Gas Price up 67% Since Obama Elected!!

towermonkey wrote: Hydrogen is the direction we should be looking.

http://spie.org/documents/Newsroom/Impo ... -02-26.pdf

LOL, what would the cost be to generate a small fraction of 94.578 quadrillion BTU's?

And what is the cost now in blood and treasure? If we focused on bringing renewables up to a point where they were feasible WHILE pursuing drilling to cover the gap, we could solve this, but there are always people who feel the need to scoff at what is obviously in their best interests. Pretty little pie chart though. Did it take a lot of effort to Google that?

I agree with NC, hydrogen is not going to be the magic pill some hope it will.

Truth is, there ISN'T one. It's pretty scary to me how most people just go blithely on, whether demanding we drill more or demanding we conserve more (neither of which is going to get us out of this mess) both expecting that when the oil runs out, somehow technology will save us and we can go right on driving our SUVs, spinning the electric meters on our homes, and watching the "global economy" deliver us with plastic pumpkins from China and grapes in January from Chile. Ain't gonna happen, folks.

The arguments between political factions about whether we drill faster or conserve more don't address the issues, they are just different ways of denying them.

AspenValley wrote: I agree with NC, hydrogen is not going to be the magic pill some hope it will.

Truth is, there ISN'T one.

Technology will provide. It might be a painfull transition. It may be expensive, but energy is out there in many forms.

AspenValley wrote:

Science Chic wrote: It's the Dems AND Reps faults for continuing our oil dependence, even though every president since at least Nixon has called for creating our energy independence in pretty little speeches.

The reason it never goes farther than "pretty little speeches" is because the only way we could have "energy independence" would involve changing almost everything about the way we live and do business. Lots of sacrifices, lots of inconvenience, lots of investment diverted from more profitable endeavers into new technology that might not at first return much. And in all fairness, so long as there is still cheap oil out there, that would put us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. The problem with playing it the way we have is that when oil gets too expensive to base our whole way of life on it, there is going to be HELL to pay. We won't have made the adjustments either psychologically, economically or technologically and we may be in for a fast-crash scenario when TSHTF on the end of the Oil Age.

You are quite right. Frankly, I see no way that the US can become oil independent even if we were to drill in all the sparsely or virgin sedimentary basins available to us as long as we persist in our current life style. The ONLY alternative is changing from an oil-based energy system to another. Hydrogen my have potential, but until we can harvest hydrogen in space as opposed to manufacturing it by investing energy to crack water into its component atoms, this will not work. I'm thinking that a the next energy system capable of meeting increased energy gluttony lies in atomic energy of some sort.

Thus in line with the blame game of this entitled thread, it isn't any one elected official's fault, but the fault of our own gluttony and unwillingness to surrender any of our conveniences. And yes, I'm as guilty as you my neighbors.

Nobody that matters wrote:

AspenValley wrote: I agree with NC, hydrogen is not going to be the magic pill some hope it will.

Truth is, there ISN'T one.

Technology will provide. It might be a painfull transition. It may be expensive, but energy is out there in many forms.

Technology will provide in some sense, but not in the sense of some seamless transition from oil to new technology. The "drilling now" faction will only make it happen faster, but the "let's conserve" faction don't seem to realize that if we cut our oil usage, the slack will be picked up, and QUICKLY by emerging economies like China so we're screwed either way.

Nope, this ship is going down, and when it does, there is nowhere near the amount of alternative available in a developed form to even keep the economy from dying a nasty horrible death, let alone invest in a lot of pretty new technology. And that's not even going into the fact that most alternative technologies are running up against resource shortages ALREADY, before we have to consider relying on them alone. I don't see any good ending to this.

towermonkey wrote: And what is the cost now in blood and treasure? If we focused on bringing renewables up to a point where they were feasible WHILE pursuing drilling to cover the gap, we could solve this, but there are always people who feel the need to scoff at what is obviously in their best interests. Pretty little pie chart though. Did it take a lot of effort to Google that?

I do not google worth a darn, it came up at a thread on another site. I believe we already spend large sums on R&D. At what point does it become a waste? There are only so many bright people capable of making the kind of progress that will make a difference.

neptunechimney wrote: There are only so many bright people capable of making the kind of progress that will make a difference.

Sometimes I think the "Frankenstein" movies had it right, the greatest risk to humanity are the brightest innovators. If everyone were "average" we wouldn't developed a civilization and technology that is too far ahead of itself to be sustainable. Some people talk about the danger of "overshoot", meaning the population explosion due to technology bringing higher standards of living. I'm more worried about "over-reach" of the kind we saw in the Gulf oil spill. We develop ways to do things that are at the very edge of our competence and when they fail, they bring horrific consequences. Might have been better if we had all stayed down on the farm.

AspenValley wrote:

Nobody that matters wrote:

AspenValley wrote: I agree with NC, hydrogen is not going to be the magic pill some hope it will.

Truth is, there ISN'T one.

Technology will provide. It might be a painfull transition. It may be expensive, but energy is out there in many forms.

Technology will provide in some sense, but not in the sense of some seamless transition from oil to new technology. The "drilling now" faction will only make it happen faster, but the "let's conserve" faction don't seem to realize that if we cut our oil usage, the slack will be picked up, and QUICKLY by emerging economies like China so we're screwed either way.

Nope, this ship is going down, and when it does, there is nowhere near the amount of alternative available in a developed form to even keep the economy from dying a nasty horrible death, let alone invest in a lot of pretty new technology. And that's not even going into the fact that most alternative technologies are running up against resource shortages ALREADY, before we have to consider relying on them alone. I don't see any good ending to this.

To gain perspective, one can view hydrocarbons as a limited resource and thereby draw comparison with the ecologic principle associated with limited resources. The world is in competition for this limited resource and the outcome of most of those competitions is the elimination (death) of inferior competitors. Mutualism is rarely the case. In other words, its going to get very ugly. Only a transition to alternative energy use will mitigate the ugliness that awaits our children (who, by the way I see as totally conditioned to continue our gluttony for oil). Walking a mile is too much of a strain when you can hop in the car and be taken there instead. This is one of the most wasteful uses of energy period- cold vehicle engines over short hauls.

The pres. is about to speak about energy prices per CNBC,1031 local time.