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Journey Towards The Center of the Earth
linumax wrote to mention an article detailing an ambitious Japanese-led voyage towards the center of the earth. From the article: "The deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu made a port call Thursday in Yokohama after ending its first training mission at sea since being built in July at a cost of 500 million dollars. The 57,500-ton Chikyu, which means the Earth in Japanese, is scheduled to embark in September 2007 on a voyage to collect the first samples of the Earth's mantle in human history. The project, led by Japan and the United States with the participation of China and the European Union, seeks clues on primitive organisms that were the forerunners of life and on the tectonic plates that shake the planet's foundations" They also hope to use the information to detect earthquakes more accurately. A 4 page PDF presentation about the Chikyu deep-sea drilling vessel is also available."
Gee, better be on the lookout for green slime and primords....
R David Francis
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Oh they did - The Core: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/ [imdb.com]
From the PDF:
> The proposed program OD21 will evolve into, in close collaboration with the current ODP and international partners, a new international program, named as the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), which will use the "CHIKYU" and a U.S. drilling vessel.
Small fix: micro-evolve. No transitional "international program" between Ocean Drilling Programs has ever been found.
BTW once that bit hits magma that is spining at a different rate from the platform, it will shear.
They say that the Actic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska would be a perfect place to drill through to the mantle, since oil offers so little resistance and simultaniously lubricates the bit. And what harm will come if a bunch of it happens to flow up to the surface by accident?
That the japanese have decided to put team Zissuo on this. The Belefonte was the perfect choice for a drilling platform. Hopefully no harm will come to the recon dolphins.
Neo-Darwinist heathens! There is only ONE "forerunner" of life on this planet, and that's GOD!
/.: why the hell am I here?
Ever see a pop can with a small hole in it? I mean, do they really have a clue what might happen if they provide a channel for deep magma flows to rise? Sure, it's a little sci-fi doomsday scenario, but I'd hate to be the one who signed off on the risk assessment for this project.
Scientist 1: Hey, Jimmie, remember that movie we saw when we were kids? The one where they go to the center of the earth?
Scientist 2: Sure, why'dya ask?
Scientist 1: I got this reasearch grant and I thought we could drill down to see if those giant mushrooms were real.
Scientest 2: Sure, I'm in.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
That drill is going to make about 0.1% of the way.
"on a voyage to collect the first samples of the Earth's mantle in human history"
Mantle != Core
What will happen if they drill all the way to the mantle? Will the magma harden and plug the hole, or will it turn into a volcano?
...digging from Japan, it looks like they'll come out off the coast of Uruguay (cool Google maps hack shows you where you will come out if you dig a hole through the center of the earth from any location).
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
"equipped with a 121-meter (400-foot) drill tower that can dig 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) below the seabed"
They're drilling 7 km into the crust. Am I the only one that thought the mantle was at least 30 km down at fault lines?
Well that was convenient. They can't make their stuff work in space exploring, so they're going for... well.. none-space exploring :P
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
Given the existence of chemosynthetic life at ocean ridge hotspots, I wonder about the potential for life in the mantle. Surely the continuing convection in the mantle and subduction zones provides the potential for non-equilibrium chemical reactions that could be a basis for life. Perhaps some form of complex aluminosilicate chains/matrix or semi-crystalline blebs could form the basis for non-carbon-based life. I'm not expecting anything particularly mobile or obvous (a la the silcon-based Horta in Star Trek) but as long as a region supports both solid-phase and liquid-phase complex mixtures, then it seems life isn't impossible. Perhaps xenoliths are the corpolites or decomposed remnants of something down there.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Heh. Or that "Chikyu means 'The Earth in Japanese'". Yours of course makes sesnse as a metaphor and mine is totally nonsensical, but c'est la vie.
>"on a voyage to collect the first samples of the Earth's mantle in human history" That is, the first samples that haven't come to us.
