My brain hurts
Feb. 3rd, 2006 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI don't watch the State of the Union. Haven't done so since about 1992, when I was last working on a newspaper.
Mostly I find it tedious, and the next day I can read the text, without having to put up with the showy folderol.
This year was more of the same, with Bush vowing (as has been done since at least Ford) that we would wean ourself from Middle Eastern oil.
Right.
No need to raise the minimum MPG, and no need to actually make it happen (as opposed to now when Detroit can make "ethanol ready {and don't get me started on what it takes to make a gallon of ethanol, in terms of energy} cars, and use them to offset not having better mileage on the rest of them... sort of like pollution credits for industry, only these guys get to sell us cars for which there is no fuel supply and then use the "credit" of making a "low emission" vehicle that isn't to offset making not so low emission vehicles) that Detroit make the CAFE standard as good as it might be.
And it turns out that his reduction (which was going to be 75 percent of whatever percentage we import from the Middle East) isn't really going to happen.
I am not quite sure how to parse the gobblydegook that came out of the White House today. From Knight-Ridder
WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
Huh? I look up displace in the dictionary and I get:
dis·place (dĭs-plās')
tr.v., -placed, -plac·ing, -plac·es.
1. To move or shift from the usual place or position, especially to force to leave a homeland: millions of refugees who were displaced by the war.
2. To take the place of; supplant.
or
displace
v 1: take the place of
2: force to move; "the refugees were displaced by the war"
[syn: force out]
3: move (people) forcibly from their homeland into a new and
foreign environment; "The war uprooted many people" [syn:
uproot, deracinate]
4: cause to move, both in a concrete and in an abstract sense;
"Move those boxes into the corner, please"; "I'm moving my
money to another bank"; "The director moved more
responsibilities onto his new assistant" [syn: move]
5: remove or force from a position of dwelling previously
occupied; "The new employee dislodged her by moving into
her office space" [syn: dislodge, bump]
6: put out of its usual place, position, or relationship; "The
colonists displaced the natives" [syn: dislocate]
Me, I tend to think of it in terms of ships, and displacement. They take up the space of a given volume of water, and it's moved from where it was.
In any case displace to me would mean (in the sentence quoted) that the oil we are getting from the Middle East we won't be need any more, and so we won't be getting it from the Middle East anymore, because, as the flack said, Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region," he said.
This strikes me as a general good, not so much because the reason is volatile, that won't change just because we aren't buying their oil, but because there are a lot of people who want oil, and sooner or later we are going to hit peak. I also happen to think there are a lot better uses for it than burning it to move cars from one place to another.
But the story didn't end at that quotation,
The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction...."
He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.
There's that word again, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Apparently what the president meant to say was we could reduce our oil needs by as much as 5.26 million bbls a day, which happens to be about twice what we import from the Middle East. We won't, however, stop buying it from them because, well that wasn't made clear.
...new technologies could reduce America's oil appetite by the equivalent of what we're expected to import from the Middle East by 2025, Hubbard said.
But we'll still be importing plenty of oil, according to the Energy Department's latest projection. and we'll be doing it from the Middle East because, that's where the greatest oil supplies are.
Mind you the Energy Dept. predicts In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand ... up from 58 percent in 2004," according to the Energy Information Administration's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook.
Since this year's budget cut the appropriations for research into alternative fuels, that seems more likely.
But hey, what we do import, it won't come from the Middle East, unless it does; or something.
Mostly I find it tedious, and the next day I can read the text, without having to put up with the showy folderol.
This year was more of the same, with Bush vowing (as has been done since at least Ford) that we would wean ourself from Middle Eastern oil.
Right.
No need to raise the minimum MPG, and no need to actually make it happen (as opposed to now when Detroit can make "ethanol ready {and don't get me started on what it takes to make a gallon of ethanol, in terms of energy} cars, and use them to offset not having better mileage on the rest of them... sort of like pollution credits for industry, only these guys get to sell us cars for which there is no fuel supply and then use the "credit" of making a "low emission" vehicle that isn't to offset making not so low emission vehicles) that Detroit make the CAFE standard as good as it might be.
And it turns out that his reduction (which was going to be 75 percent of whatever percentage we import from the Middle East) isn't really going to happen.
I am not quite sure how to parse the gobblydegook that came out of the White House today. From Knight-Ridder
WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
Huh? I look up displace in the dictionary and I get:
dis·place (dĭs-plās')
tr.v., -placed, -plac·ing, -plac·es.
1. To move or shift from the usual place or position, especially to force to leave a homeland: millions of refugees who were displaced by the war.
