In 2006, The United States used more oil than the next 20 countries combined. By 2010, that had changed, and the statement would have been: The United States used more oil than the next 5 countries combined. That’s not because the United States consumption went down, but everyone else’s skyrocketed. There is the chart as of 2010:
This might be more useful in graphic format, so here it is:
Source of date: The World Factbook – CIA
The use of “biofuels” like ethanol has changed the economy of grain worldwide significantly. Corn farming in Iowa for ethanol is affecting the hungry bellies of children in Africa and Asia, whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not.
The third source of demand growth emerged when the United States attempted to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into ethanol. The jump in U.S. gasoline prices to $3 per gallon that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005 made it highly profitable to invest in ethanol distilleries in the United States. As a result, the growth in world grain demand, traditionally around 20 million tons per year, suddenly jumped to over 50 million tons in 2007 and again in 2008 as a huge fleet of new ethanol distilleries came online. This massive ethanol distillery investment in the United States launched an epic competition between cars and people for grain.
The conversion of grain to automotive fuel has continued to climb. Roughly 119 million tons of the 2009 U.S. grain harvest of 416 million tons went to ethanol distilleries, an amount that exceeds the grain harvests of Canada and Australia combined.
Even as these three sources of demand combined to drive up world consumption, speculators entered the fray. By buying grain futures and holding grain off the market, they further fueled the price rise.
On the supply side of the food equation, several trends discussed in preceding chapters are making it more difficult to expand production rapidly enough to keep up with demand. These include soil erosion, aquifer depletion, more-frequent crop-shrinking heat waves, melting ice sheets, melting mountain glaciers, and the diversion of irrigation water to cities.
Farmers are also losing cropland to nonfarm uses. Cars compete with people not only for the grain supply but also for the cropland itself. The United States, for example, has paved an area for cars larger than the state of Georgia. Every five cars added to the U.S. fleet means another acre of land will be paved over—the equivalent of a football field.
Brown, Lester R. (2011-01-06). World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (Kindle Locations 902-916). Norton. Kindle Edition.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled Do We Need Subsidies for Solar and Wind Power? caught my attention. It is a useful article, and the Comments section itself is worth equal to a whole book of information, pro and con.
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Kreuzer, a research fellow in energy economics and climate change at the Heritage Foundation:
There is nearly universal agreement that an all-out carbon-cutting policy in the U.S.—of which wind and solar subsidies are only a small part—would do next to nothing to moderate any global warming. This is because future carbon emissions will come overwhelmingly from the developing world, which shows little appetite for squeezing economic growth to cut a few inches from sea level.
Whether Dr. Kreuzer is right or not I leave up to the reader. However, it seems to project an attitude of: why us, if the other guys don’t follow along?
My answer to that is simple: The world has looked to the United States for global leadership for over a century now. The world copies what we do. Our groundbreaking attitude about smoking has taken foothold in many other countries, and will continue to in the coming decades. On the less favorable side, our consumerism is being copied the world over. Countries that knew nothing about Halloween are now trick-or-treating. There are thousands of examples.
If the United States throws up its hands on carbon, because China, India, Indonesia and Brazil are out of our control, those very countries and their people will get the message that cutting carbon is not very important.
With leadership comes responsibility. It’s not always cheap and easy.
For example, the United States could have stayed out of World War II (assuming Pearl Harbor hadn’t happened, which is a stretch). But it could have. Hitler would then have conquered Europe, including England, and we would be living in a completely different world – and not a better one. The United States did the right thing, at great cost to it, to its people and to those thousands who lost their lives on Europe’s beaches and battle fields. A terrible cost.
But the cost of leadership.
Fact Check:
When the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted in March 2010, I received this mass email:
VOLCANOES – MAKING LIBERALS LOOK STUPID…NATURALLY! *FOOD FOR THOUGHT ….. this was sent to me by a friend, thought I would pass it along. *
*Are you sitting down? *Okay, here’s the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash a week ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.
