Humor me, what’s wrong with drilling?

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

  1. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    but like was said, only a moron would think it would stay that way long, Trump should not of got involved, let American consumers enjoy low prices for a bit
     
  2. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    You are not drilling because the supply is limited, and you are already rich and powerful as a country, so can deplete the natural resources of other parts of the planet to support yourselves and keep yours in reserve for the future. It is just another case of the powerful feeding on the weak.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2022
  3. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    That's a good point. It is not the planet that needs saving. The planet has been here for billions of years and will continue to be long after humanity and all life on earth goes extinct.
     
  4. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Correct that the idea that prices being at zero is a good thing overall is moronic
    No idea why you would say Trump should not have got involved.
     
  5. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Swap out crack for food, and maybe your analogy makes sense. The energy "crack" is how we produce food, shelter, and other output that have become the basic necessities of life.

    It's not a drug we're digging out of the ground. It's the ability to produce society we're digging out of the ground.
     
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  6. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    I agree with that. Yet, the US has pretty much double the per capita energy use than other civilized and developed nations. Each single one of us uses the equivalent of 100 little energy slaves that labor for us without even being noticed 24/7/365. Me thinks, the same necessities of society could be produced with much less energy wasted. But, when gas prices rise, people do not look at energy savings, they rather look to politicians and scream "drill more".

    Now, the latter wouldn't be so bad either, if oil was actually a limitless resource, but it is not. In a little more than 100 years, humanity has already used more than 50% of fossil fuels that ever existed. Now, to me, basing the world's largest economy on a non-renewable resource that supposedly is not replaceable without crashing the economy sounds like the epitome of insanity. If, in fact, oil is so crucial for economic growth, we should do out best to replace it with renewable energy sources asap. Instead, people want to "drill baby drill" to deplete this precious resource even faster. As I said, this is insanity.

    But, nobody ever said that humans in large groups behave rationally. They are just as stupid as bacteria growing exponentially in a Petri dish -- until nutrients run out and they all die. It's frustrating, actually, that this will be the fate of a species that claims they are intelligent.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2022
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  7. Alwayssa

    Alwayssa Well-Known Member

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    Wrong question. It's not what, but where that is the issue.
     
  8. FAW

    FAW Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Isnt this sort of like saying that we need to lose weight, so we are not going to eat Mcdonalds, knowing full well that instead we are going to Wendy's?

    How does this decision help us to lose weight?
     
  9. Overitall

    Overitall Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Unless you can force other countries (that are major polluters) to get on board with the United States there's not much chance of anything of real effort changing the end results of gloom and doom. Someone is making a ton of money off the climate change industry and are being very effective at pulling off the scam.

    All the Biden administration has done is shift where the United States gets its oil from which means its had a zero effect on climate change. The same (if not more) amount of oil is being produced, just not on our soil. That's the equivalent of taking your trash to your neighbor's property. The trash still exists, it's just not in your own backyard.
     
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  10. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is not a problem we can Jidoka our way out of. Conventional energy sources are conventional because they are so energy dense. 30k BTU per Kg for oil vs 200 BTU per Kg for LiOn is a huge energy density disparity that isn't resolved by tightening your preverbal efficiency belt. Can we use energy more efficiently: YES. But a 15k percent decrease in portability is a big problem. Is in fact, a waste of energy to tote around a low density energy source when you have access to a high density energy source that you can tote around.

    No energy source is limitless. You can't limit progress to appeals to magic. We can only maximize our energy use if: Magic. That's nonsense logic.

    And what have we produced through the use of that energy? Was it not the most massive increase in global standard of living, outpacing everything we've ever accomplished in the entire human history of the planet? Do you think things will improve, stay the same, or decline when we stop using these levels of energy? When we LEAN our way into more efficiency, what do we do with the remainder? Save it for a rainy day, or use it to increase production, to improve access to the products of those use of these resources?

    It's absolutely rational to use ALL the available energy to improve society.
     
  11. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    I don't disagree with the things you say about fossil fuels, the absolutely ARE the superior energy source, because of high energy density. Afterall, I am physical chemist, I know a thing or two about the laws of thermodynamics.

    As to the point of being rational to use ALL the available energy available to society. That depends. If you want a flash in the pan, boom and bust economy, it is rational to use fossil fuels to the maximum extent. If you want sustainability, it is not rational to use fossil fuels sources.

    Think about it in the example of the bacteria growing in the cell culture plate filled with agar. For the first bacteria introduced to the plate, the resources of the agar seem limitless and they start multiplying exponentially. Eventually, they fill half of the agar plate and have used half of the resources. Agar still seems limitless. So they continue growing exponentially. This will continue, until they have used up all the agar. Then, they all die.

    Now, what do you think will happen when humans use up all the oil that nature has stored so generously for us over millions of years? There are several options:
    -Humanity will adapt, but go back to the middle ages for per capita energy use, billions will die.
    -Humanity will quickly develop alternative energy sources and will be fine.
    -Humanity will become independent of oil long before oil runs out.

