In reference to "running out" someday...

I have posted before that what concerns me is that most people think that all the oil coming out of the ground is going into gas tanks. How far from the truth...
Everything from vaseline to showerheads is related to petroleum products. Look around you RIGHT NOW at all the plastics you see - the keyboard and mouse you're using are made of petroleum-based materials. All sorts of chemicals. Home heating oils for Pete's sake. And not just here, but all over the world.

These OTHER commodities will also be in peril when the oil pumps start to slow - whenever that day comes.
Talk about inconvenience...

Wouldn't it be a crying shame to go 100 years from now and science finally finds the ultimate cure for cancer, but it requires huge amounts of crude refined a special way to produce a dosage for 1 cancer patient - and there we are with depleted reserves and no alternative supplies.
Lame example, but just trying to paint a picture... we may develop some signifact use for crude in decades to come, and find that we have "squandered" most of the available supplies during the 19th and 20th centuries in land barges.

Nevermind milk... Got CONSCIENCE?

 

Most plastics can be made out of corn and veggie oil these days. Its more expensive, but plastic was expensive once too. So the alternatives are sort of in place for non-fuel uses, waiting for when we need them.

Rubber comes from trees, and a lot of plastics come from rubber extracts. Its not all petrol.

 

Correct. They are even developing some unique materials from tobacco plants here at NCSU. This stuff make a phenomenal adhesive that is impervious to moisture. But as you stated, the cost is prohibitive right now for volume applications. Industry is still leaning on the cheap availability of crude. That's the jeopardy I'm pointing out.

I'd feel better if we were actively persuing the commercialization of some of the alternatives today. Why aren't we subsidizing soy bean production to allow infrastructure development of soy oil and protein for marketable materials, instead of subsidizing farmers NOT to grow anything? Corn for alcohol, ethel, or methyl products? Wheat and grains for oil or fibrous products?

Chris 96 WS6, you bring good points with the alternatives!
But why aren't we doing more to develop their use NOW?
$ methinks.

 

It's not just $, it is the ease with which oil is pumped, refined and shipped. It's not as easy to produce the same types of products from corn and vegatable oil on a mass scale. When the time comes that oil is no longer readily available, you'll see a paradigm shift in thinking AND technology that will allow us to persue another course to fulfill our needs. History repeats itself over and over about this very thing. You continue on your current course until something makes you change. Whether all the oil gets used up or something better, cheaper and faster comes along.

 

Ethanol is a very ineffective gasoline additive. It lowers mileage, creates vapor lock problems in warm climates and can't be shipped in existing gasoline pipelines. This necessitates a huge number of inefficient, small and local "ethanol blending plants" Methanol is an even worse proposition, since it poses a maintainence nightmare even in racing engines. I won't even discuss the topic of using cannolla oil as "bio-diesel."

The world doesn't need more agricultural subsidies, or increased agricultural runoff. Agribusiness is hardly the answer to environmental problems, or for that matter, resource depletion.

 

You just don't get it do you. I was speaking of freedom... the freedom to buy, use and enjoy any type of vehicle you want and need. And guess what - a lot of people DO buy big, heavy vehicles with safety in mind. Sure, Volvo's have nice crash ratings... when running INTO A WALL. But in the real world, it's a little more brutal. Big vehicles bully little ones. Occupants of the small vehicle in a collision take FAR more g's than those in the larger one. Mass is the great equalizer for safety. As for me? Sure, safety matters to me. And I'm glad my 04 CompG is safer than older cars. It happens though, I also like to drive fast, I like the feel of a quick, tight sedan flinging around a curve and blasting out of it while I snick to the next gear with my TapShift steering-wheel-paddles. And unlike you and other affluent folk with plentiful doting lifestyle prescriptions for the middle class, I don't have the luxury of being able to afford a big fleet of various vehicles to support my daily driving whims. So I get by with two Pontiacs and am having a blast, thank you, wasting gas with my foot flat to the floor at every possible opportunity

But I also understand the wishes of some, those SUV-commuting creeps you speak of, to be in a big vehicle all the time. I respect their wishes, if that's how they want to spend their own money. Unlike liberals, who feel a duty to push in on the freedom of others and regulate liberty (hmm... maybe 'liberal' is a misnomer or oxymoron?) -- I believe we all ought to be free to choose what we drive. Free to do so without fear that an eco-terrorist will visit a Hummer dealership and burn new vehicles to the ground as has been done recently, for example. Frankly I do not care why for example, a single friend of mine got a big ol' Yukon and used it as his daily commuter. He enjoyed it... so what if he thought it was a status vehicle? So what if he had fantasies of going on a big offroad expedition someday? That's his business - not mine.

