2008 General Election Discussion Thread

[HuskyCaucasian]

How about shale deposits in the west?

it's possible, but I believe a great deal of them are in Colorado and they dont want their landscape marked with these massize digging sites and processing plants. They reference areas of Canada as an example of how nasty they look.

[Balta1701]

it's possible, but I believe a great deal of them are in Colorado and they dont want their landscape marked with these massize digging sites and processing plants. They reference areas of Canada as an example of how nasty they look.

While "How they look" is a problem, it's actually not nearly the biggest problem with oil shale refining. The 3 biggest problems with oil shale are what we call EROI, CO2, and H2O.

 

The first one, EROI, is an acronym for energy return on investment. Basically, the idea is that you have to put some energy in to get energy out. For oil, it's usually quite high. Some wells gush simply by being tapped, others take just a little bit of water pumped in to get the oil out, then there are additional amounts consumed in the transportation process (Hence the use of huge supertankers; it pushes this ratio up by increasing the efficiency of transport) and during the refining process. For Oil, it typically is something like 5 to 1, depending on the quality of the oil and the ease of extraction, meaning for every 6 barrels of oil you produce, you get to put 5 of them on the market. For oil shale however, the energy costs are much larger. Mining expends vastly more energy than simply pumping. You are transporting far more material. The refining process is vastly more energy intensive because you have to do the heating steps that were done for free in the earth in producing oil. The factories required to process the material are much larger and much more costly, and the problems of dealing with solids instead of liquids mean that your equipment wears out much faster. For Oil shale, the ratio can drop by a factor of 2 to 3, meaning that if you want to get 2 barrels of oil out, you often have to put 1 barrel of oil worth of energy in. While this is still useful, it is therefore much less profitable per barrel and it therefore does a lot more damage. Every so often some company comes out with a statement that they've developed a method to improve on this problem, but either it usually hits up against the 3rd problem or it winds up simply not working.

 

The second of those problems, CO2, follows from the first. If the EROI is dramatically lower for oil shale than for oil, then if we did the thought experiment of asking "What would happen to global CO2 emissions if we got all of the current gasoline from oil shale instead of oil", the answer is that you increase the world's CO2 emissions by something like 50%. This is the easiest way to get tropical rainforests at the poles within a few hundred years.

 

The third of those is actually the biggest problem in terms of economics...water. Oil shale processing takes a ridiculous amount of water. Several barrels of water are used up per barrel of oil produced. This is basically required for every method that's out there. The areas in Western Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, etc., where the Green River formation, the largest oil shale body on earth, is found, are incredibly dry. There is already more demand for water in these areas than there is water around. There simply isn't enough water to process the stuff. No one has really come up with a practical means around this problem without dumping in enormous amounts of energy to transport water or to transport the material to an area where there is more water available, and as the west dries out due to global warming, it's only going to get worse, a problem that would be exacerbated by use of more oil shale..

[HuskyCaucasian]

I bow to your seemingly never ending wealth of knowledge. lol

[southsider2k5]

Here's why... the country wants it.

 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con...ll_lower_prices

 

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/pos...zFkYTVmNjQzM2I=

 

 

Half of Florida Democrats Agree With McCain on Offshore Drilling

 

If Rasmussen Reports is right, John McCain has found a major, major wedge issue against Barack Obama — offshore drilling.

 

Rasmussen Reports conducted a special Florida survey to measure the immediate impact of the offshore drilling issue on the Presidential race. As one part of the survey, respondents were told that McCain favored offshore drilling and said it would bring down the price of gas and oil. They were also told that Barack Obama opposed offshore drilling and said it would not bring down the price of gas and oil. After hearing the views of both McCain and Obama, most Florida voters agreed with McCain—61% said it was likely that offshore drilling would reduce gas prices. Only 34% disagreed and said that offshore drilling would not accomplish that goal.

 

Not surprisingly, 85% of Republicans agreed with McCain’s perspective. However, Democrats were evenly divided—45% of those in Obama’s party agreed with McCain and said offshore drilling was likely to reduce the price of oil and gas. Just 48% of Democrats agree with Obama on this point. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 51% said drilling was likely to reduce prices and 38% disagreed. These findings help explain why the Obama has responded so aggressively to challenge McCain on this issue over the past couple of days.

 

The Florida survey also found that McCain currently leads Obama in the state by a 47% to 39% margin. Six percent (6%) said they would vote for some other candidate while 8% are undecided.

