Articles of Health: Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection

Articles of Health: Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection: "Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection
Over the last 25 years I have been researching"

Grouchy Old Cripple: Still More On Oil

Grouchy Old Cripple: Still More On Oil

Before we look at it, let's review the Dimocrats' plan.

1. No new drilling.
2. No nuclear power plants.
3. No new coal fired plants.
4. Conservation.

We can't conserve our way out of this.

5. Sue OPEC

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's a post for another day.

6. Alternate energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels.

That biofuel thing is really working out, especially with the floods in the Midwest. Some even say that the additional fields cleared for corn planting exacerbated the flood. Corn based ethanol is a deadend and a waste of money. It should be scrapped immediately.

Just an observation on wind power. Last summer I was driving through Palm Springs. It was 115 degrees and the wind was blowing. There were wind turbines all over the place. Hardly any of them were being used. WTF? There had to be a lot of air conditioners going full blast. Were those few wind turbines providing power or was it coming from an evil nuke or coal fired plant? Every time I've passed a wind farm in California most of the turbines were not being used. This was the same time that California was going through brownouts. 'Splain this wind power solution to me again.

6. Poof! PFM!

That's the most important part of their plan.

So what does Jay have to say about drilling.

Would opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other coastal areas to oil drilling have any effect on gasoline prices, as many politicians claim? No, it would not.

OK. Why not?

Let's take ANWR as an example. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that oil produced in ANWR would be sold to Americans at whatever the global price for oil happened to be. There's no "hometown discount" —- U.S. consumers would pay 100 percent of the global price for ANWR oil, just as we do now for oil produced from Alaska, Texas or the Gulf of Mexico.

That's because all oil produced in this country goes into the world oil market. All oil sold in this country is bought off the world oil market. So there's only one way that opening ANWR and other areas could lower the price of gasoline here in the United States: It would have to put enough "new oil" on the global market to drive down the price of oil worldwide.

There's supposed to be an awful lot of oil in ANWR.

Furthermore, the EIA predicts that as ANWR oil came on the world market, OPEC would simply reduce its production, thus keeping the global oil supply —- and the global price —- unchanged. So in the end, drilling in the wildlife refuge and offshore areas would have little or no impact on oil prices.

That would mean that we would be sending less of our dollars to the oil ticks in the Middle East. Isn't that a worthwhile goal? Isn't energy independence a worthwhile goal? If we had energy independence we could tell all of the Islamic countries to fuck off.

It sure is a better plan than Poof! PFM!

So what's the solution? There isn't one. The higher gasoline prices we see today are probably permanent and may go higher still. Some energy analysts even believe that world oil production is now peaking and will begin to decline just as global demand has begun to soar. If so, today's historically high petroleum prices will seem like a bargain by 2018.

And the Dimocrats will still be blocking drilling in ANWR and off the coast and waiting for Poof! PFM!

Major automakers understand that a fundamental change is under way —- they're closing plants that make SUVs and pickup trucks and focusing instead on high-mileage cars. And there is strong if early evidence that Americans are making changes in their daily lives that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

$4 per gallon of gas will do that.

In response to $4 gasoline, for example, we have begun driving fewer miles and turning more often to mass transit. For the first time in history, the number of miles driven on U.S. highways has begun to decline.

Ahhh! Mass transit. A liberal's wet dream.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove 11 billion miles fewer in March than they did in March 2007, a decrease of 4.3 percent. (In Georgia, the decline was even sharper, with travel falling 5.8 percent.) At 25 miles per gallon, that means gasoline consumption nationwide dropped 440 million gallons in March.

Hope the folks getting off the highways are those slow buttheads driving in the left lane.

And in the first three months of 2008, transit ridership increased 3.3 percent, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

Ohhh! I bet Jay had a tingle go up his leg as he was writing that last sentence.

And now he gets to write joyous things for a liberal.

There are no "outs" —- building more refineries or opening new areas to oil drilling cannot alter the global nature of the changes now under way. Overall, an economy and lifestyle built on cheap oil will be forced to undergo wrenching changes in a fairly short period of time.

And those changes are.....?

In suburban areas, sprawling development patterns will become the real estate version of the Hummer, both relics of an age of cheap energy. The same is true of transportation solutions built around such ideas as double-decking highways.

That dreaded sprawl that liberals hate so much. They think everyone should live in the cities and not on 1/2 acre lots in the suburbs. They love high gas prices 'cause it makes people use mass transit and live in dinky little houses, condos, and apartments in the city. Suburbs are eeee-vil. They're almost as eeee-vil as oil companies and highly paid CEOs.

Rail will become a more economically viable means of moving goods as well as people, the airline industry will contract, and given the importance of oil as an agricultural "input" —- it is used for everything from fertilizer and pesticides to running tractors —- food prices are likely to stay high as well.

Trains good. Actually I like trains. I wouldn't mind seeing high speed passenger rail. If the trip is under a thousand miles I usually drive to avoid the airport hassles and riding in a flying bus. A high speed train would be just the ticket. More legroom. Of course, it would have to be gummint subsidized and the liberals would love that.

Overall, the fundamental forces of supply and demand now in play are simply too powerful to be denied. Until alternative energy sources are developed and scaled up, adaptation, not denial, will be the only rational course.

Holy crap! A liberal talking about supply and demand! Will wonders never cease?

Here's my plan:

1. Drill everywhere.
2. Start extracting oil from shale. At the current price of oil it is now economically viable.
3. Coal liquification. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal.
4. Conserve energy. Yeah. I believe conservation should be a part of a comprehensive energy plan.
5. Build more nuclear and coal fired plants. We're gonna need all the electricity we can get if we go electric cars or hydrogen cars.
6. Continue work on solar power. Right now it is not a viable option.
7. Scrap ethanol from corn.
8. Poof PFM! is not an option.

We are Americans. We can do anything. Unfortunately, we have two Dimocrats running for president and neither of them is willing to do what it takes to make us energy independent.

We're doomed!