(04-12-2017 10:44 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:17 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Here is the problem that the left has with energy. They very badly, desperately want to get off fossil fuels immediately. But they don't have anything to go to instead. Wind, solar, and geothermal can't move cars, which is what something like 70% of our oil use. As long as electric cars are limited in range--I can't drive one to Dallas and back, for example--they are of vey limited usefulness. The only way to overcome that is to get more and more on the road and keep improving that, so efforts in that direction are good and useful and should be continued aggressively. But we aren't there yet.
So the focus is on doing everything they can to make oil less attractive. That's stupid. We should be doing everything we can to develop viable alternatives. But until those alternatives are viable--and an electric car that gets roughly the length of the average round trip commute is not viable for trips and not even viable for commuting for at least half the population--trying to force things toward nonviable options by penalizing the viable options we have is counterproductive.
It's time for the global warming crowd to admit the existence of the elephant in the room--we don't have a currently viable alternative to oil and gas. That being the case, and until that changes, we should try to get the oil and gas that we do need in the safest and most environmentally friendly and least politically and militarily dangerous way. That means building pipelines, that means drilling domestically, that means nuclear, that means making the most of alternatives that do exist with current technology--Brazilian sugar cane ethanol comes to mind here--and that also means requiring available safety measures which would have prevented things like Macondo.
In our rush to get off fossil fuels, we cannot forget that the way off does not exist yet. So don't try to force things down a path that does not exist.

I agree on the pipeline front, and that the general push back from the left is stupid because that is the safest and most effective way to transport fossil fuel. And also to a certain extent that MANY on the left are unrealistic about energy needs and the ability to get off of fossil fuels.
But I disagree that we shouldn't push things towards nonviable - I'd argue that this is exactly what we should do. If you don't push toward nonviable, you run the risk of only getting there once it is too late. It's all about balance, trying to be smart about conventional energy production, while going full steam ahead into alternative development. Maybe I am just that out of the loop on energy policy, but it seemed the the past two administrations were very much in that boat, and it is the current admin that is wildly changing their stance on energy and looking backwards, instead of forwards.

Do you really believe that it is intelligent policy to push toward nonviable when viable options are available?

That's where I think we lose our sanity. There are viable options currently available that would reduce our carbon footprint. So let's do them now, rather than forcing nonviable options because they feel good.

100% intelligent. Because the benefit of the government is that you can more easily fund technology with high capital and research costs when it is in its infancy because you do not need to see a direct ROI. Then you eventually can have private industries take over and unleash the full potential of that technology. For example, without NASA, I doubt you see all of the private space flight companies you do today.

I think we may be on different pages about pushing though, and what that means.

I think it is intelligent to fully fund research and development into the possible technologies of the future, and to give funding to the scientists who want to be on the forefront of science and technology development.

But pushing for the nonviable does not mean ignoring and completely throwing out conventional energy sources - which is what I stated in my original response. You can still at least create an environment that is no unduly burdensome to those technologies. The Obama administration really only did that to coal, which is one technology that is not really in our best interests to keep pursuing.

They did not make it unduly burdensome to continue to develop oil and gas resources, and I know that because we are still producing a crap ton of it. They may have increased the burden, but not to an extent that it was causing the industry to flounder (but if you can provide evidence of that, I'll listen).