The Death Gusher in the Gulf should tell us to end offshore drilling forever.
The reason is simple: Systemic risk!
Better regulations won't end what went wrong: Corporate greed, cutting corners to save money, lack of coordination among subcontractors, unforeseen factors, and just plain incompetence in private industry. Add that to isolated deep drilling sites in deep ocean where no human being can go, bad weather, and oil exploding out at 10,000 pounds per square inch, and you will virtually guarantee more Death Gushers.
Do we really need that oil? Could we make do with none of it?
With money, "A penny saved is a penny earned," as Ben Franklin noted. But saving oil -- not needing or using it -- is a much better deal: it is cumulative.
An alternative exists, though it is badly named: "energy efficiency" and "conservation" miss the general point. A high percentage of oil and fossil fuels are wasted. Huge efficiency gains per barrel are immediately possible with the right investments. What is missed is the most basic of truths. Oil savings keep accumulating.
Take insulating a building. It will save a certain number of barrels of oil this year. And the same number next year. And the year after that, and after that, year-after-year! The barrels of oil saved multiply! Without the insulation, those barrels of oil would have to be drilled year-after-year, drill and drill and drill versus save and save and save. Every year, as energy is saved, fewer barrels are needed.
Moreover, offshore drilling is very expensive, even without death gushers. And it takes time - year after year. What if that cost and that time were invested cumulatively in NOT using oil? Suppose we ended offshore drilling and re-invested the equivalent amount of money and time in forms of "energy efficiency." Would that offset the number of barrels drilled?
The Mismeasure of Energy Efficiency
The Department of Energy has misframed the energy efficiency issue. The calculation made is in money, not in barrels of oil saved. How many barrels of oil will the 2010 energy efficiency programs save not only in 2010, but in 2011, 2012, and so on ... for, say, the next 30 years. And if we putting the drilling investments into all the job-creating ways of saving energy, how many barrels will be saved on 2011's energy efficiency programs over the following 30 years. And so on. Will those multiplied, accumulated savings tell us that we don't need to do offshore drilling after all? Or that we can cut it down significantly?
And how many jobs will be created? Real, good-paying, non-exportable jobs!
We need to know. As soon as possible.
It may be the case that ending offshore drilling is good, not bad, for the economy - and the future of the world.
Secretary Chu, please add up our energy efficiency savings in terms of barrels of oil saved, with cumulative estimates over the next 30 or so years.
I make this suggestion with the greatest respect for programs already in motion from energy efficiency and conservation funding.
Add to that all the many ways that oil is used in agriculture and could be saved -- fertilizers and pesticides could be eliminated by organic farming methods, as well as transportation fuel that could be eliminated by the localization of food production. Instead of investing in offshore oil, we should be investing in not needing oil. Think about greening our long-term infrastructure -- our buildings, our cars, our public transportation, our industry, our military bases, our homes.
It saves a certain number of barrels of oil right away, barrels that need not be drilled the first year. And it keeps saving that many barrels of oil every year. That means that the yearly oil-barrel savings accumulate; and less and less oil has to be drilled.
Meanwhile, good meaningful jobs increase here, green jobs that cannot be outsourced. The economy does not lose, it benefits. And so do we all -- no risk of future offshore oil-drilling disasters, a serious move to lessen climate change and abate future climate disasters (e.g., hurricanes), a cleaner environment.
This, of course, means a decrease in oil company profits. Unless the oil companies seriously invest in the development of alternative fuels and oil-saving industries.
The Gulf Oil-drilling Disaster should teach us many things, among them:
Corporations are too greedy, too powerful, and all too often incompetent.
We cannot depend on oil companies to protect us and our environment.
There is no way around it; oil is dirty, morally as well physically.
We are told that oil from offshore drilling is necessary, as we transition to new forms of energy. But that estimate does not include the cumulative year-after-year savings of not needing oil. Imagine this: Instead of investments in the cost of drilling in the deep ocean and subsidizing oil companies, instead of paying for oil year after year, invest in jobs that would eliminate oil needs, as suggested by the energy department programs listed above.
Money is fungible: A penny saved is a penny earned.
Oil is cumulatively fungible: A barrel saved is a barrel not needed, year after year after year.
The lesson of the Death Gusher is clear: SAVE, BABY, SAVE!
