Oil Storm

It occured to me as I posted that last bit that I hadn't commented on one of today's growing experiences. I suppose that isn't entirely accurate. There was very little growing involved.

Today FX (channel 23 on cable for us) broadcasted something they called "Oil Storm" that was basically supposed to be like a History Channel style documentary on a fictitious series of events that could occur over the next year (well from september on for a year, anyways). I'm actually not sure so much what the aim was. I started with the obvious notion that it will be a leftest attack on rightest America, and it largely was, but it had some twists that I wouldn't expect coming from such a bias.

Basically, a hurricane in September of this year severs a southern oil line that very few of us would know about. The line crosses through a sea port that also is a major port for imported oil. This hurricane devestates it, and between the mutual loss of the pipe line and the harbor, the nation loses 13% of it's ability to produce oil.

And that's just the beginning.

Like I said, there was a great deal that was one sided. A goodly ammount of the story took place around an everyday sort of family in the gasoline business. The wife at one point makes a comment such as "I can't believe we let oil have so much power over our lives." Which most people don't realize. It is true, I will admit, that our modern society is completely dependant on oil. Some of it was even pointed out to me that I hadn't thought of before, though from a friend and not this program. Plastic is a large consumer of oil as well, though not nearly as much as the fuel industry. So oil definately effects everything in the world's economy.

The reason that I ended up not liking the problem is that the series of events was transparent and too perfect. No, it's not something that I hated because of poor writing, not totally. It wasn't totally thought out. It relied on PERFECT events happening. A hurricane that gets into the Gulf of Mexico through the gap of Florida and Cuba that disrupts 13% of oil taking a year to fix. Rerouting the ships from that port to a smaller, less accessible port elsewhere that happens to have a chemical AND oil tanker colide, closing that one for a period of weeks. Etc.

They definately had the fearful idiots of the stock exchange in there. If you sneeze around oil, there's a massive sell off. But too many things just started to make this scenario not as real as they wanted it to seem and to ring hollow with me.

The reason that it's so hard to put a label on this as being direct propoganda or not is that at the end of the story the crisis is averted by buying oil from Russia and promissing to invest in their oil industry to make it grow. Meaning that the only way to save us from that oil crisis was to buy more oil. That was a switch in the opposite for me. But it got me thinking, which is why I wanted to watch it.

The process of electrolysis is how we sepperate H2O and make it into space shuttle fuel. I've heard reports of it being incredibly efficient, but still the net gain of energy is a negative number. For those of you currently going "WTF, mate?" That translates that for every so much of the fuel that you sepperate, you lose energy. You don't get back as much as you put in.

I have thought for a long time that this process could be the patch on the leaky boat until A) it sinks, or B) we get around to fusion if we ever can. The problem I realized tonight is that I don't know how inificient the system actually is. If we end up having to burn oil to sepperate the H2O in the process, it might not be as effective as I thought. It depends on how efficient it is. In my previous thoughts, it might be enough to rely on hydrostatic, solar and wind power to drive the process. The catch is it might not do it fast enough to keep pace not only with growing demands, but even current demands...

I'm going to look and see what it is that I might see right now.

Oh, and if you can respond, please do, but in this TV event the gas prices reached up to $8 a gallon or more. how many of you would spring for a Hybrid or Hydrogen or even an Alcohol powered car if the price hit that high? That's something that didn't make sense to me... Why they didn't talk about any attempts to actually switch over to something different. It might not have helped enough, but I believe that a shift in market would occur in that situation (from SUV/HUMV to hybrid and friends) and that you can bet your socks that there would be drilling in Alaska passed right as that would happen. My two cents, I'm done for now.