We need trains, more green buses, and most of all we need to stop using gas needlessly.
In my opinion Off Shore Drilling should be taboo, first of all it won’t solve the immediate problem and it prolongs the problem of polluting the air and the world. Oil speculators need guidelines these people are getting rich off our backs. The electric car is definitely an immediate solution, they are already on the road,Europe has them,and there hybrides of course. The car companies pulled us into the situation after the 80’s now American workers have to pay. Big cars use lots of gas, but who cared, no one took responsibility. I am 69 and this situation really started in the 70’s, air pollution was an item in the 60’s, the auto industry was oblivious to all of it in the 90’s.
I guess you don’t believe in globle warming? The idea of high gas prices should lead us to make changes for the better, not pollute. Look at the conditions in the world, so much is wrong, can’t we do our part to help make it better. Since the industrial revolution we have been polluting, sacrifies should be made by all.
We need trains, more green buses, and most of all we need to stop using gas needlessly.
It’s real funny you should say that…Because here we are a year into the gas crisis…and Cities have this great opportunity to really get people to take public transportation. But because they are seeing the pinch like every one else with these very very high gas prices they are CUTTING services instead of EXPANDING services. So now LESS people are commuting instead of MORE people commuting. Cities should take the opportunity to EXPAND services.
Here in Jacksonville, FL, the local government works hard to attract businesses to the area. I wonder when perspective businesses will start saying “Sorry, we are going to move our business to a city with good mass transit.”
going back to the original question, i’m in favor of both. we need to find more sources for fossel fuels, while at the same time realizing that they will not last forever. in other words oil exploration is at best a short term fix. our government needs to get out of bed with big oil and start offering real incentives for alternative fuels. mccains speach the other day was a joke, he wants to offer 300m to anyone that can develope a better battery. how do we know we’re not at the top end of battery technology? aren’t there other forms of alternative fuels that might be more prommising than the battery. or are we just jumping out of one bed and into another (hello eveready bunny - you look good tonight).
and yes we need to sink money into proven forms of mass transit. mag-lev seems to be working great in europe. it would be nice to if the mass transit plans were user friendly. i’ve never been able to take advantage of it because i generally get out of work after 2am. now i suppose i could sit and wait till the first train starts at 6am. (4 hours outside a locked train station in a downtown area with no public seating or restrooms). when questioned i always get the same answer, not enough people use them late at nite or on weekends. well maybe if they were opened people would, it would also be a great alternative for drivers who’ve had too much.
“And let’s not forget about the US Nuclear industry and how totally screwed up it is. The last Nuclear power plant to go on line was Seabrook NH. Initial design cost was $2b for two plants…Final cost…$8b for ONE plant. That’s a 1600% cost increase. Oh yea I want to trust the future of this country in that industry.”
The only thing that had to do with the power industry is that they paid the bills while they were sued silly. The idea was to file so many law suits that it would be too expensive to build nuclear power plants. How does that reflect poorly on the power industry?
There are problems to be solved, but is there really any solution other than nuclear over the short term (5-10 years)? Unless there is a huge breakthough on the other approaches, nothing can deliver like nuclear, and this will be true for at least another 30 to 50 years or more.
In my admittedly nonexpert view, I don’t see a way out of this, precluding imperialist take over of oil producing regions, other than nuclear.
There is so much risk to reliance on oil that the nuclear approach seems fully to be the safest in all regards.
Regarding the nuclear power question, there are currently only 15 new U.S. reactor applications in regulatory review (that only represents about a 4% increase of the current U.S electrical capacity):
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-licensing/col.html
The time frame for starting construction is probably about 5 years for most of these, which means we are looking at 10-15 years to have any significant power increase. The cost estimates I’ve heard are in the $5-12B range for each unit. I agree that the estimates that were presented for the 80s plants were ridiculously low, $2B for the seabrook units was just silly and everyone knew it at the time (but that was the game required to get past the state utility commissions back them; low-ball the estimates and deal with the law suits latter). Hopefully the current cost/schedule estimates are more realistic. I think they are, if there are no large delays and the cost of capital stays reasonably low.
$2B for the seabrook units was just silly and everyone knew it at the time (but that was the game required to get past the state utility commissions back them
NOOO…that was the game they played because they didn’t want a public outcry because a $8b price tag would mean that electricity would SKYROCKET…which they did…and NOW there’s a public outcry…but it’s AFTER the plant was built. NH is among the highest in the country.
No I don’t believe in man-caused global warming.
Most opinions on this issue are formed by what? Time magazine articles, erroneous articles in the local paper, and a non-stop barrage of bogus TV shows coupled with political posturing.
