you forgot one. Oil is slippery and yucky... ;) Seriously though, we have to wean ourselves off of the imported oil. Of course I completely agree that in order to do that we have to find an alternative to that oil. Up here in the northern heartland we're beginning to see a pretty good growth in Ethanol production. Of course the problem with that is that the energy expended to create it is nearly as much or more than that created. Not exacly a winning situation.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
Seth, it would be interesting to ferret out how many of our current problems are due to a neglect from the prior administration. For example, how does how our refining capacity now compare to say 1992?
From what I hear, no new gasoline refineries have been built in 20 years. Since businesses don't plan 20 years into the future, ensuring future capacity is in place becomes of the responsibility of the government, the only entity that can talk e.g. 75 years into the future (e.g. FICA) while keeping a straight face.
At a risk of a shout-down from Robert108, I think there is a place for government interference in the market. Not putting policies in place to renew key infrastructural resources like oil & gas refineries is poor governance in my opinion.
Where R108 and I diverge on this is that, while we agree a free-market system is optimal in some sense, I think the FMS is optimal primarily for short-term decisions. (When you define "optimize" you need to define what it is "optimal" for.) Government needs to start getting involved as the consequences of business practice become longer and longer termed.
This could be applied as equally to oligarchies like the automotive industry. Short-term thinking and the inherent lack of long-term planning exhibited by a free market system have led to an overproduction of SUVs. The market will correct itself. However, the correction could have been dramatically softened by governmental policies that discouraged the production and sale of oversized gas-guzzleing vehicles (e.g., higher vehicle tax on gas-guzzling sports vehicles).
robert108
· 3 years ago
docdave: It was also a single incident off the California coast in 1969(!) that triggered the panic that resulted in the cessation of offshore oil drilling. Very sad.
docdave
· 3 years ago
Having been associated with various environmental groups over the years, I can assert that our oil dependancy is at least partially due to environmental laws that place impossible restrictions on exploration and alternate energy sources. Yes, Carrick, it is also environmental considerations that have made it difficult to build new refining capacities as well. i.e. refineries polute the air. The so-called clean energy resources, air and solar, have very limited capacity and usage so what else is available? The meltdown panic of Three-Mile Island effectively shutdown all nuclear power plant activity in this country and still has basically killed any future plant construction. If the construction of nuclear power plants had continued over the past 30 years, a major portion of the nations electrical needs could have been provided by these power plants that never got built. On the oil and gas exploration position, not withstanding the potential oil reserves in Alaska, there is also potential reserves off our coasts in both shallow and deep water that are not being explored and/or developed because of environmental restrictions.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
DocDave, I agree with your comment on the effects of overzealous environmentalism.
There are lots of choices out there by the way. The best long-term solution for consumer & most industry energy needs is solar.
We receive about 1400 kWatts of power of direct solar radiation per square meter on the ground. That works out to 1400*(6.4e6)^2*pi = 2x10^17 watts of solar power for the entire Earth. That's 200 thousand trillion watts. Average electric power consumption, human race is on the order of a few TW.
If we could capture 0.001 % of this power, our power problems would be history.
There are two issues that need work:
1) conversion to electricity or other usable forms of energy (e.g., thermal) especially less expensive manufacturing techniques. 2) storage mechanisms (e.g., improved battery design, hydrogen fuel cells etc)
Neither of these has gotten the attention they deserve in the last 30 years (at least).
There are plenty of applications where immediate power needs are far greater than can be answered with solar energy. Thus, I still would have liked to have seen nuclear power get developed, especially smaller, safer, cleaner reactor designs that could be used on mobile platforms (think rocket engines and other propulsion systems).
robert108
· 3 years ago
docdave and Carrick: The real solution to the energy problem is to take public utilities off the govt teat and put energy in the market. We will then know the real cost of energy, and will make the proper decisions as to the nature and structure of our energy needs. I have long felt that the present highly centralized "energy industry" is wasteful and inefficient. Covering large amounts of the Earth's surface to feed a centralized distribution system is probably not a good idea.
docdave
· 3 years ago
Carrick, no problem with solar energy. The best solution is to have individual home or business solar units independant from the power grid. The roofs of homes and businesses would be ideal places for solar panels inplace or in addition to shingles. The problems with that have to do with energy storage for times when the sun energy was not available (nights, extreme clouds, etc.). Large heated water reserves have been suggested but what is needed is something that can be more easily converted to electrical energy. The answer may lie in the fuel cells which would store excess solar energy for use when the solar energy was not available.
I think that most of the basic principles for solar energy have already been proven at the laboratory level and some are actually in operation at a minor scale. What might be affecting major production could be cost, reliability and environmental considerations.
