Sorry to resurrect this thread after it has slid off the bottom of the page, but there are a few things that really need to be said regarding oil drilling and fossil fuels in general. Some food for thought.

"Total shut down of Alaskan oil production? I doubt that that would be all that popular, but WTF it won't affect me so fill your boots, 'cos the SUV's are going to have to stay parked and the price of "gas" is going to rocket - And when it does write and thank Don."   

This is Teribus, taking me to task for signing a petition opposing BP's attempting to do an end-run around President Obama's temporary ban on off-shore drilling by putting their drilling rig in the Arctic Ocean far enough off-shore to be outside the U.S.'s jurisdiction, going down two miles, and then drilling horizontally.

Well, Teribus, there are a number of aspects to this. First of all, if the SUVs and the Humvees and the Ford Expeditions and other such gas-guzzling behemoths cease to be popular because of the cost of fuel, that most certain isn't the end of the world. Among other things, I am a strong advocate of efficient public transportation. Much of Europe and Japan have very fast, efficient, and relatively inexpensive public transportation systems. Rick Steves, travel advisor and writer, says that he is easily able to get anywhere he wants in Europe on public transportation, occasionally supplementing for side-trips by renting a bicycle. With the exception of a very few cities, the United States is way behind Europe for in-city public transportation, and as for national transportation, Amtrak leaves a lot to be desired compared to European rail systems. Perhaps a steep rise in gasoline prices would be the incentive necessary to get the population out of their gas guzzlers and try walking the three blocks to the grocery store. And for longer trips, get them to insist that the Powers That Be get up off their lazy butts and do something about more efficient public transportation.

As to personal transportation, one hardly needs an SUV. My wife and I currently have a Toyota Corolla, purchased new in 1999. It now has about 25,000 miles on it. Contrast this with the nationwide average accumulated mileage of 10,000 to 15,000 miles per year. Before that, we drove a Honda Civic. We walk, despite the fact that I'm pushing a wheelchair, and use public transportation as much as possible (Seattle's buses are all equipped with wheelchair lifts and tie-downs).

In addition to public transportation such as buses and light-rail, Seattle has a system that they call "ZipCar.' Cars parked somewhere nearby, in neighborhoods all over the city, that you can rent by the hour or by the day. One just accesses the above web site and signs up to take advantage of the system.

Particularly for city-dwellers, one does not need to own an automobile! I know many people who get along perfectly well without. Think of the money you save on such things as buying a car in the first place, insurance, maintenance and upkeep, and sometimes (as in our situation) garage rental. In the light of total expenses, gasoline is a relatively small part of the cost of owning an automobile. And health statistics report that about one in three Americans is unhealthily overweight if not downright obese (and I heard on this morning's news that recent British health figures show similar statistics for the citizens of Britain), so spending less time being a couch-potato or sitting behind the wheel of an automobile and getting off one's behind and walking would be very beneficial. Simply walking is a very good exercise for general health and for burning off excess lard.

If one does need a personal automobile, there are a number of hybrids with more coming out every year. There are small all-electric cars on the market, such as the Zenn. True, their speed (up to 30-40 mph) and range (25-30 miles) is limited, but for most people, this is more than enough to commute to and from work or to the local shopping center.

And if you must have a gasoline-powered car, I've seen several "Smart Cars" running around. Accommodates two people (the vast majority of automobiles on the freeways and motorways carry the driver only!). The Smart Car has a top speed of 90 mph. But not as good mileage as one would probably expect for such a small car (35 to 45 mpg). But—the Smart Car also comes in an electric model CLICKY. I've seen a number of them running around town. Cute! And the driver invariably looks smug!

And as far as the safety of these little cars is concerned, a Smart Car was test-crashed into a concrete barrier at 70 mph., and the passenger compartment emerged intact. But the fact that it remained undamaged is academic, because no one would have survived that rate of deceleration, even if they were in a semi-truck.

####

Non-fossil fuel energy sources:

Solar panels are getting cheaper to make all the time. I see rooftops here and there around town town festooned with solar panels, even in this city that has a reputation (not always earned) for cloudy skies and rain. Some people get all the electrical power their houses need from solar panels. A bit of an initial investment, but they manage to pay for themselves many times over.

Wind farms. The only complaints people have about them is a matter of aesthetics. Blocking a view, and all that. But there are aesthetics and aesthetics. If you think about all the electrical power they produce without pouring carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air, that they do not block rivers that fish such as salmon need for spawning, nor do they create a lot of radioactive waste that no one seems to know what to do with, those stately rotating turbines suddenly become quite attractive.

Well, there is another complaint about wind farms:   the possibility of killing migratory birds if the wind farm happens to be on a migratory bird route. Well—first, I've seen a lot of Canada geese flying either north or south, depending on the season. Classic "V" formations. But they are always at such an altitude that the idea of a bunch of them getting smacked by the slow-turning rotor blades in a wind farm seems downright ludicrous. Unless the wind farm is located in or near marshes and wetlands that the birds might use for rest and feeding stops. But that's simply solved. Don't build wind farms in swamps!! Not a good idea for several reasons.

Some years back, I had an acquaintance (a co-worker) who put a wind turbine in his back yard. It supplied all his household electricity needs. In fact, Seattle City Light thought something was malfunctioning because his meter was running backwards! He wasn't taking power out of the system, he was putting it in! And it seems that, legally, Seattle City Light owed him money!