I know, I know…. (have a group hug)…it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid’s “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs …well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just the past week. The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in the past week has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses… you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now. I’m so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.
So, grab a Coke, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!
AND JUST THINK HOW RICH AL GORE HAS GOTTEN OFF THIS HOAX !
So what is really going on?
It’s true that erupting volcanoes do emit some carbon dioxide, one of the “greenhouse gases” that contributes to global climate change. But according to USGS, human activities release at least a hundred times more CO2 every year than all the world’s volcanoes combined. Published estimates of the gas emissions from all volcanoes in the world range from 123 million to 378 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Humans haven’t produced that little since the 19th century.
The problem is that when a denier tells you the content of the email above at a cocktail party, and you don’t just happen to be a climatologist who specializes in the study of the atmosphere, you probably don’t have the facts at your fingertips and can’t successfully argue against this outrageous, completely made-up, claim.
Fact check goes on documenting that the standstill of European air travel during that time, due to ash in the atmosphere, provided a significant offset of the CO2 emissions by the volcano:
Carbon dioxide isn’t a major output of volcanic eruptions. In the case of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which began erupting in March 2010 and entered an explosive phase in April 2010, one study found that less than 15 percent of the gas given off in the pre-explosive phase was CO2 – the majority was water vapor. For some other volcanoes, the proportion of CO2 is even lower.
Still, that accounted for 150,000 to 300,000 tons of CO2 per day at the height of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, according to wire reports. But the European Union’s air travel, which was shut down for days during the eruption, accounts for 3 percent of the EU’s total CO2 emissions, which according to the European Environment Agency was about 4,089 billion tons in 2008. That means air travel in Europe gives off about 340,000 tons of CO2 per day. The shutdown of air travel in much of Europe during the first week of the explosive eruption would have offset, if not greatly outpaced, the CO2 Eyjafjallajokull produced during that time.
The amount of misinformation spewed on the American public, driven by purposeful and targeted campaigns to dumb us down, is alarming.
Insinuating, after sprewing this volcano of garbage, that Al Gore somehow made up this “hoax” to get rich, is unforgivable. I would like to get a chance to compare the life-work of the writer of that email, who in cowardice wrote anonymously, to that of Al Gore. Then let’s have this argument again.
Now for the most important question: Who can pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?
The world population is growing by 80 million people a year. That’s about 219,000 a day.
How much is 219,000?
That’s about three full average football stadiums full of people.
That’s how many people we add daily to the world’s population.
Every one of these people come to the table to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. They need transportation, clothing, education, healthcare, shelter, security and iPhones.
219,000 More. Every. Day.
Here is an example of stimulus money gone out of control. LG Chem is a factory in Holland, Michigan that was built with stimulus money. Various contracts require that it keeps employees and keeps growing. So it looks like the workers there are getting paid by federal funds and have yet to build a single battery – and there is no end in sight.
If you have misgivings about government running or supporting business, this is your ammunition. It shows the complete ineptitude of the government to manage millions of dollars. Somebody should pull the rug out from under this catastrophe quickly, since it’s still going on. Watch this video:
I wonder how many other such boondoggles are operating out there, masquerading as real businesses.
You can count on Romney using that against Obama.
In 2000, I remember traveling in Northern California. I was sitting in a restaurant for breakfast at 9:00am when all of a sudden all the lights went out. Fortunately, I already had my food. I finished my breakfast by the sunlight coming through the windows, paid cash, and left. The restaurant had to shut down because the kitchen didn’t have any outside light or power.
This was the time of the California rolling blackouts. We were told that there were problems with the power grid, and supply and demand. During that time, our rates for electricity in San Diego doubled and tripled, and we got astronomical power bills from SDG&E.
Over a year later, on December 2, 2001, Enron collapsed. Only then did we find out that there were a few people who called themselves “the smartest guys in the room” who had manipulated the electricity market and not only caused the outrageous prices but also ordered plants shut down for no reason at times of highest demand. Their hands were in our pockets and we didn’t know it.