EdMcGon
· 3 years ago
We need to get away from oil consumption for no other reason than terrorism. As long as we are sending money to the Middle East, we are funding our own destruction. I fully support alternative energy sources.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
Robert 108:
We will then know the real cost of energy, and will make the proper decisions as to the nature and structure of our energy needs. I have long felt that the present highly centralized "energy industry" is wasteful and inefficient. Covering large amounts of the Earth's surface to feed a centralized distribution system is probably not a good idea.
I have no idea what you are trying to advocate here.
You either need distribution lines to individual houses, or you need a local power source, such as solar energy. Unless you invent a working cold fusion system, there isn't any other alternative.
In the case, of solar panels a typical house's needs can be met by a 4x8 panel of high-efficiency solar cells. (One roof panel.) Put in some batteries and a power regulator and you've got self-sufficiency. The problem is the cost is too high (it's still a lot cheaper to tap into the grid.)
If you are using a distribution network, how do you propose keeping the distribution system from being centrally controlled? Remember that electricity isn't like oil---it travels all the way across the country in about 10 milliseconds. Without a centrally controlled network, there are huge problems with individual producers adjusting the supply at their own whim. (Think about the rolling blackout that started in Ohio & ended up affecting the mid- and northeast United States and southeastern Canada.)
docdave
· 3 years ago
It's possible that the answer to our energy needs rests in the 'free enegy' concept first proposed and supposedly demonstated by Tesla. The concept states that "every region of space is awash with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lengths. Each wave always has at least some energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the known universe!"
If you do a google on 'free energy' you'll get a gizillion hits so there are a lot of people looking at it. There have also been conspiracy stories that claim the free energy devicez have been created and suppress by (Loud trumpet blast!!) the oil industry. Anyway some form of 'free energy' might be a useful alternate energy source.
robert108
· 3 years ago
Carrick: You make all my points. Individual energy is "too expensive" because it has to compete in the market with subsidized, centralized energy. If we made a level playing field, it might not be "too expensive" and we would properly ration our energy use. Centralized systems are also vulnerable to terrorists.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
Robert108:
If we made a level playing field, it might not be "too expensive" and we would properly ration our energy use.
I don't know if that's true, though it would be nice if it were. However, you haven't addressed the fundamental physics issues with an uncontrolled electric power grid, that is, how you would maintain the physics requirements for set production levels from producers or requirements for demand levels from consumers. This is an extremely huge issue.
Without addressing that issue, you really aren't proposing anything of a practicable nature.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
DocDave:
It's possible that the answer to our energy needs rests in the ‘free enegy' concept first proposed and supposedly demonstated by Tesla.
When discussing Tesla, you need to keep in mind that he predated modern physics for the most part. By modern days standards, many of his ideas are a bit on the quacky side, as is most of the hubbub about extracting free energy from the vacuum.
I'm quite familiar (being a fizzlecist myself) with the concept of "free energy". Without some general-relativistic mechanism, it would be very hard to access this free energy in practice. (It's free, but not for the taking.)
robert108
· 3 years ago
Carrick: You assume a "grid", but what if the grid were unnecessary? I have apparently upset you with my radical proposal to heal the presently sick energy industry. Oh, well!
Carrick
· 3 years ago
Robert108:
Carrick: You assume a "grid", but what if the grid were unnecessary? I have apparently upset you with my radical proposal to heal the presently sick energy industry. Oh, well!
Hmm? What makes you think that I'm upset? Though you've not answered the question. You must be a lawyer: You never answer any question, who's answer would cast a negative light on any assertion you are making at a given time.
Anyway, I am just posing a rational question: How are you going to make it work without a centrally controlled grid? It would be one hell of an engineering feat.
robert108
· 3 years ago
Carrick: I thought I made it clear, but here goes again: It takes a lot of engineering to run a huge grid, but as docdave proposed, what if you had individual homeowners with solar panels on their roof, and some efficient batteries in the basement? No grid, no engineering. If you don't assume a grid, and if you don't jigger with the cost of electricity with govt subsidies and govt-controlled energy "companies", you can design energy with a clean sheet of paper. Is that clear enough for you? No huge infrastructure, no generating stations, no hydroelectric dams, no coal and oil fired generating facilities, no wires, no towers to support them, and no acreage to house all the infrastructure. We might even be able to support an individualistic energy program with the tax and bond savings. Of course, the political class would take a big hit, but then that's just another advantage from my point of view. Newer technology will make this not only possible, but desirable. Just because we have always done it with a monster grid doesn't mean we should continue with that. We would also use a lot less oil. Let's do it right this time.
robert108
· 3 years ago
Carrick: Now we have a thinking process going on. I have been thinking about a decentralized energy system for quite a few years. Since I'm primarily an economist, not an engineer, my approach is to change the way we allot our resources, not with the nuts and bolts of it. I just like to think about societal instutions from a clean sheet of paper, instead of trying to patch and adjust the present system. I think vulnerability to terrorism might be a factor for the next forty or fifty years, which will definitely change the cost of public transportation, for instance, and also public utils. It changes the cost factors, for one.
