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oil prices, drilling & ammunition for Obama
As things stand, he's looking vulnerable: according to current polling, too many Americans have bought the right wing meme that global warming either doesn't exist or isn't man made.
Too many are also ignoring all rational arguments that any drilling started now is going to have absolutely no impact on prices and they want offshore drilling.
He needs to really focus on the dreadful climate impact that's going on now. Thankfully at last today he's been given more ammunition:
Today's Science Daily:
"Expect More Droughts, Heavy Downpours, Excessive Heat and Intense Hurricanes Due to Global Warming
Today showed Bush & McCain touring Iowa, and McCain
maybe backing off from ANWR.
We need Obama to be touring and linking the heartbreak to just why he's not jumping on board the right wing rush to drill.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080619175522.htm
Comments (13)
Another issue that is dear to many peoples' hearts, whether they know it or not.
'commended.
June 19, 2008 11:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's pointless to think about not drilling in ANWR. It will happen... and probably before people want to go nuclear.
When people are freezing in their homes this winter or next, and the price of oil is at (say) $160/barrel, a choice will have to be made.
Most people don't like dealing with the tradeoffs of reality. However, a choice will be forced on us.
It will be most interesting to see which people worry more about the female polar bear and her two cubs on a melting ice floe, or the freezing single mother and her two children in an apartment in Detroit.
It will be a painful choice either way, but I'm betting most people will come done on the side of their own species -- and long-term issues be damned.
The faster the so-called progressives come to grips with this terrible choice, the faster we can make progress in trying to have some control on the future. Both sides of the political spectrum have their heads in the sand on this issue which may already be past fail-safe.
June 20, 2008 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
You make it sound like drilling in ANWR is going to be some sort of split second decision. A news story appears about freezing people, and the next day there's derricks in ANWR.
There will be a hard decision to make in the future about energy, but I think nuclear's going to carry the day.
June 20, 2008 2:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
ANWR won't be a split second decision, but already my Congressional Rep is trying to collect popular opinion to promote the environmentally safe form of drilling there.
In some sense, the whole things is crazy anyway -- it's like we've plundered the planet and now we are worried about the last little patch.
Nuclear will be part of electrical energy going forward -- assuming, of course, more plants are built. But the real problem is long term storage. But the time Yucca Mountain got up and running, Las Vegas had grown large enough to put a stop to it.
It was a Democrat (Harry Reid) that was able to nail the mountain shut.
There were also problems with overruns. I've toured Yucca and it was impressive to see how some of the same companies we know and love from the "rebuilding Iraq" effort are part of developing Yucca. These companies then played a game of chicken with the DOE and the politics became overwhelming.
So now we are left with no storage place for the waste. Current storage units weren't designed for the length of time they have been in use (40-50 years).
Nuclear energy also will not provide the petrochemical inputs you need for high-yield farming. That's another reason why you will see drilling in ANWR.
Maybe the general upcoming failure of the airline industry will finally convince the public we are in a new age with uncharted territory. But when panic sets in, ANWR will be drilling with a crash program.
June 20, 2008 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is already promising 100 more nukes:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/McCain_invoking_India_vows_100_N-plants/articleshow/3146202.cms
I think many bad decisions will be made soon. Maybe with Obama in charge, a few less.
June 20, 2008 7:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking of drilling, and nuclear energy, and nuclear waste..
If Yucca Mountain is a political landmine, then the advocates for nuclear should start talking about long-term storage/disposal. It's a discussion we should really have.
The only idea I've ever heard that I thought might be acceptable in the long term, although it is not technologically viable just yet, is drilling through the earth's crust and injecting waste into the liquid mantle. I'm no geologist though, so I'm hoping someone will tell me whether this idea is totally a pipe dream or not. It would seem to me that molten reflux back up the hole would quickly cool and solidify; you'd have a hole leftover that was still, say, 60-75% of the way through the crust to the mantle. And the next time you wanted to do it, it would take a lot less energy. Naturally, you'd pick a tectonically stable spot where the earth's crust was thin; I've heard it's as thin as 25 km or less in some places on land, 10 km in the ocean.