In the aftermath, one guy committed suicide, a few went to jail, but the great majority took their money and went about their business. Thousands of people all over the country lost their life savings. Their pensions were in Enron stock, since their mom-and-pop power company was bought up by these “smartest guys in the room.”
But that was all more than ten years ago.
When gasoline jumped from $4.19 to $4.69 at my local gas station within five days last week, I remembered Enron. I wonder how long it will take before we find out who is stealing the money out of our pockets right now?
On Sunday morning I left for North Carolina. When I drove by the neighborhood gas station, the price for regular was
When I came home from my trip on Wednesday night, the same gas station showed
I did a double-take. I have never before seen such a jump in price in such a short time.
When I came home from work the next day, Thursday night, 24 hours later, the same gas station showed
What is going on?
I am afraid to drive home tonight. I think I’ll put on some blinders. I am going to need to ride my bike to work now.
Tick – tock – tick – tock….
It is now tonight, and at 4:30pm, here is what I saw:
Fill up the tank in Bishop, California.
Head south on Hwy 395 toward San Diego.
Set the cruise control on 68 miles per hour.
Let it roll.
Arrive in San Diego 337 miles later with a gas mileage of 54.6 mpg and the tank still half-full.
Cool car!
The United States has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. The largest three gas reserves are in just three countries, Iran, Qatar and Russia, making up 56% of the world’s supply. CBS’s program 60 Minutes featured Qatar on July 1, 2012. It showed a massive natural gas liquefaction plant and talked about how expensive it was to build. What’s the problem with natural gas?
It’s one of transporting, especially when long distances are involved. There are only two ways out of Qatar. One is through Saudi Arabia’s deserts, the other is by sea, of course much preferred.
Oil is relatively easy to transport, by pipeline, ships, trains and trucks. Natural gas, however, is a gas. It’s much more voluminous than oil. It takes up more than 600 times as much space as the equivalent energy value of petroleum. Being a gas, only pipelines make sense to transport it over large distances. This is possible within the North American continent, but it gets very difficult when crossing of oceans is involved.
To transport natural gas, it must be in liquefied form. This is called liquefied natural gas or LNG. At normal earth temperatures, natural gas takes up 600 times as much space as petroleum. Only when it is liquefied does it become more compact. However, liquefaction requires cooling the gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit to turn it into a liquid. This temperature must be maintained in especially designed tanker ships during transport to distant locations. Upon arrival, it must be turned back into gas through a process called regasification. The complete train of liquefaction and regasification is extremely difficult and very costly. Plants to perform those processes can cost several billion dollars. Due to the high costs of building such plants, they must operate for several decades for the financiers to get their money back before they turn a profit.
In summary: Natural gas reserves are an effective source of energy if the consumption occurs close to the extraction locations. Otherwise it is an expensive and complex process that needs to be factored into the overall economics.
Have you seen those ads by oil companies touting that they are investing billions of dollars into research of renewable energy sources. They do. But it requires putting the numbers into perspective.
Sierra Magazine of July/August 2012, published this informative chart which puts into perspective what is really going on with oil companies and research into renewable energy.
As you can see, the $4 billion of investment into renewable fuel is a tiny moon in a solar system where the sun represents a 500 times larger investment of capital expenditures. Note also the Jupiter-sized planet of taxpayer subsidies. I don’t understand why in the world we taxpayers subsidize oil companies.
When I grew up in the 1970s, it was common knowledge that the U.S. had 5% of the world’s population, but used 50% of the world’s energy resources.
This has changed. We still have 5% of the world’s population, but our share of energy consumption is now about 25% and still declining. This is not because we’re conserving more energy. It is because the emerging nations like China, India, Brazil and Russia are using an ever-increasing share, and that presses back the size of our slice in the total energy pie.
Here is another statistic:
Today the U.S. still has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. That surprises me, and I don’t know why.
I don’t have the answer.
We always pride ourself of being an angel of freedom around the world. Except that we take away the freedom of a disproportionate percentage of our own citizens by locking them up.