This may be slightly off-topic. but it seems to me that if we improve drilling technology enough to breach the Earth's Mantle, there lies an almost endless supply of heat energy. According to http://zebu.uoregon.edu/ph162/l18.html, the average thermal gradient is 30 degrees C per kilometer, so that at a depth of 20,000 feet, the temperature is 190 degrees C. The problem is that in solids the heat can only be replenished by diffusion, so that steam extraction of heat would occur faster than the heat can be replenished. However, if we could dig deep enough to where heat could be replenished by convection, then the concept of geothermal heat extraction could be feasible.
Another alternative that may currently be feasible is to detonate small H-bombs in deep cavities to replenish the heat. This, in fact, was already done in the PACER project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER. The major problem in the Pacer project was the reliance of plutonium fission bombs to initiate the fusion reaction, which created problems with radioactive waste. If a "Fusion Fuse" other than fission could be devised, we could dispense with esoteric, far-in-the-future methods of controlling fusion above ground, and simply use deep cavities in the Earth to release heat via uncontrolled fusion reactions, and extract the heat.
Bottom Line: I am not buying into the "Peak Oil Doomsday Scenario" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html just yet.
Think about it. If we can drill deep enough to get down to the magma layer, we can make boreholes/geothermal power plants anywhere we want. Think what this could do for power stations!
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
(if that didn't work, try this one: http://www5.big.or.jp/~otake/hey/kanji/gifmoji/f5/ chikyuu.gif)
where the first one is read "chi", meaning earth (in the dirt sense). The second is read "kyuu" and means "ball".
So. Welcome to my planet, dirtball.
Tinfoil Hat: On
Okay, who lost the submarine THIS time?
Tinfoil Hat: Off
Did our core stopped spinning again?
Dude! After this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202314/
you could be a consultant!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
This was posted long ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/0 4/0526254&tid=14
Predicting earthquakes? A Breakthrough(TM) indeed...
(From the Dilbert Future or the Dilbert Principle) I remember reading something along the lines of, "If you drill a hole in the earth, all the gravity would escape!" Better send the Japanese a copy!
Will they suck out the earth's molten core through the hole, turning the earth (the big one) into a giant spaceship?
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
That is what they want you to believe.. ....
There is no mantle, its all oil. Oil. the whole world is filled with Oil. Billions and Trillians of gallons. Like a massive M&M but oil.
Sounds like a waste of time to me. NBC has already shown us what's down there ... large lizard monsters swimming in lava!
http://www.nbc.com/Surface/
Best. Science Fiction. Ever.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I guess that explains why oil just came bubblin' up when Jed Clampett missed the critter and shot his rifle into the ground...
Humor is such a fragile little butterfly, grasp at it too hard and it is a sticky mess - but still colorful!
Oh, bullsh*t. Mod this moron to oblivion.
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
I, for one, welcome our new overlord from the center of the Earth.
Professor Challengero rs/arthur-conan-doyle/when-the-world-screamed/
http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/scottish-auth
Is Art Bell still alive? Someone give him a call about this. Remember the "recording of hell" thing?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
btw.. not my beleifs, mine ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Crack In The World
"The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."
;)
OMG
nothing travels faster than light - except the mind
The earth's mantle is hot. I mean really hot.
I do not deny that this may be true. It is difficult to change cultural attitudes.
An intersting example: I recently watched a documentary on the "Little Ice Age". Between 1300 to around 1900, the climate in Northern Europe and Eastern North America became dramatically colder. Before that time, vineyards in England flourished, and English wine was considered superior to French wine. Cereal grains were the main crop. The Vikings colonized Greenland. But after the climate shift, the crops failed repeatedly, leading to widespread famine. Eventually, the potato was introduced from the Americas. The potato was much better suited to the climatic conditions of the time, but people refused to cultivate it. Priests called it "the devil's root". Eventually, the Germans were the first to adopt the potato, during the 30 years war, but only because the crop could not be burned by invading armies. The French did not adopt the potato, and famines persisted, partially contributing to the French Revolution.
So people suffered and starved for hundreds of years, simply because of their inability to adapt their culture to the changing environment.
Will we do any better?
The deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu...