2. To take the place of; supplant.
or
displace
v 1: take the place of
2: force to move; "the refugees were displaced by the war"
[syn: force out]
3: move (people) forcibly from their homeland into a new and
foreign environment; "The war uprooted many people" [syn:
uproot, deracinate]
4: cause to move, both in a concrete and in an abstract sense;
"Move those boxes into the corner, please"; "I'm moving my
money to another bank"; "The director moved more
responsibilities onto his new assistant" [syn: move]
5: remove or force from a position of dwelling previously
occupied; "The new employee dislodged her by moving into
her office space" [syn: dislodge, bump]
6: put out of its usual place, position, or relationship; "The
colonists displaced the natives" [syn: dislocate]
Me, I tend to think of it in terms of ships, and displacement. They take up the space of a given volume of water, and it's moved from where it was.
In any case displace to me would mean (in the sentence quoted) that the oil we are getting from the Middle East we won't be need any more, and so we won't be getting it from the Middle East anymore, because, as the flack said, Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region," he said.
This strikes me as a general good, not so much because the reason is volatile, that won't change just because we aren't buying their oil, but because there are a lot of people who want oil, and sooner or later we are going to hit peak. I also happen to think there are a lot better uses for it than burning it to move cars from one place to another.
But the story didn't end at that quotation,
The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction...."
He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.
There's that word again, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Apparently what the president meant to say was we could reduce our oil needs by as much as 5.26 million bbls a day, which happens to be about twice what we import from the Middle East. We won't, however, stop buying it from them because, well that wasn't made clear.
...new technologies could reduce America's oil appetite by the equivalent of what we're expected to import from the Middle East by 2025, Hubbard said.
But we'll still be importing plenty of oil, according to the Energy Department's latest projection. and we'll be doing it from the Middle East because, that's where the greatest oil supplies are.
Mind you the Energy Dept. predicts In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand ... up from 58 percent in 2004," according to the Energy Information Administration's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook.
Since this year's budget cut the appropriations for research into alternative fuels, that seems more likely.
But hey, what we do import, it won't come from the Middle East, unless it does; or something.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 11:22 am (UTC)Both of ours are 4 cylinder, and I'm not impressed that they get only slightly better mpg that 4 cyls in the 70s got.(Having checked with my parents who had a Vega. My S-10 never got the mpg that GM promised me, so I wanted to ask the customers.)
I won't buy a Prius, or other new technology car, until I see them on the road for 10 years or better, and see if that battery has to be replaced and how much it sets you back. My S-10 got driven until it was 14 and I'd like to drive the Toyota until it is 20 or so. It's 9 now, so by the time the wheels do fall off, I wonder what will be available.
I'm one of those that drives a car until the wheels fall off, generally, because of my bills and I've become more aware of waste, landfills, etc.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 02:53 pm (UTC)Thought you might find this blog post interesting:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006429.php
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 06:57 pm (UTC)Actually, folks, he didn't mean it. He just said what sounded good.
This should come as a surprise to nobody. What came as a surprise was that he said it at all. My immediate reaction, though, was hey, the man has never hesitated to lie or spin in the past to get a desired reaction. Now is supposed to be different? Really?
Since this year's budget cut the appropriations for research into alternative fuels,...
Actions speak louder than words. Always have. Always will.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 07:14 pm (UTC)For the last six years, the big companies who do the bulk of reserve discovery -- Shell, BP, ExxonMobil -- have spent more on exploration than they could possibly recoup from what they found, even assuming that everything they found could be extracted.
While this is not "peak oil", it is significant -- and the first time in history that it has held true. Nor does it look like that trend will reverse with any major new discovery, except possibly (not definitely) in the newly opened north polar or Siberian/Mongolian areas. Aside from what we find there, there aren't going to be any more major reserves discovered at all. The rest of the world has been too well mapped.
Extraction technologies are continuously improving, with things like horizontal drilling and new injection techniques to maintain well pressure, which means that we are continuously extending recoverability out of known reserves and opening up reserves which were previously not recoverable. However, rate of recovery vs. recovery expense graphs tell the story that Peak Oil -- when the expense of recovery outstrips economic viability -- IS out there, in the not-too-distant future. And the oil companies know it too. BP have actually spent a fair amount of planning on it, to be honest. But there is a deliberate effort NOT to bring it too much to public attention, because the corporate interest is in maximising profit (sensibly; this is what successful corporations do, after all), and profit is to be maximised by keeping oil the basis of the energy infrastructure for as long as possible, rather than moving people away from it while there is still some to be sold.
My $0.02.