Uh, I forget. What did Bush say he was actually going to do to end our oil addiction?

[techs]

I think Bush had some plan to end our "addiction to oil" during his State of the Union.
I'll be darned but all I remember is something about research into wood chips.
Is that the plan? To do research into using wood chips as fuel? How much money is he proposing we put into this research? 10-20-30 Billion?
Also, I thought that wood chips had found a use in pellet stoves and thats where all the sawdust and wood chips were going into nowadays, into pellet fuel?
Are we going to start planting trees for the wood chips? Won't they take years to grow? So when do we start?
I don't know about you but I am beginning to think it was an attempt to draw attention from the fact Bush plans on doing nothing, not even raising fuel efficiency standards for cars.

 

[JacobJ]

I dunno. Maybe he'll give tax breaks to wealthy people on the off-chance hope that they'll feel like researching enough to go and do it or something.

 

[Jhhnn]

I think he said we were going to Mars... or was that last year?

 

[BrownTown]

lol, and how does MArs help our oil addiction? all it really does is take billions of dollars and find cool ways of burning them.

I mean, wtf is the point of going to Mars expcept to flip the bird at China? OF course they laughing all the way to the bank since their probably raking in all the money the US is throwing away on such stupid endeavours,..

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
lol, and how does MArs help our oil addiction? all it really does is take billions of dollars and find cool ways of burning them.

I mean, wtf is the point of going to Mars expcept to flip the bird at China? OF course they laughing all the way to the bank since their probably raking in all the money the US is throwing away on such stupid endeavours,..

It may be the only way we CAN still actually compete with China.

edit: that is if we don't outsource the work to them.

 

[Lemon law]

Three or four years ago Bush was bullish on hydrogen fuels-----a radical technology that might be viable but would require massive infrastructure changes with a 10 year lead time ---and then followed up his mouth with zero R&D.------but various bio-technologies may be really viable------but the proof is in spending the money on R&D------otherwise its just more empty rethoric and slogans.

If we have a oil market crunch-----Bush again telling us to wait years and years to cure the problem will be too little too late------but tell that to Katrina victims.

Rethoric and slogans are worthless without follow up commitments.

 

[Pens1566]

I know this one. Cut taxes FTW.

 

[Strk]

I think his plan is to be out of office before anyone asks what's his plan.

 

[zephyrprime]

He wanted to spend a billion bucks on fuel cell research or something. Of course, he promised this back in 2003 also. Fuels cells have been around for 100 years but they're still not a viable power source for more than a tiny handfull of things. Moving away from oil will be extremely difficult to do.

 

[sandorski]

A Canadian host of a trendy Newsish show(The Hour) said it best: The first step to solving an addiction problem is to admit it. However, as anyone who watches Oprah knows, an Addict will often say anything that gets them their next fix.

 

[totalcommand]

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
I think he said we were going to Mars... or was that last year?

hahhahha, nice one!

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Three or four years ago Bush was bullish on hydrogen fuels-----a radical technology that might be viable but would require massive infrastructure changes with a 10 year lead time ---and then followed up his mouth with zero R&D.

You are quite wrong. He asked congress for money (not that he has a hope of competing against how much R&D is being poured into by the private sector) to construct 300 hydrogen fueling stations around the country that will provide the base infastructure needed if hydrogen does take off which seems highly likely. This money has been allocated and is being used to construct the fueling stations as we speak. Fuel cells are a reality, every major car manufacturer has plans to deploy them commercially by 2015 at the latest. There are currently hundereds of test vehicles in the US on our roads right now being tested (mostly in california).

And before you call fuel cells untested consider for a moment that they have been used by NASA since in the 70's. Biodiseal is an interesting Idea and the manufactuers should explore it if it's viable, but I doubt it is. The biodiseal you see being talked about on the internet requires free vegtable oil to make it even slightly competative against regular fuel. More long term plans like using thermal depolymerization and biomass crops to produce #4 fuel oil would be far better uses of technology.

As far as Bush's ideas to reduce foreign oil dependency, he hasn't put forward any ideas, yet.

 

[0marTheZealot]

A billion dollars in energy development is a pittance.

The energy infrastructure is several hundred trillion dollars in size. It does not change on a dime.

 

[Polish3d]

I do agree that we need a Manhattan/Apollo type project ... imagine aside from helping us get off foreign oil what it would be like if we were totally energy independent

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: techs
I don't know about you but I am beginning to think it was an attempt to draw attention from the fact Bush plans on doing nothing, not even raising fuel efficiency standards for cars.

I would expect nothing more or less from this administration...

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: Strk
I think his plan is to be out of office before anyone asks what's his plan.

Maybe his plan is to try to find some way to keep from being regarded, in the future, as the Worst President in American history?

He doesn't have a plan and if he did it would be hard to pay for it in the future since his plan for global labor wage arbitrage, mass immigration, and the subsequent destruction of the American middle class will leave us with little money to pay for it, not to mention a shrinking research infrastructure. (Why would anyone want to go to school to become a scientist or engineer when those jobs are being shipped overseas?)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: rahvin
And before you call fuel cells untested consider for a moment that they have been used by NASA since in the 70's. Biodiseal is an interesting Idea and the manufactuers should explore it if it's viable, but I doubt it is. The biodiseal you see being talked about on the internet requires free vegtable oil to make it even slightly competative against regular fuel. More long term plans like using thermal depolymerization and biomass crops to produce #4 fuel oil would be far better uses of technology.

