Aesthetics

Rich Lowry, diavlogging with Mike Tomasky, says there's basically no reason we shouldn't just drill for oil everywhere because the only downside is "aesthetics":

I assume that people who work in the tourism business, or who live in communities where many other people do, will appreciate that aesthetics can have actual economic value. If we made it so that every spot of the coastal United States became horribly ugly the total economic damage would be pretty large. But even aesthetics for its own sake aren't nothing -- I assume Lowry wouldn't burn Starry Night for $5. And of course the ecological damage done by oil drilling can go far beyond merely ruining the view (oil and ocean life don't mix) which is to say nothing of the environmental problems associated with burning the oil.

Ultimately, though, this kind of thinking is why the "oil addiction" language has gained such popularity. There are things we could do that would set us on a path toward reducing our oil consumption. Alternatively, we can decide that it's somehow just not possible and we need to reconciling ourselves to pumping more and more oil with that quest for oil overriding all other possible considerations.

Comments

For Gwich-in Indians, the merits of not drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge go beyond aesthetics. But I doubt Lowry asked any of them.

I doubt I'd be able to stomach a viewing of that video, it's hard to imagine Tomasky not delivering a serious spanking to the deeply unserious Lowry.

Posted by ed | June 22, 2008 5:46 PM

We have a similar situation here in Colorado with the Roan Plateau. It turns out that tourism produces 500 times the revenue that drilling on the plateau would generate even under the rosiest of predictions. Needless to say, the usual local input has been avoided in this case. Republicans usually like big business and tourism is the biggest business Colorado has. One would think that Republicans would support the tourism industry, but that's not the case.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 5:54 PM

i thought by aesthetics you meant the video....

Posted by razib | June 22, 2008 5:54 PM

We have a similar situation here in Colorado with the Roan Plateau. It turns out that tourism produces 500 times the revenue that drilling on the plateau would generate even under the rosiest of predictions. Needless to say, the usual local input has been avoided in this case. Republicans usually like big business and tourism is the biggest business Colorado has. One would think that Republicans would support the tourism industry, but that's not the case.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 5:54 PM

Lowry is not just an idiot, he is a fucking idiot. He ought to move to Texas where they literally DO drill for oil anywhere, including in newly built sub-divisions, because while the developer may own the surface, there is still a lease holder for what lies beneath.

The ridiculous result is that you may end up with a drilling rig in the front yard of the McMansion you just bought for half a mil.

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-9044238_ITM

I'd say lets start drilling a test well in Rich Lowry's head but I already know that that would be a dry well.

Posted by calipygian | June 22, 2008 5:55 PM

One would think that Republicans would support the tourism industry, but that's not the case.

It's insufficiently centralized -- the money flow is too diffuse. What you want for Republican support is the ability to concentrate money flows from a lot of ordinary citizens into a few big entities with aggressive lobbying shops and wingnut welfare programs, from which the Republicans can skim off their percentage.

Small business owners *think* the Republicans are on their side, but when that happens to be the case, it's incidental to the Republicans being on the side of (certain classes of) very big business.

Posted by paperwight | June 22, 2008 6:01 PM

"I'd say lets start drilling a test well in Rich Lowry's head but I already know that that would be a dry well."

You sure about that? Lowry's head obviously doesn't contain much in the way of brain matter, but who knows?. Maybe it contains oil. The must be some kind of non-brain material in there.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 6:01 PM

And not only do I think Lowry would burn Starry Night for five bucks, I think Lowry would burn Starry Night for Pan Am air miles.

Hell, Lowry would probably burn his own mother for a tenner.

Posted by calipygian | June 22, 2008 6:07 PM

Good point, Paperweight. While all the major hotel chains have big investments in Colorado, tourism still remains a primarily small business operation. And we like it that way.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 6:07 PM

Fans of unrestricted drilling and loose environmental regulation should drive along the coast of Azerbaijan. It's just like the Bond movie presents.

Posted by Brian Ulrich | June 22, 2008 6:09 PM

"Fans of unrestricted drilling and loose environmental regulation should drive along the coast of Azerbaijan"

Or you can just go to the coast of Texas. There's a very good reason no tourists go there. Even Texans don't go there. When they go to the beach, they go to Mexico or Florida. The only tourist beach in Texas in South Padre Island, and that's almost in Mexico.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 6:17 PM

Also it costs a lot of money to go around drilling everywhere, and the deeper you drill the more it costs. In fact, I think that is the actual reason they don't drill everywhere.

