Trade Deficit has crippled the United States of America

if we get desparate, there's pleny of oil, coal and natural gas in the u.s.

 

You bet there is. And the true recovered cost will make current Mid East oil look cheap.

Recovered cost will be far more in line with the oil sands in Alberta, $75 a barrel and up.

 

I guess people are angry, they don't know at what, though all the time.

Offshoot, good heavens malorn, based on your current vehicles the priuschat forums are a strange spot for you I assume you used to have one?

 

Like, whenever you post?

This used to be a place for left-leaning Prius owners only. I don't know who let in all the riff raff.

 

Malorn (a GM dealer) showed up shortly after the Prius started selling back on 2005. He came here (and continues to) strictly to ridicule his competitors (toyota).

He famously tried to predict a return of cheap gas back then as an argument against buying a Prius. Of course that never materialized. So he now focuses on the trade imbalance reasoning (IE: pushing guilt) as his argument against Toyota. Nevermind how much of the GM parts are imported, or how all the big car companies are essentially global at this point anyways.

 

Proven oil reserves in the United States are 21 billion barrels - Wikipedia.
The undiscovered, technically recoverable resources total 134 billion barrels* -ibid
Oil shale might add 2.2 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. -ibid

U.S. oil consumption is approximately 21 million barrels per day - ibid.
Growth of US oil consumption is around 2% annually.

So if we used 100% US oil, we would be out of proven reserves in late 2013. (current usage gives us until 2019). If we could discover and extract the unknown reserves, we would run out, early in 2025. If we somehow figure out how to extract oil from shale FOR FREE, that runs out in less than 100 years.

What am I missing?

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* The undiscovered, technically recoverable prospective resources in all areas of the United States, including the Federal Outer Continental Shelf, the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, and the Bakken Formation, total 134 billion barrels (21.3×109 m3) of crude oil.

 

You are missing the fact that most of the remaining reserves require high energy and capital input for recovery. No more sticking a straw in the ground and reaping the rewards. Now we have to put in massive energy and effort to get it. And much of the "technically recoverable" oil would require just as much energy to get out as would be recovered. Translation: Not worth producing.

And shale is the worst of these. Not only is the energy return on energy investment very poor, but the process itself will use massive amounts of water (which is another valuable limited resource) and will leave the environment badly damaged.

But hey...if that's what's required to keep running my monster truck, RV, and snowmobile...

 

True. Well not so much missing, as ignoring, in order to give the rosiest possible picture (in order to forestall any excuse to say, it isn't as bad as that).

 

Maybe there's still enough oil left to make all the renewable-energy infrastructure we need. It wouldn't be very smart to just burn it all, now would it?

 

Prius: 2.0 gallons per 100 miles * 300,000 miles * $4/gallon = $24,000 + MSRP $21,000 = $45,000
GMC Denali: 6.6 gallons per 100 miles * 300,000 miles * $4/gallon = $80,000
So Malorn, please recycle your huge vehicles and buy a Prius to help with the trade imbalance.

 

I'm amazed that you say

And you even make a big deal of "proving" that you're right:

And then it turns out that you missed the mark by quite a bit. Depending on the recent year chosen, our entire trade deficit is composed of between 45% and 55% or our oil trade deficit. And getting bigger. To make it handy, let's just call it 50%. And you claim that's not important or significant? You are correct that 50% isn't anywhere "near the majority" of our deficit - but it sure seems like a big chunk to me. It is, in fact, where the "big money" is going. Cherry-picking the numbers to one region doesn't work too well.

So what I'm amazed about is how emphatic you were about this. And you were proven wrong... and we just moved onto another subject as if this doesn't matter.

In one sentence, can you answer this: just what IS our biggest trade deficit problem if not oil? Is it that we don't buy enough "American" cars?

 

He sort of blipped off the screen right after that, didn't he? I'm glad he's back. Makes things interesting. The mind is a fascinating machine.

 

Well Malorn, maybe it's time to stop selling made-in-Mexico, assembled-in-Canada, foreign-gas-guzzling trucks. Yeah, ouch. Sorry - you're here for the challenge, right? There you go. Straight up, plain and simple.

 

Truly we can bitch and moan about all the other parts of our trade deficit. But the oil one? It is the single biggest slice of the pie. And it is what our civilization is built on. It is responsible for our current way of life. We are depending on other nations for our wealth and power. And it is killing us. And it is ruining our economy. That we keep building and selling cars that consume this stuff is criminal. I can get an expensive ticket for rolling my bicycle through a stop sign, but it is perfectly legal for me to idle my Hummer at a red light and destroy our country. Awesome!

 

Nonsense. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and life will continue on. The catch is that for the average person, each generation can expect a somewhat lower standard of living.

It's all our fault

If you REALLY want to solve the trade deficit problem that you always whine about, instead of spending, try SAVING. That is, stop buying shit

These are good reads. They are long, very complex, lots of math, and boring

http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0129.pdf

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rs21951.pdf

http://www.iie.com/publications/wp/wp05-11.pdf

"We have met the enemy and he is us" Walt Kelly

 

Or, to quote George Carlin

"They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table to figure out how badly they are getting f***ed by a system that threw them overboard thirty f***ing years ago .... they want obedient workers."

And the masters are the big corporations who shoved this all down our throat.

But enough people are delusional to ensure this will continue. Depending on who you listen to, the entire trade deficit problem is either caused solely by Toyota, or by driving fuel efficient small cars.

Don't even get me started on education. Don't even get me started on how we have become so incredibly dumbed down and stupid, we can barely tie our own shoelaces

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference at a large American university. Let's just say they are world famous with their acronym, and they are on the eastern seaboard

Took a tour of the engineering facilities, as I always enjoy learning. Noticed over 2/3 of the students appeared Asian.

My first thought?

Good!

While the typical white kid is out getting stoned, getting drunk, driving a pickup with a lift kit and a smoke belching motor, we have Asian kids who pay good money to come here and learn all our engineering skills

Guess what folks? We simply GAVE it away, including the kitchen sink. Because we were arrogant enough to believe that we could ignore the rest of the world

I personally like having a B.Sc. in computer science and a B.Sc. in chemical engineering. I've never really had to look too hard for work, it's always there. The attitude of most others of my skin color is pretty bad, especially when they start blaming "chinks" and other even more insulting slang, for all their ills

Want to blame somebody for your problems? Take a look in the mirror. Almost all the problem in my life, I can blame using that technique

 

:thumb:

We are literally consuming the planet. Well, the biosphere, anyway. The less we spend, the less we consume.