Posted on 05/07/2013 11:02:26 AM PDT by DannyTN
Lots of people think American energy independence is within reach thanks to our shale boom.
...
It's been a long time since producing all your own oil actually made you independent. We spent 40 years transforming global markets so they were integrated and flexible, to give us protection from the vagaries of global oil production, and one of the side effects is we're now part of that, even if we produce all our own oil. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
You clearly don’t understand “fungible” markets or how distributorships function. And no, I don’t have the patience to splain it to you....
Hydro is great for a sizable portion of the country.
Too bad we’re tearing dams out as fast as we can.
On another day, he might be whining about our trade deficit.
Energy Independence and Other Myths: A Q&A With Michael Levi, Author of The Power Surge
http://science.time.com/2013/05/06/energy-independence-and-other-myths-a-qa-with-michael-levi-author-of-power-surge/#ixzz2SdDFrdSp
We’ve seen other energy revolutions go through a boom and bust cycle. What makes this moment different?
Two things make this moment special. The first is the diversity of changes that are happening. This isn’t just one isolated area. Today you’ve got booming production of oil, natural gas. You have oil consumption, rapidly falling, rising renewable energy. It’s not just one boom, it’s several at the same time.
The other thing is that there are multiple forces driving the change. In oil it’s not just fracking, it’s expanded offshore drilling. In renewables, it’s not just one technology. It’s wind, it’s solar, both centralized and distributed. On the car front, it is everything from better traditional engines to electric vehicles and natural gas for long-distance trucking. So when you have multiple trends and drivers, the transformation is more robust.
The economic/biz ignorance is stunning sometimes. America is not a corporation acting as one company. It’s 325 million people doing what’s best for them at any given time. If that means shipping some stuff in, shipping some stuff out, hiring over here or over there, shopping over here or over there, etc, either as a biz or as a consumer, then so be it.
Energy independence, to anyone above a kindergarten IQ, means that on net we are break even or close on energy production. Yes, the way the markets work, some will flow out and some will flow in - but that’s because those markets work with people making their buying, selling, distribution and refining decisions as fits their particualr biz model.
Yes, I figure you get all this already...
“Council on Foreign Relations” would naturally disdain energy independence for the US. Socialist propaganda ...
I think the things that makes things different today are taxpayer funding of marginal sources of energy like wind and solar combined with the elimination of other sources like coal and hydro.
In other words, all this stuff is too multi faceted and too dynamic and too fast moving to try and over simplify, let alone centrally plan....
When you can use a 3-D printer to make your own gun, don’t tell me we can’t figure out how to get homes off the current utility grids. That will mean an enormous change in our energy consumption.
Milton Friedman once said of why free trade is such a hard sell, that its beneficiaries are many, and they don’t know who they are, while its victims are few, and they know who they are.
I understand fungible markets quite well. The whole point of this article was that producing our oil won't make us energy independent because of our commitment to keeping international oil markets fungible.
We could tariff or ban exports of petroleum products and American produced oil would only be fungible within our borders. But we don't have the will to do that, for that would be disturbing our "Free trade" mantra.
I understand fungible markets quite well. The whole point of this article was that producing our oil won't make us energy independent because of our commitment to keeping international oil markets fungible.
We could tariff or ban exports of petroleum products and American produced oil would only be fungible within our borders. But we don't have the will to do that, for that would be disturbing our "Free trade" mantra.
Yep, and at the root of that is a simple lack of faith in the concept of self interests interacting in liberty to produce the most dynamic, fair and efficient way of allocating resources.
The same can be said for energy. People see energy “going out” and “coming in” and assume that independence is thus impossible. Not at all. Fungible markets is an amazingly simple, yet explanatory, concept here.
A lot of the dams being taken down can be replaced by an efficient gas powered generating plant.
I don't understand that either.
And I thought McCain had a great energy plan with his 12 new nuclear plants. I would have built more than that and had as many more sites prepared and ready to go.
You just proved you don’t understand what fungibility really means. If we produce enough to break even, or be a net exporter on net, then who gives a sh-t whether the specific gallon of gas in your Prius came from Texas or Alaska or the Dakota’s or Saudi?
You know the def of fungible perhaps, but you haven’t a clue how to apply the definition, which your post PROVED
So you take down a clean hydro plant that uses a renewable energy source. And replace it with an emissions producing gas plant that uses a potentially finite fossil fuel? Why?
Nuke plants would be tremendous idea - it’s the one thing that the French do that American libs do not like.
Hydroelectric power generation is by far the most efficient method of large scale electric power generation. See Comparison Chart. Energy flows are concentrated and can be controlled. The conversion process captures kinetic energy and converts it directly into electric energy. There are no inefficient intermediate thermodynamic or chemical processes and no heat losses.
The conversion efficiency of a hydroelectric power plant depends mainly on the type of water turbine employed and can be as high as 95% for large installations. Smaller plants with output powers less than 5 MW may have efficiencies between 80 and 85 %.
It is however difficult to extract power from low flow rates.
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