Kerry Urging Energy Independence in U.S.

BOSTON -- With the start of the summer driving season approaching and gasoline prices soaring, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said the United States should strive for energy independence.

"There are two reasons why we cannot be asleep at the wheel during this current energy crisis," Kerry said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "First, soaring energy prices are putting our economy at risk and second, our dependence on Middle East oil is putting our national security at risk. But it doesn't have to be this way."

In the short term, the Massachusetts senator said, the United States should divert oil being used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and bring it to market. The White House says, though, that would have only a negligible impact on pump prices. Kerry also said the country's leaders should demand that Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations increase supply.

He said his long-term strategy as president would include investments in alternative fuels and new technologies that are more fuel-efficient. He said he would establish tax credits to help make fuel-efficient cars more affordable.

more........

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-kerry-gas-prices,0,4025787.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

They won't divert Oil, but they want to drill in anwar. Both are negligible, but one is profitable. Fucking crooks.

See the link in my sig below

Hemp became a threat to oil scions early on..

Hemp is the perfect "vegetable".

an extra 2 million barrels a day..and the price for a barrel of crude dropped $10.. Someone better update Kerry's info..

They can't do the 2 Million barrels alone and they had already opened their spigots about as far as they can go. What they did was ask OPEC as a whole to pump the 2 MBD and the price for a barrel of crude dropped $1, not $10.

But postponed the decision until their June meeting.

To bolster Shrub's reselection?

"In the short term, the Massachusetts senator said, the United States should divert oil being used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and bring it to market. "

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree here. If having to pay higher prices at the pump is the only thing that will spur Americans -- who are obscenely spoiled about using all the world's finite resouces they want, all the time, and at rock-bottom prices -- to conserve then I say let the prices continue to climb.

Yes, there I said it. Maybe then and only then will America take a serious look at energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources. This is not an either/or situation here, ie, free the reserves or drill in Alaska's pristine wilderness. We need to CONSERVE what resources are available to us.

These high gas prices aren't just harming individual consumers but also our economy in the sense that they are making transporation far more expensive. How do you think large ships and semi trucks transport the food you eat and the stuff you buy everyday?

Also guess who pays for the increase in their expenses?

Kerry's right the first time we need oil independence. Starting with making more efficient vehicles is a start, but eventually I want to see that H2 dream become a reality.

Perhaps if we conserve the fuel we already WASTE at mind-boggling rates the commecial transportation industry won't feel the pinch. But expecting that everyone is inherently entitled to continue their all-you-can-consume trips to Wal-Mart in their tax-deductible SUVs for cheap, non-labor tchotchkes has got to stop. So does the neverending construction of developments located miles from the nearest stores or commuter rail sites.

As far as food goes, I've already cut the food bill at our home by growing some of our own and buying from local farmers. It (conservation) CAN be done but it takes effort. If a bite in the wallet is what it takes, then I'm all for it. I'm sick and tired of the "we'll deal with it tomorrow" response from politicos when it comes to energy conservation.

This spoiled country needs to face reality. The fuel we so crave in order to sustain our obscenely wasteful lifestyle also fuels the immoral wars we so protest and if a serious effort to curtail our energy usage isn't made RIGHT NOW it will be too late to turn back the clock of global warming. Sadly, it may already be too late and addressing the problem in some ambiguous "tomorrow" of the future doesn't cut it with me.

Sure, we'd use less energy if everybody lived in the city,
but everybody won't fit in the city, so guess who gets squeezed out?

Strategic reserves of oil should only be tapped for a true emergency -- such as loss of refineries and/or suppliers due to sabotage or natural catastrophe.

No matter how painful the current rise in oil prices may be, it does not constitute an emergency. We are facing the inevitable cost of doing business in an economy that is drunk on oil usage despite the fact that this valuable commodity is finite in quanitity. We've gotten a free ride for decades, certainly compared to European prices.

Our screams of outrage aside, we are responsible for growing increasingly dependent on a resource which we import from other countries. We are also responsible for squandering it on our self-indulgent lifestyle, pissing it away in everything from SUVs and other recreational vehicles to NASCAR; for dismantling mass transit in favor of fuel-inefficient private transport; and for a building an economy that is dependent on a resource that does not belong to us.

When it comes down to it, we have no right to set the price of oil, or to protest if OPEC chooses to raise it to the roof. If we don't like the price, we can simply refuse to pay. If we can't afford to refuse, then we can only blame ourselves.