None of these fixes is expensive, and most can be done by someone is dire economic straits. A retrofit might be nice, but the longest journey starts with the first step.
The US Military issuing its Joint Operations Environment 2010 Report (http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2010/04/united-states-joint-forces-command-us.html) said that if there isn't a massive amount of new production we could see a 10 M/bbl per day short fall within 5 years. The US requires 9 M/bbl per dayl to supply it's daily gasoline needs. So the JOE's shortfall by 2015 is, to use an analogy, like having every single gas station in the US going dry...for ever with no car moving on any US roadway. Little wonder the military is expecting an economic depression
If, as climatologists say is true that, CO2 has an atmospheric lifetime of 50-200 years then it's the rate of carbon burn that's increasing CO2 levels. And it doesn't matter where that carbon is coming from. It could come from bio diesel derived from alga or from diesel derived from fossil alga (crude oil).
Assuming you could, if all our liquid fuel needs were derived from bios, and assuming burn rate remained the same as today's consumer needs, bio fuels will still increase CO2 levels at a similar rate as fossil fuels. Assuming alga as the bio fuel source (using alga as the example), the only way atmospheric CO2 concentration couldn't continue to increase would require yearly alga production to be somewhere between 50-200 times greater than the alga being burned as bio fuel.
It's the burn rate that matters and not the carbon's source. The public is led to believe that bios would get recycled each year at the same rate it would be burned. That cannot be true if CO2 lifetime isn't recycled annually and equal to burn rate but actually 50-200 years.
Local produce is fresh. However, consuming only locally grown food will result in a bland diet and malnutrition.
The Haber process is used to synthesize ammonia = nitrogen fixation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
Methane (natural gas) is commonly used as a source of hydrogen for the reaction but other hydrocarbons and even coal can be used---- not just natural gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
See Moving Beyond Oil at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
Revolutionary electric vehicle technology is being born that will require no recharge.
Magnetic generators are presently hard to believe as they have been the subject of inventors delusion and scam artists.
However, as new sources of energy are better understood, practical prototypes are presently emerging in the laboratories.
With sufficient support for a 24/7 validation, development and production program, they can emerge much more rapidly than might be imagined.
An early goal is to replace the need for a plug on a plug in hybrid and provide the 2 kW available from a household outlet with an on-board generator that needs no recharge.
Once that can be demonstrated, every auto manufacturer will recognize that the world has changed.
A little recognized life threatening emergency may have been spawned by the Gulf oil gusher. See the front page article at www.aesopinstitute.org
If that is accurate, we may need an incredibly urgent transition that can supersede fossil fuels much more rapidly than would otherwise be the case.
It can be done. It will generate millions of jobs and, ironically, provide the missing stimulus to truly restore the economy.
There is no time to lose if the threat in the Gulf is as great as it now appears it may become.
Consumers/voters simply don't have a clue as to the energy density in a barrel of oil nor the volumes now being consumed by the global economic engine. At 86 million barrels per day you could fill enough Olympic sized swimming pools each year to encircle the earth 2 1/2 times. 86 million barrels fill 5600 Olympic pools every day or 2,044,000 pools each year.
If it is Abiotic, there is no shortage. Substituting renewable sources of energy as rapidly as possible needs to be accomplished for other reasons such as avoiding a Tipping Point that may threaten human existence.
Moving Beyond Oil on the Aesop website discusses two of several hard to believe alternatives. To the surprise of almost everyone and certainly scientists, there is enough laboratory validation for those of us developing such systems to be aware they will prove practical.
However,, until there is much more independent validation and products appear in the market skepticism will be understandable.
Ambient energy and fractional Hydrogen will not be taken seriously as replacements for oil until those events take place.
One barrel of ordinary water, used to provide fractional Hydrogen, will replace 200 barrels of oil. See blacklightpower.com for their application to power generation.
Our own work is aimed at engines for hybrid cars. It seems likely a gallon of water will provide 1,000 miles of driving. The root of this technology is a modified engine in a National laboratory 30 years ago that attained 70% efficiency. They were apparently producing fractional Hydrogen unknowingly.
Ambient energy is sometime called Zero Point Energy. Nobelist Richard Feynman once pointed out that if you could liberate all of it in an apparently empty cup you could boil all the oceans.
Most buildings are not heated with oil. Or houses either, except the more rural North areas.
And we don't use much oil to generate electricity either, so the savings on AC won't help.