 

However, after voters were told that McCain favored offshore drilling and Obama opposed it, McCain’s lead increased to eleven points, 49% to 38%. While a three-point net gain is not stunning, it is significant that the issue didn’t push voters towards Obama. All of McCain’s gains on the offshore drilling issue came from male voters.

 

With the exception of Quinnipiac's last poll, Florida had looked pretty good for McCain all year. But if Floridians are reconsidering their opposition to offshore drilling, I wonder how every other coastal state feels...

[lostfan]

Ok so I've read into this thing a little more and this to me smells like a crowd-pleaser and nothing more. The barrels of oil will only last... what, 5 years tops, and we're already at max refining capacity anyway. If it's a step towards energy independence, it's a tiny step.

Edited June 19, 2008 by lostfan

[HuskyCaucasian]

Florida

Rasmussen: McCain 47; Obama 39

[lostfan]

Florida

Rasmussen: McCain 47; Obama 39

That sounds a lot more realistic than the other polls I've seen.

[BigSqwert]

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/pos...zFkYTVmNjQzM2I=

Would you be in favor of oil rigs set up around Michigan City?

[southsider2k5]

Would you be in favor of oil rigs set up around Michigan City?

 

I already live in a town with a gigantic garbage dump, a coal cooling tower, and not too far away from steel mills and the 3rd largest refinary in the country. I don't see much of a difference to be honest. In reality its that NIMBY attitude that has been as much of a factor in energy prices in this country versus anything other than demand. Everyone wants more of energy, until it involves them. Just like people want the high classes to pay more taxes, until that includes them... then they somehow are over taxed.

[BigSqwert]

I already live in a town with a gigantic garbage dump, a coal cooling tower, and not too far away from steel mills and the 3rd largest refinary in the country. I don't see much of a difference to be honest. In reality its that NIMBY attitude that has been as much of a factor in energy prices in this country versus anything other than demand. Everyone wants more of energy, until it involves them. Just like people want the high classes to pay more taxes, until that includes them... then they somehow are over taxed.

Personally I wouldn't mind solar panel or wind turbine farms nearby. Oil is not sustainable and produces greenhouse gases.

 

But as an ultra liberal everyone already knows how I feel so I'll just shut up on this topic.

[southsideirish71]

Would you be in favor of oil rigs set up around Michigan City?

 

I wonder how you are going to stop the Cubans who are slant drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. The Bad American companies are shutdown by the gov, however the Cubans and their friends can drill the same waters and in some cases, drill on a slant to get our oil. I guess the Hurricanes only wipe out the American Oil Rigs, and the Cuban oil rigs are the picture of safety I am sure.

[kapkomet]

I wonder how you are going to stop the Cubans who are slant drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. The Bad American companies are shutdown by the gov, however the Cubans and their friends can drill the same waters and in some cases, drill on a slant to get our oil. I guess the Hurricanes only wipe out the American Oil Rigs, and the Cuban oil rigs are the picture of safety I am sure.

But according to the libs, they're not doing that.

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

I wonder how you are going to stop the Cubans who are slant drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. The Bad American companies are shutdown by the gov, however the Cubans and their friends can drill the same waters and in some cases, drill on a slant to get our oil. I guess the Hurricanes only wipe out the American Oil Rigs, and the Cuban oil rigs are the picture of safety I am sure.

I haven't really been following this very closely, I heard this said more than once, is there any PROOF this is actually happening? I thought I read it was just an internet rumor being used by Big Oil Chaney to push his agenda.

 

Please correct me if I am wrong. I honestly havent followed this much.

[Balta1701]

But according to the libs, they're not doing that.

Damn liberal heads of the RNC...

The claim: China has Cuban leases to drill for oil -- miles from the Florida shore.

 

Even Vice President Dick Cheney got into the mix Wednesday, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that ``oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We're not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.

 

''Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,'' he added. ``Yet Congress has said . . . no to drilling off Florida.''

 

But industry experts and other observers say there is zero evidence that China is drilling in Cuban waters, and doesn't even hold a lease to drill offshore.

 

''China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period,'' said Jorge Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy.

 

Rising gas prices are prompting renewed efforts to open Florida waters to drilling, and the specter of oil-thirsty China slurping up nearby reserves is helping to fuel the push: In recent days, House Republican leaders have penned newspaper opinion pieces making the claim.