    Now, obviously, number one is the least optimal possibility, but, in my view, the most likely. Why? Because humanity as a whole seems to be unable to prepare for a rainy day. We want everything right here and now, no matter what the consequences. Now, from the pchem point of view there is also another reason, entropy, but I already wrote too long of a message to get into that minefield.
     
  12. Doofenshmirtz

    Doofenshmirtz Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    According to Buddha, your snarky replies reveal who you are, not who they are. In my experience, when someone tells me they are a (Insert religion here) its because their actions are inconsistent with the image they are trying to project.

    I live in Los Angeles and am surrounded by Liberals that commute in their single occupancy vehicles, order from drive thru, order their latte or frappuccino in a disposable cup, spray pesticides/herbicides that end up in our ocean, and come home to a pile of Amazon packages on their doorstep. Of course, the "SAVE THE PLANET" bumper sticker projects the image they want us to see.

    Those walking the walk do not need a name tag saying they are a Buddhist, Environmentalist, MAGA, etc.
     
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  13. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Systems in equilibrium are not desirable, practical or even possible. The premise of sustainability is that energy is renewable. It is not. It is always a consumable. (The laws of thermodynamics have a thing or two to teach about that).

    It doesn't matter if I'm dragging electrons up out of the ground, fossils, or loose gluons, the act of moving them "wastes" energy. All energy sources have a "cost" to produce, transmit, use, and dispose of. Knowing this, I find it silly that people think they can minimize the impact on the climate by taking energy directly from the climate. The idea that such behavior is "sustainable" and "renewable" is oblivious to the lessons that thermodynamics screams at us.
     
  14. FAW

    FAW Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I can appreciate your mindset, but I think that perhaps you have not thought this all the way through.

    Even if we were to pretend that there will be no more energy innovation over the next 50 or 75 years which is almost impossible to imagine (and that there are not any new sources of oil discovered), we already possess the technology for non-renewable sources of energy. The problem with those sources is that they are not currently cost-competitive. As the decades march on, and the remaining oil supply gets smaller and smaller, the law of supply and demand shows that the price of oil will rise precipitously, and long before oil actually runs out, renewable sources will become less expensive, making them more cost competitive and logically the new energy source of choice. Market dynamics dictate that the problem with limited non-renewable energy will automatically fix itself. It certainly does not require us cutting back on consumption now.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2022
  15. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    Of course systems in equilibrium are not desirable, because it means the system is dead. However, our economic system, including energy consumption, is at steady state, not equilibrium. A steady state can be sustainable, as long as the energy input is sustainable and stable. Oil as energy input is not sustainable, because oil is present as a limited quantity, much of which we have already used up. The sun as energy input is sustainable, at least as long as the sun doesn't die. And when it does, we have other things to worry about than energy.
     
  16. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    In other words: The free market is going to save the bacon. That's lazy thinking. Where was the free market in the 1970s, during the oil crisis? Why didn't it come up with a replacement for oil? Where is the free market at the moment, when energy prices are spiking? In 1970, the free market made the problem worse, because it focused on increasing oil supply, rather than coming up with alternative energy solutions. This made us even more dependent on oil than we were before.

    The problem is the following: The energy transition we are facing is unlike any other we have faced in the past. We went from wood to coal, coal to oil. In each case, the quality of the energy source (energy density) went up. In the next energy transition, the quality of the energy source will go down (decreased energy density). This will be unprecedented.

    The problem is: If it is too expensive and inefficient to run today's economies on renewable energy, it won't get any better 50 years down the road. Why? Because the energy density of the fuel source is a physical limitation that cannot be overcome by just thinking hard about it (i.e. innovation from the free market).

    I realize most people don't like to think about these issues. They suffer from recency bias, i.e. if oil has worked for us throughout most of our lives, it will also work in the future. Unfortunately, we don't see the dwindling oil reserves. Unlike a glass of water, which visually gets empty when you keep drinking water, so you see when it has to be refilled, the oil reserves are underground and invisible in their depletion. If people could actually see with their own eyes how much oil we have already used, they might change their behavior. Although, I even doubt that, since people obviously see how the water reservoirs in the West are depleted (Lake Mead), and they still don't change their behavior to fix the problem. It's really depressing.
     
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  17. FAW

    FAW Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Your response is that since they could not come up with alternative energy in the exceedingly brief time span of the 70's oil crisis, therefore the free market is not going to work over the next 50 -75 years by raising the price of oil as it becomes more scarce thus making renewable energies cost-competitive? Is that honestly your belief? You do not think that the price of oil will rise as it becomes more scarce? You are clearly smart enough to understand this. I do not believe for one second that you do not understand and agree with this notion. Of course the price will rise, and of course renewable energy will be adopted as it becomes cost competitive. Sincerely, I cannot fathom that there is anything there to argue. You understand supply and demand, and nothing about the 70s oil crisis means that supply and demand principles will cease to exist.

