Yep, in a perfect world we could all ride our bikes to work, take the bus or carpool but this isn't the perfect world.  What happens to the economy when people can't afford to drive to work anymore?  What happens when only the richest Americans can travel by plane?  And exactly what alternative energy sources are they developing?  We are now seeing the results of the wonders of ethanol, less efficient fuel, higher food prices, food shortages in other countries.  I care about the environment but I want to be able to turn the lights on when its dark and I want to be able to afford to put gasoline in my car. 

If John McCain were smart he would hammer away on this issue.  He could win the election on energy policy alone. 

Everuthing (oil, nuclear, solar, wind, etc.) is going to take time. What these people fail to realize is you must start now! The silliest thing I've heard is not to drill because it won't do anything immediately....like waiting will.

Well, it certainly is good that we can agree on something! However on one point I'm going to have to diverge-

There is currently not 200 years of reserves in the U.S. Currently you have about 3 years worth inside your borders. The U.S currently has 21 billion barrels (approx) proven reserves. As 21 million bpd consumption, your current rate, you would burn through that in 3 years. The other kicker is this-

Since 1970, U.S domestic production has been declining. That's 38 years of falling levels of production. Currently only 37 percent of your oil is produced domestically with over 63 % being imported. Even if you managed to increase your domestic production to 50 % of what you need (more than 10.5 million barrels per day which would surpass the height of U.S production in 1970) you would still be beholden to foreign oil and a major overseas war or disruption of that supply could easily make gas a commodity so expensive that only the state and industry could afford it with average folks riding bikes!

All of this information is easily obtained from geological society reports and the like!

Regardless, we need a solution that looks forward to new way of doing things. You're absolutely right about all the wonderful inventions we've created. Now it's time to get off the oil!

That sounds nice, but reality is, we aren't getting off oil anytime soon.  Even if we started now it would take decades to get independence.  The short term solution is drilling for our own resources, while at the same time working on the bigger problem.

 

I agree with the above statement. However I have seen nothing from Bush on working on the bigger problem, instead he is simply trying to maintain the status quo. IF he were to say "we need to increase domestic production now while we work on a real plan to get off the oil soon!" it would be a different story entirely. Instead his solution is simply to increase the rate at which a finite resource is going to be extracted, thereby shortening the length of time that we will have to use that resource with no plan for what to do after that. This is a guy who tried to push "clean coal" as a long term viable solution. As soon as his term in office is up which will be very soon, he's off to his ranch in Paraguay where he will undoubtedly laugh at the plight of the average American from his Blackwater Inc. guarded estate!

As for taking years to get off oil you're also correct that it won't happen anytime soon, but in switching to alternatives that are available now we can drastically reduce our demand and consumption for oil and eventually phase it out. If for example, in two years time there are economically viable electric cars on the market (in the range of 30 thousand dollars or so, which is realistic as GM plans to do this) anyone looking to buy a new car will probably choose electric over gas. Sure, it's not like everyone decides to buy a new car right away but most folks have a car on average for 10-15 years. So doing some quick and very dirty math, we could maybe say that over the space of 2 years at least 10 % of the car owners will look to replace, no?

So that right there would be 10% of the vehicles on the road no longer requiring gas to run, drastically reducing demand. Over a five year span, coupled with the high cost of gas creating an incentive to switch, we could hit, what, 25-30% of the cars on the road replaced?

Of course this would assume manufacturing capacity could meet it, but right now GM and Ford have plenty of capacity but no one's buying. Retool idle factories to build electrics instead of internal combustion, everyone wins and can enjoy chicken on sunday. The end.

Congress is more of the problem here than Bush.  Why not go back and blame Clinton too, he didn't do anything either.

Paladin,

Okay, fair enough. Please provide your source on this. Everywhere I go, like the United States Geological Survey and Department of Energy all state approx 21 billion barrels. And to correct you, proven reserves are not necessarily fields we are using or are bringing on line, they are fields that we are 80-90% sure we know how much is really there, regardless of whether or not it is being pulled out of the ground. There has been some excitement over the Bakken field in the North Dakota area, with claims of anywhere from 200 billion barrels to 5 billion barrels realistically recoverable. Even if the 200 billion barrel mark were accurate, that would only provide a 30 year supply instead of the mythical 200 year supply you state.

Once again, where did you get this "200 year" number from exactly? That would mean a minimum of 1.3 TRILLION barrels of oil, currently Saudi Arabia only has 260 billion barrels!

No, this problem has very little to do with legislation. It's a simple fact that no one in the U.S wants to admit, that the reason why U.S production has been declining for the last 38 years is because Hubbert called it right. In the 1950's he predicted the U.S would hit it's peak oil production between 1965 and 1970 and that's exactly what happened. Go to google and look up 'Hubbert' and 'peak oil'.