Interview with Eike Batista, the Brazilian industrialist, in World Changers:
Question: Why did you expand out of mining? You have essentially created a conglomerate in Brazil, which is unusual for most entrepreneurs.
Answer: I wanted to do other things, although I am on overload now. I’m spending $40 billion in ten years in natural resources and infrastructure sectors in Brazil, so there is a limit. If you look at the world through the eyes of an engineer, there are a lot of opportunities. America and Brazil have allowed the financial people to make money through money. We have forgotten to make things more efficient. In America, you should be driving electric cars today. So it’s coming at least ten years too late. If things had started twenty years ago, people would have looked for efficiencies. It’s incomprehensible that America doesn’t have high-speed rail between major cities. The European car fleet has twice the energy efficiency than America.
I remember clearly traveling in Northern California in May of 2000. I was driving through Glenn County and stopped for breakfast in a country restaurant off I-5. The table-cloth was red and white checkered, like Arafat’s headdress, my coffee was hot, and the omelet tasted great. I was reading the morning paper. Then the lights went out.
There was enough sunlight coming through the windows that I could finish my meal and my coffee, pay in cash – the register didn’t work, and leave.
In the most industrialized nation in the world, in the largest and most progressive state of that nation, California, we didn’t have the infrastructure in place to keep the power on? We were told, by the media, by the Bush administration, by the California government, that we simply had a power distribution problem. We were using too much power. Prices had been going up. Our electricity bills in San Diego had more than doubled. We were asked to conserve, not run air conditioners, turn off the lights, and “sacrifice for our country.”
Then, in the fall of 2001, Enron collapsed, and we found out that there were a bunch of traders who called themselves “the smartest guys in the room” who had been laughing about all of us idiot consumers in California, all the way to the bank. What they did was at a minimum “market manipulation,” but really, as we dug deeper, we found out that they had committed fraud on a massive scale.
Now our gas prices are way out of proportion with the market. Our demand for oil has gone down, due to electric cars and many other conservation measures. We have more oil than we can use right now. The price is not up because we don’t have enough, so supply and demand is not the problem. Our politicians agree that market manipulation is taking place. Even the head of Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, states that based on a pure economic approach the price of a barrel of oil should be in the $60 range. Yet today, crude oil runs $104. Why is that?
Like Enron controlled electricity and its delivery, and purposely shut down power plants for no obvious reason just to create hardship for millions of residents in the Western United States, speculators are currently manipulating the oil market. How do they do that? They buy massive amounts of oil – which they don’t need and don’t ever even touch, just to keep if off the market. They wait until the price is up, and they sell it for a profit. Clearly, they are making money out of thin air, and essentially pulling the dollars out of the pockets of consumers filling up their tanks all over this country.
The question is, is this activity illegal? If it is not, it should be, just like price-fixing, abuse of monopoly power, collusion of contractors, kickbacks, bribery and all the racketeering we have learned about is illegal.
Some people say that not starting to build a pipeline that will eventually ship gas from Canada to the U.S. causes gas prices to be up right now. A pipeline that would be completed many years from now. A pipeline that would contribute a very small percentage of our consumption.
Ludicrous.
Remember Enron.
We live within the evacuation radius of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in San Clemente. We’re basically straight downwind from there. The plant has been shut down since summer due to leaks that they can’t identify and therefore not correct.
It is now shut down indefinitely per this article in CNN.
Gary Headrick, founder of the group San Clemente Green, said that public pressure was needed in order to guard against a nuclear crisis along the lines of what happened last year at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.
“If we were to let things go as they’ve gone in the past, it’s very likely that we’d experience a Fukushima right here in Southern California,” Headrick said at the rally. “And that’s why we’re here today.”
If we had to evacuate Southern California, it would displace 20 million people. Oh, sure, we would be told that Los Angeles and San Diego were safe. Would you believe it?
Looking at the picture above, I also wonder if the plant is tsunami-safe? It would not take a very big wave to flood the entire compound.