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Entertaining, but *all* stats seem completely useless without context.
“…Milk jugs to fill the inside of the Empire State”? So…?
The only stat that seemed to have any reference point is “the amount of oil lost is the same as the US consumes in less than 7 hours.” — Which makes it sound like not that much, probably not what the video producers intended…
I also assume we would have continued pumping oil out of the hole until it stopped producing? Course we will do that eventually from another well. I agree, irrelevant comparisons.
How about still no Energy Plan for the USA? How about still no oil drilling safety review?
How about no BP Exec’s in jail for 20 years of lying on their permit applications and operations?
How about BP not paying sufficient damages to those whose lives were ruined?
How about a Nova Special on where all the oil went?
and on and on and on.
#1 – exactly, 7 hours of oil.
I think that film is actually an environmentalist’s nightmare: it shows all the thousands of uses of oil, and how, even if we stop using it to run cars (which does seem wasteful in comparison), we’ll continue to consume oil.
Using a thermos makes a difference? These guys are idiots.
The only real difference is that Obama would not have had an excuse to shut down oil drilling in the Gulf, so prices would not have gone up quite so much.
Sure, I’m going to put my overweight 60 year old body on a bike and head off about 15 miles to school and another 15 back home every day rain or shine/hot or cold then thirty to church on Sunday.
Need a two seater for that so I can take my eighty five year old mother who isn’t going to be doing any peddling and we have some very steep hills on the way. Then there is grocery shopping.
I’m sure the people that made that video are sincere. I’m also sure that they are completely unrealistic in their expectations which suggests they are oblivious to what what is actually going on around them and live in a fantasy world.
#6
I live in Minneapolis and ride my bike to work in rain, shine, cold and snow. I know a professor in his mid-70’s (as well as several others) that do the same.
None of use are overweight, at least not anymore. Maybe there’s a connection?
@TeaTroll: “I think gas would be $1.00 a gallon, inflation 0%, and the economy booming.” You forgot to add the rainbows, unicorns and fairy dust in your fantasy world. And in it (“we owned Iraqi, Kuwait and the mineral wealth of Afghanistan”) you want not just wars and nation building, but also outright colonies, huh? Yeah, sounds very reasonable. BTW, please keep supporting Trump. If he’s not the Republican nominee, you should demand that Trump run as an independent then vote for him.
As far as oil, here’s the ugly truth. Oil is a finite resource. You can drill, drill, drill and one day, it’s going to end. Maybe 50 years, maybe 500 years. It doesn’t matter. We must come up with alternatives. I’d rather we deal with this now than to let my kids and grand kids deal with it.
This is an opportunity for the USA to rise up again as the leaders and technology innovators but we’re too busy picking lint out of our belly buttons to look up. “We got ours, so screw you,” we’re telling our kids. We can have the luxury of always using gas guzzling SUVs, always running the A/C… Too bad one day you wont, kids. Deal with it then, because we won’t even try now.
It’s just like Medicare and social security. It’s ok to destroy it for the younger people. We got ours already, screw them.
bobbo, what do you mean there’s no energy plan?
Carter implemented the Dept of Energy in 1977, it employs 16,000 people and cost 28 billion this year alone.
So what you’re telling us is that govt has failed once again, for 34 years they’ve been tasked with getting us off foreign oil, yet we have increased our dependence because the morons in our govt, won’t let us develop new sources or even our own sources. But we gladly pay money to foreign govts (Brazil) to pay for their offshore drilling so that they can sell their oil to China. For this stupidity we’ve roughly spent over a half trillion dollars for the Dept of Energy since 1977
um, they would have just spilled it somewhere else?
cookie please..
-s
>I’d rather we deal with this now
Then you should use as much gas as you can now, so the oil runs out sooner. When the oil runs out alternatives will be developed.
The same thing that is happening now. Beg the Saudis for oil and cripple our oil industry.
“President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is calling on major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia to increase their oil supplies to help stabilize prices…”
http://tinyurl.com/3nas95s
“In a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday, Obama urged them to take steps to repeal oil industry tax breaks…”
> “you should use as much gas as you can now (…) When the oil runs out alternatives will be developed.”
