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BP Makes ‘Giant’ Oil Discovery in Gulf of Mexico

Electric cars will, someday replace petroleum engines, however that's a few decades away.

Tell that to Tesla Motors. Not to mention Nissan who is planning over a 100,000 electric car sales next year.

Switching to bio-fuels is a terrible plan. We don't want to turn our food and water supply into our fuel supply.

I wasn't aware that indigestible cellulose and switch grass have become food supplies. Not to mention algae used in coal plants.

Please educate yourself before posting.

That's right, they're invested in oil, because it's more practical and cost effective than any other source

Incorrect. They are invested in oil because that was the only serious fuel source for 50 years. Is it practical and cost effective now? That depends how you do the accounting. In terms of taxation, it is due to depreciation.

An increase in supply, when there's no increase in demand will cause prices to go down. That's how supply and demand works.

Your ignorance is astounding. A tiny drop in the bucket will not cause prices to decline for an exceedingly simple reason. Once the first cheap 50,000 is gone, everyone else who needs that other 82 million barrels will pay the normal price. There is absolutely no reason for the providers of that other 82 million barrels to give a crap what the price is for that 50,000 barrels. You just argued that a mom and pop grocery store can force a Walmart Super center to cut its prices.

And you really don't understand commodity markets.

Grocery stores aren't commodity exchanges. Wal Mart pays the same amount for corn that Bob's Stop-n-Shop does.

No it doesn't. Walmart gets exceptionally large discounts due to massive buying power. There is no way that Walmart pays the same price for anything that a small mom and pop pays for exception maybe for electricity and water.

Speaking of ignorance of commodity exchanges.

Which is you. You just argued that a tiny price setter can force massive price setters who control the price can force the big price setters to change their prices. Which is analogous to mom and pop grocery making a supercenter reduce its prices. Not going to happen.
 
Tell that to Tesla Motors. Not to mention Nissan who is planning over a 100,000 electric car sales next year.

I wasn't aware that indigestible cellulose and switch grass have become food supplies. Not to mention algae used in coal plants.

Please educate yourself before posting
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Tesla cars are VERY expensive, and only a few will be made each year.
Even if Nissan makes a million electric cars, it is only a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the number of cars on the road...
and so far there are no electic cars with a range that makes them viable...
The process for making fuel from food crops is NOT efficient, much less the process for cellulose and grass...

what is the algae in coal plants about?
 
Tesla cars are VERY expensive, and only a few will be made each year.
Even if Nissan makes a million electric cars, it is only a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the number of cars on the road.

While that is true, the fact that their goal is 100,000 electric cars during essentially jobless recovery is quite telling. Besides, we all know once it the number of electric reaches a certain point, it will start to pick significant speed.

and so far there are no electric cars with a range that makes them viable.

What do you mean by viable? Most commutes in the us are under 50 miles roundtrip and many electric cars are approaching that if not already there.

The process for making fuel from food crops is NOT efficient, much less the process for cellulose and grass.

What's your take on sugar? The Brazilians appear to have produced efficient sugar ethanol.

what is the algae in coal plants about?

Capture the pollution from coal plants, feed it into cylinders full of water and algae exposed to sunlight and outcomes various biofuels.
 
While that is true, the fact that their goal is 100,000 electric cars during essentially jobless recovery is quite telling. Besides, we all know once it the number of electric reaches a certain point, it will start to pick significant speed.



What do you mean by viable? Most commutes in the us are under 50 miles roundtrip and many electric cars are approaching that if not already there.



What's your take on sugar? The Brazilians appear to have produced efficient sugar ethanol.



Capture the pollution from coal plants, feed it into cylinders full of water and algae exposed to sunlight and outcomes various biofuels.
No, we don't all know any such thing:)....I for one would buy one for local use, but not until the warranty on the batteries is 100,000 miles.
Granted, the majority of cars are used for commuting, so I guess I mean they won't be viable in the sparsly populated areas. IF you live 40 miles from work, who will provide the chargers at your parking spot. If you "run out of battery" on the freeway, you have to be towed in. They can't bring you 5KW of juice to get you going again.
BTW, check out the warranty on the Tesla. There will be only a few locations with trained mechanics. Owners will probably get to pay their roundtrip air fare...
Brazil has an advantage for biofuels, right climate, plenty of land and water, etc.
They use sugar cane like we use pork, we process everything but the squeal.;)
They don't waste any of their sugar cane.
If we could capture the pollution from coal plants, why aren't we already doing so?
How does coal ash, sulphur, CO2, mercury, radioactive isotopes, etc. get converted to biofuels?
 
Why does one preclude the other. Why should the government even be telling a private company what they can be spending their "Billions" for?

Do you think that all these alternative forms of energy are going to magically spring up while it'll take "ten years" for anything to be produced from the oil? Do you think its not going to take ten years, if not more, for alternative forms of energy to become so wide spread that they make up the majority of our energy use in this country even if we did force companies in the U.S. to be focusing on oil, let alone if we allow it to go at a even SEMI-natural course? Do you think that even IF all of that happened we still wouldn't have need and use for oil in a still decent amount?

Your position isn't logical, it isn't intelligent, its platitudes and talking points and nothing more. We most definitely need to be focusing money and research in this country towards ALL forms of domestic energy...wind, coal, solar, nuclear, gas, and yes, OIL as well. We should not focus specifically on oil, but nor should we simply reject it and ignore it. Transitions don't happen over night, rarely do they even happen in a decade, and there are far to many things that simply in a decade or even in five decades are still going to require oil and in those cases its better to have it locally then relying upon some exterior source.

