Look, Krellin, I'm not a believer in the doom and gloom crowd, but even I think we should take care of this rock we live on to some degree. I like breathing and burning fossil fuels makes it hard to breathe when am overpopulated region does it to extremes in the summer. So I am still for alternative energy sources if just to male my breathing more comfortable.

This from the same person who insists that government scientists are so incredibly corrupt? Shocking. It's almost as if rank hypocrisy is perfectly acceptable if it conforms to your previously held beliefs about the world.

It's so easy to get you people riled up...heh heh

I always thought the argument was that oil takes too long to produce in sufficient quantities, not that it can't be produced at all.

There will be plenty of oil for a long time as long as we continue to develop new technologies for retrieving the oil (e.g. fracking). However, these new technologies are continually doing more damage on retrieval than old technologies because they have to dig deeper to get it. That's why peak oil was off - there was more, we just didn't know how to get to it at the time. Now we do.

Climate change aside, why are using oil? It's great if you don't want solar or wind. Frankly, solar and wind are in developmental stages. Trying to implement them large-scale today would be disastrous for the alternative industry. Hydro power is still coming along and will become more viable. Nuclear fission is obviously not going to happen long-term. Nuclear fusion is the most likely long-term solution but it's at least 10 years away on even a small scale let alone around the world.

But why, why in the world, are we still using oil? What else are we using from the mid-1800s? Our technologies have so far exceeded that era that the idea that we still use oil, given the risks and given the damage its retrieval does to the environment on a local scale (again, exclude climate change). Find me another major technology that we are dependent upon that is just as crude (pun intended) today as it was in the mid-1800s and I'll concede.

Well, there is always coal and wood fired furnaces driving hydro electric steam turbines. Nuclear power (the aforementioned fission) actually is a viable long term solution if we find a safe way to store or reuse the waste or if we perfect some of the safer forms that use tholium and the like.

I've never understood why conservatives don't support actually conserving valuable natural resources. Even if you disagree with global warming or other environmental concerns, the course of action to *use petroleum resources more efficiently* makes sense from a purely national security standpoint. One place where liberals and conservatives should agree is that we should reduce how much petroleum we are importing from abroad from dodgy regimes for loads of money and consuming it immediately in inefficient vehicles and plants. This is one of the reasons why I'm not a Republican: they're so locked to the oil industry that they can't be reasonable about conservation even when it makes sense philosophically *and* practically.

Draug, nuclear fusion is the long-term future. There's hardly anyone able to dispute that. That could be a hundred or more years down the road though if western governments continue to help the fossil fuel industry out.

Oil is a fantastic source of densely-packed hydro-carbon energy - that's why we use it, because it is really good at what it does.
The notion that all hydro-carbon energy must be dirty is simply a lie.

Modern vehicle technology is very clean, and if GOVERNMENT BACKED "green" energy initiatives hadn't killed fuel-cell technology in the auto (and other) industries, we'd be much farther along in having zero-emission hydro-carbon fueled automobiles.

Once again, it is politics, and misguiding know-nothings in Congress throwing money at the wrong thing that screws up technological advances.

So Draug, when you suggest you love the earth and clean air, yadda yadda yadda...no kidding. Who doesn't? You sound a little like our silly liberal friends when you make such emotional pleas. The problem with your assertion that oil = dirty air is that is doesn't hold up to reality.

I'm certain you remeber walking down the sidewalk in 1975 and choking on the exhaust fumes whenever a vehicle drove past you (or still today when you get behind a vehicle who's emission system is not functioning correctly) -- so clearly you can therefore recognize the contrast with you modern vehicle's emissions. And again...let the funding be guided by reason and industry, rather than political pay-out, and perhaps we would be closer to sensible alternative energy sources.

Bo's mention of wind and solar makes me want to laugh...it's so trite and uninformed, starting with you can put up all the wind and solar sources you want, but when the wind dies and the sun goes down, your city...your hospitals...go black, unless you have some alternate energy supply ready and on hand at an instant's notice.

Thus, you need coal burning, nuclear, whatever ready to supply the grid at full capacity at all time.

And you can't just turn the coal plant OFF when the sun comes out, then flip it on for 8 hours, and then turn it off at sunrise again - that's not how the technology works.

Alternately, instead of a stand-by power source to cover for the highly dieficient wind/solar, you need to have energy storage devices - big ass batteries, essentially - than can store energy when the wind blows and sun shines, and release it for whatever period is required.

We can't develop a battery to keep a cell phone running reliably for a day....by are a damn long time away from powering a city with batteries...

So when reasonable people discuss the issue of energy, and examine the real issue - not pie-in-the-sky emotioanlly-driven "the earth is dying" dream solutions - they recognize the long-term continued need for reliable energy sources that are ready to be used now, that are highly efficient, etc. Hydro-carbons.

Unfrotunaely, because idiotic POliticians - let's say Obama - have made the coal industry such a villian, who is going to do research on clean coal technology, when he threatens to shut the industry down. And it won't shut down...it CAN NOT shut down with current energy supplies....but you won't get a cleaner coal plant built because of the greenies trying to kill the industry for their non-existent alternatives.

Bo - Fusion is a pipe dream. Controlling the reaction has never been close to being possible. It is just too unstable a reaction.

Krellin speaks a lot of sense. Wind can never be more than a top up source of energy. Similar for solar (which is the only true fusion). Tidal is a good regular source, although annoyingly expensive. Coal is wonderfully cheap, and with a bit of carbon capture has great potential.

Foreign oil is very much on its way out if we have any sense.

