so if the federal government asserts that they have the right to restrict citizens from owning nuclear bombs, you're going to say the feds must lose on that issue? nuclear non-proliferation is the job of the states?
what's your feeling on discipline in the armed forces? you think courts martial are unconstitutional because it's the feds vs an individual?
doesn't like every laptop now have a built-in microphone, an HDTV camera, a wireless and wired Internet connection, a browser and software with voice to text conversion, face recognition and more?
we're gonna need a lot of tape.
shit, maybe this story was a plant by Big Tape! 3M has deep pockets. that's the real conspiracy.
given that jesus's blood was wine, that dude would probably exhibit a hell of a meissner effect. maybe that's how he pulled off the whole 'walk on water' shtick.
well, the 9.6MMbbl/day figure is 'all liquids', which includes natural gas liquids, LPG, ethanol and 'refinery gain' (which is an accounting trick used to inflate our domestic petroleum numbers). the actual crude number is noticeably lower.
Drilling domestically might not lower the price of gasoline, but perhaps it creates a buffer in case worldwide oil flows are disrupted. That is, if all oil is imported and there is a boycott against the U. S., we are back to 1973, waiting in gas lines.
back in 73 we were producing a much higher percentage of our consumed oil than we are now. even if you only import 20% of your oil, price shocks can still mess you up.
it's so simple you don't even need words. first, draw a big capital 'S'. then draw a short vertical line through the middle of it. sit back and stare at it.
talk about ignoring math and arithmetic. i didn't say our drop was the exact same as chindia's rise. however, as i pointed out (and you completely ignored), net exports have dropped in that time because consumption elsewhere has risen also. you can look it up. between 2002 and 2010 china's oil usage rose about 75%. india's about 40%. most importantly, the top 33 exporting nations - their internal consumption rose almost 30% on average.
every year there's less exports for us importers to fight over. and china and india are growing by leaps and bounds.and china has been making sweetheart deals with exporters, buying up oil patches and working to build infrastructure in exporting nations.
we scientists have a saying: ignore data at your own risk.
something people don't mention - of all the oil shale formations, about a third are on private land. so why isn't it being dug up and processed into syncrude? it aint about federal leases or any of that shit. maybe it's because they can't get the amount of fresh water they'd need? maybe it's because it requires lots of earthmoving equipment and infrastructure? because stripmining colorado and wyoming to produce a relatively small throughput of synthetic oil at high cost is not economical, even at today's oil prices.
maybe if big gummint threw a bunch of money at it, like they do in canada. that's really about it. even if oil hits 150/bbl forever, we're never going to produce more than a few million bbls/day of that garbage.
ours dropped, chindia's went up. also, many crude exporting countries have seen their internal consumption go up, dropping the overall level of net available exports over time - net exports peaked in 2005 or so. and of course its the export market that determines the price. less exports every year + level world consumption == rising price.
meanwhile, conventional crude peaked in 2005 also, and keeping up the general level of production has been put on the shoulders of unconventional crude which costs way more.
and no, fracking and oil shale do not provide enough output to cover all current consumption. fracked basins in the bakken and other areas only have a few months' worth of oil at current US consumption rates. and oil shale is garbage, and will never produce enough oil to cover our oil use. there's no way we're ever going to get 15mbpd out of oil shale. maybe a third that if we go hog wild and even then sometime in the mid-to-late 2020's.
you're confusing US demand with world demand. yes, america's demand is down, but china is growing at 8% a year. china and india are buying up every spare drop of crude on the market, creating an overall high demand.
and unfortunately for us, the price of oil is set by the world market, not the american market. and the cost of crude makes up the majority of the wholesale cost of gas.
taxes add up too, but gas taxes are low in the US, especially federal excise tax which has (thanks to the inflation you rant about) steadily dropped since 1993 when it was raised last. clinton got gas taxes raised to.18/gallon which it is still at. 18 cents in 2012 is the same as 11 cents back in 1993.
oil shale is garbage. it isn't even oil, it's wax. you have to strip mine a nice big area of colorado, using tons of energy, earthmoving equipment and fresh water. you dig up a ton of rock for every 15 gallons of extract. you have to cook it under pressure and process it (leaving a lot of waste) to create syncrude which still isn't as good as the light sweet we've built our economy on and costs a ton to boot, even if you foist all the environmental costs off somewhere else.
canada's tar sands use a similar system, but at least that shit is bitumen. oil shale isn't even that. canada now produces 1.5 mbpd from its tar sands and hopes to get it up to 3.5mbpd by 2025. why would it take that long? because it isn't a straw you stick in the ground. this sort of stripmining and processing takes a huge infrastructure and can only be ramped up so far and so quickly. you can only stripmine so much land in a day.
the US will never be producing more than 5mbpd from oil shale. likely less, even 15 years from now. meanwhile, at our current growth paradigm of the last 10 years, by then we'd be wanting to consume 25mbpd of oil. at least. oil shale would last almost forever at that rate of production, but at best we're talking about a low baseline production of expensive-ass crappy oil.
