there is just no winning solution for the eco-greenies out there for fue/cars...

[PocketThunder]

People can take any one (or several) statistics and prove anything they want to.  Temps say this, glaciers say that, etc.

But the net overall picture that has been forming over many years is pointing to the idea that the earth's climate is shifting.

 

... and has been since the beginning of time. The question becomes then how do some people on this planet become so arrogant as to attempt to drastically modify the lives of their fellow man based on information gathered whithin a perspective of time that is completely minute?

Because thats the ultimate power in some peoples lives, to control another person life. 

[Mike DC]

 
 
   

"Drastically modifying the lives of our fellow man based on information gathered within a period of time that's completely minute." 

Umm . . .  What about the original decision to start buring fossil fuels and drive/float/fly motorized vehicles all over the earth 100 years ago? 

Would you consider all the thought processes & decisions up until now to be something other than this?   


 

[pettyfan43]

People can take any one (or several) statistics and prove anything they want to.  Temps say this, glaciers say that, etc.

But the net overall picture that has been forming over many years is pointing to the idea that the earth's climate is shifting.

 

And that is exactly the point, the climate has ALWAYS SHIFTED!!! This is NOTHING NEW, it has been happening since this ball of dust has been here.

That big ball of fire 93 million miles from here, the BIG thermonuclear reactor called THE SUN has ALWAYS had temperature fluctuations. To suddenly assume that humans can override the natural changes on our planet and in our environment is the very epitome of human arrogance.

This old world has a way of dealing with what it has no use for. (dinosaurs anyone?)  The temps will go up and they will go down. The rub? There ain't a THING you can do about it!

[Mike DC]

 
I would actually agree with that for the most part.  Some tiny little scrap of sun activity can unleash a TON of environmental impact compared to most human endeavors.  And it's no secret that our climate has varied like hell throughout history.

I just think the scientific community has formed a pretty big consensus that we're in for a real warming trend in the next 100 years.  If it happens anything like it's being predicted, then we're pretty well screwed whether we caused it or not.  We're gonna be wishing we had done everything in our power to fight it. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My thinking just goes like this: 


Q.  What are the reasons to wanna seriously cut back on coal & oil? 

A.  We start seriously researching a way out of this dependence and end up leading the rest of the world on new energy solutions.  We reduce oil dependence all over the middle east.  We leave the rest of the coal-heavy areas of the US countryside sort of intact.  Healthier lifestyle.  Get suburban sprawl under control & start cleaning up the rotting cities.   Keep cars/trucks built correctly and affordable to purchase.  And probably some effect on the environment, could be anything from miniscule to significant.



Q.  What are the results of keeping on burning tons of oil & coal?  (Besides the opposite of everything above?) 

A.  Temporary economic gains and prolonging a lifestyle that is unsupportable within another 50 years anyway.  Just looking at the raw amount of resources still in the ground (even going by the most optimistic estimates), we won't have enough to keep it up more than a few more decades.

   

[pettyfan43]

Possibly, but 30 years ago the "Scientists" had a "consensus" that there was 30 years of oil left in the earth. They had their measuring devices, and said there was just so much.  By the way, there is no such thing as a consensus in science. At most it is theory and these scientists are PAID (Grants, subsidies and SALARY) to come up with conclusions.

Now 30 years later, there is STILL a 30 year supply and in some places there is actually MORE than was thought to be there back then.


In other words, more hooey.  The alarmists are always looking for SOMETHING to make waves about. A couple of years ago, this was "Global Warming". Well now since the climate has actually been COOLER (the warmest year on record over the past 100 years was actually 1998) it is now called "Climate Change". 
SO now ANY weather related phenomenon is called evidence of CLIMATE CHANGE, I got news for em, the only thing CONSTANT in the climate is that it CHANGES!!!

What is so bad is that there are SO MANY people that just fall in line with whatever they are told.