 

Agreed.


On the latter, I'm in 100% agreement with you on that. Subsidies, just like corperate tax giveaways, is actual welfare (it also costs us far more than goverment programs commonly refered to as "welfare"). Why are we paying people not to grow certain things?

On the former subject, ethanol & methanol, the issue IMO is that they can be used to lower our dependence on foreign oil. It's far easier to tackle the problems associated with these fuels than to develop a whole new way of powering automobiles.

It's going to take some expense setting up a car's system to run on a fully ethanol or methanol fuel or a fuel that has a large percentage of this. But when you consider what it's going to take to set up a hydrogen refueling infrastructure as well as developing the technologies to make the powerplant cost efficient, vs simply changing the fuel and a car's fuel system and growing things people are being paid not to grow, I'd think it's a pretty good proposition.



As for other positions that we're going to run out of oil one day "and then where will we be?", I'm not too worried about us running out of oil. It's not like you are going to wake up Monday morning, and everyone is going to run out of oil at one time. You'll more likely see a few places run dry, and perhaps spread to other places over the course of decades.

As oil becomes less plentiful, the price will go up. As the price goes up, we will simply switch to the cheaper form of energy. If gasoline were to hit $10 per gallon, for example, Methanol at say $6 per gallon, or CNG at an even lower price will become the favored fuel. People will always go for convience and lowr cost. That's the fatal mistake with every alternative fuel effort today. There simply isn't any real advantage.

We should end our dependence on foreign oil though. It allows other countries, some not very favorible to us, to control our economy. IMHO, the middle east would become a far more hospitable place if the US were able to chop it's oil consumption to what we were able to produce, with other fuels filling in the rest. We actually get relatively modest amounts of oil from the middle east (most of ours comes from Alaska, Venzeuela, Mexico, and a handful of other small countries), but the extra oil we'd leave on the market will drive prices down something fierce.

 

Ethanol is probably the biggest scam ever perpetrated on this country. It is a pure pork barrel subsidy for farmers and ADM.

One gallon of ethanol requires more than one gallon of fossil fuel to create.

 

IIRC, Canada is #1 or #2 on that list.

I've recently read an article that puts cost of Ethanol in the mid-upper $2.xx/gallon. Combine that with the reduced fuel efficiency, and it's not real compelling. I'd be willing to partially subsidize that, but not at the level required to kiss off foreign oil.
100% agree. It bugs the crap out of me that conservation and efficiency are unmentioned footnotes in the pursuit of that goal. That aggravates me more than anything. We could eliminate 10% of our consumption without even batting an eye, without reducing anyone's standard of living, simply by eliminating inefficiencies in our daily lives, at work and home.

Todd

 

I agree completely!

 

Congrats on your car. It's great you're satisfied with it. Let's hope ProudPony doesn't start dressing you down for not making do with a five-passenger Civic ... after all it's your duty to be responsible with our precious fuel....

How noble of you to think of the safety of others. I always feel a little safer though, when we go for a ride in my dad's extended cab Silverado - and it's comforting to know he's putting his own family's safety first. Too cheap to drive a big vehicle? Too bad for you and your fam I guess.

How's collision avoidance so much more difficult in a big vehicle? Stopping distances aren't much more. Visibility is better. And we know who will be hurting more if the other vehicle is smaller.

You sure you want to try and use the above articles to bolster your argument? The first thing that struck me about link #1 was the "CNN" (Clinton News Network ) in it. And true to form, this famously liberal news source tried their darndest to serve their socialist agenda. So they compared 3500 lb SUV's to 3500 lb cars. Should anyone be surprised the SUV's of the same weight as a corresponding car have a higher rollover tendency? How profound! Not. It misses my point though about MASS. A HEAVIER vehicle has a built-in advantage in actual collisions, a point carefully avoided in this heavily biased article. It has a close brush with truth and objectivity when the author observes how many occupant deaths in SUV rollover accidents can be attributed to lack of seatbelt use and the young demographics of small SUV ownership. But that's about as close as it comes. The rest of the article flails about how many rollovers SUV's have (oh... hey what about full-size pickups? no commentary there). In fact I'm surprised the author didn't also send the reader on a little guilt trip about how dangerous your SUV is for OTHER motorists as it tumbles along the median or ditch

The second link (warning: from a university) looks like a human-arts class project for a college sophomore... not enough there to even comment on especially since it follows the same silly lines of the CNN article.

