U.S. Politics Thread

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by willx

I'm not sure where all these attitudes of big oil being "invincible" and or otherwise strangling the economy comes from? In my work, I'm staring directly at a company that lost billions of dollars due to the Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium, and subsequent become insolvent because of that. I've also worked on or around transactions related to large companies working on hydrogen fuel cells.

I mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again. Watch the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Or at least read the wiki page. Big oil worked with GM and the car companies to stage fake grass roots campaigns to discredit the notion of an electric car. They got the Bush Administration to come in and knock down California's law. If are on the right, you should hate that the Federal government stomped on a state's right. If you are on the left, then you should hate oil in general.

And even almost a hundred years earlier, we actually had a great mass transit system and lots of electric cars. Much like the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" plot, the car and oil companies bought up the mass transit systems and dismantled them to force us all into gas-guzzling cars.

The oil companies aren't invincible. But they retard progress on a grand scale. Just think of where we would be today, if gas-guzzlers had never come about, and electric cars advanced for the past 80 years. Imagine how many industries and technologies that would have been developed, had the oil companies not sought to use their power to force us down a narrow road? How much money and opportunity have we lost because of them? How many people have died because of pointless wars that we otherwise would have never concerned ourselves with?

Oil is a commodity. It's a resource. It's valuable because of how energy efficient it is and it's (relative) ease of portability. It allowed great leaps in innovation and productivity. I'm not talking about pipelines and oil tankers, I'm talking about it being a storage of "energy" in a relatively static state. Let's not kid ourselves about how absolutely awesome oil is.

That said, oil is just a commodity, a commodity that has gotten more expensive. So as it's gotten more expensive, side businesses and side industries have emerged in response, such as: "fracking" is back in vogue, fuel efficiency has become important, alt. energy companies (solar, hydro, hydrogen fuel cell, bioethanol, etc.) were investigated and hybrid and electric cars are in development (most popular, Prius but most fancy, Tesla Motors). The world has not been and will not be standing still.

While coal is worse, oil is pretty bad. I don't know about you, but I don't want that many deaths on my conscience. Not when we have a great alternative in nuclear (and solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc.). And note that this chart does NOT take into account the deaths due to wars in the middle east. If you add those in, oil would probably easily overtake coal.

So no, I don't have any sympathy for the oil companies, who rake in $8 billion in subsidies. Eliminate those. Tax gas. Move as many people as possible to electric cars powered by nuclear/solar/wind/etc.

Oil is awesome? Perhaps, in a very technical, scientific sense. But in a realistic sense, oil is decidedly not awesome at all.

Edit: Adding this website where the graph comes from. Has a lot of numbers relating to power generation that the studies and curious person may be interested in.

[Vexx]

Voter discrimination laws ... maybe "voter suppression laws" is a better phrase. It is purely coincidental that the ID act affects mostly minorities, the young, the elderly, the disabled. Yup. If all you can attract are middle-aged white men with your policies and incessant need to say offensive things and blatant nonsense in public then all you got is suppression and gerrymandering

[Triple_R]

What does this voter ID law/act actually say?

[sikvod00]

It's not one voter ID law. Several states like Texas and Pennsylvania have tried or are trying to pass them. Most coincided with the 2012 Presidential elections. I think some have already passed? I have to dig through a site to find the articles pertaining to them.

EDIT: I also agree that voter suppression is a better word for what they are.

[Ithekro]

I would point out that it was not only Southern states that have a voting problem. What is unclear is if other states (such as Illinios) fall under that law as well. Especailly considering the stereotype for Chicago is that your grandfather may have voted for one party his entire life, but now is voting for the other party from the grave.

[willx]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

Oil is awesome? Perhaps, in a very technical, scientific sense. But in a realistic sense, oil is decidedly not awesome at all.

In a technical scientific sense? A realistic sense? How about in a practical sought after sense? As a scientific and industrial sense? A technological revolution that propelled our society forward to a much higher standard of living sense?

Heck, coal .. I'm not even going to address your dislike for coal. What I will say is there is a reason why coal is still and will likely be still incredibly important in the near future.. You should maybe have a look into thermal coal mining and the how and why it's still used. Or metallurgical coal and it's applications for making steel.

As for "left" .. my boss calls me leftist. The left would likely call me a conservative. I call myself a realist. Let me ask you this -- why is your version of the world the one that everyone else in the world be forced to live in?

