[Serial_Worrier]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 13206.html

According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years and more gas in the U.S. than there is in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some place called Turkmenistan combined. Oil? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's top oil producer.

[ralfy]

Ten billion barrels divided by 80 million gives you only around 125 days worth of oil.

[seahorse3]

There's a reason why eebhave all that unused NG under the ground, because we don't use it for anything except some electrical generation. Some day we might build all the infrastructure necessary to use it to replace oil, but until then, it's like ascertaining how much dirt we have in the ground to power out cars.

[Pops]

Wow.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER), founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organisation, advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless.

http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title= ... y_Research

How RealClear is that?

[eXpat]

Ten billion barrels divided by 80 million gives you only around 125 days worth of oil.

So much for "unlimited energy"

[Serial_Worrier]

Wow.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER), founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organisation, advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless.

http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title= ... y_Research

How RealClear is that?

SourceWatch (formerly Disinfopedia) is an online wiki that is a collaborative project of the liberal[1] Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

[PrestonSturges]

Ten billion barrels divided by 80 million gives you only around 125 days worth of oil.

So much for "unlimited energy"

Math has a liberal bias.

[Plantagenet]

Ten billion barrels divided by 80 million gives you only around 125 days worth of oil.

There is much confusion about energy in Washington DC and elsewhere. For example, In his 2012 State of the Union speech a few weeks ago, Obama said, "We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years."

Was this just political BS from Obama? Or is Obama now also getting his facts from the Institute for Energy Research?

[Pops]

IER’s President Thomas J. Pyle previously worked as a lobbyist for Koch Industries, while IER’s CEO Robert L. Bradley was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron, where he served as speechwriter for Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.

http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-ene ... wind-study

They're still being supported by them:
A few hundred thou from EXXON
A few hundred thou from Koch

Don't be coy, just come out and say you're reposting PR fluff from the oil industry because that is the only source left that denies PO and GW. I can see their point, they want to get to every last drop and hope if they throw enough money into disinfo people will holler: Drill Baby! and forget about changing their lifestyle for maybe another year.

But you don't need to know who is paying to know who lying, just look at the lie. If oil is "virtually unlimited" wouldn't it be "Virtually Free"? Brent is $122 & wti is 106 right now, Unleaded is the highest for this time of year ever - yet from hill and dale (or from fair-N-balanced to RealClear) it's: oil is virtually unlimited!

The incantation is repeated over and over, just like clicking the red slippers together and wishing for Auntie Em.

It may be disheartening to see so much disinformation in the media spewed by people who ought to know better. But it is ever so delicious to contemplate the desperation hiding behind their fretful posturing and incantation. I can almost hear them say, "It can't be so, it can't be so...it simply mustn't!" They seem to believe that if they say "Bakken, Brazil, offshore, tar sands, technology" enough times in a row, it will make $100-a-barrel oil go away. But that incantation will not make the data go away, and so we must keep pointing out that the trend remains flat despite all of those things.

From a good article by Kurt Cobb about this very thing.

[Plantagenet]

When oil prices went up a bit in 2011, after the US started bombing Libya, Obama released oil from the Strategic petroleum reserve. Looks like that plan is being considered again.

Leading Democrats urged Obama to release oil from the Strategic petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices for US drivers

[seahorse3]

Pops makes a good argument, if its unlimited it is free. Air and ocean water come to mind, maybe arctic ice if you act now.

[kublikhan]

There was another article I liked on Big oil's campaign of PO and GW denialism:

It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced. Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously. Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything—including fund an endless campaigns of lies—to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So instead, we simply charge ahead.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That’s why the fight is so pitched.

