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You mean a trillion barrels of oil won't make a drop in the sea's worth of real change and call it an "Energy Policy".

You're clearly not reading the same EIA reports the rest of us are. The delta appears to be about 0.2% of world supply.

And you guys have been saying that for many years. That's why we couldn't fix the problem back then too. Now, many years later, it is not fixed.

So, that would have "fixed the problem" then? A fat 0.2% increase in world production that, according to the DOE would have an "insignificant" effect on the price? I'm crushed that we missed the boat on that solution.

This is the standard politician's formula of "X is a problem, Y is something I want to do. I'll pretend that Y will solve X and sucker the electorate into letting me do it."

You do realize that their profit isn't all from gas and Diesel fuels right? They have wells that produce oil sold on the open market, they own stations or station lands and building and lease them out to private operators, produce and sell natural gas and home heating oil plus a number of chemicals.

In fact, Fivecentnickel did a break down of were the money goes in a gallon of gas. As it turns out, refining and profit is of gas is only about 10% of the price per gallon. This isn't off from other estimates either. And it isn't excessive compared to other industries. Microsoft kept 27.3 cents of every $1 in revenue in its most recent quarter; General Electric, 11.4 cents and McDonald's, 12.3 cents. In fact, Exxon is below the 11-cent average of Standard & Poor's 500 companies, says analyst Howard Silverblatt.

So lets look at this, 10% per gallon. That is 40 cents on $4.00 gas. But wait, 40 percent or more of that goes to income taxes. So in reality, of the 40 cents, they keep around 23 ti 24 cents per gallon. Of course federal highway and state taxes average around 13% depending on the price and location but lets not focus on that. So If Exxon (the countries largest oil company) decided to cut their profits in half to save the consumer, that would only effect gas prices by 5% or 20 cents on a $4.00 per gallon gasoline. Does $3.80 compared to $4.00 a gallon seem like gouging?

The problem is that we only have about 5 major oil companies operating in the US with only 4 of them operating in any given state at a time. This problem is compounded by not being able to develop oil fields in the US because of environmental concerns and not being able to open refineries because of the same problems. This means that with all of the smaller oil companies, the major ones just do enormous volume in sales which is why they make so much. In 2007, the US consumed 142 billion gallons of gas (about 390 million gallons per day).

So if we look at this 142 billion gallon figure, we can do a number of things. Lets multiply it by $4.00 per gallon of gas, thats $568,000,000,000 or 568 billion dollars in sales. Now of the 10% holds true, that is 56.8 billion in profit across the US. Lets divide that into quarters to compare it against profits for Exxon. It comes to around 14.2 billion dollar profit per quarter in the US gas market alone. Now assuming that usage hasn't went down in the US in more then a negligible amount, with Exxon's $11.7 billion profit posted this quarter and forgetting that it makes money in places other then Gasoline sales (about 65 billion gallons of diesel and heating oil in 2007 nation wide )plus natural gas supplies and all, 11.7 billion profit in a quarter at $4.00 a gallon is only about 79% of the market.

Now we know that Exxon doesn't control 79% of the US market. So were did all the extra come from? Well, it isn't a calculation error (even though I rounded some numbers) and it isn't a number error, the 8k sec filing shows us that the US market is a very small portion of Exxon's sales compared to world wide participation. It refined 2,584,000 barrels of liquid product (or 2,584 kbd in case I got my abbreviations wrong) in the second quart in the US where it refined 4,191,000 barrels elsewhere in the world for a total of 6,775,000 (6,775 kbd). And forgetting about all the other areas for profit, Roughly 38% of their profit would be derived from within the US. So if we take 38% of the 11.

The so called 'solar constant' is actually 1.367 (that should be enough decimals) KW / square meter.

The actual power produced depends on the angle of incidence (lattitude) and the local weather (cloud cover).

The current crop of commercially available solar cells hovers around 16% efficiency when new, the best lab models do 40%+ ( http://www.doe.gov/news/4503.htm ).

Then of course there's concentration and all kinds of tricks to capture that power in a different form than electricity, and here the efficiencies can be considerably higher still. Electricity is the 'steak' of the power industry, but there are plenty of uses for 'burger' (heat).

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Pickens is no fool - he sees the political tide turning and smells a chance to make a few billion in tax dollars sent directly to his pocket.

Solar isn't competing against oil unless you a solar powered car. Solar power is competing against coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear for electricity generation.