Carrick
· 3 years ago
Robert108:
but as docdave proposed. what if you had individual homeowners with solar panels on their roof, and some efficient batteries in the basement
Maybe if the indirect costs of the huge infrastructure & costs to society, the distributed energy method would work better. For instance (thinking about it), what are the indirect costs to society from paying higher per year fees on energy.
Just because we have always done it with a monster grid doesn't mean we should continue with that
Now see... this makes sense. I thought you were advocating a non-centrally controlled national electric distribution system driven by a free market. You can do that with oil pipelines, but it wouldn't work with electricity.
In terms of practicable solar energy on a massive scale: We still need to work on the manufacturing process for the high-efficiency solar cells, and a number of other elements. I think the problem can be solved this way, which is why I raised the issue of solar energy to start with, and the lack of a cohesive national energy policy pushing technology in this direction.
The costs are high using current technology. I've estimated the initial outlay to be around 2 trillion dollars (slightly less than our national budget). Most of the cost is in the solar cells, which have expected lifetimes longer than the structures they would be serving. We couldn't do this on a whim (and it couldn't be done in a year due to a lack of manufacturing capacity amongst other reasons), but it would definitely transform our national landscape if it were done.
You can do the same by removing fixed telephone lines & relying on higher bandwidth microwave frequency communications. Then there really would be no grid.
Jordan
· 3 years ago
Hold your horses: solar won't reduce dependence on oil, because America hardly uses any oil to generate electricity!! Only 3% of U.S. electricity is generated from oil today. Set America Free has a blueprint for energy security that focuses on what can really be done.
Havoc
· 3 years ago
An Appropriate Exchange of Views
At a recent Christmas Dinner Party were some ultra libs from Berkeley who recently gave up honorable employment to work for a Kyoto feel good foundation trying to rally support from, politicos...they are up to "the Mayor of Seattle.
The mousey wife insulted us outright in the first ten minutes for having 4 productive kids ... because they drive Cars.
When I told them I had spent a summer with the Amish and would actually look forward to farming again with horses; along with the amount of guns and knowledge to use them we possess, we were reasonable assured of self reliance to keep them and their starving masses leftists friends off our land should their policies ever be implemented.
Their best response ... well ... that's really hard work and I don't think you have any idea what it would be like to live that way.
My Response -- I've already done it ... and if you insult me or my wife again, complete strangers until 15 minutes ago, then I'll take you both outside and kick your skinny wrinkled childless asses all the way down the dark street.
Fortunately ... we were better friends of the hostess than they were.
John
· 1 year ago
The oil market is an open, world-wide market. To participate in this market I agree that oil should not be inhibited to only flow into the US. Howver, refining capacity does seem like an issue worth raising.
As prices rise people will find alternatives. However the transition will cause some pain.
All Comments
From what I hear, no new gasoline refineries have been built in 20 years. Since businesses don't plan 20 years into the future, ensuring future capacity is in place becomes of the responsibility of the government, the only entity that can talk e.g. 75 years into the future (e.g. FICA) while keeping a straight face.
At a risk of a shout-down from Robert108, I think there is a place for government interference in the market. Not putting policies in place to renew key infrastructural resources like oil & gas refineries is poor governance in my opinion.
Where R108 and I diverge on this is that, while we agree a free-market system is optimal in some sense, I think the FMS is optimal primarily for short-term decisions. (When you define "optimize" you need to define what it is "optimal" for.) Government needs to start getting involved as the consequences of business practice become longer and longer termed.
This could be applied as equally to oligarchies like the automotive industry. Short-term thinking and the inherent lack of long-term planning exhibited by a free market system have led to an overproduction of SUVs. The market will correct itself. However, the correction could have been dramatically softened by governmental policies that discouraged the production and sale of oversized gas-guzzleing vehicles (e.g., higher vehicle tax on gas-guzzling sports vehicles).
The so-called clean energy resources, air and solar, have very limited capacity and usage so what else is available? The meltdown panic of Three-Mile Island effectively shutdown all nuclear power plant activity in this country and still has basically killed any future plant construction. If the construction of nuclear power plants had continued over the past 30 years, a major portion of the nations electrical needs could have been provided by these power plants that never got built. On the oil and gas exploration position, not withstanding the potential oil reserves in Alaska, there is also potential reserves off our coasts in both shallow and deep water that are not
being explored and/or developed because of environmental restrictions.
There are lots of choices out there by the way. The best long-term solution for consumer & most industry energy needs is solar.
