I’m not a tree-hugger. I think most of the science involved on BOTH sides is very taited by political, monetary and religious vested interests.
But that’s not what this thread is about.
My question is about national security. It has long seemed to me that we are fundmentally putting ourselves in a bad situation by depending on foreign oil, as well as fomenting unrest by our presence and inhibiting democracy.
Whether the Saudis want our forces there or not, if we weren’t sucking down their black crude like it was mother’s milk, we could just say “sorry, we don’t want to get involved.” And presto, one big islamic militant greivance gone.
We’ll stop propping up undemocratic nations like Saudi, Kuwait, etc. Let them find their own way. If the people of the middle east want democracy, fine. If not, we’ll stop trading with them and they can stop getting rich.
We need a visionary leader (and while I like W, visionary he ain’t) to set energy self-sufficiency as a goal the way JFK did the moon. I think Nader talked about this a bit, though his concern was ecological. I say do it for defense, and the rest is a bonus.
Maybe alternative energies aren’t viable yet. But it seems to me we’d better put everything we have into finding out.
It depends on what you mean by “alternative energy”. Some mean it to be “solar and wind”, and nothing else. I consider it to include nuclear.
In any case, oil isn’t much of a problem with power plants… most of them use coal or natural gas. Oil is what is crucial for transportation… and, don’t worry, with the advent of fuel cells (Ford starts road-testing their fuel-cell car in 2002, plans mass-production in 2004), our dependency on oil will begin to drop. Perhaps a Presidential Order (or whatever it’s called) will speed up the process.
I think we should look for alternative uses for our existing energy supply. For example, a lot of potential energy is stored up in a nuclear bomb. A better use for that energy, IMO, is to convert it to kinetic & thermal energy, e.g. dropping a few over Afghanistan.
Curse you, Furt!
I was going to start a thread on this very topic momentarily.
Well, at first I thought I’d share the ideas I was going to present in it here anyway, but after seeing that post by Crafter_Man, I can see what this one is going to turn into. So I think I’ll wait and start my own thread later.
Flame away, people.
Considering that the current administration is composed almost entirely of people elected with campaign contributions from big oil and other energy industries, my answer is;
Considering the dollar value of damage done to the US in the late unpleasantness translates to 1 and 1/2 billion barrels of oil, according to one estimate, I believe it’s time to take over some of the middle east oil fields. That’s something we should have done ten years ago. Make them “pay” for the carnage in every sense of the word.
A dollar a barrel is fair, the saudis can still come rich, etc…
Hey Tedster, I agree. After all, it was Americans who discovered oil in the middle east. If it was’nt for the oil that Americans discovered, the Arabs would still be living in tents, herding their sheep and goats across the desert.
Who exactly are “they?” You proposing invading our Saudi allies? If, not exactly whose oilfields should we sieze? Kuwait? Iraq? Bahrain? Afghanistan doesn’t have any.
And you are expecting support for this war of aggression from whom?
on second thought, please don’t answer those questions. You aren’t able.
Ahem…getting back to the original question…
SPOOFE: Nuclear energy is a short-term fix with a long-term downside.I seem to remember reading that the lifetime of a nuclear generating plant is only about 30 years (although newer designs may be more robust…I don’t know). However, the current system of centralized generation, distributed over a power grid to individuals is starting to show signs of strain. Witness the power shortages in California. I think the ultimate goal would be to enable consumers to generate their own power on-site. A recent article in Techology Review discussed new developments in small gas turbines for commercial use. I doubt there will be an ultimate widget devised in the near future, (Hey; what ever happened to “it”…the thing that was supposed to revolutionize our lives?) so we should look to any number of ways to reduce our addiction to fossil fuels.
Until we can develop and market viable alternative energy, we need to have a secure and steady supply of oil. I’m not asking for a war of aggression, but I’m certainly in favor of securing, say, Iraq’s oil, no problem.
My understanding it that they run on liquid hydrogen; which of course is the minor problem with them: to create liquid hydrogen, you need elecricity, which is obtained form … well, currently, fossil fuels.
This is my solution. Massive tax breaks for energy companies using solar and wind power; that gets them in the game. Then we slowly reduce those breaks – over a period of years-- and market forces force further improvements in the technology.
This sounds too good; I must be naive. Can someone blow it up?
Well, it’s a fossil fuel, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know if it’s the rule that natural gas is ALWAYS and ONLY found with pockets of oil.
Bizzwire…
My apologies. I was referring to fusion. In that we need to hasten our development of it.
Fuel cells can be designed to run on almost anything, it seems. It only requires a slight alteration. They CAN run on gasoline, but can also be configured to run on fuels derived from, of all things, corn. Essentially, a fuel cell allows for a more diverse range of fuels, including fuel that we can develop at whim.
Ummm… unless you know of massive oil reserves in Kansas that is whta we’re discussing. ANWR will supply the US oil needs for, at best, a couple of years. Most people consider coal to be unacceptably dirty and nuclear to be (true or not) unsafe. Hence our options are:
1 develop honest-to-god “clean coal”
2 convince people nuclear is safe
3 solar
4 wind
5 fusion
6 ?
[QUOTEI don’t know if it’s the rule that natural gas is ALWAYS and ONLY found with pockets of oil.[/QUOTE]
Ah, I found something!
According to this chart from the U.S. Department of Energy, the total worldwide production of natural gas in 1999 was 87.31 quadrillion BTUs. The U.S.'s production in 1999 was 19.13 quadrillion BTUs.
So, if we assume that the 1999 proportions were roughly the same as those today, the U.S. produces 22% of the world’s natural gas. Russia tops the chart at 24% of the world’s natural gas production, while all the middle eastern countries put together account for a paltry 8% of the world’s production.
However, according to another chart at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/tablee3.html, in 1999 the U.S. consumed 22.29 quadrillion BTUs of natural gas. This was 3.16 quadrillion more BTUs than the U.S. produced that year. In fact, for every year during the past decade, the U.S. seems to have consumed more BTUs of natural gas than it produced.
Therefore, if all the transportation sectors of the U.S. switch over from using petroleum to using natural gas (either directly in natural-gas-burning engines or indirectly in electric cars recharged from natural gas power plants), it would not make the U.S. self-sufficient. We’d just switch from being dependent on Middle Eastern oil, to being dependent on Russian natural gas.