Suggested Discussion Outline - Everything About Oil

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Discussion Outline - Everything About Oil

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Suggested Discussion Outline

Everything About Oil – Soaring Prices, Plummeting Foreign-Exchange Rates, Devastated Family Budgets, Implications for Global Warming, Political Dependence on the Middle East, Etc.

(A) The basics = how much of $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline goes –

A-1. “off the top” to OPEC and other producers;
A-2. for the Federal excise tax;
A-3. as state and local sales taxes; and
A-4. for refining, transportation and marketing.

(B) The 5 cents/gallon environmental cost included in the 40.2 cents/gallon for refining, transportation and marketing.

(C) The comparable costs for different sources of energy – petroleum products, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, etc.

(D) Of the energy sources that are cost competitive, their comparative environmental impact.

(E) Of the energy sources that are cost competitive, their comparative implications for energy independence.

(F) “Hitting the Wall” as the rest of the world community loses interest in making loans to the United States to purchase crude oil (just like nobody on our e-mail list of 130 responded that, on a personal level, s/he had been able to find a bank willing to make monthly loans to cover the borrower's monthly personal EXPENSES!!!)!!!

(G) Conservation finally forced on the American consumer by the “laws of economics” (since our spineless politicians were incapable of enacting conservation laws that could have achieved a “soft landing”).

(H) The irony of American workers having to be re-trained to perform their old jobs that had been “out sourced” during the period that our spineless politicians maintained the dollar at unrealistically-high levels.

(I) If it is not too “audacious to hope” that coal can be made to burn cleanly, the next environmental crisis that will be caused by using coal that our “experts” are failing to mention.

(J) The position of Barack Obama on these issues.

(K) The position of John McCain on these issues.

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Additional Issues Raised In The Wake of Utah Owl’s 7 July 2008 Comments Posted Under “Short Quiz – Everything About Oil – Suggested Answers”

I. Europe’s lack of success in complying with Kyoto by using “cap and trade” which both Barack Obama and John McCain favor – because as soon as “pollution rights” began to acquire a significant price, (1) fraudulent pollution rights became common and (2) more importantly, the European Union authorized purchasing “pollution rights” from anywhere in the world (not just Europe) rendering the whole charade meaningless in addition to introducing wholesale fraud.

II. Since Utah Owl claims that electricity generated from wind and concentrated (vs. photovoltaic) solar power have become economic with crude oil at $145/bbl while nuclear-powered electricity plants are economic at a fraction of that cost, should American workers be forced to work in plants powered by high-cost wind- and solar-powered electricity while competing foreign workers have plants powered by low-cost nuclear power???

III. If the answer to II is affirmative, how can the high-cost plants be financed – (1) should the U.S. government guarantee the $145/bbl cost of crude as a floor and guarantee that it will NOT impose a windfall profit tax if the price increases, or (2) should the U.S. government add to the national debt by building the plants itself in a Tennessee Valley Authority style federal government project???

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