That’s not “dealing with it now”, is it? That’s pushing the problem down until we’re *forced* to deal with it. Sigh…
Are there no adults left?
Many here need to educate themselves on the oil industry. Price hasn’t been tied to demand for years. Also, the US is so commited to empire that the last thing you’d want to do is start suckin hard on your home reserves. All these answers coming from the right, when most of the simple fucks don’t even see what the problems are. North africa will be entertaining to watch unfold over the next decade especially considering your military will be losing the initiatve over the next 5 years or so.
#17 “Price hasn’t been tied to demand for years.”
I would like to know what what it is tied to.
Oil is a commodity and the price will rise or fall based on real or perceived demand and availability.
#7 You ride how far? There are three nasty long hills in the way two of them I couldn’t pull when I was a kid. The ride is about 20/30 minutes in a car on a four lane mostly due to speed zone. I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen a bike on this route. How long on a bike assuming I want to risk becoming road kill?
Let me guess you also do a sixty mile round trip on a two seater with a 85 year old on the back and do your grocery shopping that way?
I don’t know you so maybe you aren’t blasting total BS but I wouldn’t count on it.
#7 Let me make a wild guess you are a student and live on or near campus. When I did that a lot of students rode bikes who lived on or near the campus. I walked. The site was flat and it wasn’t a problem to ride a bike or walk so I saved money and trying to find a parking place or buying a parking sticker and walked.
I can remember doing it when it was so cold I saw a cardinal with frozen legs trying to land and flopping over one frigid morning. That cold is not common in TN though the winter of the frozen cardinal was pretty cold.
If this is your claim to being green you’ve done jack so forget it. Feel free to sort me out if I’m wrong but you aren’t going to do it by telling me you rode a few blocks on side streets on a level grade commuting too and from classes.
@ #18, Deregulation has chiefly made speculation the driving factor on oil prices. The fact that the price has been steadily rising as the world economy has been drastically declining should have given you your first clue.
Obama’s energy plan is to either put a surtax on the oil companies, or “reduce the subsidies (tax breaks) they get”.
How does he think this will reduce gas prices? If you were selling something and the government increases your taxes (or reduces your tax deductions) wouldn’t you increase the price of your product so you could continue making the same profit?
#21
Here is what Blooomburg has to say about it today and yes a lot is driven by speculation. Speculation is the essence of futures.
“Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world’s largest company by market value, posted its biggest first- quarter profit increase in eight years as surging energy demand and supply concerns pushed crude prices to a 30-month high.”
http://tinyurl.com/3fk2y4t
And more.
“In China, the world’s second-largest consumer of oil and gas after the U.S., demand for oil-based fuels such as diesel rose 11 percent during the first three months of this year, almost seven times the U.S.’s 1.6 percent growth rate, according to the International Energy Agency. Brazilian and Indian demand expanded by 5 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.”
Yes, I and friends all rode bikes to work for years. Of course, they were 1.0 liter or larger. Perot got a little uptight about it.
#20
It’s about 14 miles round trip but sometimes I’ll take the long way home so it can go up to 20. No, I don’t take an 85 year old mom to work with me.
I do know people who ride 20 miles or more each way 3 to 4 times a week.
I’ve ridden in weather as cold as -20 F and and about 4 inches of unplowed snow. Any deeper than that and I’ll take the train because riding in that much snow is too damn hard. I have two sets of studded tires for use in snow and ice. They work pretty well but slow you down quite a bit.
Personally I use a car when I have to haul much stuff but there are people who commute as far as I do or more and are “Car Free”. A regular bike with a rack and grocery panniers works fine for a couple of bags worth. More than that you need a cargo bike or trailer.
It started as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it once a week. Figured out that I liked it. I purposely moved closer to work to make it more practical from a time standpoint. It’s much less aggravating than sitting in traffic and I’ve gotten my exercise for the day just by going to work and back.
Plus I put barely any miles on my car and could give a crap what gas costs.
It’s not BS
Just some more observations from a guy who rides his bike to work.
We’ve become way too damn soft. When people find out I ride my bike to work one of the first questions is: “What do you do when it rains?”
I have some rain gear but I do get wet. Guess what though. I don’t melt.
