There isn’t going to be a single solution, we’re going to need many of them.

There’s a great book about overstated oil reserves in the mideast called “Twilight in the Desert” by Matt Simmons. Simmons is in no way a DFH, he’s a Texas Bush-voting energy investment banker.

Saudi Aramco does not reveal detailed production information (most western oil companies do) and so they are able to conceal their reserves. Why? One reason is that OPEC production quotas are based on reserves - the more reserves an OPEC producer has, the more they can sell.

Simmons went over the papers that the petro engineers and geologists from Saudi Aramco presented at conferences and concluded that the Saudi reservoirs are in decline. They are old, producing less, and what they are producing is much more costly (high water cut, high sulfides, complex well completion technology, short well lifetime). Ghawar is dying.

So, yeah, we need to replace petroleum, sooner not later. And while nuclear fission power sucks in terms of risk and waste disposal, it is a mature power technology that is ready to go now, and it’s a lot less horrible than coal. Also, we have all these nuclear triggers (fission bombs for igniting fusion bombs) that need to be safely decomissioned and power reactors can do that.

We’re gonna need everything: efficiency, solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, low-impact biofuels, bottom cycle thermal recovery, ocean thermal, better storage (ammonia, etc), a better powergrid and as little coal as possible.

Let’s get to work.

yup, that’s about how i see it. and here’s the cold, hard truth: many “developing” nations just getting going with that whole petro-based expanding economy thing aren’t going to stop producing lots and lots of pollution and consuming lots of oil, quickly. if anyone thinks the chinese gov’t, for example, is going to “go green” anytime soon, you’re kidding yourself.

so i just plan for rising sea levels and temps over the course of the rest of my life. faster than most are saying it will happen. b/c if i have learned one thing about environmental news over the last 20 years, it’s that the “official’ and “mainstream” estimates are almost always revised later or proven to be off, and almost never in the ’good’ direction.

Here’s a chart - http://www.grist.org/candidate_chart_08….. Now that Obama has ended his coal industry suck up, not much difference between him and Clinton that I can see. I would like to know what on earth he was thinking when he voted for Cheney’s 2005 energy bill.

Also from Grist, here’s a bit more detail than the chart on each candidates’ position - http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/07/06/…

Flashback to highlights from Grist’s environmental forum in which Edwards, Clinton, and Kucinich participated - http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/11…

And, yes, cd, every time I see some new revision on the environment and global warming it is always worse than originally thought. Ack!

I guarantee you they will not change a damn thing unless we do. So if you want to make sure that the climate is as big a disaster as possible, then complain about China and do nothing here in the west.

If we get off our asses and make the energy conversion we need to, they will follow. And they’ll pay us to do it.

we already let them make all our goods and don’t care how toxic or shoddy, etc—we make that clear with every cargo ship that arrives, and with every wire transfer of big bucks back to them.

we already owe them billions and billions, growing daily—and we can’t afford to antagonize them.

we already are dependent on their cheap labor keeping our goods affordable

our corporations won’t allow it at all

they already have their own deals for oil and gas, and we keep pouring money into their coffers so they can afford to pollute til it’s all gone.

our govt and our corps will never force China to be energy-efficient or non-polluting—it’s not in our interests ($$).

and our trade laws and deals with them are all in their favor, really.

last sunday—a Chinese govt-run investment fund guy—pouring billions into our banking system and buying majority shares in wall st too.—

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/0…

Things that can’t go on forever don’t.

1. There is less oil than you think. And there’s a thermodynamic wall coming up where it will cost more than one barrel of oil to recover one barrel of oil.

2. It won’t always be cheaper to dig up more coal and burn it. That time will come sooner if we get to work now.

3. China will find its markets drying up if it does not reduce carbon footprint. Tariffs on noncompliant countries’ goods will be a condition in the west of passing carbon legislation. Everyone knows this, even they do.

Just to sharpen Cenobite’s post on methodology a little:

At some point, and between themselves, the technical people can’t lie to themselves—unlike the suits, the marketing people, and the Village. The technical people have professional associations and conferences where they exchange information on problems and solutions, just as professionals do (or should do) everywhere.

And when Simmons perused the papers, he found that the technical problems they were studying all had to do with dying oil fields. Like one problem is that when you pump oil out of a field, the pressure decreases, so yield decreases, and the solution is to pump water into the field to increase the pressure again. Or the vertical wells don’t work anymore, so you start drilling into the fields horizontallty.

So, of course, as Kissinger says, IRaq really was all about the oil. Making it all the more galling to Our Betters, I am sure, that those pesky Iraqis haven’t managed to sign a hydrocarbon law handing their oil reserves over to the multinatinals.

And somebody should ask our Presidential candidates if they’ll release the records of Cheney’s energy task force, complete and uncensored. Hint: The correct answer is yes.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

allow anything that will reduce their profits—they won’t do carbon tariffs or anything that will actually raise production costs.

they won’t allow actual strict labor protections here or there either, no matter how much candidates promise—it’ll all be “advisory” and “non-binding guidelines” etc.

and they don’t care about future generations—they don’t even inspect the medicines or kid’s toys china makes, for god’s sake. (and at the same time, we’re not allowed to buy from Canada bec they say they can’t guarantee safety)

there’s like 200 years of coal, and by that time solar and wind will be everywhere too.

we’re too tightly interdependent with and on them to force things that will hurt both their rise and our continuation—and by the time stuff does run out, they’ll have become more powerful than us and will ignore anything (like we do now).

This is the Chinese Century—ours is over. We’re helping make it China’s.

You see, they will profit from carbon legislation. They want it. They see the EU carbon market making money for corps and they want some of it. Just wait.

actually have helped our own environment (remember acid rain and love canal/superfund sites, for instance?) — at the cost of millions of jobs and the middle-class.

our govt won’t do it, so the market will instead—soon gas will really be too expensive for everyone to drive everywhere—then things will start to change (i thought it’d be 5/gal, but i guess it has to be 10 or even higher).

And food’s only going up from now on—and water is a giant problem too.

our govt is far more pro-business/pro-rich.

push for it—it’s easier to just cut/eliminate benefits instead.

if there’s an easier way out, companies will take it, no matter if it hurts ppl or not.

tons of things—but they’re not pushing for better freight trains/rails to replace the trucking of goods all over the country.

tons of things would give them more profits and lower costs—that doesn’t mean they’ll make it happen if what works now and the next 15-25 years can still work.

this is what they prefer to work for—

http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2008/04/you-wo…