 

The renewed efforts prompted Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, who opposes drilling off Florida's coast, to take to the Senate floor Wednesday to -- as his office put it -- ''debunk the myth'' of China drilling in Cuban waters.

 

''Reports to the contrary are simply false,'' Martinez said, his remarks delivered just before Cheney spoke. ``They are akin to urban legends. China drilling off the coast of Cuba only 60 miles from the Keys, that is not taking place. . . Any talk of using some fabricated Cuba-China connection as an argument to change U.S. policy has no merit.''

 

Florida's congressional delegation remains staunchly opposed to offshore drilling, and Martinez noted the delegation had reached a compromise in December 2006 to give up eight million acres in the Gulf of Mexico in exchange for the state getting at least a 125-mile buffer zone from drilling.

 

Piñon, who supports oil and gas exploration, said he met with several congressional offices Wednesday about the China-Cuba connection. He said he told them: ' `If you guys want to use this as a scare tactic to lift the moratorium on drilling off the west coast of Florida, at least be factual, be correct.' They didn't do their homework.''

 

China's Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban government to develop onshore resources west of Havana, Piñon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but no drilling. Western diplomats in Havana told McClatchy that to the best of their knowledge there is no Chinese drilling offshore.

 

Cuba's state oil company, Cupet, has issued exploration contracts to companies from India, Canada, Spain, Malaysia and Norway. But many oil companies from those countries have expressed reservations about how to turn potential crude oil into product. Cuba doesn't have the refinery capacity, and the biggest potential market -- the U.S. -- is off limits because of the trade embargo.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Damn liberal heads of the RNC...

thanks

[BigSqwert]

I wonder how you are going to stop the Cubans who are slant drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. The Bad American companies are shutdown by the gov, however the Cubans and their friends can drill the same waters and in some cases, drill on a slant to get our oil. I guess the Hurricanes only wipe out the American Oil Rigs, and the Cuban oil rigs are the picture of safety I am sure.

So you're using the "if they do it we should do it too" argument? Why not be the innovators and leaders in alternative fuels? Why keeping clasping to an outdated and limited resource?

[Balta1701]

Florida

Rasmussen: McCain 47; Obama 39

Nate Silver with a discussion of why Rassmussen is diverging so far from PPP, Quinnipac, and Survey USA.

some of the pollsters (like SurveyUSA and PPP) that had shown Obama leading in Ohio by fairly large margins tend to have a more fluid/less grounded conception of party identification than does Rasmussen. In Ohio, they're finding a huge shift in party identification, with as much as 50 percent of the state identifying as Democrat, and running with those numbers as is. Since SurveyUSA and PPP identify a lot more Democrats in their sample, and since much of Obama's bounce appears to be in the form of bringing Democrats back home to their party, it is not surprising if they are showing more movement toward him.

 

Unfortunately, there are no definitive answers about how one should measure party idenitifaction, and we won't really know who got it right until November. At a gut-feel level, it's hard not to imagine Ohio being somewhat close. At the same time, Obama's problems in the state had stemmed from his poor performance in Southern Ohio, which is part of Appalachia. And this is the region in which his bounce appears to be most profound: his polling has improved by 12 points in Kentucky and 15 in Arkansas, and he took some huge steps forward in Southern Ohio in Quinnipiac's regional breakdown.

[southsider2k5]

So you're using the "if they do it we should do it too" argument? Why not be the innovators and leaders in alternative fuels? Why keeping clasping to an outdated and limited resource?

 

Depends on how far you want to push that arguement. The entire transportation structure of the United States depends on this energy. You just can't quit fossil fuels cold turkey and expect the country to be OK, especially for things that we don't know will necesarily work in mass production and on a national scale. NONE of this is proven. We are already seeing the results of the shortsightedness in our energy policies of the last 20-30 years, by the supply problems we are having now. There is no guarentee that in another 10 years, even with significant investments in everything under the sun, that any of this will actually work. Then where is the country at?

[HuskyCaucasian]

Nate Silver with a discussion of why Rassmussen is diverging so far from PPP, Quinnipac, and Survey USA.

very interesting. I'll leave the polling and analysis to people far smarter than I.