@Draug ... fusion's a pipe dream today, but everything else was once a pipe dream. The way we've progressed, there's no telling what can be done by the time a few generations pass. It's only those crazy enough to try that will make it happen.

Krellin, I never mentioned solar and wind as sustainable large scale sources. In fact, I said they're quite the opposite. You based half of your post off of something I didn't say. You also appear not to know what generators are, but that's for another day.

Bo - Fusion is a pipe dream. Fusion is the best-case scenario. Large-scale solar and wind does totally suck, but when there's nothing else left, that's what we'll have.

You guys really doubt the possibility of innovation. Must be tough to look at the future where nothing's possible. I feel kinda bad for you all sometimes.

Wind sucks! Drive along I-10 to LA and look how the windmill farms around Palm Springs have ducked up the land scape. I can't believe environmentalist are for that!

Solar, on the other hand, in a sunny environment like AZ and TX, can be very economical. We have to have roofs over our heads and over our cars in parking lots anyway, so why not put solar arrays on top instead of tiles or shingles? There are many places around the phoenix area that have started building covered parking structures (which is a god send when its 120 outside (45 for you Canadians and Europeans)) and putting solar panels on top. Brilliant, I say!

Not exactly the solution for an entire city, but it actually is a net input to the grid, so ever bit helps.

Why does my phone REFUSE to learn "fucked"? I have never typed "ducked" deliberately, and yet it is always the default "correction" to "fucked" which I type at least daily!

@Bo The future is in miniaturization, rather than limitless energy.

Ask the Chinese how coal is working out for them.

"You guys really doubt the possibility of innovation"

Yes, actually. Innovation has been accepted as an article of faith when there is really little to indicate that we're making much headway on transportation and energy innovation. We're still using automobiles for crying out loud.

"I feel kinda bad for you all sometimes."

You're not exactly a fount of boundless optimism here.

问：
煤用得如何适合你？

答：
我不知道，问普京三十三了他的意思。

AT philcore - I recently heard a statistic that the amount of desert space we would need to cover with solar to provide all our needs is actually surprisingly small - like 10% or something

The irony would be, of course, that if we ever had a true push to cover the desert in solar, the same people demanding it would be the first to scream "NOT IN MY BACKYARD" and yell about how we are destroying the natural beauty of the desert.

They are the very same people that scream and shout for windmills...until the proposed windmill is off their coast line and suddenly it is an eyesore and a truly horrible solution.

"You guys really doubt the possibility of innovation. Must be tough to look at the future where nothing's possible. I feel kinda bad for you all sometimes. "

lol Good lord, what the hell are you talking about. Some of us old farts around here grew up with black and white TV (if we even had a TV in the house when we were born). There weren't even hand held calculators, let alone computers, cell phones, etc.

You are, again, talking out of your ass, Bo - hate to tell you that.

People in their 40's have had the great fortune of seeing the world utterly transformed within our lifetime - so we certainly fully grasp the wonders of innovation.

My mother had her knee replaced a week and a half ago, and is up and walking. My father has a piece of electronics wired in to his heart to keep him alive should the old ticker decide it wants to skip a beat.

Believe in innovation is a fairly natural thing for many of us. Belief in pie-in-the=sky pipe dreams is something different altogether, especially when innovation - particularly in the area of energy - is more controlled by the handing out of money for political favor, rather than based upon putting money in the hands of the best and brightest based upon where they believe it should be put.

I again will reference the zero-emission hydro-carbon powered vehicle run by a fuel cell. A perfect technology that utilizes existing energy sources that we have in abundance, that we have a fully implemented and functional infrastructure (gas pumps), and that fits easily within existing vehicle technology.

The auto industry has all but scrapped this technological research because the government decided we needed to dump our money in to electric vehicles...you know, that gas-powered vehicles that run about 30 miles on a charge before running on a conventional engine again, and which carry around as a primary energy source a massive toxic box we like to call the "green clean energy" of a battery.

I could have water vapor coming out my tail pipe *today* if GM had kept it's research dollars in hydrogen fuel cells instead of being strong-armed in to the very bad electric technology that nobody is buying.

Krellin & BoSox are like bad issues of Popular Science.

"http://gizmodo.com/government-scientists-created-crude-oil-from-algae-in-m-1485731339
Scientists can create crude oil in minutes..."

Its a very brief article. Its meaningless without knowing how much energy is returned for the energy invested.

"Coal is wonderfully cheap, and with a bit of carbon capture has great potential."

Octavious. Sure. If carbon capture were a simple process then problem solved. The hard bit is the carbon capture (and containment). Once again you have to consider the energy return for the energy invested.

@spyman....as if covering the desert in solar panels is easy, and building the (as yet UNinvented) power storage facilities to provide energy when the wind stops blowing/sun stops shining is easy.

As I referenced far above, the research in to clean coal technology was well under way....and then Obama campaigned on the promise of bankrupting any company that wanted to build a power plant (Oh..YAY for Obama supporting research in to innovation!)...

Automobiles have done an *amazing* job of containing toxic emmissions over the last few decades. Developing containment technology for a smoke stack is eminently doable....oh, unless you have been told you will be put in to bankruptcy by excessive government regulations for trying....

@Putin33 Why doesn't the Green Party in China run some candidates with a "clean air" agenda?

Why don't you make a post that isn't some sanctimonious screed about the infallibility of multi-party democracy.

@Putin33 Of course there is no Green Party, because there is no need for multiple parties, as there is only one class.

Please let me know when the Green Party takes power in the USA.