Reporting the climate as being “normal” does not garner any attention does it? It takes moving pictures of glaciers crumbling (which by the way is what they’re supposed to do), cuddly polar bears, and a million sound bites to make the point.
My guess is this is exactly how your opinions have been formed, correct?
What you should do instead of turning on the TV is do some real digging on the issue and you’ll discover there is another side to this issue.
For instance, and not knowing if you’re familiar with the U.N. IPCC reports or not, did you know that only a tiny handful of the 2500 “esteemed scientists” behind this report even have any climatological qualitifications? Most are economists, psychologists, etc.
Did you know there is currently a petition signed by 31,000 climate scientists stating the GW issue is overblown?
Did you know the Arctic used to be forests BEFORE it iced over?
My son is a climatologist, teaches a bit of this stuff, and actually will be addressing a world panel later this year on greenhouse gasses. He would advise you to turn off the TV, a.k.a. boob tube or idiot box, and do some behind the scenes reading on this issue. Try realclimate.org or icecap.org. for starters.
(As an addendum here, did you know that over the last 10 years the average global temps have actually decreased almost .5 a degree? Even the head of the IPCC panel recently came out and admitted to it. Why the difference you ask? Well, it’s because the GISS data was being skewed by installing testing stations above A/C units, on top of buildings, etc. Add that data and the temps are up. Remove that skewed data and the temps are down. Do you want the real temps or the ones from a thermometer placed above a heat source?)
Agree we need to develop our offshore resources (oil & gas), but do it in a very cautious and safe manner. Most undiscovered oil reserves worlwide are offshore. Malaysia, an oil producing Asian country has nearly all its oil and gas reserves offshore in the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca. It has been producing oil there since the 70s without any mishaps between tropical paradise islands.
At the same time, a major bank just forecats that there wil be 12 million cars taken off the road by their owners in next 5 years as drivers switch tio public transit, carpools, or move closer to work where tey can walk. Since downtown parking in my city is now very expensive, I’m taking the commuter train downtown, and saving money bigtime. It’s also good fro the environment.
US cities will now find it worthwhile to expand train and bus service and operate minibusses late at night, and on the weekend.
Nuclear power plants can be built safely and at affordable cost. In our country, every Nuclear plant is a different design, built as a cash cow from the ground up using the “Big Dig” model. A standardized design with standardized control rooms and suddenly costs become completive with coal, especially now that coal prices are skyrocketing…Don’t let the fear-mongers scare you, nobody died at 3-mile island…As long as the reactor has a properly designed containment structure, there is almost no risk to the public. Disposing of the waste is a political problem, not a technical problem. The French have used Nuclear Power for 40 years without any problems. Worry about something else…
I think that there is nothing to be gained from drilling offshore and certainly not in ANWR. As everyone has correctly pointed out: it will not lower prices and will take quite a while to get everything online. It seems to me that we Americans will look at this as a reason to not pursue energy conservation or pushing for automakers to build cars w/ hybrid and other technologies. Why postpone the inevitable? There’s nothing like a fire under your behind to get you in gear.
Oh I agree it can be done…but that doesn’t mean that it WILL be done…or that there are companies willing to do it if they can’t make a profit of 1500%.
Mike, I’m sure you understand that “public outcry” means exactly nothing when there is real money in play. In regulated states, the public utility commission is supposed to represent the interests of the rate payers (an imperfect system, to put it politely).
In reality, the game at the time was to low-ball the cost estimates at the beginning of the project to get approval, then build the projects on a cost-plus basis (the more it costs, the more money everyone makes). The regulatory process at the time allowed the design requirements to be changed while the plants were under construction. Also, the process was set up to allow the NIMBYs and local governments to delay the process, causing everyone to make even more money. Eventually, the project is finished and the public utility commission acts shocked at the final price (like they didn’t understand the game from the beginning) and demands that the utility sue all the builders for the cost overruns; then everyone then sues everyone else for a while and a bunch of lawyers make lots of money too. Eventually, the entire cost of the plant gets put in the rate base and everyone gets paid back by the rate-payers. In other words, it works just like any other big project with government involvement.
Nothing in that whole sleazy process was related to the fact that it was a nuclear power plant, as opposed to any other multi-billion dollar “public” project. Anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention knew exactly what was going on, and everyone involved was making money off the process (including politicians who routinely solicited large campaign contributions from everyone involved in these types of deals). I assume I not telling you anything you didn’t already know.
The obvious solution is to get back to deregulating the electric markets and let the energy producers (instead of the rate-payers) take the risks and make the profits. Unfortunately, the California model of deregulation was a disaster and it scared everyone off; eventually there will be a “better” deregulated market in most/all states.
