels, which, as we reach peak oil (assuming we haven't already) is going to be *vital*.

An article about the same topic here . Its foccused on the repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

All renewable energy (except tidal and geothermal power), and even the energy in fossil fuels, ultimately comes from the sun. The sun radiates 174,423,000,000,000 kilowatt hours of energy to the earth per hour. In other words, the earth receives 1.74 x 10 ^17 watts of power.

That's 174 trillion kWh every hour.. or 4,186 trillion kWh per day.. or 1,528,929 trillion kWh per year..

2003 world energy consumption.. 417.605 quadrillion BTU per year..
Divide by conversion constant 3412 BTU/kWh .... yields 122 trillion kWh per year...

I.E.. In one hour the sun delivers, to the earth, more energy than mankind consumes in a YEAR.

P.S. Just in case your worried about solar conversion losses.
Our fossil fuel society is based on conversion losses stacked on top of other energy losses.
The overall conversion efficiency of oil in ground, into miles traveled by a typical auto is less than seven(7) percent.

One interesting aspect is that these things seem to be pleasant to look at.

Aesthetics are an important issue for solar collectors, because if we want to generate any significant amount of power from solar, we are going to be looking at a lot of them. On average, with 10% efficiency, you can generate about 150 kWh per year per square meters. US electric power generation in 2004 was about 4 trillion kWh, so if solar were to provide even 10% of that, we'd need to cover the better part of Rhode Island with cells. If you were to provide 100% of total US energy consumption with solar (no, I'm not suggesting we do that), I think you'd need 1-2 Maines.

The actual numbers for traffic, from his source, are 1.6 million man-hours and 8 million gallons of gas. The average American makes $16.49 per hour, and gas costs $2.78 per gallon. So traffic consumes $48 million dollars per day.

(Note that at 800 million gallons a day, the gas alone would cost $2.22 billion per day, or $812 billion a year - or 6.5% of GDP.)

I've never seen $$$ for wind power that included cost of construction and maintenance and tax credits when calculating the cost of power.

Most of the figures thrown around for wind power include the cost of construction spread out over the expected life of the windmills, and production estimates are generally based on an estimated 30% efficiency. Not including tax credits, the latest estimates I've seen are around 10-15 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to 7.3 cents on average for coal (but that includes subsidies and tax breaks coal receives).

As you probably know, Nat Gas is the most expensive fuel on earth for making electricity. In most places it is used for "peaking" plants because of the cost. And, of course, it is still a global warming contributor (if you believe in global warming), comes from the Middle East where they are trying to kill us for taking it.

The U.S. only imports about 15% of it's natural gas, and 95% of that is from Canada. We get very very little of it from the Middle East (table) Also, NG is used for waaaaay more than just peaking power. It's a very popular fuel for new plants in urban areas with significant air quality problems because of its relatively favorable emissions. Unfortunately, it's price is a lot more volatile than other fuels.

if you believe in global warming

Most people who pay attention do, especially those who know what they're talking about. The only real debate left is whether it's human caused (although there's not much debate left there), how fast it will occur, and what the exact impact will be.

I remember reading a report on wind a few years back saying that if the entire land surface of the earth was evenly coated with windmills (0.5 Km separation) we would meet approximately 20% of of our total power needs.

I'm sorry, but you're talking out of your ass. I can counter your report with several more credible reports that say covering the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas completely with windmills would meet 100% of the United States energy needs, and that total wind potential globally exceeds global energy demand (cites here and here).

Nuclear is the most environmentally friendly way to go.

No, it's not. I'll concede that the designs of modern nuclear reactors and advances in fuel recycling have significantly decreased the negative environmental effects of nuclear energy, but not enough to declare it "the most environmentally friendly" energy source.

Energy efficiency and conservation should be the top priority of any sane energy policy, beginning with improvements in generation efficiency and transmission. 67% of the energy output of power plants is lost in conversion to electricity, and another 9% is lost in transmission and distribution (graph). Eliminating even a fraction of that loss could eliminate the need for new power plants for decades.

Why don't we just do what we do with the Uranium in coal?!

According to this paper (which just happens to be the first sort-of-remotely-useful source I've seen in Google, rather than an exhaustive study):

Coal Samples: Coal from Stockheim, Franken, Federal Republic of Germany, having a uranium content of 554 microgramme/gramme of coal was used.

According to a US DoE report on coal production and consumption states that on 2005 prelimary data shows total coal consumption to be around 1.1 billion short tons.

