Energy Independance

19 Jan, ’07

With all my grumbling and growling about Islamic fundamentalists, perhaps I should clarify a point. I have nothing against any religious fundamentalist of whatever creed. It’s the extremists, Muslim, Christian, Animist, Idolaters, or any other group who attempt to push their particular beliefs on me that I can’t stand. Nor is it just the religion salesmen that I get upset with, as I happily snap and snarl at politicians, “progressive” liberals, environmentalists, and door-to-door salesmen. It’s Okay though, as my wife makes sure my shots are kept current.

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times recently wrote an interesting article about the need for American energy independence. In considering the conflict between radical Islam and the rest of the world, he states that "Not only would ending our oil addiction protect us from the worst in the Arab-Muslim world, it would help us support the best. These regimes will never reform as long as they enjoy windfall oil profits, which allow them to maintain closed societies with archaic education systems and protected industries that can't compete globally... energy independence that will enable us to continue to engage honestly with the most progressive Arabs and Muslims on a reform agenda, but without being hostage to the most malevolent."

Then too, we know we’re running out of oil. There’s no such thing as an infinite resource on a finite planet. One of these days the well’s going to run dry, and we’re going to be in serious trouble if we don’t do something in the very near future. Yes, energy independence is certainly something I can support, although it appears to be a hate phrase to more than a few hard core environmentalists.

During the course of his last Town Hall meeting here in Grangeville, Sen. Larry Craig made several comments about recent oil discoveries in both the United States and Canada. Apparently we have oil reserves sufficient to last quite a long time, if someone would start them producing. But that brings us to another problem, drilling into those reserves requires federal permission, and so far the environmental terrorists seem to control congressional voting on the subject. I guess the Snail Darter or some such is more important to them than the well being of American citizens. Red China doesn’t have that problem, and as I understand things is presently drilling for oil in the sea floor between Florida and Cuba, an area currently “off limits” to American oil companies, even though we know the oil is there. Sen. Craig also mentioned oil shale and tar sand deposits, which certainly is another source of petroleum. But the oil from tar is an extremely heavy crude, containing a high percentage of paraffin and asphalt, along with considerably smaller amounts of gasoline, diesel, and the lighter fuel oils. We’re not going to get much help from that, unless you can figure out how to burn chassis grease and canning wax (paraffin) in your car. Oil from shale isn’t even oil, but rather an oil precursor called “kerogen”, that requires extensive processing to make anything useful from. Then to, accessing those shale and tar deposits promises to be a large scale strip mining operation rather than drilling a few oil wells. Mention of either drilling or digging is guaranteed to generate hysteria and lawsuits in the ranks of the Sierra Club.

One potential fuel source is found in the various “bio-fuels”, such as ethanol and biodiesel. Granted that these have possibilities, particularly for the farm producer/user, they aren’t going to reduce US dependence on petroleum fuels, as we’d have to convert all our farm lands into fuel production to make more than a minor dent in today’s energy demand. And if we were to do that, who do we wish to become food dependent on? President Bush has placed himself strongly on the side of the “Hydrogen Fuel” movement, a step I was quite happy to see. But a hydrogen economy has it’s own problems as well. Hydrogen is easily produced by the electrolysis of water, but doing so requires that we put more energy into the process than we can possibly get back (Hydrogen has a 60% energy recovery rate). Additionally we’d have to build the entire production / distribution / user infrastructure from scratch and at great expense.

“Alternative Energy” ideas abound, and are technologically feasible. Wind power, tidal power, geothermal, all have been successfully demonstrated. But… they are extremely limited in scope, promise to be quite expensive, and like so many other things have the environmentalists in an tizzy. Nuclear power would currently be our best bet by far, if the public could ever overcome an almost superstitious fear of nuclear energy. The radiation hazard from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl combined is far less than the respiratory hazards produced daily by fossil fuel power plants.

Finally we have the potential of solar energy. Solar power offers us the chance to replace both fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, thus eliminating much of the pollution and residual radiation hazards. Solar power and electric vehicles could soon clear the skies in our smog infested cities. Here the environmentalists get quite upset with the idea of “solar farms” being built all over the planet, and possibly interfering with the life style of the local flora and fauna, even though desert areas close to the equator would be the preferred sites. Even better would be constructing an SPS (Solar Power Satellite) system. Built in geosynchronous orbit, an SPS would beam its power to earth based receiving antenna farms via microwave energy. Such a power source has a fantastic potential, but like anything in space would be expensive to construct. Here, like every other idea, the environmentalists protest that beamed microwave energy might be dangerous. They’ll probably decide that microwaves could interfere with the mating habits of mosquitoes or some such.

Environmentalists, again and again. Often depending on junk science and feel good propaganda, they seem bound and determined to outlaw any progress, and legislate us back into the stone age. Humm… Perhaps we can use the environmentalists in a squirrel cage generator system, and thus electrify the entire world… maybe they’ll work for peanuts?