oil
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Using high gas prices to push for a rebirth
In today's New York Times, President Gerald Ford's energy adviser, in an article entitled "How to Win the Energy War," tries to use higher gas prices and oil dependence as an excuse to build more nuclear reactors:
The other major way to wean us from oil is to resume construction of nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy is the cleanest and best option for America's electric power supply, yet it has been stalled by decades of unproductive debate. Our current commercial nuclear power plants have an outstanding record of safety and security, and new designs will only raise performance. How can Washington help? One thing would be federal legislation to streamline the licensing of new plants and the approval of sites for them.
His first way to wean us from oil is to gradually increase gas taxes. Ford's original energy independence plan might make you wince, as it included 150 new coal-fired plants and 200 nuclear power plants.
Not a word about global warming or peak oil, by the way. Not that mentioning those would help: Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to use global warming as a cover for more nukes, a trick that even Margaret Thatcher used as well.
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New Hansen paper
Today the Oil Drum linked to a James Hansen released paper analyzing the impact of peak oil, peak gas, and peak coal on the likely emissions of carbon. Hansen notes that most of our emissions scenarios have thus far failed to account for whether the carbon will even be there to burn.
Plenty of graphy goodness, but what I took away was this: There's just enough oil and gas left in the ground to take us up to, or maybe a bit over, the 450 parts per million of CO2 that climatologists worry about so much. This makes it imperative that we in the developed countries immediately phase out coal, the one supply of fossil carbon that can take us right over the cliff.
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Drilling for oil is good for climate change — see how!
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) explains why drilling in the Arctic Refuge will help us fight climate change: Won’t drilling for more oil make global warming worse? What some might perceive as the contradiction in further drilling, when we take into account the mean estimate of what we take from ANWR, it will be the […]
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I’m not sure if a rock concert is the answer …
… but I’m pretty sure “burning all the oil” isn’t.
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Do gas prices affect behavior or not?
Despite record-setting gas prices, U.S. drivers haven't changed their gas-guzzling habits, says AP. Not only are we consuming as much as we always have, new vehicle sales seem to be tilting even more in favor of trucks than cars.
But wait, USA Today disagrees. They say that drivers are, in fact, starting to cut back on how much they drive -- a clear sign that higher gas prices are starting to bite.
Who's right? Who cares! Either way, the consumer response to massive increases in gas prices over the last five years has been teensy-tiny.
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Funding deniers, still, in 2007?
A little while back Exxon was trying to backpedal on its global warming shenanigans, claiming it had been misunderstood and that it wasn’t funding those nasty denialist groups any more. In what is sure to come as a huge shock to … nobody, that turned out to be bullsh*t. According to a new report from […]
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Patrick Moore proves to be — gasp — a nuclear shill
We anti-nuclear folks are frequently accused of closed-mindedness. Like, you know, Chernobyl is so 1980s. Get with the here and now, man.
So I was interested to see how nuclear shill extraordinaire Patrick Moore would react to the news that the Canadian oil industry is increasingly interested in geothermal power as an alternative to nuclear in the heat-starved tar sands developments. The heat produced by obviously-feasible technology would be a perfect fit, and if those tree-hugging hippies in the oil sector are interested, surely there's something to suggest it, right?
Nope, not for Moore. It's nuclear or nothing. Talk about closed-minded.
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Some guy on CNBC
There’s plenty of oil. We’re swimming in it! What I don’t get is, why does he think production-capacity limitations and geological limitations are mutually exclusive? (via Hugg)