If we assume that the uranium content of 554 microgrammes/gramme is rather typical then:

1.1 billion short tons is about 997,700,000 tonnes of coal, which is 997,700,000,000,000 grammes.
Multiply that by 554 microgrammes/gramme to get 552,725,800,000,000,000 microgrammes of uranium...

Which is (drum roll) 552,725.8 TONNES (about 609,400 short tons) of URANIUM!

And what happens to it all? Well, some of it is in the airborne smokey stuff, and some of it remains as part of the coal ash. And what happens to the millions and millions of tonnes of coal ash? I wonder.

Are you sure that 50,000 tons of nuclear waste is really that much of a problem in comparison?

> Canada actually consumes more energy per person than the US and also produces more CO2 per person.

The first claim is true, but the second---the one pertinent to this discussion---is false, even using the most recent data available (2004).

Canada uses more energy per capita than the US, but has lower CO2 emissions per capita (link1, link2, link3).

> Canada isn't mentioned because (and forgive this), in the larger scheme of things, what
> Canada does isn't very important.

Fun to say, but not really true - Canada is one of the top ten consumers of oil in the world. While it can't be personally responsible for a large cut in world emissions itself (as the US can), one of the top-10 energy users taking emissions limits seriously---or not---is symbolically very important.

It's also one of the top-ten oil producers, and a significant portion of its production results in the emissions of large amounts of CO2. Cutting emissions strongly, then, would require Canada to slow or stop its breakneck expansion of Alberta's oil sands, which in turn would cut down on the flow of cheap-to-transport oil into the US. That, in turn, would raise oil prices (all over the world---spare global capacity is significantly less than Canadian oil production---but especially in the US due to the aforementioned transportation-cost issues), and hence trigger increased interest in fuel-efficient machines in the world's largest energy consumer, and hence would have an effect on carbon emissions rather out of proportion with the direct change.

So, basically, you're wrong. Unfortunately, it's moot, since not much is being done about this anyway.

> Canada's emissions have gone up a lot since then. They use massive amounts of natural gas to
> make steam to extract oil from oil shale.

Most of which, ironically, is exported to the US.

Provided carbon emissions limits can be traded, Canada meeting Kyoto would ironically be harmful to the US - since oil from tarsands would require purchasing carbon credits, its price would go up. Since the US is the largest consumer of tarsands oil and benefits from low transportation costs associated with it, the US would suffer more from that price increase than anyone.

(Yes, I know oil is partly fungible, but transportation costs make it not perfectly so.)

Why do you measure pollution in terms of "per dollar GDP" ? Isn't pollution "per person" a fairer measure ?

No. If the US had a billion more people in it, but the GDP stayed the same, its pollution per capita would look a hell of a lot better, but it wouldn't be producing any more than it does without the extra billion people.

In 2005, the US emitted 491.7 metric tons of CO2 per million dollars GDP. In 2003 (the latest year of data available for China at this site), China emitted 2511 MT CO2 per million dollars GDP.

Another possible measure would be the pollution emitted per unit energy consumption. In 2005, the US emitted 57.87 metric tons of CO2 per billion BTU of energy used. In 2003, China emitted 77.82 MT CO2 per billion BTU.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/canenv.html

Here you go.

I'm guessing the oil situation has more in common with welfare than anything else. It has little to do with supply and demand, and a lot to do with a cartel controlling the price and mix of non-USA oil.

For example, only about 12% of the US energy demand is satisfied by persian gulf oil. A country that wastes as much enery as the USA could cut 12% of it's energy use almost trivially. In fact a lot of countries could...but that would cause oil prices to plunge, and the economies of the OPEC nations to collapse, and all those carefully crafted flows of money like :

USA->OPEC->NATION_BILLIONAIRES->USA INVESTMENT
USA->CHINA->OPEC->NATION_BILLIONAIRES->USA INVESTMENT
(and the myriad of others...) ...to collapse on their face.

I'm not going to call it a conspiracy, because I hate that word, but I will say the game is definitely rigged. And whether you're in Europe, or Asia or the USA, or even a citizen in an oil-rich OPEC state, you're all getting buggered by the oil welfare state...it's welfare for billionaires, from what I can tell.

Remember the charts showing the flows of money for the marchall plan of WW2? One of those for the oil industry would probably look very interesting, especially if you took in to the detail of various political entities in Texas and Washington, DC.