Posted by Noah | June 22, 2008 6:29 PM

MY - I assume that people who work in the tourism business, or who live in communities where many other people do, will appreciate that aesthetics can have actual economic value.

Lets hope the potato heads also recognize that without people having affordable transportation, their tourist industry will rot. It is not just a question of tourism being more important as a revenue source than energy - so any oil drilling, coal mining, refineries, or power plants must be fought tooth and nail and blocked. It is that all service industries and industry are predicated on essential resources needed to enable the tourist hotel or "pristine" lovers in a kayak. Food, electricity, water, fuel to transport workers and visitors to your business. Lack any critical resource item and you're bankrupt before long.

ed- For Gwich-in Indians, the merits of not drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge go beyond aesthetics.

The mostly Canadian Gwich'in indigenous peoples are hypocritical frauds. They had no objection to oil companies drilling everywhere on their lands that the "sacred caribou" also live and reproduce on so Gwich'in can shoot them for dog food. But when the oil companies came up dry, they reached out to hardcore environmentalists and gave the old Indian sob story about sacred lands, Gwich'in being noble stewards of the poor caribou, pristine lands untouched....oh, and land occupied by Alaskan natives the Gwich'in dislike because they are used to migrating over to the US side to shoot more caribou.

In turn, the only Indians in Area 1020 of the wildlife area strongly support drilling and hate the Canadian Gwic'in's guts.

30 years of doing nothing to address our comprehesive energy woes, as US population went up by 60 million new energy users - means we will have years of pain and only turn things around if we get past our NIMBY follies.

Posted by chris ford | June 22, 2008 6:35 PM

"Or you can just go to the coast of Texas. There's a very good reason no tourists go there. Even Texans don't go there. When they go to the beach, they go to Mexico or Florida. The only tourist beach in Texas in South Padre Island, and that's almost in Mexico."

When I was a kid, the beaches in Galveston had lots of beach tar (balls of semi-solid oil). But this is much less common now. There actually has been a lot of progress cleaning up offshore drilling. There are lots more rules and regs now than there used to be.

So why isn't Galveston a tourist magnet? Maybe it's because the water is pretty icky. It's not cool or clear and never has been. When you have so many rivers dumping so much silt into the Gulf, you just aren't going to end up with the kids of pretty beaches you have in Florida and California. The surf sucks too. Blaming the lack of tourism in Galveston (or Corpus Cristi or Port Aransas) on oil extraction just doesn't ring true to me. (IN any case, while Galveston might not get tourists from far away, it still gets plenty from the Houston area. It might not be a great beach, but it's convenient.)

I like the idea of having alternatives to oil, and would love to see a Manhattan Project of government-funded research in that direction as well as continued and expanded tax credits for industries and consumers who choose to buy or produce renewable energy over oil. But we're going to continue using oil for a long time even if we do ultimately wean ourselves off it. So the question is, do you want all that oil money going to the motley collection of thugs, gangsters, kleptocrats and fanatics who currently control most of it, or would you prefer to have at least some of it end up in the hands of the state and federal governments. Opening up new areas to oil doesn't have to be a give-away, after all. LOTS of strings (regulations) can be attached, and the government should negotiate those leases like a bulldog to get the most income out of each lease, whether it's producing or not.

Posted by RWB | June 22, 2008 6:46 PM

the old Indian sob story about sacred lands

Wow. Just, wow.

Now that is some serious Republican douchebaggery.

Wow.

Posted by ed | June 22, 2008 6:51 PM

I assume that people who work in the tourism business, or who live in communities where many other people do, will appreciate that aesthetics can have actual economic value. If we made it so that every spot of the coastal United States became horribly ugly the total economic damage would be pretty large. But even aesthetics for its own sake aren't nothing -- I assume Lowry wouldn't burn Starry Night for $5. And of course the ecological damage done by oil drilling can go far beyond merely ruining the view (oil and ocean life don't mix) which is to say nothing of the environmental problems associated with burning the oil.

Of course, if this is a valid argument against widespread drilling for oil, it's also an argument against widespread renewable-energy projects. The environmental damage caused by dams used to generate hydroelectric power has been extensively documented. Large-scale wind farms may reduce real-estate values and adversely affect tourism, as well as killing birds and disrupting their migratory patterns. Paving over large areas of land in the desert southwest with solar panels would also adversely affect the fragile desert ecosystem and may adversely affect tourism and local businesses too.

