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In today's " energy speech " photo op by Bush I didn't hear him talk about ethanol or the Canadian Tar Sands saving us from our quickly devolving energy predicament here in the US. Now he has switched to citing the Green River Oil Shales, and opening up " anything " within the US territories to drilling. Ethanol has always been very close to a " break even " proposition when it comes to the EROEI ( energy returned on energy invested ) equation for corn ethanol production and the realistically tiny ramp up in its use in the US is causing dramatic food price increases, not to mention starving many of the world's poor who depend on US corn exports. The Canadian Tar Sands will NEVER provide anything but a tiny fraction of what is the US voracious apetite for oil. The process of extracting oil from these sand requires vast quantities of natural gas and water, and Canada is running low on both in the Tar Sands mining areas. The Canadians are also protesting more and more about this process destroying vast tracts of their lands where the natural landscape is literally devastated by the mining of these sands. The Oil Shales that Bush proposes now are as much as a farce as the Oil Sands or Ethanol in terms of making any significant differance in helping with high energy prices and scarcity. These shales are rock, thousands of feet underground in a very thin layer. They are not on the surface as much of the Canadian tar sands are. It would take mindboggling amounts of energy, water and a multitude of other dwindling resources to release the oil from this rock. The process is a net loss EROEI. With the prices of oil and natural gas headed for the stratosphere, the prospect of getting any meaningful amounts ( its just on the drawing board presently ) of oil out of oil shales is a ridiculous proposition as an endeavor that could change our national slide into Energy Armagedon. Bushes other Ace In The Hole is to open up oil drilling, everywhere in US territories. Anyone who knows clearly the figures of the estimated reserves in these offshore regions and in Alaska understand well that compared to the Big Picture of the amounts of oil the US uses, opening up these areas for drilling will produce under the " best circumstances " only a very small fraction of the oil needed to run the US economy as presently structured. The bottom line, Bush is trying to present that these things will somehow stave off our building energy woes, when in truth it will do nothing of the kind, and he the Liar And Chief knows it. The vast majority of the public however fall for these Smoke and Mirror illusions. They believe the lies and mis-representations and think that Business As Usual conditions will be back soon, and some Magic Fix will show up anytime.
Bush and his criminal crew are running out of options and that is clear. They are proposing non-realistic fixes like Ethanol, Tar Sands, drilling in offshore waters and in icy locals like Alaska, and oil shales because the oil coming from exporters is maxing out, and going into decline now. Bush is reduced to begging the Saudis for increased production. Regarding Iraq, the word is today that US and British Big Oil like Exxon, Cheveron, Total, BP etc will be moving into Iraq soon to pillage thier oil. Yes, its truly MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. This of course was Bush and Cheney's plan all along. This is the first time these companies have had access to the vast oil reserves of Iraq since Saddam Hussein nationalized them some 30 plus years ago. So the plundering will begin soon, all protected by US military and Mercenary occupation forces. It remains to be seen how long the millions of Iraqi citizens will stand by while their national treasure of oil wealth is being stolen by the Big Oil theives. The Iraqi oil production infrastructure is literally falling apart, and its subject to continual attacks by various groups hostile to the US occupation. Don't count on any oil coming out of Iraq making any significant differance in queling the energy problems for the US. If the Western and European oil companies do actually manage to set up shop in Iraq, they will make tons of money off of their stolen prize while they are able to control it, but it won't change in any meaninful way the world's slide into super expensive and scarce energy. If we had real leaders of integrity and honesty, they would be ernestly getting out the message of just what a dire situation we are entering into on so many fronts. They would be discussing the realities of the massive scope of changes on every level that are and will continue to sweep over the US and world societies because of the imminent and inevitable rapid decline of the fuel that made humanity bloom and proliferate in the last 150 years. When looking at this spike of humanity's abundance in terms of the timeframe of 5000 years before, and 5000 years after Peak Oil, the time of Hydrocarbon's energy forms skyrocketing affect on the massive up-tic in human population and as the driver of huge worldwide economies will show itself to be a very shortlived affair.