Author Topic: Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong  (Read 2385 times)

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Offline bijou

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Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
« on: June 03, 2011, 02:16:14 AM »
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Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling. Natural gas may be only the beginning. Fracking also permits the extraction of previously-unrecoverable “tight oil,” thereby postponing the day when the world runs out of petroleum. There is enough coal to produce energy for centuries. And governments, universities and corporations in the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries are studying ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the seafloor. The potential energy in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils, including other forms of natural gas, combined.

If gas hydrates as well as shale gas, tight oil, oil sands and other unconventional sources can be tapped at reasonable cost, then the global energy picture looks radically different than it did only a few years ago. Suddenly it appears that there may be enough accessible hydrocarbons to power industrial civilization for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

So much for the specter of depletion, as a reason to adopt renewable energy technologies like solar power and wind power. Whatever may be the case with Peak Oil in particular, the date of Peak Fossil Fuels has been pushed indefinitely into the future. What about national security as a reason to switch to renewable energy?  ...
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/31/linbd_fossil_fuels



Offline Janice

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Re: Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2011, 05:05:02 AM »
The earth is constantly pushing new oil to the surface. Its constantly producing new oil and gas too.

The "green" movement is not about "saving the environment". Its about attacking capitalism. Specifically to hurt the US.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the biggest threat to our existence is no longer from outside our borders.

Did I say "borders"?
Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Empire ...

Obama is bankrupting the American Republic

Offline JohnnyReb

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Re: Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2011, 06:03:50 AM »

Did I say "borders"?


Yes you did.....you're so old fashion. :-)
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” - Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."  Stalin

Offline CG6468

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Re: Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2011, 07:05:39 AM »
Our daughter has a dog named Frack. She was a sister to Frick. Both were at the animal shelter where our daughter worked.

Not kidding!
Illinois, south of the gun controllers in Chi town