Posted by Mixner | June 22, 2008 6:55 PM

fostert:
They don't go to Galveston anymore?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 22, 2008 7:00 PM

"They don't go to Galveston anymore?"

Apparently, some people do. When I lived in Texas, I actually did go to Galveston once. But I never went to the beach there. When I did go to the beach, it was in Mexico. But I lived in Austin. I guess if you live in Houston, Galveston would be pretty convenient. But I certainly never heard anyone rave about the Galveston beaches. And I've heard people rave about Lubbock. Not many, of course. And having been to Lubbock, I simply cannot understand why anyone would rave about it. But it still got better reviews than the beaches of Galveston. In Austin, at least.

Posted by fostert | June 22, 2008 7:34 PM

The insanity of this discussion is beyond the usual Bush bobble head level. Anybody who has ever looked at an oil rig map of the Gulf of Mexico will see that, indeed, we do drill out in the Gulf. In fact, a big patch near Trinidad and Tobaggo was the big discovery last year. But we don't drill off the Florida coast because Floridians have paid a lot of money to live in an area with clean beaches and stuff like that. I think this is an excellent issue for Obama to use vids from people like Lowry to tell Floridians exactly what they would face if McCain becomes preznit.

The idea that the U.S. is going back to energy autarky is sure to please the moron crowd, get their testosterone flowing and such. However, a simpler and quicker way to pop the oil bubble is, of course, to take the security premium out of it. For instance, a creditable pledge by Pres. Obama not to attack Iran but to recognize the government there, as well as to negotiate for the economic integration of Iranian oil into the world system would take the price of oil futures down a good 40 to 60 bucks. Oil is as high as it is because the bet is on future violence in the oil producing regions of the Middle East. Finding oil in the Miami harbor ain't gonna happen; getting more oil on the market could pretty easily happen - for instance, the U.S. could give up its pressure in Iraq to privatize oil and allow Iraq to once again pump up its oil ministry, which, even under Saddam Hussein, was one of the finest national oil ministries in the world. But on noes! We'd have to give up what we were fighting for - "free enterprise", as Colin Powell put it.

Hell, if we had allowed that to happen in 2003, and had pumped at the level that Saddam was pumping under the sanctions, there would have been enough oil to keep the price down to about 60 dollars per barrel. Just another opportunity cost that we are going to pretend didn't occur, brought to you by the vanity war.

Posted by roger | June 22, 2008 8:13 PM

Isn't the aesthetics argument used in exactly the same way as an argument against building wind turbines?

The rest of the reasons against drilling make a lot of sense, but it seems like "aesthetics" is just a political pawn used where-ever it's convenient.

In short - I suspect that Matt won't be joining the pro-costal aesthetics lobby any time soon.

Posted by ly_yng | June 22, 2008 8:14 PM

Opening up new areas to oil doesn't have to be a give-away, after all. LOTS of strings (regulations) can be attached, and the government should negotiate those leases like a bulldog to get the most income out of each lease, whether it's producing or not.
Posted by RWB

The other huge plus of local energy production vs. bleeding wealth away to radical Muslims that dislike us and Cuadillo Chavez who also dislikes us, is that on top of money staying here in the US and getting that huge money multiplier in an economy from fresh created wealth...you also have the Federal and State royalties that can be ploughed back in for more energy development and research on oil and other substitutes for oil in industry and transportation. (Alas, solar and wind have huge environmental impacts and are unsuitable for anything other than electricity production or very inefficient hydrolysis for hydrogen that is a long way from being an economical substitute)

The royalties were squandered pretty well in the past, so a law would have to be enacted to ensure Federal royalties only go to energy production, not West Virginia folklore studies or a new Robert Byrd road...Any law should say that any research money goes to the state in which or offshore which, drilling happens. NIMBY states like CT, NY, and Massachusetts that get more than their share of R&D dollars while opposing even windfarms would be out of luck in the royalty fund which would stay in places like Texas, Louisiana, Florida (if they play ball), California, Montana, and Alaska.

*************
People opposed to oil (and nat gas) drilling fail for the most part to understand that is where the good sportsfishing is- by the rigs, that most drilling would be well offshore, and the Earths curvature is such that something the height of an oil rig disappears down beyond the horizon after 11 miles from shore.

Posted by chris ford | June 22, 2008 8:30 PM

are we really making a serious comparison between windmills and oil rigs?

windmills can't leak wind into the water and screw the local fishing and beachgoing.