Lots of people use heating oil for their homes, especially in the US. According to the Dept. of Energy, over 8 million of the 107 million homes in the US use heating oil (roughly 7.5%) and rougly 4.1% in Canada. Typically, they have to refill their tanks 4 to 5 times a year. Heating oil accounts for about 25% of the yield of a barrel of crude oil, the second largest "cut" after gasoline (petrol). With solar generated heat/power in place, heating oil would no longer be needed

Deregulation of what killed who?

I hope your not talking about Enron. It wasn't deregulation there. Enron was manipulating prices and scamming the system in ways that were already illegal. The so called deregulation in California which was only partial deregulation only exposed Enron's illegal activities and caused the bankruptcy.

The EU type of regulation costs on average of 30% more to the consumer then American energy does before you add in taxes depending on where in the Eu you are. Average costs can be compared here. And yes, that is in US dollars already adjusted for the week dollar. Notice how the average in the US is 10.4 cents per Kilowatthour and England is 18.6 cents. Denmark doesn't have a 2006 listing but in 2005, it was 29.5 cents compare to 9.5 cents in the US. France seems to be a little better with 14.4 cents in 2006. Now, consider that on top of this rate, there is a 5% vat tax added on and then normal government taxes. Plus there are tariffs designed to combat global warming that add costs. Although I think most of the tariffs are voluntary at this state.

These numbers only go to 2006 and in some cases, just 2004. If you think they are doing something better, I suggest you look again. Their rates went up again because of "global warming" measures and to get them in compliance with Kyoto accords and all. In 2005, Germany was paying and average of 21.2 cents per Kilowatthour and their rates supposedly jumped 25% in order to implement a solar program because of global warming. If my math works correctly, that should put them around 26.5 cents now.

Now of course those numbers are the average for the country and some areas may be more or less. But the same wisdom holds true for all the countries in order to calculate an average. Imagine going from 10.4 cents to Frances 14.4 cents averages. That's a 38-39% increase automatically. My billing last month was for 786 Kilowatt-hours. I actually pay 7.9 cents but lets go with the averageof 10.4 cents. That's around $79.81 for the month at US average rates. If I was paying the France rate of 14.4 cents, I would be paying $110.60 instead. Using the UK's rate, $142.84. Germany ans Denmark respectively would be $162.81 and $226.56.

As you can see, I wouldn't think their is anything sane with the EU's system. I much prefer my hypothetical average of $79.81 (the actual @ 7.49 cents was $57.52 for the month) over the EU's pricing and controls.

Have you actually looked at the differences or did someone tell your which is better. Of course if the US starts a carbon trade, we will probably be in the same boat as the EU shortly. And I'm sure the averages have increased somewhat over the last 2 years or so. I'm not looking forward to that at all.

Ouch, that page is talking about capacity, not actual generation. Probably a lot of that natural gas capacity is unused since it's for peak production times. For instance, Lincoln Combustion Turbine Station is 1200 MW of capacity but only runs on "hot summer afternoons and cold winter mornings."

If you look at the page about annual net generation by energy source, you see natural gas accounts for 800 TWh out of 4000 TWh total. Coal is 1990 TWh. Petroleum is an anemic 64 TWh (1.5% of total).

By the way, nuclear is 787/4000 = 19.7%, pretty close to 20%.

Granted it would take 22 solar arrays like that to power all 107 million homes in the US (2001 census) if we tried to go by solar alone...

Why is everything couched as 'all or nothing'? Diversify - don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Today we have Nuclear, Coal and Hydroelectric.

Tomorrow maybe we'll have Nuclear, Hydroelectric, Wind, Solar, Geothermal etc...

$0.33/kWh?!?!

Try a normal, non-Californian-buttrape price:

http://www.duke-energy.com/rates/north-carolina.asp
specifically the residential, no-energy discounts rate, RS:
http://www.duke-energy.com/pdfs/NCScheduleRS.pdf

Basic Facilities Charge per month $ 7.87
For the first 350 kWh used per month, per kWh 7.3572
For all over 350 kWh used per month, per kWh 7.7470

Yes, that's 7-something cents a kWh, 24 hours a day. Of course, there are at least 2, possibly 3 nuclear reactors feeding this service area, and NC is well regulated.

Ah, even better, state-by-state and national numbers:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

10.24 cents/kWh average across the US for residential in Feb 2008.

Anyways, using your $4.75/night figure and converting to my prices ($0.077470/kWh), that's more like $1.12/night.

No, it actually has quite a bit of stability.. in its skyrocketing trend. It skyrocketed during the gulf war in 1990, and pretty much stayed at that price afterward

Cite? The price data I can find disagrees with your claim.

Take oil as an example. The price of WTI was about $15-20/bbl in the late 80s, spiked up to $36/bbl in Oct 1990, and then fell back to $20 by the end of 1991, which is where it stayed until the end of the decade.

