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China's only 'green" policy is selling cheap crap to the US for our Green Dollars.
Correct, while they are moving forward with green tech butt they are also going to burn up all the coal they can get their hands on including what they import from the US. There's a shortage of anthracite this year primarily because the Chinese bought up a **** load of it in the summer for coking.
If you read your own link (fuelfix.com) you would have read:
No place in YOUR article did it say that Obama had anything to do with refinery closings. According to YOUR article the decision was purely a business one.
Refinery operations are normally low profit and the decision to close them was the owner companies. This has nothing to do with Obama.
If there is nothing to replace their generating capacity during peak usage then the lights go out. That would be a problem, yes?
So, we'll just become another third world country where electricity is rationed daily. It's a wonderful way to live - electric power roulette - you never know when the system will rollover and send you electricity your four hours a day. Ah, but solar and wind will save the day. Right! These "green" types ain't got a clue just like they don't have a clue about "global warming."
That's great example of regulations run amok. For those unfamiliar with the situation Texas was allowing the refineries to apply pollution controls in a practical manner that made sense. Let's say they had two processes producing each producing 10 pounds of pollutants and they had to reduce that pollution by 50%. What Texas allowed them to do was reduce the pollution of one process by 80% and the other by 20% which still gives you the 50% reduction overall. The end result is the same but that wasn't good enough for the EPA
Coal to liquid fuel tech and oil shale can meet these demands, NEXT.
As of right now coal to liquid fuels would be far cheaper than conventional oil, it's about the equivalent of $50 to $60 a barrel. I beleive the shale production is in the same neighborhood.
This is a free market economy, if turning coal into oil is such a great idea, nobody is stopping coal companies from doing just that. If this is so profitable and nobody is doing it, here is your opportunity to make a bundle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTAtech
If you read your own link (fuelfix.com) you would have read:
No place in YOUR article did it say that Obama had anything to do with refinery closings. According to YOUR article the decision was purely a business one.
Refinery operations are normally low profit and the decision to close them was the owner companies. This has nothing to do with Obama.
I've looked at your links. Not one of them suggests that the closing of those refineries had anything to do with Obama policies. News flash: Obama didn't invent refinery regulations. They've existed for decades. The notion that the right-wing has that every time government enforces a regulation on the books, it is an Obama regulation, is mindless.
Anyway, those links are merely parroting the same general "regulating refineries are bad" rap. The first one did say that a new refinery had a rejected permit. Is that a bad thing?
I'm not an expert in this field but maybe if the federal government rejected BP's oil rig from getting a permit we would have avoided a disaster two years ago. Why the knee-jerk condemnation every time the federal government rejects a permit? Perhaps there was good reason.
I remember the air we lived in the 50's and 60's and the clean air we have now is worth the cost.
That's right. Younger folks just don't understand how bad it was.
For instance, I worked in Long Beach, CA back in the mid-60's. By the end of the work day, the air over Signal Hill, which was covered in oil wells and refineries, was literally brown. It looked like a cloud of dirt hanging in mid-air. Over the entire LA basin, it smelled like rotten fruit all the time. Because of the smog and haze, I'd lived there for more than a month before I ever saw the San Gabriel Mountains, which are just right there! On occasion, you could see Old Baldy Mountain peeking up through the cloud of crud. Once, while flying in over Palm Springs, I could see the air pollution banked up behind the mountains ringing the basin and spilling out onto the desert through the passes like water.
And, that's just air pollution in one spot. Nobody in his right mind would want to return to that. But, guess what? We heard the same excuses about how it couldn't be done and about how it would impose crippling costs on businesses and how it would be ruination of our economy, but it didn't turn out that way, did it?
This is a free market economy, if turning coal into oil is such a great idea, nobody is stopping coal companies from doing just that. If this is so profitable and nobody is doing it, here is your opportunity to make a bundle.
The answer to that is quite simple, it's risky investment because of the volatile oil market. If the price of oil drops below the profitable threshold even a for a few weeks or months you're going to be in serious trouble.
Now if the government were going to guarantee a value of $50 or $60 a barrel you'd see an explosion of this tech since the risk is associated with the conventional market is no longer there. This is still far below the current costs and makes economic sense. Even if they do end up collecting on it you've pretty much accomplished your goal anyway which is to drive the cost of oil down. In any event as the cost of oil goes up this tech becomes far less of risk, at some point in time it will be used.
We heard the same excuses about how it couldn't be done and about how it would impose crippling costs on businesses and how it would be ruination of our economy, but it didn't turn out that way, did it?
The jobs we have lost to overseas companies can certainly be attributed to environmental laws to some degree, I'm not suggesting that environmental laws are not important but the fact is strict environmental regulations in this country that do not exist in other countries are one of the driving forces behind our faltering economy.
My solution is any county importing goods into this country has to mirror the environmental laws we have.
The jobs we have lost to overseas companies can certainly be attributed to environmental laws to some degree, I'm not suggesting that environmental laws are not important but the fact is strict environmental regulations in this country that do not exist in other countries are one of the driving forces behind our faltering economy.
My solution is any county importing goods into this country has to mirror the environmental laws we have.
I agree. For a country or business to export stuff to the US, they should have to certify that they've matched US environmental and labor laws, or pay a tariff to offset the difference.
No problem. Just install a couple of gas turbines.
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