Obama: 54.5 Miles per Gallon by 2025 - Page 2

**MikeC** · 09-09-12, 04:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhink

WHY do they have to do something? If oil is cheap, burn the crap out of it! Again- let the market decide. There's not a lot of downside to the stuff, assuming we can get a pretty hefty stable supply of it in the US and/or friendly/stable countries.

Very good. The law of supply and demand.

Although I've been thinking about pollution caused by using oil and gas. That may be a reason we want to wean ourselves from it.

rhink · 09-09-12, 09:02 AM

No matter what, producing a lot of energy is going to cause pollution.

There's a couple different forms of pollution we can be talking about with gasoline- smog, which is a problem in certain areas (in particular LA), but usually we talk about CO2 these days. The thing is, CO2 just isn't the problem it's made out to be. Human CO2 emissions have had some influence on temps, but a much larger influence has been natural cycles. We see the same patterns now as happened in the 1930's and 1950's.

Now I don't want to derail this into a political debate on global warming. Even if you are concerned about global warming, the truth is the oil and gas industry are driving DOWN CO2 emissions, and by a tremendously larger margin than any green initiative we've seen so far. There's several reasons (for example economics, politics, etc) but the biggest one is natural gas. It is suddenly plentiful due to fracking, produces far less CO2 than coal, and it's replacing coal.

Here's the first article I could find on the topic:
http://grist.org/climate-policy/u-s-...king-about-it/

In particular, look at this graph.... coal demand has collapsed the last couple of years:
http://grist.files.wordpress.com/201...-2000-2012.png

What does this have to do with transportation fuels? well, for one oil & gas are usually found together. But the bigger point is: we can reduce CO2 emissions cheaply without replacing every car with an expensive hybrid or artificially constraining gasoline supply.

**sytaylor** · 10-12-12, 08:41 AM

Obama is using legislation to solve an economic problem. Interesting, it's a policy that will really play into the polarised political sphere that is the US. The coasts will love it. The tea party will feel it violates the constitution in some way.

I can't see those with a pick up, who enjoy hunting, particularly liking this requirement. Although there doesn't appear to be any law against owning an older vehicle, it will just become progressively more expensive. Like owning a car from the 90s is now...

We've already passed peak oil and global net consumption is being driven up by the BRICs (especially China) so oil is only going to get more expensive. The real problems are energy independence and security. These can only be solved with investment. Investment in the current economy is hard to come by, since we wasted all the good times money on tax cuts, Washington pork, and trying to fix the middle east.

I'm waiting to see an impressive move from efficiency to new sources of energy. It took a while for the combustion engine to replace steam, but by the 1930s you could really see it. I wonder what 2030 will look like for alternative energy sources?

rhink · 10-27-12, 03:00 PM

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.asp...aph=production

Does that look like we're past peak oil t you?

In fact economic data suggests we'd be producing even more oil the last few years, except demand has dropped.

See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...3zFV_blog.html

Investment in energy isn't that hard to come by. Take a look at what's going on in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. The deal is: that's petroleum. Investment in economically dubious "green" sources is hard to come by, which is why so many of the green energy companies the US gov't has thrown money at the last few years have failed. The market doesn't want their products, even at subsidized prices. Throwing money down the drain to prop up companies the market doesn't want is bad economic policy.

There is no economic incentive to shift away from oil at this time. There's a lot of economic incentive to pursue energy independence by exploiting oil reserves around the world & at home. If peak oil does occur, the market is more than capable of responding by diversifying energy sources when the need comes... because the free market is the most efficient way we know to allocate scarce resources.

09-09-12, 09:02 AM	#14
rhink Registered User Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 434	Re: Obama: 54.5 Miles per Gallon by 2025 No matter what, producing a lot of energy is going to cause pollution. There's a couple different forms of pollution we can be talking about with gasoline- smog, which is a problem in certain areas (in particular LA), but usually we talk about CO2 these days. The thing is, CO2 just isn't the problem it's made out to be. Human CO2 emissions have had some influence on temps, but a much larger influence has been natural cycles. We see the same patterns now as happened in the 1930's and 1950's. Now I don't want to derail this into a political debate on global warming. Even if you are concerned about global warming, the truth is the oil and gas industry are driving DOWN CO2 emissions, and by a tremendously larger margin than any green initiative we've seen so far. There's several reasons (for example economics, politics, etc) but the biggest one is natural gas. It is suddenly plentiful due to fracking, produces far less CO2 than coal, and it's replacing coal. Here's the first article I could find on the topic: http://grist.org/climate-policy/u-s-...king-about-it/ In particular, look at this graph.... coal demand has collapsed the last couple of years: http://grist.files.wordpress.com/201...-2000-2012.png What does this have to do with transportation fuels? well, for one oil & gas are usually found together. But the bigger point is: we can reduce CO2 emissions cheaply without replacing every car with an expensive hybrid or artificially constraining gasoline supply.

10-12-12, 08:41 AM	#15
sytaylor Cerebral Barbarian Join Date: Nov 2000 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 1,656	Re: Obama: 54.5 Miles per Gallon by 2025 Obama is using legislation to solve an economic problem. Interesting, it's a policy that will really play into the polarised political sphere that is the US. The coasts will love it. The tea party will feel it violates the constitution in some way. I can't see those with a pick up, who enjoy hunting, particularly liking this requirement. Although there doesn't appear to be any law against owning an older vehicle, it will just become progressively more expensive. Like owning a car from the 90s is now... We've already passed peak oil and global net consumption is being driven up by the BRICs (especially China) so oil is only going to get more expensive. The real problems are energy independence and security. These can only be solved with investment. Investment in the current economy is hard to come by, since we wasted all the good times money on tax cuts, Washington pork, and trying to fix the middle east. I'm waiting to see an impressive move from efficiency to new sources of energy. It took a while for the combustion engine to replace steam, but by the 1930s you could really see it. I wonder what 2030 will look like for alternative energy sources? __________________ Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 @ 3.42GHz \| Abit IP35 Pro \| GeIL 4GB DDR2 Gainward BLISS GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB 770/1920/1070 Creative Audigy 2ZS on Logitech Z-680s Yuraku 24" Widescreen monitor It saddens me that I need the following to post here: Disclaimer: Any views expressed in the above post under the psuedonym "sytaylor" are entirely subjective and do not reflect the views of any business, company or entity associated with Simon Taylor. The use, copying of or editing of any materials within this post for professional purposes without written permission is stricly prohibitted under the UK Right of Privacy as provided in the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 10 ECHR. Any attempt to use the information herin shall be subject to the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information act, with damages being saught for defamation. This disclaimer applies to all text, images or media on this domain. You have been warned. My Blog

10-27-12, 03:00 PM	#16
rhink Registered User Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 434	Re: Obama: 54.5 Miles per Gallon by 2025 http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.asp...aph=production Does that look like we're past peak oil t you? In fact economic data suggests we'd be producing even more oil the last few years, except demand has dropped. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...3zFV_blog.html Investment in energy isn't that hard to come by. Take a look at what's going on in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. The deal is: that's petroleum. Investment in economically dubious "green" sources is hard to come by, which is why so many of the green energy companies the US gov't has thrown money at the last few years have failed. The market doesn't want their products, even at subsidized prices. Throwing money down the drain to prop up companies the market doesn't want is bad economic policy. There is no economic incentive to shift away from oil at this time. There's a lot of economic incentive to pursue energy independence by exploiting oil reserves around the world & at home. If peak oil does occur, the market is more than capable of responding by diversifying energy sources when the need comes... because the free market is the most efficient way we know to allocate scarce resources.