Replies

A sure way to decrease dependence on foreign oil - let the marketplace take the price of crude oil high enough, and restrict the refinery capacity, thereby limiting the amount of crude that may be turned into fuel oil and gasoline. Automatically, despite all the grumbling and outcry that "business is being destroyed", the commercial enterprises will find a way to get their goods delivered a little more efficiently, and manufacture those goods with a smaller input of energy from fossil fuel sources, and the alternative energy sources become more cost-effective, with the consequence of institutionally decreasing the amount of energy required to maintain the level of output enjoyed before. Expanding input, of course, will call for still more fossil fuels to be made available for the growing demand for ever more energy.

Suggestion: Find a way to reclaim the vast stores of natural gas that is to be found off the edge of the continental shelf, at a depth of 500 to 1,500 meters, in the form of Methane Hydrate. This is an ever-renewing source of energy. It would not take a great deal of new technology to recover this otherwise unused natural resource. In fact, it may become a NECESSITY to take up this vast quantity of Methane Hydrate, to avoid a climate catastrophe of mammoth proportions. If, for whatever reason, the water at these depths warms enough so the stability of the Methane Hydrate is destroyed, there could be a huge burp from undersea, and the methane concentration could rise so high as to make the atmosphere both almost unbreathable, and constitute a huge firestorm potential.

And a resulting CO2 concentration in our atmosphere unparalleled since perhaps back to Jurassic times.

Interesting. Never heard of methane hydrate before.

A few years back, I saw the CEO of BP interviewed on TV. He said the largest oil reserves in the world were right out there in the Gulf of Mexico. But, nobody wants to see an oil rig when they go to the beach. That, on top of fears of oil spills, and there it sits, untapped.

If, for whatever reason, the water at these depths warms enough so the stability of the Methane Hydrate is destroyed,...

I love these doomsday scenarios that always begin with the word "if".
If frogs had wings...

Makes for entertaining movie scripts but are worth zero as a basis for energy policy. Some people really believe they sound profound...