RMS saw it coming in 1997, except that his timetable is about 70 years too late: The Right to Read. In fact, the scientific literature is already closed to most people...not unlike the Dark Ages when most books were hidden in monasteries and an education outside of Big Religion would most likely get you executed, either burned or drawn and quartered...
In the long run, intelligence is merely another fatal mutation in the twisted and tortured evolutionary road.
is the guy who read the article and corrected the guy who didn't read the article and yet received points from a moderator who didn't read the article and incorrectly criticized for not reading the article the guy who read and linked to the article?
occurred in the drum storage area. The fire continued to spread and reached the storage area for the filled aluminum shipping containers. This resulted in an even larger, second major explosion, about four minutes later..."
From the Wikipedia article cited above (emphasis mine).
and please forgive my snide remark at the end. I misunderstood your position as being in support of the NSA's illegal domestic spying.
That being said, I still liked the article. I am sure whatever the actual numbers of the NSA's program for probability of detection and false alarm rate for finding terrorists (or whatever it is they are searching for) are highly classified, so all we can do is make reasonable guesses. The author's point was that, almost certainly, the number of false alarms overwhelms the usefulness of any system when the number of targets is a very small proportion of the total population. I guess that is obvious to anyone with even an elementary understanding of statistics, but it is NOT obvious to the general public (the intended audience).
As for the other tools, collection of other records such as police records, credit card information, bank records, credit ratings, medical records, voter registration, public library records, internet surfing habits...I highly doubt the effort of collecting all of this information for ALL American citizens can be economically or tactically justified if the real target is some tiny proportion of the population (terrorists). The author's point is that this program is ripe for abuse, and is likely designed for abusive surveillance of some much larger class of "targets". Again, this point should be obvious for anyone with an elementary understanding of the mathematics.
If you are looking for 500 terrorists wouldn't you want to decrease the search space to, say, 50,000 or less, rather than increase the search space to 300 million! Sheesh, whatever happened to "old-fashioned" detective work and HUMINT operations?
1) The only "guesswork" involved in the cited article is that potential terrorists comprise only a very small proportion of the total population of the United States, a perfectly reasonable assumption. The rest follows from Bayes Theorem, and a wide range of assumed probability of detection values used for illustration of their point.
2)If there are other factors in identifying potential terrorists, then is should be easy to actually obey the lay and obtain a WARRANT.
After all, the real issue is a blatent and treasonously illegal disregard of Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which requires that all searches and seizures require a warrant.
*By "Insightful", I mean bending your torso to the degree that you can peer into your own asshole.
...military control is one way of gutting the CIA for the purpose of subverting intelligence operations that may uncover truths that are "inconvenient" for the current adminstration. The military, with its strict hierarchy and narrow focus, is much less likely to have access to the kind of independent thinking and breadth of expertise that is necessary for extracting the truth from a set of conflicting accounts, observations and intepretations of events. Transferring intel analysis to the DoD will make it much easier to "manage" the product.
Plans to strip the CIA of its analysis functions have been formulated and are most likely already being implemented.
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.
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
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.
The positive feedback loop associated with the difference in albedo between sea ice and open water is generally recognized. Another, potentially more powerful feedback loop that is not as widely known is the potential huge release of methane from the arctic permafrost. First, note that atmospheric methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, about 8 times stronger than carbon dioxide. According to http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/hydrates/,
"Methane hydrate form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) where high pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred meters thick."
"In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrate of the United States ranges from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recoverable gas resources and reserves in the United States.
Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrate approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,500 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently proven gas reserves."
I was interested in what proportion of the methane hydrate reserves were located in the permafrost region, and how much methane release might result from melting of the permafrost. Here is some revealing information:http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/geoma rs2001/pdf/7035.pdf
From the above link we learn that oceanic hydrate contains up to 95% of all naturally occurring hydrate worldwide.
The methane deposits under the permafrost are at least 200m deep, some much deeper, and those deposits constitute an estimated 5% of total methane hydrate deposits on Earth. So the actual estimate of methane trapped beneath the permafrost is estimated at 5% of 400 million trillion cubic feet of methane is:
2,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic foot = 56,633,693,423,376,624,568 liters,
trapped below the permafrost.
