Posted on 12/18/2007 7:09:17 AM PST by fweingart
A conservative commentator says the energy bill President Bush is expected to sign is another "big government" attempt to address the nation's energy situation, but laments that it "does nothing" to encourage more exploration for oil and natural gas.
By a vote of 86-8, the Senate has passed an amended energy bill that raises fuel-efficiency standards for cars, light trucks, and SUVs, and increases production of renewable fuels like ethanol. Senate Democrats failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to include in the bill a House-approved provision that would have imposed billions of dollars in new taxes on oil and gas companies.
Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum, says government mandates are the wrong method to motivate automakers to build more fuel efficient vehicles.
"There's a lot of desire for more fuel-efficient vehicles -- and that's because, when gas prices go up, we all wish that our cars got better mileage. That's the way to encourage more fuel-efficient cars; it's through the marketplace," she said. "And of course, the automakers are responding and trying to create more affordable hybrids and cars that get better mileage, out of response to consumer demand."
Lukas also believes the bill does nothing to increase domestic energy supply in the short-term.
"We all agree that it would be wonderful for there to be alternatives to oil and gas, but creating these mandates -- that we have to be using ethanol, a given quantity of ethanol in 20 years -- just really isn't realistic," Lukas said. "We need to let the marketplace figure out what's [sic] the best alternative fuels, instead of these government dictates.
"There's a lot of unintended consequences to these big government mandates and," she concluded, "unfortunately, that's what a lot of this energy bill is about."
The bill calls for the first major increase by Congress in required automobile fuel efficiency in 32 years, something the auto companies have fought for two decades. The automakers will have to achieve an industry-wide average 35 mile per gallon for cars, small trucks, and SUVs over the next 13 years, an increase of 10 mpg over what the entire fleet averages today. And it would boost use of ethanol to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a nearly sixfold increase, and impose an array of new requirements to promote efficiency in appliances, lighting, and buildings.
Since the tax increases on oil and gas companies were dropped, President Bush has pledged to sign the bill, which awaits a vote in the House this week.
This energy abortion of a bill will put the finishing touches on our nation's funeral.
Via the dims, who is making a killing at working Americans' expense?
This bill has boondoggle written all over it. The only boondoggle left out is the mandate for renewable energy across the country for utilities.
Imagine that our enlightened law makers were in charge of communications technology. In the mid 1990s, low earth satellites looked like a good alternative for high speed internet. There were several satellite ventures that failed. Given our law makers logic, we should have subsidized these losing ventures forever. We would have an expensive system that did not deliver high speed communications.
The mandates in this bill will likely have terrible side effects and not solve any problems. We are looking for much higher fuel prices for a long time.
So - the Demonrats and their fellow travelers in the Republican party think they can change the laws of physics by passing a man-made law? That’s like saying man is warming the planet when, in truth, if any warming is going on, the sun is warming the planet.
The albatross weighing on the backs of the automakers is growing into a dinosaur.
Libs hate the car; they think “the masses” should ride on mass transit. Get it? Masses? Mass transit?
“to include in the bill a House-approved provision that would have imposed billions of dollars in new taxes on oil and gas companies.”
!!! And just who in the he!! do the Dims think will actually end up paying these taxes? They think, and are right, that most people are just too stoopid to understand!
Change the date to 30-40 years ago and it’s the same old, same old.
Thanks to the lifers in Congress who continually feed the monster that rules our lives!
They are killing this nation, bit by bit and it doesn't seem to matter which idiot sits in the oval orifice! It does seem to matter, however, how many lifers hang on to their congressional and senate seats who don't give a damn about anything excepting their haircuts, lunches, parking places, vacations and unearned retirement pensions!
Congress has become the enemy of America!
Congress has finally succeeded in proving that democracy doesn't work! We are continally attempting to export the lie that is called American democracy to other countries.
Interesting.
Every drop of oil on earth comes from millions of years of buildup from algae and other natural residue... buried, compressed, and eventually drilled—supplying our energy since the late 1800s.
Now, consider that we’re going to deplete, in less than 300 years, what took hundreds of millions of years to form. And with the inevitable global depletion of oil, alternative forms of energy are destined to emerge.
Algae, ironically, is one of them...
Research at leading universities suggests that algae could supply enough fuel to meet all of America’s transportation needs in the form of biodiesel... using a scant 0.2% of the nation’s land.
In fact, enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles, or 4.5 million acres of land.
That’s about the size of Maryland.
How is this all possible?
Technology exists right now to cultivate algae that can be used as fuel, using human and animal waste as fertilizer.
This is no surprise. Gasoline only represents 44% of the crude oil that we consume and the demand growth rate is only 1.4% per year. The remaining distillates (diesel fuel, heating oil, kerosene, Jet-A fuel, propane, naptha, etc) represents 56% of the crude oil that we consume. The demand for those distillates is growing at about 2% per year ( ahigher growth rate than gasoline). So, even if the CAFE standards reduce the growth of gasoline consumption, they will do nothinmg about the demand growth of the other distillates. Thus, we will be more dependant on foreign energy sources when the CAFE regs are fully implemented.
By the way, don’t expect ethanol to be a big source of energy any time soon. Thats because many new ethanol production plants must be built. The dirty little secret about ethanol plants is that they consume a lot of coal to produce the ethanol (if they use natural gas or oil then ethanol will not be competitive with gasoline). One thing we can count on is that environmentalists will protest the building of each new ethanol production plant because of the coal. That means we either won’t have ethanol production plants built or the ones built will run on oil or natural gas (and be more expensive than gasoline which means that no one will [urchase the ethanol).
“”Technology exists right now to cultivate algae that can be used as fuel, using human and animal waste as fertilizer.””
Don’t fall for every fly-by-night solution. You can make almost anything work in a lab or at the pilot plant level. Its when you get into production scale-up that a lot of seemingly viable technologies fail. One question you must ask yourself is, “how much energy must be invested to get energy out of a process?” A lot of these fly-by-night solutions fail to yield more energy than they consume.
BS
Crude oil contains biotic markers.
The Petroleum System Paradigm and the Biogenic Origin of Oil and Gas
http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/extended/dow/dow.htm
that it picked up along the way as it migrates.
I'd rather be drilling for oil where I know it exists by the billions of barrels!
1. The 'pristine' Arctic wildnerness where millions of liberals go for their vacations annually.
2. The ocean floor between Florida and Cuber, where millions upon millions of barrels of oil are being extracted by China, friends of Cuber and Estado Unidos.
(We'd better hurry before they siphon ALL the valuable oil off.)
Ah yes, another theory from Thomas Gold the Astrophysicist. Included in his many theories was that the moon was covered with dust so fine it would not support astronauts or landing craft. He has be the cause of many wasted dollars is several fields.
Every time oil has been searched for based upon abiotic theories it has only produced cash from gullible investors and sometimes governments. No oil field in production in the world has every been found this way. Oil continues to be found only sourced from sedimentary rock.
“Congress has become the enemy of America!”
Except for the case of Tom Tancredo and the Congressman from PA who fought to open the Clinton intelligence debacle, and maybe one or two others I don’t know about, yes - they are doing more harm than good.
That’s why I say it’s a blessed time when Congress doesn’t do anything! A do-nothing congress is to be desired.
I'm curious to see what they're doing to "phase out" incandescent light bulbs. Caught a blurb on the news about this - naturally, the news reader didn't elaborate.
I wonder if light bulb will go the way of 5 gallon toilets. I could get a trunkload of them in Canada and smuggle them across the border....
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