We use oil mainly for transportation; personal, not commercial.
The solution is less driving, more efficient cars, hybrids, and ELECTRIC CARS.
Some 25% of my total assets is in solar PV stock, so I understand energy. The only way to use much less oil is to use less in cars and trucks.
Also note solar panels are just a better insulation: you put them on the roof and your electricity usage goes down. Particularly for AC: they produce electricity just when you need it, and that's also peak load on the system. And that electricity is the most expensive: commercial users pay much more for daytime, solar offsets the most expensive electricity.
Which is why utilities hate it: it takes their best business away. The more solar, the less power they sell. Most of what we know about solar is wrong, disinformation from the utility industry. That's why other nations have a lot more of it, including China: they aren't run by their corporations.
Electric cars only shift pollution from the mobile to the stationary source. California was hot on them in the 80s because they shifted pollution from California to the electric plants in Nevada and helped California meet its goals under the Clean Air Act.
Electric cars do nothing for CO2 pollution and climate change and are not a viable long term option except for a few vehicles
The ONLY way to do this is to (as you say) drive less, use more efficient cars and invest in public transportation.
Without nationally recognized testing and certification, large businesses are very reluctant to even try new technologies. Currently, there is no real government certification for green technologies. They are all pretty much certified by non-profits that could be real or bogus.
My husband and I own a green technology that restores gas mileage to at or slightly above the manufacturers MPG specification when the vehicle was new while reducing CO2 emissions. For fleets, it has shown to improve MPG up to 120% (because those vehicles were old and getting very poor gas mileage). We have international certification, SAE tests and multiple independent tests from municipalities. Yet commercial fleets are only now beginning to take us seriously. The reason is that many states are now adopting California's tough emissions standards. Before that, businesses were too risk averse to even try it. Fleet managers are more worried about losing their jobs for recommending a technology to management than they are about saving money and the environment. If there is a mandate, then evaluating new technologies to reduce emissions, fuel usage and cost is part of their job.
1. Suggesting that oil spill risk is systemic and unavoidable is just plain wrong. Was the risk of exploding rockets systemic and unavoidable when American rockets were blowing up on the launchpad in the 1950s? By Mr. Lakeoff's logic, it must have been. Nevertheless, we're entering an era of private space travel. Oddly enough, technical problems have tehcnial solutions, and you learn from mistakes.
2. The idea that there's something magical about annual savings in energy costs due to reduced consumptions is... bizarre. This is elementary economics, yet Mr. Lakoff treats it as if it's a previously-secret revelation. Yes, of course the savings compound. Nevertheless, it also costs money. Why not spend $25 Trillion this year to insulate every building in America? Because the money isn't there. Further, what will the workers do when every building is insulated and there are no more jobs drilling/refining oil? Mr. Lakoff doesn't seem to consider this.
3. Mr. Lakoff seems to think that organic farming will somehow greatly reduce oil consumption, but fails to back it up. Widespread organic farming would reduce the amount of oil used on the farm, true. It would also greatly increase the amount of land that would need to be devoted to farming to meet food production needs, and require more shipping and higher price. Net win? you need to do some math.
Don't let your ambition get the best of you. Stick with facts, one at a time.
While I agree with conserving energy (and everything really) for it's own sake ... we should not fall into the trap of making claims about conserving that simply are not true and can never be true.
All energy production/use has costs, including environmental costs.
#2 seems to be a straw man.
#3 seems to be an assertion without support.
Shouldn't we be working instead on reducing the need to use cars as much, no matter the energy source?
I know, in California, they are looking at solar to produce electricity at electric power plug-in stations. Solar can also used at home to charge electric cars.
Every one of those methods costs lots and lots of resources (money, manpower, natural resources) to use. There isn't really enough money in the world (in terms of material wealth) to make the switch for all.
Thus your claim of being able to do it "profitably" (which is bogus) is thus irrelevant. The resources just aren't there (which is why we subsidize the &#$^ out if what little we have).
I have actually made the calculations for profitability for solar power, and it is indeed very profitable. As an electrical engineer, I am qualified to make those calculations. What evidence do you have to support your claim that it is not profitable? Have you made any calculations? I doubt it. Germany has also made the calculations, and they are pushing for 100% clean renewable energy by 2020.
We also have the manpower. Are you not aware of our enormous rate of unemployment?