Frogwatch wrote:
On Nov 3, 6:44 pm, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:
On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:44:30 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:
Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:
On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:41:32 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:
Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.c....View&FileStor...
So as a man who studies this type of thing in much more depth than I,
what do you think of our "significant" number of BOEs as compared to all
other countries with the exception of Russia?
Noted that the vast majority of our reserves are in coal.
Two things come immediately to mind.
One - we need to make more use of the proven coal reserves up to and
including gasification, liquification and burning. We need to work on
clean coal technology and CO2 sequestration by allowing more pilot
plants and research into various techniques. That's where we seem to
be failing miserably.
A recent example is what's happened in Lindon, NJ. I forget the
company, but they wanted to build a 750 megawatt coal fired station,
sequester the CO2 by pumping it offshore into a salt dome where it
woud stay permanently locked up. The technology is available now and
it seems like a good concept. Unfortunetly, the Enviromentalists are
creating havoc with the plan to the point where it probably will be
abandoned thus losing the facility and needed power generation.
Two - we need to start exploring and drilling off on our own to see
what may, or may not, be easily accessible onshore, inshore and
offshore. There are some areas off New Jersey and California that
appear to have the correct geological formations (domes, salt domes
and such) to contain easily recoverable oil - some think the equal of
all that Arabian Peninsula has ever contained, but we aren't allowed
to drill for various reasons - mostly political. And it's not like new
discoveries are impossible - consider Brazil's Guari and Tupi fields
which are recent discoveries - it's out there, we just have to find
it.
Here's a list for you to consider - the amount of fossil fuel needed
to produce 1,000,000 BTUs.
Natural Gas: 1,000 cubic feet
Coal: 83.34 pounds @ 12,000 Btu/pound
Propane: 10.917 gallons @ 91,000 Btu/gallon
Gasoline: 8.0 gallons @125,000 Btu/gallon
Fuel Oil #2: 7.194 gallons @ 139,000 Btu/gallon
Fuel Oil #6: 6.67 gallons @ 150,000 Btu/gallon
You'd need a lot of wind farms and solar panels to produce similar
results to fossil fuels.
Nice summary....we have some work to do, particularly on the political
front.
What we need to do is just do it - no pussy footing around. The real
problem is that there are too many lawyers wanting to make a buck or
two by obstructing permits. And you have a group of environmentalists
who hate everything other than technology that doesn't even exist yet.

Or even technology that does exist for that matter. I recently read
an article (somewhere - maybe CaliBill posted it or knows of it) where
a company wanted to build a pilot sun/wind farm in some desolate area
of California - nothing around for miles, minimally invasive, no
protected plant species or animals to speak of and the project was
killed because of the Serria Club's (and others) objection to spoiling
the "natural beauty" of the area.

That's what has to stop.

I have no problem with solar as long as people stop believing it is
somehow without environmental problems.
BTW, an average oil well or gas well requires far less maintenance
than a wind turbine so the roads are used far less. As far as the
view is concerned, I'd rather have oil or gas wells than wind
turbines.
Of course, given the choice between tourism in Florida and oil/gas
wells in the Gulf, I'd easily choose oil/gas as being far cleaner than
tourism. My home (Florida) has been completely ruined by tourism
whereas if our economy had been built on energy we'd still have our
beaches and salt marshes.

Everything we do leaves a mark on the Earth. It's how big of a mark you
want to leave.