Did you even read the third link you referenced? Here's a quote, DIRECTLY supporting the points I've been making:

Indeed. Maybe the 'Trucks & SUV's Kill' section heading caught your eye. I suppose this is the same logic that liberals use when they try to ban guns, as if a gun is just going to jump up off a table and kill someone. Guns don't kill... people do. Same with any vehicle. The article confirms what I said earlier about relative risks in dissimilar vehicles:

This lask link, to suv.org (hosted and maintained by the arch-liberal Friends of the Earth, www.foe.org , who also host the absurd www.meatrix.com to fight evil industrial agriculture) is so biased it's hardly worth reading. However it does confirm once again what I have said, that occupants of a larger vehicle are less likely to die in a collision.

So thanks for posting evidence for me... saved me some time

 

It would be cheaper for all of us in the long run though if we didn't wait for that to happen. You know how much inflation will kill our wallets in two decades if your theory is true? I'd rather move to South Africa and carry baskets on my head than pay $5 for a loaf of bread.

If we introduce an inftrastructure of alternative energy sooner, it will be a little more expensive for us to power our vehicles for a while, but prices will drop sooner, and certainly level off at a low mark before it would if we just waited for oil fields to dry. IMHO that would be one of the biggest mistakes in not only human history, economics history also.

 

I'll be sure to borrow my Dad's Peterbilt 379X if I'm ever in your neighborhood, just to be sure I have a leg up on you.

Thank you for being part of the problem. You sound like a RainSoft salesman, with that "I guess you don't care about your family" line. They're in no danger, as I'll be able to swerve out of the way of your battering ram.

I guess you can ignore the IIHS and NHTSA data in those sites, because they're liberal minded, eh? Typical Rush-like response- discard the message due to unrelated association. You hittin' the Oxy with him?

How about a rant that's more up your alley?-
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA465.html

This eludes to some of the problems, and even contains some damning statistics, perhaps without knowing it. Rollovers (what do I care if you kill yourself in a rollover, right??) account for 2.5% of the accidents, yet over 10,000 people died in them. Lessee, only just over 40,000 people die in ALL accidents each year. So, 2.5% of the accidents in pickups and SUVs are causing 25% of ALL traffic deaths for ALL vehicles. Some safety, eh?

That article also eludes to the problem of responsible use. I couldn't care less how you affect you. I'm worried about how you affect me. Is that the more self-centered slant you are looking for?

EDIT- need some more? http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1334

http://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/200...atimes_suv.pdf

Todd

 

So the real question is, where are we going to get all of this "alternative energy"? Can we grow enough crops to produce enough ethonal or methonal for world demand and also enough food to feed the world population? Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source, so we need energy to create it as well.

 

I wouldn't worry as much about the cost aspects of gasoline in the closing days of petroleum economy. If the American consumer was willing to pay European prices for gasoline ($4-to-6/gallon), it would be economic to refine gasoline from coal.

In WWII, the Germans developed a complex, if workable, way of "refining" gasoline from coal. They were forced to do it when the Soviets retook the Romanian oilfields, and the project was entirely functional - not an experiment. It all ended when the 8th Air Force destroyed the refinery, an easy enough task because Germany's entire capacity was localized in a single facility. This successful raid, as much as anything, was the reason why the Germans literally "ran out of gas" during the "Battle of the Bulge."

Of course the **** weren't exactly concerned about the environment, and the energy consumption of the 3rd Reich would be tiny compared to the needs of the modern United States. Still, it's amazing what you can do if the chips are down...

Thank you for your advice, President Carter.

The real problem is the legacy of Post-Vietnam political weakness that has allowed OPEC to run rough-shod over our country. OPEC is an entity which inhibits free trade and seeks to manipulate prices. If it was based in the United States, the anti-trust laws would have put it out of business in a matter of months. As it is, the member states of OPEC (for the most part) are countries where the "rule of law" doesn't really exist.