Offshore drilling bill passes house - CONTACT YOUR SENATORS!

[MXGratefulDiver]

"To put it bluntly, sometimes we rely upon energy sources from countries that don't particularly like us." - George W. Bush, February 25, 2002

Hell, that would be most of the planet ... even our "friends" don't particularly like us anymore ... as an example, have you talked to any Kiwis lately?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[captain]

I can remember life before television, home air conditioning, computers, cell phones, touch tone phones, vcr's dvd's and 30 cents a gallon gasoline. I remember the dire warning of an ice age coming, I remember the oil embaro and gas rationing. I remember the warnings all the oil woud be gone by 1990. Someone some where at any time in the past was predicting some calamity. Now it is gobal warming and oil again. We can now monitor the world's enviroment in ways and places that weren't even thought of 200 years ago ( A microsecond in earth's history) and take that little information from the past few hundered years and compare it to now and draw a conclusion. Sorry if I am a little skeptical. The price of everything goes up, deal with it.

 

[bruehlt]

I thought this article was pertinent....

Ocean acidification report: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/report.shtml

Yeah - this was on page 1 of the lifestyle section of USA Today.

I think its simply amazing that people who say they love to dive are the first ones that don't want to give up their lavish lifestyles when it threatens the sport as a whole.

 

[bruehlt]

I'm pretty sure I don't buy the "oil is gonna run out real soon" calims any more.

That's fine - keep living in a fantasy land. Peak oil production is a fact - just ask the oil companies. In fact, its one of the reasons we import so much freakin' oil as we do.

30 years ago, they were busy telling me that in 30 years we were going to be close to the end of oil. Most of it would be gone. Well, it's 30 years later & it's not only not gone, we now have more known reserves than we did then. We're easily looking at 100 years worth of oil, just with what we already know about & we find more every year.

Technology changes every year - drilling techniques, as well as new equipment allow us to reach the oil that we previously couldn't reach before, due to geographics and what-not.

I also don't think the term 'fossil fuel' is correct for oil. As a kid I was taught that oil came from dead dinosaurs. Anyone ever give any thought to jusy how many dinos it would take to simply account for the billions of barrels we've already pumped up, much less the billions still down there?

Uhh - you know that plant matter also contains carbon, right? Think about a rain forest - and how much vegitation it contains. Than multiply that by millions of years (remember, the earth isn't 2000 years old).

 

[bruehlt]

I can remember life before television, home air conditioning, computers, cell phones, touch tone phones, vcr's dvd's and 30 cents a gallon gasoline. I remember the dire warning of an ice age coming, I remember the oil embaro and gas rationing. I remember the warnings all the oil woud be gone by 1990. Someone some where at any time in the past was predicting some calamity. Now it is gobal warming and oil again. We can now monitor the world's enviroment in ways and places that weren't even thought of 200 years ago ( A microsecond in earth's history) and take that little information from the past few hundered years and compare it to now and draw a conclusion. Sorry if I am a little skeptical. The price of everything goes up, deal with it.

OK - lets use some logic here mr wizard.

Let's think about global population for a moment. In case you can't remember back to the days of the abacus and your high school algebra classes - the population of the earth is an exponental function. That is - as time goes on, population doesn't increase linearly. Since the population of the earth is growing by leaps and bounds daily, consumption of worldly goods (such as food) increases as well. Since most of what we use is made from petroleum products (including gasoline), demand for oil has also soared!

The premise behind peak oil is that we do *in fact* have limited capacity (at the present time). When this happens, demand outstrips pumping capacity - and the laws of economics take over. Presently, the law of diminishing returns is also applicable. Since we haven't developed any new technology to further increase the amount of oil we can extract from the earth - the amount that is available on the global market is slowly decreasing.

There are limitations as to what we as humans can actually do - including putting enough oil on the market to meet demand, if it simply doesn't exist.

 

[bruehlt]

For those who are scientifically challenged - visit this web site:

http://www.peakoil.org/

Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.



Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.



In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

 

[TheRedHead]

I think its simply amazing that people who say they love to dive are the first ones that don't want to give up their lavish lifestyles when it threatens the sport as a whole.

I think it is the middle and lower classes who are driving the SUVs you love to hate. Wealthy people are driving the Jags, Beamers and Benzes. You're neglecting the psychology of American consumerism. If you can make it a fashionable status symbol to move to a car that has a better MPG rating, then you'll solve 75% of the problem with SUVs. You just need a car that is large enough to comfortably seat 4 and hold some stuff in a fun, sexy package. The whole SUV problem was created with marketing and can be undone the same way.

Americans don't tend to react well to attempts to legislate behavior. We have a bad habit of throwing the bums out when they try.

 

[SNorman]

For those who are scientifically challenged - visit this web site:

http://www.peakoil.org/

So oil may run out some day. And we'll figure out a way around it. That's what we do. Peak oil lunacy is almost on the same level as people screaming about the "Y2K" bug who were sure the whole planet was going to crash on Jan 1 2000. Fortunately, we have a lot of hardworking people on this planet who solve problems instead of spending their time telling people the sky is falling.

 

[H2Andy]

Sorry if I am a little skeptical. The price of everything goes up, deal with it.

i hear what you're saying. it seems the press needs a "horror story" to sell
advertisement, and universities need something to get research grants over

you know what worries me? that we've heard so many false cries of wolf that
when the real one comes along, we'll tune it out along with all the other white noise

you know, it's not like there's ANYTHING i can do about it anyway, sad to say, at the global level ... what will happen will happen ... we're too far along on the ride to be able to stop now

when the prohibitive cost of oil destroys the US economy, i hope to be dead by then, seriously (no children, so no worries there). if it happens faster, i got my motorcyle and the AK-47

 

[bruehlt]

So oil may run out some day. And we'll figure out a way around it. That's what we do. Peak oil lunacy is almost on the same level as people screaming about the "Y2K" bug who were sure the whole planet was going to crash on Jan 1 2000. Fortunately, we have a lot of hardworking people on this planet who solve problems instead of spending their time telling people the sky is falling.

Actually - that's the concern. There *IS* no alternative that has the energy density that oil has. Additionally, oil is entrenched so much into our daily lives (moreso than most people don't realize), that once peak oil hits - the world economy will tank. We're talking about a post industrialization stone age.

Don't believe me - read the web site. When sources such as:

Dick Cheney

George Bush's own energy investment banker

Fortune Magazine

Roscoe Bartlett (one of the most conservative memberes of the hose of representatives)

etc, etc, etc.....

Read the site, it really is a non-partisan healthy look at life after oil. We are, indeed screwed.

Frankly - I love how everyone considers themselves experts nowadays - and refuses to believe the truth. I say go ahead, stick your head in the sand - be an ostritch. You'll just prove that Darwin theory of survival of the fittest was correct!