I realize I'm going to come off as a petty nitpicker, but couldn't they have done a better job of Romanizing the name of the craft? It needs one more 'u' (I checked the original Japanese). Without the second 'u', it just looks downright wrong to me.
Incidentally, "chikyuu" means "Earth" in Japanese, which I think is a great name for the craft.
If they want a sample of mantle rock, all they have to do is visit Newfoundland, Canada.
There's a valley in western Newfoundland where, on east side, the soil is derived from weathered crust material. On the west side, the 'soil' is mantle rock.
I've driven along a road in the bottom of the valley and the difference is striking! The east side is heavily overgrown. The west side has only a few blades of grass that seem to be growing in tiny pockets containing soil blown across the valley.
So, no drilling required. Just pick up a sample from the surface.
No virus tried to infect me on that site.
Then again, maybe it's an IE thing?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Just curious....
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Drilling even a small hole that deep into the earth seems like it could cause all sorts of problems. A crack in a hard material tends to permeate outward. If you drill down just a little bit into the earth, cracks will be very limited in how far from the origin point they can spread. As you drill deeper into the earth, though, I imagine the cracks that form back up toward the surface can get further and further from the origin point, and increase in severity as you go up (in addition to the fact that a crack five feet below the surface is relatively inconsequential whereas a crack 50 feet below the surface could be catastrophic.
I hope they've really thought this through, 'cause to me it sounds sooooo not worth the risk.
Yes I did notice that. It was however, my first time posting a link of /. and thought it was a convention of sorts.
Sorry to be a party pooper, not a troll though. All this fun about what they might hit is a bit over done. The depth of drilling is 25,000 feet. That is a bad joke. They drill 31,000 feet in South Alabama all the time. They drill nearly 50,000 feet at Petronius 65 miles south of Alabama. What they have hit doesn't in any way resemble the "mantle" and I really doubt this project is ever going close to the "mantle."
This rig might do a somewhat useful drilling of fault zones and it might find other useful things but this isn't likely to be of any use in actual "mantle" research.
The Russians have drilled locations much deeper and attempted to go into the mantle. They hit hot salt water in the rock but nothing resembling the "mantle" that we all have been so rigorously taught to believe exists. Actually so many deep bores of the earth exist around the world that vastly exceed this depth it seems to me almost useless to consider this "research." Maybe we should be considering exactly what the research is actually going to be? I wouldn't hazard a guess but unless the ship is going to bore something like 200,000 feet the prospects of really new research coming from it are dubious. The world is full of holes going down 25,000 feet.
My suspicion is that they will find if they drill fault zones a pretty shocking reality that they knew nothing of what was going on. It would be a fair prediction to estimate that these zones are water penetration zones. The seismic signature of a "diving plate" is probably only a water penetration crack into the rocks below. This would explain the volcanoes and all without any of the subduction or other stuff. Such a discovery would have the science of Geology scratching their heads for a long time. They might discover that the earths plates match (as they do!) in the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. They might discover like Yukos found that there is "Magma oil." They might just come up with a bunch of other fun stuff. Again they might not but who knows? It could be a lot of fun watching.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I wonder if they've recently found a stone statuette of some kind of lizard creature?
I can burn potatoes with ease so I don't see how a bunch of semi-barbaric Europeans couldn't ;)
;)
So people suffered and starved for hundreds of years, simply because of their inability to adapt their culture to the changing environment.
Although you didn't blame them exclusively, Europe's relative secularism has taken care of priests saying or doing stupid things like that. I'd like to think that the US could be included in that but Creationism makes me very pessimistic on that score.
I'm a bit of a misanthropic old bugger and think less humans on the planet would be a good thing in general, I just wish it was possible to choose who would be saved from the verge of extinction. No politicians, captains of industry, suburban SUV owners, religious nutcases or women who use a pushchair as an offensive weapon would be allowed on MY ark
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
The article is wrong. We have samples of the mantle. Lots of samples of the mantle. There are several sitting here on my desk as I type. Not a lot, grant you, since the majority comes up as xenoliths in igneous rocks or as inclusions in other minerals (anyone ever heard of, say, diamonds?) or in tectonically uplifted terrains. Moreover, we (the geoscience community, that is) has recoverd mantle samples via drilling. During ODP Leg 209 in 2003, for example.