I'll reply to the AC since he was the most incorrect and rudest of the would-be correctors. See the DOE's list of electricity by power source here: Fuel oil is 17% and that's hardly the inconsequential amount everyone ranting on seems to think it is. AC even imagines the 10% of electricity from nuclear power is 20%. Get YOUR facts straight, ass.

Natural gas pipelines feed many, perhaps most of the homes in US48, about 6m^3 per hour max. The energy in 6m^3 natural gas is about 6*39Mj = 234Mj:h, or 65 kilowatts. NG fuelcells already get at least 40% efficiency into electricity, so that would be 26KW peak. Which means that the average home at 2KW average continuous needs only 0.08% of maximum duty (the typical 5KW peak demand would be 0.2% duty).

Big SUVs have about 80KW max output engines. If a 40% efficient fuelcell drove a 90% efficient NEMA-B motor, 80KW kinetic would consume about 225KW in NG, which would still consume only 84% of the home's incoming flow. So overnight "charging" even a big SUV could still drive that SUV for as many hours as it spent charging. Since most people don't drive SUVs at full motor power all the time, even an hour charging is probably enough to refuel after a day's driving.

In April 2008, NG cost about $7:Gj, while direct electricity cost in February, 2008 about $0.09:KWh, which is about $25:Gj. Even at 40% efficiency converting NG to electricity, that's only $17.5 per Gj.

Another advantage of NG powering homes and cars is that very little energy is consumed/lost in the NG distribution, compared to double-digit (up to 50%) losses in electric distribution. Compared with gasoline powering cars, the distribution of gasoline is very wasteful, with not only tankers driving around to filling stations, but cars driving to (and lining up at) filling stations for every refill. While NG can refill along the car's normal route, at home. Meanwhile, any kind of energy storage at home, whether electric in batteries, or tanks of NG, or raising water to roof tanks, or heating water even into steam, all can let the home user buy more energy input only when prices are lowest, which also takes pressure off the distribution systems.

A NG home charger that is also a fuelcell for a 2-5KW (or more) home should cost under $10,000. That's about as much as a good new water heater that's part of a home (air) heating system, which the fuelcell can also supply to bring its efficiency closer to 100% total. In fact such a fuelcell should really cost $3-5K. Which that $7+ savings per Gj would repay in 9 years or less.

And as efficiencies go up, that 9 years could go down to 2-5 years pretty rapidly.

From the article:

The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'.

1. To absorb 1 mole of CO2, you need 2 moles of CaO (one mole of CaCO is used to negate the effect of the production of CaCO), that gives is a ratio of 2:1

2. We are producing almost 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year from fossil fuels (and accelerating).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/carbon.html

These numbers look suspicious, but remember that the weight of CO2 is huge due to the fact that burning fuel (which almost only made of carbon) adds 2 atoms of oxygen to carbon, therefore quadrupling the weight:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml.

3. Divide the weight of CO2 by atomic weight of 44g/mol, multiply by CaCO atomic weight of 84g/mol, and then multiply by the ratio of 2:1, you get:

115 million tons of lime per year (roughly 4 times the weight of CO2)!

Thus is huge: in comparison, the world is producing just under 1 billion tons of mineral ore per year, which means that we would have to divert the equivalent of 12% of that effort to the task of producing and transporting lime. Imagine the cost!
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_ore/340302.pdf

In comparison, saving one pound of oil which produces 4 pounds of CO2 would save 16 pounds of lime.

600kWh a day per home seems quite high, where'd you get that figure from?

Oh! Nice catch. I was thinking about monthly usage when I used 600kWh. 600kWh is what a moderately green household would use in a month (I was reading online about off-grid homes a few days ago), but the average household usage is 920kWh per month. So daily that's about 31kWh. So that solar array would power 98,923,354 households, about 91% of the households in the US. Thanks for that.

First, the area of desert directly affected by the atomic bomb test is peanuts.

I wouldn't call 1,375 square miles, peanuts. That's 38,332,800,000 square feet, If we assume 10 watts per sq ft that's 383,328,000 KW per hour or 3,066,624,000 KWH in an 8 hour day. If the average home uses 600 KWH a day, that's 5,111,040 homes. Granted it would take 22 solar arrays like that to power all 107 million homes in the US (2001 census) if we tried to go by solar alone, and we had ways to store that power to use it 24 hours a day. A 1,375 sq mile array could likely supply the mid-day (non-peak) power needs to about 20 million homes because of the correlation of sunshine and power usage, little to no storage needed. That's the mid-day household power usage for almost the entire "West" census region. Not peanuts at all.