First of all, there are no hydrogen wells - so to speak. Hydrogen exists in abundance on earth, heaven knows, but must be separated into its elemental form before we can use it to generate power or produce electricity.

This allows one of two possibilities - using an existing hydrocarbon fuel as feedstock for hydrogen, i.e. gasoline, methanol and so forth, or stripping the hydrogen from its most abundant form on earth - water - through electrolysis.

Couple of problems here. First of all, if you have 100 barrels of oil, but can only get the equivalent of 90 barrels' worth of hydrogen energy out of them, why bother with the expensive conversion process and investment to make that conversion possible?

Secondly, and more fundamentally, basic thermodynamics makes the large-scale conversion of our current economic system to an identical one based on hydrogen simply impossible. The process of stripping hydrogen from water or other feedstocks will produce hydrogen, but at a net energy loss.

The best we could hope for would be some sort of sustainable process whereby hydrogen could be separated from water using renewable energy, like hydro and wind, but that wouldn't be nearly enough to sub for oil, which (other than nuclear) is pound-for-pound the most energy-dense fuel, and in terms of EROEI (energy return on energy invested) by far the most rewarding. The scale of such a renewable-based system would be absolutely daunting, far beyond the scope of proposals for hydrogen filling stations, which is a huge enough plan.

Hydrogen will certainly have a limited place, particuarly for remote power generation, but the "hydrogen economy" is essentially a political smoke screen, presented to preserve the illusion that "They" - scientists, techies, politicians, business leaders - have a seamless transition in mind and a bold answer for our limitless demand for cheap and ever-more-abundant energy.

They don't. Thermodynamics doesn't allow it.

We may hate the idea, but what do we matter?

Its badly needed and it has to be the cornerstone of any sane energy policy, but it doesn't make for good soundbite politics. Wait until he gets elected President.

High prices are what will spur the development of new technology and new sources of renewable energy.

Achieving true independence, at least in the short term, would necessitate going aggressively after every drop of oil to be found anywhere on US soil and, once we'd sucked out those few barrels, then where would we be? At our current level of conspicuous energy consumption, the oil reserves in our own country wouldn't last long, and the environmental cost of obtaining it would be very high. Given that the Middle East still has oil in relative abundance, doesn't it make more sense to buy it up cheap while we still can and save our own reserves for that rainy day when oil becomes sufficiently scarce (which, at the rate that we in this country are buying up Hummers and other such aircraft carriers which mesure their gas mileage in gallons to the mile, should be any day now) as to increase prices to astronomical levels? Once oil prices have climbed to $10/gallon, not only will Americans finally have been given the strong incentive to conserve energy rather than squander it, which means our own domestic reserves will last longer than five minutes at that point, but they'll be worth ten times as much to us then than they are now, when oil can still be purchased relatively cheaply from other countries.

It seems to me the better strategy is to begin letting gas prices increase, so that we can begin the slow process of motivating Americans to stop thinking of energy as an inexhaustible commodity to be squandered as recklessly as they please.

Why wait 5-10 years for OPEC to spike crude prices again, when we can just increase gas mileage of cars and trucks. My dad commutes 12 miles round trip to work in a Silverado that gets 10 miles to the gallon. It pisses me off. If the government just put higher mpg mandates and put them on ALL cars instead of the AVERAGE of all cars, we would be in much better shape. Who cares if Detroit bitches, the Japanese and Europeans will love the business. Plus then you won't have to worry about the truckers striking because of high gas prices.

hadn't scrapped Carters fuel standards in 1985, the US would have been free of all imported oil by 1991.

what do they call that, the "energy-wasting tax credit"?

to do it effectively on farms. there's new machinery available that can turn a dairy farm into a completely self-sustaining entity with no need for outside power whatsoever! why not convert human waste and trash as well?

we need more science and technology, and less religion and maniupulation of the facts. bushco is pure corruption.

The U.S. consumes as much oil as China + India combined. And China and India are very eager to catch up.
The window of opportunity for this planet to develop into a sustainable technological civilisation may close pretty soon. At least, I think, we have already lost the opportunity for a smooth transition to the post fossil fuel age. The ride will be very bumpy. Iraq war may just be the beginning of the agony of our gas guzzling civilisation.

Welcome to the future.

Hey we only had a 30-year warning this was going to happen.

Moring in America followed by bury your head in the sand affected Americans to such a degree that they thought pure ignorance would put off the future.

