SPILL, BABY, SPILL - Crude is America's Crack ... What are we going to do?!?

[bondwooley]

From an online political satire poll:

Oil. It's a hard habit to break. And scientists predict we'll reach peak oil before 2020!

And now, with BP letting a major portion of our resources go to waste, how are we going to get our fix?

It's true - Crude is America's crack. Usage keeps going up and supply keeps going down. Alternative energy might not be catching on fast enough for a happy ending to this addiction. Other than "carpet patrolling" the Gulf, how is America going to get the oil it needs?

Original poll here:

http://www.pledge-drive.com/lesterandcharliesurvey.html

[FBI_Un_Sub]

1. One reason alternatives not catching on

"Big Oil" keeps funding "sponsored research" at prestige institutions (Pimental at Cornell, Lave at Carnegie) to denigrate alternatives.

[bondwooley]

2. I didn't know that ...

... who all is influenced by these "sponsored research" initiatives?

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Nobody, really, except maybe a few congresscritters who...

lean that way anyway.

We have a couple hundred million cars that we need to get to work and take the kids to soccer games because we evolved into a society with these little islands of homes and activities only connected by roads.

Most of those houses and many commercial buildings, perticularly here in the Northeast, are heated by oil, meaning millions of oil furnaces.

Most of our food and consumer goods, and construction supplies and other commercial goods, are transported by truck, rail or air, none of which are electric. (Note that Europe went electric for its trains when they dumped steam years ago, while we let GM, not the oil companies, talk us into diesels.)

I'm not sure of the exact percentage, but a large amount of the crude we extract is the main ingredient in everything from car tires to plastic shopping bags.

Electrical generation is from coal or natural gas, depending on which is cheaper in an area, and gas is a close cousin to oil.

So...

Just how would we be expected to change all of this even if we wanted to? And how long would it take?

Anyone can take potshots at oil companies, but they are satisfying our most basic needs for the time being, and there's no way to get around it.

[bondwooley]

8. A very important point in here is that we don't just use crude for energy ...

... elements are used for lighter fluid, plastics, dyes, pain, detergent, medicine, make-up, film, clothing, fertilizers and rubber. Which helps further explain the addiction, but makes the addiction that much worse and complex.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

14. Most of those "plastics"

can be synthesized just as cheaply from vegetable oils or coal.

[bondwooley]

18. Vegetables = good thing, coal = same non-renewable problem as oil! n/t

[CrispyQ]

20. This is a huge part of the problem.

We're going to need the by-products of the oil industry to build a new technological infrastructure. If we burn it all in our cars/planes/houses & use it to make cheap plastic crap for Walmart, before we've built the new infrastructure, how fucked will we be then?

:banghead:

I have little hope for humanity. I don't recall the term for it, but I'm of the view that we have some outstanding individuals - intelligent, creative, forward thinking, compassionate - but as a collective, we suck. American society in particular, values the individual over community ,to the point that we are destroying our communities.

[lunatica]

19. UC Berkeley has a grant from them for research in alternative energy

Half my job there is with the administrative services for all the research departments. They have BP money.

I'm trying to get a full time appointment with the other half of my job because it's academic. They don't have Filthy BP money to hold them back.

[CrispyQ]

3. We're gonna smoke it all.

And then we'll whine, louder than all the combined noise in the universe, that we weren't told our dealer was running out.

[bondwooley]

4. Which brings up the questions ...

... What are the dealers doing about their finite lifespan? The post above mentions that "big oil" funds anti-alternative research. Shouldn't they instead be figuring out how to stay in business when the wells dry up?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Exxon used to fund alternative energy research, but a major change...

in attitude when Rawl took over was from "Exxon is the biggest and the best" to "Exxon makes the most money" and pretty much anything that didn't have short-term profit potential was off the table.

The general attitude among this new sort of management is that they won't be around if it all falls. Stockholders and board members, who might be considered to have a longer view of things, became primarily short-term traders looking for a quick payday and hoped to get out before any crash.

If it sounds like musical chairs, it is.

[bondwooley]

10. Seems to me if some oil exec with a vision stepped up, it would actually help stock prices n/t

[TreasonousBastard]

12. It doesn't. If stock prices reflect reality at all, it's the reality of quarterly profits. n/t

[bondwooley]

16. Yes, that's a good point. But stocks might not be cashed in an out in this ...

... industry so quickly if the industry had a sustainable plan. Sustainability also impacts stock prices.

[CrispyQ]

21. I've read articles that state big oil has been quietly buying alternative energy ideas for decades.

Is it true? I don't know, but it certainly sounds like something they would do. As oil gets more scarce the price will go up. Big oil certainly doesn't want to turn out new technology before they can cash in on the higher profit margin of a dwindling resource. Of course, it will be at the expense of our eco-system, but they clearly don't care.

I heard a comedian a few years ago state, "Once they figure out how to put a meter on the sun, we'll have solar everything by noon the next day."

~sigh

[bondwooley]

22. "Sigh" is right but that's a great quote! n/t

[Newest Reality]

6. When I assess the situation ...

I find the term, "addiction" to be misleading. Perhaps it is meant to be that way?

The results of fossil fuels are all-pervading in our current sense of what living a life is, including the myriad of items and services that support it. Oil is almost ubiquitous and, other than fuel-related issues, it tends to be transparent to the average recipient of its impact. That is why I find it hard to call it an addiction when our way of life is built with the so-called, addictive substance. Maybe if you see life itself as addictive, then you can use the term in that way.

