At Long Last...The New Messiah!

[sparks]

Wouldn't a Messiah of love forgive Bin Laden and move on.  Obama is pledging to hunt him down and kill him.  Bush has been at it for 7years and the result is more people dead injured and in fear of their lives never mind fulfilled lives then died in the Towers.  The towers went down.  Lets fucking move on.  How many towers fell in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  How many towers fell due to religious zealots and tribal leaders over the course of human history.  How many more need to fall before this shit ends? The politicians are playing right into the hands of a phsycological warrior.  Hitler was a master at physcology and look at the hell he raised.

[Cap-Z-ro]

Obama is selling the same snake oil as McCain.

Some still do not know that Bin Laden is 'not' being sought in connection with 9/11...mainly due to a total lack of evidence against him.

Apparently people are still buying into that 9/11 myth...else he wouldn't be pandering to it.

Regards...

[GeoscienceStudent]

Interesting article on oil:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-oil-side1-story,0,2965469.htmlstory?coll=chi-homepagepromo440-fea

Who is voting for response to energy crisis: 

HR 6: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2007-226

HR 364, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-364

HR 547,   http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-547

HR 635, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-635

HR 6049, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-6049

AND HR 6709. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-6709

Actions speak louder than words, I say. 

As even Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes concludes in his book, "Hubbert's Peak:  The impending world oil shortage," "beware of any salesman peddling just one brand of snake oil" (Deffeyes, K. 2001, p. 187).  Wind alone, or even CNG will not solve all of the U.S.'s energy problems.  But innovative technology has been developed that allows us to use it in some strategic places in the U.S., though Indiana itself, may not have many.  If we relax and wait too long to start on a road to action, we may find ourselves in a situation that has gone too far, leading to an economic meltdown.  But the planning must be designed to consider caution as well.  Deffeyes also warns, "beware of the salesman peddling an enormous variety of snake oils" (Deffeyes, K. 2001, p. 187).  He argues that a long list give the impression that doomsday won't arrive in our lifetime.  He continues to explain that some "efficiency" claims, can be misleading.  A high efficiency gasoline or diesel may require increased energy used by the refinery, thus being self-defeating (Deffeyes, K. 2001, p. 188). Furthermore, in planning other factors must be taken into account such as Social impact, Environmental impact, physical impact, Visual impact, and Economic impact.  Questions need to be carefully examined to make sure we do not over exploit land reducing availability for farming, forestry, and urban development.  It must include cost effectiveness versus efficiency of the resource planned, for solar and wind both don't meet the efficiency of coal being around 10-35% vs. coal at 75-85%.  We must consider issues such as tornados, earthquakes, and other national disasters and how they would effect the placement of the plants, and to consider any other factors such as would it effect the availability of water or destroy natural habitats, or, is it within a flood zone, and so on.  GIS is used in planning that can analyze all these impacts.  Public opinion is also part of the crucial steps in planning.  They many jump on the band wagon now, there could be arguments such as "Not in my backyard," later. 
In the 1970's, we suffered both from the OPEC embargo, as well as the fact that the United States had reached is peak oil production, confirming in the spring of 1971, that M. King Hubbert's prediction.  Carter took action, attempting to persuade the public to conserve energy, and research in other alternatives, including oil shale, and other innovative ideas for self-sustaining energy, such as wind, geothermal, and solar began to emerge. 
In the 1980's  my professor of geology, Dr. Glenn Mason, then working for the Dept. of energy as researcher of oil shale energy production, was told in Germantown, Maryland, the new policies of the Reagan administration:  "We were told that the need for exploration of new technologies would at least be 50 years in the future."  Now we face the consequences of this decision.  Even worse, the apathy of the public to not demand that the government act on finding workable alternatives has lead us to now be faced with this current dillema. " We can't have breakthrough in technology if we are not looking for it" (Mason, G., 2008).  Furthermore, energy contributes to a large part of our economic structure to include transportation and manufacturing, as well as running businesses, heating homes, and the operation of hospitals, schools, and government agencies, including prisons.  So many people drive cars, crowding highways, releasing emissions into the atmosphere, and using fuels.  Mass transit could be developed, though it will be expensive.  But the alternative is a continuing increase in drivers, resulting in a climb in the fuel demand, thus increasing the competition for fuel with other developing countries such as China and India, which could reach a number unable to be matched by oil supply, leading to wars, famine, and further marginalization of the poor.  Deffeyes suggests that if oil reached $300 per barrel being 15% of total economy, it would cause a total shutdown of global economy.   
