Greg,

I do not know if this post will have gotten overrun by the time you see this, but I found the article from 321 Energy. Wondering what you think of their theory on peak oil.

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html

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Oh I forgot about geothermal energy. Thanks. Tack on another 10% by 2050.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2007-06-06-geothermal_N.htm

There are others including energy generated by waves, energy from manure (India has cooking stoves ran on cow manure)/other biowaste, etc. All of that could make the U.S. an exporter of renewable energy when factored into my earlier equation.

I don’t know if task Force Horn is a military base in the usual sense. It’s a training camp to train Africans. It could even be considered a military academy. I would equate it more with the School of the Americas than a foward base that could attack somebody or defend an area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Joint_Task_Force_-_Horn_of_Africa

I think the majority of environmentalists in the U.S. are more involved with something like the Kyoto treaty and in this plan the U.S. would eventually exceed that sometime mid century. Two of the best population controls are education and jobs. Most first world countries have a population decrease. Some of those increases are just due to immigration (which would shrink if they could get jobs in their own countries). I actually have a plan for even that, but I’m not the one running for office.

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Sorry, the “war for oil” comment was a general one, not aimed at you. It is difficult to convey that sense across the written word.

One problem with the “no bases is Africa” is that it is not quite true, as Task Force Horn of Africa has operated for years, but I digress.

I have to find the old article from 321 Energy about competing theories on “peak oil” and it will be tomorrow evening before I can post it here.

I fully agree that corn is a wasteful fuel source and the ethanol it creates is partially oxygenated (burned). It is also a sponge when it comes to water, and is difficult to transport. I hope switch grass works out and better fuel can come from it. I also hope we build more oil refineries using modern technologies and cutting edge systems for greater production and quality control.

There are additional power drivers for electricity generation including geo-thermal plants (the US Army even built and operates one in a depot somewhere). So in a sense, the US Government at that level is gaining money from alternative energy generation already.

The only issue I have is with your last paragraph concerning the environmentalists. While your statement would hold true for the more moderate among them, the more… militant, do not want more energy and surpluses; they want less humans. The radical groups are against everything designed to help create more energy and human growth and can be very destructive about it. These groups (ELF/ALF, Sea Shepperd, and several “population cap” groups) will have to be somehow dealt, preferably by the environmental movement itself.

Other than that I see it working just fine. In addition, rebuilding the power transmission lines to prevent heat loss of long distance electricity travel, better friction controls, and continuing improvements in machine and electronic efficiencies should also reduce waste of energies.

In the mean time, we also need to better drill, refine, and use what oil we have until the new infrastructure and technologies are in place.

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The reason why the U.S. doesn’t really care about oil rigs is because oil rigs are the most costliest form of getting oil. That and all the other oil rigs would probably shut down if it hit $60-$70 a barrel. The profit then would be lower than the cost. The oil rigs off California’s coast were primarly closed down because the profit wasn’t there.

In the story about coal to oil, there is one or two paragraphs explaining what they do with the excess carbon dioxide. They basically pump it back into the Earth into a shaft such as an abandoned mine or oil well.

I didn’t say the U.S. invaded Iraq for oil. There has always been U.S.military around the Middle East since WWII, especially the Navy, to safe guard the oil supply from first the Germans and then the Soviet Union. After the OPEC oil embago. The U.S. wants to increase the number of bases in The Middle East, yet doesn’t want to put them in Africa where terrorists are hiding and genocide happens. This is to prevent an embargo or somebody else from taking away a future oil reserve.

Canada is actually the number one supplier of U.S. oil with Saudia Arabia and Venezuela as the second and third suppliers. Based on proven reserves, the oil will run out in Saudia Arabia and Venezula by the end of this century. In 200 years, based on proven reserves, there will be no more oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
Note this number is based on current production levels. If more countries used more oil, those reserve numbers will fall. There is also a hint of Middle Eastern countries giving inflated reserves. Even though oil prices are going up, Saudia Arabia cut production by 6% in 2007. We will probably be dead from old age before the fighting starts on the remaining oil.

If you can believe the liberal numbers (I read it in Rolling Stone in the mid 1990s), the amount of energy the U.S. uses per year during the 1990s was equal to a solar power grid that was 100 sq miles. With present technology, that number is probably close to the same for 2007. The energy to make that many solar panels could come from biofuels. If each of the continental states put up 1 square miles (including on roofs), that would probably supply the U.S. with 40% of the U.S. energy. 10% of the U.S. energy is from hydroelectric. Alaska could use wind farms with each 3 mega watt 110′ wind tower able to power 1,000 homes. Wind power plants in the U.S create enough energy to power 2.3 million homes. At the present rate of growth, the U.S. would have 20% of it’s energy means met by 2030.
http://www.powerofwind.com/node/7
again, the energy to make these machines could come from bio fuel.

Switch grass vs corn is important. Corn is used in the studies now and is an energy loser. It costs 30% more energy than what corn can provide as energy. Switchgrass is an energy winner because it supplies over 540% more energy than it takes to get the energy from it. This goes from being able to supply 4% (critics’ estimate with corn) to just over 20% with switchgrass.

Right now the U.S. gets 20% of it’s electricity from nuclear power.

This leaves over 100% of today’s energy needs. Any future needs could be offset by more solar panels, more wind farms or more switchgrass being grown and more nuclear power plants. While this is being figured out and more wind machines/solar panels are being made, Montana could continue to turn coal into gasoline and diseal.

When the world does run out of oil, the U.S. will be in a positive position on energy rather than having to fight for it.

