Congress Has Made It Illegal to Develop Oil Shale!

[Thales 0]

These people really are trying to kill us. Congress has recently made it impossible to develop oil shale, a very promising resource for oil.

http://www.americansolutions.com/General/?...26-b9a87f635903

buried in a Department of Interior appropriations bill passed in December 2007 was an amendment that prevented establishing regulations for leasing land to drill for oil shale. The House passed that amendment, proposed by Rep. Mark Udall of Colorado, on June 27, 2007, by a vote of 219-215.

Udall is a democrat, of course.

How large are the known reserves?

RAND: U.S. Oil Shale Resources Are Three Times Larger Than the Current Oil Reserves in Saudi Arabia

So, oil prices are going up and up, and Congress is blaming oil companies, all the while they are doing things like this without us knowing!

[RayK 0]

There comes a time when a corrupt government becomes the worst enemy of the people it is governing. I think our government officials need to read the Declaration of Independence, "...Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government".

[Thales 0]

There comes a time when a corrupt government becomes the worst enemy of the people it is governing. I think our government officials need to read the Declaration of Independence, "...Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government".

They've probably spent more time reading Al Gore's "Earth In The Balance". But you're right, I just hope we can turn this thing around before that.

[Cometmaker 0]

These people really are trying to kill us. Congress has recently made it impossible to develop oil shale, a very promising resource for oil.

[...]

So, oil prices are going up and up, and Congress is blaming oil companies, all the while they are doing things like this without us knowing!

I don't know who forms part of your 'us' either as a target for death or for lack of knowledge, but count me out. I'm not going to be part of any complement of victims for any new hydrocarbon extraction or pyrolysis technology - I'm unfortunately already part of that complement for the oil industry as it stands. The last oil executives who can remember signing an agreement that did *not* involve compulsory unitization (collectivized rights) retired in the early 1980s. This is the only method the current oil industry knows to deal with the fact that hydrocarbons migrate, despite the fact we now have the computational ability to engage in strictly voluntary unitization, and better predictive ability of relative demand and prices that we did not have on-demand in the 1920s when compulsory unitization started.

If my fuel supply is insufficient, I'm not waiting for or urging governments to stop claiming they can assign property rights by forcing units out of multiple participating areas with separate producers and/or time-phases of production, irrespective of whether the legislation applies to the remaining non-nationalized companies (ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell) or new shale oil producers. The producers seek to lift some or all government controls on offshore drilling while continuing to accept that the state should have coercive power to force trade by making parties "better off" in the act of drilling itself. Oil companies are still providing the sanction of the victim, and I'm not counting on any "shale oil" venture to be any different.

My two gold pieces is that it's far more important to keep one's advocacy energies devoted to one or a few issues in one's hierarchy of values than to get worked up against every injustice. For example if one does what one can to prevent further infringements on and outright seizure of one's property, one can avoid straining vocal cords on every issue and take a hint that's been out there for a long time from LS9 Inc. and make one's own ready-to-use fuel in your garden shed from E. coli, using concepts one learns about in high school/college and not much capital investment (production on the scale of a household), without intervention. I think it's better to plan for and investigate such an example course of action than to pontificate and be negatively sarcastic about one's own situation.

[Cometmaker 0]

I think it's better to plan for and investigate such an example course of action than to pontificate and be negatively sarcastic about one's own situation.

To clarify, this thread is not particularly divorced from action, negative and/or sarcastic, but this statement is my reaction to many different threads.

[Free Capitalist 0]

There comes a time when a corrupt government becomes the worst enemy of the people it is governing. I think our government officials need to read the Declaration of Independence, "...Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government".

Ray, the government is not acting for its own end here, indifferent or destructive to the governed: the people are the ones who want this, or else else we would've seen an outcry and an immediate repeal of this law.

Even still, it passed just barely. Look at the voting tally, it almost didn't pass.

I think it's better to plan for and investigate such an example course of action

What, Shrugging?

[PhilO 0]

[...] and take a hint that's been out there for a long time from LS9 Inc. and make one's own ready-to-use fuel in your garden shed from E. coli, [...]

An interesting company. I like the motto on their contact page, The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It. It reminds me of a thought I've had for a long time, that "raw" weather will never be fully predictable, but eventually it will be fully controllable (and therefore tamed and predictable).

[Betsy Speicher 0]

It reminds me of a thought I've had for a long time, that "raw" weather will never be fully predictable, but eventually it will be fully controllable (and therefore tamed and predictable).

You mean we can't control the weather now by sacrificing light bulbs and SUVs and oil companies to the environmental gods while chanting Leftist slogans?

[piz 0]

...chanting Leftist slogans?

O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!

(OK, I promise, that's the last time. I'm starting to get queasy from it, anyway.)