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by willx

In a technical scientific sense? A realistic sense? How about in a practical sought after sense? As a scientific and industrial sense? A technological revolution that propelled our society forward to a much higher standard of living sense?

Hypothesis contrary to fact. Who is to say we wouldn't have been the same, or much further along, with a different technology fuel? In fact, given that we are returning to electricity for vehicular propulsion, just like we had before unscrupulous individuals set us on a gas path, and electricity that powered much of the technological revolution, one should say that gas held us back. But either way, your assertion is lacking solid ground.

So are you proud we built this civilization upon billions of deaths? Are you okay with using a technology base that kills so many?

Heck, coal .. I'm not even going to address your dislike for coal.

Yeah, my dislike for causing so many deaths. I thought that made me human.

As for "left" .. my boss calls me leftist. The left would likely call me a conservative. I call myself a realist. Let me ask you this -- why is your version of the world the one that everyone else in the world be forced to live in?

I never said I was forcing anyone. But shall we ask people what they would prefer? What would the people of this forum like to us as a power source?

A. The one that kills 0.04 people per unit of energy? (Taking Chernobyl into account)
B. The one that kills 36? (Not counting wars)
C. The one that kills 161?

[DonQuigleone]

Coal, Gas and Oil are valuable resources that we shouldn't shy from exploiting. There are many things that can't be done without them.


However, it's true that there are human and environmental costs associated with fossil fuels. The problem is not that these costs exist (it's an unfortunate fact of life that everything has to some degree or another these costs involved), but that companies are not sufficiently held to task to pay for them.

If companies were rigorously required to pay compensation to the families of injured or killed workers, and to communities whose environment has been damaged, in accordance with these costs, then you'd see companies go to a lot more effort to do business in a sustainable manner. And this will also mean that consumers using these products will be paying for the human/environmental damage of those products.

Furthermore, when companies do blatantly bad things, people need to go to jail. Executives shouldn't be allowed to buy their way out of responsibility.

[Ithekro]

In a lot of those cases it would be deaths, or we'd be in the 1700s still in terms of progress. No industrial revolution. No steam power. Steel would be rare for large stuctures. Plastics would not exist at all. There would be no flying machines other than ballons and maybe some gliders. No horseless carridges. Polution might be worse since everyone would be using either wood or coal to heat their homes.

Sure there might be more people living today than if we stopped advancing technologically in the 18th century, but then again, maybe more people would be dead. What advances in medicines are tied with the technologies powered from coal and oil? How much of electicity comes from such technologies before hydroelectric came about? How many of the parts needed to make a hydroelectic power station or dam are made using coal or oil derived products or need the power such fuels product to make?

We can't go backwards. The genie is out of the bottle so to speak. The same with nuclear power. You can't go backwards. You have to go forwards.

Forwards takes time, but you get there eventually.

[monsta666]

Originally Posted by willx

Heck, coal .. I'm not even going to address your dislike for coal. What I will say is there is a reason why coal is still and will likely be still incredibly important in the near future.. You should maybe have a look into thermal coal mining and the how and why it's still used. Or metallurgical coal and it's applications for making steel.

As for "left" .. my boss calls me leftist. The left would likely call me a conservative. I call myself a realist. Let me ask you this -- why is your version of the world the one that everyone else in the world be forced to live in?

You do realise if we do not stop burning fossil fuels or worse insist in consuming ever greater amounts of coal we will end up with runaway global warming not to mention resource collapse and national state bankruptcy. And people say this is the practical option we need to pursue. I call it strength through exhaustion. I think there is merit in letting me paraphrase what many people who shares similar opinions to you are saying so we can identify the broken logic to this line of thinking:

"The more rapidly we get the last bit of coal out of the ground and finish using it the better off we'll be!"

Please do not take this the wrong way; I am trying to take this as a general opinion as I know many pragmatic people share your opinion. I just want people to think about the real logic behind such statements and ask them if it is really practical thing to advocate. Our coal consumptions maybe considerable but asking for greater and greater rates of coal consumption will result in this resource being exhausted sooner than you think and real issues will be result if we consider the "peak production" that most non-renewable resources follow in their depletion dynamics.

