Palin's full speech contained yet another energy lie, one that is very revealing:
To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies ...
Not even close. Yes, if you live in a world where the only energy source is oil, then the Persian Gulf countries do produce 20 percent of the total world supply -- although it would be next to impossible for Iran to cut it all off. And kind of stupid, since they'd lose tens of billions of dollars in revenues themselves.
But we don't live in a world where the only energy supply for the world is oil -- well, maybe Palin and the McCain campaign do, but the rest of us don't. In the world the rest of us live in, oil is maybe 20 percent of total world energy usage. And I'm going to ignore efficiency, even though it is certainly the largest energy resource.
Bottom line: A really self-destructive Iran might in fact be able to cut off a few percent of the world's energy supply.
And one more thing. If you were really worried about the possibility Iran might cut off a fifth of the world's oil supply -- cut off some 20 million barrels of oil a day -- then it is inane to say you confront that threat by saying "we need to produce more of our own oil and gas." If you opened every conceivable area now off-limits to drilling, you might get 1 million barrels of oil a day starting in 10 years.
The only way to prepare for losing a fifth of the world oil supply -- or, more realistically, to prepare for the reality peak oil -- is to transform our transportation system into one that can also run on electricity.
Here is the total global energy use:
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
Palin’s book spreads falsehoods about clean energy legislation
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:05 am
04 Sep 2008
We in the world known as Earth consume oil.
It is the energy of our People.
You, Joseph Romm, live in Dimensia 13, where nanobots erect solar panels on your birdhouses, and a personal journeyman named "Tim" erects windmills for you at the touch of a button!
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cjwirth Posted 11:53 am
04 Sep 2008
To get some idea of how critical this is to the world, read this:
According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
Surviving Peak Oil: We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed, found at the website listed below.
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. Google: surviving peak oil clifford wirth.
cjwirth http://www.peakoilassociates.com
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vakibs Posted 12:38 am
05 Sep 2008
And the capacity of increased ANWR drilling or oil shale is far too low to address this danger. Canadian tar sands will help a lot, but not completely.
Each one of these controversial oils are only the prelude to the real threat "liquid coal" - the Nazi era technology of converting coal to oil. Since USA has a lot of coal, it will not be long before this technology is proposed to address the energy woes. That is the mother of all evils.
This is what worries the environmentalists the most. Unless the republicans are put in check, they will resurrect this nazi era technology. Then it will be goodbye, mother earth !!
There are practical and sensible ways of avoiding this problem which is through sustainable bio-fuels, battery and fuel-cell vehicles. Let's hope that good sense prevails !
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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mreinbold Posted 1:34 am
05 Sep 2008
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archigeek Posted 2:29 am
05 Sep 2008
The mellotron is your friend.
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mreinbold Posted 3:45 am
05 Sep 2008
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