HughHewitt.com Blog "The 5-Minute ENERGY Blog" by Tim Dunn

HughHewitt.com Blog : Hugh Hewitt : "The 5-Minute ENERGY Blog: Post 1" by Tim Dunn

Whether we face continued energy abundance in the US, or face a looming crisis will largely depend on the political choices we make in the next dozen or so years.

Energy is to the economy what food is to a human.  You can’t get much more basic than the need to eat.  Energy provides the ability for humans to accomplish many times more than their own physical efforts.  It is energy that drives the machines that allows an American to be many times more productive than workers in non-industrial economies, from tractors to computers.

Post 2:

The last Post argued that our Energy Future will largely be determined by who gets to decide, who gets to make energy decisions.  If we have decisions made by individual Americans in a competitive market, we will continue to have ample energy.  But if we have decisions made by central planners, we will see energy famine and perhaps even the return of poverty to America.

Post 3:

To generate the solar heat equivalent of 2200 Calories provided by four 13 ounce bottles of oil requires a ten foot by ten foot  solar panels sitting in the sun for a quarter of a day.  Think about the convenience of chugging down four bottles of oil verses lugging around a ten by ten foot panel for a quarter of a day and you have a pretty good personal illustration why extracting sun power from combusting oil is so much more useful than using direct sunlight.
Note that oil comes from plants.  So oil is also green energy.  Combusting oil releases sunlight energy that shined on plants in time past, and releases carbon dioxide and water back to the atmosphere from which it came.  It’s all part of what is called the Carbon Cycle.  Think about it, oil is a naturally occurring “biofuel” and what is currently called “green biofuel” is actually produced synthetically by a manufacturing process.

 Post 4: Oil Haters and Energy-Crats

And will we really run out some day?
Actually, oil is being generated all the time.  The “biofuel” industry uses man-made manufacturing processes to simulate what the earth does every day: cook plant material and generate oil.  I don’t think we will ever see an end to the green, organic, naturally occurring, plant-stored solar power miracle fuel, oil.  The primary problem is one of accessibility.  The harder something is to access the more it will cost, at least for a while.

 Post 5: The US Oil Shale Boom

 It is quite astonishing to consider the possibility that in a short five years US oil production might be restored to the previous peak rate reached forty years earlier. 

Post 6: Oil -- The Plant Smoothie

We know that oil is organic, naturally-occurring, solar-packed biofuel.  It’s from plants, so it’s green.  Most oil and gas migrates from its source until it gets trapped and stored for our later use, or seeps out at the surface.   Seeps happen a lot in the Gulf of Mexico, and many bugs depend on it for food.

That is why oil from the Mercado oil spill just disappeared; the bugs ate it.  There are entire ecosystems around oil seeps.  Oil is a sort of plant smoothie. 

The Mercado spill was a human tragedy because of 11 lost lives.  But most of the subsequent human tragedy was imposed by government policy.

But first let’s look at the spill from a bug’s perspective.  For them, the Mercado spill was sort of like spilling a truck load of birdseed by the side of the road might look to a bird.  It’s not good for people because it makes a huge mess and creates a lot of inconvenience, and perhaps a hazard.  But the birds see an all you can eat buffet.