In studying religious belief systems, what it the difference between a "crazy cult" and a "real religion"? As far as I can discern, the only answer seems to be the number of followers of that belief system: if more than a few thousand followers, then it "must" be a religion.
The U.S. has always been a breeding ground for cult-like, splinter-group protestant sects. Most often, these sects would form around some charismatic leader, remain localized, and then gradually die off. An unforeseen side effect of improved communications (mostly radio and television) is that these "non-traditional" religions could spread far and wide in a relatively brief time. Thus, we end up with a large number of non-traditional religious fundamentalists who would like to speed-up "The Apocalypse" so that they can be "raptured", instead of dieing a natural death. Cynical, ultra-wealthy elites have gained control of the mass media, so they are able to manipulate the formulation and dissemination of these "non-traditional" religious beliefs, and deceive the fundamentalists into thinking that they are allies.
Maybe the difference between us and the Europeans is that they have already suffered through centuries of insane destructive war, mostly driven by religion and religion-like ultra-nationalistic cults. The Second World War, especially, was so destructive that much of European culture had to start from scratch. In that sense, maybe, they are the "New World" and we are the "Old World", and they may be able to better adapt to swift cultural changes that will be necessary in the future. As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I look around me, and I am unable to come up with much evidence to the contrary
(Sorry for the off-topic conversation, but this is just the way that conversation flows)
A significant portion of the heat leaving Earth (which we experience on the surface) originates from radioactive decay deep within. This might shed some light on the origin and, more importantly, the variation of that heat. It would be a shame to be taking measures to reduce global warming by attempting to increase the radiation of heat into space if, at the same time, the heat output from within the Earth is declining on a 10,000 year cycle leading to slightly cooler surface temperatures. Kind of like turning off the central heating right before the blizzard hits.
Oil prices are rising and so the economically recoverable part of ANWR rises along with it. So let's say there is 15 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered for $25 / bbl. I'll certainly give you that Saudi Arabia can pump it out for a buck, but, if oil is $75/bbl, and thus, I get 50 x 15 billion bucks in pure profit. Last time I checked, that's a f--- load of money.
Elk are not worth nearly a trillion dollars. Drill ANWR now.
This is my sig.
Well - I read the site frequently... People might note that you can't post comments as you can here at slashdot. If people could post comments then the absolute crap that he picks up on would get throughly trounced rather quickly.
Your idea to start drilling now isn't going to work unless you can figure out where to drill. The industry dosn't know where... they are drilling what they do know about.
Savinar is out to lunch simply fanning flames. In the short term he is correct - and there is likely to be a major disruption. We need about 20 years of a crash building program to replace conventional oil decline - that is 20 years before peak. I suspect peak world oil production will occur in 2007 and it is possible it will occur BEFORE 2007. It is also possible it will occur as late as 2010 and given some massivly good luck maybe even after 2010.
At this point the investments in the Alberta Tar sands are beyond the "crash" building level. This will cause production to ramp up to about 3.3 MBOPD by about 2010. While this may sound like a lot - it isn't. This will replace perhaps 2 years declines of just the top 4 conventional feilds.
Yet - there are solutions.
One of the easiest solutions is to move work closer to people. Maybe people can adjust their working conditions rather easily and simply set up an office at home and spend 2/3 of their time in this office rather than downtown.
Of course - many people don't think this idea will work. As oil goes over $100 per barrel they will have to reconsider.
More than likely the option will be payed out differently than mearly a rational - lets work part time from home approach. Initally rather than say 1/4 of the work being done from home... what will happen is that about 1/4 of the work force will be laid off.
Overall the commuting will drop. The same number of reduced hours will be subtracted from hours spent in offices downtown... however rather than this being spread evenly through the population and everyone enjoying the extra freedom and productivity... instead 1/4 will be deemed to be unemployed. They will spend 100% of their time in their new at home office - probably filling in CV's. Meanwhile the other 75% will continue in the old ways.