Learn more about the oil welfare state :

Arab_Oil_Embargo
OPEC at WP
OPEC at US DOE
Persian Gulf Oil Use by Country

I'm guessing the oil situation has more in common with welfare than anything else. It has little to do with supply and demand, and a lot to do with a cartel controlling the price and mix of non-USA oil.

For example, only about 12% of the US energy demand is satisfied by persian gulf oil. A country that wastes as much enery as the USA could cut 12% of it's energy use almost trivially. In fact a lot of countries could...but that would cause oil prices to plunge, and the economies of the OPEC nations to collapse, and all those carefully crafted flows of money like :

USA->OPEC->NATION_BILLIONAIRES->USA INVESTMENT
USA->CHINA->OPEC->NATION_BILLIONAIRES->USA INVESTMENT
(and the myriad of others...) ...to collapse on their face.

I'm not going to call it a conspiracy, because I hate that word, but I will say the game is definitely rigged. And whether you're in Europe, or Asia or the USA, or even a citizen in an oil-rich OPEC state, you're all getting buggered by the oil welfare state...it's welfare for billionaires, from what I can tell.

Remember the charts showing the flows of money for the marchall plan of WW2? One of those for the oil industry would probably look very interesting, especially if you took in to the detail of various political entities in Texas and Washington, DC.

Learn more about the oil welfare state :

Arab_Oil_Embargo
OPEC at WP
OPEC at US DOE
Persian Gulf Oil Use by Country

There are no direct measurements of the longer-term variation and interpretations of proxy measures of variations differ. Solar variation has probably been the cause of some climate change, for example during the Maunder minimum.

Given the natural variability of the Earth's climate, it is difficult to determine the extent of change that humans cause. In computer-based models, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases generally produce an increase in the average temperature of the Earth. Rising temperatures may, in turn, produce changes in weather, sea levels, and land use patterns, commonly referred to as "climate change." ...

... However, there is uncertainty in how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases. Making progress in reducing uncertainties in projections of future climate will require better awareness and understanding of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the behavior of the climate system.

25.1 billion tons, not 7. 7 is just the US total. It does not include all sources, so it is actually higher then the 25.1 billion tons.

look:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_ report/co2report.html#electric
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tab leh1co2.xls

The effects of glabal warming are readily apperent and viewable. They are not some abstract numbers on a piece of paper; further more the effects of global warming happening faster then the worse case scenerios projected by scientist in the 70s.

25.1 billion tons, not 7. 7 is just the US total. It does not include all sources, so it is actually higher then the 25.1 billion tons.

look:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_ report/co2report.html#electric
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tab leh1co2.xls

The effects of glabal warming are readily apperent and viewable. They are not some abstract numbers on a piece of paper; further more the effects of global warming happening faster then the worse case scenerios projected by scientist in the 70s.

There are 600 coal plants in the US, and they produced a total of 1,974 terrawatthours in 2003. The largest nuclear plant currently operating has a capacity of 1335 MW, or 11.69 terrawatthours under the unrealistic assumption that it operates 24x7 at full capacity. Replacing all coal plants would therefore require building 169 new nuclear plants, all as big as the largest currently operating in the US. The Palo Verde plant cost $5.9B to construct (in 1988 dollars), so the cost of building all these new nuclear plants would be about $1 trillion.

The enormous scale of the problem really makes SHUTTING DOWN coal plants anytime in the near future virtually impossible. I think the bottom line is that we can't continue to consume energy at the massive per capita levels we do now. People need to realize that there's so much we can do to drastically cut down the amount of energy (and materials, as a matter of fact) without meaningfully impacting our standard of living. If every adult in the US could find a way to save the power equivalent to lighting a single 60 watt bulb for one hour every day, that would save enough power to eliminate one coal plant. (1974 TWh / 600 plants / 150M people / 365 days = 60 Wh)

Are you sure ?

As long as you don't mind a big lump of Plutonium in your pocket or backpack and the associated health issues, you can, at least in theory.

All available genetic data (and protein data) from every sequenced organism has always been publicly available. Whether it's due to requirements by publishers of the journals that they publish their analysis in, a requirement of their funding agencies, or for the mere goal of sharing their data with the global scientific community.

Gene sequence databases have been around since 1981:
EMBL: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/
GenBank: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
DDBJ: http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/
HUGO: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/
JGI: http://www.jgi.doe.gov/

Protein sequence/structure data is also publicly available:
Expasy: http://ca.expasy.org/
PDB: http://www.pdb.org/

Their statement "Google is guilty of biopiracy because a searchable database could make it easier for private genetic information to be abused" is flawed on many levels.. and is merely an attempt at media hype.

