[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[David Ritchie]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Jeff Hubbs <jhubbslist at att.net> wrote:
> Oh?  Where am I - or, rather, where is the DOE (where I got the numbers)
> wrong, David?
>
I think you are being mislead by the difference between crude oil (as
pumped from the
ground) and refined products. Yes, we produce refined products that
get exported. The
real question is where to crude comes from, not the refined products.
Also, imports at some
level get driven by demand... demand appears to be down from a few
years ago, and as Sean McNealy's more recent data shows, we are
currently consuming 14.3M barrels/day, of which
only 5 M barrels a day is domestically produced.

  http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_w.htm
  Current Imports:  11M (9M crude)
  Current Exports:  1.7M (almost all refined product)
  Domestic Production:  5M crude

  The good news is we are burning the cheap Arab oil, because our oil
is a lot more expensive to
extract (the stuff that was easy to extract was heavily depleted
during WWII, evidently). We
really don't want to burn through our oil first, because our economy
will be at the mercy of
a lot of people we (as a country) have irritated over the years...

BTW, an economist Jeff Rubin has an interesting talk you may find
educational... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBpt9_FSV0 - he
predicts that when oil hits $200/barrel, suddenly producing stuff
overseas is no longer viable and the dynamics change radically..
I think he puts forward a pretty strong argument.

-- Dave Ritchie