Interesting Article

I just read a very interesting article on the Fox News Forum by James Pinkerton.  The gist of the article is that whomever is elected as the 44th President brings Arnold Schwarzenegger aboard as the newly created position of Energy and Environment Czar.

Rick

Just sent to Obama and McCain campaigns

Excuse me a moment, Obama Campaign staffers, and McCain campaign staffers. I know that nothing I write can get anywhere close to either candidate before passing through several levels of staff, so I am addressing this to you, the worker who will read it for the first time. It does get a bit wordy, I apologize for that, but I have made it as brief as I can without sacrificing the point.

I am asking both candidates to respond to the following question. If you are elected, and re-elected, at the time you leave office after 8 years, please give me your best estimate of the following statistics:

Percentage of our oil we are importing (1973 = 35%, 2008 = 60%+)

Percentage of our energy derived from renewable sources (1973 8.4%, 2007 7% (year end, latest figures I have found, so far))

Price we will have to pay to put one gallon of gas in our car (we all know how ugly that number is today)

I will decide my vote based on the responses to this request. I can see several possible outcomes:

Neither candidate responds – I will understand that politics as normal is the rule of the day. I will also conclude that neither candidate has a solid grasp on the significance of our energy crisis, and has no solid plan to solve it.

I get a response from one or both campaigns, whether directly, or through listening to the campaign hype. Any candidate able to communicate an response, no matter what their vehicle, will get one “Atta Candidate”,¹ or AC for short. added to their account.

I will be listening to all of the hype, and once that first AC is earned, further ACs may be earned your ability to convince me that you know what you are talking about, and/or, that you are indeed committed to eliminating our oil imports as fast as reasonably possible.

My vote will go to whomever has the most ACs when I cast my vote.

A word of warning, however, don’t be setting off my Energy BS Detector. I have some experience in the energy industry, worked in it for more than 30 years. Not only in the industry, my specialty was Procurement. I have been trained in BS detection by some of the best around, including some senior level staff from Bechtel. My experience, combined with the wealth of statistical information published by the Department of Energy, give me a pretty well developed ability to spot weaknesses, and of course, outright mis-statements of fact. An outright lie will automatically trigger a Full BS Alert (FBSA), which resets the AC score to negative 5. I may also issue lesser BS1s, BS2s, or BS3s, (each reducing your score of ACs by that number) for lesser instances, at my sole discretion.

Considering the profound role Energy plays in our current crises, I have decided to focus my efforts on this arena. I will apply your net AC/BS score to all of the issues, and vote based on that score. If you’re BS’ing me on Energy, I will assume you are BS’ing me everywhere. Accumulating ACs on Energy subject, an area I understand, also increases your credibility on the rest of the issues, where matters are not so simple to define. Convince me you have the best plan, and the commitment to stay with it, I will trust you with it all.

Good luck on the campaign, I know it will be entertaining. With my BS Detector by my side, I will be able to appreciate the entertainment value far more this time. And, I believe, better meet my responsibility to the United States of America by casting the most carefully and accurately considered vote of my life. This is as it should be. The issues our vote will decide this time are at least as important as any in my 41 years of being able to vote, perhaps, as I personally believe, even more so. I owe this much to my country, along with an apology for taking so long to figure it out.

1. “Atta Candidate” or “AC” comes from the old fashioned American slang term of “Atta Boy” but modified for political correctness.

Rick Olson

US Citizen retired and living in Thailand

Found some Great Info

And some not so great, sigh.  More about the not so great, later.  While researching to verify Fox New’s statement that oil imports for 1973 were 35%, I ran across a good article at the Wiki on the 1973 Oil Crisis.  Fascinating article, lots of details I had forgotten about.  How many of us remember what initiated that first Oil Crisis?  I didn’t.

The 1973 oil crisis began on October 17, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship oil to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (the United States, its allies in Western Europe, and Japan).

There is also a fascinating chart right beneath that opening statement of the article, showing the price history of oil from 1861 through 2007.  Wow, the spike now is almost as big as the spike of 1973 and 1979 combined.  The price of oil did not pass $40 per barrel until sometime after 2001, I can’t tell exactly from the chart.  Even when historical prices are adjusted for inflation into 2007 dollars, we only crossed $40 one time, at the end of the run up from the 1979 crisis.  Today it is $140 plus.  The cost of crude has more than trippled in less than 7 years.  Mind boggling.

I have not yet read it all, but also looks a very good source of accurate facts to help explain how we got here from where we were in 1973.  Be careful if you read it, the data does tend to lead you to some rather disturbing conclusions.  Have a look, the link is above.

I will write a separate piece on the not so good information later, but don’t want to let this much to wait.  The other issue is one source that is giving data in a very confusing way.  Whether deliberate or accidental, it sure does present golden opportunities to distort the data.  I need to do some more homework on that one.

Misinformation, hype, emotional arguments are all on the agenda for an article on how much they are hurting us in trying to solve the energy issues, so I will wait till I have that one finished and use it there, it will be a good example.

I have added the Required Reading tag to this article.

Rix

Found a Problem, a couple actually

The biggest problem I found applies equally to both candidates, that is an abundance of well written words, with a severe shortage of facts, and to total void of footnoted facts.  Both espouse doing great things, but neither tells specifically how much energy that will save, or produce, or how much it will reduce the cost.  Neither of them tie it all together and show me how this will lead to energy independence in 20 or 30 years.  Sorry to say, but after listening to similar nice words for 35 years and finding ourselves again in a crisis, I must insist on the facts to back up proposals.

Here is a specific problem.  Obama says this:

Obama’s plan will reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels per day, by 2030. This will more than offset the equivalent of the oil we would import from OPEC nations in 2030.

But Fox News says this:

During the oil embargo in 1973, we got only 35 percent of our oil from foreign sources. By 1995, we were up to 45 percent. And so far this year, we are getting 61 percent of our oil from foreign sources.

By those numbers, reducing our oil imports by 35% by 2030 as Obama proposes will still leave us importing a greater portion of our oil than we did in 1973.  A 35% reduction will not get us there, unless Fox News is lying.  Somebody is blowing smoke at us, which one.  I’m going to find out, I am going to spend the time and find the facts from reputable sources and I’ll show you what I find. And I will tell you how long it takes to find them.  Care to guess??

Rix

Rix