City Light had a wall-eyed fit! They tried everything they could think of to have the wind turbine declared illegal. Among other things, they tried to get his neighbors to file complaints. But what he got instead were neighbors dropping by, say, "Cool! How do I go about setting up a wind turbine like yours!??" So City Light called in the Federal Aviation Administration and the Civil Aeronautics Board. Randy lived near the north end of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. And he had a tower!! The Feds came out, looked things over, and told Randy to put a flashing red light on the wind turbine. Just a precaution, and, they admitted, essentially unnecessary. If any airliner, on its landing approach, was coming in so low that they might clip Randy's wind turbine, they were already in very serious trouble!!

So—Randy gets all his household electricity, running all his light, heat, kitchen appliances, stereo system, and big-screen television for free, and Seattle City Light has to send him a small check every month for the electricity he puts back into the system.

[Moral of Randy's story:    the idea that "You can't beat City Hall" is propaganda put forth by—City Hall!]

Tidal power. There are various ways that this can be harnessed to produce power. The regular raising and lowering of the sea level. Slow, but regular, and the effect can be greatly speeded up with a system of gears to turn turbines. And the much swifter ebb and flow of vast quantities of water through straits and channels (fifty-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy).

Carrying the power of the oceans much further, I read a series of articles in the now-defunct science magazine, Omni a couple of decades ago. The article advocated placing turbines—very large turbines—in various selected places, such as the Gulf Stream, and anchoring them to the sea floor. These would be like ducted fans, and there could be a whole string of them in series, or several such strings. They would be deep enough so that they would not interfere with shipping in any way (and submarine services and other submersibles would be notified of their locations). A series of these turbines in the Gulf Stream, the article said, could easily supply electrical power to the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States, and perhaps even further.

The only complaints voiced were similar to the ones about wind farms and migratory birds:   but the idea of whales, porpoises, and other pelagic creatures getting caught in, being injured by, or damaging the turbines could be easily solved by equipping them with coverings of mesh fine enough so that it doesn't impede the flow of the current, but blocks anything much larger that plankton. Not a problem.

I've not heard anything about the implementation of this scheme, but considering the inexorable power of ocean currents and the fact that they are all over the earth's oceans, it would seem to be a rich and as yet totally untapped energy source.

Another friend of mine came up with a scheme that sounds like it has a great deal of promise. He was thinking in terms of supplying electrical power for a base on the moon.

Bury pipes under a large, flat area. This could be very large, even, say, a mile square. The pipes would be filled with fluid, and they would zig-zag back and fourth through a row of turbines. Then, place a large sheet of insulating material over half of the area, placing it on rails. The rails would allow you to periodically roll the sheet of insulation from one half of the area to the other half. Okay. Got that?

Now. When the sun is shining on the area (on the moon, for a period of about two weeks), one half is absorbing heat while the other half is insulated from the heat, Then, as the sun moves to the other side of the moon, you roll the insulating sheet to the other half. Do this back and forth dance a couple of times and you have a large patch of ground growing very hot (absorbing the sun's heat), then being prevented from radiating it back out when the insulation is rolled back over it;   this, while the patch adjacent to it is insulated from the sun's heat and radiates any residual heat when the sun is not shining on it. One patch grows very hot, the other patch grows very cold. Got it?

The fluid, heated under one patch and cooled under the other, races back and forth through the row of turbines.

Voila!! Electicity. More that enough to power the moon base.

If placed in a desert area here on earth, this would not be as efficient as it would be on the moon, it would still work quite well.

####

Speaking of the moon, an old friend and drinking buddy of mine is science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle. We met in the late 1950s, saw each other frequently in our favorite watering-hole (beer joint) near the University of Washington campus, the the legendary and infamous Blue Moon Tavern. Jerry moved to California in the mid-1960s, and it was there that he began writing science fiction, often collaborating with Larry Niven (The Mote in God's Eye Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, others). But science fiction notwithstanding, Jerry is a solidly grounded scientist, has worked in the space program, has written articles in scientific journals, had a regular column on computers in Byte magazine, and during the Reagan administration, he was a science advisor to Reagan, both advocating for and supplying technical information on the projected "Star Wars" program. What all he is doing currently, I'm not sure. I last saw him in 1985 when he and Larry Niven were in Seattle promoting their latest book.

Jerry's viewpoint was, and is, strongly conservative, whereas some here have accused me of being a member of the dreaded "Liberal Mafia," so Jerry and I had some fairly intense discussions (while remaining fast friends). But there are a number of points upon which Jerry and I are in agreement.

One point is that he said, "Considering that there is a wide variety of relatively easy sources of energy, and considering all the essential products that are made from petroleum" (he enumerated such things as pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, plastics) "that simply burning it to provide energy is a crime against the future! Because it's not going to last forever. The remaining reserves get scarcer and more difficult to get at with each passing year."

And he also opposed both Gulf Wars, on the basis that they were really all about who controls the oil reserves, and said that "We should develop some of the other readily available sources of energy and let the Arabs drink their oil!" And he was NOT talking about drilling for oil in the U. S., off-shore or otherwise.

So, if anyone has the bad judgment to buy a gas-hog these days, that's his problem, not mine.

Don Firth