Even before the war began I’ve been a staunch proponent of the Bush Administration’s policy on Iraq. And longtime readers of this blog can attest to the fact that my support for the war has been unwavering. But after hearing the latest news on Iraq, I can no longer bite my tongue. It’s finally time I speak out against this grave injustice.
I know we’re supposed to stick with the story line that we went to war to find WMDs (wink, wink) and to liberate the people of Iraq (nudge, nudge). I realize we had to tell the UN something and that was the story we came up with. Fine. I was willing to stick to the script as long as it allowed us to further our real goal: to seize Iraqi oil so that we could have low gas prices.
I realize that as a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I'm not supposed to speak about this topic in public. But I simply can’t keep quiet any longer. Seriously, isn’t it time we came clean about our real motives for going to war? It’s not like we’re convincing anybody. According to The Economist, a Pew survey shows that 60% of Germans and 58% of French believed that the war on terrorism was being fought “to control Middle East oil." When you can’t even fool the French, its probably time to drop the ruse. (Ok, Frenchies, we admit it. C'est la vie.)
Besides, by pretending the war wasn’t about oil we’re allowing the Administration to screw that part of it up without being able to criticize them for it. We must put a stop to this reckless disregard for our national interest and we need to do so quickly. We have to take a stand before I'm forced to take out a second mortgage in order to fill up my Hummer.
Just look at what we’re doing to the Iraqi oil industry. As King of Fools points out, “We secured it. We removed the explosives intended to sabotage it. We rebuilt the infrastructure around it. We dredged the harbor required to transport it. And then we gave it back." Indeed, we did. For shame. How can Donald Rumsfeld sleep at night? Many of our boys made the ultimate sacrifice for that most noble of reasons -- so that we could buy all the gas we wanted as cheaply as possible. Are we seriously going to besmirch their memories by letting the Iraqis control their own oil? What kind of occupying force have we become?
And what about the poor Brits? We convinced Tony Blair to go along for the ride by telling him he’d have cheap petrol for his MINI Cooper. Now gas in the UK is $5.79 per gallon (it probably sounds even worse when you convert it to metric). As the great British patriot Morrissey would say, “That joke isn’t funny anymore."
But the most infuriating part -- my hands are shaking with rage just typing this -- is that the Iraqis are getting gas at five cents a gallon! Five cents! You can’t buy raw sewage in America for five cents a gallon! And why do the Iraqis need such cheap gas anyway? For heaven’s sakes, they don’t even drive SUVs! What, is it for the long daily commute to Fallujah where their job is to fight the infidels?
Forget the Iraqis, I’m the one that needs cheaper gas. I’m the one who has to carpool with a guy who drives a VW Beetle and smells like patchouli oil. Heck, I volunteered to go to war just so I could afford not to ride to work in a car with a “Visualize World Peace" bumper sticker.
I don’t know what Paul Bremer is doing over there but he better get his act together. I can live with his failure to find any WMDs. But if he doesn’t find me some cheap gas pretty darn quick, President Bush may soon find that Ghazi al-Yawar isn’t the only one who’s head of an “interim government."
Good satire. The oil theory for this war tends to go down the tubes when you consider the stupidity of it: The direct costs of the war, international fallout, and socio/political-economic disruption alone would dissuade any sane-minded politician bent on oil. Simply adding the fact that short term profit margins are slim for oil comapnies and no American firm would willingly invest in such an unstable region for five or so years without a lucrative contract and protection, you simply add icing to the cake. Any you slice it, we're extracting that oil at a LOSS. That means any anyone going in for oil was an idiot. It would have been ecnomically and politically more expedient to buy oil from more stable regions.
Or Saddam himself...
The tax that Bush should have eliminated after the income tax cuts is the gas tax. Something like $0.30-$0.40 per gallon is federal gas tax if memory serves.
Amusing satire though.
