Conservation of Resources discussion

In 2009, the US imported 1.7 billion barrels of petroleum from OPEC nations, and 2.5 billion barrels from non-OPEC nations. The largest supplier is Canada (with nearly 1 billion barrels), followed by Mexico (just under half a billion barrels) then Saudi Arabia. (Check for details on the website of the US Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.gov/.)

To help reduce this dependence on foreign oil, there is growing pressure to begin using America’s abundant reserves of tar sands and oil shale. Based on your assigned reading and what you came across on the Internet, do you think mining tar sands and oil shale is a good alternative to imported oil? Or, do you think the higher cost and additional damage to the environment caused by mining these makes foreign oil more appealing? Or perhaps you have another alternative. Whichever you chose, please explain with details.

I believe that continuing to drill is very bad for the environment and way too costly. I do not think the oil industry is honest with public about the amount of oil available or not all over the world at this time. The subsidies are used to partly keep this a mystery. I do believe that the peak is here or very close for them to be so adamantly persistent to drill in such expensive and environmentally unsafe conditions. Foreign oil to me is more appealing due to the lesser effects on the environment. Safe alternatives should be put into place as soon as possible due to rising cost and rising consumption of energy. The dependence on oil itself is contributing to the high cost of oil whether it be foreign oil or close. When the sources are low the cost will be high no matter where that oil comes from. When the oil is harder and more costly to drill along with the bad economy( will take more dollars than other currency to invest in the drilling) will make the price more than it already is. The price of drilling has a lot to do with the market and currency values also. This is one reason why countries with oil have so much power in congress.

A windmill on top of the car maybe? It might would take off slow, but the wind generated at full speed no telling how fast that might be able to get. Time has to be involved in how fast an object can go with whatever energy is used. Example it takes time for solar to heat up. This society is blessed to have a burst of seemingly immediate energy for everything. Is there some way we could slow down the speed of the portable energies we have today like dilute it? This would slow down the use also to create more time for fuels to catch up with the demand. This is hard to explain due to I am not a rocket scientist. I see two things that slow down energy consumption dilution and recycling. How to do that I would have to leave to scientist, because I do not have that knowledge. I am just a nurse and a mom. This is another reason why I am all for subsidies to scientist.

Katie I wonder a lot about that one. Where I live they do rolling blackouts randomly throughout the year for the reason to decrease the consumption due to the demand is too high and price would be too much. I do not think it is shortage but who knows. I do know the last rolling scheduled blackout, they blackout even the airport. It is very inconvenient to my job due to my patients are all on a machine cleaning their blood. When the power goes out we have to manually return their blood to them in the dark.