Another reminder

Less than 5% of the area of the United States and associated continental shelf remains to be explored and exploited for any underlying oil. At most only 5% of the oil that we extracted from the rest of the United States over the past 100 years can be pumped out from under there — i.e., a 5 year supply of oil, at best. We cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis by drilling more oil wells in the United States, regardless of whether you open up ANWR and the Pacific and Florida coasts or not. Any significant finds remaining to be made are in foreign countries that haven’t been explored and exploited to a fare-the-well the way that the United States has been. And most of those places either hate us or they’re inaccessible (the Amazon basis) or they’re a political nightmare (the Congo basin).

In short, we ain’t drillin’ our way out of this one, folks.

— Badtux the Oil Penguin

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The stupidest prune farmer on the planet

I’m talking about V.D. Hanson, the mad prune farmer of Modesto, and his latest editorial saying we can drill and mine our way out of the current oil crisis.

Uhm, no. We already drilled everywhere on the continental U.S. that’s drillable. There’s still offshore off the West Coast and East Coast but that’s less than 5% of the area of the United States and at most we’ll get 5% of the oil out of’em that we got out of the rest of the United States. Sorry, that’s just the facts. There’s more oil out there, but it’s in places that are currently pretty inhospitable politically speaking, or just damned remote (e.g. the Amazon basin, the Congo River basin).

But V.D. Hanson whines that “salt of the earth” types in the “heartland” are hurtin’ because of the fuel prices. Oh waaah! I have no sympathy. *NONE*. Jimmy Carter had the solution for that problem back in 1976 — fund alternative energy so that when the oil ran out, we’d already have a solution ready to go, rather than leaving it to some future generation, plus fund real mass transit that could eliminate the need for most folks living in cities and large towns to have a car. Guess what. These “salt of the earth” fucking dumbasses voted for Ronald fucking REAGAN because he promised to end “alternative energy” and cut their taxes. So now they’re gathering what they fucking reaped, and they’re going to whine about it? Oh waaahhh! Stupid motherfuckers, nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions anymore. The stupid motherfuckers voted against alternative energy for the past forty years, and now they wanna go wah, wah, wah because their own stupidity resulted in high oil prices? Fuck’em.

Yeah, not bloody well diplomatic. But I just get fucking sick of all these goddamned crybabies out here whining that they don’t like the consequences of their own actions. These are the stupid motherfuckers who voted for Ronald Reagan and ended alternative energy research in the United States for a generation. And they don’t like what they voted for? Well fuck them. Fuck them good and hard. Well, OPEC is doing that for us, but so it goes.

— Badtux the Unsympathetic Penguin

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My next 4×4

My Jeep is getting too expensive. So here I am with my new offroad vehicle:

— Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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Clinton Derangement Syndrome

I’ve had to stop reading a couple of my favorite blogs for the time being because they have simply gone completely nuts. Obama has won the Democratic nomination for President. Even if you include both Michigan and Florida (respecting the will of the voters in Michigan, where the “uncommitted” votes were clearly for Obama rather than Clinton since Obama wasn’t on the ballot there), Obama still wins. That’s just the facts.

But the sufferers of Clinton Derangement Syndrome trot out one excuse after another as to why Obama didn’t “really” win. It’s like play day at the paranoics conference when it comes to the sufferer. Just as the paranoic “really” knows that he lost his job because “the CIA is beaming mind control rays into my brain”, the CDS sufferer “really” knows that Hillary “really” won because “caucauses disenfranchise handicapped people” and thus aren’t representative of the will of the majority of the Democrats in caucus states (just one example, CDS sufferers have plenty of other excuses for why Clinton “really” won). Nevermind that they haven’t found a single handicapped person disenfranchised by caucus states or a single bit of evidence that indicated that handicapped persons would vote any differently than any other voters in caucus states. Evidence is not required for the CDS sufferer, just as it is not required for the paranoic who “knows” that the CIA is beaming mind control rays into his brain.

The funny part is that I voted for Clinton (gasp!). When Edwards dropped out, she had the best health care plan of the remaining candidates. Obama’s health care plan is little more than pandering and hot air, and his criticisms of Hillary’s health care plan were dishonest. But then after Super Duper Tuesday, Hillary started running John McCain’s attack ads against Obama, and has run a dirty Republican-style campaign ever since pandering to the worst parts of the Democratic coalition, including the appeals to racism that are a hallmark of modern Republican politics. And her recent comments claiming victory despite the fact that, uhm, she lost, strike me as being as deranged as John McCain’s continued assertions that we’re “winning” in Iraq. Just completely divorced from reality. Like a Republican, that. But if I want to vote for a Republican, I’ll vote for a Republican, not for a Republican Lite like Joe Lieberman or (apparently) Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, I (and many other Californians) would not vote for Hillary if the California primary were today instead on Super Tuesday. Luckily, since Obama won, I won’t have to hold my nose and pull the lever for her in the fall. Saved by reality!