I described this process in the long convoluted fashion above to illustrate that the way we describe things has a bearing on how we perceive them. In a rational world if we have to cut back say 25% on the commutes we wouldn't do it via unemployment. Note also that these comments address the office and white collar activities - many blue collar activites cannot be location shifted - but office work for the most part certainly can be.
------------
So there are short term effective rational solutions. It is not necessay for people to sit 6 abreast in SUV's in grid lock traffic 2x per day. Peak oil will affect transporation more than any other part of our economy. If the USA gets 1/2 of its cars off the road for instance - then this is equivalent to saving about 1/2 of 2/3 of 20 million barrels per day - and that is about 3 million barrels of oil per day - about the same as Alberta's Tar Sands will produce by 2015.
Personally - I think getting 1/2 the cars off the raod is quite feasible. Furthermore this will save money... and if we do this via moving work closer to where people live - then everyone wins... especially single moms who will have a big part of their child supervision issues alieviated.
---------------
Note that moving work closer to people is only one step. Moving distribution of goods off of our highways and onto railroads is another very effective way to save fuel. This has the added benefit that MOST of the wear and tear on our hiways will be reduced and traveling will be far more pleasant for the light vehicals. Then as fuel costs continue to climb - there will be fewer vehicals overall.
Insulating our homes is very economical and has the additional benefit that they will be more comfortable to live in.
The solutions are there. We just need to put them into production.
No worries, the Japanese can supply him with all the tentacle pr0n he can use.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Of course, murphy's law says that if so, they will replenish at a rate at a rate matching our correct consumption divided by 2. Meaning we will still be up the creek without a paddle.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As a former contributor to Greenpeace, in my "youthful days", I would agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that the environmental movement is primarily responsible for propagating irrational fear of nuclear power. The depth of their irrationality on the subject was made plain to me by their active opposition to the small radioisotope thermal power sources on deep space missions such as Galileo and Cassini. The most extreme environmentalists made claims like "millions would die" in the case of an accident. They seem to fear anything nuclear as the superstitious fear demons, and their fear spreads as a contagion. Of course, the Russians didn't help much with their miserly approach to safeguards; the very word "Chernobyl" entered the lexicon as a synonym for something like "hot radioactive wasteland".
Beyond the particular elements of Jimmy Carter's energy policies, what I admire about him most was he was the last President to take on a clear public leadership role in favor of energy independence. Carter's 1977 address to the nation on his National Energy Plan was unprecedented. Carter did much to open Federal Lands for oil and natural gas exploration and production. Like you, tjstork, I suspect that in the 1970's Carter would have supported drilling in the ANWR, if that had been an issue at the time. However, he is on record now as being opposed, due to global warming concerns (which I share). Although, as you point out, the Three Mile Island disaster was a major setback, I think the political symbolism of Ronald Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House marked the end to Carter's dream of energy independence for our country.
Interestingly, supplemental solar power was restored to the White House 23 years after it was first removed. In a world where the Future Shock-wave rolled over us long ago, 23 years is a long, long time. As it is with the environmentalists, so it is with the Lords of Industry; neither can be counted on to be rational players. A laissez-faire approach to markets cannot lead to an ultimate solution to our energy woes. Ultimately, Adam Smith's metaphorical "Invisible Hand" comes to grasp the throat of the common man. I believe more in the wisdom first explored by John Maynard Keynes, that the government's intervention in the market can be beneficial, not only to protect the public from the excesses of an unfettered market, but also to provide a guiding hand in rational long-term policy. Had we continued in the spirit of Jimmy Carter 23 years ago, striving towards national energy independence, then the guiding hand of government could have been gentle. Tax incentives, increased research funding for energy alternatives, small business initiatives, and reliable government support for pilot programs that promised future economic returns would have brought us far beyond where we are today. But now, 23 years later, even the basic task of maintaining a sufficient and affordable future energy supply is more akin in magnitude to President Kennedy's 1961 challenge to put a man on the moon, and can only be envisioned if we roll back the disastrous and irresponsible fiscal policies implemented by the current administration in the last five years.