And the "climate change experts" are saying over the next 100 years the AVERAGE temp may rise as much as 3-5 degrees. There is more MARGIN ERROR than that in the climate AVERAGE for each year. 

The Air IS CLEANER than it was 30-40 years ago. Cars scavenge 90-95 percent of their OWN emissions. There are systems in place for industry. Still this is NOT ENOUGH for the greenies and the EPA. Now they want these ridiculous standards for gas mileage in place. 

As for DEPENDENCE on FOREIGN oil, if idiot liberal politicians would let the US drill for oil in our OWN space, we wouldn't NEED the foreign oil! 

Need proof of the absolute BS that IS "Global Climate Change"? 

Al Gore took great pains to make it understood that his companies buy "Carbon Credits" (What the h e double hockey sticks is a damn CARBON CREDIT?!??!!??)  to offset their "Carbon Footprint". And they buy them from a company that was started, is owned and directed by....................AL GORE!!!!  There's  an Inconvenient truth for ya!!!

Common sense and intelligence has taken leave in this country, NOBODY stops and takes time to research ANYTHING they are spoonfed by the media. Nobody stops to question things they are told because somebody says "Scientists say" because there are JUST as many SCIENTISTS that say the Global Warming Climate change "experts" are very wrong! 

A group of scientists decided to take this climate change BS to task and check out the placement of several hundred of these "climate change" thermometers that the readings were derived from.

Know what they found?  That 80% of these things were NOT placed out in the open as they should be, they were in downtown areas placed between OFFICE BUILDINGS, they were placed in areas of clustered buildings, RIGHT ABOVE the HVAC systems (Those give off some heat!) and at least two were found at the edge of ON RAMPS at MAJOR metropolitan AIRPORTS!!!! Can you say Jetwash? YEP they were placed where EVERY TIME an airplane entered a runway, the exhaust would blow right over them thermometer.  If you are a scientists being PAID big money to come up with a conclusion, you WILL find a way to come to said conclusion.

This theory is a LOT more POLITICAL than it is SCIENTIFIC!  The stuff I have said is all verifiable and if you want to research it you can, but it isn't easy. The news networks who are by and large liberal, and the environmental groups (ditto) have a vested interest in making this news as low key as possible. Then you have the hollywood types who give an academy award to a pile of crap like algore's movie that is FULL OF misinformation. And DON'T think for a SECOND that there isn't a a money issue with algore.   He's making a HUGE profit from this whole thing, global warming/Climate change is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the people of this planet!!!

[RECHRGD]

Possibly, but 30 years ago the "Scientists" had a "consensus" that there was 30 years of oil left in the earth. They had their measuring devices, and said there was just so much. By the way, there is no such thing as a consensus in science. At most it is theory and these scientists are PAID (Grants, subsidies and SALARY) to come up with conclusions.

Now 30 years later, there is STILL a 30 year supply and in some places there is actually MORE than was thought to be there back then.


In other words, more hooey. The alarmists are always looking for SOMETHING to make waves about. A couple of years ago, this was "Global Warming". Well now since the climate has actually been COOLER (the warmest year on record over the past 100 years was actually 1998) it is now called "Climate Change".
SO now ANY weather related phenomenon is called evidence of CLIMATE CHANGE, I got news for em, the only thing CONSTANT in the climate is that it CHANGES!!!

What is so bad is that there are SO MANY people that just fall in line with whatever they are told.

And the "climate change experts" are saying over the next 100 years the AVERAGE temp may rise as much as 3-5 degrees. There is more MARGIN ERROR than that in the climate AVERAGE for each year.

The Air IS CLEANER than it was 30-40 years ago. Cars scavenge 90-95 percent of their OWN emissions. There are systems in place for industry. Still this is NOT ENOUGH for the greenies and the EPA. Now they want these ridiculous standards for gas mileage in place.

As for DEPENDENCE on FOREIGN oil, if idiot liberal politicians would let the US drill for oil in our OWN space, we wouldn't NEED the foreign oil!