Now, further: "What matters for climate change is methane mass (kg or
tonne). Normally, volume (m3) or flow rate (m3/h) is
measured using some measurement device or instrument, and
these volume values are converted to mass (kg or kg/h). An
intermediate step usually involves adjusting the measured
volume by measured pressures and temperatures to volumes at
standard conditions (0 C and 1 atm, equal to 1.013 bar)."
http://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/inputsconsmeth/MGM_methane.pdf
So for methane,
"1 gm mole occupies 22.4 litres at 273 K and 1 atm.
C 12.01115
H 1.00797
16.043 g CH4 = 22.414 litres
Density (16.043 / 22.414) = 0.7157 g/litre or kg/m3.
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."
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 my last reply I was mostly pointing out that there is a limit to your statement:
Oil prices are rising and so the economically recoverable part of ANWR rises along with it.
From your reply I can tell you are well aware of this limit, so sorry to belabor the obvious.
Another point I was trying to make is that oil has many uses, and its value is unlikely to decrease, smoothed over the long term.
I can picture children in school saying of us a hundred years from now, "You mean those barbarians actually burned oil?
I love nature, but don't confuse me with the type of fuzzy-thinking do-gooder who wants to "save the rainforests" without addressing the complication that there are starving people down there trying to scratch a living from the thin soil. In the case of ANWR oil, yes, it is a national treasure, and it will still be a treasure 10, 20, 50 years from now. But there is a significant investment to be made before we see even the first barrel of oil. I would rather see money spent, first on conservation, then on beginning to dismantle our oil-based infrastructure and replacing it with a more sustainable combination of renewable/hydrogen/nuclear/coal infrastructure (that is my own "preferred order", but we may not have much choice in the matter). Why invest in a dead-end technology? Unfortunately, pure market mechanisms will not point us in the right direction, due to overemphasis on short-term gain. We need long-range planning and active government intervention to get us there (Imagine how much better off we would be today if we had vigorously pursued the initiatives put in place by Jimmy Carter, instead of abandoning them).
We need to start "real soon now" to avoid major oil shocks and severe disruptions to our economy. The sooner we start the transition, the smoother the transition will be. Our children's children will thank us for our wisdom, and for saving some of our national treasure for them.
By necessity, we will need to become the next "Great Generation"
The flaw in your argument is that we will get to the point where the energy consumed to build the infrastructure to extract and transport the oil exceeds the recoverable energy contained in the oil. This equation includes the inefficiencies in converting oil energy to usable forms (e.g. electrical, mechanical).
So no matter how high the price of oil rises on the speculative markets, once we reach this tipping point we are only digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
Besides, petroluem oil is used for many other purposes: in the manufacture of medicines, fertilizers, plastic, building materials, paints, and synthetic cloth. As the price of oil rises, alternative forms of energy production also become feasible, so why not save the oil for these other purposes where it may be indispensible, and invest the money in forms of energy production that are either renewable, or have a much longer expected period before depletion.
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)
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.
If you read my link on the PACER project, there is no need to dig holes; the original experiments were conducted in salt domes. But, at best, this can only be part of the solution.
The way I see it, it will not be very long before society will have to begin to change dramatically in order to survive without experiencing a die-back or series of world wars.
Yachts are fine, as long as they are sailing ships, but SUVs will be gone. The globalized economy will mostly be a vestige, and industry will return to our shores, due to the high cost of transportation. We will have to change our lifestyles, become less dependent on global trade, and do more at the local level.
We will have to diversify our energy sources: wind power will become economical. Unfortunately, I believe we will have to tap our resources of coal and lignite. Public transportation will become more available. If we do have automobiles, they will be more like golf carts than Cadillacs. Thr railroads will flourish again. Urban areas will need to be revitalized, walking or bicycling to work will be common. Many of us will have our own gardens.
This is my optimistic outlook. I refuse to dwell on the "Mad Max" alternative, but I will be prepare myself and especially my children as best I can for any eventuality.
