Thursday, December 21, 2000
Naively plugging for Gore as Environment Ambassador
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Dear Mr. President-Elect: appoint Al Gore as Environment Ambassador
As a former petroleum executive you are fully aware of the shrinking world supply of oil. Using US government supplied data, analysis shows that there is a potential of the Earth running out of natural oil in 38 years. This is not the only environmental crisis that we are not prepared to cope with. Emissions (fully half of the greenhouse gasses come from CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, 1/6 stem from chlorofluorocarbons), bio-engineering, the population growth in poor nations that has resulted in such things as the self-destruction of the sub-Saharan nations (draining of the water table and destruction of arable land resulting in famine and death of millions of people) are some of the painful environmental concerns that we ignore. "Not on my watch," say governments, the Pope and the Muslim clerics.
Al Gore, a man who has thought and written about the environment a great deal, could be our ambassador to the world, to spur action toward the preservation of humanity beyond the next century.
On the subject of energy, the issue you have worked with: there is an urgent need to develop bioenergy, energy from renewable resources, to replace the vanishing petroleum. Ethanol is the principal product, a storable clean energy source. US produces 1.2 billion gallons a year from corn and other agricultural crops (Brasil produces 3.2, from sugarcane). By 2010 bioconversion could produce 14 billion gallons of ethanol a year (10 percent of fuel needed for automotive transportation in the US) from corn, agricultural residues, wood residues from excess growth in unmanaged forests, industrial and municipal waste streams. This would also provide jobs in agriculture and generate valuable animal feed byproducts. Most importantly, this is clean-burning fuel, with no net increase in carbon dioxide in the air (the growing process takes it out, the burning puts it back in). This reduces the greenhouse warming.
Biomass is the term used to describe the sources of bioenergy.
There is an US Energy Information Agency (eia.doe.gov) that documents this subject. Renewable energy sources also include solar thermal collectors for heating water, space and utilities' processes. There are collectors atop new residences all over Israel, while their use in the US has dropped considerably after peaking in 1985. Here, 9/10ths are used for swimming pools, with a puny annual value of $30 million. In 1997 the US Department of Energy launched a Million Solar Roofs program, which may improve the results, but I doubt its success to date. Photovoltaic cell and module production has continued to increase steadily during the same period, to nearly $200 million a year.
Renewable energy still constitutes only 7.5 percent of energy uses in the US, and more than half of it is conventional hydroelectric power (growing). The other half is from biomass (not growing; US stats include also straw, tires, landfill gases); solar energy use is less than 1/10 of one percent of energy consumption. Non-renewable fossil fuels provide 85 percent of US energy (45 percent from petroleum, the rest evenly divided between coal and natural gas). Nuclear power is down to 7 percent of total energy consumption.
The world's non renewable oil reserves of 1,033 billion barrels are spread out as follows: 4 percent in Far East and Oceania, 7 in Africa (3 in Libya and 2 in Nigeria), 67 in the Middle East (11 in friendly Saudi Arabia, 10 in the Emirates and 10 in Kuwait; alas, 11 in Iraq and 9 in Iran); 5 in Russia; 2 in Western Europe, 9 in Central and South America, and 7 in North America (5 in Mexico, .5 in Canada, and a puny 2 percent in the US). Here we see why oil drives world policy. The figures also explain some of the new emphasis on keeping the US militarily strong. Of the world's 5,141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves,the Middle East has 34 percent, Russia has 33 and the US has 3.
Given that the world's annual consumption of petroleum is 27 billion barrels (the US accounts for 24.6 percent of it, with all of Europe at 20.5 percent, Japan at 7.5, Russia at 3.4 and China at 5.6 percent) and the oil reserve is 1,033 billion barrels, we the world will run out of fuel in 38 years (natural gas is good for 62 years). That should cause a pause for thought. The way we are consuming, forget about protecting the Alaskan wilderness from extinction, we have to protect humanity from extinction.
A look at the entire world's sources of energy confirms its total dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels. Of the 373 quadrillion BTUs consumed annually, 40 percent come from petroleum, 22.5 from natural gas, a like amount from coal, 7 from hydroelectric and nuclear power, and a pitiful .5 percent from biomass and solar. The day when we all run out of fuel and start cutting down our forests for firewood, the way they did it in sub-Saharan Africa may come within the lifetimes of our children.
The US today imports 50 percent of its oil, a number that is continuing to move up, from 30 percent during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. It accounts for 30 percent of our trade deficit. Isn't it about time we and the rest of the world recognized and did something about the impending self-destruction we are facing? Al Gore the environmentalist could be the man who would successfully move us and the world off the dime. I would ask him to help if I were you, Mr. President-Elect.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish a happy Holiday seas.on to our readers, and best of everything to all of us, health and wisdom, governments and governed, in the new millenium of rapid changes.