First, the area of desert directly affected by the atomic bomb test is peanuts.

I wouldn't call 1,375 square miles, peanuts. That's 38,332,800,000 square feet, If we assume 10 watts per sq ft that's 383,328,000 KW per hour or 3,066,624,000 KWH in an 8 hour day. If the average home uses 600 KWH a day, that's 5,111,040 homes. Granted it would take 22 solar arrays like that to power all 107 million homes in the US (2001 census) if we tried to go by solar alone, and we had ways to store that power to use it 24 hours a day. A 1,375 sq mile array could likely supply the mid-day (non-peak) power needs to about 20 million homes because of the correlation of sunshine and power usage, little to no storage needed. That's the mid-day household power usage for almost the entire "West" census region. Not peanuts at all.

First, Yucca Mountain is in an area where atmospheric nuclear blasts used to be conducted without bothering anybody. You can still go there and see the craters. The site was chosen partly because it's very remote.

Second, any future clueless explorers digging in that area would have to be well-equipped. They're going to have to bash their way through a considerable amount of steel and concrete, so they'll need some mining technology. Then when they get to the concrete casks enclosing stainless steel tubes of glass enclosing radioactive materials, they have to get those open. Then some of them die within a few days, and it finally dawns on the rest of them that they've found something that was buried because it was dangerous, not valuable.

The problem is not going to spread. If you just had a nuclear fuel rod lying in the open, it wouldn't be dangerous fifty feet away. To get a large scale hazard, you have to grind it into powder and put it in food or water.

For the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, this is the solution that was developed:
Permanent Markers Implementation Plan, United States Department of Energy, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (PDF)

Some brainstorming that led to the above document--this contains some of the more "exotic" ideas that were considered:
Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (PDF)
Excerpts in HTML format

Overview of warnings for Yucca Mountain

Basically, the idea is to take a multi-layered approach, starting with simple "Danger" warnings (both symbolic and in current languages, large scale and small), and finishing with detailed scientific information about what we will have buried. There will be instructions to add new structures with translations into whatever languages will have arisen in future societies. Sturdy but low-value materials will be used. There are a lot of other considerations; the "Expert Judgement..." document is an interesting read.

I agree with the other posters saying that reprocessing should make all of this moot, though.

How do we warn people 10,000 years in the future about our nuclear waste dumps? We don't because we don't have to because we don't have to store waste for 10,000 years.

It is possible to reprocess fuel to remove the actinides, which have a long decay time, and recycle them into new fuel. The remaining radioactive waste has a much shorter decay time, on the order of a few hundred years.

Here is a long picture diary of a trick to ANWR that prove you absolutely positively don't know what you're talking about. But then, I think that should be apparent given the name of Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Drilling in ANWR would not yield significant benefits to the oil market until 2026 according to the Department of Energy.

It seems before you should tell people to get perspective, you should stop deluding yourself with homemade "facts".

Wind doesn't need subsidies but until fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies dry up, there isn't enough market incentive to get it going on a scale that's more than a science project.

Then the EU must be running a hell of a big science project, as last year they added more wind than any other generating source, and it provided 4% of their total electricity (source).

The USA must be keen on pumping money into science projects, too, as wind trailed only gas in terms of capacity added last year (and wind's 31% capacity factor is higher than natural gas's 25% - compare EIA capacity and generation figures).

It's too late to say wind power can't scale; it's already done so.

Germany gets 6% from wind. And the us uses 10x as much electricity.

And the US is 30x as large.

Space is not a problem for wind.

Thats 800,000mills. At current prices this will take 28trillion dollars to install

Let's check that, but not with numbers you've just made up.

The USA uses 7x the electricity of Germany, meaning it would need 20%/6%*7 = 23x as many wind turbines. Germany had 22,000MW installed at the end of last year, so the USA would need 516,000MW.

Pickens is planning on spending about $10B for 4,000MW, or about $2.5M/MW. $2.5M/MW * 516,000MW = $1,300,000M = $1.3T = 2% of what you claimed.

So it's pretty clear you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I bet you Pickens does.

The real problem is that a 200MW farm takes 20 square kilometers. So to fill that 20% need it would cover around a quarter of texas.

At 20km^2 per 200MW, we'd need 516,000MW/200MW*20km^2 = 51,600km^2 of the USA's 9,800,000km^2 of land, or 0.5%.

Space is not a problem for wind.

What I think many of the "Just use less" people really want is a complete change of lifestyles.

Not unless you think the lifestyles of Europeans are completely different from those of Americans. Having lived in both regions, I can tell you they're not that different, despite rich-country Europeans using half the energy per capita that Americans do.