http://igs.indiana.edu/survey/projects/BioFuels/web/index.html  this is for Indiana
A fellow geology student has been studying the distribution of biofuels and has been attempting to try to find a way to help her uncle to encourage our area to increase the distribution points of this fuel.  The problem with buying new cars that use this fuel is that they often have lower gas mileage per gallon noted on the sticker, and people are not aware of where they can get the fuel for their car.  When I was attending the 4-H fair this past summer, a local county citizen asked, "What do you need first, the car, or the fuel?"  The answer was "the fuel."  Without the fuel, how are we going to drive the car?  Now the ones being produced are actually flex fuel, which are able to run on either gasoline or up to 85% ethanol.  But the notion of paying for a higher priced car with lower stated gas mileage simply to continue to use gasoline is not economically wise to the consumer.  When I asked the car salesmen, they did not know where the closest local distribution point of the ethanol was.  This can lead to a difficulty in selling the idea to change to another form of fuel.  The link above is to the Indiana Geological Survey interactive map of production and distribution sites of Indiana.  I will, in an effort to assist my fellow classmate be distributing this information to the car salesman, as soon as I can get the information all put into GIS so I can make a large poster for the local car dealers.  One important factor in this energy issue is education.  Without knowledge on the subject, we are unable to move forward with the alternatives we currently have. 
In October 2007, National Geographic released an article, "Green Dreams," discussing the some of the history, current conditions, such as the higher price of corn from $2 to briefly topping $4 per bushel due to use of corn for ethanol (Bourne, J. K., 2007, p. 42).  This may be great for the Nebraska corn grower but it does have a systemic effect.  It rises the cost of feed for chickens and cows, the use for cooking oils, corn as a food source, especially concerning to Mexico, who's major food staple is corn, and then the cost of meat, milk and eggs, propentiated by the fact that with the higher cost of fuel transportation cost that on average travels about 1500 miles to get to an American's plate (Mason, G., 2008) will eventually run full circle and cause a higher cost of living.  What's worse is the Petroleum input to ethanol output on average is around 1:"1.3, due to the need of fertilizers, pesticides, and the fuel for tractors and transportation of the product (Bourne, J. K., 2007, p. 44) It also releases carbon dioxide during the fermentation process so the claim that there is  no carbon dioxide released is false.   However, biomass such as corn stalks, garbage, algae, wood chips, etc. can also be used to make biofuels can have a ratio of 1:2 or even up to 1:36, depending on the process used (Bourne, J. K., 2007, p. 57), and sugar cane can have a ratio of 1:8 (Bourne, J. K., 2007, p. 47).  It just seems a shame since we went through so much trouble trying to defeat world hunger, having made progress since the Green Revolution of the 1960's to allow food to be burned when even one person is still hungry.  Furthermore, with climate change leading to droughts, floods (such as in Iowa this past spring) hurricanes causing devastation in its wake, and impending famine if this continues to progress, it is not sound judgment to burn food. 
I saw in Obama's plan that he intends to continue the use of corn ethanol, but also increase biomass fuels.  One plus, one minus.  McCain wants to decrease corn ethanol but increase the cane ethanol by reducing the tariff tax.
We cannot totally tear ourselves away from petroleum thus must reduce it as much as possible to conserve it for the years to come.  Petroleum products do not include only gasoline, oil and kerosene, but we also get coke, asphalt, tar, waxes and starting material to make other products such as plastics from the residuals (material left at the end of the distillation tower process).  The computer I am typing on now has been made using petroleum by-products.  Hospital equipment is made using these products, and increased especially since latex has been found to be sometimes a deadly allergen to some patients and health-care workers. Car parts, furniture, (the seat I'm sitting in) some clothing parts such as shoes or bra rings, hair articles, toothbrushes, pipes, house building articles and tools, and the list goes on and on.  We are truly enormously dependent upon this dwindling resource. 
Using Hubbert's Peak model, some geologists have predicted that the world's production peak would be between 2004-2008.  The Geological Survey claims it is further off in the 2040's.  But regardless, and considering the enormous incline of use by developing countries such as India and China, our resource is not finite, and will eventually decline to a point that will force people to move into another way of life.