Cob Pile
Why should it be yours, all yours?
Pick any reason the US should own the oil in the Gulf that suits you, Stewart. Here are a few suggestions:
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By the Grace of God, it should be ours, all ours.
National territorial soveriegnty makes it ours, all ours.
A vote of Americans decides it should be ours, all ours.
Karl Rove's wicked schemes require that it be ours, all ours.
On orders from Gort, it must be ours, all ours.
Because I think so.
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Have you any better reason that would produce a different conclusion? Why should the oil not belong to the US?
it's irrelevant, all irrelevant ;)
Since the USA consumes some 7 billion barrels of oil per year, what difference is 15 billion barrels of oil really going to make? This assumes all 15 bbls are in fact recoverable too. Not likely. More likely they'd get 1-1.5 year's worth of oil. Also likely it would take 6 years from now to get it. All that development for that?
I'm afraid I don't see much point. Put your money to use on... ending suburbia and moving to a debt-free existense. Or even growing food locally (www.100milechallenge.com). Or hey by all means blow it all on your next hummer while the stock market crashes.
The USA is the largest debtor nation on earth. When the oil goes so does the world economy. This will crash the dollar and make it tough to live. I would hope that people start to see just how deep the hole is, not be eager for another shovel.
good luck
pretty funny walter spicer. nbc made a big deal about it on the news saying it would boost our reserves by 50%.
screw the reserves, I want it now.
whah !
good luck & bmc
Walter,Walter, you took the words right out of my mouth. Pin pricking the neo-con balloons is one of my joys and you jabbed them first on this issue. Boooo.
Anyway, the article I read stated the USA only usues 5.7 bullion barrels/year but that is nit picking. Your point is still valid.
PS: Don't criticize their love for hummers. I did that once and I was subjected a verbal assault equivalent to being attacked by a Warthog.
Canuckguy:
thanks for the update. I read 7 bill on the kunstler.com website, so 5.7 billion barrels a year isn't far off... it's still not going down though.
yeah, the hummer gets the bullseye a lot, but let's face it, it's a great target and remains the best symbol of Peak Oil stupidity out there. 10 mpg? Less? oink oink... Can't wait for gas prices to kill off that one... Later on, it might be good for a tree planter or portable garden/greenhouse in the next economy. I guess I'll have to brave the warthogs ;)
mike:
Holy smokes. If NBC is saying such a move would boost the reserves by 50% this is scary news not good news. But nobody sees that do they? You'd think they'd check their facts a bit! y'know.. even once. funny world this.
As a canadian I'm screwed by a useless conservative government too, but everyday I read about some small town or city in the USA that has either adopted the Oil Depletion Protocol or is experimenting with biodiesel,
(http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/
distributors/showstate.asp?st=KS)
...or figuring out how local value-based money systems are going to work instead of those based on debt. (ex: Ithaca hours) Really very admirable stuff.
Solutions exist, but we're too busy being cool. Our brains are not connected to our body actions running on autopilot.
It will come down to asking someone somewhere to stop driving. Anything but that, but that's about it. We can't but we must. Transportation is 98% of the oil/gas need. What to do?
With oil now depleting at 3-7% per year, my guess is a mix of railways and bicycles for best use of resources. Shipping or Rail for the big items, bikes for local travel.
One workable idea anyway. Not sexy (sorry), but it would work.
You are such typical liberal defeatists, CG & WS. Go backwards? I thought you cats were supposed to be bold, forward-thinking, can-do, progressive problem solvers. What I see here is fear of the future, surrender in the face of a tough problem, and the loss of advances already made.
You make yourselves appear to be fearful, anti-progress sissies. You would have us regress instead of progress. The only folks actively advocating a more drastic return to the past these days are the Mohammedan fanatics.
Bicycles, indeed. They will be really effective out here where towns are 100 miles apart and the wind makes 6' snow drifts at 20 degrees below zero. Our ancestors here in Nebraska had no cars. Bikes were available, but they chose to ride horses with built-in heaters. At least until their enlightened offspring could invent the Hummer for them.
PTG stated "At least until their enlightened offspring could invent the Hummer for them."
See,Walter, they love their Hummers.
PTG: We are not defeatists, we are worrywarts.
Phase out our dependence on oil,Simple.
America will have to "make do." We`ve done it b4 and we`ll do it again. Thats what makes america, america.
...the death of a hot rod.
I don't see anyone having to "make do" for lack of of oil around here. From the 10 people a day that ride the city busses in Omaha, to the hopped-up V-8 pickup trucks I see making jackrabbit starts at every stop light, everyone acts like there is plenty of fuel.
No worries, mate. The driving lamp is lit here in Nebraska.
ptg:
Thank you for your response. I'm not really thinking of pleasure driving, but rather how food will be transported to my local store. I'll try to outline my thoughts a bit...
If you think railways are derlict and useless now you'd be correct. Comparing the luxury of a hummer to a rickty railcar has no comparison and seems backward.
Right now the railways are in such a state of disrepair and neglect, that cities and towns are not connected together in any way efficiently, so that my "rosey" comments regarding rail and bicycles today cannot even happen. We are not so advanced at all as it turns out, and having these networks now would, in fact, be a step forward. They can be as luxurious as any car if we decide to make them that way.
rail works in -40C/-40F weather also. I think we'd both prefer taking the train than biking in that case!