Posted by cletus | June 22, 2008 8:43 PM

There are things we could do that would set us on a path toward reducing our oil consumption. Alternatively, we can decide that it's somehow just not possible and we need to reconciling ourselves to pumping more and more oil with that quest for oil overriding all other possible considerations.

Wrong and wrong.

First, there are not, as of this instant, very many things that we could do to reduce US (or global) oil consumption in any meaningful way (if climate change is your thing, we could completely give up coal in about fifteen years, but that would require that Democrats stop getting in the way of nuclear power and, in the case of Dodd and Kennedy, windfarming as well). Sure we can take baby steps toward vehicles with better fuel efficiency (something I largely support), but any baby steps we do take will be more than made up for by China, India and overall global population growth.

Second, allowing some groups to engage in coastal drilling and allowing other groups to look for a replacement fuel is not an either/or proposition. A nation can seek to maximize its energy capacity until such time as these other possible fuels you speak of exist outside your own mind.

Chris Ford,
It is that all service industries and industry are predicated on essential resources needed to enable the tourist hotel or "pristine" lovers in a kayak. Food, electricity, water, fuel to transport workers and visitors to your business.

Agreed and wanted to add disposable income on the part of the tourists to your list. Higher oil prices will have far more of a negative effect on coastal resorts and, by extension, tourism employees than some rig a tourist needs binoculars to see from the beach.

Posted by Shinyk | June 22, 2008 8:45 PM

My guess is he's just trying to make a provocative statement. It's not hard to understand that geological and ecological concerns involved in drilling may be complicated; nor is it hard to understnad that doing things like building a bunch of roads into an area they've never been before, sending a bunch of traffic out there, and then drilling an incredibly deep hole to release a substance that kills wildlife if too much of it gets into the environment can have big consequences that have to be investigated at specific potential drilling sites and planned for.

I mean, no one's got suburban housing or elementary schools sitting right next to oil derricks.

Posted by Swan | June 22, 2008 8:49 PM

Aesthetics - Shmaethestics.

There are an estimated one trillion barrels of oil world wide remaining to be pumped.

At the CURRENT rate of usage, 80 million barrels a day,
this reservoir will be completely depleted in 33 years. (Add ANWR to the mix and you shift the time to 34 years).

Drill all you want - it's oil, not Doritos - they won't make more!

Even if the estimates are off my a huge factor of two - this still means that we won't make it to the next century at the current rate of usage.
Forget about if the usage rate increases (I'm looking at you, China and India!).

Posted by Jim Kakalios | June 22, 2008 8:57 PM

There are an estimated one trillion barrels of oil world wide remaining to be pumped.

The oil sands in Venezuela and Canada are estimated to have an additional 3 trillion barrels. We don't know how much more there is yet to be discovered. Advances in technology allow us to continually increase the amount of wealth we can generate per barrel of oil. A good example is hybrid auto engine technology, which roughly doubles the efficiency of oil as a transportation fuel.

Posted by Mixner | June 22, 2008 9:12 PM

One would think that Republicans would support the tourism industry, but that's not the case.

Nah, it depends too much on ordinary working people actually having enough vacation time and disposable income to go places, a state of affairs that Republicans are clearly against.

Also, what paperwight said about how tourism is too decentralized to be favored by the right.

Posted by latts | June 22, 2008 9:14 PM

Yes, tar sands - Canada is the Saudi Arabia of tar sands, while we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. There would be considerable impact, beyond the merely aesthetic, if either Canada or the US tried to fill the oil void.

Which would do nothing about changing the rate of CO2 added to the atmosphere, of course.

Improving efficiency via hybrids is an excellent move - but is NOT what the Drill Now, Drill More crowd are about.

Furthermore - how many refineries are currently sitting idle due to a lack of crude oil? Iran has oil that they currently can't sell at a discounted price because it is the high sulfur variety. Even if we had more oil coming from ANWR right this minute, it would have a small impact on the price at the gas station.

I don't have all the answers, but if you're going down a hill, and you don't know what awaits at the bottom, a prudent move might be to ease off on the accelerator.

Posted by Jim Kakalios | June 22, 2008 9:30 PM

I don't have all the answers, but if you're going down a hill, and you don't know what awaits at the bottom, a prudent move might be to ease off on the accelerator.

Hard to know what this metaphor is supposed to mean. What does the hill represent? The car? The future is obviously unknown. Anything we do could have unforeseen consequences. Drastically reducing our oil consumption in the near-term future would almost certainly have serious adverse global economic consequences. There is no consensus among scientists, economists or policymakers about how best to respond to global warming.

