http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/automotive/2908995/detail.html
My view: I think there are some AM talk-show hosts and other public-discourse participants who think that a very large portion of this is due to the refusal of the U.S. Government to allow domestic production of fuel. In a way they're right, but not if we are only talking about fossil fuels. I think the amount of Oil we could produce here, if we opened up every spigot possible and got out of the way of every potential field, would not cover our shortfalls at what most consider a reasonable price, nor address any potential looming global warming liabilities. It would not allow us to stop importing, that I'm aware. The estimates I've seen for Alaskan Oil are roughly 1 million barrels per day, give or take, and those were generous estimates, severely raised from the estimates made just a decade or less ago at the DOE site. And to be clear: at some point the Alaskan fields, which would take some years to develop, would decrease in output, just as happened in Texas and Oklahoma? And yet we in the US are using *20 MILLION* barrels of oil per day! And our production shortfall (the amount we need to import) is between 9 and 11 MILLION BARRELS PER DAY! And we think that increasing production in Alaska and a few other fields would really solve that problem? What it would do is temporarily help the problem a bit, but it would not, by any stretch of the imagination, "solve" the problem. In any event, my vote is to consider this ongoing fuel-pricing concern as a multi-faceted challenge which will demand of us that we address it with some real effort, maybe even making a few big mistakes, but I think it has to be addressed on a number of levels, with a variety of different technologies and efforts. If Battery EVs continue to be conspicuously and unfairly excluded from consideration, based on disingenuous and partly-false claims about lack of demand and lack of performance of advanced batteries and what-not, then I don't see why we advocates of real solutions to the fuel pricing problems should listen at all to talk about drilling in Alaska. We're asking that all potentially contributory solutions be considered fairly, without unnecessarily choosing one to the exclusion of all others, and one of the most promising partial solutions is dismissed out of hand with some real dishonesty. This does not bode well for further dialogue. I like the bit about us blaming the Chinese for their "over-consumption". Heh. I'm sorry but a lot of this really is just too funny. I wonder what we've been doing. Not over-consuming? At least the Chinese have dozens of thousands of people in Universities and Laboratories and serious manufacturing plants working feverishly and sincerely on all manner of alternative-fuel solutions. In advanced batteries alone, I see more indication of serious Chinese work than almost anywhere else. What are we doing to equal that? We are taking sorely for-granted our own comparable (smaller number of) people who set the challenges for themselves, and pretending their patent rights are crap and their business rights (to work without horrific red tape) are nonsense and that their inventions don't work or aren't wanted.... where in fact their products might work for some and might be wanted by some.... whose voices aren't heard because the press and the government turn a deaf ear. MM ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
