Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
Posted on 07/19/2008 5:58:35 AM PDT by kellynla
Despite the pessimistic headlines on energy, a beneficial long-term trend is underway called decarbonization.
In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, writer James Howard Kunstler declared that when peak oil hits, “We will have to downscale every activity of everyday life, from farming, to schooling, to retail trade….Epidemic disease and faltering agriculture will synergize with energy scarcities to send nations reeling.” Nobel Prize winner Al Gore has said that global warming will likely result in “a string of terrible catastrophes.” And in his Academy Award–winning movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he implies that a warmer planet could mean that sea levels will rise by 20 feet.
Amid this torrent of doom and gloom, there is some good news that has largely been ignored by the media: the trend toward consumption of cleaner fuels that contain less carbon. This decrease in the carbon intensity of global energy use, known as decarbonization, has been ongoing for more than two centuries and appears to be gathering speed.
(Excerpt) Read more at american.com ...
ping
Maybe, but there are already natural gas shortages. People in TN use to want gas appliances because gas was cheaper than electric. It’s not that way any more.
“Maybe, but there are already natural gas shortages. People in TN use to want gas appliances because gas was cheaper than electric. It’s not that way any more.”
I’m sure you know more about the situation in TN & natural gas in general than I, so I’ll just refer you to “thackney” who is our resident FReeper expert on energy.
Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals and Production
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_prod_sum_dcu_NUS_m.htm
Additions to Capacity on the U.S. Natural Gas Pipeline Network: 2007
“U.S. natural gas pipeline construction activity accelerated
in 2007 with capacity additions to the grid totaling nearly
14.9 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of daily deliverability (Figure
1). These additions were the largest of any year in the
Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) 10-year
database of pipeline construction activity. The increased
level of natural gas pipeline construction activity in 2007
conformed to a growth trend that began slowly in 2005 and
intensified in 2006. In 2007, about 1,700 miles of pipeline
were installed, which was greater than in any year since 2003.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/feature_articles/2008/ngpipelinenet/ngpipelinenet.pdf
Locally produced energy is the most efficient, regardless of the type of fuel.
If NG is not available locally, but coal is readily available, the cost of transporting the fuel is minimized. Plus the local economy is stimulated by the local jobs.
Oil is the universal energy that allows us to travel.
But for heating, electricity production, or other uses, locally produced energy is the most efficient. Not every region of America has NG readily available.
Give me coal!
Yes it has to be cleaned up and yes thats expensive from the capital and O&M side. Yes, we know that much of the cleanup of coal has diminishing returns but at least we quantify the input and therefore the output. It make a lot more sense to do what we know works with all thats at stake than to pour those same billions into other forms of electric production that can’t be quantified.
I know propane has really gone up. It used to be $1.50 in the winter a few years ago, just under a dollar a gallon in the summer. Now, in the summer, it’s a little over $3.00 a gallon. It will probably be up to $5 this winter. People are really going to feel it trying to heat their home in rural areas. I think the rural areas are feeling the gas prices the hardest. Of course I still wouldn’t move to the city to save a few bucks.
Thanks for posting. This article’s a keeper.
Good article, and—unlike so many articles on energy these days—it’s full of actual facts and is a very good reference.
For one thing, it utterly demolishes the standard “peak oil” arguments. LNG can and will replace oil relatively painlessly if it comes to that.
Drivel from some guy trying to be the first to name a new “trend”, decarbonization.
When I had enough money to buy coal instead of cutting fire wood I hardly cared about c to h ratios nor has anyone else when switching fuels. What they do care about is cost, convenience, supply, meeting regulations, Etc.
“Natural gas will be the dominant fuel of the 21st century. And that’s good news.”
If the rising demand for energy should teach anything it’s that a replacement fuel has to be so clearly superior to another so as win widespread acceptance or be forced upon a unwilling users by the government.
Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
Flat beer and soda? I'm against it.
This, too is bull.
Since the author apparently knows nothing of peak oil, the article does not address anything about peak oil.
He talks about it directly in the first paragraph, and the entire rest of the article is a rebuke to the standard peak oil argument--and by "standard peak oil argument" I mean things like this--in other words, the idea that when we run out of petroleum, industrial society will collapse.
The article spends much of its time talking about the enormous and growing supply of natural gas, and its obvious future as a substitute for oil. The point is, the disappearance of oil, if it ever happens, is not going to return us to the stone age as the peak-oil cultists insist. Hence, the demolition of the peak-oil argument. The entire article is about peak oil.
He imagines he wrote about it. He wrote about a strawman.
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