Need proof of the absolute BS that IS "Global Climate Change"?

Al Gore took great pains to make it understood that his companies buy "Carbon Credits" (What the h e double hockey sticks is a damn CARBON CREDIT?!??!!??) to offset their "Carbon Footprint". And they buy them from a company that was started, is owned and directed by....................AL GORE!!!! There's an Inconvenient truth for ya!!!

Common sense and intelligence has taken leave in this country, NOBODY stops and takes time to research ANYTHING they are spoonfed by the media. Nobody stops to question things they are told because somebody says "Scientists say" because there are JUST as many SCIENTISTS that say the Global Warming Climate change "experts" are very wrong!

A group of scientists decided to take this climate change BS to task and check out the placement of several hundred of these "climate change" thermometers that the readings were derived from.

Know what they found? That 80% of these things were NOT placed out in the open as they should be, they were in downtown areas placed between OFFICE BUILDINGS, they were placed in areas of clustered buildings, RIGHT ABOVE the HVAC systems (Those give off some heat!) and at least two were found at the edge of ON RAMPS at MAJOR metropolitan AIRPORTS!!!! Can you say Jetwash? YEP they were placed where EVERY TIME an airplane entered a runway, the exhaust would blow right over them thermometer. If you are a scientists being PAID big money to come up with a conclusion, you WILL find a way to come to said conclusion.

This theory is a LOT more POLITICAL than it is SCIENTIFIC! The stuff I have said is all verifiable and if you want to research it you can, but it isn't easy. The news networks who are by and large liberal, and the environmental groups (ditto) have a vested interest in making this news as low key as possible. Then you have the hollywood types who give an academy award to a pile of crap like algore's movie that is FULL OF misinformation. And DON'T think for a SECOND that there isn't a a money issue with algore. He's making a HUGE profit from this whole thing, global warming/Climate change is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the people of this planet!!!

Come on now!  Tell us how you really feel!!  Actually, I totally agree with most of that.  The global warming "scientists" also covered their butts by saying that extreme weather conditions (record snow and cold) would be a bi-product of the global warming process.  Now my very liberal daughter in Oregon is afraid that things are happening sooner than predicted because of the severe winter we've had this year.   It's like talking to a boulder.   Bob

[Mike DC]

   
I don't think what I think because of Al Gore.  I've never seen his "Inconvenient Truth" movie.

Most of my opinion about oil/cars/gas doesn't even come from concerns about the environment at all. 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The estimates of oil in the ground were more conservative 30-40 years ago.  And we also got more economical with the stuff for many years after the '73 oil embargo, which bought us some more time over the original perdictions too. 


The biggest oil reserves that we still think are left in any country on earth is Saudi Arabia. They've basically been running on the same 5 uber-gigantic oil fields that they discovered 40-50 years ago.  The Saudis keep claiming that they have plenty more oil fields where that came from and everyone believes them.  But the fact is that their main giant & supergiant fields are being pumped so hard & fast that it's at the verge of hurting the fields' ultiamate oil yield.  And yet the Saudis keep dumping more & more money into wringing the rest of the oil from just these waning main fields year after year.  And their (major) exploration efforts haven't turned up much of any new oil since the 1970s.  And there hasn't been an outside audit on the current state of the whole country's oil reserves in decades.  Hmmm  .  .  .



The world's long-term oil estimates have mostly gone up because science has invented better methods of getting more oil out of the ground than they originally thought they could.  Partly driven by higher oil prices. 

But this won't work forever.  With any engineering feat, the earliest improvements are more cost-effective & beneficial, and then it gets more and more work for less and less gains all the way to the end.  (Same reason it's a whole lot easier to make a drag car go from 14's to 13's than trying to go from 10's to 9's.)



Part of the constantly improving oil gains in the recent decades have been the result of getting the same oil out of the ground more quickly than in the past.  The planet's oil reserve isn't getting a whole lot "fuller" so much as it's just getting drained a lot faster & more completely than we used to think was possible.  (Russia has been finding "more" oil partly by just pumping their existing oil fields recklessly fast & hard.)