Kerry and Bush are spouting the same-old rhetoric. When gas is $5/gal and we're sitting in line for hours, maybe then there'll be real progress.

http://desmoinesregister.com/business/stories/c4789013/23945889.html
Record high prices for gasoline are pushing ethanol prices skyward, too, and that is turning yellow corn into gold for Iowa's plants that produce ethanol from the grain.

Ethanol prices are high enough these days to offset the higher prices for corn, the primary grain used in making ethanol, and for natural gas, one of the principal fuels used in the ethanol-making process.

The result is that Iowa's plants are making money these days - and that is good news for the rural areas where the plants buy corn, provide jobs and pay taxes.

"The price of ethanol is significantly better than it was a year ago," said Mike Jerke, general manager of Quad County Corn Processors in Galva.

Last year at this time, ethanol prices were falling, but the increasing demand for the fuel additive has out-paced the increase in ethanol supplies as new markets for the fuel have emerged in California, New York and Connecticut.

The economic viability of ethanol is critical to Iowa's rural economy.

You burn more oil growing the corn to use for ethanol production than you replace with the ethanol itself! Consider all the oil used to fuel the tractors and trucks to plant, cultivate, harvest and transport the corn. Also consider all the oil used to produce the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides used to obtain maximum yields. The only way that ethanol plants stay afloat is through massive government subsidies that artificially reduce the price of ethanol. Without these, ethanol production would cost several times that of gasoline production. Biodiesel from soybeans would be a better solution, as you actually DO end up with a net energy gain there.

other feed stocks have a better energy balance.

Bio-diesel is good also.

How about we take the subsidies away for oil.

Most reaserchers have shown that corn is slightly energy posative. Their are other feed stocks that are even better than corn. Switchgrass is one of them.


http://www.westbioenergy.org/july98/0798_01.htm
Oklahoma Researchers Test Switchgrass for Biofuel Production
A sea of switchgrass once grew in the central and eastern portions of the United States from the Gulf Coast to Canada. Today, switchgrass survives mainly on land not used for other purposes, land that is poorer in quality or land in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program.

However, if research at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater proves fruitful, this innocuous native grass may once again wave across vast areas grown as a feedstock to make biofuel.

Biofuel is fuel derived from plants. One biofuel, ethanol, is primarily made from corn and grain sorghum and blended with gasoline, but ethanol also can be made from other plant matter, waste dairy products and grasses such as switchgrass. Research has shown that, with the right infrastructure, ethanol could be produced from switchgrass more efficiently than from corn.

at Rocky Mountain Institute. Fascinating stuff at http://www.rmi.org/. He is brilliant, IMO, and he offers his book 'Natural Capitalism' for free download.

I meant to edit above post but my time expired.

http://www.acpropulsion.com/Veh_Grid_Power/Veh_grid_power.htm

As cars and light trucks begin a transition to electric propulsion, powered by batteries, engines, or fuel cells, there is potential for a synergistic connection between such vehicles and the electric power grid. The aggregate power rating of the US vehicle fleet is much larger than the total US generating capacity. If even a small fraction of vehicles could be harnessed as generating assets, benefits would accrue both to the electric power grid and to the vehicle owners. The potential exists for the economic value generated to significantly offset the costs of electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles.

http://www.acpropulsion.com/Products/Range_extending_trailers.htm

The Long Ranger range-extending trailer converts an electric vehicle to hybrid mode for long trips. The efficient, high specific-output, gasoline-fueled, trailer-mounted generator maintains battery charge, allowing unlimited driving range at speeds up to 75 mph.

The Long Ranger is proven over more than 20,000 highway miles. 20-kW DC output allows sustained high-speed driving without range restrictions. Emissions are controlled with a closed loop fuel control system and a zero-evaporative-emissions sealed fuel tank.

It may fuel inflation, but it will also be a wake-up call for energy conservation and alternate energy sources.

We have had 25 years to wean ourselves from foreign energy sources, yet we have not done so. The reason we have not done so is because the energy was so inexpensive in direct costs. Yet the hidden costs like increased costs for security due to instability in the middle east is staggering. Does anyone think to figure those costs in the overall costs for energy. I say no.

It is past time for investing the costs we spend for security into alternative energy sources.

We need to be independent of the energy we mine from the middle east, so we can make better decisions in our relationships with the countries in that part of the world. Decisions based on our values rather than economic wellbeing.

if he tried to spawn oil-alternatives.

If Kerry wins the election, he needs to have the SS and the CIA members that he really trusts keeping their eyes open for any assassination attempts. And he needs to be VERY careful. These oil guys have no morals.

:kick:

subject is getting some coverage.

Sensible words from the Senator.