Plus walking - or waddling - around town would do many of us a lot of good.

It's easy to say "Just use less", but to get to the point where you can use less sometimes requires some economically UNviable steps, like those I mentioned above.

Which part of "insulate your house and buy an efficient heat source" is not economically viable? In most cases, it'd pay for itself due to energy savings in 4-8 years.

Right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_One

The Nevada Solar One solar tower plant generates 134 million kwh per year, cost $266 million to build, and covers 400 acres (roughly 0.6 square miles or 1.6 square km).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html The 2006 US energy use was about 4,060,000 thousand mwh. So to generate all of that with plants like the Nevada Solar One, we need 4,060,000,000,000 kwh / 134,000,000 kwh = roughly 30,300 copies of Nevada Solar One.

That's $8 trillion in expenses and 0.5% the surface area of the United States. Petty cash. (Obviously, shifting our entire energy generation to solar tomorrow is impossible. But gradually ramping up this kind of energy production looks good to me. Eventually economies of scale will bring the energy generation costs down below coal.)

We're definitely on the same page. Regards.

As for more drilling == more supply. That may not be the case. Mexico had an 8% decline last year. Their major fields hit peak. As they decline, they will hoard more and more oil for their own domestic use, meaning less to export to the US. Guwar in Saudi Arabia has been reported to be pumping 50% sea water, an indication that it may have, or will soon be, hitting peak.

I personally think we need drill more just to minimize the supply decline in the coming years. Perhaps enough to buy us time to get renewables in place.

Nobody knows for sure, only time will tell....

This would be a lot more insightful if more than 1 new refinery permit had been issued in the last 20 years, or if more than about 15% of the oil that the U.S. imports came from private companies rather than nations (Canada and Mexico are the organizations that make the most money feeding oil to the United States).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbblpd_a.htm

This would be a lot more insightful if more than 1 new refinery permit had been issued in the last 20 years, or if more than about 15% of the oil that the U.S. imports came from private companies rather than nations (Canada and Mexico are the organizations that make the most money feeding oil to the United States).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbblpd_a.htm

You haven't addressed my point, which is that some people can use less oil by telecommuting part of the time.

Sure, some can. But my point was that not all can and it seems to be less productive when they do. Now, this some is a small portion of the puzzle. The amount of people who can telecommute who aren't already doing so is probably not going to be very significant.

However, you have successfully and concisely refuted the assertion that all people can telecommute all of the time. Strong work. Who made that assertion?

Wel, to be honest, I took it as implied with your statement:

Here's a substitute for oil: tell your boss you have to work from home 2 days a week.

If I did so incorrectly, I apologize. But I'm not sure how else to understand that. Maybe it is because I know that we get roughly 19 gallons of gas from a barrel and most people could live within 50 miles of their work. There will be people who live further either by choice of neccesity and that it ok too. But at 25 miles to a gallon of gas, if the full 50 miles was considered, we would only save 4 gallons a person (100 mile round trip). This 4 gallons also depends on the worker not driving and having to goto some place that they would have already went by and stopped on their way to and from work. That means we would need around 4-5 people like that to save one barrel of oil per day. It would be halved(2-3 people) for 2 days. Now, If we can imagine (I'm making this up so don't ask for sources) that at least 30% of workers could work from home 2 days a week and of those 75% already do, that leaves around 8% of the workforce left to do something not already being done.

If we take that 8% and assume the best possible scenario of 100 miles round trip with 2 people saving one barrel in 2 days and look at some real numbers, it isn't going to mean that much. There was around 146.0 million employed workers in the US during May 2008. In June ( I can't find the may report) we produced about 9.1 million barrels of gasoline per day. In two days this would be 18.2 million barrels. A barrel of gasoline would be 42 US gallons so 18.2 times 42 would be around 764 million gallons of gas a day.

8% of the workforce would equal about 12 million people. That would be a savings of 48 million (12 million times 4 gallon savings) gallons or 2.5 million barrels of oil (48 million divided by the 19 gallons from crude). From the same PDF (June), we find that we put 15.3 million barrels of crude a day into the refineries which would be around 30.5 million per two day period. The actual number presented in the PDF is 15,374 thousand gallons per day. I converted it to millions to keep the math easy. But as you can see, this is only around an 8.1% savings. Now this all hinges on the idea that everyone drives 100 miles round trip and they wouldn't drive those days to do things like going to the store or something that they would have been able to do on their way to and from works normally.