In #14279307, Sayeth deaddrunk,
Although you didn't blame them exclusively, Europe's relative secularism has taken care of priests saying or doing stupid things like that. I'd like to think that the US could be included in that but Creationism makes me very pessimistic on that score.
I do not think I can respond to your observation any more eloquently and succinctly than this quote by famous literary critic Harold Bloom from his article "Reflections in the Evening Land" in yesterday's edition of The Guardian,
"I am a teacher by profession, about to begin my 51st year at Yale, where frequently my subject is American writers. Without any particular competence in politics, I assert no special insight in regard to the American malaise. But I am a student of what I have learned to call the American Religion, which has little in common with European Christianity. There is now a parody of the American Jesus, a kind of Republican CEO who disapproves of taxes, and who has widened the needle's eye so that camels and the wealthy pass readily into the Kingdom of Heaven. We have also an American holy spirit, the comforter of our burgeoning poor, who don't bother to vote. The American trinity pragmatically is completed by an imperial warrior God, trampling with shock and awe."
I respectfully submit that you miss the point of the market. The market is the ultimate democratic expression of the people, even more so than the vote. When people vote at the ballot box, if they vote there, they are pledging nothing more than a cross on a piece of paper. But if they vote at the store, they are pledging a certain portion of time that they invested of their life. They worked to achieve that which they vote with. To say that the free hand "chokes" the will of the people is a moral misnomer. When you argue against free markets, really, you are succumbing to your own totalitarianistic desire to impose your view of the world upon people by fiat.
At an abstract level, the idea of energy independence is a good one. I see it right up there with manufacturing independence, technological independence, steel independence, agricultural independence and food independence. On some level, I think that anyone that buys any kind of foreign product is some kind of a traitor, because I grew in the Rust Belt. I pay a little bit more for an American car and put up with the plastic dash because I know that's just the best we can do right now. But should we ban all foreign cars? No I don't. It's undemocratic.
I would rather see it stigmatized to buy a foreign product of any kind in the United States. Perhaps we should view consumers of any foreign product with a certain level of disgust. Perhaps we should culturally encourage the vandalism of foreign cars and other foreign made products. Perhaps we could encourage employing zoning tricks and other rules by local governments to drive out stores that peddle foreign goods.
I don't see a reduction in fossil fuel burning as the answer to atmospheric carbon management. We should probably have some sort of a baseline, and, for strategic reasons, reduce the global temperature and starve out most of our geopolitical rivals by shortening the growing season.
Still, when it comes down to it, there's the possiblity of a massive climate change with the oceans rising, hurricanes more frequent, storms more violent, planet getting warming, and the other, the thrill of driving 0-60 in under 5 seconds. If you ever drove a 2004/2005 Pontiac GTO, you would surely come to the same conclusion as I - the polar bears are going to have to find a new place to live! Maybe when all that land under the glaciers frees up, they can use that to build zoos for them or something.
I actually support most of what Bush has done in terms of a national energy policy, except for one big mistake. We invaded the 2nd largest oil producing nation in the world and gasoline is $2.17 a gallon where I live! What's up with that?
This is my sig.
Just to clarify my point about reducing carbon content. Basically, we should build a giant machine to scrub the atmosphere, and then, like OPEC manipulates oil prices to the world community, we would in turn use our atmoshpere machine to manipulate global temperatures. So we could shorten the growing season enough to starve our geopolitical rivals, or perhaps lengthen it to turn our enemy's lands into dust choked deserts.
This is my sig.
We invaded the 2nd largest oil producing nation in the world and gasoline is $2.17 a gallon where I live! What's up with that?