so no, it won't make us an oil exporting giant. unless we cut our consumption dramastically at the same time.
shale oil? there's only a few billion barrels of that. a few months' supply at current US consumption.
if you're talking about 'oil shale', there's about 2 trillion barrels' worth of that stuff in CO and WY, but it isn't even oil. it's a waxy nasty precursor to oil that has to be strip mined, cleaned and cooked under pressure, then processed to create syncrude. 3 tons of rock makes 1 barrel of syncrude.
it's more like getting a permit to open a bar next door to an observatory but the city strictly requires you to keep your outdoor lighting to a minimum so as not to disturb the telescope next door. yet you still put up a huge neon sign and searchlight and when the observatory complains that your light pollution has ruined its ability to gather data, you say 'it's not my fault your telescope sucks'.
IMO, Romney is, intellectually and experientially, the most qualified candidate for US president that we've seen in the last two centuries.
meh. he's not stupid (neither is obama), but as to experience, wha? he was a one-term governor and was hated by his electorate. he has nothing regarding foreign policy at all. he knows a sector of finance but that's hardly the overall economy.
plus, it's really hard to tell what he really knows and thinks because he changes his mind on every issue every day. he's like a human magic 8 ball.
i'd argue that, in terms of experience, the most qualified guy we had in the modern age was H.W. former congressman, ambassador, CIA chief, VP for 8 years (and really ran the show as opposed to the doddering dementiaman-in-chief). still sucked as a president tho.
who had they been around in the time of the caveman would have taken away Ugh's flint for fear he'd burn down the forest were he to succeed in starting a fire.
i'm sure the rest of the biosphere thinks that would have been a good move.
go ask all the people who have, say, iPhones if they're interested in being able to put BASIC or something on it. I think you'll be surprised at how few people are actually interested in writing computer programs on their cellphones. people like apps and shit, but no one wants to write a program that prints out 'hello world' in an infinite loop on their fucking phone. BASIC? come on. yeah, they're computers. not computers from 1983.
because it's a fucking phone. should i put BASIC in my car stereo too? how about my toaster oven! i cobbled together an assembler for my clock radio and i'm never lookin' back.
Slashdot Mirror
so if the federal government asserts that they have the right to restrict citizens from owning nuclear bombs, you're going to say the feds must lose on that issue? nuclear non-proliferation is the job of the states?
what's your feeling on discipline in the armed forces? you think courts martial are unconstitutional because it's the feds vs an individual?
doesn't like every laptop now have a built-in microphone, an HDTV camera, a wireless and wired Internet connection, a browser and software with voice to text conversion, face recognition and more?
we're gonna need a lot of tape.
shit, maybe this story was a plant by Big Tape! 3M has deep pockets. that's the real conspiracy.
given that jesus's blood was wine, that dude would probably exhibit a hell of a meissner effect. maybe that's how he pulled off the whole 'walk on water' shtick.
well, the 9.6MMbbl/day figure is 'all liquids', which includes natural gas liquids, LPG, ethanol and 'refinery gain' (which is an accounting trick used to inflate our domestic petroleum numbers). the actual crude number is noticeably lower.
back in 73 we were producing a much higher percentage of our consumed oil than we are now. even if you only import 20% of your oil, price shocks can still mess you up.
it's so simple you don't even need words. first, draw a big capital 'S'. then draw a short vertical line through the middle of it. sit back and stare at it.
you can have my worn-out issue of Completely Ruined Junk #28 when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
talk about ignoring math and arithmetic. i didn't say our drop was the exact same as chindia's rise. however, as i pointed out (and you completely ignored), net exports have dropped in that time because consumption elsewhere has risen also. you can look it up. between 2002 and 2010 china's oil usage rose about 75%. india's about 40%. most importantly, the top 33 exporting nations - their internal consumption rose almost 30% on average.
every year there's less exports for us importers to fight over. and china and india are growing by leaps and bounds.and china has been making sweetheart deals with exporters, buying up oil patches and working to build infrastructure in exporting nations.
we scientists have a saying: ignore data at your own risk.
this. a thousand times.
something people don't mention - of all the oil shale formations, about a third are on private land. so why isn't it being dug up and processed into syncrude? it aint about federal leases or any of that shit. maybe it's because they can't get the amount of fresh water they'd need? maybe it's because it requires lots of earthmoving equipment and infrastructure? because stripmining colorado and wyoming to produce a relatively small throughput of synthetic oil at high cost is not economical, even at today's oil prices.
maybe if big gummint threw a bunch of money at it, like they do in canada. that's really about it. even if oil hits 150/bbl forever, we're never going to produce more than a few million bbls/day of that garbage.