The Great Carbon Bubble

I mean the position of Big Oil makes sense. Do you really expect them just to write off $20 trillion worth of reserves? What about the oil exporting countries? Nearly their entire budget comes from oil revenue. If you went up to them and said: "You have to stop exporting oil for the good of the planet", they would laugh at you. Their economy would collapse and their people would be driven even farther into misery without all of that oil revenue to pay for social programs. It's not just happy motoring that goes bye-bye if we say no more to fossil fuels. It's also those rich oil funded social programs in Venezuela. It's that huge bribe the Saudi's paid out last year to keep it's people from rioting. If you were in charge, would you not make the same decision as well? Once the average person realizes that eco-friendly policies means not just pain for the greedy oil baron but also for himself, how quickly will he jump ship to the side of the fossil fuel industries? I think the sad truth is that we will wreck the environment to keep the economy running.

[dissident]

There was another article I liked on Big oil's campaign of PO and GW denialism:

I mean the position of Big Oil makes sense. Do you really expect them just to write off $20 trillion worth of reserves? What about the oil exporting countries? Nearly their entire budget comes from oil revenue. If you went up to them and said: "You have to stop exporting oil for the good of the planet", they would laugh at you. Their economy would collapse and their people would be driven even farther into misery without all of that oil revenue to pay for social programs. It's not just happy motoring that goes bye-bye if we say no more to fossil fuels. It's also those rich oil funded social programs in Venezuela. It's that huge bribe the Saudi's paid out last year to keep it's people from rioting. If you were in charge, would you not make the same decision as well? Once the average person realizes that eco-friendly policies means not just pain for the greedy oil baron but also for himself, how quickly will he jump ship to the side of the fossil fuel industries? I think the sad truth is that we will wreck the environment to keep the economy running.

The explanation sounds OK at first cut but it rather falls apart at Venezuela and Saudi Arabia being at the forefront of the AGW denier initiative. All of the producer nations are totally irrelevant when it comes to disrupting public dialogue on AGW. The core of denialism is the USA. There are EU deniers but they have little effect on EU policy. Then there are China and India who have deluded themselves into thinking that addressing AGW means losing out on potential economic growth. In fact it is these up and comers along with the USA that are the backbone of forces preventing action on AGW. They are responsible for diluting and sabotaging Kyoto and any successor agreements that would have had more teeth. Recently pipsqueak Canada has joined this camp of idiots who think that we'll just adapt and that there is no crisis. What other than idiots can you call policy makers who think that they are safe since their country is high enough above sea level (China) or that think their state is some "energy superpower" because of non-conventional reserves (Canada).

I am quite sure that these policy makers have no clue about the model consensus on future drought affecting all the primary agricultural zones. They can claim all they want about models being "garbage in, garbage out" but in the case of the drought predictions the mechanisms are clear and rest on physical fundamentals. We'll just have to "adapt" to mass starvation.

[Beery1]

According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years

Yes, but homes don't run on Washington DC think-tank-generated hot air - we're always going to have a surplus of that kind of 'natural gas'. But what we need is a mix of methane and ethane, and I don't think we have hundreds of years of that, no matter what the cornucopians say.

[Keith_McClary]

Recently pipsqueak Canada has joined this camp of idiots who think that we'll just adapt and that there is no crisis.

Hey, haven't you heard, we're a Clean Green Energy Superpower?

[SilentRunning]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/22/arent_high_gas_prices_what_democrats_want_113206.html

According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years and more gas in the U.S. than there is in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some place called Turkmenistan combined. Oil? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's top oil producer.

You can always make up soothing numbers to lull the masses to sleep.

Meanwhile, oil prices keep heading up, and we're being forced to use ever less efficient means to extract what energy we can. These trends, plus the swelling global population mean that we're inevitably headed for disaster. And it will be in far, far less than 575 years.

[Serial_Worrier]

The only reason oil prices are up is because Iran is cutting off supplies to ratchet up pressure on the international community to slam Israel.

[Ferretlover]

There is virtually unlimited energy in America

Yes, but just HOW do we harness all the energy it takes to operate all those talking heads?

[ralfy]

The only reason oil prices are up is because Iran is cutting off supplies to ratchet up pressure on the international community to slam Israel.

But as BP has shown, energy demand has been exceeding energy from oil production since 2006, with the additional demand met by the use of non-conventional sources. Worse, BP and other groups have also shown that energy production per capita peaked in 1979.