[Balta1701]

Depends on how far you want to push that arguement. The entire transportation structure of the United States depends on this energy. You just can't quit fossil fuels cold turkey and expect the country to be OK, especially for things that we don't know will necesarily work in mass production and on a national scale. NONE of this is proven. We are already seeing the results of the shortsightedness in our energy policies of the last 20-30 years, by the supply problems we are having now. There is no guarentee that in another 10 years, even with significant investments in everything under the sun, that any of this will actually work. Then where is the country at?

Quite frankly, whether we drill everything under the sun or not, we're basically in the same boat. The fact is the U.S. is trying to use 25% of the world's oil and it has only 4% or less of the world's supplies if you count up everything regardless of how much it costs to drill it. That's the simplest level at which the math fails for us. Drill all you want, and it maybe buys you another year once Saudi Arabia's decline sets in come a few years from now.

 

If you drilled everything, you might be pulling in 2-3 million additional barrels of oil per day 20 years from now. The odds are, frankly, that the total U.S. and world production from other wells will have declined by more than that. Drilling everything is a play for time, and it's not a play for very much time at that.

[StrangeSox]

So you're using the "if they do it we should do it too" argument? Why not be the innovators and leaders in alternative fuels? Why keeping clasping to an outdated and limited resource?

 

It isn't "outdated" if its still powering an overwhelming majority of the world's transportation industry. You can't just get off of oil over night. It will take decades.

 

As far all of the poll-watching, I'd love for someone to make a spreadsheet with all of the polls taken now vs. the actual results. I really don't get why people put stock in polling data 5 months before the election.

Edited June 19, 2008 by StrangeSox

[BigSqwert]

It isn't "outdated" if its still powering an overwhelming majority of the world's transportation industry.

 

You can't just get off of oil over night. It will take decades.

Well I might have used a poor choice of words but you know the jist of my argument.

[Balta1701]

It isn't "outdated" if its still powering an overwhelming majority of the world's transportation industry.

 

You can't just get off of oil over night. It will take decades.

So what happens if we drill everything in sight and in 2012 the amount of oil the world is able to pump out of the ground starts declining precipitously because we've crossed over the global production peak and there's no where left to go but down?

[StrangeSox]

So what happens if we drill everything in sight and in 2012 the amount of oil the world is able to pump out of the ground starts declining precipitously because we've crossed over the global production peak and there's no where left to go but down?

 

Then we are still cutting those losses some because of the drilling. We're still increasing supply.

 

People have been shouting "OMG! NO OIL IN A DECADE!" since the early 1900's. The EIA predicts a peak in about 30 years, not 4.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36645.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petrole...upply/index.htm

Edited June 19, 2008 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/pos...zFkYTVmNjQzM2I=

Here's some of the actual methodology of that poll. When you read the questions, it basically is acting like a quasi-push poll, it focuses people in on their energy costs and then asks the question in a way that focuses on the energy cost issue. It's worded in a way that's bound to get that result.

 

1* How concerned are you about rising gas and energy prices?

 

79% Very concerned

16% Somewhat concerned

4% Not very concerned

1% Not at all concerned

0% Not sure

 

2* In order to reduce the price of gas, should drilling be allowed in offshore oil wells off the coasts of California, Florida, and other states?

 

67% Yes

18% No

15% Not sure

Note the things they did here to get that result.

 

1. They started off with the energy cost question to get people focusing on the costs of that.

 

2. They asked the question in a way that only focused on lowering energy costs.

 

3. They asserted in the question that it would lower gas costs, without saying how much it would lower energy costs by (this is a key point...you never know how much people are thinking that the drilling will lower the cost of gas. Some fraction of the people answering yes likely thought that drilling there would be enough to drive gas prices back down to $1 a gallon. If you ask the question and say that it will drop the price of gas by $.25, or $.50, you're going to get different answers.

 

4. They didn't attempt at all to include anything about the potential environmental costs, which could easily have pushed the poll the other way and would have been a worthy question to ask. "Would you support drilling offshore in Florida, California, and in other areas if it increased the risk of oil spills fouling beaches and other natural environments in this area"?

 

It's also worth noting that the NRO bit you cite seems to ignore the one environmental question they did ask...and it's equally overwhelming result:

5* Should the federal government pass laws requiring oil companies to use a significant portion of their profits searching for alternative sources of energy?

 

61% Yes

22% No

17% Not sure

Overall, this is a shoddy poll, but Rass isn't going to care because they're getting press and therefore money out of it.