Also, conventional nuclear fission plants still have the problem of creating highly radioactive waste products with very long half-lifes, so the infrastructure must be very expensive for safety reasons, and there is still the disposal problem
However,if we ever get past the "pilot plant" stage in designing and building breeder reactors: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html,which actually create more fuel than is used, then the viabilty of nuclear fission as an alternate energy source might be enhanced considerably: http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste% 20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm The final waste products from plutonium fission have much safer radioactive by-products in terms of half-life, but plutonium itself presents problems as it is an extreme security risk and a very hazardous material
On the other hand, the supply of Deuterium and Tritium is vast, and the fusion reaction is clean, except for the need to absorb the free neutrons that are carrying the most of the energy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
Let's break down your mythology. Even if we started today, ANWR production would probably take 10 years to come to peak production of about 1 M barrels/day. Current U.S. consumption is 20 M barrels/day, projected to rise to above 25 M barrels/day before 2020. Total estimated reserves in ANWR vary wildly, but it is most certainly much more expensive to extract than most OPEC sources. For example, from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/oil/anwar.html
"The companies that want to get at that oil estimate there's 16 billion barrels waiting to be pumped south - or about 30 years worth of Middle East oil imports. U.S. government geologists have estimated a likely reserve of perhaps 10.4 billion barrels in the 700,000-hectare coastal plain region at the northern end of the ANWR. That's the only part of the refuge where the U.S. government has considered lifting the ban on development.
But it would be economically feasible to pump out only a fraction of that reserve. A 1998 study estimated that about 1.9 billion barrels could be recovered at a price of $24 per barrel. Environmentalists and other opponents of opening the area to oil exploration argue there's no way to know how much oil is there.
The Union of Concerned Scientists suggests there may be enough oil to fuel vehicles in the United States for six months. It argues that making vehicles more fuel-efficient will save far more oil than Alaska could ever produce."
Compare this to current Saudi oil production costs of $1-$2/barrel
Just do the math. The economically extractable oil would only last about five year before depletion, at the peak production rate, supplying only a small fraction of our needs.
Slashdot Mirror
That is pretty much all you need to know to judge the merit of the state's case, *in Florida*
RMS saw it coming in 1997, except that his timetable is about 70 years too late: The Right to Read. In fact, the scientific literature is already closed to most people...not unlike the Dark Ages when most books were hidden in monasteries and an education outside of Big Religion would most likely get you executed, either burned or drawn and quartered...
In the long run, intelligence is merely another fatal mutation in the twisted and tortured evolutionary road.
WGA, or were blindsided by automatic update, here are a couple of suggested workarounds: Disable Non Genuine Windows Warning Messages.
is the guy who read the article and corrected the guy who didn't read the article and yet received points from a moderator who didn't read the article and incorrectly criticized for not reading the article the guy who read and linked to the article?
occurred in the drum storage area. The fire continued to spread and reached the storage area for the filled aluminum shipping containers. This resulted in an even larger, second major explosion, about four minutes later..."
From the Wikipedia article cited above (emphasis mine).
psshaaa! OSHA smosha!
and please forgive my snide remark at the end. I misunderstood your position as being in support of the NSA's illegal domestic spying. That being said, I still liked the article. I am sure whatever the actual numbers of the NSA's program for probability of detection and false alarm rate for finding terrorists (or whatever it is they are searching for) are highly classified, so all we can do is make reasonable guesses. The author's point was that, almost certainly, the number of false alarms overwhelms the usefulness of any system when the number of targets is a very small proportion of the total population. I guess that is obvious to anyone with even an elementary understanding of statistics, but it is NOT obvious to the general public (the intended audience). As for the other tools, collection of other records such as police records, credit card information, bank records, credit ratings, medical records, voter registration, public library records, internet surfing habits...I highly doubt the effort of collecting all of this information for ALL American citizens can be economically or tactically justified if the real target is some tiny proportion of the population (terrorists). The author's point is that this program is ripe for abuse, and is likely designed for abusive surveillance of some much larger class of "targets". Again, this point should be obvious for anyone with an elementary understanding of the mathematics. If you are looking for 500 terrorists wouldn't you want to decrease the search space to, say, 50,000 or less, rather than increase the search space to 300 million! Sheesh, whatever happened to "old-fashioned" detective work and HUMINT operations?
So where in the cited article is there something so unreasonable as to be labeled as "mere guesswork"?
1) The only "guesswork" involved in the cited article is that potential terrorists comprise only a very small proportion of the total population of the United States, a perfectly reasonable assumption. The rest follows from Bayes Theorem, and a wide range of assumed probability of detection values used for illustration of their point.
2)If there are other factors in identifying potential terrorists, then is should be easy to actually obey the lay and obtain a WARRANT.
After all, the real issue is a blatent and treasonously illegal disregard of Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which requires that all searches and seizures require a warrant.
