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Originally posted by The17sss Jesus fucking Christ! You didn't PROVE anything to me. Again, as it happens many times, when I see zero progress is going to be made in me opening up someone else's eyes to the other perspective, and I know the other person's perspective will not make a dent on me, I choose not to continue to beat my head against the wall. It doesn't mean I've been proven wrong or that I can't muster the intellect or research. And if someone chooses to stop debating with you, it doesn't mean you're victorious as you love to claim. You have more stamina to argue than anyone I've ever seen, and sometimes people just don't want to fucking continue... if that spells victory to you, then fine. I was on another tangent when I started talking about Pickens and Gore by the way. I never even said oil companies aren't in it for the money...

Woah dude, chill out. Don't get mad when I respond to you. Don't get frustrated. It's an exchange of ideas. If I convince you of how sensible alternative energy investment is, great, if not, at least you've got something to think about. If you make a statement in this forum, you should expect a response! Never forget that! I was a creationist in my high school days. A few years of MisterOpus changed all that..

And contrary to your statement, there is a REVOLUTION going on in solar, wind, and other new industries. There is progress rivaling that of the technology sector! As I said, and I'm refering specifically to BOTH wind and solar, the energy output is doubling, and the production costs are halving every 18 months. Meanwhile, hydrocarbons energy output remains....THE SAME. The only thing we are doing is using it more efficiently. Wind/solar/etc is doing so much more than hydrocarbons.

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obviously they are. And we have more than just ANWAR... we have the OCS and the fucking shale, and the goddamn massive deposit just discovered in the Dakotas. PLENTY FOR DECADES!

Do you really want to release that much more carbon into the atmosphere? My god!

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And as for the carbon, I honesly don't give a fuck because I don't buy into the hype. Just yesterday, for example, I read a story about the APS (American Physical Society), 50,000 members strong of physicists, about their scientist Lord Monckton:

As for Lord Monckton, I wholeheartedly disagree with his entire assesssment, which by the way is in the extreme minority of holdouts against the reality of human-caused climate change.

Instead of looking at the UN climate model, which tries to predict the future, let's look at what know about the past..





You can't possibly say that the higher carbon concentrations are from ANYTHING but human civilization. Carbon dioxide has been PROVEN in the scientific laboratory using the scientific method, on numerous occasions, to be a greenhouse gas. So it can be very wisely inferred, that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide gas equals a higher average global temperature. And the scientific data shows that the earth is warming to record levels.

To me, Lord Monckton is 100% wrong. Thank god he is on the fringes where he'll stay as far as the scientific community is concerned. The Keeling Curve is probably the one of the best things to have been discovered in the 20th century.

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Originally posted by The17sss No, it's called Murphy's Law... you can only argue with an idoit for so long before it becomes difficult to figure out who the idiot is. I like to get out before that line becomes too blurred when I'm obviously not making a dent. You love to debate, as you call it, but you are too stubborn to admit when you are wrong and don't ever, even in the slighest way, stray from what you believe is true at the beginning of the "debate"

I hope you're not calling me an idiot!

Isn't Murphy's Law, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong."

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Originally posted by Krypton Isn't Murphy's Law, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong."

Yeah, I'm not sure what he's talking about.

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Originally posted by Krypton I hope you're not calling me an idiot! Isn't Murphy's Law, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong."

Nah man that was actually directed at Clovis... about the idiot thing. I don't even specifically think he's an idiot, I was just trying to explain why and how I can only take so much of a discussion if it's obviously not going any further. I saw a book once that had several different types of Murphy's Laws, and it included that statement about idiots, which makes sense if you think about it. The "whatever can go wrong will go wrong" is the one most people associate M.L. with. Sorry for getting all agitated last night... I got some good sleep and I'm calm today

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Originally posted by Clovis Basically every time your position is completely debunked as totally fucking retarded you head for the locker room. Understood.

And what happens when your notions are debunked?

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Don’t look now, but investors and speculators have taken notice of the political metamorphosis among Americans on domestic drilling — even if American politicians have been slower to do so. Since George Bush rescinded the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling and since demand for higher domestic production has increased in the face of $5 per gallon gasoline, the price of crude has dropped over $20 a barrel in less than two weeks. The stock market has improved and the dollar has strengthened at the same time: Overseas stock markets were higher and Wall Street index futures pointed to a solid open as the cost of oil retreated further and traders turned a bit more hopeful about the economy. Light sweet crude oil for September delivery was down $2.17 at US$126.25 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after dropping more than $3 in the previous session as Hurricane Dolly looked likely to avoid oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude now is down by more than $20 a barrel from its July 11 peak above $147 - a surge that had raised worries that inflation would cripple the economy. It’s amazing what the promise of more supply can do for market psychology. And it goes beyond a few hundred thousand barrels of oil a day, what Bush tried to beg out of the Saudis earlier this year. According to this Bureau of Land Management release yesterday, the potential for oil shale recovery alone could far outstrip the known reserves in the Middle East: The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States. … In remarks last month calling on Congress to expand domestic energy production, President Bush noted the “extraordinary potential” of oil shale resources on public lands in the West. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. holds more than half of the world’s oil shale resources. The largest known deposits of oil shale are located in a 16,000-square mile area in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Shale formations in that area hold the equivalent of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Federal lands comprise 72 percent of the total surface of oil shale acreage in the Green River formation. http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/ne...07_22_2008.html Currently, the US uses 20 million barrels of oil a day, 12 million of which we import. We also import refined gasoline, thanks to a lack of refining capacity in the US. The reserves in the Green River formation would supply us with 182 years of what we import now, or 109 years at our total rate of consumption. Once in motion, Green River alone could give us complete energy independence far beyond the time we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels. With the risks of transferring vast sums of wealth to nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela by having de facto price supports with our refusal to add supply to the market. The risks to our national security and our economy far outweigh the risks of unleashing our domestic production. Undercutting oil prices should be our national policy, if only to keep cash out of the hands of dangerous despots with ties to terrorists such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and FARC. Everyone would love to see a new, clean energy source replace oil — but it has to be reliable and mass-produceable. We can work in parallel to find and develop that source, but until then, we need to start acting like responsible adults and take charge of our own energy needs with our own vast resources