In my own personal worldview, the answer to that question is also an illustration of why I believe democracy is not equivalent to laissez-faire markets. The demand for gasoline is not very elastic (we need to drive to our jobs, deliver goods and services, etc.), and the ratio of consumers to producers is extremely large. This leaves the producers free to manipulate supply, and also to create large profit margins for themselves. Due to the relative inelasticity of demand for gasoline, the only limitations the producers have on what they charge are avoiding prices that are so excessive as to cause a recession (thereby reducing demand), and what I would call "social acceptability". What I mean by the concept of "social acceptability" is that there are still limits to the power of corporations set by our government. I wouldn't doubt that we would be paying closer to $2.50/gallon now if not for the fact the oil company CEOs were recently called to testify before Congress. It was a bipartisan "shot across the bow" of the oil companies, and they responded to the warning by slightly lowering prices.
Laissez-faire markets are cannibalistic by design. What I mean by that is even if we start with a large number of suppliers, they will compete, there will be winners and losers, corporations will merge, and it is inevitable that we end up with a large consumer/producer ratio in most market sectors. The only mitigating factor is technological innovation that creates new market sectors, but in mature market sectors we will always end up with relatively few producers. We went through this cycle once, in the late 1800's to early 1900's, until anti-trust laws were passed and enforced, beginning with the "trust-buster" Teddy Roosevelt. Now, the anti-trust laws are laxly enforced, if at all, and we are going through the cycle again. In the case where there are few producers and many consumers, it is the producers who, in your own words, get to exercise their "totalitarianistic desire to impose (their) view of the world upon people by fiat". This is exactly what I was referring to when I made the comment, "Ultimately, Adam Smith's metaphorical "Invisible Hand" comes to grasp the throat of the common man."
Another problem I have with conflating markets with democracy is that democracy is "one man, one vote", whereas markets are "one dollar, one vote". As an example, I grew up with a friend whose grandfather started a Savings and Loan in our local community. Essentially, he inherited a bank, but he was never involved in the business (the S&L was eventually sold to a large corporate bank), and as far as I know, he never held a job. On the other hand, I often worked two jobs when I was younger, worked my way through college, got accepted to a superior graduate school, graduated, and have worked hard ever since. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that I will ever have a fraction of the "market voting power" that my friend will have. Now, he is a good fellow and I do not begrudge him his good fortune in life, in fact I am happy for him. In turn, I have had my own share of good fortune, and there are many others less fortunate, who well may have worked and struggled much more than me, and yet have less to show for it. Others have suffered illness or debilitating accidents through no fault of their own, and living in poverty, have very little voice in the market. As I see it, this type of "one dollar, one vote" situation is antithetical to the concept of democracy.
Chap with the wings, five rounds rapid!
There is a big difference between drilling in South Alabama and drilling into the ocean crust. The continental crust is somewhere around 30-40 Km thick around Alabama... while it is only 5-7 km thick in the part of the ocean where they plan to drill. They will indeed hit mantle if the project is successful. However, as post above, we already have samples of the mantle retrieved by other drilling projects, and from natural processes. The difference here is the location of drilling, as the mantle in this part of the world is thought to be undergoing a different movement from that of say, Siberia (or Southern Alabama). Your rig never hit mantle, it probably drilled into granite. The rocks they will encounter on this journey will be basalt, then gabbros, then olivines and associated mafics. Not as exciting as the headlines make it, but important never-the-less.
You are an interesting fellow, tjstork, your conversation ranges from energy policy to macroeconomics to using climate as a weapon to the joys of driving. I guess I just cannot resist a couple of more comments
In #14288910, tjstork wrote:
I don't see a reduction in fossil fuel burning as the answer to atmospheric carbon management. We should probably have some sort of a baseline, and, for strategic reasons, reduce the global temperature and starve out most of our geopolitical rivals by shortening the growing season.
I wouldn't be surprised if the DoD has studied using meteorological weapons, but I cannot imagine a "conventional" mechanism to reliably alter climate locally, due to the massive amounts of energy it would require. Perhaps, with a greater understanding of the "butterfly effect" as applied to the atmosphere, small changes in initial conditions could generate large changes on a meteorological time scale, but to affect climate on a local scale it would seem the only viable candidates would be large arrays of space mirrors or very large solar arrays placed in near-sun orbits to power large microwave beam generators. Since climate change is also chaotic, downstream effects could result in detrimental and unintended consequences. All of this is pure science fiction, at this point. Unfortunately, I believe that global warming will actually have more of a detrimental effect on this country, with increased desertification, severe regional water shortages, and an increasing incidence of extreme weather events such as devastating hurricanes. On the other hand, countries like Canada and Russia may benefit in the long run, as agricultural grain-producing belts shift north.
