There's huge amounts of fossil fuel energy locked up in rocks in various places in the world, refered to as oil shale. Its actually a kind of sand
stone having a pre-petroleum fossil fuel called kerogen in it. Is this the holy grail of fossil fuel energy which can last hundreds of years until we
replace fossil fuels with nuclear power and other alternatives? Some of the articles here say that kerogen is the most abundant fossil fuel on earth.
We don't need more fossil fuel! We need to implement alternative energy sources immediately.12AX7 - 2-8-2009 at 07:12
Trouble is, it's not deep enough to gooify, hence it's still kerogen. So you have to add energy before you can pump it out. I suppose when carbon
becomes precious enough that underunity production is undertaken (i.e., more energy is put into extraction than yielded by the product's raw fuel
value), it will be useful. Until then, it's just a rock I guess.
We don't need more fossil fuel! We need to implement alternative energy sources immediately.
That's an opinion. Here's another. I agree the ideal situation would be a little panel on the roof of your house or car that supplied all the free
energy you could want. Until that becomes practical I'm content to use fossil fuel or whatever is cheapest to maintain my standard of living. If the
brain washed want to go to a cold bed when the sun goes down and live like a 17th century peasant then go ahead. Just don't expect the rest of us to
follow you back. We are not running out of energy.
My take on coal, oil shale and nuclear reactors is they are all practical in a technical sense, but not politically for the people who own the world,
I'll call them oligarchs, as that's what they are, have decided to keep the price of energy high by various means. One of these is to hold a pillow
over the face of any newborn energy sources. This can take the form of buying up the rights to to shale reserves, coal reserves, and uranium ores.
This effectively removes them from the market. Another facet of the strategy is to hinder any development by obstruction, such as shutting down the
nuclear waste depository in Nevada, shutting down coal plants, removing dams on rivers to allow fish spawning, not allowing power transmission lines
to be built, and finding problems with everything that is not 'green'. One example is the Global Warming argument and the Cap and Trade Tax on carbon
fuel. Another example is the huge swaths of land removed from use and accessibility by declaring them wilderness preserves.
You may ask "Why would they do that"? In my opinion they already have all the money, wealth and privilege they want. What they work for now is to
preserve it. This is nothing more than a way to keep us down on the farm. Maybe I'm all wet on this idea, but I'd love to here some discussion about
it.
The history of the 20th century has been defined by who had access to energy. Wars were fought and millions died to control this essential factor of
wealth and it's other leg power. You can almost define your standard of living by how much energy you have at your disposal. The wealthy are known as
'Jet Setters', and some even own their own jets, boats and toys. Even the head prophet of Global Warming cult, Al Gore , spends energy with abandon
while doing 'God's Work' converting the sinful (non-green). Al's power bill at his personal castle, was shown to be an order of magnitude higher than
a normal US household. That's only at ONE of his homes. Of course the oligarchs have many homes and travel around the world like birds following the
ripening grain and the summer flowers. They don't like seeing hordes of peasants wandering about ruining the scenery and littering the beauty.
All of this opinion is just a long winded way of saying they won't develop oil shale because it's not in the interests of the people who run the show.
Obviously it can be done. They can even make it out of coal, of which we have even more of than shale.
Does anyone remember the comment by a British royal on seeing all the farm workers going by train to the beach in the 19th century?
[Edited on 2-8-2009 by Mr. Wizard]unionised - 2-8-2009 at 09:44
Just because al Gore is a hypocrite doesn't mean that global warming is something to encourage.
We need to stop pretending that we can keep burning fossil fuels without it making any difference.
"Does anyone remember the comment by a British royal on seeing all the farm workers going by train to the beach in the 19th century? "
No, enlighten me please (though you might want to remember that the royals talk a lot of bollocks). Mr. Wizard - 2-8-2009 at 10:48
Al, one of our self appointed royalty, isn't just a hypocrite ,he doesn't give a F#-flying-#K about it. It's just a tool he uses to promote the
program of control and tax. An analogy might be made about pedophile preachers being hypocrites but they are right tithing.