Hopefully the CDS sufferers will return to reality shortly. If not, well… (shrug). Say hello to President McCain. And say hello to a depression that will make the depression of 1929 look like child’s play. If less than 50% of Americans die of starvation after the strongmen seize power amidst the ruins of the American economy and all oil imports are cut off, I will be extremely surprised. Well, I’ll be dead so I won’t be extremely surprised, but you get the point.

— Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

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The End is Near

Bush Administration makes deal to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. While some commentators make hasty conclusions about Saudi Arabia wanting to develop nuclear weapons, there is a much, much simpler explanation: The end is near.

The problem is that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are on their last legs, and what little oil hasn’t been pumped yet has to be sold in order to finance whatever is going to replace oil as Saudi Arabia’s energy source. While much of Saudi Arabia is desert and thus well suited for solar power, the problem is that deserts lack, well, water (duh!). So Saudi Arabia has been building desalination plants in order to provide water for their growing and thirsty population. And desalination plants require a *lot* of energy — paving all of Saudi Arabia with solar panels would provide enough energy to maybe desalinate enough water for a million people. And in case you haven’t noticed, Saudi Arabia has a population of over TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE. All of whom require water in order to live.

So clearly solar lacks the energy density to provide for Saudi Arabia’s water needs. Given that, the Saudis have few options for replacing their current gas-fired power plants as the natural gas runs out (which is already happening — the Saudis are pumping salt water at full speed into their oil reservoirs in order to increase the pressure in order to force the remaining oil to the surface, which means that the natural gas pressure which used to be providing that force is now *gone*). Saudi Arabia has no coal, so that isn’t going to do the job. So nuclear energy is the logical next step for them — and indeed they’ve been talking for years about building a gigantic nuclear desalination plant. And if it is a light water reactor properly designed and properly monitored by the IAEA (so that rods cannot be short-cycled — you must short-cycle rods in order to extract Pu-239 for bombs, otherwise it picks up more neutrons and becomes isotopes not usable for bombs), it is not a particularly large proliferation threat.

All of these arguments also apply to Iran, of course. But oooh, I forget, Eye-ran EEEEvilll. Saudi Arabia GOOOOOOOD. Even though women are slaves in Saudi Arabia who aren’t allowed any advanced education and aren’t even allowed to fuckin’ *drive*, while 50% of Iranian university enrollment is women as are 40% of their doctors. Tells ya just how much our ruling elite values women’s rights… first they overthrew the only regime in the region which guaranteed full rights to women (Saddam’s secular Baathist regime), and then they target the regime that is the next-most-congenial place for women in the region? Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

– Badtux the Energy Penguin

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On energy density and nuclear power

Two words: Energy density. Nuclear power is currently the only technology which has the energy density to replace oil, gas, coal and so forth. We could put solar panels on every patch of barren ground, windmills in every windy pass in America, biofuel rapeseed on every piece of marginal ground not needed to raise timber or food, and still fall woefully short even of the energy requirements of modern agriculture, which is a very energy-intensive process that requires hauling enormous amounts of food long distances over a transportation infrastructure that requires enormous sums of energy to operate even if we transition it all to electrical or hydrogen operation. And without modern agriculture, we have a great die-off, because we now have far more people on this planet than can be supported by primitive agriculture.

Frankly, I prefer being alive to being dead. I’ve looked at some of the modern nuclear reactor designs, and they’re far safer than Three Mile Island (which itself was far safer than Chernobyl, a weapons reactor converted to civilian use which would have never been permitted to operate in the United States). Note that the so-called “hydrogen economy” is basically a mechanism for storing nuclear power in an energy-dense manner for individual transportation, rather than a method of generating energy… the only method for generating energy is nuclear power, whether it is the nuclear power of the sun (which also powers the wind as well as solar cells and plants), or nuclear power from man-made reactors. Even oil, gas, or coal is just nuclear power in the end, since it is just stored nuclear energy from the sun, energy stored in hydrocarbon bonds rather than in batteries…

– Badtux the Energy Penguin

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Gettin’ Raped

Day before yesterday, gas was $3.01 per gallon here. Last night, it was $3.05 per gallon. I hate to see what it’ll be tonight.
I wouldn’t mind so much if all these billions were going into some fund to create an alternative to oil. But they aren’t. The oilmen are raking it in and piling it up. Which goes to show that oil and the open market don’t work once we’re past peak oil, which we probably are.

If there was someone making, say, widgets, and piling in billions in profits, someone else would start making widgets too. But ain’t nobody makin’ no more oil. What we’ve got, is what we’ve got. And the alternative energy guys still aren’t getting enough money to come up with some viable alternative to oil. It’d be easy enough to do — just whack an oil windfall profits tax on the oil companies. But it ain’t happenin’.

Gotta go, gotta get dressed in all my motorcycle duds to get 50+mpg on my morning commute…

— Badtux the Raped Penguin

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