A - If the genetic data is private (ie. industry funded and not shared with the global scientific community), how will Google get access to it?
B - Searchable databases that contain private/public genetic information have existed since before most other types of searchable databases.
C - Sharing data from biological analyses (whether genetic sequence data, protein sequence data, gene expression data, protein structure data, etc.) is an important aspect of understanding the underlying mechanisms of biological systems.

Many of the medical advances that we've seen these past couple decades have resulted directly from the fact that biological data has been publicly available... facilitating collaborations beyond borders and beyond disciplines.

I look forward to Google's role in facilitating access to this information, and look forward to applying it in future research projects.

Ryan

Actually, that's probably not true. If you look at the actual numbers, you'll see that Iraq supplies less oil to the US than Nigeria, ffs. Moreover, the war itself has basically wiped out Iraq's oil production capacity, which runs contrary to the whole "iraq-for-oil" idea.

Now, don't get me wrong, I feel the war in Iraq was a *gigantic* mistake. But it's a grave error to dumb down the motivations for the war to a single issue like this. All it does is muddy the waters, preventing us from *really* understanding what's going on.

By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

You're way behind the times; they already do. The US burns about 9 million barrels/day of motor gasoline out of a hair over 20 million total.

Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

Setting aside the question of why you drive a Suburban while touting light SUV-class stuff (hypocrisy?), the SUV form factor is inherently draggier than a car. The same powerplant technologies that can make a 40 MPG SUV can make an 80 MPG car. You know, like the Daimler-Chrysler ESX3, the GM ParadiGM and the Ford whateveritwas.

Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.

Done long before you ever thought to ask. (More here).

Take it from the horse's mouth: 2005 ethanol production was only ~4 billion gallons. Production this year isn't even projected to reach 6 billion gallons.

Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology.

I've read The Billion-Ton Vision. It projects a whole 10% of transportation fuels will come from biomass in 2020 (see the sidebar in the first page of the introduction, page 18).

How many people can actually use E85 when ethanol is only 10% of transportation fuel? That's the proof that the whole flex-fuel vehicle thing is a scam. The auto companies are getting CAFE credits for guzzling monsters that can run on E85, without there being enough ethanol to run more than a small fraction of them.

Production of ethanol loses about 50% of the energy right off the top; it disappears into the process either as metabolic losses of the yeast or process heat in hydrolization or distillation. That's energy that can be used productively if you aren't wedded to the idea of using liquid fuels. There are other ways to use biomass, such as carbonization. Direct-carbon fuel cells (a variant of molten-carbonate fuel cells) can convert charcoal to electricity at up to 80% efficiency, and the off-gas from carbonization is combustible and can run engines. With a scheme like that, you can do a lot more than just offset some fraction of oil consumption; you can:

• Provide all transport energy.
• Between carbonization and wind, provide most scheduled electric generation requirements now provided by gas and coal.
• Manufacture excess charcoal for use as a carbon-sequestering soil amendment (search for "terra preta de los indios", or start reading here).

Ethanol is a very lossy way of making biomass suitable for even lossier internal combustion engines. It's a dead end.

By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switc

The crude that comes out of this source is actually easier to refine.

Which source? The product of oil sands is solid at room temperature, and requires both cracking and desulfurization IIRC.

In at least two of the processes natural gas is a suprluss [sic] product.

I think you have not learned the distinction between natural gas, cracker off-gas and synthesis gas. They are not interchangeable.

Water usage isn't the issue for this source, power is. Hence part of the political roadblock. Indeed, if used intelligently, this process can be used to produce surpluss *clean* water, as well as power for the electrical grid.

Production of oil from tar sands requires 2 barrels of water per barrel of oil. The situation with Fischer-Tropsch (the governor of Montana wants to use coal-to-liquids to prop up his economy) is roughly the same.

You don't get a free ride if you use in-situ retorting. Here's what The Rand Corporation has to say about it:

All high-grade western oil shale resources lie in the Colorado River drainage basin. For mining and surface retorting, the major water quality issue is the leaching of salts and toxics from spent shale. A number of approaches are available for preventing surface water contamination from waste piles, but it is not clear whether these methods represent a permanent solution that will be effective after the site is closed and abandoned. For in-situ retorting, inadequate information is available on the fate, once extraction operations cease, of salts and other minerals that are commingled with oil shale.