It actually seems to get a little worse. According to this http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/Story?id=485098&page=1 >news article from ABC news, they listed the average commute as being 16 miles but it talks about the time the commute lasts so it might be just a wash. However, 16 miles is about 16% of the original 100 miles which could mean around six times less of an impact. If we used the 16 miles average (32 round trip) each person would only save around 1.28 gallons instead of the 4. So instead of 2-3 people saving a barrel, we are looking at something like every 14 people. Instead of saving 48 million gallons or 2.4 million barrels of crude, we would only be saving 15.3 million gallons or

Says the guy that's never paid a gas heating bill.

Have too. BTW, the US is a net importer of natural gas (warning - pdf). Also, the government predicts shortfalls after 2020 (google cache to avoid pdf).

The U.S. Dept. of Energy estimates the U.S. has roughly 21 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves (source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html). These data are current as of 2006. It's very likely this is a conservative estimate, as higher oil prices make otherwise-unprofitable reserves profitable to extract. Yet we're only producing 5 million barrels a day and completely unable to measurably increase production with existing fields. Why do you think that is? Here's a hint: environmentalists have made damn sure this country can't open a well or refinery without months -- sometimes years -- of red tape and lawsuits. Now we're reaping the "benefits" of such actions and folks are pissed gas costs what it does. Nuclear and clean coal are in similar doldrums for similar reasons.

It's called cause and effect. Look it up.

Furthermore, we'll assume you work 5 days a week so that's 150 miles per week.

And finally, let's guess that the gas prices in your area are $4.50 -- the highest price listed for average US gas prices on this page. (I presume that you're in the US.) For $50, you can therefore get a little over 11 gallons.

That would mean you're getting just over 13 miles per gallon. I would suggest that, if your vehicle's gas consumption is keeping you from buying a house, you may want to trade it in for something a little more efficient.

If you look at the data:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mcrfpus2a.htm

You will see that Domestic oil production has fallen by 40% since its peak in the 60's through 80's. Bush leaving office will not bring that capacity back, nor will it decrease demand, nor will it strengthen the dollar. Bush has nothing to do with any of these things.

Domestic production began to fall off in the mid 1980s. Why? Because we began to exhaust some of the smaller wells and congress would not authorize exploration for new sources, and they have not done so since.

See how silly that is?

And what does the "oil teat" have to do with the topic of electricity production? Petroleum accounted for only 1.6% of electric energy produced in 2006 (the latest full year available) www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epat1p1.html

Conservatives are "entrenched" in big business? What are they, spies? Newsflash--all businesses tend to be predominantly conservative! So what? Business people aren't in business to lose money. When alternative energy sources become economically competitive, utilities will latch onto them in a heartbeat, regardless of their political viewpoint.

And don't keep us in suspense: What are the "more practical benefits" of alternative energy sources, because it's sure not cost?

Electricity costs have not tripled unless that happend in the last year or so, which in fact it did not.

Electricity costs have not tripled unless that happend in the last year or so, which in fact it did not.

we can do it better, but overall it's still the best bang for the buck (calculating the waste output, and handling of said waste output, into the buck) that we have.

How is nuclear power the best choice? We don't even have a way to deal with the waste.

I'm hopeful that when we do get around to building new reactors, they'll be of a more modern and efficient design than the ones running currently.

Where are these designs? And not just general hand waving but actual designs. And doing more research into new designs don't count, the same energy and money put into alternative resources may come out with better things.

Sorry, Falcon, but solar, wind, wave, hydro and all the other renewables won't cut it at our current consumption levels (see the link at the end).

So your news link beats my science links?

A nearly-as-bad downside is the fact that the footprint for enough of a solar or wind farm to replace a coal plant means you're eating up many times more real estate with concrete and metal than the coal plant did, and I've no desire to pave the planet.

Did you even read the Sciam article? Or the Wind Atlas?

So the big objection to coal power (which also pertains to combustion engines; cars) is that we're running out of the power source and there's not more we can get or make.

My biggest issue with coal, and nuclear power, is that it is dirty. If you're going to bring up carbon capture and storage, show one such plant in operation that actually works.

and then there's the limited-fuel-resources-from-few-suppliers drawback as well

Now I'll admit here the US doesn't need to worry about running out of coal, there's hundreds of years of coal in the US alone. As stated above though it's dirty. And not just the burning of coal but the mining as well. Mountain Top removal is probably the dirtiest mining there is, though uranium mining comes close. And underground mining isn't any better, healthier, or safer. It causes Black Lung as well as other health problems. There are a number of underground fires in coal mines, the Centralia mine fire in Columbia County, Pennsylvania has been burning since 1962.