Horizontal drilling, higher & higher well pressures, worse water cuts in the resulting oil, deeper & deeper drilling, heavier & less profitable grades of oil that the world's refineries are mostly not even equipped to handle yet, etc.

But once again, this won't work forever.  Probably not even for another 50 years at the current rate of usage. 



We've taken about half the world's oil out of the ground already.  We definitely took the easiest, cheapest, and more energy-efficient half first.  And we won't ever get anywhere near all of it.  We'll only keep pumping the stuff until we reach the point of spending more to get what's left than it's worth.  That point will come WAY before the world's oil supply is theoretically gone to the last drop. 

   
 

[Ghoste]

Sorry for my ignorance here Mike because I am wading into a topic in which I am really not equipped to debate but when I hear people make definitive statements about oil reserves such as "we've used up half the worlds supply" (not a direct quote obviously), I can help but shake my head in wonder.  I know the stuff is finite and I know that geologists must have a pretty good idea of what's out there, but the statement still leaves me bewildered.  It just seems so definite on a topic that by most accounts does not appear to be a perfect science.
Again, I'm not really debating you because like most of the world, I am petroleum ignorant, just stating my impressions. 

[Mike DC]

That's very true. 

You singled out that point when you read it, and I thought twice about putting that exact comment in my post when I wrote it.



Nobody really knows anything in the oil business for sure.  You're right. 
I've been trying to absorb it for years and it's still startling what kinds of unexpected stuff happens in that industry all the time. 

There is definitely more oil in the earth than we will ever extract.  It's like all kinds of other natural resources --  we don't truly retrieve every bit of it, we just retrieve every bit of it that is anywhere near cost-effective to get.  It becomes a judgement call about how high the price will go, and how much better the technology will get to retrieve more of it later. 



But there are some built-in limitations that can be taken to the bank:

--  There's a limit to how deep we'll ever find oil, because eventually we get so deep that there weren't enough living things on the earth in those years to make the stuff. 

--  And there's a limit to where we'll ever find it, because it more or less has to be in areas that were once dry land at the right times.  (As I understand it, offshore oil rigs are still only drilling where there was once dry land in the past.) 

--  And there are more limits on locations beyond that.  Only certain kinds of rock formations trapped & pressurized the raw materials long enough to make oil a long time ago, and then only some of those formations have kept it there long enough for us to retrieve it in the present. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Environmentalists and oil barons alike share a few opinions.  People with very big brains and very big engineering/geology degrees seem to have a rough consensus on these things.  They mostly say we're either at or near the halfway point of the world's realistically-reachable supply of oil. 

I'm just repeating what they say. 

 

[AmadeusCharger500]

I really expected better than the fantasy in this thread even though I understand we all have our dreams. If anyone should be coping with this issue its the people who love their cars.
Anyone know what the word fossil means?

[Brock Samson]

btw:
there's a new word in the lexicon... "greenwash".
like toyota's we are so damn green commercials,.. honda does it too, but i have no idea if you see the same commercials I do...
seems every commercial on TV or in the liberal media.... lol..    touts how the product advertised is gonna save the planet..


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/greenwash

also in relation to the volcano remarks...

http://www.rense.com/general67/aag.htm

it could be quite possible that these periodic vulcanic "burps" will wipe us as quickly as our own generated greenhouse gases...
another thing that came to mind is that when our imported supplies of oil are finally at an end, we "may" still have out as of yet untapped domestic supplies avail. perhaps not due to long-term stratigic planning, but because of supposed enviormental concerns.
Just puttin it out there,.. I'm no expert, just mulling things over... 

what's this thread about again?.. 

[Charger_Fan]

what's this thread about again?.. 

Anal warts.

[Brock Samson]

here's one for ya'

http://www.physorg.com/news137216197.html