The United States Energy Outlook

There has been much talk about getting new alternative energy policies going in the United States, but so far I have not seen an effective solution put into action. Using money earmarked for improving the economy, the government is suppose to give a certain amount of money towards developing alternative fuel sources to oil. I would imagine that this would mean giving amounts of money to solar, wind, fuel cell, electric, hydrogen, and what ever other alternative energy ideas there are out there. I think we are essentially putting the cart before the horse on this plan unless the government takes prudent steps first.

Before we get to talking about the solutions, let's think about why we need alternatives to oil in the first place, just in case you have been living under a rock since the 70s. The world is running out of oil. As things stand now, at this point in time, everything we need, want, produce, and/or use is dependent on foreign oil. Our food industry needs foreign oil to power the tractors to work the land, plant the crops, cultivate and harvest the crops. In order for that food to get to us, the consumer, fuel made from oil is needed for the trucks, trains, and ships. Not only is the oil used to make the fuel to power our cars, but it lubricates almost every moving part in all of them.

When oil was first discovered it was practically bubbling out of the ground in some parts of the country, it was cheap and abundant. It was the stuff that made the industrial age possible. Then a way was figured out how to also use this oil to power the engines to run the machines in the industrial age and life was good. Since then though there are a lot more of us, using even greater amounts of oil to power our cars, oil also makes plastics that have made our way into every aspect of our lives, and everything else from medicines to paints. At one point someone figured out that we only had a limited supply in the United States. It was decided to save much of the oil that was within the US boarders for national security matters so we started getting the majority of the oil we used from other countries. At first we had a good time, many of the places we were getting the oil from were countries that didn't have the tech to use the new found oil so it wasn't worth much to them so we got it cheap.

Now, the places we have left to supply our oil habit are a bunch of countries that don't really like us a whole lot so we pay a lot more for our oil and we face the possibility of someday one or more of these countries will cut us off for differences in opinions, or as a retribution to issues we don't agree on. This makes us nervous, makes the other countries wealthy, and it gives the countries where we drill for oil power over us. What's worse is that even with getting oil from other countries there is only so much oil and it will eventually run out.

Our country is now starting to think about alternative energy, but we really need to stop and think before just throwing money to the wind. We already have numerous alternative plans out there, electric, hydrogen, propane, ethanol, but what we really need is standards and infrastructure. There isn't any alternative that stands a chance if there isn't an infrastructure to support it. If I take my electric, fuel cell, or hydrogen car out on a trip and I get 300 mile out and I need to charge up or refuel and there isn't places where I can do that, or there are only a limited few places I can refuel that I have to search for and I have to plan my route around them, it isn't going to fly. I don't care how environmentally friendly or efficient the alternative is, if people can't travel as we do now with gasoline, it isn't going to go over with the public.

Where does this leave us? We have alternatives to gasoline, but right now, because they are not convenient, and/or their cost is too high, there are not many people who can use any of them. What we need is for smart people who know the facts to sit down and come up with a strategy of how to go ahead. One of the first things they have to figure out would be which alternative energy option would be the best. They have to take into consideration the affect on the environment, costs, leaving room for future technologies, and how abundant the alternative energy source is. I have read of many different ideas, fuel cells, electric, hydrogen, ethanol... What we need though is to have government incentives and support for the winning option. We don't need an approach which is going to put the country's energy needs in the position where it is going to be a battle like VHS vs. Bata, or Blue Ray vs. DVDs. This approach would waste too much time and resources battling for a winning technology where the losers would end up being obsolete and having the cost of having to change over to the winning technology. This is where we need government to step in and say, this is the direction we are going to go, the standard we are going to adopt, and then step in to support the infrastructer for that alternative energy.

I read an article that made sense for supporting the idea of electric cars. Most any of the alternative energy ideas out there can be used to make electricity, if we have the resources to make enough of it, the cost should be low. The problem with electric is with our existing technologies we can only drive so far before needing to recharge the batteries, which is a long process requiring quite a bit of time before you are ready to continue your drive again. I read about an inventor, I think from Iraq, who has what I think is a really great idea. Instead of having to charge up the batteries in your car when your batteries are low, you just swap your battery pack for a charged up battery pack and you are back on your way. This inventor wants to standardize battery packs so that you pull into a charging station and within 10 minutes your low battery pack is swapped out for a charged battery pack. The battery pack is hung in the car the same way missiles are hung on plane wings being able to be swapped easily and quickly. As battery technology improves it can be swapped out over time with the lesser technology batteries, but keep the same standards so that any changes won't interfere or make hardships for the consumer, they would just drive in and get their battery pack swapped out as usual. When battery packs get older and fail they would just be swapped out with new ones at the distrabution centers and not cause the consumer great expence by having to replace all the battery packs in their cars, also it would make recycling of the old batteries easy as everything would be done at the battery distrabution centers after swapping the batteries out instead of having to disasemble the vehicle to take batteries out of here and there all over within the vehicle. We could still support a maze of various alternative energy ideas, but they would be used to make electricity instead of trying to cram the different technologies into the vehicles.