Cars have become entertainment centers on wheels. We don’t really need a climate controlled, gas powered lazy boy with sound system and DVD player to travel a few miles.
For that matter, people used to get by fine with rakes and hammers. Now we “need” leaf blowers and air nailers. The list goes on and on.
@ #23 Well if the Msm and exxon says, then it must be true. Either that or they might not want to come right out and say how deep they are burried in your ass. I will leave it to you when to jump off of the “free market is working” train.
I liked it the clip but it needs to be dumbed down for the sheeple if the intent is to encourage them to conserve.
Speak in terms of trips to Walmart, number of lit Christmas lights, how many pampers, ….
#22, Yes.
Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their customers do.
Unfortunately, customers are too fracking stoopid to realize it.
So much for not taxing the middle class . . .
The really funny part of this whole mess is Obama took the statement out of context. The company said that with the profits it made it would be able to start exploiting the resources here at home instead of overseas (hint, local job creation?).
All Obama heard was, “We made lots of money!”
#26, We don’t really need a climate controlled, gas powered lazy boy with sound system and DVD player to travel a few miles.
Yes, I do! And as long I can afford to do so, I’ll do it. The EPA is bringing in money for gas guzzlers to clean the air so it isn’t a big deal.
For that matter, people used to get by fine with rakes and hammers. Now we “need” leaf blowers and air nailers. The list goes on and on.
That’s called “automation” and it is what makes the economy more efficient. Someone can do three or four more jobs for the same time and money that it used to take.
At one time women used washboards and cloths lines instead of washers and dryers. They were very green. Would you prefer to step back a 100 years?
#30
Yes, automation allows us to build more crap we don’t need for less money all while requiring fewer workers. In other words, fewer jobs that pay a decent wage.
Air nailers and other automations let you build a house twice as big, twice as fast with half the workers. The average home built in 2004 was 2,400 sq ft. In 1970 it was 1,400. This even though family sizes have gotten smaller. 1,000 extra square feet to heat and cool even though most of the space is unoccupied most of the time.
This is progress? It’s waste.
So we need a more educated populace for the information economy of the future? Maybe. Look at Egypt though. Plenty of highly educated people with zero prospects for work. Think a more democratic government will fix that? I have my doubts.
#31, You sound like a Luddite.
Here is an interesting article for you.
http://tinyurl.com/6aqqz4g
The doubling of floor space from 1970 to 2000 has not increased the amount each house consumes per capita. It is generally believed that electric appliance saturation and more efficient electrical power generation as kept the costs down.
But I agree with you to a certain extent. We have become a nation of consumers and not producers.
The Deepwater Horizon was conducting exploratory drilling. I don’t think oil from there would have arrived at oil refineries for years.
#2 Taxed Enough Already Dude- “reaped billions of tax revenue drilling for our own oil.” Only if oil companies can make a profit. In the US, that means a high oil price.
#6 deowll – That’s why we need urban planning. Remember: It’s suburban sprawl and exurban sprawl not urban sprawl that’s the problem. Too many distant suburban and exurban destinations are built with limited road carrying capability. The US needs to get off the automobile. That’s the addiction. The US can’t support its road network as it is today. In the next 35 years, the population will grow to approx. 400 million people. It’s like it is in alternative FOOD. It’s not what is eaten but what is not eaten. Don’t eat the High fructose corn syrup, high saturated fats, gluten, and sugar.
#7 tjspiel – Less than 50% of the commuters to downtown Minneapolis drive themselves in automobiles with only one occupant. That means car pools, mass transit, bicycles, walking, etc. There is even a bridge to the downtown area that is only for bicycles & pedestrians.
In Tampa, there are four bridges to downtown over the Hillsborough River. One bridge’s surface was renovated with federal stimulus funds and another is having its drawbridge machinery replaced entirely. No word on anything similar to the Minneapolis alternative vehicle bridge proposal yet.
I think its interesting that everyone is assuming that because you see an image of a bike then that means the creators of the video are saying you have to ride a bike.
These are simply quick examples of things you could do. You could also take a train, carpool, encourage more recycling, buy local foods cause they traveled less distance, on and on and on.
I think the point is that there is a lot of ways to counteract oil consumption but most people are too apathetic to make an effort.