Dear Mr. President-Elect: appoint Al Gore as Environment Ambassador
As a former petroleum executive you are fully aware of the shrinking world supply of oil. Using US government supplied data, analysis shows that there is a potential of the Earth running out of natural oil in 38 years. This is not the only environmental crisis that we are not prepared to cope with. Emissions (fully half of the greenhouse gasses come from CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, 1/6 stem from chlorofluorocarbons), bio-engineering, the population growth in poor nations that has resulted in such things as the self-destruction of the sub-Saharan nations (draining of the water table and destruction of arable land resulting in famine and death of millions of people) are some of the painful environmental concerns that we ignore. "Not on my watch," say governments, the Pope and the Muslim clerics.
Al Gore, a man who has thought and written about the environment a great deal, could be our ambassador to the world, to spur action toward the preservation of humanity beyond the next century.
On the subject of energy, the issue you have worked with: there is an urgent need to develop bioenergy, energy from renewable resources, to replace the vanishing petroleum. Ethanol is the principal product, a storable clean energy source. US produces 1.2 billion gallons a year from corn and other agricultural crops (Brasil produces 3.2, from sugarcane). By 2010 bioconversion could produce 14 billion gallons of ethanol a year (10 percent of fuel needed for automotive transportation in the US) from corn, agricultural residues, wood residues from excess growth in unmanaged forests, industrial and municipal waste streams. This would also provide jobs in agriculture and generate valuable animal feed byproducts. Most importantly, this is clean-burning fuel, with no net increase in carbon dioxide in the air (the growing process takes it out, the burning puts it back in). This reduces the greenhouse warming.
Biomass is the term used to describe the sources of bioenergy.
There is an US Energy Information Agency (eia.doe.gov) that documents this subject. Renewable energy sources also include solar thermal collectors for heating water, space and utilities' processes. There are collectors atop new residences all over Israel, while their use in the US has dropped considerably after peaking in 1985. Here, 9/10ths are used for swimming pools, with a puny annual value of $30 million. In 1997 the US Department of Energy launched a Million Solar Roofs program, which may improve the results, but I doubt its success to date. Photovoltaic cell and module production has continued to increase steadily during the same period, to nearly $200 million a year.
Renewable energy still constitutes only 7.5 percent of energy uses in the US, and more than half of it is conventional hydroelectric power (growing). The other half is from biomass (not growing; US stats include also straw, tires, landfill gases); solar energy use is less than 1/10 of one percent of energy consumption. Non-renewable fossil fuels provide 85 percent of US energy (45 percent from petroleum, the rest evenly divided between coal and natural gas). Nuclear power is down to 7 percent of total energy consumption.
The world's non renewable oil reserves of 1,033 billion barrels are spread out as follows: 4 percent in Far East and Oceania, 7 in Africa (3 in Libya and 2 in Nigeria), 67 in the Middle East (11 in friendly Saudi Arabia, 10 in the Emirates and 10 in Kuwait; alas, 11 in Iraq and 9 in Iran); 5 in Russia; 2 in Western Europe, 9 in Central and South America, and 7 in North America (5 in Mexico, .5 in Canada, and a puny 2 percent in the US). Here we see why oil drives world policy. The figures also explain some of the new emphasis on keeping the US militarily strong. Of the world's 5,141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves,the Middle East has 34 percent, Russia has 33 and the US has 3.
Given that the world's annual consumption of petroleum is 27 billion barrels (the US accounts for 24.6 percent of it, with all of Europe at 20.5 percent, Japan at 7.5, Russia at 3.4 and China at 5.6 percent) and the oil reserve is 1,033 billion barrels, we the world will run out of fuel in 38 years (natural gas is good for 62 years). That should cause a pause for thought. The way we are consuming, forget about protecting the Alaskan wilderness from extinction, we have to protect humanity from extinction.
A look at the entire world's sources of energy confirms its total dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels. Of the 373 quadrillion BTUs consumed annually, 40 percent come from petroleum, 22.5 from natural gas, a like amount from coal, 7 from hydroelectric and nuclear power, and a pitiful .5 percent from biomass and solar. The day when we all run out of fuel and start cutting down our forests for firewood, the way they did it in sub-Saharan Africa may come within the lifetimes of our children.
The US today imports 50 percent of its oil, a number that is continuing to move up, from 30 percent during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. It accounts for 30 percent of our trade deficit. Isn't it about time we and the rest of the world recognized and did something about the impending self-destruction we are facing? Al Gore the environmentalist could be the man who would successfully move us and the world off the dime. I would ask him to help if I were you, Mr. President-Elect.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish a happy Holiday seas.on to our readers, and best of everything to all of us, health and wisdom, governments and governed, in the new millenium of rapid changes.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:54 AM 