All the government programs, no matter how effective , irrational or harebrained, have one thing in common; more government control.
I'd like to enlighten you about the British royal's comment, but I don't remember who said it or exactly how it was said. He saw a train load of farm
workers going to some holiday beach on their day off, and it bothered him that they should be allowed to go there. He made a comment about not
allowing them to travel. Basically it was that the hoi polloi should stay home and out of sight, a common sentiment then, and now.
12AX7 - 2-8-2009 at 10:52
Wow, only two on topic posts. A record?
*lock*Mr. Wizard - 2-8-2009 at 11:02
I know it looks 'off topic' but what is the reason we don't use oil shale? Is it technical or political? Nicodem - 2-8-2009 at 11:31
Wrong formulation of the question. It should be: "What are the technical obstacles?"
No more political discussions and no more ideology spreading. You all know where this always leads and you know the forum rule about it!Vogelzang - 2-8-2009 at 14:19
A lot of the Democrats need to appease their wacko environmentalist supporters.
Quote:
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who has emerged as the Senate's leading oil shale opponent. Salazar inserted the aforementioned moratorium into an
omnibus spending bill last December, and in May he proposed a new bill that would extend the moratorium another year.
The potential value of this immense oil resource of America is almost beyond comprehension. Enough oil is held in these natural reservoirs to fill
many times over every tank, cask, barrel, can and other container of every kind in the world.
Technical obstacles could be overcome, given sufficient value. Just look at seabed mining for manganese. But the USA has far cheaper ways of getting
it's oil. Just destabilize some middle-eastern country with sanctions, invade them on some pretext when they are softened up, and then dole out the
oil to the coalition of the willing. Mr. Wizard - 3-8-2009 at 08:25
"Technical obstacles could be overcome, given sufficient value. Just look at seabed mining for manganese. But the USA has far cheaper ways of getting
it's oil. Just destabilize some middle-eastern country with sanctions, invade them on some pretext when they are softened up, and then dole out the
oil to the coalition of the willing. "
True. The Manganese nodule mining was a cover story for the building of a ship ( Glomar Explorer) to recover a sunken Soviet submarine. This is a
most interesting story and topic all by itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Glomar_Explorer_(T-AG-193)
Was manganese nodule mining ever commercially practiced?12AX7 - 3-8-2009 at 11:37
I'd rather mine them for cobalt. Cobalt is just about semiprecious.
Timargyrium - 3-8-2009 at 12:12
AFAIK, the Chinese have been pretty much the exclusive miners of Mn in the Pacific for at least 15 yrs.
A friend at the USGS facility at U of H here used to fabricate a lot of deep/exploration equipment and was outraged that we were not permitted to mine
what is our own "backyard". Something to do with some treaty the US agreed to.
The oil-shale topic is an interesting one. I unfortunately agree with the argument put forth by Mr. Wizard. Irrespective of the economics, there are
powers/groups that will squelch utilization of this type of resource.unionised - 3-8-2009 at 12:14
One potential technical problem with exploiting oil shale is that we can do without the extra CO2 in the air.Vogelzang - 8-8-2009 at 17:14
Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! 'Nature not man responsible for recent global warming...little or none of late 20th century warming and
cooling can be attributed to humans'
For more on trends, recent work by Compo and Sardeshmukh (Climate Dynamics, 32:33-342, 2009) is illuminating. The abstract includes the statement:
“Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans
rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”
Which to say that recent climate changes are mostly driven by changes in ocean temperature, in particular the Southern Oscillation, rather than by
changes in land temperature.
Sorry, a Geocities site comes in below the Onion as a meaningful scientific source.
As for using oil shale, Estonia gets the majority of it's energy from oil shale, which it has some of the highest quality reserves of in the world.
Estonian institutes have published a number of papers on the general topic, including the unpleasant effects from the sulphur oxides released. Vogelzang - 9-8-2009 at 14:23
