The Absurd Report

Preface: As this website has grown in size and stature it seems that it has attracted many from the left side of ‘no man’s land’ and they are certainly welcome to read and use the comment line and all points of view are acceptable.

All I ask is that anyone using the comment line do so in a civilized manner.

I probably on average get about a hundred e-mails a day and I do attempt to read them all but I would need a forty hour day to respond to them all and this website would never get published.

Now let’s get to the topic on hand…

Now it seems that my friends on the left have taken issue with me on the subject of Global Warming and ‘Big Oil’ and some have gone so far as accusing as being in the tank for them.

I have nothing against the use of alternate source of energy and I actually am looking forward to that day when the gasoline combustion engine goes the way of the horse and buggy. But what might that source of energy be at this time?

You speak of “Wind” like it is a given source of solving our energy problems. At present wind farms produce about 2% of our energy needs and if you would take the time to educate yourself on the subject instead repeating the left’s talking points you will find that this solution is far from the answer.

Electric produced from wind farms can not be stored for future use, it must be used immediately or you loose it. Wind is a variable and as smart as we humans think we are (?) we can not forecast nor predict it or control it and we would be subject to the whims of Mother Nature.

So on a cold winter day when the wind is not blowing and you are freezing you ass off don’t come knocking on my door looking for a place to stay.

You speak of biofuels like they are “The Mother of All Solutions” to energy crises. In 2007, the US consumed 20.7 million barrels of oil every day on average of which 45% of it was used for gasoline. That comes out to 9.32 million barrel a day for gasoline usage. (Now get a pencil and paper out and follow my math, you did learn basic math in school didn’t you? or where you to busy learning how to be politically correct.)

Of the 9 million barrels used daily (A barrel produces 42 gallons of gas) of this number 500,000 barrels was corn based ethanol. This equates to 5.5% of our usage and it took 1/4 of our corn crop to achieve this. So if we planted corn on every vacant acre from the east coast to the west coast including rock beds, mountain tops and deserts we couldn’t even come close to filling our needs for fuel. The idea of burning food for fuel does not seem to be a viable solution to me.

The good news is - Industry gasoline production through 6/27/08 averaged 8.96 million barrels per day, still near the 2007 record for this time of year of 8.97 million barrels per day. This is even with year-to-date gasoline deliveries are down by 1.0 percent.

As far as me being in the ‘Tank’ for oil companies, I guess you could say that. We need oil now and who is better to provide it until such time in the future that we develop alternate energy sources. When you got a plumbing problem at home you call a plumber and when you need to drill for oil is not logical to use an oil company? Or what would you suggest, create another government agency that we could use for drilling for oil, like the Freddie and Fannie Drilling Company?

At this time there are about 90 million gas driven vehicles on our roads today and to suggest that that we all run out and buy an electric car is folly. The American consumer will turn over this fleet when they see a viable option available to them but my guess is you are looking at more than a decade. Until then gasoline is our only option.

And I will give you another trip. All the information that I have provided above is easily attainable by surfing the net. Spend so time researching the subject you are talking about before you pop off with your daily talking points you get from the DNC about these wonderful solution that don’t work.

There is something very unique about Liberals, you can run around with all kinds of “Pie-In-the-Ideas” for solving the world’s problems, but when reality sets in it is the Conservatives who must clean up your mess.

And there is no better time than this to inject this quote…

“If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.”

P.S. And to those of you who can not seem to write a complete sentence without using the “F” word as an adjective, I am not impressed because as an old hard hat I have heard them all a thousand times before and all it shows an inability to express one’s self and a lack of intelligence.

The Ethanol Mandate

U.S. law currently mandates nine billion gallons of ethanol blended into gasoline by 2010, equal to about 2.6% of US fuel consumption. Currently, 25% of the U.S. corn crop goes for ethanol, driving up food and fuel prices. The ethanol mandate rises to 36 billion gallons by 2022, which would consume more than 100% of the U.S. corn crop, if it were all made from corn.

At 300 gallons per acre, corn yields 192,000 gallons per square mile. It takes 5,208 square miles to produce one billion gallons of corn ethanol. It would take 187,488 square miles of corn farms to meet the 2022 ethanol mandate of 36 billion gallons, an area about the size of the entire state of California, plus West Virginia.

To replace all petroleum fuels with corn ethanol would require a “corn farm” of about 1.5 billion acres, or 2,500,000 square miles, which is approximately 2/3 the size of the entire United States.

The rush to “biofuels” is destined to be the Mother of All Boondoggles.

By a Friend

Environmentalists like to promote the concept of “peak oil.” The idea is that global oil production will now decline in uninterrupted fashion in perpetuity.

Obstructionist legislators are doing their part to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy and futures trading that drives up the price of oil is only a signal, not the cause, of the success of this effort. An oil commodities trader purchases today a contract for future delivery of oil, betting that the contract can be sold at a profit sometime before delivery. In essence, the wager is that aggregate demand will increasingly outstrip aggregate supply: A pretty safe bet as long as China and India are industrializing while the United States fails to endorse an energy policy where much of the world’s untapped fossil fuel resides, is legally off limits to further development.

Self-interest is at work here. Politicians want money and political support from the green lobby. Green venture capitalists, like Kleiner Perkins general partner Al Gore, stand to make billions of dollars on “clean-tech” investments, but only if oil prices continue to climb. A lot of venture portfolios are in trouble the day after Congress permits unfettered domestic oil exploration. And these folks are nothing if not well-connected.

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