The question you should ask:

Do you believe we have a choice??? So far noone's find a *practical* alternative to oil, and we may have to return to a 1700s/1800s lifestyle kicking-and-screaming, even if we don't want to. We may not have any choice but to abandon our current oil-rich/spoiled lifestyle. Not really. We survived the fall of the Roman Civilization (albeit after 400 years of dark ages), and we'll survive the fall of the Oil Age too. We just need to adapt to having less energy.

We can learn a lot from our ancestors.

- They had candles. I use 5 watt bulbs. If they could survive with dim candlelight, so can I survive with 5-watt light (which is actually several candles brighter).

- They had one-room fireplaces. I have adjustable heating that only heats one room at a time, while the others lay cool. Saves money & energy to only heat one room, rather than the whole house.

- They had no hot water except what they heated over the fire. I live the same way - only heating water when I need it (on-demand heating).

- They made their own clothes. I don't do that but I do sew & repair the old ones. I've got shirts and pants that are nearly twenty years old (black pants never go out of style).

- And on and on.

I've spent a lot of time studying the past & adapting my lifestyle to be more energy efficient. More like my ancestors. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor.

 

When I said we are doomed I meant the United States and western civilization. I have no doubt that mankind would survive and I am better prepared than most for a 18th or 19th century lifestyle. My dad has a small working ranch where we raise cattle. I have done some light farming. But the US as a whole cant handle this and there would be large starvation and death before it got sorted out. Ergo we need to develop ANWAR so we can transition to at least nuclear power and ethanol then hydrogen. We do not need to go down the road of back to the 18th century. We just need to use the technology we alreay have and develop some new energy sources.

We could lead the world, again or we could turn out the lights!

 

> TIPS ON PUMPING GAS--GOOD INFO
> I don't know what you guys are paying for gasoline....Here in
California
> we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of
work
> is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to
get
> more of your money's worth for every gallon.
>
> Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose, CA we
> deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the
pipeline.
> One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular
and
> premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity
> of 16,800,000 gallons.
>
> Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the
> ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations
> have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground
> the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands,
so
> buying in the afternoon or in the evening....your gallon is not
exactly a
> gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the
> temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other
> petroleum products plays an important role. A 1-degree rise in
> temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations
do
> not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
>
> When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a
fast
> mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)
stages:
> low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low
> speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are
> pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are
> pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank
> becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the
> underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your
money.
>
> One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is
HALF
> FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in
> your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline
evaporates
> faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal
> floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas
and
> the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service
> stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature
> compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.
>
> Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the
storage
> tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up--most likely the
> gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you
> might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.
>
> Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.
> DO SHARE THESE TIPS WITH OTHERS...
>


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I think we should SAVE anwar the same way you save a can of gasoline in the basement in case of emergency.

If we use ANWAR now, what will we use in 2030 when the Mideast is dry? We won't have any emergency reserves.

 

We will be in deep trouble if we havent changed our oil consumption by 2030. We could be totally ethanol (for cars) by then. It will take 5-10 years to bring ANWAR on line anyway, start now so we will have it in 2015-2020

 

Do you really have a can of gasoline in your basement?

I think what you say about ANWAR has value if one assumes consumption is going to stay flat.

Eventually, whatever you've saved in this case will be gone. We're not talking about saving a buck which one can replenish. Once those reserves are gone - they're gone.

Unless we can pull our fuel out of the air, so to speak, any renewable fuel requires land. The more land we put into production of ethanol means less land for the production of food. And since crops are rotated, corn this year might be wheat or some other grain or food product.

Dairy farms are shutting down because the cost of corn is being pushed. That pushes the cost of milk. It means little if the corn for ethanol is of a different hybrid, or strain, than corn for feed or food. Arable land is finite, and will probably become less so as the planet moves deeper into global warming.

 

ANWAR doesn't have enough supply to alleviate prices. It might affect them .01-.03 cents/gallon but thats about it.

But I am curious why you are so for "saving" it. Have you ever been to the North Slope of Alaska? No? Do you ever plan on going? I am so tired of the Environ/Kennedy camp in the media talking about how important it is to "save" ANWAR. I've got news for you: ANWAR is a tundra. If there is ever a place where if an environmental disaster had to happen, it would be in a place like ANWAR (not that that would be a good thing). Nobody visits ANWAR for recreation and very few people live there.

You should be more worried about environmental damage in places people actually live.

In order to ease the transition off of oil which will happen over the next 40 years, we are going to need to exhaust all avenues for procuring it. Even so that might put us in a recession, but we should at least try.

 

We are in deep trouble right now.
We just don't know it yet.

Here's a link. Scroll down to the slide showing projected oil supply vs demand for the year 2030.
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/...0Sept%2023.pdf

We are running a deficit in oil supply vs demand right now of over 10 million barrels per day. The difference is currently being made up by doing things which are neither scalable (enabling future increases) nor sustainable.

We could very easily be seeing skyrocketing oil prices within the next five years.

And ethanol won't save us. It is very energy intensive to manufacture; that means the net energy gain is close to nil. We use as much petroleum based energy to make ethanol (farming machinery, distilling/refining, transporting, etc.) as we get back out from the ethanol itself.

 

I've been to Greenland, I don't know what difference that makes. It's interesting that the discussion has moved to land use from products from the land.

Tundra, as it defrosts and as once dead plants begin now to decay CO2 and even worse, methane moves into the atmosphere exacerbating heating the planet.

Looking at which place is best for oil production not only signals an exhaustion of supply, but even worse to my mind is that we may be reaching the carrying capacity of the planet. If that sounds dire - it is.

Alternative fuels have a lot problems as other postings to this forum have pointed out.

Ethanol from sugar seems more acceptable to me. The alternative to cane sugar is beet sugar. Unfortunately, corn is now subsidized so good luck to going to sugar. Oh, yeah. Forgot that sugar is also subsidized.

 

I think and hope the alternative to global recession/depression lies within these plug-in vehicles. They can already give them a 70 mile range. Most Americans don't drive 70 miles in a day so there is real potential there. Also most would jump at the opportunity to eliminate the gas expense from their budget, which at $3/gallon is not insignificant.

Of course don't look for the Big 3 to produce them--Detroit has been behind the curve for years. Its hard to feel sorry for the Big 3 really: they ran their companies like a typical western one focusing on quarterly earnings and the current stock price, meanwhile the European (VW) and Asian car companies thought longer-term and have viable, fuel efficient products on the market now.

I'm still not convinced that economic disaster can be averted as few have really prepared on a large scale. Oil is probably the one commodity with the most impact on consumer spending. Just imagine what $5 gas would do to the economy...