You will be hard-pressed to find even a small part of your non-primitive lifestyle that is not directly or indirectly dependent on the availability of oil and other fossil fuels. I assure you that your food, transportation, medicines, plastics, and everything that it is all made of, as well as the energy that supplies the manufacturing is oil dependent to the tune of billions of barrels a day, world-wide

Every living organism has an energy equation involved in its very survival. If the amount of energy required to survive exceeds that which is squired, that results to death and even extinction. So, our real issue is our own species-related needs for energy, (therefore, not our addiction) are what is important and at issue here. It is more about requirements and excess, over and above our basic needs and an addiction does not fit that criteria.

We live oil, and we require energy in various forms to live. We have been led down an unsustainable path and sold a lifestyle that we were taught to accept as the way that things are and should be. It is our false perceptions, (delusions) that is are question here and that require a reassessment. The addiction analogy implies you either keep using or quit. We cannot quit using energy even in the most primitive of scenarios or we will suffer and die. Simple.

How can you find any realistic or practical solutions when the dialog is based on ridiculous terminology that proves to be a diversion from the basic facts and necessity involved? We are on an energy diet path now and will soon find out that alternative energy is neither mature or efficient enough for modern life to continue on its highway of progress, happy motoring and unnecessary mountains of stuff for which a need is skillfully manufactured like a product itself.

[Iwasthere]

9. You say "We cannot quit using energy ...."

"We cannot quit using energy even in the most primitive of scenarios or we will suffer and die.'

BULL! We CAN alter our methods. We must start now. I personally drive a Ford Excursion diesel converted to run on waste grease from restaraunts, I am proud that I do not have to use the toxic stuff, I do not affect the enviroment in any negative way and I have NO limitations. This is not the sole sollution, but we all need to find alternative methods, they are not going to help us. Groundswell, from the bottom up. Just quit using their product, our planet depends on it.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. You're missing the point entirely...

you're still using energy and burning stuff even if it is waste fry oil, and crude oil was used to make the tires, hoses,and plastic parts. Vast amounts of energy is used to build and maintain the road network you use, and the restaurants you get the oil from.

And your other energy use? have you reduced your electric consumption and carbon footprint significantly in other ways? You do realize how much fuel is used to transport vegetables from Florida and California and meat from the Midwest, don't you?

Then there's everything from snowblowers and lawn chemicals to some soaps and detergents that use petroleum and add just a little more poison to our planet.

(Do you bring you own bag to the supermarket?)

[Newest Reality]

15. No, that's not BULL!

Look into energy returned on energy invested. It applies to biology in the very same way it effects us in industrial and high-technology cultures.

To help you out, imagine you are living in a forest and surviving on what is at hand? You will use your physical energy to do so. That energy is supplied by whatever food you can acquire and the availability of water. If you spend more energy obtaining the energy you need to continue that process, its over for you. To warm yourself, you will hopefully have wood to create a fire and that wood, via combustion, provides the energy to do so.

You can take that formula and apply it all the way up the chain of complexity, but then you add the term "profitable" to the massive energy needs and their fulfillment. We are reaching an apex of that equation where it behooves us to both understand and grapple with an extremely complex and dire problem. You will be altering your methods most certainly, like it or not, and even more so the longer you live. The question is, how much can you adapt to and still call it it comfortable or decent?

You do affect the environment simply by living and with a little careful observation and inspection you will see just how many-fold you do so in comparison to a primitive, basic life. Try to find something that you have or use that fossil fuels were not a part of. I assume you don't live in a cave with straw mats and wear animal skins, etc.

Perhaps we are using the word energy in different ways?

[bondwooley]

13. You say tomAto, I say tomAHto ...

You point out that we're dependent, I used the term addicted ... and the line between the two is blurred. I understand the ultimate difference. But the bottom line is that you're right - we are dependent on energy. Right now, oil is energy. But that doesn't mean that it's going to be here forever.

[CrispyQ]

24. Balance.

Have you ever read "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann? It's very good. He tells how societies must keep their populations in check with the amount of resources they have. In ancient times, tribes would war on other tribes, steal their resources, kill off their population, thereby allowing them to grow beyond what they would have been able to support with the resources they originally had. Once we discovered oil, we tapped into a resource that allowed our global population - western civilization, particularly - to live beyond it's means.

It's all about balance. But we believe that we are more clever than nature & that we can extract ourselves from the natural world - that we are no longer a part of it. The human species is about to learn a very hard, hard lesson. Will we survive? And if we do, will we learn?

If you haven't read Thom's book I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Hours-Ancient-Sunlight-Revised/dp/1400051576

[bondwooley]

25. That's a very interesting thesis and seems true. I'll look into the book. Thanks for the rec! nt

[Swamp Rat]

17. I am giving up my car.

Of course, my family has another vehicle that we must absolutely have in order to escape hurricanes.

[Dems to Win]

23. With a Manhattan Project, We COULD be off oil by the end of Obama's 2nd term -- but we won't be

When did the U.S. become a Can't Do It country?

Can't be energy-independent, can't enforce our immigration laws, can't build high-speed rail, can't build our bridges out of US-made steel. It's a good thing the U.S. built the trans-continental railroad over a century ago; we sure wouldn't be able to accomplish such a thing today.

The steps Obama has called for to move toward green energy are very small baby steps, similar to those taken by Clinton. We just don't seem to be a country that can do big things anymore.

ETA: with a Manhattan-Project-style-effort, we could be off oil. I'm not advocating we go nuclear as our alternative.

[bondwooley]

26. Big projects aren't in our nature any longer...

and I'm not sure why. Maybe we're not desperate enough. Or maybe we don't know how desperate we really are.

Hard call.