Saying that, it is true that fossil fuels is necessary to maintain our industrial style of living if we wish to live entirely on "renewables" then we must recognise we cannot have an industrial lifestyle. The amount of energy contained in renewables is not only much more diffuse but I have a hard time believing all fossil fuel energy can be replaced with renewables. For example one barrel of oil contains 6.2 gigjoules of energy that is 1.5 million kilocalories or about 7-10 years of human labour (assuming 48 40 hour weeks). We consume 30 billion barrels of oil per year. Coal releases around 18 gigajoules per short ton and the world consumes 7.7 billion tons of coal per year. In addition to this people demand economic growth so more people can be supported and people can have more prosperous lives. I will not detail on the powers of exponentials except by saying it is very significant even with growth rates of 3% never mind 7%. To me I just do not see how the numbers can add up in displacing fossil fuel energy with renewables.

In addition to the points mentioned above we must recognize that a lot of the inputs used in constructing renewable energy (wind turbines to solar panels) depends on fossil fuels! For example mining the materials to make solar or wind turbines requires diesel which is oil. Then it must be transported to a factory (more oil) where it is processed in a factory (which is normally powered by some fossil fuel but perhaps nuclear) then it must be transported yet again (more oil) where the materials are converted into the actual goods. Then this must be transported yet again were it eventually reaches the end-consumer. Once there it must be transported to the site (more oil) where it is then installed. Finally many of these processes can be quite complicated and require a lot of supporting infrastructure such as banks, globalised world trade, university education etc. All this surplus energy required to build and maintain such systems is unlikely to be supportable with only renewable energy sources particularly if you wish to add storage capacity to make up for renewable energies intermittent nature. I suppose in all fairness thermal solar panels could be used to smelt the iron and construct the solar panels/steel for wind turbines but that only takes care of one stage of the industrial process. You still need to cover the transportation and mining phases which are highly dependent on fossil fuel energy. It is these reasons why people sometimes say that renewable energy are really fossil fuel extenders.

I think we need to recognise what we have is a predicament and not a problem. Problems have solutions while predicaments only have outcomes. We need to recognise that we can never go back to what we had and accept the fact there are limits to growth and we can only manage the decline in the fairest way possible. Off course if people deny there are limits then these issues will come any way but the decline will be a chaotic one and not a managed one and there will be a lot unnecessary suffering. Unfortunately I do not have solutions to this predicament but feel we need to be honest and debate them. I am sure with enough awareness we can come to a more amicable program that people can agree to. But we need to be honest with ourselves first.

[Ithekro]

Another solution would be to find an alternate supply of fossil fuels, thus extending our supply beyond our current known limits.

While renewable and nuclear are the idea, there are things they cannot do at this time (and in some cases are unlikely to ever do).

The question would be, "where"? While we have little knowledge of the Antarctic, here is possibly some resources there, far below the ice. The other option would be to investigate the Solar System for viable alternatives to using materials from our own planet. While fossil fuels on other worlds without life is doubtful, we could always find something with a relatievly high energy capacity and use that to our advantage. It would just need to be worth the collection and transportation cost of not only getting it from where it is to Earth, but also worth the cost of going out to get it in the first place.

Though if Mars had life at one point in time, it could have a supply of fossil fuels.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by willx

I'm not sure where all these attitudes of big oil being "invincible" and or otherwise strangling the economy comes from?

Take a look at the list of the world's companies with the greatest revenue. Seven of the top ten are oil/gas companies. While you get more variety as you begin to look in the 10-20 and 20-40 range, oil and gas companies are still very well represented - and as an area of business, "oil and gas" has far more companies listed than any other area of business.

These companies are big, and money has influence. These companies have a say in our government's rules and restrictions, although they don't get an easy rubber stamp of approval unless the Republicans are in charge. These companies have the power to invest in other areas of energy, and they most certainly are - but what benefit would it be to them to displace oil with something else? That "something else" would need to be cheaper than oil on the consumer end in order to become popular, but it would need to make the company more money in order to make switching away from oil worthwhile. And as that list of companies by revenue shows, companies are doing very well by sticking with oil.

The oil companies aren't charities. It may be more beneficial to us in the long run to use something else, but the companies primarily care about their revenues. Why would they try to put something else forward at this point in time, and if they have the opportunity to do so, why wouldn't they do everything possible to keep everyone using oil?

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Coal, Gas and Oil are valuable resources that we shouldn't shy from exploiting. There are many things that can't be done without them.