I wouldn't want you to think this is a regression, but an appreciation of what has been successful in the past. It's just not a loner socially degrading exercise like our current car/ipod generation.
We have the Internet, and making that available at least during the day through solar or whatever would allow us to maintain our connections without travel and maybe even telecommute to work more often. Communication is the key to our future. Making that a platform for change would be progress.
So what to do? We have examples to dust off.... Other than new railway networks, we also have the Erie Channal system as an example of a non-road based transportation system.
This connects the eastern seaboard of the USA with Canada and up to the 1950s was the largest trading area in the world. I think it will be again. This is all water power. Would probably be wise to devote more lakeshore to wharfs and piers for trade as a backup to the dying trucking industry.
Consider: http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story...&
nav=menu216_10
This story is one year old but I like it because it's in arizona and it's about road repair. Pretty blahze, true, but with ashpalt(made from oil) going up and up in cost, fewer roads will be repaired. This kind of decision is true anywhere. Fewer trucks will be able to travel on those roads or risk having their axles break. How will goods be transported? What's our backup plan?
The waterway system is already there when we will need it. Not as fast a delivery, but something to appreciate again as never before. I know my own attitude to the waterway system has changed.
You point out quite accurately that our cities are too far apart. This is the case throughout North America. They will need to be closer together.
In the USA come oil crisis time, how will Phoenix or Las Vegas do? There will be many places that cannot exist without cheap energy.
Much of the lower and western USA was not so populated as it is today, and will in all likelihood return to the carrying capacity that existed years before WWII. Without cheap air conditioning and water I think it'll be pretty annoying.
Progress will come to be measured in realistic human adaptability, reinventing/invigorating what works, new urban design, and fun recycling technologies. Not in maintaining a wasteful deadend lifestyle.
Hope that helps
Walter
You are at least a dreamer, Walter; there are far too many weeping hand-wringers out there for my taste. But the problem with dreams is that they seldom come true.
The solutions you posit are all sensible, if only there were some powerful (probably external) force that could cause folks to go along with your sweeping vision. That has always been the ugly part of implementing dreams. Either you need to come up with a "new man" who agrees with your schemes, or you need a way to coerce the "old man" into compliance. Every utopian scheme requires a "new man" or an outside force to get going.
No matter what fine utopian suggestions you manage to convince our real-world legislators to pass into law (like: move our towns closer together, make us cough up to invest in trains), there will always be plenty of contrary, liberty-first folks who won't care to go along. Your utopia's jails will be full of cats as wouldn't recycle or who built hot-rods in their barns or turned up their thermostats too high. You will need more force behind your dreams than Stalin or Mao had, or you will need to invite Gort to earth to straighten us all out. Either way amounts to totalitarianism, something I think you wouldn't like.
You can paint a dreamy picture of the future as you would have it be, Walter, but your recipe for utopia needs a little pinch of practicality and a big dose of reality. I'm guessing you are a young man, Walter. When you are as old as I am and have seen how really wicked, stupid and contrary your fellow man can be, perhaps these troubling dreams of yours will stop.
Sound sad? Well, that is the way it is with the world. The future of humanity is, inescapably, a dead end. But that is no reason to weep and wring your hands. Life is too short for that. For now, live, try to let live and you'll learn to enjoy the ride.
Canuckguy: have you clicked on the picture of Katie Couric in the very next post? I'm interested to see how far you will go in finding females to be 'hot'.
I forgot, you are probably busy helping American Democrats in their efforts to censor the TV. Like grandma used to say, "Scratch a liberal, find a totalitarian tyrant."
PTG: Yeah, I just clicked it. It's not a pretty sight.
Now I must go back to censoring TV so the truth does not come out.
ptg:
The driving unifying global force will be (other than the making of toilet paper and mead) the gradual and not-so-gradual decline in liquid fuels, forcing us to live within our means for the first time in 150 years. Thusly tossing the hot-rod mechanic and weed grower into more useful enterprises.
As our economies of the world rely upon +2 to +5% growth per year, what of -2 to -5% ? Global depression? Sure, I'd like to get a Gort or two but simple solutions are just not in our future. This time is up. On to the next round!
I guess I'm in the middle, a young 35 with ideas of practical solutions. But I feel I'm on the razor's edge between generations. Those under my age I feel that they will be confused but okay. Those above will give up but be missed.
I hear you when you say you can't save them all, and sadly that'll always be true. (6 years of technical support can bring anyone down)
It takes about 3 months to 'get over' peak oil thinking and start thinking like a useful person again. What happens when people don't have the time to digest the facts? We tend to react badly or ignorantly. Nothing new there.
The only totalitarianism that bugs me now is the inability for the majority population anywhere to read, be mindful, or vote. They just want the latest Brad Pitt updates. The only tyrannts are of our own making.
What of 2015/2020? I'm thinking more a Turn of the Century model, with individual and important roles, like tailors, blacksmiths, doctors, carpenters etc with solar-powered Internet and more localized economies of scale. How we get there from here though bums me out a bit.
Hamlet: "O'Cursed world of spite,
If I was ever born to set it right"
Ever Hopeful
Walter
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