Articles tagged with: OPEC
Just Two Choices? Come On.
Columnist Kathleen Parker wrote in her column in the Washington Post, Tuesday August 4, that the Waxman-Markey energy bill now before Congress, would make us less secure if passed. She claims we only have two choices: we can either be green or we can be less dependent on foreign oil. Her reasoning is a bit convoluted. She is assuming that we continue business as usual. To her alternative energy is a non-starter. Any attempts by the government to cap CO2 emissions will cause a stampede to OPEC for our oil supplies. We will certainly continue to need oil for some time as we transition to a fossil fuel free economy. Most of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico, but there is some new developments that could alter that...
Running on Empty - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Is There Really an Energy Crisis?
Not Fossil Fuel?
Just what are fossil fuels? The big three are oil, natural gas, and coal. There are other products derived from them, but they are the primary fossil fuels on which our economy runs and depends. The term fossil fuel refers to fuels originating from the remains of ancient plants and animals buried deep in the earth’s crust hundreds of millions of years ago, transformed into hydrocarbons by the earth’s heat and great pressure. They are not the result of dinosaurs dying and decaying as some suggest, but in the case of oil, they result from microscopic zooplankton deposited on ancient ocean floors. Coal is the result of plant matter from ancient forests being buried and subjected to great heat and pressure. Natural gas results from the same basic process, except that gas is the result of higher temperature and pressure. Gas is often found together with coal and oil. They all contain a mix of hydrogen and carbons in differing amounts and are therefore called hydrocarbons. Incomplete combustion of fossil fuels generates pollution, most of which is carbon dioxide (CO2). The hydrogen and carbon, when combined with oxygen, are what burns. Fossil fuels are finite commodities, and our use of them affects everything throughout our country and the world. Modern society can’t exist without them. Unfortunately, one of these days they will be gone.
Running on Empty: Introduction
Check out the new book cover design by Book Surge
Running On Empty
A Handbook for Understanding and Surviving the Energy Crisis
Crisis (Kri’sis) A crucial point or situation in the course of anything; a turning point. An unstable condition in political, international or economic affairs in which an abrupt or decisive change is impending.
—From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
Introduction
Can you imagine a world without oil? If you know all of the ways that oil impacts our modern world you will understandably have a difficult time imagining such a world. Our automobiles that give us our freedom of mobility, the food we eat, the products we buy and sell, our warm comfortable homes, all are made possible by the ease with which we can obtain oil and other fossil fuels. If you have traveled to undeveloped third world countries, you can begin to understand what a world without oil would be like. And yet even the poorest of these countries have cars, things made of plastic and many things that are dependent upon oil. The closest one can come to a place completely devoid of anything related to oil is the Amazon jungle where remote tribes with little or no contact with the outside world reside. This is not a world in which any of us would want to live...