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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (366796)	1/14/2008 12:28:32 PM
From: SilentZ	Respond to of 1571764

Strange... I agree with most of something you posted. -Z

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (366796)	1/14/2008 2:35:41 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571764

But the hype doesn't match reality. Remember, the two largest suppliers of crude to the U.S. market are Canada and Mexico -- neither exactly known as a belligerent terrorist haven. This comment is absolutely meaningless. Its so typical of the near sightedness of some people on this topic. The oil supply is made up of many nations....and is pretty much inelastic at this point. So it doesn't matter whether we get it from Canada or Russia or Iran.....its all part of the same oil supply. If we demand a lot of oil, we use up that total supply and it doesn't matter where we get it from.......the countries that harbor terrorists benefit as much as does Canada and Mexico. So yes, Virginia, we are helping to fund the terrorists. The new energy bill requires that the country produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. That sounds like a lot of fuel, but put it in perspective: The United States uses more than 320 billion gallons of oil per year, of which nearly 200 billion gallons are imported. So biofuels alone cannot wean the United States off oil. Let's say the country converted all the soybeans grown by American farmers into biodiesel; that would provide only about 1.5 percent of total annual U.S. oil needs. And if the United States devoted its entire corn crop to producing ethanol, it would supply only about 6 percent of U.S. oil needs. I do agree with that......in fact I think ethanol production dependent on corn is a huge mistake. Its going to take a variety of alternative energy sources to wean us off oil.......solar, wind, wave etc. And there have to be other sources for ethanol. 3 Energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries. Fans of energy independence argue that if the United States stops buying foreign energy, it will deny funds to petro-states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Hugo Ch¿vez's Venezuela. But the world marketplace doesn't work like that. Oil is a global commodity. Its price is set globally, not locally. Oil buyers are always seeking the lowest-cost supplier. So any Saudi crude being loaded at the Red Sea port of Yanbu that doesn't get purchased by a refinery in Corpus Christi or Houston will instead wind up in Singapore or Shanghai. Here we go.....he just disproved his first myth. 5 Energy independence will mean a more secure U.S. energy supply. To see why this is a myth, think back to 2005. After hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast, chewing up refineries as they went, several cities in the southeastern United States were hit with gasoline shortages. Thankfully, they were short-lived. The reason? Imported gasoline, from refineries in Venezuela, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Throughout the first nine months of 2005, the United States imported about 1 million barrels of gasoline per day. By mid-October 2005, just six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, those imports soared to 1.5 million barrels per day. This doesn't make sense.......the only way this country can get energy independent is to have oil become a smaller source of its energy consumption. It may take years but it has to be done......its not whether it can be done, we have no choice.....we are near or at peak oil. And once you accomplish energy independence, any disruption in oil will have a minor impact on the economy and the country. Having said that, its nice that you provided an article that makes us think.