We all understand that the cost of energy is going no-place except up, regardless of the source. I honestly hope that we do a better job of holding the budgets on the next generation of nuke plants (so we don’t scare off the capital market), and I do think the current cost estimates are closer to reality (although some overruns are probably inevitable). The regulatory process has been streamline considerably, and the public hearing process has be adjusted to significantly limit disruption by the local governments. The bottom line is that we will have to see how it goes.
Five miles off the shore of the small beach town of Summerland, California, at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday, January 28, 1969, crews on Union Oil Company offshore Platform Alpha were pulling the drilling tube out of well A-21 in order to assess their progress. Mud began to ooze up from the depths through the well shaft, signaling that something had gone wrong below. Within minutes, tons of mud spewed out of the top of the well propelled by a blast of natural gas. Frantic platform workers quickly capped the well, but it was too late to stop the rushing rent of oil rising from 3,000 feet below the ocean floor. The unlined walls of the well shaft gave way and oil poured into the surrounding geological formation under the sea floor. As the pressure continued to build, the oil burst upward through the roof of the Venture Anticline, ripped five long gashes in the ocean floor, and rose 188 feet through the blue-green waters of the Santa Barbara channel. The flow continued at thousands of gallons per hour for more than a week, spreading a tar-black patch seaward over eight hundred square miles of ocean. Then on the evening of Tuesday, February 4, the wind shifted and blew hard onshore, driving the oil into Santa Barbara harbor and fouling thirty miles of beaches up and down the coast. Futile Fight Against the Oil Slick. For weeks on end “[a] dense acrid stench clung to the shoreline as a force of 1000 men ? many of them prisoners ? pitchforked tons of straw onto the stained sand and murky tide to soak up the mess.” Great Oil Slick Cleanup ? The Impossible' Task, S.F. Chron., Feb. 10, 1969 at 2. The cleanup efforts proved largely ineffective against the mass of oil, and thousands of sea birds were killed along with seals and other marine mammals. See Oil Slick Killing Off Wild Life, S.F. Chron., Feb. 2, 1969 at 1; Oil Thickens on Beach?Months of Work Ahead’, S.F. Chron., Feb. 6, 1969 at 1. By February 24, another well on Platform Alpha had blown out, and the oil-gushing fractures had spread over acres of ocean floor.
In the aftermath of the spill, California Congressman John V. Tunney took to the well of the House to declare that “illplanned offshore oil drilling” was a manifestation of “centuries of careless neglect of the environment [that] have brought mankind to a final crossroads,” and that “the quality of our lives is eroded and our very existence threatened by our abuse of the natural world.” 116 Cong. Rec. 498 (1970). President Richard Nixon personally viewed the damage and agreed that the Santa Barbara spill “frankly touched the conscience of the American people.” The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective at 3.
No.
China is drilling just a few miles beyond our coast and using OUR oil. Why shouldn’t we use it? It is after all our oil.
This is blather…Chinese companies are EXPLORING, not drilling, in Cuban waters because of our misguided policies towards Cuba. As far as anyone knows, they have not found any appreciable amount of oil. Should they suffer a blowout like that described above, fouling the Keys and Florida Straights, the global reaction will be devastating and our Navy will enforce the no drilling ban from that point on… Way to risky an outcome for either China or Cuba…
A little fact checking shows that there are NO drilling rigs operating in Cuban waters, Chinese or otherwise…This nonsense is brought to you by the same people who brought you WMD’s…
Absolutely not. It does nothing to get us off the oil dependency we have in which we have indulged for years. Besides, the first drop of such drilling wouldn’t be refined for 5 to 10 years. The route to go, in my opinion, is a “man on the moon” or a “Manhattan Project” type effort to develop alternative energy sources. We should be funding via grants, tax credits, and other tax incentives such development efforts as a hydrogen fueled engine and a small and safe nuclear powered engine for transportation while developing wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal, non polluting energy sources for electricity. I understand that disposal of nuclear waste is a problem. I suspect that may be the reason we are on Mars now. We want to see if those folks wouldn’t mind our waste products. I mean, if China is literally buying our trash…
In the meantime, suck it up everyone. Five dollar a gallon gas at the pump will be here by next year. We have waged a very expensive war on our credit card and we will have to pay for it sometime. Raising taxes is the only way it’s going to happen and we can’t do that while in recession. So it will be $6.00 a gallon gasoline by the end of 2009. Sounds as though we are corkscrewing ourselves into economic collapse. No amount of offshore drilling will prevent that since the first drop of gasoline from that oil is far in the future.