Yes, but we need to be smart about our usage. We have electric cars; do we have electric planes or trucks? No. Save the petroleum for those applications, it's being utterly wasted on most cars at this point. Plastics are derived from petroleum, and we rely on them for many, many areas of society. Is there a good replacement? No?

[Lost Cause]

According to tonight's news we may get to Mars (manned mission) by 2018. Wonder what we'll find there?

[Ithekro]

That is a lot sooner than expected (as of like a year ago where they were talking 2030s to Mars and maybe 2020 to the Moon again). that suggests they found something, or it is politically viable again to have a space race with perhaps China.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

A. The one that kills 0.04 people per unit of energy? (Taking Chernobyl into account)
B. The one that kills 36? (Not counting wars)
C. The one that kills 161?

A, but apparently that one is evil because Mr. Burns owns one and grows multi-eyed fish.

If the fearmongerers have you going, you'd believe that the Japanese are swimming in radiation right now. But then again, would one take a risk of a dangerous accident which may take lives as opposed to options that WILL take lives?

[Ithekro]

Originally Posted by Lost Cause

According to tonight's news we may get to Mars (manned mission) by 2018. Wonder what we'll find there?

I see you mean this project: "Inspiration Mars"
http://news.msn.com/science-technolo...le-around-mars

Which is a private venture rather than a government project. That will have to be a wait and see sort of thing. But if big bucks wants to go to space, than big bucks will go to space.

After that it will be a matter if they can find profit out there (outside the "first" catagory). I can imagine things...it is just a matter of making things viable.

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by monsta666

Saying that, it is true that fossil fuels is necessary to maintain our industrial style of living if we wish to live entirely on "renewables" then we must recognise we cannot have an industrial lifestyle. The amount of energy contained in renewables is not only much more diffuse but I have a hard time believing all fossil fuel energy can be replaced with renewables.

That's probably what some might like you to believe, but as I mentioned before, the sun provides enough energy to the earth, to power everything we could possibly want and need... times 20,000. We have enough uranium to last us a thousand years. We have enough thorium to last us 10,000 years.

But we use oil for so much more than just fuel. In order to make it last, we need to shift what we can off oil. Science has already given us good power sources... all that remains is the will to seize them. And by doing so, society will reap the huge benefits with reduced health care costs, as oil and gas are thousands of times more polluting than solar or nuclear. We can easily maintain our way of life by switching... and then some. And when the demand for oil drops, so will the price. And the things we still need it for (jet-powered flight and plastics) will get much cheaper as a result.

Who doesn't want to save money and save the planet, preserving it for the generations to come?

[Bri]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Another solution would be to find an alternate supply of fossil fuels, thus extending our supply beyond our current known limits.

While renewable and nuclear are the idea, there are things they cannot do at this time (and in some cases are unlikely to ever do).

The question would be, "where"? While we have little knowledge of the Antarctic, here is possibly some resources there, far below the ice. The other option would be to investigate the Solar System for viable alternatives to using materials from our own planet. While fossil fuels on other worlds without life is doubtful, we could always find something with a relatievly high energy capacity and use that to our advantage. It would just need to be worth the collection and transportation cost of not only getting it from where it is to Earth, but also worth the cost of going out to get it in the first place.

Though if Mars had life at one point in time, it could have a supply of fossil fuels.

The low energy density of fossil fuels doesn't make it worthwhile to collect them in the solar system. Titan has methane seas containing hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth.

Not to mention you wouldn't want to bring in more carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere from the outside unless you want to beef up global warming to Venus levels.

[Ithekro]

If you need such things for manufacturing, you go and get them. If you need them for plastics, you go and get them.

There is also no rule that says we can't export extranous gasses from our planet. If one things there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, find a way to extract it and either store (if one can find a use for that much carbon dioxide) it or export it offworld. Perhaps to the place we go to pick up materials, or to Mars to improve its greenhouse gasses level.

[DonQuigleone]

I'm not necessarily convinces our fossil fuels are as limited as people think.

There are many sources of Fossil fuels that are only not being exploited because at current prices they're not economical to exploit.

Furthermore, there are ways to synthesize plastics from resources besides fossil fuels. They're just more expensive.


More serious then fossil fuels, however, are helium and certain exotic heavy metals being used in electronics. Helium in particular we're just releasing out of the atmosphere from children's parties...