I wonder, though, whether he really thinks ethanol is an answer, or whether he is playing home-state politics.

EVERYONE initially thinks ethanol is the answer.  I mean growing plants - good, helping farmers - good, it all sounds very green and very benign.  That is, unless and until you start really trying to evaluate and understand what you really have.  

Don't know Obama, but my impression of him is a guy who will (eventually) listen to fairly detailed arguments (on all sides) and make thoughtful decisions.  If true, then there is hope.  

that dude has an anchorman's voice.  Not what you expect from such a skinny guy.

Thank God for Drumbeat II.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/4/26/121441/891

I know there are quite a few staffers who check in here on a regular basis.  We have a standing relationship with Roscoe Bartlett whose be a good friend to the peak oil community.  In fact, I am efforting a couple of other things at the moment with regard to political action and activism.  However, these things take time to put together...

But any ideas that you all have, please do feel free to send them our way.

What they don't seem to grasp (or admit that they grasp) is how this is a fundamentally new problem that our civilization will face. I think part of it is the politicians have a fairly sunny and optimistic face to keep up for the public. They have to talk about solutions and how they are going to solve problems. The types of radical solutions to peak oil would require them to call for shared sacrifice, higher taxes, more regulations, long term planning, instead of offering quick fix solutions that can be implemented before the next election.

So what I've done with my local work, is to combine the resource depletion issue with a plethora of other local considerations - quality of life, impact of traffic congestion, noise pollution, asthma/cancer rates, etc. New York is somewhat easier because you have a viable mass transportation system, people are genuinely concerned about global warming, people understand some regulation is needed to curb undesirable behaviors.

I guess what I'm saying is that you need to link peak oil to the other issues of the day and break it down a bit instead of dumping the whole load on them. Think of your ultimate goal and think of all the intermediate steps to get there. Start lobbying for step one and see what you can do.

A good example of this relationship can be found in the Defense Energy Working Group as created by but not facilitated per se, by members Bartlett and Israel.

How ironic  to see a solar concentrator at an oil refinery.

Arnold will appear at noon on Thursday. The under secretary of DOE spoke about the urgency of solar power. He was almost screaming his head off and only once looked at his notes. I guess the robots are reserved for the top most levels.

Now, to the natural gas issue and more.  This is one of the reasons that Matthew Simmons calls the coming natural gas crunch (or crisis, depending on how dim a view you take) worse in potential impact than the crude oil crisis.

Interestingly, the natural gas crisis is seldom discussed by politicians, even the more aware ones like Barack Obama.  If one assumes that knowledge is sparse among politicians about oil, it is almost certainly even far thinner on the subject of natural gas, a vexing subject even to the energy knowledgeable.

Really, what IS the situation with natural gas?  The gas industry and it's lobbies continue to say don't worry, there's plenty.  In the most abstract way, they are correct, when they point to the trillions of feet of gas still "out there" to be extracted.  What they don't point to as often is the way in which industrial and utility planners have come to rely on natural gas in making the great switch away from crude oil in the last three decades.  There is a lot of gas still out there to be extracted, but consumption is still climbing.

The famous NPC (National Petroleum Council) report "Balanced Options", which had on it's panel both Daniel Yergin and Matthew Simmons in 2003 (fancy that!) was very clear it's warnings that natural gas would become increasingly volatile in price, and at some point, the possibility of spot shortages and conflicts between residential, industrial, agricultural and electrical production demands would emerge.  So obvious was the threat that then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress that natural gas price issues could endanger the economy, a stunningly direct set of statements by the normally reserved head of the reserve (pun intended).

Matthew Simmons said in remarks after the famous (or infamous) Chaney energy hearings that he was not sure President Bush bought into the coming emergency on crude oil, but his people seemed to accept the natural gas crisis as real and immediate (perhaps the NPC report and Greenspan's remarks added to the persuasiveness of the argument).  It was then that we saw the Bush administration go into "action mode".  It has done so only twice since elected, in the Iraq invasion, and here, in it's full expediting of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) importation.  Those two examples should give us an idea of the priorities of this administration.  They are well aware of the U.S. peril on energy issues.

Now, let us return to Barack Obama, ethanol, the Persian Gulf, and low sulfur Diesel....(do you really think I am going to try to tie all this together?  Well, just watch me...:-)

GreyZone said something very clever in our inaugural late night Drumbeat...
"No, politics from every side is a move within a move within a move. The problem is in attempting to unwrap all the layers of action from each player."

