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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (3945)	1/6/2009 4:30:27 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

Let me sum up the article: In fact, it reminds me of a song, Classical (Natural) Gas with multiple refrains of Drill, Drill, Drill!!! I don't know why you INSIST on believing that myself, or any other others who debate with you, are promoting imported oil. Especially when you're, in effect, promoting imported Lithium for your batteries (or subsidizing the domestic Lithium producers). Apparently subsidizing lithium producers doesn't bother you, but you can't justify subsidizing domestic oil AND NATURAL GAS exploration (even if only opening up government owned lands like ANWR). I am promoting a pragmatic and all-inclusive approach where our energy requirements are met in the broadest possible, yet commercially viable and competitive, manner from DOMESTIC SOURCES. So I really don't understand what your argument is, unless it's solely to argue. Hawk

To: RetiredNow who wrote (3945)	1/6/2009 4:32:06 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Good post.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (3945)	1/7/2009 12:32:57 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

A powerful argument to: Open up ALL domestic crude sources (including ANWR) Scrap environmental restrictions on developing domestic energy sources - oil, natural gas, coal, oil shale, nuclear, or other After all, if ending oil imports is that vital, let's make it the top priority and override green opposition to domestic energy development. We are extraordinarily rich in coal and oil shale reserves but are unable to make any new developments in these areas due to green opposition. We also know how to make nuclear power economically because we've doing it for decades. There is green opposition here too. Furthermore, there is certain to be major green opposition to the development of "alternatives" once they cease to be "alternatives" and are implemented on a major scale. "Alternatives" is a word used for stuff we don't use much now and which exist more in people's minds than on earth. Accordingly, there's little opposition expressed against them since there's only this benign vision in "alternatives" supporters minds. For "alternatives" to cease to be alternatives and became real meaningful sources of energy, there would be massive solar, wind, tidal, whatever projects and massive new energy tranmission and storage facilities. This would all have a big and negative environmental impact in the real world and would engender the same kneejerk green opposition our present energy sources do. ------------------------------------------------------------- Re. the oil externality argument: First, re. the alleged amount of $825B - Luft claims this would add $8.35 to a gallon of gas. If you do the math based on $825B, 12M barrels a day, and 42 gallons per barrel, you get $4.48 a gallon, not $8.35. What's the difference? No doubt he's only including the gasoline made from a barrel of oil and not allocating any of his alleged externality amount to other products like diesel fuel, heating oil, kerosene, chemicals, etc. I think he fails to make this allocation to other crude products because he is straining at everything possible to make the $ per gallon claim as big as possible. Next, is the $825 billion per year amount believable? No! I googled up the current budget for the entire defense department and its around $480 billion. To get to $825B, Luft must be including all our military costs plus things like veterans costs, homeland security, and who knows what. Thus the $825B amount is ridiculous and Luft is a honesty-challenged propagandist. To accept $825B, one would have to believe that if we ended oil imports, all hostilities in the world would end, world peace could be achieved, we could disband our army, marines, navy, air force, coast guard, homeland security, cia, etc. .... cue John Lennon's Imagine .... "and the wor-rrr-rld would live as one". This is bullshit! If you do buy the argument there are externalities involved in importing oil, we should use a reasonable number for this externality. I have no idea what a reasonable number would be, I just know Luft has grossly over-estimated it. But let's guess that its as big as $50 billion a year normalized. This would give you a per barrel amount of about $11 and a per gallon amount of about $.27 allocating it to all products produced from a barrel of crude. This externality could be "internalized" by imposing about a $10-11 per barrel fee on imports (though I don't think we could impose any such fee on imports from Canada and Mexico, our two largest foreign suppliers, due to NAFTA). That shouldn't bother anyone as those sources are pretty safe and we're defacto committed to the defense of both countries anyway since they're so near to us.