When we were involves in the great world wars, there was a shift in our production plants to support the building of all the planes, tanks, ships, bombs and ammunition. It didn't happen all by acident, the government stepped in and directed everyone to who was making what. The government stepped in and said this is what we need, money was spent retooling factories to make what was needed and it was made. It was an amazing feat that we achived in little time. We need to be weaning ourselves off of oil and into using a form of alternative energy that is clean and non-poluting, we need to strenthen our national security of not having to depend on our energy needs from other countries that don't like us, we need to stop supporting these countries with our oil money. We need to put as much effort into finding alternative energy sources as we put into war.

The Push for Oil

The Northwoods Politic

President Bush today has lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. He's been pushing Congress to allow for the drilling of offshore oil deposits on the U.S. continental slopes. There are both executive and Congressional ban on drilling offshore, but he's hoping that by lifting the executive ban he can push Congress into lifting theirs.

There are two parties that both have fundamental differences in opinion on how this will affect energy prices. One party says this will bring the high cost of fuel prices down. The other side says this is mostly hype and it is just a matter of the first party taking advantage of people's fears that we need to do anything and everything to bring these prices down, because they just can't afford to pay these prices for fuel. What the true facts are is hard to tell. If you read about the companies that make these big drilling platforms needed to extract the oil from our continental slopes, they state that they are already backlogged 5 years on orders for other countries so it would be 5 years before they would even be able to start building the oil platforms to use in the U.S. On top of that, some say that the oil companies hold leases on all kinds of land with viable oil reserves that they are not drilling already.

Again as always, this is an issue that runs along Republican and Democratic party lines, with mostly Republicans wanting the drilling and Democrats not wanting drilling. This is one of the biggest problems in our government. We can't seem to have all these people sit down, look at the facts, and come up with what they think is good or not good. After deciding what their stance is, they should go back to their districts and try to persuade their constituents to what they think is right, but their main job after that is to take what views their constituents decide back to Washington and reflect that in their vote on the issue before Congress. Instead the top person, in this case the president, decides what he wants and all the rest of the people in their party fall in line behind him, they say this is what they want too, and they vote on the issue in Congress to reflect their party's will. Most of these people that we are talking about are addressed as Representatives, the reason they are addressed by that title is that they are supposed to represent the people from their districts. The way this has been working is a major flaw in the way our government is supposed to work.

News Shorts

News Shorts

This week I have found a few things I have issue with. First off there are a couple of quotes from our King George. Yes that's right, I said king instead of president, but the way I see it he acts more like a king than a president, a president that has been sworn in to serve the American people and up hold the constitution:

"It's this ideological struggle against cold blooded killers who kill people to achieve their political agenda." - King George

This was the king's statement in talking about his terrorist enemies, but couldn't it also be true in describing the actions of the king himself? How many Americans and Iraqis have died since we have overthrown Saddam to "free" the people of that country? How many prisoners have died from the torture and inhuman treatment they had suffered as a result of being captured by American forces?

"They can't stand to live in a free society, that's why they try to fight free societies" - King George

Another quote from King George. Again, oh how I would love to ask him how he can say something like this when he has been the one of the most secretive presidents. Secret wire tapping, secret data bases on Americans, secret prisons to hold prisoners without rights or charges for years at a time... What about white house emails? Why can't we ask questions of former aids? Why can't people sue telecommunication companies? Can you see who is fighting against a free society? A hint: You don't have to go as far as overseas.

Bush and Oil

After talking to the Saudi leaders about getting more oil produced to help lower oil and gas prices in America, King George is said that he was going to, "take the explanation back to his own experts and see if it conforms.." What does Bush figure that is going to do? If his experts have a different conclusion are we going to invade yet another country? Such a silly man.

Arlen Specter

He's at it again, wanting a congressional investigation on the Patriots video taping opposing football teams to gain an advantage. Just like the investigation into baseball... Tell me, what does this have to do with the running of our government? What difference is it to me, or millions of other Americans if the Patriots video taped the other teams? I'm not trying to excuse them if they did, but wouldn't they be breaking a league rule, not a federal offense? Shouldn't it be up to the league to investigate a matter such as this and to take the necessary steps to enforce their own rules? It just doesn't seem like the tax payers should have to pay for investigations of sports teams or individuals, it has nothing to do with our government. With there being so many other, more important things that tax payer money could be spent on, what is the justification to spend it investigating professional sports, an organization that has plenty of money to be investigating its issues itself should it choose to do so.