There's no proof that freeze-walls will work on such a large scale, that the boreholes will remain open as the shale is retorted (it expands, which would tend to occlude the bores), or several of the other things that would have to work to get the oil out. We can be pretty certain that production cannot be ramped up fast enough to compensate for declining production elsewhere. We can be pretty much assured that the groundwater in the area will be a toxic mess for millennia, though.

E85 provides a transition to ethanol driven fuel cells. Ethanol driven fuel cells are showing the best potential as far as infrastructure requirements.

Hogwash. The US burns about 140 billion gallons of gasoline every year, and another 63 billion gallons of distillate (diesel). You're not going to replace that with ethanol (especially not from corn!), and you've still got the remaining 1/3 of US demand that goes to non-transportation uses. US production of ethanol is due to get up to around 5 billion gallons/year. Uh, w00t?

The best replacement for petroleum transportation fuel isn't alternative petroleum, it's electricity. The grid is here, and its spare capacity in off-peak hours is enough to move several times as much energy as our vehicles need (total generation capacity almost 1 TW, average is ~450 GW; do the math). We've got several suitable varieties of Li-ion batteries on the market already, a carbon-backed lead-acid technology (which radically reduces weight and increases lifespan) coming, and several different supercapacitor technologies either on the market or under development (EEStor). To keep electricity from becoming the transport energy source of choice, ALL of them will have to fail. Electricity has further advantages:

• Stationary plants can sacrifice lightness and form factor for high efficiency and cleanliness.
• Stationary plants can use energy sources which cannot be packaged for a vehicle.
• Stationary plants can co-generate with fuel being used for heat.

And to provide actual numbers to back this assertion, you can see the numbers from the Energy Information Administration here.

Look at the last coloumn in these DOE stats.

North Dakota ... is also a lot less windy.

Every other state you mentioned has a much bigger population... AND is less windy.

1. North_Dakota 1210 billion kWh 30.7%
2. Texas 1190 billion kWh 30.2%
3. Kansas 1070 billion kWh 27.2%
4. South_Dakota 1030 billion kWh 26.2%
5. Montana 1020 billion kWh 25.9%
6. Nebraska 868 billion kWh 22.0%
7. Wyoming 747 billion kWh 19.0%
8. Oklahoma 725 billion kWh 18.4%
9. Minnesota 657 billion kWh 16.7%
10. Iowa 551 billion kWh 14.0%
11. Colorado 481 billion kWh 12.2%
12. New_Mexico 435 billion kWh 11.0%
13. Idaho 73 billion kWh 1.9%
14. Michigan 65 billion kWh 1.7%
15. New_York 62 billion kWh 1.7%
16. Illinois 61 billion kWh 1.6%
17. California 59 billion kWh 1.5%
18. Wisconsin 58 billion kWh 1.5%
19. Maine 56 billion kWh 1.4%
20. Missouri 52 billion kWh 1.3%

You can feed electricity from places like Iowa to Illinois and the Dakotas to Minnesota and Wisconsin relatively easily.

Add to that the fact land in several of those states is much more expensive.

If they can't cover 100% of their power needs with wind in South Dakota

Luckily, Canada is the USA's largest source of oil

Not by much, though:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_ publications/company_level_imports/current/import. html

More radiation comes from coal plants than from all the nuclear waste, reactors and mining. Now as to your statement that Yucca Mountain is overflowing, that'd be hard since it isn't taking waste until 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_mountain

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/about/index.shtml

"The Yucca Mountain Project is currently focused on preparing an application to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a repository."

nuclear waste is infinitely easier to contain than a cloud coming out of a smokestack.

Oh really? "Infinitely?" It takes a hell of a lot of coal to come close to the problems at Hanford or Rocky Flats. And Yucca Mountain is already overflowing.

Personally, I'm pro nuclear power too. But it's only significantly cleaner than coal when you ignore the waste.

Personally, I buy my gasoline at random gas stations here in Montana... And considering most of our crude comes from Canada (and most of the rest from Mexico), your presumption is correct, Sir. Good on you. As for the rest of America, well... you might be surprised how little of their oil money actually goes to Arabs... http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_ publications/company_level_imports/current/import. html

I had the same question:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biodiese l/

Its about $2.50/gallon ... not much savings currently.

I had the same question:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biodiese l/

Its about $2.50/gallon ... not much savings currently.