Yeah. And what about our new colony? I was hoping to take my family to Babylon to get a nice land grant of an Iraqi date plantation. How come I'm not getting all those dates that I deserve. Sovereignty. It's just disgusting.
Wow I'm so disillusioned with this Iraqi "adventure" as the Germans loved to say. I think I should vote for Kerry so that we can let these people go back to being ruled over by thugs and people-mulchers -- and throw away all the blood, sweat, and money we've poured into the "quagmire."
Plus we're not even being "unilateralists" any more! UN approval? What's this crap?
;-)
The only "No Blood for Oil" signs I see now are the ones people take with them when they have to go fill up their cars.
Satire or not, I think it's a good question: why don't we just pump the place so dry the ground caves in? We should be sticking so many oil wells in the ground it's like watching my four kids, each with a straw, going after the same ice cream float.
Correction Kevin: Oil wells and date palms. We can't forget the date palms.
Seriously though, if we really wanted more oil production, wouldn't the Marines be policing Venezuela right now?
Answer to Kevin: It's their oil and frankly, we don't need it. We have LOTS of oil in Alaska, if anyone remembers. If we could beat back the tree-huggers for five minutes to get the proper legislation passed, then we could open up the vast oil reserves up North and drive oil price well under a dollar. We actually have to import a large portion of our oil by legal edict. You can thank Cater for that one.
Another problem is that refinery capacity in the US is fixed. Until someone wants to risk the rage of the NIMBY types and bring new refineries online we're stuck. All the additional output in the world won't matter. Add to that all the "botique" blend required by environmental regulations in various parts of the country and you can see why gas is so expensive.
Plus you just know that those scientists are lying about oil being a non-renewable resource. I mean, we haven't run out yet, have we? I don't think God would have put us here without enough oil to last until the End of Days. And after that, who needs oil? :) :) :)
Ok, I'll feed the new troll :-) In point of fact mark, you might be half right. The tide of entropy means that all resources we now have are finite. If the world is going to some day end, then it is reasonable to suppose that we'll have enough to sustain ourselves as a race until that time comes. But enough of down and dirty theology.
More vocal wings of the scientific community have been predicting the drying up of oil supply since the 60s. That alone says something. Is the oil supply finite? Yes. Is it going to run any time soon? As far as I can see, no. You look at the sheer size of the Earth, how much space humans take up, and you realize that our perspective is a little skewed. The doomsday predictions will continue unfulfilled for a long while.
The problem with most renewable energy resources is that they are either unreliable or you end putting more energy into making the fuel than you get out, which sort of defeats the purpose of using the energy source in the first place. Wind energy has definitely made some head way in development and tidal energy holds potential. If someone could figure out reliable solar-powered fuel synthesis, I would definitely pay attention.
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David, I don't know how old you are, but I would be willing to bet that you will see the end of petroleum as a viable energy source on anything approaching the current scale. I have much more faith in geologists than in your unsubstantiated theology. How is it reasonable to assume that we will have enough oil to last until the world ends? It is not even reasonable to assume it will last until humanity dies out, which in all likelihood will be much sooner.
The person you characterized as a troll makes much more sense than you do. How long do you think those "vast oil reserves up North" will power even just our own nation? A couple of years, maybe. How come there isn't more outrage about wasteful consumption like racing? Oh yeah, the economy. Too bad we aren't more concerned about the economy of my children's future.
Rob,
The undeveloped oil fields in the Alaskan Refuge would allow the US to double the current output of the lower 48 states. This would go on for more than a couple of years, more like 15-20 years minimum. Would this seriously impact prices in the US? Maybe. It's just enough to power California roughly. But it would take years to bring online.
However, look at whale oil. We're completely out of it. I can't find it anywhere. There's not a drop to be had within 1,000 miles from my house. How will I keep my lamps running? Oh. Right. Just flip the switch.
Now consider this new technology. It's really interesting.
