Humor me, what’s wrong with drilling?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Steve N, May 14, 2022.

  1. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This makes no sense to me. Do you think it's in a steady state now, or do you want to try to engineer it to be one?

    First of all, there isn't a single energy input. There are myriad inputs. You can't call it "the input" as if the current stability isn't a result of the average of the variability of each individual input. Second, humans are great at imagining that things are closed systems (in order to analyze them as closed systems) when they are not closed systems. The economic system is not by any stretch a closed system. It must interact with the political system, the environmental system, and other social systems. Stability in these interactions is a bad thing. It must be reactive, unstable, easily, rapidly upgradeable.

    Gold as a resource is not sustainable, because gold is present as a limited quantity, much of which we have already used up. For the good of the stability of the economy we need to stop using gold in our electronics so that we can someday switch from gold to a more sustainable imaginary renewable conductor. (hopefully one that doesn't oxidize, or become brittle like silver, copper, and aluminum.) Pass in your cell phones, folks. We need to use sustainable Dixie cups with strings instead.

    We'll do an experiment. I'll place 10 - 100W panels in various locations in America. I'll only place them in inhabited areas and I won't pull any funny business like putting them under a tree, or face them north, etc. I promise to give each panel the best shot at collecting the most energy. How stable will the output of each be relative to the others over a 24 hour period? Over a 7 day period? Over a 30 day period? Over a 6 month period? Over a 12 month period? My hypothesis: They won't look anything like each other.

    What work did I interrupt by collecting the sustained energy of the sun? Are we assuming a closed system here that is actually open? Didn't I take that energy out of the loop of a different system?

    How do I transmit that energy to the place I need to use it? Chemical battery? Transmission line? Thermal? All methods I know of are low on efficiency.

    It's really not a great source of stable instantaneous energy.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022
  2. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    I am aware of that.
    Oil companies already have large drilling operations. I was not particularly considering new endeavours.

    Your government has signed an international pledge to limit oil production. and in any case extracted oil takes months if not years to get to your personal consumption.

    Why can't you just do what everyone else is doing and use your cars less often?
     
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  3. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    [​IMG]

    Stable, sustainable energy you can depend on. Unless you live in the wrong parts of the Earth, it's the wrong time of day, wrong time of the year, or if you actually want to use it to go somewhere...
     
  4. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A large portion of energy use is consumed scraping the food you eat out of the ground, bringing it to your grocery store, and keeping it fresh while it waits for you to buy it.

    Just eat less often.
     
  5. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Personal transportation is much less than 30% of our domestic oil use. You make your house with it. You heat your house with it. You power your lights with it. You farm your food with it. You make your clothes with it.

    This problem isn't solved by: Just drive less.
     
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  6. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    And in many instances that isn't a bad idea.
    Just looking at the size of some people I might consider a famine to be a good thing.
     
  7. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think I'll stick with an energy policy that doesn't result in people starving to death.
     
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  8. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    30% is quite possibly the largest single use of oil in the west, given the other uses it is put to.
     
  9. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The largest uses are industrial and electrical generation.
     
  10. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    You have a penchant for drama.
    I said less, not starve to death.
    Get serious.
    The USA is famous for its flagrant use and subsequent waste of food involving huge portions, far too much sugar, salt and fat. I remember once in Texas asking for a muffin for breakfast and it lasted me three days. What you eat would feed a normal family of four anywhere else.
    You seem to have no idea of the amount of waste you produce.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022
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  11. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    If you produce less food, packaging and labelling, and transport you could easily reduce your greed for oil.
     
  12. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    FYI in the rest of the western world, it is getting quite common for families who have at least two jobs, to need food banks to feed their children.
    You really have no idea how the rest of the world lives.
     
  13. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh you know me and what I know?

    Interesting. Tell me more about myself.

    I'll tell you what I know about you. You just joked that people starving to death might be a good thing. Is that because you think you know "how the rest of the world lives?"
     
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  14. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You said famine might be a good thing.

    https://www.euractiv.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2011/06/hunger Africa.jpeg

    Look how good!
     