We receive about 1400 kWatts of power of direct solar radiation per square meter on the ground. That works out to 1400*(6.4e6)^2*pi = 2x10^17 watts of solar power for the entire Earth. That's 200 thousand trillion watts. Average electric power consumption, human race is on the order of a few TW.
If we could capture 0.001 % of this power, our power problems would be history.
There are two issues that need work:
1) conversion to electricity or other usable forms of energy (e.g., thermal) especially less expensive manufacturing techniques.
2) storage mechanisms (e.g., improved battery design, hydrogen fuel cells etc)
Neither of these has gotten the attention they deserve in the last 30 years (at least).
There are plenty of applications where immediate power needs are far greater than can be answered with solar energy. Thus, I still would have liked to have seen nuclear power get developed, especially smaller, safer, cleaner reactor designs that could be used on mobile platforms (think rocket engines and other propulsion systems).
I think that most of the basic principles for solar energy have already been proven at the laboratory level and some are actually in operation at a minor scale. What might be affecting major production could be cost, reliability and environmental considerations.
You either need distribution lines to individual houses, or you need a local power source, such as solar energy. Unless you invent a working cold fusion system, there isn't any other alternative.
In the case, of solar panels a typical house's needs can be met by a 4x8 panel of high-efficiency solar cells. (One roof panel.) Put in some batteries and a power regulator and you've got self-sufficiency. The problem is the cost is too high (it's still a lot cheaper to tap into the grid.)
If you are using a distribution network, how do you propose keeping the distribution system from being centrally controlled? Remember that electricity isn't like oil---it travels all the way across the country in about 10 milliseconds. Without a centrally controlled network, there are huge problems with individual producers adjusting the supply at their own whim. (Think about the rolling blackout that started in Ohio & ended up affecting the mid- and northeast United States and southeastern Canada.)
If you do a google on 'free energy' you'll get a gizillion hits so there are a lot of people looking at it. There have also been conspiracy stories that claim the free energy devicez have been created and suppress by (Loud trumpet blast!!) the oil industry. Anyway some form of 'free energy' might be a useful alternate energy source.
Without addressing that issue, you really aren't proposing anything of a practicable nature.
I'm quite familiar (being a fizzlecist myself) with the concept of "free energy". Without some general-relativistic mechanism, it would be very hard to access this free energy in practice. (It's free, but not for the taking.)
Hmm? What makes you think that I'm upset? Though you've not answered the question. You must be a lawyer: You never answer any question, who's answer would cast a negative light on any assertion you are making at a given time.
Anyway, I am just posing a rational question: How are you going to make it work without a centrally controlled grid? It would be one hell of an engineering feat.
Maybe if the indirect costs of the huge infrastructure & costs to society, the distributed energy method would work better. For instance (thinking about it), what are the indirect costs to society from paying higher per year fees on energy.
Now see... this makes sense. I thought you were advocating a non-centrally controlled national electric distribution system driven by a free market. You can do that with oil pipelines, but it wouldn't work with electricity.
In terms of practicable solar energy on a massive scale: We still need to work on the manufacturing process for the high-efficiency solar cells, and a number of other elements. I think the problem can be solved this way, which is why I raised the issue of solar energy to start with, and the lack of a cohesive national energy policy pushing technology in this direction.
The costs are high using current technology. I've estimated the initial outlay to be around 2 trillion dollars (slightly less than our national budget). Most of the cost is in the solar cells, which have expected lifetimes longer than the structures they would be serving. We couldn't do this on a whim (and it couldn't be done in a year due to a lack of manufacturing capacity amongst other reasons), but it would definitely transform our national landscape if it were done.
You can do the same by removing fixed telephone lines & relying on higher bandwidth microwave frequency communications. Then there really would be no grid.
Set America Free has a blueprint for energy security that focuses on what can really be done.
At a recent Christmas Dinner Party were some ultra libs from Berkeley who recently gave up honorable employment to work for a Kyoto feel good foundation trying to rally support from, politicos...they are up to "the Mayor of Seattle.
The mousey wife insulted us outright in the first ten minutes for having 4 productive kids ... because they drive Cars.
When I told them I had spent a summer with the Amish and would actually look forward to farming again with horses; along with the amount of guns and knowledge to use them we possess, we were reasonable assured of self reliance to keep them and their starving masses leftists friends off our land should their policies ever be implemented.
Their best response ... well ... that's really hard work and I don't think you have any idea what it would be like to live that way.
My Response -- I've already done it ... and if you insult me or my wife again, complete strangers until 15 minutes ago, then I'll take you both outside and kick your skinny wrinkled childless asses all the way down the dark street.
Fortunately ... we were better friends of the hostess than they were.
As prices rise people will find alternatives. However the transition will cause some pain.