Steven Den Beste over at USS Clueless has done several essays on "new energy technologies" and has concluded that none of them would provide enough production volume to make a significant dent in energy independence or oil prices.
Waste-to-Oil has three limitations:
1) The amount of agricultural waste available (is it enough to produce enough volume of oil?)
2) Transportation expenses of that waste to processing (if you burn two gallons of oil taking one gallon's worth of raw materials to the plant, you're not coming out ahead on the deal).
3) The efficiency of the process and the expense of the plant and non-waste materials (if you burn two gallons of oil to make one, you're also not coming out ahead).
David Marcoe, with the wisdom of the Gods at his fingertips (as always), says:
"If the world is going to some day end, then it is reasonable to suppose that we'll have enough to sustain ourselves as a race until that time comes."
So, David, which is best estimate in your opinion of the number of years the world's oil reserves are going to last us (at the present rate of consumption, which is most likely a minimum rate given the inevitable growth of the world's population): 50 years, 100 years, 500 years, or 5000 years, or 50,000 years.
Any evidence you are able to cite to support your opinion would be appreciated, of course, but hardly expected.
Ken I'm not sure read the article.
1. The one plant in Missouri turns 200 tons of turkey guts into 200-500 barrels of oil per day. Pigs are larger than turkeys. Let's say a large pig-slaughterhouse based plant could ingest 500 tons of pig parts a day, this would be converted into up to 1200 barrels of oil/day. At this rate if you have over 1000 large plants you could produce well over 1M barrels per day.
2. When the waste-to-oil plant is on-site, the transportation costs are nearly zero. Plus people are paying to have garbage carted away, and are running out of places to put it. People will pay you to take their waste after they've transported it to you, you wouldn't have to pay extra for transportation. It's a sunk cost of waste disposal.
3. The plant is 80% efficient, and uses it's own output to fuel the reactions. The 200 barrels of oil are net after fueling the system. The plant uses technologies that are readily available, but I have no idea how much it cost.
Jim:
The undeveloped oil fields in the Alaskan Refuge would allow the US to double the current output of the lower 48 states. This would go on for more than a couple of years, more like 15-20 years minimum.
I'd like to see where you got those numbers. The most optimistic estimates I've seen show that the ANWR contains 16 billion barrels of oil. At our 2002 consumption rate of roughly 20 million barrels per day, the most optimistic estimates is that we would get 800 days worth of oil out of ANWR. That's 2.2 years worth, and that's assuming that we're able to suck every drop out. There's a possibility that the actual reserve there could be six days worth:
Oh, and it would be a minimum of ten years from the time arctic drilling is approved and the time that oil could be brought to market.
I can't find a source on this, but I recall hearing that the majority of Alaskan oil recovered today isn't even sold to the US, but to Japan and Australia, where it can be sold for more money.
"Any evidence you are able to cite to support your opinion would be appreciated, of course, but hardly expected."
No, it wouldn't be appreciated, because your saying that to condescend me. And you should have figured out by now that I don't directly cite that often and I have said so in the past. I far better things to do than to devote that much typing to turning a comment into an essay (unless I'm board or particularly interested in the subject). So take your turn your arrogance off when posting. Thanks.
David:
I'd hate to break it to you, but making claims and refusing to back them up with sources, even when challenged to do so, comes across as pretty damned arrogant. It's like saying "If you don't already agree with me, it's not worth my time to try to convince you." Which is fine, I suppose, but then why bother engaging in debate at all?
David isn't interested in debating. He just wants to shout in the face of those "whining libruls." If I were him, I'd probably hide under my rock, too, if were caught between arguing that we have more than 100 years of oil reserves left and arguing that the world is going to end before then.
Poor little Mr. Marcoe. Just wait until the next round of Abu Ghraib treachary comes to light. Then there'll be nothing to do but wait for Bushie's comeuppance in November (or earlier). Mark my words.
Hey David and Kevin and others. We libruls were right, you were wrong: