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White House Explains Transport-Energy Future
blair1q writes "Today on the White House Blog, the President (ok, his staff) released an infographic showing various facts about transportation energy, and how current gas prices need not be so worrisome. Highlights include rapidly increasing domestic production and rapidly decreasing prices for electric-car batteries, requesting Congress to shift tax breaks from oil producers to wind/solar/geothermal energy producers, and increasing domestic oil production (yes, there's a conflict there)."
If you magically shifted to 100% domestic production overnight, at the current burn rate of 20 million barrels a day, the known reserves of 20 billion barrels would be all gone in 1000 days. Also known as "about 3 years". All gone forever. So be careful what you wish for.
How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The amount of energy you get out compared to the amount you put in.
Oil from Saudi huge. Oil from Canada, not so much.
The lower EROEI is, the larger the proportion of the economy must be dedicated to energy production.
Deleted
And then charge us for how many miles we drive because gas consumption decreases. As discussed yesterday. Move us to clean energy and then tax the wind.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I don't see anything in the graphic about urban planning. If they incentivized development near light rail hubs and discouraged car-dependant suburban development it would do a lot.
First, there's the carrot of new development projects. There's the houses themselves, and the light rail. Secondly, don't tax the suburbs as that would be very unpopular and counterproductive. Instead, simply give Federal money to jurisdictions based on their ability to reduce non-walkable development. This would reduce the *supply* of this type of development. Buyers who still want 0.25 acres of grass and a 5 mile drive to the store would see their home values increase due to the supply side effect.
Done right, we could kill two birds with one stone: The real estate slump, and gasoline consumption.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I never thought I'd see a President pretty much ACTUALLY SAY THAT.
Obama's an amalgam of the worst of Jimmy Carter, Bush I, and Bush II.
Does that mean we're going to be lucky enough to have Hope and Change limited to four years?
If the commodities speculators weren't running amok, the price of gas (and every other commodity) would come down. I read somewhere recently that oil speculators add $.70 to the price of a gallon of gas at the pump.
I just want to put it out there that this energy crises that we are having has as much to do with our habits as it does with the conflict in the middle east. We are stuck in a rut with our large cars. How many of you can fill up for under $40 and have that last for the month. We need start to drive smaller cars. You will find that your wallet will stop hurting as much.
Im not saying that we all have to go out and buy a hybrid or electric vehicle. I would caution against it. It is still expensive to manufacture those batteries and i dont think that the technology isn't there yet. Wait a few years.
Just as a tip for saving money, don't drive as much. Carpool, dust off that old bike in your garage, take the bus or train, even walk. These are all alternate modes of transportation and are a lot cheaper then driving. I personally make the effort to ride my bike more miles then I drive in a week and as a result i can fill up about once a month.
There are no "tax handouts" to the oil companies. Oil companies can depreciate their oilfield assets just like any industrial company can depreciate long-term tangible investments (factories, mines, etc). That's all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Lets get tax credits for every mile that we ride on a bicycle. That should help solve these problems.
Mark
Already done since 2009: http://www.bikeleague.org/news/100708faq.php
Ask your employer about it!
If the tax breaks are eliminated, or decreased, before we are fully prepared with alternative energy sources what do you think will happen. We will pay the difference at the pump, is my opinion.
First, we already know from various scientific papers, that you can use wind energy to provide power for full scale freight trains in Canada, using fuel cell engines, and do so while reducing both carbon emissions and particulate pollution. Economies of scale kick in, you just split the H20 into fuel cell engine components at the wind farms along the route, which also allows you to handle the variable nature of wind.
Second, it supposes that our insane blockade of Cuba and other countries cane ethanol will continue, and that we will continue to divert corn food/feed crops to ethanol with massive farm and energy subsidies that are unsustainable - the most anti-capitalist thing we could be doing.
Third, it assumes that our country won't shift from using mostly air travel (high energy) to rail travel along the dense urban corridors in the East, South, and West. It also ignores Boeing's and SA's and Airbus higher mpg planes and jets and the use of turboprops and algae/switchgrass biodiesel to get twice the air miles using mostly alternative non-oil-based jet and turboprop fuels.
