1) Of course gas is a finite resource. So is most everything else that you’ve used today. In fact, there isn’t enough of everything to satisfy everyone’s wants, so there has to be a way to ration it, and the pricing mechanism does a great job of that in the free market. As the supply of oil decreases, the price will increase. As price increases, it makes other, more inexpensive sources of energy more attractive to consumers. Therefore, more people will adopt these alternate fuel sources to lower costs. This of course assumes that the demand for oil remains the same, which may be far from the case as we find alternative fuels in the future that may be more cost-effective than oil (*cough*nuclear*cough*).

2) All you do when you increase the costs of oil manufactured in the US is make oil from other countries more attractive. These countries, by and large, have worse records on the environment than the US (with the arguable exception of Canada). Therefore, it’s quite possible that the negative effects on the environment that the production of more oil would cause would be offset by the fact that some of the oil from other, more negligent countries would be replaced by more environmentally friendly American oil.

3) As to your non-sequitur concerning naval expenditures, you realize that at this point, military expenditures currently hover at about 20% of the budget, and are universally acknowledged as a legitimate function of government. As to Iraq, I’m not of the opinion that we should have gone in in the first place, but I can’t say that it was a complete waste of government funds to depose a dictator who posed a grave risk to the stability of that area of the world and to re-form the country from being a rathole beholden to Hussein’s twisted whims a constitutional modern republic and a valuable ally in the region. (Also, the stabilization process is going swimmingly ATM, thanks for asking). Heck, I’d have thought that out of all wars, a war against a regime propped up by religious fundamentalists and abusers of women would be right up the left’s alley, esp. when said country attacked religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds) and when said war was encouraged by the UN. But then I remembered that leftists hate women, and aren’t too crazy about people different from them, either.

I doubt you’ll learn from this post, as it seems that you’re chronically unable to process facts that don’t fit your narrative rationally, but hopefully, someone else will be able to.

We could be doing much more with reprocessing fuel and using the plutonium to power reactors. The reason we *can’t* do this is because of a Jimmy Carter ban on that – don’t want to make any plutonium, might be a proliferation problem. France of course does this extensively without any trouble (technical or political).

Dealing with the waste is a political problem, not a technical one. We’ve had a plethora of viable disposal methods for decades – it’s just that they’ve been continually blocked by the anti-nuclear fanatics. The whole Yucca Mountain circus is just the latest example.

BTW, keep in mind that “long-lasting” is actually better than “short-lasting” in many ways. When something has a short decay life, it emits gobs of radiation. When something has a long half life, it emits low levels of radiation – and is more manageable. Ponder that.

But this one was heading for a nervous breakdown. His obtuse ramble here needs no real comment, other than to note how he sees how the Tampa-St.P metro area is larger and more populous than it was 30 years ago…. and extrapolates THAT to infer what’s going on in the ENTIRE PLANET. Good grief.

What’s really disturbing is to see so many people willing to sign up (on their own dime) to be the talking points cannon fodder for the DNC and that lot. They’re just being used and are regarded as expendable, and will be discarded – but that reality hasn’t penetrated their fuzzy minds yet.

In China, you can still note a certain age group in the population that is strange – they are basically illiterate and completely unskilled. These are the fanatics who were the “shock troops” (more like social cannon fodder) of the so-called “cultural revolution.” They were used as cannon fodder by Mao and his minions, and were left uneducated, illiterate, and unskilled – and worthless for life.

I hope I live long enough to pity our version of people like that.

By the by, natural resources aren’t the only tax favored endeavors. So are invention, farming and fishing, home ownership, medical insurance… charitable giving to the very institutions that educated all the common sense out of you.

You are confusing a tax break with a subsidy. The oil business gets a tax break. The auto companies get a subsidy.

There isn’t a honey pot in Washington filled with unspent subsidies. There isn’t a Social Security Trust Fund. There isn’t an Easter Bunny.

Or are you just stopping by to read off the DNC talking points that are sent out to all the volunteer cannon fodder?

All you’ve done so far is babble and wave your hands. There’s no sign of any engineering experience or knowledge.

Do go into details about the “smart grid” – that should be entertaining.

The first is “energy-density.” The sources the greenies profess to hate are nearly all very dense – i.e., lots of energy from a relatively small amount of “stuff.” As you note, in the case of nearly all of these things, you actually are using energy that is conveniently stored in some corporeal form, so that you can not only store and transport it – you can fire up the source (in both time and scale) at will.

The only viable exception to that is hydro – since that’s an instantaneous-generation source. That only works because the flow of rivers is relatively predictable – at least it’s far and away more manageable than the wind. Of course, note how a key feature of hydro power is dams and reservoirs – which amounts to energy storage as well.

The second problem is indeed that the present grid is not at all configured to accommodate diffuse sources. This is of course because of the energy-density of the major sources – you generate A LOT of kWh in one place and distribute them outward. “Renewables” are so diffuse that they require an entirely new grid to be built to collect all the diffusely-generated power and feed it into the distribution grid. Whether or not that’s desirable is for now not the point – it will be very expensive to go and do that.

These things aren’t easy. That’s why it’s not a simple matter to go rewrite the rulebook on electricity/energy production and generation. Almost every path you go down turns into a massive sink for money and resources.

I’m not in the energy domain at all. My main worry is as a downstream user – having enough of a supply of reliable electricity/energy to be able to engage in other productive economic activities. I also don’t want to see so much of a fraction of our resources put into “fantasy energy” that it takes away resources from more productive activities.

My main fear is that whenever people have gone down the fantasy road, the collateral damage to everyone else has been catastrophic….

Nat gas is independent of shale oil.

Shale oil is the one that requires processing, like crude oil. It has a lower enthalpic quality or heating value (as engineers say) as compared to crude oil.

Crude oil requires Catalytic cracking to form refined fuels like gasoline, diesel and kerosene, among others.

Problem One is that physics always wins. These “alternative” sources are by nature very diffuse – you need A LOT of them and you need to hook them all together AND find a way to feed the energy into the grid. They’re also “intermittent” – meaning they are grossly unreliable. Have you noticed how energy sources that don’t let you turn them on and off have fallen into disuse? You might want to ponder why that’s the case.

If you’re going to spout, you owe us detailed calculations of how many windmills you’d need to replace a single nuclear or coal-fired plant – and I mean a calculation, not a link to some crackpot energy site.

Then tell us how many tons of cement your plans will require, and where you will get it.

Problem Two is that your knowledge of economics and public policy, umm, leaves a great deal to be desired. The cost difference between “conventional” feedstock sources and “renewable” sources is multiple-times. If you’ve got a spreadsheet laying out exactly how the alleged “subsidies” are the only thing causing a cost-difference, lay it on us.

The problem is that you won’t because that’s just self-delusional nonsense. It’s the “renewable” outfits that are always clamoring for handouts.

If you bother to look, other nations have been foolish enough to pretend that they can just go that way. They’ve either destroyed their economies, or become client states for unscrupulous but energy-rich countries.

What you’re left with is the kooky conspiracy theories, such as the Rockefeller family’s secret Ninja squad that goes around knocking off anyone who comes up with a better energy idea.

Tell you what. You’re on the way into the OR for emergency surgery for an immediate and life-threatening situation. There is a brief pause at the OR door that allows you to push a button on a panel to choose what source of electricity you want to be powering the OR during the surgery – nuclear, NG, coal, wind, or solar. What would YOU pick?

Besides, I’ve heard that there is a natural antagonism between windmills and ACs. And solar panels hate TVs.

Gas is a different deal.

It flows out of the ground on its own. There is no “carbon footprint” associated with its extraction.