Posted by Mixner | June 22, 2008 9:40 PM

Lowry would also advise someone to sell their soul for a nickel's worth of dog meat counseling that the only problem would also be "aesthetics." Or, why not trip an old woman crossing the street and grab her pocketbook? What's the problem? Just a matter of "conscience." Shoot a polar bear and her young cubs to make a nice coat? No problemo. When Lowry dies and winds up in Hell - it would be interesting to see how it affects his sunny disposition.

Posted by Trevor | June 22, 2008 9:51 PM

Basic principles of physics, however, dictate that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has consequences. Libertarian delusions become painfully apparent whenever confronted by matters like that. You may find, for example, that the property costs of an ice free planet are substantial.

Posted by Marc | June 22, 2008 10:15 PM

The mostly Canadian Gwich'in indigenous peoples are hypocritical frauds. They had no objection to oil companies drilling everywhere on their lands that the "sacred caribou" also live and reproduce on so Gwich'in can shoot them for dog food.

The Gwich'in shoot oil company people for dog food? I'm going to have to learn more about this tribe.

Posted by observer | June 22, 2008 10:19 PM

Basic principles of physics, however, dictate that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has consequences.

Since no one has suggested otherwise, I'm not sure why you think this statement is relevant. The important questions have to do with the nature and magnitude of those consequences, and of the consequences of actions that would reduce the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere.

Posted by Mixner | June 22, 2008 10:21 PM

"are we really making a serious comparison between windmills and oil rigs?

windmills can't leak wind into the water and screw the local fishing and beachgoing."

If safety and environmental regulations are followed, spillage can be minimized. I know this is hard to believe, but the technology of drilling and the culture of oil production has come a long way in the past 20 years. In any case, there is plenty of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. I don't pretend to know what effect oil drilling here has on fish populations, but it certainly hasn't turned the Gulf into a shrimp and fish-free zone.

In South Texas, there is strong local opposition to a windfarm under consideration because of how many birds those props kill. Again, I don't know if this is a serious problem. But assuming it is a serious problem, would you say that fish have more of a right to live than birds?

As much as we'd like to imagine it, there is no energy source that doesn't have some kind of externality. What we need to do is minimize those externalities through taxation and regulation.

In any case, if we are really concerned about the enviromental effects of drilling, we should encourage drilling in the U.S. where the regulations governing drilling and production (and the enforcement of said regs) are much much higher than in places like Nigeria. I mean, the environment is a global thing, right?

Of course, we should also reduce our oil consumption--but that is also a long term project. (Although we could immediately cut consumption by bringing the speed limit down to 55 mph again. Sammy Hagar might not have liked it, but that was one Carter-era regulation that actually worked, and worked almost instantly.)

Posted by RWB | June 22, 2008 10:28 PM

RWB: Sammy Hagar might not have liked it

Fuck him. I'd support a federal speed limit of 55 just to annoy the guy who ruined Van Halen.

Posted by anonymous 37 | June 23, 2008 3:03 AM

"are we really making a serious comparison between windmills and oil rigs?

windmills can't leak wind into the water and screw the local fishing and beachgoing."

On a practical sense, yeah, there are real differences between oil drilling and wind power. But Matt titled the post "Aesthetics," and if you're going to make an aesthetic argument against oil drilling, you need to make it against wind farms too.

A better argument against oil drilling is that it's a temporary fix that doesn't bring about the nuclear/renewable energy infrastructure that's the real key to ending dependence on foreign oil and, of course, perpetuating our American hegemony.

Posted by ly_yng | June 23, 2008 4:14 AM

Just aesthetics?

He lives in a pig sty? He dresses in rags? His wife wears big polka dot dresses and a hats with gilt feathers?

Just aesthetics? Uh huh.

Just another cynical schmuck saying what his bosses want.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 23, 2008 8:59 AM

In a few years all the oil in the Gulf will be gone, and scuba diving in the sunken city of Galveston will be a huge tourist attraction . . .

Posted by rea | June 23, 2008 9:07 AM

We're WINNING!

Posted by norbizness | June 23, 2008 9:18 AM

"Higher oil prices will have far more of a negative effect on coastal resorts and, by extension, tourism employees than some rig a tourist needs binoculars to see from the beach."

Shinyk nails it with that observation. We're talking about very, very minor, negligible effect on aethestics, while meeting an increasingly desperate need to drill more oil now. Complaining about the aesthetics of offshore oil derricks coast is like complaining about the aesthetics of Jessica Biel gaining 4 pounds - it's still all good.

