Post-Bill

Bill,

Back at you on “Thank you for taking the time for a thoughtful, direct, and considered response.”

Your post I think clearly states the thoughts of most concerned reasonable people throughout the world.

Let me answer the war issue first. No I don’t think we should be fighting wars for oil. First of all we don’t need foreign oil. The Rockies have enough shell oil equal to the Saudi reserves. ANWAR has at least a 100 year supply, and I have been told probably 4-5 times more. Then we have off shore. The real shame-and folks I am not trying to get political- is that our politicians will not allow us to explore in our country, while they are allowing people in the middle east to get rich (who are funding all these terrorist groups) and allow the Chinese to set up just outside our maritime boundaries and angle drill our oil.

In 2006 the CEO of Saudi Aramaco stated that known reserves were around 4.5T barrel or roughly a 140 year supply. Since then roughly another 1T barrels have been discovered.

What we know:
1. We have at the very least 150 years of known oil reserves
2. We have a probably at least that much in Natural gas
3. Coal is anyone’s guess but it is measured in centuries
4. Worst case scenario by the IPCC ( I’m giving you this) is a temperature rise of 1.6 degrees in 100 years, well below the medieval warm period or the Roman warm period.
5. America has spent $80B on research of Global Warming
6. The world needs a strong and healthy America
7. Solar is roughly $6k/kW installed, new advances in thin film may take that down to $4K in a few years.
8. Wind is roughly $5K/kW installed and I don’t know of any new significant advances in the near future.
9. Conventional plants cost roughly $1.5K/kw not sure about Nukes.
10. Coal puts out ~2.1 lbs/kw of CO2, Gas 1.3, and petroleum 1.8, nuke 0
11. etc etc

What is best for the environment and the economy?
1. Drill here now, open up ANWAR (I have probably been up to the slope 40 times and believe me when I tell you are not hurting the environment by drilling there).
2. Build the Trans Alaskan Natural Gas Pipeline
3. Streamline the permit process for Nukes especially for existing sites that want to add additional generation.
4. Allow existing coal and natural gas plants to expand generation. You can not shut down coal, too many people depend on coal mining. Gradually over the next 50 years shift to cleaner forms of generation.
5. Take a small portion of that $80B and instead of wasting it on cooked scientific studies use it to:
Encourage onsite power generation to include wind, solar, CHP, ORC etc-it is much more efficient, can save money if done right, and enhances our national security.
Fund American companies to bring power to the 3rd world, that will have much more impact on world pollution, health issues, deforestation, and American business.
Develop items like carbon capture etc.

I believe in America and its ingenuity. I don’t believe we are destroying the planet. We will solve these issues, but we can’t solve these problems unless we have the capability. We don’t have the technology at this time to implement cap and trade with a stroke of a pen, especially in the middle of a major recession. But we can start down the road with much of the technology on the ground today and make real differences with positive effects and little pain-possibly some gain.