You can't honestly believe that the falling U.S production has been entirely due to inaction on the part of the government for the last 38 years? That would mean that Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, and until now, Bush 2 are all equally to blame. And if this was such a good idea earlier, why didn't Bush 2 pursue this when his party controlled both the senate and the congress before 2006????

I'm afraid this illustrates your ignorance as to just how far the electric car has come in development. GM has a working model (actually they had a test line they ran in the mid 90's!) and plans to have a mass produced model on the market by 2010 (Assuming they don't go belly up!) and the Tesla Roadster already surpasses all the benchmarks you've listed for 'coming of age' and is on the market now, only it's a tad expensive for the average joe. They too are expanding production capacity to have a much cheaper model on the market in two years time. The drawing board phase for electric cars are pretty much over, now we're in the mass production phase.

As to the "battery pollution" nonsense, it's already been nailed down that your average battery pack with today's technology should be good to approx 100,000 miles before requiring replacement, and that too will get better with time.

But don't take my word for it, check it out here-

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145876

and here-

http://gm-volt.com/about/

 

 

I don’t know where you get 50 years of reserves, the published reserve life for the United States is 12 years.

This is an excerpt from an article by Dr, Bill Kovarik

Ever since the world's first commercial oil wells opened in the US and Russia in the 1850s, the question of future supply has been a matter of controversy.

Today many people take for granted that oil production has peaked and that no substantial new amounts of oil are possible to develop.
These pages present a contrary view based on the idea that oil reserve figures have not been presented honestly by the US and European oil industry. This is not to say that oil won't run out some day, but rather that the usually uncounted reserves are far larger than are generally known.

To begin with, one of the most revealing speeches about world oil reserves went unremarked in 2006. The head of the world's largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, said:

“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential. That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.”

What does it mean? Why does his view of world reserves conflict so dramatically with the oil industry's view?
Probably most important for world oil policy, the Middle East does not necessarily have two thirds of all world oil reserves, as has long been claimed by the oil companies and the US Dept. of Energy. It only has two thirds of "proven" oil reserves which are far smaller than the potential reserves Jum'ah describes.

According to a US Geological Survey report quietly published in 2000, there is more oil outside the Middle East than inside the region. Certainly two thirds is not at all accurate -- It's 54 percent of identified reserves, possibly 40 percent of ultimately recoverable reserves, and possibly 30 percent or less if you include unconventional heavy oil fields.
As Standard Oil executive Wallace Pratt said in 1944, it is a "fallacy ... [to] cite proved reserves as a measure of available future supplies." Yet this is exactly what has animated US policy in the Middle East.


Dr. Kovarik wrote this article that I have excerpted, he serves as an academic representative on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists and on the editorial board of Appalachian Voice.

This from next energy news:
In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

Me writing again
Actual oil reserves are kept highly secret and are never published. Estimates are made but rarely do nations advertise what they have. They either over estimate or under estimate what they have for political, financial, and security reasons. We have known about the oil in the Dakotas since before I was born but it has never been added to our official reserve list the same is true with the oil off the coast of Florida and California, both states have stopped and blocked drilling there. Canada is more open and has admitted to only 150 years of reserves but that number is low by at least a factor of two. I am just listing published stuff not super secret “I know but can’t tell you” stuff. It is out there if you look.




I repost this:
The head of the world's largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, said:

“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential. That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.”



To build a refinery you need ten years from the time you start the paper work to the time you can start building. It then takes five to seven years to build it, then five to six months to refine the first drops of oil.

If there is a legal challenge like not in my back yard, or the endangered snow flea might be harmed. Every thing comes to a halt until the challenges are resolved.

Environmental laws require millions of dollars of studies to prove it is save to the environment.

When you go nuclear, the Congress has so many restrictions that it takes 20 years to get approval to build and then you have to deal with the legal challenges.

Proof of this problem. In the last 30 years not one new oil refinery has been built in the U.S., not one new nuclear power plant has been built. How can you say that legislation is not the cause of our high fuel prices? In the Dakotas there is known oil there, the new estimates go as high as 500 billion barrels of oil, with the technology of the 70’s it was not profitable to get the oil because it would cost double or triple the cost on the open market at 30 dollars a barrel. Now that is a bargain! Why have the oil companies not started drilling? They have known it was there for 57 years what is stopping them? How about the laws written by congress has stopped them. If you can get the oil at a cost of 30 a barrel and sell it for 100 a barrel you are looking at a lot of money, 500 billion times 100. Are you seriously saying they are sitting on that oil to keep the price high?

Even with the windfall profits tax it is profitable to drill there.



January 2008
For both the plug-in and series hybrids, GM says the timeline for commercializing the vehicles will depend on the development of the battery systems. But such systems may not be far off. GM representatives say that they have already seen lithium-ion cells that have the performance required for both plug-in and series-hybrid applications. What remains to be done is to combine these cells into large, complex battery packs and make sure they work well together in an actual vehicle. Last week, GM announced that it has a contract with two sets of companies for building lithium-ion-based battery packs and control systems for plug-in hybrids.