However, with only a few thousand nuclear plants, eventually, powering the US

We don't need more centralized power, we need more distributed power. Nor do we need to devote land for just one purpose, which nuclear power requires. With wind gennies, generators, farmers can lease small plots, or use as their own, to erect a genny. This would create a second source of income for farmers. One of the biggest problems with wind farms are all the NIMBYs, such as the ones fighting siting wind farms off the coast of Cape Hatteras. The Mid-Atlantic Coast Could Supply 330 gigawatts of Electricity, from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, alone according to researchers at University of Delaware. Meanwhile 4 Nuclear Power Plants in California had a capacity of 4 gigawatts in 2005. That comes to 1 gigawatt per power plant, whereas the wind potential off the Mid Atlantic comes to 330 nuclear power plants.

I was listening to NPR this morning and they were bringing up decent points regarding drilling off the coasts. The impact would be negligble and would take a while for it to show any signs of impact. According to this article from Time - Will Drilling More Mean Cheaper Gas?, which mines some quotes and data from the EIA of the DOE, found that drilling ANWR would only decrease the cost of gas by 3.5 cents per gallon by 2027. When it comes to offshore drilling, the National Resources Defense Council says that it will only cut down by a similar amount, 3-4 cents per gallon.

Shale oil I'm really interested in because I heard that the major barrier was the cost effectiveness. With oil at about $140/barrel, I can only hope to see a more concerted effort in refining that oil at a cheaper price. Do we have the necessary infrustructure to do so and make an immediate impact?

They're predominantly in Hawaii, Gulf Coast, and New England. Nationwide, it makes up only about 1.6% of generation in 2007, (source) down from over 3% in 2006. Non-hydro renewable makes up about 2.4%.

Furthermore, PHEVs aren't too far away, and they will serve to shift energy demand from petroleum products to electricity.

That said, I'm not a big fan of McCain's policy. It's not that he's pro-nuclear, it's that he's consistently voted against subsidizing wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal while at the same time voting to subsidize oil, natural gas, and nuclear. This policy is no different. Nuclear may well be part of the GHG emission solution, but it's not problem free [waste transportation and storage], and so long as other parts of the GHG emission solution don't create nuclear waste, we ought to focus on bringing those solutions online first.

there's a really cool terrestrial (as oppose to aquatic) plant called misanthus giganteus which has biomass growth rates ~6 dry tons/acre. ( http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/miscanthus/miscanthus.html )

dry biomass contains ~17GJ/ton ( http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html ), so if you assume no loss of energy in conversion, you get a maximum energy production there of ~100GJ/year per acre.

The US fuel consumption is ~20,687,000 barrels/day ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html ), which is 460 million acres of land.

luckily, this doesn;t need to be grown on farmland (we have 450M acres of farmland in the US), but for comparison, doing this with corn would take about twice as much land, and much more nutritional fertilizer.

algae is another possible way to sustainably grow that much biomass, but having researched it extensively, it;s too expensive, and requires a lot of labor. miscanthus only requires normal farming techniques, so is very cheap to produce (maybe cheaper than shipping the amazon up here?)

The price of oil isn't high because it's expensive to produce but because people want more of it than is readily available at the moment, and because of speculation by investors.

$50 is how much it costs them to produce a barrel of crude, what the oil industry calls "lifting cost". By comparison the average lifting cost of traditional crude oil pumped out of the ground is around $6.00 per barrel. (Lifting costs from 2006). To be fair you have to include the finding cost of oil too so let's call the total production cost average around $15/barrel.

As you can see $50/gallon is a very high COST for crude oil. It's almost too high for anyone to consider investing the serious money required to start producing at any real volume. At this point demand is so far above supply and appears likely to remain that way long enough that it might be worth the risk, but it is a HUGE risk. Imagine you throw the billions of dollars necessary to ramp up production using this process so that a decade or so from now you're producing oil on a meaningful scale. What happens if the economies of India & China falter during that time drying up demand. It's a given that your conventional competitors will have been spending the same decade desperately scrambling to bring traditional oil wells into production at a MUCH lower cost per barrel. Other businesses will likely have been exploring other alternatives sources of oil further increasing supply (The Orinoco tar sands? Shale Oil? Oil from coal?). Oil could drop to the $30-$40/barrel price it held steady at for the two decades prior to the current bubble.

Sorry for the double reply, link to gasoline consumption number:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

The Bakken Formation alone has well over 100 billion barrels of oil (with only a fraction of that recoverable with current technology). The US uses about 7.5 billion barrels a year.

The point being we are not anywhere near running out of oil, especially if you include the hard to get stuff.

Well you may be right or you may be wrong.

