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Octane Molecule, 3-d Representation

I left a comment at Nashville City Paper's LTE's on Thursday, that's apropos to this post. NCP 'disappears' after a day, and is not a friendly place, sometimes, and it can (and does) degenerate quickly...it's a public fourm.

The LTE was in support of funding research on new energy sources...my reply to the author...

Ed, you can pile up well-educated college seniors to the moon, and that still would not solve America's thirst for and addiction to cheap oil.

The problem is simple physics. We have a ready-made supply (millions of years of prehistoric life, reduced by time and crushing pressure to these 'convenient' underground resources...hmmm, a little 'intelligent design, I wonder?), and this 'supply' has been, to this point, used freely by the entire world for it's remarkeable advances in technology.

The hydrocarbon molecules that make up crude oil can't be duplicated by anything we have now, without expending more energy than it would be worth to create them. And we don't have millions of years to wait around for more of the stuff to 'show up'.

So, people, eventually we are going to have to bite the bullet, and severly curtail the use of 'fossil fuel' for extravagent purposes...wheeling and flying ourselves around our country without second thoughts, personal transit, whatever. Eventually, the stuff will have to be conserved for it's more important use as raw materials for plastics, etc.

The reason we don't hear this from our Government? Our economy is based on the free-flow of Oil, and the stuff is the lifeblood of our way of life. If we started by, say, banning all 8- and 6-cylinder cars and trucks, stopping most pleasure travel by air, and otherwise started 'conserving' oil resources, our economy would tank, and so would our way of life.

All for the lack of a chained carbon molecule, the kingdom was lost... »http://tinyurl.com/37xjyu«

and, to a commentor who suggested more refineries and the Artic 'reserves'...

...you conveniently ignore the fact that our consumption is too great. You're putting off, to future generations, the same scenario...just because we can open up Artic resources, and pump oil like mad, build more refineries etc., the fact is we are using up a finite resource that took millions of years to 'create', and doing so in a careless fashion, just to obtain some immediate gratification for our generations.

I've said this before, future historians will see our current life cycles as including the most greedy and obnoxious bunch of humans that ever existed on the planet.

So, does this make me an instant boilerplate leftist envirowhacho? No, I'm just along for the ride. Enjoying it while I can, but when the time comes to bite the bullet, I'll understand.

No Whining. Not Ever...

That pretty much sums up my read on our current Oil Price/Consumption conundrum. We simply expect too much, for what little purpose we serve.

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