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Topic: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?  (Read 10701 times)

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Offline Donaldson Tan

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Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« on: June 17, 2007, 08:37:34 PM »
Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
"Say you're in a [chemical] plant and there's a snake on the floor. What are you going to do? Call a consultant? Get a meeting together to talk about which color is the snake? Employees should do one thing: walk over there and you step on the friggin� snake." - Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxosmithkline, June 2006

Offline constant thinker

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2007, 08:34:34 PM »
From reading this article and educating myself on the concept, it sound like a good idea for some things like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions.

As far as oil and gas consumption goes though, I don't think I can see a good application of it. I don't think it would settle well with people and their consumption of gasoline/heating oil.
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Offline Donaldson Tan

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2007, 10:28:03 AM »
We would be facing a real shortage of oil and gas in the future.

If we do not cap our consumption now, how do we ensure the suvivability of our future generations?
"Say you're in a [chemical] plant and there's a snake on the floor. What are you going to do? Call a consultant? Get a meeting together to talk about which color is the snake? Employees should do one thing: walk over there and you step on the friggin� snake." - Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxosmithkline, June 2006

Offline enahs

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2007, 11:42:38 AM »
We would be facing a real shortage of oil and gas in the future.

If we do not cap our consumption now, how do we ensure the suvivability of our future generations?

If science fiction has taught me anything, anti-matter energy sources! And molecular re sequencing! Something that can make something as complicated has food (which on a molecular level is damn complicated) but a special part to fix part of the space ship is too complicated!

Offline Donaldson Tan

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2007, 02:33:59 PM »
If science fiction has taught me anything, anti-matter energy sources!


Star Wars, Star Trek, Dan Brown's Angel & Demon

And molecular re sequencing!


Dr Who!

Regardless what future energy sources we would uncover in future, energy sources would always be finite in nature. Somehow, we have to regulate our energy consumption
"Say you're in a [chemical] plant and there's a snake on the floor. What are you going to do? Call a consultant? Get a meeting together to talk about which color is the snake? Employees should do one thing: walk over there and you step on the friggin� snake." - Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxosmithkline, June 2006

Offline enahs

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #5 on: June 20, 2007, 08:11:46 PM »
Quote
Regardless what future energy sources we would uncover in future, energy sources would always be finite in nature. Somehow, we have to regulate our energy consumption

Science Fiction to the rescue again!

In the Science Fiction world there are unlimited universes, and it is possible to access those other universes. Thus, unlimited energy! To bad for those poor suckers in the other universes, though.



Offline Donaldson Tan

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2007, 12:20:50 AM »
In the Science Fiction world there are unlimited universes, and it is possible to access those other universes. Thus, unlimited energy! To bad for those poor suckers in the other universes, though.

However, wormhole creation or warp drive is no-where near the reach of current technology. We are in need of reducing our consumption of energy not thru increased efficiency but by reducing unnecessary usage of equipment such as leaving the lights on or the PC on standby mode.
"Say you're in a [chemical] plant and there's a snake on the floor. What are you going to do? Call a consultant? Get a meeting together to talk about which color is the snake? Employees should do one thing: walk over there and you step on the friggin� snake." - Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxosmithkline, June 2006

Offline enahs

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2007, 12:06:08 PM »
However, wormhole creation or warp drive is no-where near the reach of current technology. We are in need of reducing our consumption of energy not thru increased efficiency but by reducing unnecessary usage of equipment such as leaving the lights on or the PC on standby mode.


Hog wash! Blasphemy! Common Sense?!

No, this is the thing that everybody that wants to save the environment does not understand. The vast majority of people (and not just Americans, every industrialized company) could drastically reduce their energy composition and waste by doing small things that would cost them nothing. And they could reduce their heating and cooling (and thus energy waste) by doing cheap things such as more insulation, fixing cracks, etc etc. Not only do they reduce the energy they waste, they save money in the long run.


But people do not do this. Not even the people you here on TV bitching about how SUV’s waste gas really truly do this. Millions, maybe billions each year go into telling us how we are doomed and how certain people are evil really horrible studies of how evil we are, etc. Hardly any real money is going into research on new energy source (and guess what, that Oil Companies are by far leading in research funding of new energy sources). Not enough people are doing things to reduce energy waste, even in new construction. And why should they? Why would I want to pay 10X more upfront for some product when building by new house that saves 15% energy, when that price increase means I can not afford it? Instead of spending billions each year telling us how evil we are, subsidizing the cost of things like that would actually help.


Also, all of us here on this board leave in free societies. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting the privilege and luxury of driving a SUV that does not get great gas mileage. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with it. Think about it. Why is it wrong and evil to want to pay for a privilege? When people do not do the free and easy stuff to reduce their energy wasting, they really have no right to complain, as they are paying for their luxury of wasting energy.