But per the Department of Energy in 2005 World Wide
imports of oil started to decline due to lack of supply.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm

By 2008 World Wide oil imports had dropped 100 million barrels a year.

The oilfields in Mc Camey Texas are dry, The Lake Maricaibo oil
fields in Venezuela are dry, the oil fields in Baku Azerbaijan
are almost dry and produce much less.

In the early 70's the US pumped 10 million barrels, and now
it pumps half that.

So if you want to know why oil prices are on fire it is because
they know how to read the data from the DOE and other sources.

They missed the boat, and know that they are ramping up biofuels
FAR too slowly and there are going to be some serious growing pains.

Thankfully Valcent has found a way to grow algae-oil vertically
in the desert but it will take many years to scale it up.

Seriously how can you make the claim that the climate of the US is not "that much different" than that of Europe with a straight face?

A significant portion of the US has summer average temperatures in the high 90's or low 100's, with winter that rarely touches freezing. Another huger portion has winters that dump many feet of snow and leave the area in a frozen blanket of ice for significant portions of the year. Many places have both the high temperatures and the low temperatures. The range of temperatures in the continental US is larger than the range of temperatures in "continental Europe".

As to standard of living differences, that claim is also false as has been shown by the UN for at least a couple decades. If you only just now learned that N.A. uses more energy per capita than Europe you must be new to BBC, or slashdot. America also has a much higher GDP. We make more stuff. so even considering energy use per capita is an incomplete and useless thing to do on it's own.

Go ahead, cut off the electricity supply to millions of people living in 110 degree heat so they can't use their air conditioner and compare that to someone in London not needing an air conditioner. Now tell the millions of people in that 100+ degree weather that their standard of living is "not that much different" than those in Europe. Take the heat source away from those in Minnesota or Canada in January so they can use less energy per capita and convince them that their standard of living isn't any different.

Consider this chart from UN data in 2005: http://www.zianet.com/ehusman/weblog/uploaded_images/E_Intens_v_pCap_GDP-718899.jpg

The US and the UK, for example, are very similar in how many BTUs are consumed per unit of GDP. Yet we produce more GDP per capita. How does that affect your assertion that North America's energy consumption is excessive. IN terms of GDP, the US is about as efficient as the UK, and much more so than Norway which produced about the same GDP per capita as the US, or Canada which produced far less GDP than the US per capita and consumed far more BTUs per unit of GDP to do it. The big "winner" on that chart is Japan which produced a high GDP/capita with a BTU/GDP far lower than that of Europe.

Indeed:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/energy.html

Shows that the US' energy use has in fact been getting more efficient in that our energy user per dollar of GDP has gone down by 42% since 1980. And for those who might say otherwise, it ha snot risen once over the previous year in that 27 year run. Energy use per capita had a slight uptick in the second half of the 90's but is still down a few points from 1980.

How about next you don't just try to take a swipe at those in a different area with a dumb-ass isolated statistic and do some real research? Even a 10 minute excursion into the data coudl have prevented you from such silliness.

Those websites are grossly misrepresentative.
US produced 1.9 gigabarrels last year, and imported 4.9 gigabarrels. We got 0.9 gigabarrels from canada.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasoline/index.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm

Those websites are grossly misrepresentative.
US produced 1.9 gigabarrels last year, and imported 4.9 gigabarrels. We got 0.9 gigabarrels from canada.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasoline/index.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm

Those websites are grossly misrepresentative.
US produced 1.9 gigabarrels last year, and imported 4.9 gigabarrels. We got 0.9 gigabarrels from canada.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasoline/index.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm

Those websites are grossly misrepresentative.
US produced 1.9 gigabarrels last year, and imported 4.9 gigabarrels. We got 0.9 gigabarrels from canada.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasoline/index.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm

1) It all depends on how your fractal column is setup. Diesel is easier to refine as it is lower on the column.
2) "Marginal increase in efficiency". I can get 40-50-60 MPG out of my car that is 10 years old. I had a 86 diesel, 22 years old that got 50 MPG. Identical cars (and I had them) only got 30 at most.
3) "Carbon speak" is all BS. And you measured on a 'per gallon'. If I have a gasoline engine that gets 30 MPG and a diesel engine that gets 50 MPG and I drive 10,000 miles per year. Unless the diesel puts out 5/3 as much NOx/CO2/PPM, the diesel is still better.
4) Your last point is a good one. If you can get 200k out of a Gasoline Engine and 500k out of a Diesel engine. What is the 'carbon footprint' of making that entirely new engine?
5) Diesel prices are not that much cheaper in Europe.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.jpg
vs
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/diesel1.jpg

A few % at most. At $10/gallon, $0.10 is not that much