It is an insane plan written by deadenders who fail to understand that the world has already changed, and that all our exports and imports already have a carbon tax imposed on them - when we sell to NZ, Australia, Canada, Mexico, South America, and the EU we get charged for our lack of a carbon tax and end up paying a higher amount of taxes on the exports - and the imports already have a carbon tax built into them, which we don't get a refund for, since we lack a carbon tax.
EPIC FAIL.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Detailed here:
1) oil depletion allowance, [which is only available to smaller, independent companies, not "big oil"]
2) expensing indirect drilling costs, [which is an accelerated expensing schedule. It changes the timing of expense writeoffs, not the amount.] and
3) a tax credit for taxes paid to foreign nations during foreign operations (foreign tax credit) [which every multinational company gets, not just oil companies.]
When you hear about oil company "subsidies", this is what they're talking about.
I like the fact they post that the more efficient mileage will save $3000 over the life of the car. So I should spend $15000 more than I just spent so I can save $3000. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me.
BTW, I went from car that averaged 30 mpg to one that averages 20. I enjoy having 300hp vs 130hp, and not having car payments.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
If Obama's energy strategy doesn't involve tax handouts to the oil companies and shortsighted environmental rules then I don't support it.
Of course, I'm retarded so I was probably going to vote for a Republican anyway...
The retards (or if you want to be polite, the misled) are the ones who keep supporting this Democrat-Republican duopoly that's gotten us nowhere, eroded liberty, and steadily run the nation into the ground for the last several decades. They don't even pretend to be our servants anymore.
Granted, it's a masterpiece of social engineering because it exploits a few simple principles without trying to be overly elaborate. It's classic divide-and-conquer: get the voters bickering over relatively trivial issues, each "side" thinking the other "side" is a bunch of morons who don't understand the facts, meanwhile all of the important decisions are made by the corporatocracy which can afford media campaigns, lobbyists, and real representation. It exploits the baser facets of human nature that date back to our hunter-gatherer days: members of my group good, outsiders bad, us against them. Isn't it funny how the status quo never really changes, it just becomes more so, just moves farther down the path it's already on? This is why.
Here's the failure of basing an educational system on memorization and authority instead of principle and discovery: most people would recognize why a duopoly with a stranglehold on an entire market is undesirable, why it guarantees that customers get screwed. Those same people need to have it pointed out to them that a duopoly with a strangehold on the entire political process is worse, that with money and power the stakes are higher than with money alone, that the voters get screwed quite badly.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Speculation does not exist in a magic vacuum. For every point speculated for higher prices, there's essentially someone else who speculated a point for lower prices. You can't make a bet with no one, you need someone to take that bet.
Don't believe the excuse of the day meant to distract from the government's failures.
If you want to lower price, think taxes. Direct taxes on gas average 50 cents per gallon. On top of that, the oil companies are heavily taxed, Exxon alone paid over $26 billion last year in taxes, half its profits. Who pays corporate income tax in the end? You do, by paying more for that corporation's products.
Of course, I'm retarded so I was probably going to vote for a Republican anyway...
Why are such childish arguments usually made by those attacking Republicans? I wonder if it's simply the age disparity; kids tend to be liberal, adults conservative.
So how do I parse these "liberal guys" from CATO, published in Forbes, saying that oil and gas firms get special tax breaks?
Or this guy over at The Volokh Conspiracy claiming that:
Because, I wouldn't want to look dumb and uneducated, thereby hurting my claim.
$ perl -p -e 's/liberal/OTHERGUY/g; s/conservative/liberal/g; s/OTHERGUY/conservative/g;'
Hey don't let facts get in the way of a good liberal rant. If you backup their claims with facts they will look dumb and uneducated. Thus hurt their primary claim that I am liberal because I am smarter then the conservatives.
Hey don't let facts get in the way of a good conservative rant. If you backup their claims with facts they will look dumb and uneducated. Thus hurt their primary claim that I am conservative because I am smarter then the liberals.
about prices when they exceeded $3 and nearly had a cow when they were at $4.