*By "Insightful", I mean bending your torso to the degree that you can peer into your own asshole.
...military control is one way of gutting the CIA for the purpose of subverting intelligence operations that may uncover truths that are "inconvenient" for the current adminstration. The military, with its strict hierarchy and narrow focus, is much less likely to have access to the kind of independent thinking and breadth of expertise that is necessary for extracting the truth from a set of conflicting accounts, observations and intepretations of events. Transferring intel analysis to the DoD will make it much easier to "manage" the product. Plans to strip the CIA of its analysis functions have been formulated and are most likely already being implemented.
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.
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
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.
The positive feedback loop associated with the difference in albedo between sea ice and open water is generally recognized. Another, potentially more powerful feedback loop that is not as widely known is the potential huge release of methane from the arctic permafrost. First, note that atmospheric methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, about 8 times stronger than carbon dioxide. According to http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/hydrates/,
"Methane hydrate form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) where high pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred meters thick." "In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrate of the United States ranges from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recoverable gas resources and reserves in the United States. Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrate approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,500 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently proven gas reserves."
I was interested in what proportion of the methane hydrate reserves were located in the permafrost region, and how much methane release might result from melting of the permafrost. Here is some revealing information:http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/geoma rs2001/pdf/7035.pdf
From the above link we learn that oceanic hydrate contains up to 95% of all naturally occurring hydrate worldwide. The methane deposits under the permafrost are at least 200m deep, some much deeper, and those deposits constitute an estimated 5% of total methane hydrate deposits on Earth. So the actual estimate of methane trapped beneath the permafrost is estimated at 5% of 400 million trillion cubic feet of methane is:
2,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic foot = 56,633,693,423,376,624,568 liters, trapped below the permafrost.
Now, further: "What matters for climate change is methane mass (kg or tonne). Normally, volume (m3) or flow rate (m3/h) is measured using some measurement device or instrument, and these volume values are converted to mass (kg or kg/h). An intermediate step usually involves adjusting the measured volume by measured pressures and temperatures to volumes at standard conditions (0 C and 1 atm, equal to 1.013 bar)." http://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/inputsconsmeth /MGM_methane.pdf
So for methane, "1 gm mole occupies 22.4 litres at 273 K and 1 atm.
C 12.01115
H 1.00797
16.043 g CH4 = 22.414 litres
Density (16.043 / 22.414) = 0.7157 g/litre or kg/m3.
So 56,633,693,423,376,624,568 liter * 0.7157 g/liter= 40,532,734,383,110,650,203 grams = 40,532,734,383,110 metric tons [metric] (40.5 trillion metric tons).
somebody please check my calculations...
For comparison, the mass of the Earth's atmosphere is estimated at 5.3×10^18 Kg =5,300,000,000,000,000 ton [metric]
Scientists are beginning to see evidence that methane and CO2 release from thawing permafrost is a positive feedback result of the warming
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."
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.
Sounds like a bizarre gasoline tax where the government spends a pound to collect a penny.
Flush the idea down in the nearest penny house
In my last reply I was mostly pointing out that there is a limit to your statement:
Oil prices are rising and so the economically recoverable part of ANWR rises along with it.
From your reply I can tell you are well aware of this limit, so sorry to belabor the obvious.
Another point I was trying to make is that oil has many uses, and its value is unlikely to decrease, smoothed over the long term. I can picture children in school saying of us a hundred years from now, "You mean those barbarians actually burned oil?
I love nature, but don't confuse me with the type of fuzzy-thinking do-gooder who wants to "save the rainforests" without addressing the complication that there are starving people down there trying to scratch a living from the thin soil. In the case of ANWR oil, yes, it is a national treasure, and it will still be a treasure 10, 20, 50 years from now. But there is a significant investment to be made before we see even the first barrel of oil. I would rather see money spent, first on conservation, then on beginning to dismantle our oil-based infrastructure and replacing it with a more sustainable combination of renewable/hydrogen/nuclear/coal infrastructure (that is my own "preferred order", but we may not have much choice in the matter). Why invest in a dead-end technology? Unfortunately, pure market mechanisms will not point us in the right direction, due to overemphasis on short-term gain. We need long-range planning and active government intervention to get us there (Imagine how much better off we would be today if we had vigorously pursued the initiatives put in place by Jimmy Carter, instead of abandoning them).
