Crude: The Real Price of Oil--anyone seen this?

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by snijd, Sep 13, 2009.

  1. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    I was.

    It's one of those dirty little secrets, like skid marks on underwear, that everybody is aware of or at least SHOULD be aware of. It's self-obvious

    If you thought that was a downer, I guess I shouldn't tell you what happens when these do-gooder recycling programs round up used electronics.

    Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste - 60 Minutes - CBS News

    Toxic Trade News

    I find it amusing how we in North America pretend to be so clean, "green," and holier than thou. As I have stated previously, the REAL reason we outsourced and offshored our energy and electronics was to DUMP the emissions problem onto some other country, far away from ours

    You have to admit, that scheme worked pretty good. We can sit on our big lazy butts here, smug and confident that we're so "green" when we are killing people half a world away

    Doesn't matter if you point a rifle and drop the person, or force them to drink water laced with cyanide and arsenic, PAH's, etc, you still kill them
     
  2. MarinJohn

    MarinJohn Senior Member

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    Tony you're onto something here. Since the US has more coal than God, we finally can EXPORT it to China to help balance the trade deficit. After all, they'll still be burning coal whether or not we sell it to them, they'll still have all that coal pollution (which eventually blows to the US anyway), and we could fill all those ships going back empty to China after they dump all their cheap goodies here, thereby making use of the ongoing ship pollution. We could level mountaintops making more room for building WITH VIEWS, and we could still maintain our superior attitude!
     
  3. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    exporting coal is almost not an option. "Big Coal" a book i read discusses the sheer bulk of coal and the difficulties we encounter now since most of the coal now comes from Montana and most of it is burned in the East (the West has luckily not adopted Coal to the same extent)

    unlike oil its density to energy ratio is not all that great.

    besides, one of the big reason China is building so many coal plants is because they have plenty of it as well
     
  4. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    China is sitting pretty as far as coal reserves are concerned. Russia, and the USA, have the most proven coal reserves
     
  5. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    China does have to import a lot of coal, mostly from Oz, I think. At the rate that they're building coal fired power plants, they will vapourize their coal reserves in about 80 years. If I recall, the US has by far the largest coal reserves in the world, about double that of the second nation, which is China, I believe. The article I read (can't remember the source) said that the US has about 30% of world reserves and China about 15%.
     
  6. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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  7. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    US coal reserves are largely like US oil reserves. we have it, but not likely to get it.

    a lot of this stuff lies under national parks, monuments and major population areas. Coal is currently still available in largely unpopulated areas but that does not excuse what has to be done to get the stuff out of the ground.

    now whether the old email urban legend about an oil discovery that is supposed to be three times the size of the entire middle east sitting right here in the good old US of A that is not being tapped because its under ecologically sensitive government park land is true or not

    well, dont care if its true or not. we simply cannot afford to burn what we have now.
     
  8. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    It's not that the oil isn't available, its just that the cost of extraction is quite a bit higher than that stuff from the Mid East.

    However, once you factor in the political crap involved in that mid east oil, our geologically-tight formations look pretty cheap to extract. Just not economical at <$70 a barrel
     
  9. snijd

    snijd DIY or die

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    Crude: The Real Price of Oil--Follow Up

    18 months later, there's finally been a court decision against Chevron. Now to see if and when they actually make any payments.
     
  10. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    lol, interesting that this thread should be revived on the eve of $4 gas AGAIN. its got a ways to go here at $3.299 but have a Leafer bud in San Diego seeing $3.89 so not too far to go.

    its funny. we are almost a dime higher than the national average, but the national average is more than a nickel higher than here. but that was yesterday, have not been out yet today to see what gas is going for now