Monday, July 30, 2007

Knuckleheads

Just Drill, Baby by Pete Du Pont.

Selected excerpts:
First, we are not running out of oil. In 1920 it was estimated that the world supply of oil was 60 billion barrels. By 1950 it was up to 600 billion, and by 1990 to two trillion. In 2000 the world supply of oil was estimated to be three trillion barrels.
...
But ethanol is not a good gasoline substitute. It takes some seven gallons of oil to produce eight gallons of corn-based ethanol--diesel fuel for the tractors to plant and harvest the corn, pesticides to protect it, and fuel for trucks to transport the ethanol around the country. So there is not much energy gain, nor with all the gasoline involved does it help with global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And ethanol yields one-third less energy per gallon than gasoline, so that mileage per gallon of ethanol-blended auto fuel is less than gasoline mileage.

Sometimes it is hard for me to believe how incompetent our Federal Government has become. Oil, Nuclear Power, and even coal can solve all of the energy needs of America, but our elected representatives are choosing to use tax money to promote ethanol production. What absolute knuckleheads!

3 comments:

Buz said...

Two simple questions

(1) if global warming is occuring, then why do we have any record high temperatures left that date prior to 1950 and why have we set any low temperature records since 1950

(2) What is the baseline used for global warming comparisons? Is it the average temperature of the 1950s, the 1850s, the last ice-age?

I grew up in the 1960s and the same people who are now telling us that the earth is warming were telling us in the 1960s that the earth was cooling and we were facing another ice age ... they were claiming that north america would be covered with glaciers by the year 2050. As their proof, they pointed to the fact that, while in the 1920s and 1930s the Florida orange crop was never bothered by frost, in the 1960s there were frost warnings in Florida on a regular basis.

Frankly, I am getting rather perturbed with people trying to scare me into hiding in my house so that I can wait to die some horrible death ... especially when they have been doing it for 40 years, and they have been wrong time after time.

What I don't understand is why anyone listens to the people who foretell such ignominious doom.

If you have some preconceived results, you can find the right data to prove your point.

Buz

P.S. they still have frost warnings that will destroy the orange crops in Florida on a regular basis ... and all those Global-Warming initiated hurricans which were supposed to be of supernatural force and wipe the east coast of the US off of the face of the earth have yet to materialize yet this year ... as a matter of fact, I don't think we have had any hurricans which reached land so far in 2007.

David M. Smith said...

Hi Tarun,

Thanks for stopping by. I think we could find some areas of agreement even if we can’t agree about catastrophic Global Warming.

Please stop back by and join in some of the faith discussions. I am interested to know what you believe about God.

Rusty said...

I worked in Valdez, Alaska, in 1994. The trans-Alaska oil pipeline had been running since 1977. It was originally thought that it would pump oil for about 10-15 years.

It's still pumping.