Has anybody here raised the point of the cost of drilling vs benefit? Do any of you think it's perfectly good business practice to spend billions on something that will take a heck of a lot of time to produce any profits, let alone very minimal output???

Back in the day when oil was still gushing, the second biggest oil find in the world remained untouched. Why? Because it was deemed too much trouble, as there was a lot of sand in the mixture. The cost was too high to refine until it reached $150 a barrel. The Alberta tar sands production has slowed since the drop in price, but it will be full tilt once again once the price gets feasible once again.

I also think we are much more behind in alternate technology. Ten years??? We are far from that, IMO.
 
Tell that to Tesla Motors. Not to mention Nissan who is planning over a 100,000 electric car sales next year.

You gotta source for those sales projections?



I wasn't aware that indigestible cellulose and switch grass have become food supplies. Not to mention algae used in coal plants.

Please educate yourself before posting.

How much usable fuel can we produce from those? Oh, wait, we're not going to use coal fired plants anymore.



Incorrect. They are invested in oil because that was the only serious fuel source for 50 years. Is it practical and cost effective now? That depends how you do the accounting. In terms of taxation, it is due to depreciation.

That's right, because, again, it's the only practical fuel source. How many times do we have to tell you that?



Your ignorance is astounding. A tiny drop in the bucket will not cause prices to decline for an exceedingly simple reason. Once the first cheap 50,000 is gone, everyone else who needs that other 82 million barrels will pay the normal price. There is absolutely no reason for the providers of that other 82 million barrels to give a crap what the price is for that 50,000 barrels. You just argued that a mom and pop grocery store can force a Walmart Super center to cut its prices.

And you really don't understand commodity markets.

I never said that a mom-n-pop operation could force Wal Mart to close. I said there's a huge difference between gorcery stores and commodities markets. Perhaps It's you that is astoundingly ignorant.
 
What's your take on sugar? The Brazilians appear to have produced efficient sugar ethanol.

It takes 1.5 gallons of ethonal to produce the same amount of energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. Therefore, it's only half as efficient, causing vehicles to poorer fuel mileage, paying the same amount for a gallon of fuel, since fuel is a commodity and the price is determined by supply and demand and not the overhead inccured to produce it. Another downfall of ethonal, is that it takes 3 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon ethonal, so, not only are we turning part of our food supply into our fuel supply, we'll also be doing the same thing with our water supply.
 
Back in the day when oil was still gushing, the second biggest oil find in the world remained untouched. Why? Because it was deemed too much trouble, as there was a lot of sand in the mixture. The cost was too high to refine until it reached $150 a barrel. The Alberta tar sands production has slowed since the drop in price, but it will be full tilt once again once the price gets feasible once again.

It wasn't touched, because there technology wasn't there to produce it.
 
It takes 1.5 gallons of ethonal to produce the same amount of energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. Therefore, it's only half as efficient, causing vehicles to poorer fuel mileage, paying the same amount for a gallon of fuel, since fuel is a commodity and the price is determined by supply and demand and not the overhead inccured to produce it. Another downfall of ethonal, is that it takes 3 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon ethonal, so, not only are we turning part of our food supply into our fuel supply, we'll also be doing the same thing with our water supply.

Alcohol is also a very strong solvent. There is a good reason it is used as a blend in domestic cars. You can use it on race day, but don't leave it in your car when you aren't driving it for a while...
 
Alcohol is also a very strong solvent. There is a good reason it is used as a blend in domestic cars. You can use it on race day, but don't leave it in your car when you aren't driving it for a while...

Not to mention, that is there's any sugar left in the fuel and the car isn't driven frequently enough, it will cause fouling in the fuel system.
 
Petroleum is not used to make fertilizer.

Chemical Fertilizers are largely derived from petroleum products.

Chemical Fertilizers

Chemical fertilizers (also called inorganic, synthetic, artificial, or manufactured) have been refined to extract nutrients and bind them in specific ratios with other chemical fillers. These products may be made from petroleum products, rocks, or even organic sources. Some of the chemicals may be naturally occurring, but the difference is that the nutrients in chemical fertilizers are refined to their pure state and stripped of substances that control their availability and breakdown, which rarely occurs in nature.

DIY: The Debate over Organic vs. Chemical Fertilizers - Danny Lipford
 
Chemical Fertilizers are largely derived from petroleum products.



DIY: The Debate over Organic vs. Chemical Fertilizers - Danny Lipford

Wrong. Fertilizer has three main components, nitrogen, phosphate, and potash. Nitrogen is obtained from the atmosphere through a process called Haber-Bosch. Both phosphate and potash are minerals that are mined from the earth.

Is some petroleum required to produce, deliver, and spread fertilizer? Of course, but fertilizer is not made from any petroleum product.
 
I thought the treehuggers told us there was no more oil in the Gulf. Guess they were wrong, again.

The United States has the largest reserves of oil in the world, given current extraction technologies. Google Green River Basin.

It will take at least 10 years to get a single drop out ... at least.

That's absurd. It simply does not take that long to establish pipelines and platforms to get the product out of the ground to a treatment facility.

Regardless, even if it does, so what? Did I miss the memo about how we will all be on 100% pure alternative energy in 10 years? Did someone invent a way to produce plastic without petroleum? Are internal combustion engines going away in the next 10 years?

This type of argument is the exact same one made by Clinton in the late '90s. Of course, 10 years after that, oil spiked up over $150 per barrel.
 
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