Posted on 02/06/2005 2:12:43 AM PST by Johannesson
Much of the blogosphere is concerned with the fate of CNN's corrupt and untrustworthy despot Jordan. Next week, Jordan will get his - undoubtedly. Meanwhile, in a different part of the world, peoples' struggles are pressing on, void of attention and void of international reason.
Hugo Chaves is a ruthless ruler, described by his opposition to model himself after Fidel Castro. Running the danger of destabilizing an entire region while sitting on the fifth largest production of world oil supplies, the Venezuelan proto dictator has his hands firmly in egotistical control. Chavez is continually checking the pulse of the Venezuelan people and eliminates each and every effort of oppositional organization, forcing on them subservience through intimidation and violence. From Venezuelan sources, there are no set elections on the horizon. Chavez simply keeps ousting reformist judges as 'mistaken appointments' and anyone is a target for violence and kidnapping should they choose to take an alternate view of 'Venezuelan' politics. Clearly, this is a failed experiment in Democracy!... Can you spell 'Grenada'?
Cleaning house, Chavez only solidifies his position in power while eroding democratic values and institutions; the very same that got him to power after two failed coup attempts. United Sates Democrats like to draw parallels between Bush and Hitler (nonsense) – if you want parallels, here is your man!
Coming to power on the backs
(Excerpt) Read more at rightviews.com ...
There seems to be a popular misconception about electricity generation. Very, very little of it has to do with petroleum products. Some Natural Gas, yes, but very few plants are fired by petroleum as it is not cost effective. even when petroleum is used to this end, the economics of the approach are quite problematic. The price fluctuations of petroleum are hard to reconcile with the various rigidity sorround the pratices of utility rates. This is why coal is much more widely used in ecectrial generation than pertoleum.
One could make the argument that we should move all heating in the country to electrical heating. Then I suppose that the nuclear plant/foreign oil argument might make sense. This is not really what people mean, however, when they are talking about this. It is a common misconception.
Yes, we should build as many state of the art nuclear plants as we need, but this will not reduce our dependence on foriegn oil much. The vast majority of our expenditures on oil are made to support transportation.
It is here that the change has to be made. If we allowed more discovery and exploration in the USA (including offshore drilling) we could be much more independent as it is, and that should be pursuesd as a mid term solution.
What really should drive the future are "mixed" solutions and economies - Hydrogen, neclear, coal, new technologies, etc. - and it should be market driven, not dictated by some central plan of the government paln that attempts to predict the proper course and dictate a long term solution. Obviously this will not work. We should be very cautious about fusion, we should not assume that this problem will be solved in the mid term or indeed if it ever will be solved. We should not assume that there will be some great technological revolutoion that will save us.
If a cost effective way to generate hydrogen was found, we could have a hydrogen based economy covering 70% of our internal needs inside of 20 years.
sorround the pratices= surrounding the practices
Those are all good but you're overlooking the best option:
Invest and expand the oil sand operations of northern Alberta.
The Alberta oil sands contain 2.5 trillion barrels of oil, 300 billion of which can be recovered using today's technologies. The entire patch is as large as the entire state of New York.
If synthetic crude oil production capacity can be ramped up to 20 million barrels per day (slightly over the entire US daily consumption), this resource will last for over 41 years. If used to supply 100% of US imports, it will last for 82 years.
The US no longer needs to rely upon Middle Eastern or Venezuelan oil.
Sure the investment is huge, but in the end, it is the only sure way of guaranteeing the safely of the US oil demand.
Check out the current edition of Forbes at Forbes.com.
They have made an ecellant presentation and the nuclear power industry is well underway to enhance current units and build new ones starting very soo.
This post (from VCrisis) might be of interest to you two. I am always interested in your posts on the oil situation, btw. In any case, if you click on the link in this post and read the whole article, it is mentioned that Chavez is thinking of selling Citgo because it has contracts (presumably with us) that are unfavorable to VZ.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337145/posts
I hope you're right. One of the things that bothers me, however, is how much support he's getting from European countries, particularly Spain under its raving Socialist PM, Zapatero.
These may now be coming together. As I said, "mixed approaches are the best way to go. You suggestions are good examples of this. Do not try a total, global solution - solve particular problems is ways that address the requirements of those problem's solutions. For my part, I am somewhat skeptical of the electrical, commuter car" concept, but the electrification of rail is long overdue.
The real danger seems to be rash action on the part of the Socialists in power, and the scope of that those actions. Most pointedly, the threat seems to be some sort of "catastrophic action" inspired by 911, an action timed to bring America to its knees. This need not be a "terrorist action," it could be a series of economic attacks. It need not be immediate wither - it could be gradual yet the cumulative effects would be just as "catastrophic."
If this does not come to pass then time is on our side as the socialist inspired "revolution" will most likely fail due to the nature of the socialist project itself.
The one of the problems of Latin American political economies is the plain fact that the so called "capitalist economies" that the socialists down there are constantly railing against in fact rarely have existed, if in fact they have ever existed at all.
Clearly the prior attempts (or pretensions to) "capitalist" economies have not worked. The Left in Latin America thus sets up a false dichotomy between "capitalism" and socialism and then proceeds to beat that mischaraterization of capitalism and liberalism (in the 19th century sense of the term) to death.
In the end, the socialists will come up short handed too. It is all the mischief that they can cause before that point is reached that is so troubling.
But you may be right.