This energy plan could be that simple It would create U.S. jobs, create U.S. energy, preserve U.S. drinking water (corn is a water hog) and it’s something that any president could do without spending tax money. Usually alternative energy is even given tax breaks. So the plan has tax breaks for the Republicans, more drinkable water (not going toward corn) and 70%+ non pollution energy for the enviromentalists (80%-90% if you don’t include radioactive waste), 100% self energy sufficiency for the protectionists/isolationists and if the government gets in on it as a revenue source it could even cut the deficit.

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Even at 11,500 gals/acre/yr, we are still looking at A LOT of farmland used for ethanol (a partially oxidized fuel). I need to find the numbers but this probably will not even come close to supplying the US needs even at millions of acres used.

However, many states have large “heavy oil” reserves. States like Michigan have is easily accessible but new refineries must be built to refine it.

Also, solar and wind will not work for some states. So what about them?

As an aside, what is the pollution created by that plant in S. Africa? Will it pass our harsher environmental standards here?

And as for Africa, Nigeria is where and produces what?

And since we get more oil from Venezuela than the Middle East, why have we not invaded there? Why have we not taken the Chinese oil rigs operating just outside our boarders in the Gulf of Mexico?

Maybe, just maybe this is not a “war for oil” but a war to protect us from true evil. But hey, I just fight it, so what do I, and hundreds of other MILBLOGGERs, know?

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The U.S. is working on switchgrass, a native grass of the U.S. as a means of fuel production. Switch grass uses low amount of water compared to corn which uses a high amount of water. The average production is about 1,500 gallons of ethanol per year or about 45,000 miles worth in a 30 mpg vehical. One site was able to produce 11,500 gallons per acre per year.
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html
Montana plans to use 80 year-old technology to convert some it’s 120 billion tons of coal to gasoline and diesel at the cost of about $35 per 55 gallon drum (right now oil is about $100 a drum and it takes two drums of oil for one drum of gasoline). One plant in South Africa is able to produce an estimated 300,000 barrels (55 gallon drums) of gasoline and diesel a day from coal.
http://governor.mt.gov/hottopics/faqsynthetic.asp

The U.S. neglects Latin America and Africa for the Middle East, because the Middle East has oil (Africa and Latin America have their share of terrorists such as the drug lords that are exported around the world).

Promoting those things along with solar, wind and hydrogen fuel cells should be the Democrats’ idea of security as a follow through about removing troops that, guard our supply of oil, from foreign soil (for the same reason U.S. troops don’t guard foreign salt mines, tulips and spice routes which were resources that people fought over).

What the Democrats have is disjointed and incomplete ideas about U.S. security among other things. Like I said, some of this technology is 80 years old which is long enough to create an alternative energy source that would have increased U.S. security. That’s a long time and the party still doesn’t have the pieces put together. These people aren’t fit to run anything at that pace.

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Barack Hussein Obama is a seriously dangerous individual. As a dedicated community organizer (meaning someone who believed that petitions for redress of wrongs from the government are the right way to solve individual problems) working in highly impoverished neighborhoods and a civil rights lawyer representing other community organizers he has demonstrated his belief system that is based on the government dedicated to helping the poorest citizens as the first priority.

He has spoke out about the need to wage only wars that will “earn the respect of the world”. As a persistent critic of the Iraq war fundamentally denying anything positive about it and a sponsor of various bills requiring the most aggressive time-tables from withdrawal he has demonstrated his contempt for the concept of the struggle with world-wide Islamic extremism. As a co-sponsor with McCain of the Amnesty bill as well as the “climate change” bill he has shown himself to be a radical leftist.

The church to which he belongs shows the following description on the home page of its website:

“We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.”

Anybody belonging to a church with this credo cannot possibly be interested in protecting all Americans equally.

Barack Obama’s recent statements on his perception of reality in Iraq only go further to demonstrate how radical this man is.

George Soros and his family gave Obama $60,000, or the maximum of $12,000 per person allowable under the “running against a millionaire exception” rule of the campaign reform legislation in his Senatorial Campaign. George Soros’s politics are well known to all serious students of radicalism and attempts at control of governments. Someone who was groomed this way by Soros and who rose to the national stage after only two years in the Senate has to seem dangerous to all who love freedom.

May we all survive the affliction personified by Barack Hussein Obama whose goal can only be to destroy the United States as we know it.

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David,

Thanks, but the real thanks belongs to men like 1SG Aaron Jagger (my PSG when I was a young 2LT in 1AD), MAJ Doug Sloan (went through ROTC with me), 2Lt Todd Bryant (one of the PLs in 1-34AR/1st BDE/1ID) and many others.

They can never respond to your thanks but the work they did is what is keeping the islamofascists from winning and creating Hell on Earth.

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Twilight Zone territory indeed. Or, perhaps, the Star Trek episode which Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov find themselves in an alien version of Tombstone as the Clantons.

Both analyses show the Democrats are woefully unprepared to assume the executive. If they were to take the WH, everything we’ve done in Iraq would be for naught. The hard work done by ChrisG and many, many others would have been wasted. And, for what purpose? So, other nations and people would think of us better?

AQ is counting on us to quit. In many ways, they’re hoping for a Democratic victory in November that they couldn’t achieve on the battlefield.

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In the last forty year a large number of low-functioning individuals have been brought into the political process, many of them imported. These individuals are often belligerent to the status quo. That and the lowering of educational standards have resulted in a dramatic reduction of the collective IQ of the populace and an increase in the strength of resonance of any “anti-establishment” message. It has therefore become possible to state bold lies by the party that appeals to this segment without any ability to effectively challenge the acceptance of the lie. Unfortunately, this will lead to significant negative consequences.

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