  15. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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    I know how the average American lives.
    They have always enjoyed the possibility of having anything they want and as much of it as they want.
    Just look at their waistlines. I grew up in the US when for some few brief shining moments we as a young population identified conspicuous consumption as something indesireable. Unfortunately it didn't prevent the continued acquisition of material goods requiring energy to produce them because you never gave a thought to the ***** you were spewing into the air so that someone could buy a bigger car or heat their outdoor swimming pool.
    To be fair, the USA was only the worst of many western countries.
    And the all justified it through capitalist targets relying on growth and productivity, even if we didn't need whatever was being produced.
    And to be fair, when we couldn't produce something we didn't need by ourselves, we bought it from China, now one of the major polluters of the globe.

    We don't need most of what we consume. We don't need to "grow our economy". We need to stabilise it. We need to learn to be content and appreciate what we have. To live modestly.
    A close friend has a daughter who lives in Texas. This week she sent her mother a photo of a plate I would use as a serving dish for four, covered in one fish, as a meal for one person.
    You don't have a clue about how the ROW lives...and lives happily.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022
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  16. Pixie

    Pixie Well-Known Member

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  17. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Good old fashioned prejudice. Nice.

    Ohh they have? Cool story. Guess there's no such thing as poverty in America. Can't imagine who all these democrats are pandering to...

    While you're imagining how things are, have you ever taken a moment to learn how things actually work? How are things actually produced? How are things distributed from one place to another? Or do you simply imagine your imagined way is better because: muh feelz..
     
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  18. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh yeah. Ignore poor people.

    Good plan.

    That way you don't have to reconcile their poverty with your focus on crushing the production that poor people need access to...
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022
  19. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Now what are you going on about .. Trump never cut supply ?
     
  20. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This conversation reminds me of a passage in Gulag archipelago.

    But the inflation of this scathing term kulak proceeded relentlessly, and by 1930 all strong peasants in general were being so called-all peasants strong in management, strong in work, or even strong merely in convictions. The term kulak was used to smash the strength of the peasantry. Let us remember, let us open our eyes: only a dozen years had passed since the great Decree on the Land-that very decree without which the peasants would have refused to follow the Bolsheviks and without which the October Revolution would have failed. The land was allocated in accordance with the number of "mouths" per family, equally. It had been only nine years since the men of the peasantry had returned from the Red Army and rushed onto the land they had wrested for themselves. Then suddenly there were kulaks and there were poor peasants. How could that be? Sometimes it was the result of differences in initial stock and equipment; sometimes it may have resulted from luck in the mixture of the family. But wasn't it most often a matter of hard work and persistence? And now these peasants, whose bread grain 'had fed Russia in 1928, were hastily uprooted by local good-for-nothings and city people sent in from outside. Like raging beasts, abandoning every concept of "humanity," abandoning all humane principles which had evolved through the millennia, they began to round up the very best farmers and their families, and to drive them, stripped of. their possessions, naked, into the northern wastes, into the tundra and the taiga

    Its entirely conceivable that what you are characterizing as American gluttony will result in exactly the same famine that resulted from the characterization of Kulak gluttony.

    But you think you know better than I do how the rest of the world lives...so...I guess you can comfort yourself with that.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022
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  21. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    per his tweet, he took credit for it - but you are right, Trump probably lied
     
  22. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    When most of the world has 1/10 or less of the per capita energy use than the US, it is hard to argue that US energy consumers are not gluttonous.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita

    And, we are number one with respect to per capita fossil fuel use:

    [​IMG]

    Now, while other countries invest in alternative energies, the US has its short-term, regressive view on energy policy, due in large part of the rural regressive electorate, which will make us last in the world, when the fossil fuel shi$ will hit the fan. It's not a question of if but when.

    Winning.....
     
  23. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Confused about what you read perhaps. Good thing he tried to stop El Saud/Russia from Flooding the markets.. not that it did any good though .. as the damage was already done .. were ready to raise prices anyway.

    The TDS has set in .. diagnosis severe.
     
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  24. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    In my case it is a 30 mile round trip to the nearest grocer and I'm too old to make that trip for each bag of groceries on a bicycle with a back pack. I can't walk that far because my hips are worn out.
     
  25. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am sorry to hear about your condition, hope you get better soon
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2022

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