In #14288910, tjstork also wrote:
I would rather see it stigmatized to buy a foreign product of any kind in the United States. Perhaps we should view consumers of any foreign product with a certain level of disgust. Perhaps we should culturally encourage the vandalism of foreign cars and other foreign made products. Perhaps we could encourage employing zoning tricks and other rules by local governments to drive out stores that peddle foreign goods.
So we shift from a discussion of the wonders of the free market to the old Union call of "Buy American". I actually still try to do this, but it is becoming increasingly difficult since we hardly manufacture any consumer products in the U.S. any more. I believe that allowing the deindustrialization of America is one of the greatest betrayals that our government has perpetrated on the American people during the last forty years. This is a non-partisan issue: Democrats are just as responsible as Republicans for these policies. Even people perceived as "ultra-liberals" such as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich supported these policies. Like you, being born in the Rust Belt, the effects of deindustrialization largely shaped my formative years. On this note, I will leave you with the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song, written back in the 1980's:
Union Sundown
by Bob Dylan
My shoes, they come from Singapore, my flashlight's from Taiwan, my tablecloth's from Malaysia, my belt buckle's from the Amazon. You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines, and the car I drive is a Chevrolet. It was put together down in Argentina by a guy makin' thirty cents a day.
Well, it's sundown on the union, and what's made in the U.S.A. Sure was a good idea 'til greed got in the way.
This silk dress is from Hong Kong, and the pearls are from Japan. Well, the dog collar's from India, and the flower pot is from Pakistan. All the furniture, it says "Made in Brazil", where a woman, she slaved for sure. Bringin' home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve, you know, that's a lot of money to her.
You know, lots of people complain that there is no work. I say, "Why you say that for when nothin' you got is U.S.-made?" They don't make nothin' here no more. You know, capitalism is above
Infidels, that's a great album. "I and I" is the best song on the album.
This is my sig.
This thread has been kind of a conversational "Journey to the Center of the Earth", so we are still on topic, right?
I loved the music and lyrics of Bob Dylan starting as a young teenager and collected all of his albums up through "Street Legal". But for a period after that I was very turned off by some of his songs. I wasn't so much that his songs were about his religious views, after all his 1967 album "John Wesley Harding" is almost exclusively about his religious beliefs of the time, and I consider that album as one of his best. But in the period 1979-1982 many of his songs were much too preachy and proselytizing for my tastes. I always thought a person has to walk their own path in such matters without being shoved down the path. For me, the spell was broken and the bloom was off the rose, so I didn't pay much attention to "Infidels" when it was released. But I still loved his earlier work, and in 1986 I had the chance to go see one of his concerts again. He was touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers that summer, who were also backing him up on the electric sets, and he was leading off for the Grateful Dead that day. He sang "I and I" with such power and emotion that it really grabbed my attention. I bought the "Infidels" album because of that performance, and I agree "I and I" is the best song on the album. Aided by the wonders of the internet, I was able to trade for an audience recording of that show, and that version of "I and I" remains my favorite to this day. BTW, there is one guy's interesting interpretation of the song "I and I" here: http://www.radiohazak.com/Dyl-IandI.html
The Grateful Dead show that followed was probably one of their weakest ever, except for the two numbers when Dylan joined with them to perform "Don't think twice" and "It's all over now". I swear the whole stadium was in liftoff mode then, temporarily transported from the dreary surrounding post-industrial wasteland to some better place in the Universe. I think that collaboration helped lead to the 1987 Dylan and the Dead tour. Pre-tour, they got together for a rehearsal session. The version of "Union Sundown" from that session is very different from the "Infidels" version but is also great. Highly recommended if you haven't heard it already.