    You mention the problem that if it is too expensive now, it will not get any better later. This is true (if we assume that technology does not improve in the next 50-75 years), but you are ignoring the differing context. Right now, if the USA were to switch to other forms of energy we would not be cost-competitive with countries that do not switch to other forms of energy and in the global marketplace we would lose out. In 50 or 75 years when it is truly scarce, it will no longer be cheaper for anyone, thus there will not be a competitive advantage/disadvantage at play. Additionally, the increase in cost would be extremely gradual, which would provide time for economies to adjust, as opposed to the 70's oil crisis where economies had virtually no time to adjust. There is not a legitimate basis to make any comparison to the 70s oil crisis. It is truly an apples to oranges comparison.

    As far as me assuming that technology will not improve in that time period for sake of argument, is a stretch in logic to say the least. In reality, of course technology will improve over that long of a time period. I am not even sure that it is fair to assume that the quality of energy source will go down as you asserted. It is very possible that it will actually improve. I am not saying that it definitely will, but to say that it definitely will get worse is by no means an automatic. Its also not an automatic that new oil reserves will not be found. If I had to bet my life, my money says that they will find a lot more oil than is currently known.

    People will be keenly aware of the dwindling oil as prices rise. This is not something that is going to one day catch everyone by surprise, which is what you seem to be implying. It doesn't matter whether or not they can see it like an emptying glass of water. They will feel it in their wallet. We dont see how few of diamonds are in the ground, but we all are keenly aware of their rarity based on the cost. Direct visualization is irrelevant.

    I disagree with the notion that people are just used to what has worked and cannot possibly fathom something else. People will flock to the most cost-effective form of energy. This is human nature. Recency bias does not enter into the equation. The only factor is people's wallets. The devices using the energy source that provide the most bang for the buck is what the public will buy. Currently, that is not renewable energy. At some point in the future (either by improved technology or scarce oil driving up its cost) renewable will be the winner.

    The notion that we are talking about this 50-100 years prior as if it is a pressing problem does not make a lot of sense to me. Time and circumstances will solve this dilemma long before the theoretical extinction of oil becomes a crisis. An awful lot is going to happen between now and then. Hell, we may have colonized Mars by that point, and for all we know, hydrogen may be our primary form of energy. Maybe they will have portable nuclear fusion devices. Only time will tell. There are a lot of things that we can legitimately gnash our teeth about. The potential extinction of oil in 75 years, IMHO, is not among them.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2022
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  18. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    cause as the other poster said, it was not going to stay at zero for long, let consumers have the cheap gas - but Trump did not want consumers to have cheap gas I guess
     
  19. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Finally you make a point .. and kudo's for that .. step in the right direction .. but premise is only one part of an argument (1)
    (2) consists of support for claim - evidence which shows claim is true.

    Your claim is that Trump did not want consumers to have cheap gas .. yet for most of his administration - as told you many times - he did want cheap gas .. just not oil at zero .. for reasons explained to you numerous times. .. thus should be a little embarrassed trying still trying to hold that hill.

    but .. it is the second Hill .. upon which the crucifix is posted .. rather than the flag of victory.

    Your second claim -- is that Trump should have let consumers have cheap gas

    A) assumes Trump had some control -- which he did not .. other than begging OPEC to Stop .. which they may or may not have .. they did it to begin with .. was intentional .. was a big FU .. made a bold move .. and was checkmate .. destroyed our Shale oil Industry .. production dropping from 13 million bpd to under 9 .. in a very short period of time ..

    So .. the assumed premise fallacy badge holds .. is a false premise that he had some significant control .. he did not.

    Ohhhhh .. but that is just one nail .. "My Pretty " Haa haaa haaa .. supposed to get a picture of the Which of Oz in mind :)

    B) Your claim infers that it would be a good thing .. to try to keep the oil markets collapsed for as long as possible .. oil at "Zero" .. they were actually paying folks to take oil in some of the more ridiculous cases ..

    So lets save some of the suspense .. and give you opportunity to save face .. Did you really want to try and hold the B-Hill ?
     
  20. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    Cool.
     
  21. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    did he want cheap gas though, or did he just try to steal credit for gas when it was cheap
     
  22. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    quit asking silly questions and defend your hill

    B) You claim it would be a good thing .. to try to keep the oil markets collapsed for as long as possible .. oil at "Zero" . a good decision and Captain of the Ship.

    Told you the Flag on top of this hill mate ...
     
  23. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    not what I claimed at all, I claimed Trump wanted to reduce the supply of oil to increase the price
     
  24. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you think Trumps decision was a good one .. excellent :)
     
  25. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    so you finally agree that Trump cut supply to raise the price.... excellent
     

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