Also, laws come into play. Freon (Refrigerant, R-12, Freon-12) was banned in the early 90’s in the US and other countries. It was banned because it was a fluorocarbon possibly causing harm to the ozone layer. It was replaced with a refrigerant that supposedly did not cause harm. Now, government and environmental officials where all over the banning of Freon-12. DuPont, the company that had the patent on Freon-12 also joined the fight against Freon-12, but they started their fight as their patent was going to expire and they could not longer get a piece of every manufactured Freon-12. So Freon-12 was banned (ok, a tiered ban, not all at once). But guess what, the next best thing that was supposedly safe for the ozone was another DuPont product with a fresh patent. Great, except, it is no where near as efficient as a refrigerant as Freon-12, as far as my knowledge, there has yet to be a safe refrigerant  synthesized as efficient as Freon-12 (safe as not in environmentally, but as in if there is a leak in the coolant line you do not blow up really really big). Now, it has been since shown that the new refrigerants we use are just as harmful, if not more so, then the Freon-12 that was banned. But, we have not gone back to using Freon-12 yet because the environmentalists do not want to admit they where wrong, and even the ones that do, they inundated public opinion so much that it was bad and evil it is a hard battle, nearly impossible to restore using Freon-12. Now, refrigeration and air-conditioning is one of the most energy taxing things we in free societies do. Virtually all the recent improvements in refrigeration efficiency come from better insulation and better engineering. Even if switching back to Freon-12 could only improve the efficiency of those processes by 5%, when ~30% of the industrialized world’s energy composition goes to refrigeration that is a massive amount of savings.


What is the point of this long post?
The point is that energy consumption and waste is not, at all, a scientific problem, but a social one. As scientist we could invent the new ground breaking technology to save energy or produce clean energy. But it better be easy and cheap. It better be something the governments of the world can force onto its people.

The other option is education. Responsible education. Not just telling everybody “we are evil and destroying the environment and have to stop blah blah blah”. It is not just an American problem that most students graduating high school (or the equivalent in other countries) have no clue about real science, the real scientific process, how to critically think for themselves. How to look past their own needs and wants, both personally and tangibly.


I really wish more money was invested in energy research, not wasted at conventions and paying celebrities to speak and do commercials and stupid crap like that. And scientific research might provide answers or possibilities to solve the problem.

But ultimately, it is not a scientific problem, just a social problem. And I doubt anybody here has any idea of how to go about fixing it on a tangible level, not a idealistic level.




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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #8 on: June 22, 2007, 03:45:51 AM »
The point is that energy consumption and waste is not, at all, a scientific problem, but a social one. As scientist we could invent the new ground breaking technology to save energy or produce clean energy. But it better be easy and cheap. It better be something the governments of the world can force onto its people.

The other option is education. Responsible education. Not just telling everybody ?we are evil and destroying the environment and have to stop blah blah blah?. It is not just an American problem that most students graduating high school (or the equivalent in other countries) have no clue about real science, the real scientific process, how to critically think for themselves. How to look past their own needs and wants, both personally and tangibly.

There is a Chinese saying: "You will not cry until you see your own Coffin". It is time to bring the coffins to the masses instead of talking about them. Make energy waste illegal.
"Say you're in a [chemical] plant and there's a snake on the floor. What are you going to do? Call a consultant? Get a meeting together to talk about which color is the snake? Employees should do one thing: walk over there and you step on the friggin� snake." - Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxosmithkline, June 2006

Offline enahs

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Re: Should Oil & Gas Consumption undergo Cap-And-Trade Scheme?
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2007, 08:40:00 AM »
Quote
There is a Chinese saying: "You will not cry until you see your own Coffin". It is time to bring the coffins to the masses instead of talking about them. Make energy waste illegal.


First. Not going to happen, not any time soon. Too much money on the energy being wasted, and not enough money can be made of making it illegal. Again, a social problem.

Plus, I know you here the people say that "climate change due to global warming is a scientific fact and anybody that disagrees is a complete idiot", but if you look at the hard scientific evidence about it and not the stuff from the business, it is not a fact, and now the alternate explanations better answer the small increase in temperature we are currently experiencing. Also, global warming proponents have always been trying to prove it by showing graphs and such and talking about the geological record that shows an increase in CO2 along with a rise in temperature. They still say that, and it has pretty much been disproved. The records show that the CO2 levels rise ~400 years after a increase in temperature, that the increase in temperature generally causes the natural increase of CO2 levels.


I do not believe in global warming like they say. It at its essence is horrible science. In science we make theories, and sometimes in order to test them we have to make assumptions. You can only make so many assumptions. So, I think it is stupid to make laws based on bad science.

However, there are much more important reasons to stop wasting energy then global warming. But doing things for the wrong reason will just continue to encourage people to be stupid. So what even if you save the world now. Soon you will be dead and stupidity will lead to another problem facing the world and if you are not around to save it what happens then if people are still just as stupid?


To illustrate. Al Gores video about global warming was pretty much forced on every student in America. An alternate video was banned from being shown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8v5du5_ag
That is the first in 8, you can find the rest at YouTube as well, quite easy.

Now, everything they say in that video is not 100% true, just like in Al Gores. And they really could have helped their cause even better if they made it less political, despite it being a political topic. That video is not proof of disproving global warming. It does however illustrate some of the major problems with the theory.

But like I said, there are so many other reasons to stop wasting energy, tangible unquestioned ones and I am all for it. I just do not support laws and regulations based off of poor science (which we already have too many), as that just encourages the public at large not studying science to continue to be idiots and believe whatever they where told. It is not the 19th century anymore. Cheap availability to information and opportunities to learn to read and be exposed to different viewpoints and opinions are readily and easily available. I holey admit I am an idiot and make many mistakes. I try to learn and view things from different viewpoints.


Plus, it is big business saving energy and I am currently applying for a grant to do something like that anyway.  :D

But, I would support and be willing to pay a little more tax to make the government offer tax breaks or other incentive programs to subsidies the cost of doing things like installing higher energy efficient windows, better insulation, more energy efficent heating and AC units, those low energy lightbulbs that only the $15 ones look good and natural and the $5 ones give you a headache! etc etc.

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