I'm sure the above article means nothing to you though... and you'll probably say something along the lines of "HA! foolish republican. That won't change a thing. Maybe 3 cents a gallon at the pump. The Dems said so!"

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Originally posted by The17sss And what happens when your notions are debunked? I'm sure the above article means nothing to you though... and you'll probably say something along the lines of "HA! foolish republican. That won't change a thing. Maybe 3 cents a gallon at the pump. The Dems said so!"

No, it does. I saw that happen as well. And how much has the price of gas gone down? So you think that the solution to high gas prices is drilling costly shale reserves from which the real fruits of production won't be seen for another 25-30+ years? That is backwards. We have the technology, we need to start heavy investment into renewables and more environmentally friendly energy sources NOW. Not in 45 years when we run out of proven reserves AND shale reserves after the ice caps have melted. Which direction do you want to go? Remain dependent on oil for the majority of our energy needs untill the last possible drop of tar is extracted from the earth? Or start NOW and be ahead of countries like China etc within 30 years...

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Originally posted by ******** Seplling don't demonstrate intelligence and educatoin - knowing does.

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Originally posted by Clovis And how much has the price of gas gone down? So you think that the solution to high gas prices is drilling costly shale reserves from which the real fruits of production won't be seen for another 25-30+ years? Not in 45 years when we run out of proven reserves AND shale reserves after the ice caps have melted.

Where do you get the figure of 25 to 30+ years before the fruits of production will be seen? How will we run out of proven reserves in 45 years? The data showed that we have enough to be energy independant for 182 years.

I'm saying use what we have (not just the shale, but what we can directly drill for now in the OCS and ANWAR) which is more than enough, and at the same time we can invest in the alternatives. With lower feul costs, the economy will run much better all around, and people will be more likely to invest in the alternatives.

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Originally posted by Krypton Tell that to T. Boone Pickens, an oil man with some real sense....

You're right... Pickens does have real sense:

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Originally posted by The17sss Where do you get the figure of 25 to 30+ years before the fruits of production will be seen? How will we run out of proven reserves in 45 years? The data showed that we have enough to be energy independant for 182 years.

proven reserves = not shale

Think about how long it will take to start an entire oil shale extraction industry in this country. We're not going to see a noticeable impact on oil prices for years. By then the economy will have had to find a way to adapt to the higher prices, it already is.

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I'm saying use what we have (not just the shale, but what we can directly drill for now in the OCS and ANWAR) which is more than enough, and at the same time we can invest in the alternatives.

OCS, ANWR, already showed you those do not have enough oil to put much a dent in our usage. The economy can and will adapt to higher prices.

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With lower feul costs, the economy will run much better all around, and people will be more likely to invest in the alternatives.

Yeah, in the same way that they've been more willing to invest in alternatives given the low fuel costs of the past 25 years... We've just FINALLY raised fuel efficiency standards for automobiles...after 32 years...in the year TWO THOUSAND SEVEN.

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Originally posted by ******** Seplling don't demonstrate intelligence and educatoin - knowing does.

There's a reason shale oil hasn't been developed in the 100+ years we've known it's existed.

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Extracting oil from the shale is no simple task. The earliest attempts to extract the oil utilized an environmentally unfriendly process known as "retorting." Stated simply, retorting required mining the shale, hauling it to a processing facility that crushed the rock into small chunks, then extracted a petroleum substance called kerogen, then upgraded the kerogen through a process of hydrogenation (which requires lots of water) and refined it into gasoline or jet fuel. But the difficulties of retorting do not end there, as my colleague, Byron King explains: "After you retort the rock to derive the kerogen (not oil), the heating process has desiccated the shale (OK, that means that it is dried out). Sad to say, the volume of desiccated shale that you have to dispose of is now greater than that of the hole from which you dug and mined it in the first place. Any takers for trainloads of dried, dusty, gunky shale residue, rife with low levels of heavy metal residue and other toxic, but now chemically-activated crap? (Well, it makes for enough crap that when it rains, the toxic stuff will leach out and contaminate all of the water supplies to which gravity can reach, which is essentially all of 'em. Yeah, right. I sure want that stuff blowin' in my wind.) Add up all of the capital investment to build the retorting mechanisms, cost of energy required, cost of water, costs of transport, costs of environmental compliance, costs of refining, and you have some relatively costly end-product."

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/OilShale.html

A sustainable technology seems fairly evasive, and to a large degree theoretical at this point. It may happen, but I don't think it's the answer we should be looking for.

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