ours dropped, chindia's went up. also, many crude exporting countries have seen their internal consumption go up, dropping the overall level of net available exports over time - net exports peaked in 2005 or so. and of course its the export market that determines the price. less exports every year + level world consumption == rising price.
meanwhile, conventional crude peaked in 2005 also, and keeping up the general level of production has been put on the shoulders of unconventional crude which costs way more.
and no, fracking and oil shale do not provide enough output to cover all current consumption. fracked basins in the bakken and other areas only have a few months' worth of oil at current US consumption rates. and oil shale is garbage, and will never produce enough oil to cover our oil use. there's no way we're ever going to get 15mbpd out of oil shale. maybe a third that if we go hog wild and even then sometime in the mid-to-late 2020's.
you're confusing US demand with world demand. yes, america's demand is down, but china is growing at 8% a year. china and india are buying up every spare drop of crude on the market, creating an overall high demand.
and unfortunately for us, the price of oil is set by the world market, not the american market. and the cost of crude makes up the majority of the wholesale cost of gas.
taxes add up too, but gas taxes are low in the US, especially federal excise tax which has (thanks to the inflation you rant about) steadily dropped since 1993 when it was raised last. clinton got gas taxes raised to .18/gallon which it is still at. 18 cents in 2012 is the same as 11 cents back in 1993.
oil shale is garbage. it isn't even oil, it's wax. you have to strip mine a nice big area of colorado, using tons of energy, earthmoving equipment and fresh water. you dig up a ton of rock for every 15 gallons of extract. you have to cook it under pressure and process it (leaving a lot of waste) to create syncrude which still isn't as good as the light sweet we've built our economy on and costs a ton to boot, even if you foist all the environmental costs off somewhere else.
canada's tar sands use a similar system, but at least that shit is bitumen. oil shale isn't even that. canada now produces 1.5 mbpd from its tar sands and hopes to get it up to 3.5mbpd by 2025. why would it take that long? because it isn't a straw you stick in the ground. this sort of stripmining and processing takes a huge infrastructure and can only be ramped up so far and so quickly. you can only stripmine so much land in a day.
the US will never be producing more than 5mbpd from oil shale. likely less, even 15 years from now. meanwhile, at our current growth paradigm of the last 10 years, by then we'd be wanting to consume 25mbpd of oil. at least. oil shale would last almost forever at that rate of production, but at best we're talking about a low baseline production of expensive-ass crappy oil.
so no, it won't make us an oil exporting giant. unless we cut our consumption dramastically at the same time.
shale oil? there's only a few billion barrels of that. a few months' supply at current US consumption.
if you're talking about 'oil shale', there's about 2 trillion barrels' worth of that stuff in CO and WY, but it isn't even oil. it's a waxy nasty precursor to oil that has to be strip mined, cleaned and cooked under pressure, then processed to create syncrude. 3 tons of rock makes 1 barrel of syncrude.
think we can produce 15 million bpd of that?
it's more like getting a permit to open a bar next door to an observatory but the city strictly requires you to keep your outdoor lighting to a minimum so as not to disturb the telescope next door. yet you still put up a huge neon sign and searchlight and when the observatory complains that your light pollution has ruined its ability to gather data, you say 'it's not my fault your telescope sucks'.
clearly, this whole thing is obama's fault.
IMO, Romney is, intellectually and experientially, the most qualified candidate for US president that we've seen in the last two centuries.
meh. he's not stupid (neither is obama), but as to experience, wha? he was a one-term governor and was hated by his electorate. he has nothing regarding foreign policy at all. he knows a sector of finance but that's hardly the overall economy.
plus, it's really hard to tell what he really knows and thinks because he changes his mind on every issue every day. he's like a human magic 8 ball.
i'd argue that, in terms of experience, the most qualified guy we had in the modern age was H.W. former congressman, ambassador, CIA chief, VP for 8 years (and really ran the show as opposed to the doddering dementiaman-in-chief). still sucked as a president tho.
who had they been around in the time of the caveman would have taken away Ugh's flint for fear he'd burn down the forest were he to succeed in starting a fire.
i'm sure the rest of the biosphere thinks that would have been a good move.
so was santa claus.
yeah, why doesn't my iphone have FORTRAN 77 and a punch card reader? WTF?
go ask all the people who have, say, iPhones if they're interested in being able to put BASIC or something on it. I think you'll be surprised at how few people are actually interested in writing computer programs on their cellphones. people like apps and shit, but no one wants to write a program that prints out 'hello world' in an infinite loop on their fucking phone. BASIC? come on. yeah, they're computers. not computers from 1983.
because it's a fucking phone. should i put BASIC in my car stereo too? how about my toaster oven! i cobbled together an assembler for my clock radio and i'm never lookin' back.
Can you imagine if 1% of cars would randomly blow up?
apparently you never lived through the 70's.
depends on whether poland is in charge.
actually, the WH states specifically that our role in libya includes drones.
hard to say. i personally don't think a drone is any more a member of the armed forces than a bullet.