Posted on 04/25/2016 4:05:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Thirty-five dollars: As I write, that’s the price for a barrel of oil. We’re extracting like crazy and burning like there’s no tomorrow, for real, pumping carbon dioxide into the air we all share. Meanwhile, very few pumps are turning a profit.
Ten thousand dollars: that’s what I would have offered a climate change denier pundit, who prefers to be called a climate change “doubter.” I was ready to pay Marc Morano $10,000 if 2016 turns out not to be one of the 10 hottest years ever recorded. He didn’t take the bet, because 2016 will indeed be among the hottest. Like most climate change deniers, he’s coming to terms with our situation. He has kids, after all.
As a young engineer, I used to work in the oil patch (as it’s called). I used to wash my coveralls in the “greaser” machines at laundromats. And through the circle of life, I was back in Midland, Texas, a month ago, in March. The price of a barrel of oil was $36. At that level, no one in the Midland oil patch was making any money. So, very few were working. There were fleets of trucks parked, no drivers showing up for work. From the highway, I could see a forest of idle drilling rigs, and countless rigs lying horizontal, impotent. They’re hanging on, waiting for the next boom in an oil price cycle.
I was in Fort McMurray, Alberta, last summer. There, crude oil is synthesized from the ubiquitous subsurface tar sands. It takes scalping the topsoil (destroying the ancient forest) and 30 percent of the tar’s energy to drive the chemical process that turns black “asphaltene” into useable yellow oil. So, at 45 bucks a barrel (the price back then; it’s even lower now), the place was deserted.
Should we keep our heads in the sand — or in the borehole? Or, should we get to work?
If we were to take this situation seriously, we could supply all of the United States’s energy needs renewably, without trying to build new nuclear plants. (Technical issues completely aside, people just don’t want them around.) We could have wind turbines and solar energy systems all over the U.S. We have tremendous energy supplies available in Midwestern and Eastern seaboard wind. The sun shines like crazy all over the continent. We could do this.
And, all the jobs would be here in the United States. The same people who assemble and transport oil-drilling rigs can transport and erect wind turbines, mirrors and panels. The electrical workers, who run power lines, can be in that business on a huge new scale. By the way, Texas (of all oil-rich places) gets 10 percent of its electricity from the wind. It’s just the start of things. We could change the world — if we got to work. We’d completely electrify our ground transportation. We’d develop plant-based jet fuel or liquid hydrogen turbines for our airplanes. We can git ’er done, if we just get going.
I also hear people worry that the U.S. will fall behind economically if we clean up our energy supply. But what about this very real possibility: What if most or even all of the other 191 countries who signed on at the COP21 conference go renewable? What if they decide to enforce a multilateral, 191-against-1 carbon tax? And what if they put a high, but reasonable, price on any goods exported from the U.S. based on the U.S.’s carbon emissions? Things like Boeing airplanes and even Tesla cars would become hard to sell overseas. What if our delay in transforming our economy to a renewable one comes back to bite us in the greasy coverall?
When faced with these economic musings, climate change deniers (or extreme doubters) either attack the messengers or throw up their un-callused hands and say, “Well, it would cost too much to do anything about global climate change.” When did we become a can’t-do nation? Actually, it will cost way too much to not do anything about it, to not go renewable right away. Quit your bitching. We can get this done, if we just get going.
... and start paying up.
Bill Nye in La La Land.
[ If we were to take this situation seriously, we could supply all of the United States’s energy needs renewably, without trying to build new nuclear plants. (Technical issues completely aside, people just don’t want them around.) ]
I wonder if Bill Nye THE GUY, even understands that Thorium Nuclear would revolutionize the energy industry and make 90% of renewable sources obsolete...
But he just writes off all of nuclear power like a schmuck.
Who’s payroll is Nye on?
Come make me, Billy boy.
NPR?
That’s his background, anyway, isn’t it?. Public broadcasting.
[ I was in Fort McMurray, Alberta, last summer. There, crude oil is synthesized from the ubiquitous subsurface tar sands. It takes scalping the topsoil (destroying the ancient forest) and 30 percent of the tar’s energy to drive the chemical process that turns black “asphaltene” into useable yellow oil. So, at 45 bucks a barrel (the price back then; it’s even lower now), the place was deserted. ]
So he admits that forrests can grow OVER tar sands.... I thought the poor widdle tress would have died long ago once their roots hit the tar.....
Nye is an self contradictory moron...
Big Wind?
Climate Hysterics!!
It is time they stopped denying what we all know.
They have been lying to us.
There has been no warming for nearly 20 years.
C02 is not a dangerous pollutant.
The greenhouse theory is all hot air.
What a rambling nit-wit.
Nye is a fraud.
L
What about all the birds killed by wind turbines? How can we depend on solar when most of the panel manufacturers are scams and frauds? What about Nuclear Deniers? They should be jailed and punished. There must be a strong Stupid Gene in these globull warming fanatics to deny their genius “scientists” are changing the historical statistics to agree with their twisted agenda. I for one cannot accept such pseudo-science that so clearly does not pass the smell test.
I liked the $ 1.199 gas price of 1995, recently seen on an old receipt.
Is that before or after the NOAA "adjusts" the data?
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