We need to start "real soon now" to avoid major oil shocks and severe disruptions to our economy. The sooner we start the transition, the smoother the transition will be. Our children's children will thank us for our wisdom, and for saving some of our national treasure for them.
By necessity, we will need to become the next "Great Generation"The flaw in your argument is that we will get to the point where the energy consumed to build the infrastructure to extract and transport the oil exceeds the recoverable energy contained in the oil. This equation includes the inefficiencies in converting oil energy to usable forms (e.g. electrical, mechanical).
So no matter how high the price of oil rises on the speculative markets, once we reach this tipping point we are only digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
Besides, petroluem oil is used for many other purposes: in the manufacture of medicines, fertilizers, plastic, building materials, paints, and synthetic cloth. As the price of oil rises, alternative forms of energy production also become feasible, so why not save the oil for these other purposes where it may be indispensible, and invest the money in forms of energy production that are either renewable, or have a much longer expected period before depletion.
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)
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?
If you read my link on the PACER project, there is no need to dig holes; the original experiments were conducted in salt domes. But, at best, this can only be part of the solution.
The way I see it, it will not be very long before society will have to begin to change dramatically in order to survive without experiencing a die-back or series of world wars.
Yachts are fine, as long as they are sailing ships, but SUVs will be gone. The globalized economy will mostly be a vestige, and industry will return to our shores, due to the high cost of transportation. We will have to change our lifestyles, become less dependent on global trade, and do more at the local level.
We will have to diversify our energy sources: wind power will become economical. Unfortunately, I believe we will have to tap our resources of coal and lignite. Public transportation will become more available. If we do have automobiles, they will be more like golf carts than Cadillacs. Thr railroads will flourish again. Urban areas will need to be revitalized, walking or bicycling to work will be common. Many of us will have our own gardens.
This is my optimistic outlook. I refuse to dwell on the "Mad Max" alternative, but I will be prepare myself and especially my children as best I can for any eventuality.
According to the projections of Uranium reserves on this page, conventional nuclear power won't get us very far: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/petch /2005/0703.html
Also, conventional nuclear fission plants still have the problem of creating highly radioactive waste products with very long half-lifes, so the infrastructure must be very expensive for safety reasons, and there is still the disposal problemHowever,if we ever get past the "pilot plant" stage in designing and building breeder reactors: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html ,which actually create more fuel than is used, then the viabilty of nuclear fission as an alternate energy source might be enhanced considerably: http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste% 20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm The final waste products from plutonium fission have much safer radioactive by-products in terms of half-life, but plutonium itself presents problems as it is an extreme security risk and a very hazardous material
On the other hand, the supply of Deuterium and Tritium is vast, and the fusion reaction is clean, except for the need to absorb the free neutrons that are carrying the most of the energy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
Humor is such a fragile little butterfly, grasp at it too hard and it is a sticky mess - but still colorful!
I guess that explains why oil just came bubblin' up when Jed Clampett missed the critter and shot his rifle into the ground...
Let's break down your mythology. Even if we started today, ANWR production would probably take 10 years to come to peak production of about 1 M barrels/day. Current U.S. consumption is 20 M barrels/day, projected to rise to above 25 M barrels/day before 2020. Total estimated reserves in ANWR vary wildly, but it is most certainly much more expensive to extract than most OPEC sources. For example, from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/oil/anwar.html
"The companies that want to get at that oil estimate there's 16 billion barrels waiting to be pumped south - or about 30 years worth of Middle East oil imports. U.S. government geologists have estimated a likely reserve of perhaps 10.4 billion barrels in the 700,000-hectare coastal plain region at the northern end of the ANWR. That's the only part of the refuge where the U.S. government has considered lifting the ban on development.
But it would be economically feasible to pump out only a fraction of that reserve. A 1998 study estimated that about 1.9 billion barrels could be recovered at a price of $24 per barrel. Environmentalists and other opponents of opening the area to oil exploration argue there's no way to know how much oil is there.
The Union of Concerned Scientists suggests there may be enough oil to fuel vehicles in the United States for six months. It argues that making vehicles more fuel-efficient will save far more oil than Alaska could ever produce."
Compare this to current Saudi oil production costs of $1-$2/barrel
Just do the math. The economically extractable oil would only last about five year before depletion, at the peak production rate, supplying only a small fraction of our needs.