The junior Senator from Illinois mentioned only ONE actual energy alternative in his 90 second talk about energy: ethanol.  But it is no secret that many regard ethanol not as an "alternative fuel" as Obama calls it, but as a "fuel switching" operation, basically making a liquid motor fuel from North America's natural gas bounty.  Likewise the tar sand industry.  Likewise, until renewable hydrogen is available, the "Hydrogen economy" and the fuel cell industry.  In other words, we are spending the natural gas reserves of North America multiple times, over and above the already rising consumption in electric power production, industrial use, and even ideas to grow it's use in transportation.  But Senator Obama seems to go with the assumption that everyone else does, that there MUST be the gas available for these projects, OR, he is not aware of the predicted crisis by the NPC and other energy experts...(?).

So, let's assume we somehow make Senator Obama aware.  What then?

Remember that the Democratic party is seen far and wide as much more "green" that is to say, environmentally friendly than the Republicans.  Could Obama admit the truth, and talk about what would be needed to assure the natural gas for even half of these upcoming "green projects", that is:

# Somehow renounce the low sulfur Diesel idea (referred to in the post by 12231989 I am replying to) as too draining on natural gas supply to continue?
#  Admit that ethanol was NOT an alternative fuel, and was in fact a non-renewable fossil fuel based on it's absolute (for the foreseeable future) reliance on cheap natural gas (testified to by the corn growers themselves before Congress in Washington)?
#  Admit that tar sand oil was likewise natural gas addicted?
#  Discuss the need for immediate opening of the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) to assist in the supply of natural gas in America?  (This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:  The NPC report, which predicted a supply/price crisis in natural gas BEGAN WITH THE ASSUMPTION that the OCS would be opened by 2006, and STILL foresaw a crisis.  The OCS was not perceived as a "silver bullet" but instead as ABSOLUTELY FUNDAMENTAL  to the U.S. having even a hope of matching supply and demand of natural gas in the North American market.

Lastly, and this one is BIG:  Discuss why the Iranian situation cannot be walked away from, and will almost assuredly have to be dealt with in a forceful way.  At this time, the U.S. has only one assured large supplier online for LNG, our staunchest ally in the Persian Gulf:  Qatar.  A nation ruled by a Westernized Emir, with a socially progressive wife, and a population smaller than Atlanta, it sits on the third largest known reserves of natural gas in the world (behind Russia and Iran).  The potential wealth here is STAGGERING.  Acting as the base of operations for CentCom, the occupational force that secures Iraq, is it now home to the greatest concentration of firepower in the world in such a small area, the most modern and massive force the American empire can bring to bear.  All within binocular viewing distance of the Iranian coast, and within barely a days drive of the oil reserves of Iraq, Kuwait, and the Saudi giant field of Ghawar.

 In the first post I ever wrote for TOD, I referred to it as "the small end of the funnel, in which American power is forced down a smaller and smaller tube, where the fate of the modern world will be decided."  I have had no reason to change my mind since then.  

Will potential Democratic presidential hopeful Obama be the one to tell his party that we must throw open the coast to drilling, and hold fast to the occupation of the Persian Gulf and deal with Iran in the strongest way, (can we perceive this much wealth and power, now so pivotal to our existence, sitting within spitting distance of an Iranian nuclear force, whether we be Liberal or Conservative, Socialist or anarchist...does politics really matter at this point, with the loaded gun swinging around to point at our head?  Has there ever been a nation, a culture who could bring themselves to surrender before such a threat?  Can Senator Obama, anymore than any other political survivor, talk the truth?

Or is he taking the wise path, as Franklin Roosevelt did in the 1930's, and focusing on the homefront (ethanol, the "home grown alternative" in the myth of American energy policy) and leaving the complexities of overseas lands and hard choices for a later day?

Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout

Of course the best thing they could do would be to implement universal, government paid health care.

Bob

I'm a New Englander and we heat with propane.  The problem that we have -- and oil burners may have the same problem -- is that the town limits the size of my propane tank to 500 gallons (US).  Leaving approx. 20% of the tank for expansion, this means that we inevitably have to get a second delivery sometime in February (when we still have 6 weeks of winter weather left).

We try to fill the tank in the summer when propane prices are at their lowest, but, with our current setup, buying on the cheap is not always an option.

Triff ..