Fuel cell technology is far from being a done deal. There is a huge difference between being able to do it in $1 million vehicles and to actually implementing it for $15,000 vehicles. There are still a great many problems that need to be overcome, such as where all of the platinum will come from, not to mention the hydrogen (it costs energy somewhere to crack water through electrolysis and make hydrogen gas--where will that come from--coal plants? Nuclear?). I think fuel cells are a great idea, but I'm skeptical about whether they'll actually be implemented.

As for biodiesel, the problem is, where do you get the fuel from? We also need farmland for food, and with runaway worldwide population growth, including a huge rate of population growth in the United States (no thanks to Bush and his open borders policies), the choice between food and fuel will become an increasingly large issue.

(Isn't there a German guy, somewhere, who turns dead cats into biodiesel? I think it's 13 cats per liter.)

 

[Darkhawk28]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: rahvin
And before you call fuel cells untested consider for a moment that they have been used by NASA since in the 70's. Biodiseal is an interesting Idea and the manufactuers should explore it if it's viable, but I doubt it is. The biodiseal you see being talked about on the internet requires free vegtable oil to make it even slightly competative against regular fuel. More long term plans like using thermal depolymerization and biomass crops to produce #4 fuel oil would be far better uses of technology.

Fuel cell technology is far from being a done deal. There is a huge difference between being able to do it in $1 million vehicles and to actually implementing it for $15,000 vehicles. There are still a great many problems that need to be overcome, such as where all of the platinum will come from, not to mention the hydrogen (it costs energy somewhere to crack water through electrolysis and make hydrogen gas--where will that come from--coal plants? Nuclear?). I think fuel cells are a great idea, but I'm skeptical about whether they'll actually be implemented.

As for biodiesel, the problem is, where do you get the fuel from? We also need farmland for food, and with runaway worldwide population growth, including a huge rate of population growth in the United States (no thanks to Bush and his open borders policies), the choice between food and fuel will become an increasingly large issue.

(Isn't there a German guy, somewhere, who turns dead cats into biodiesel? I think it's 13 cats per liter.)

Is he related to Bill Frist?

 

[Jhhnn]

From Cyclo Wizard-

"This passes for a legitimate thread now? Some idiot builds a strawman from a recent speech and trolls about completely unrelated topics? The transcript for the speech is readily available from any major news site, which tells me you had no other intention than trolling when you asked your question."

The real "Strawman" was built IN the recent speech... a flag-waving feel-good sop for the faithful. The notion that anything proposed by the Prez will actually have a significant impact on foreign oil dependency is absurd. It's a question of scale, and what he offered doesn't even begin to address the issue in a meaningful way.

It bears as much resemblance to reality as going to Mars, and anybody with enough sense to pour piss out of a boot should be able to recognize it.

OTOH, if we weren't busily providing welfare to the wealthy and squandering our resources in wars of adventure and pointless security scams, we might actually be able to move in a meaningful direction...

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
From Cyclo Wizard-

"This passes for a legitimate thread now? Some idiot builds a strawman from a recent speech and trolls about completely unrelated topics? The transcript for the speech is readily available from any major news site, which tells me you had no other intention than trolling when you asked your question."

The real "Strawman" was built IN the recent speech... a flag-waving feel-good sop for the faithful. The notion that anything proposed by the Prez will actually have a significant impact on foreign oil dependency is absurd. It's a question of scale, and what he offered doesn't even begin to address the issue in a meaningful way.

It bears as much resemblance to reality as going to Mars, and anybody with enough sense to pour piss out of a boot should be able to recognize it.

OTOH, if we weren't busily providing welfare to the wealthy and squandering our resources in wars of adventure and pointless security scams, we might actually be able to move in a meaningful direction...

Imagine all the energy and money being put into the Iraqi war effort instead being put into alternative energy, nuclear research, etc.

Bush has was, is and will always be an idiot in my book. He couldn't manage to lead this country out of a wet paper bag unless someone showed him how he could make money for his rich buddies by doing it.

/rant

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

We're going to go broke . . . oil consumption will fall dramatically.

 

[totalcommand]

Hey how did CycloWizard get his post removed?

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: techs
Uh, I forget. What did Bush say he was actually going to do to end our oil addiction?

Uh, it looks like Bush forgot what he said, too. Check this report on Keith Olbermann's Countdown, last Thursday:

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, less than 24 hours after the State of the Union address for 2006, the president?s energy secretary telling reporters that Mr. Bush really did not mean it literally when he vowed to reduce America?s dependence on Middle East oil by slashing imports 75 percent by the year 2025.

How silly of us to take him at his word!

The president?s comments on Middle East oil, including what he called America?s addiction to it, making headline after headline after Tuesday night?s address, Mr. Bush vowing to fund research into (INAUDIBLE) alternative, rather, fuels, setting the goal, as we mentioned, of cutting imports by three quarters over the next two decades, and pledging to, quote, ?move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.?

Well, not quite. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman telling reporters on a conference call, quote, "This was purely an example."