Oh boy.
 

Hydro is more problematic from, e.g., Indian rights and endangered species protections issues, than it might seem. Not all that "clean."

Oh boy.
 

Forget about wind. Too many birds smashing into the blades on wind farms.

aV

Oh boy.
 

and here's what fucked up about solar- at first because the ozone is depleted and greenhouse effect there'll be plenty sunshine BUT once we switch over pollution is solved then the ozone rebuilds and greenhouse effect goes away and then there's not enough sunshine anymore. catch 22,

Stability in the MidEast
 

Serious question, Hank.

You believe that Clinton should have done something more to attack al Qaeda, and that because he didn't 9/11 is his fault -- right?

What do you think he should have done?

Were any Republicans calling for him to do whatever that is?

Did Bush propose that during the 2000 campaign?

And if the threat was so clear and so obvious as you seem to think, why didn't Bush do anything about it during his first 8 months in office?

I mean these as serious questions, though I doubt you'll give straight answers.

Oh boy.
 

Saudi Arabia has long been aware that if oil prices get too high, there will be more pressure for efficiency and alternatives that will be detrimental to oil prices in the future. Since Saudi is one of the few countries that is likely to continue pumping at current volumes for a long period of time, this is their particular concern, and so they have long worked to manipulate prices to find the right balance point.

In other words, you already trust this process to politicians -- but to Saudi politicians, who are likely serving a different constituency with different concerns.

I'll leave the comment about the entire community of non-oil financed climate scientists (what you call "the global warming crowd").

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We should use nuclear, as well as developing other alternatives.

But these are long-term proposals, as are things like fuel efficiency standards. Right now we are trying to fix the leaky roof while the raining, which leads to stupid and desperate proposals like the $100 check to everyone....

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Aren't Kennedy and Keary trying to stop wind proposals?

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Agreed, but the same crowd that is kooing about global warming and oil dependency is also blocking new nuke building.

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yes, and blocking nuke proposals.

i blame fringe.

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indian rights? what are those? they lost.

what about human rights to clean air?

Oh boy.
 

Those are three different crowds. They each have some of the same people. But the fact that irrational people agree with rational people on some items does not make those items irrational.


ETA: "kooing"? Is it your view that things are going just swimmingly, and that we don't need to be concerned with oil dependency or global warming or anything else? That we should just continue eliminating government interference in the energy markets* by, say, eliminating the CAFE standards instead of making them more rigorous?


*I mean US government. The governments of Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. will stay plenty involved, of course.

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A. Interesting note, that many petrologists are giving serious credence to the thesis that the Saudis have far smaller reserves than we think. They may no longer have the ability to throttle down the price by seriously bumping production.

B. You do realize that this was all tongue in cheek, right? I just figured that, if we're all dumb enough to take seriously politicians whose response to rising gasoline prices is "let's send them a $100 check", then this would also count as serious discourse.

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Mostly Kennedy. They would be unsightly from his compound.

Seriously.

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Citgo is owned by PDVSA. However, PDVSA is not fully integrated. It has production in Venezuela and it markets in the US through Citgo. However, its refining capacity is minimal, and conducted mostly through joint ventures.

I don't recall offhand if Marathon is now owned by Ashland or not, but if you're too lazy to google, I'm too lazy to argue.

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Hydrogen cells work off of water. Their emissions are called "steam." Solar is too expensive and cumbersome to make the effort to power vehicles with it. However, anybodywho has ever had a solar calculator should be able to intuit that the technology can be made to work on a small scale. Maybe at $8/gallon, it will become cost-efficient to finally get serious with solar.

I don't think we're ever going to be able to comletely wean ourselves from hydrocarbons. But as the resource becomes more expensive (and more dangerous to obtain) we will see more applications of renewaable resource technology. And the majors will probably be at the forefront of bringing them to us.