Just wow.
They don't concern themselves with current gas prices; watch this change in months leading to the election; because it doesn't fit their model. See, we, the public are too ignorant, too stupid, etc, to do what is right so those who are obviously much smarter than us have to "hurt" us because they love us so much, even though we don't really deserve it.
The sad part is, the people who propose policies rarely would ever adhere to them for their personal consumption. Thats for the little people, leaders need exceptions to rules and laws to be effective, y'know, after all they are so much better and smarter.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Accepting as fact that oil reserves are finite, we should be importing more, not less. The reserves will be more valuable later. When the Arab oil runs dry, they can buy oil from us at a much higher price based on the scarcity. If there were only two canteens available for a hike across the desert, would your policy be to consume your own canteen of water first?
Gently reply
You necessarily don't need lots of rare earth elements to make an electric car. Sure, when Toyota was designing the Prius in the mid 1990s, they chose to go with rare-earth magnets in their motors because they were the latest, fanciest, lightest magnets you could buy. On the other hand, Tesla Motors (and other companies) in the 2000s took a more cautious direction and built their propulsion motors without permanent magnets, therefore using no rare-earth elements there (the power windows probably still have rare-earth magnets, just like in every other modern car). Instead, Tesla Motors went back to the induction motor, originally invented by, you guessed it, Nikola Tesla in 1888. Rare earth problem solved.
References: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/induction_motors
all the easily accessible, cheap energy has been found
Rei posted some real facts to the contrary. You reply by just blindy asserting this - is this a religion to you or something? Cause this reads so much like the posts asserting the evolution must be BS.
is it reasonable to argue that peak oil is a bit further out than now? sure. but you seem to be arguing that oil/gas/coal are infinite in supply.
Rei is arguing that for all of human history the "oil peak" has moved out by more than one year per year. That's a simple, checkable fact. That's not saying it will never come, only that there's no data about when it wil come.
The "oil peak" isn't necessarily a problem - eventually there will be some source of power so cheap that no one would dream of using oil for power. The interesting question is whether a marvelous new power source is invented before or after the ultimate limit on the oil supply matters. One thing's for sure the more expensive oil becomes, the more motivation there is to fins/use somehting better. The solution to high commodity prices has and always will be high commodity proces.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, Herbert Hoover was in office. Other than the notable exception of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, his response to the Great Depression was for the most part to do nothing and let the economy take care of itself. He refused to run a budget deficit, and didn't use federal money to stimulate the economy. In fact, he was such a deficit hawk that he ended up raising taxes in order to keep the budget balanced with declining revenues.
FDR was inaugurated March 4, 1933, and by this time the economy was a complete basket case. This was over three years and three months after the market crash of 1929, so your suggestion that FDR's policies turned a small correction into the Great Depression is simply wrong. The US was already three years into the depression, and Hoover's relative inaction, which for the most part would have made today's Ann Rand acolytes happy, clearly didn't allow the economy to heal itself as you suggest.
If you are desperate for power build breeder reactors, subways and electric street cars. That will eliminate 1/2 the oil imports and drive down oil prices world wide. It would buy you time to do something.
I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.
Actually, it's your oil companies that are investing the most in other forms of energy. These guys know that as soon as a "better" form of energy is found, they are out of business. If they are the ones to discover this new form of energy, they put their competitors out of business.
I know everyone likes to call the "oil companies" or "big oil", but the fact is, these are "energy companies". Oil just happens to offer the best profit margin right now. If cars and plants start to run on milk, oil companies will gladly become dairy farmers.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
1. below market, or even interest free, loans
2. construction bonds for new drilling sites
3. the feds assuming liability for new exploration
And then there are more indirect subsidies
1. the federal interstate system (imagine how much less oil would be needed without that money being spent)
2. miitary costs for escorting tankers through pirate infested waters
3. cleanup costs for superfund sites and other poluted grounds (how much did the feds pay for BP's spill last year alone)
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/05/swedish-skeptics-confirm-nuclear-process-in-tiny-4-7-kw-reactor
http://www.nanosolar.com/power-plants/technology-advantages
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.