Jeremy Rifkin (yes, I know, he's a 'lib', but like Pat Buchanan, once you don't let his mantle distract you, you can find some interesting commentary within his writings...) in his book "The Hydrogen Economy", effectively illustrates how the use of a new fuel source would not be the panacea we're looking for, because the energy puzzle contains (besides exploration/exploitation) processing, transportation, delivery, end-point (at the consumer point-of-use, where safety and efficiency butt up against cost & "bang-for-the-buck" - this is where Gasoline still wins when compared to Hydrogen) storage and infrastructure components. For example, our current energy grid reflects a centralized, top-down design - oil exploited, then transported over large distances to processing points, in turn distributed over further long distances to local distribution points (gas stations) from which the consumer taps into it.
Rifkin visualizes the combined effects of ever-evolving (and miniaturizing...) technology, entreprenuerialship and - using what-is-today an increasingly de-centralized information society best represented by the Internet - local processing/storage/distribution nodes eventually replacing this top-down "corporate" paradigm in how we get, move, store and use our energy.
He makes a pretty compelling argument, but again, he's a "big-picture" guy - the devil is, as always, in the details.
But he is intrigueing. I've some preconceptions about how a hydrogen (or at least, a non-foreign-oil-dependent...) economy could come true, and I gotta tell ya, I like the idea of getting all these middle-men out of the picture. After all, even when you remove the "we'll charge what we want" Saudi effect (which is how it costs them 2 - $3 per barrel to extract, but costs us 27 - $40 to buy from them), a simple look at what a gallon costs us at the pump shows plenty of taxes, fees, etc that are doubling the impact to our pockets.
Also, I believe that we the general public are placing too much emphasis on what the energy companies/corporations are telling us about how viable these solutions are. I read up on this periodically, and once I get past all the tech jargon, I basically read the same thing, that Hydrogen (as compared to current petroleum) would be difficult to transport, to store safely, to convert effectively in a way that the existing web of plants-routes-localGas stations-consumers could effectively use. after all, if they are market-based entities, than logically they don't want to put themselves out of business - which means they'll try to graft any new energy sources exploitation/use model into/onto the current design. And this is the only way they can realistically look at the problem, because the infrastructure belongs to them... it would be corporate/financial suicide for them to develop a technology that allows me to have a safe and efficient hydrogen-generator that provides me fuel for home and transportation right under my roof...
But we really can't expect revolutionary ideas/initiatives on this issue from the entities-in-charge as they explain how we can find, develop and use future energy sources, if there exists the possibility that such ideas could mean we must do away with the current model, and their existence depends on our continued dependence upon the current model in the first place. That's like asking the fox guarding the hen-house how safe the eggs are. Yet we still do this, or at least nod knowingly and deferentially to these experts as we "entrust" our future energy needs to their all-knowing and "altruistic" explanations.
In synthesizing my view of Rifkin's ideas, I ultimately come to have great faith in two things that I believe will ultimately hold true: the unstoppable advance (and miniaturization/growing efficiency of/decentralization of and accessibility of...) of technology, and good old-fashioned American Ingenuity. The former really can't be stopped, and the latter gives me great hope that somewhere in a midwestern farmhouse, some kids are going to be able to figure out a way to create the modern-day, hydrogen equivalent of an 18th century "well" that can provide answers for many of the needs of the consumer at the lowest level possible.
CGVet58
This is my very first post and probably is too long...if it is, I promise to do better next time.
I was an eyewitness to what happened in Venezuela in 1998 when Hugo Chavez came to power. In February of 1998, many thought the shoo-in winner was the former Miss Venezuela ( who is now governor of Margarita Island).
But as the campaign continued, it became apparent what Chavez and his cadre of workers wearing red berets were going to do. They were going to hijack the election with the politics of fear.
We could have written a script about how it was going to go down. I told people back then that if you liked Fidel Castro, you would love Hugo Chavez. Our diplomats over at Foggy Bottom were asleep at the switch, and their leader committed malpractice every time she opened her mouth.
Chavez is determined to keep the price of oil at $50 or above because the revenue for PDVSA (which is already nationalized, by the way) is a windfall. An old adage in business says that revenue hides a lot of sins.
Chavez uses the money to keep the poor in the country on his side. You ain't seen nothing yet...watch how his land redistribution program moves along.
By the way, I do not suppose that the transition to hydrogen will happen overnight.
pretty much sums up my own thoughts when I read his book. I had also read his "The End of Work" and learned some things there which really aren't touched upon in common everyday discussion. If I could sum up my impression of Rifkin in one sentence, it would be that he is honest enough to look for real answers in the past (unlike libs who luv to rewrite history to suit their needs) - but still too prone to fall in line with the leftist let's-take-the-utopian-path-of-good-intentions route (at least, I judge this by the political leanings of the organizations he has associated with).
oh, and yes, I agree completely with your last sentence - this won't happen overnight (wanted to comment further along those lines in my first post, but felt I had said enough at that point). Which really heartens me... I'm very suspicious of quick-fixes that happen so fast, we scarcely have time to understand the unintended (and usually negative...) consequences of the fix until the "program" is entrenched as an entitlement.
In a way that is a blessing of technological advance, it forces you to have a "just in time" inventory mindset (or what we in the Coast Guard called "open-ended" when structuring a computer-IT overhaul about 10 years ago) vice a "just-in-case" expensive and redundant infrastructure. You don't want to get caught choosing (and spending vast $$$ upon...) a technology that is outdated by the time you've revamped across your production line.
As we transition over the next 20 years (and this is a good marker which is historically proven out by other revolutionizing technologies - think automobile and computers; both took about 20 years to become universally accepted and necessary components of daily life) we'll see this and that qualitative improvement, first implemented by those who can afford the experiment (like the hybrid cars you see sometimes)... which makes the next step in R&D more viable since more people are willing to buy into it... and so on.
We certainly do live - to paraphrase the ancient Chinese adage - in interesting times, eh?
CGVet58
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