Me again
Yes, the concept vehicle is out and they hope to have production started in 2 years but as of right this minute they are still working on getting the batteries designed and commercially built as well as control systems. A prototype is not the same as a production vehicle. The difference between what you believe and what I believe is three years. You say 2010 I say 2013, split the difference and smile.



Those weren’t my benchmarks they were facts of vehicles that are already on the market. If you go to Green vehicles you will see all of what I wrote, I found it after I wrote what I wrote because these are 3 year old facts, I am disappointed that they have not improved in the last 3 years.



I think you missed my point here. The town in Canada that mines most of the nickel used for batteries has been declared an environmental disaster area. The ore is sent by ship burning diesel fuel to be refined in china, and then sent to Japan to be made into batteries. Those batteries are then shipped to manufacturing companies around the world to be installed. After 10 years those batteries have to be disposed of causing another environmental problem.

Some guy without a life figured out that the manufacture and ten year life of an internal combustion engine pollutes less than the manufacture of the batteries. And when you add in the disposal of the batteries it is even less environmentally friendly. Will it save gas? Yes! If that is your sole concern then you are correct but the over all problem of the batteries is worse than the pollution of the car it is supposed to replace.

The price will never be right even if it went all the way back to 18 cents a gallon.
The point is that the ultimate goal has to be to rid the planet of fossil fuels, not to mention the combustible engine.

Bingo! You cannot legislate supply and demand. That is the fatal flaw in all the arguments about this. The old USSR tried, and we saw what happened (and we see it in Cuba, and NK now).

Once the demand disappears, the supply will be irrelevant. Or better, if you really want to kill the demand, dry up the supply! The democrats are doing that, and only one is honest enough to admit it and embrace it. The rest are just vote sucking toadies (well all politicians are, but more so Pelosi and Reid for their blatant hypocrisy).

Energy policy will be tough to change regardless.  This is a government controlled by major interest groups.  What is good for the nation as a whole is not what goes through legislation in many cases.  This is becoming such a problem "now" in the eyes of the public because and stemming from a lack of bipartisanship in government.  All of a sudden we are at each others' throats about something we ALL should have been considering planning for years.  We can't simply sit back and conserve everything at risk of hurting the welfare of the American public interest in energy (we cannot simply cut back use overnight).  At the same time, we have to consider the global effects of drilling for more oil and using it to continue/even increase our daily output of fossil fuels across the globe.  I am a proud democrat, and I do believe that neither side has the proper (or even a close to complete) solution for such an issue.  This is the time for major conversation between parties, intellectual and creative ideas for future action, and plans for strategic implementation of those ideas.

The key phrase. If they start today, the "current technology" has not even been developed by today by the time the fields come on line.

It is a safe and correct answer that the USGS has to give. They do not develop the technology, they just use it to evaluate proven reserves. "Greedy" oil men develop the technology and as has been proven since the 1850s, "current technology" only exists in papers on reserves as it is a constantly changing thing.

5 years ago, deep sea drilling was not "current technology". Don't tell that to Brazil, they are now using it to go after some huge reserves of their own TODAY.

Nowhere have I said that it isn't "worth the trouble". But are we being realistic here? The U.S currently only produces 37 % of it's required energy, and currently produces nearly 4 million barrels per day LESS than the height reached in 1970. Even with all the new technology, your domestic production has continued to fall, just at a slower pace. Look at the Prudhoe fields in Alaska, the production there has been falling for years despite attempts to increase it with modern technology. Same goes for Saudi Arabia... they can no longer increase their production "on demand" because most of their efforts are going to sustain their current output with newer technologies. The truth is that truly major oil finds have been fewer and farther between over the last 30 years, and when they are found it's in places that will cost WAY more money to retrieve than the easy to get stuff. This does not bode well 5 or 10 years down the road.

700 million barrels of oil! Wow, that could provide the world with all the oil it needs for 8 whole days! Or if just the U.S were to get it, it would sustain you for a whole month!

10 billion barrels?!?! That will keep the U.S going for a whole year and 3 months! (okay, almost 4 months, you got me)

The truth is, even if you tap all your domestic reserves and decide to rush production on new refineries to increase capacity, coupled with new technology, it's highly doubtful that the U.S could ever increase it's domestic production past it's record of nearly 10 million barrels per day in 1970. You would have to produce more than 4 million barrels per day on top of what you're doing right now. And even if you managed to produce 50% of your own oil, you'd still be beholden to the international market for oil prices.

It's time to admit defeat and take a lesson from Europe (ooh, double entendre!) They've employed far more mass transit, engineer new communities to be as compact and walkable as possible and are embracing alternative energy left right and center!

In Belgium, gas costs almost 9 dollars a gallon but folks don't complain, because their lifestyle changed years ago to accomodate a less automobile and oil dependent one. Here in north America we continue to build massive eyesore big box shopping complexes that you need a car to get to and live miles from work in the suburbs!