Theoretically, the nuclear waste would be diluted with all of the other liquid metal down there, and infinitesimally trace amounts of radioactivity would eventually appear out of volcanoes, at spreading mid ocean ridges, and other places where mantle material sometimes emerges through the crust. This is a solution to pollution through dilution; compared to the amount of nuclear waste humanity can possibly make, the total volume of the earth's mantle must still be gargantuan.
Here's a link to the deepest hole ever drilled - you guessed it, it was the Soviets, not the Americans. Took them 24 years, but they were going slow 'cuz it was for science.
So someone give me an informed guess about feasibility, cost, whether the energy investment is worth it, what technology needs to be developed, how many years into the future before this might happen, etc.
June 20, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with Yucca Mountain had nothing to do with the engineering or geology. At least, those issues weren't the reason why it was shut down.
The geology is amazingly stable at it took years of geological survey to find and verify the quality of the storage site.
The issue, which your hole solution wouldn't fix, is transportation. When the initial sites were understudy, beginning in 1978, Las Vegas didn't have the same political clout as it does today. Ditto when Yucca Mountain was essentially chosen as the site in 1987.
There were protests of all kinds (including those of Native Americans), but the thing that really hurt (besides the overrun) was that the transportation of the nuclear waste would focus all that material on freeways near Las Vegas.
Concerns about accidental spills -- and later terrorism -- right in Vegas' backyard made for a political hot potato. With Harry Reid's ascension (he is from NV after all), the final nail in the coffin of Yucca Mountain was nailed.
So the problem, at least in this implementation of a national storage facility, is that where ever it is, nuclear waste from all over the country will be moving towards it.
Of course, having a centralized facility, or at least just a few regionalized large facilies, is the only way to dispose of the waste in terms of long-term storage and security. Therefore, this becomes a very political topic.
The engineering is another story altogether. Remember that the government wants the facility securely sealed for 10,000 years -- and the pyramids are only 4,000 years old.
June 20, 2008 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right. I saw the "60 minutes" on Yucca where they interviewed Spence Abraham on the subject. They quoted a time frame of like 20 or 40 years to get all the nation's nuclear waste from where it is to Nevada. So I know all about the pros and cons of the Yucca site.
You're correct to say that a borehole has the same transportation problem. Wherever you put it, getting the waste to it will take decades.
I mention the borehole idea because it seems like an attractive alternative to the uncertainty of a storage site remaining viable for 10,000 or more years.
The half life of plutonium is 24,000 years, so I'm thinking 100,000 years would be a more appropriately conservative goal.
June 20, 2008 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I assure you, if we got to something for 10000 years, that would be an engineering feat of the ages. Literally.
;-)
June 20, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just for your info, SPQR,
While you no doubt know at least 98% more than the average citizen about nuclear waste disposal (even knowing what Yucca Mtn is puts you probably at 85% percentile!), I would caution you on thinking that a 60 MINUTES story is enough to feel comfortable on the topic.
60 MINUTES has about 12 minutes to tell a story -- and they try to make it entertaining.
I know this from having been involved in some of the topics that 60 MINUTES has chronicled over the years.
Of course, I suspect you already are aware of these issues.
June 20, 2008 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
the 60 minutes episode i saw isn't the only bit of info i've ever seen or read on yucca. we cover it in an undergraduate course that i TA for.
i also read up on it outside of my duties educating undergrads, simply out of a personal interest that i'm sure you're aware of.
June 20, 2008 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting. What class? Geology? How much time do you spend on it?
June 22, 2008 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
it's called environmental analysis and design.
we spend about 3 weeks on energy, and at least one of those weeks on nuclear energy and yucca.
we also refer back to the yucca case study whenever we talk about environmental politics and policy.
June 23, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
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