[Capitalism Forever 0]

Ray, the government is not acting for its own end here, indifferent or destructive to the governed: the people are the ones who want this

Most Americans have probably never heard of this and would be livid with anger if they did. "Gas is $4 per gallon and Congress is working on making it more expensive?? Are they out of their freakin' MINDS?!?!"

The problem is that your average American is much more interested in making a living than in reading and deciphering political news--something you cannot really blame them for--and therefore is completely unawere of even what oil shale is, let alone of such obscure provisions buried in Department of Interior appropriations bills.

[PhilO 0]

You mean we can't control the weather now by sacrificing light bulbs and SUVs and oil companies to the environmental gods while chanting Leftist slogans?

It's interesting that those are all about controlling/destroying the men who control nature, which is all the Left knows how to do.

[Carlos 0]

[...] and take a hint that's been out there for a long time from LS9 Inc. and make one's own ready-to-use fuel in your garden shed from E. coli, [...]

An interesting company. I like the motto on their contact page, The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It. It reminds me of a thought I've had for a long time, that "raw" weather will never be fully predictable, but eventually it will be fully controllable (and therefore tamed and predictable).

We would have to control the solar cycles of our sun, the large scale circulation of the atmosphere, the temperature of the ocean, the temperature gradient of the troposphere, probably the galactic cosmic ray flux, and possibly even the magnetic field of the Earth... Some things may be impossible

[PhilO 0]

We would have to control the solar cycles of our sun, the large scale circulation of the atmosphere, the temperature of the ocean, the temperature gradient of the troposphere, probably the galactic cosmic ray flux, and possibly even the magnetic field of the Earth... Some things may be impossible

No, men would simply have to have access to sufficient energy - and knowledge - which will happen someday if humanity and civilization doesn't perish. And observe that men don't even currently have to control *any* of those things in order to have a very well controlled environment, such as the inside of a large enclosed structure. The "weather" that used to exist in the volumes now taken up by the insides of buildings in large cities has been replaced by man-made conditions; you don't need to have some impossibly large computer model of the rest of the universe, nor a need to control what the sun or cosmic rays are doing to create clouds, you simply (currently) isolate some volume then use simple engineering principles to control the temperature and humidity.

Additionally, large cities now alter the local weather conditions generally, though not in a controlled fashion now.

Given growth in knowledge and enough time, men will eventually do anything permitted within the laws of physics, including such things as using the staggering amount of energy represented by fusing deuterium extracted from seawater (which is many orders of magnitude larger than the sum total of fossil and fissile nuclear fuels). The technological distance between the cave men and 2008 is nothing compared to what will happen in the next 10,000 years, and the pathetic supposed limitations espoused in modern environmentalist-propaganda-drenched 2008 have no relation to what is actually possible.

[Mercury 0]

We would have to control the solar cycles of our sun, the large scale circulation of the atmosphere, the temperature of the ocean, the temperature gradient of the troposphere, probably the galactic cosmic ray flux, and possibly even the magnetic field of the Earth... Some things may be impossible

No, men would simply have to have access to sufficient energy - and knowledge - which will happen someday if humanity and civilization doesn't perish. And observe that men don't even currently have to control *any* of those things in order to have a very well controlled environment, such as the inside of a large enclosed structure. The "weather" that used to exist in the volumes now taken up by the insides of buildings in large cities has been replaced by man-made conditions; you don't need to have some impossibly large computer model of the rest of the universe, nor a need to control what the sun or cosmic rays are doing to create clouds, you simply (currently) isolate some volume then use simple engineering principles to control the temperature and humidity.

Additionally, large cities now alter the local weather conditions generally, though not in a controlled fashion now.

Given growth in knowledge and enough time, men will eventually do anything permitted within the laws of physics, including such things as using the staggering amount of energy represented by fusing deuterium extracted from seawater (which is many orders of magnitude larger than the sum total of fossil and fissile nuclear fuels). The technological distance between the cave men and 2008 is nothing compared to what will happen in the next 10,000 years, and the pathetic supposed limitations espoused in modern environmentalist-propaganda-drenched 2008 have no relation to what is actually possible.

Owing to my love of hot summers, several times in the past 6 months I've considered the possibility of an alternate sun, like the machine called "Icarus" unveiled by the Bond villain in Die Another Day. I would be perfectly happy in a world with year-long summers, which is one reason Australia interests me so much.

[Arnold 0]

Owing to my love of hot summers, several times in the past 6 months I've considered the possibility of an alternate sun, like the machine called "Icarus" unveiled by the Bond villain in Die Another Day. I would be perfectly happy in a world with year-long summers, which is one reason Australia interests me so much.

Stay away from Melbourne then. Tropical Queensland is where you want to be.