Jim Cramer has an excellent article on the "oil lies" here.

Posted by Erudite Hillbilly | June 23, 2008 9:35 AM

It's time to get off of oil...period. And the oil mongers are just that; people who have no concept of the bigger picture, but want us to stay stuck in the past.

We have 2 oil men in the White House and what did that get us? In McBush we have the same, only controlled by lobbyists even more...

Time for a new direction...

Posted by cm | June 23, 2008 10:32 AM

Conversely, Matt, I think it's pretty safe to assume that there's a price at which Rich Lowry *would* burn Starry Night, and I expect there's a pain point at which those of us who are opposed to more drilling on public lands could change our minds on that. It seems to me that much of the support for drilling is based on misconceptions about what it would actually do for oil prices and I'd like to see more focus on that than on aesthetics.

As for where to drill, in the completely hypothetical case where we had to choose one or the other I'd definitely support drilling off NJ over drilling in the arctic. Once the arctic is wrecked it basically stays wrecked, with century-old willow trees coming up to mid-calf on a human and vehicle tracks in the tundra staying there for decades.

Posted by Melinda | June 23, 2008 11:31 AM

Newsflash, the Earth is round. You can't see more than 7 miles to sea from the beach. I'd have no problem putting rigs just outside states' territorial limits (3 to 9 miles), but I thought the proposals on the table were from 50 miles out to the US territorial limit of 200 miles out.

Actually the closer to shore the better, since the more shallow the water, the faster and cheaper it takes to drill (you can use an anchored platform up to 600 feet or so in depth. Deeper than that, IIRC, you have to go with a deep sea drill ship).

If you're so against the petroleum-based economy that you've given up your car then I can respect your principles. But to be against oil drilling but in favor of driving, is like supporting the war on drugs but still getting high every weekend.

Posted by beowulf | June 23, 2008 12:37 PM

The oil sands in Venezuela and Canada are estimated to have an additional 3 trillion barrels.

Once again Mixner proves his knowledge of the subject to be about a millimeter deep. Oil production from Canadian tar sands will never, never, exceed 5 million barrels/day due to availability of water necessary to convert the tar into oil. The conversion contaminates 4 barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced and the ponds of waste water that have been produced at the current 1 million barrel/day oil production rate can already be seen from space.

Then there's energy return on energy invested. Tar sands must be heated in order to get useful oil out of them. They also must be strip mined rather than pumped. This reduces EROEI to about 6 to 1, far less than current 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 returns from conventional sources.

So Mixner is correct that the supply of tar sands is essentially limitless, but their impact on our transportation fuels supply will be negligible. But then, we all know that Mixner specializes in truthiness.

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 1:34 PM

DMonteith

Oil production from Canadian tar sands will never, never, exceed 5 million barrels/day due to availability of water necessary to convert the tar into oil.

You have no idea how much of the oil in the Venezuelan and Canadian tar sands is recoverable. There is no basis for the assumption that production will forever be limited to what is recoverable using current technology.

Posted by Mixner | June 23, 2008 1:48 PM

There is no basis for the assumption that production will forever be limited to what is recoverable using current technology.

So Mixner just knows that we'll be able to exploit oil sands without using water sometime in the future. Kurtzweil knows that the singularity will be here any day now and there are lots of people arranging their affairs in preparation for the rapture, but I'm not going to take their word for it either.

Just in case you're confused, Moore's law applies to the production of semiconducting integrated circuits on silicon, not converting tar into oil.

You have no idea how much of the oil in the Venezuelan and Canadian tar sands is recoverable.

I assume that the majority of it is technically recoverable, it's just that the rate of recovery and the fairly massive environmental externalities associated with its production that will render it irrelevant in maintaining, much less growing, current levels of global oil production.

I think, perhaps, that granting you a millimeter's depth of knowledge on the subject was generous. Angstroms, anyone?

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 2:25 PM

So Mixner just knows that we'll be able to exploit oil sands without using water sometime in the future.

No, Mixner doesn't know that. Mixner is saying that DMonteith's assertion that "oil production from Canadian tar sands will never, never, exceed 5 million barrels/day" is utterly stupid, because DMonteith simply doesn't know how much oil is ultimately recoverable from those deposits. Technology developed late in the 20th century has allowed us to recover oil from conventional deposits that would simply have been impossible to extract using the technology that was available in the 19th century. You simply don't know what future technology will allow.

Posted by Mixner | June 23, 2008 2:39 PM

Technology developed late in the 20th century has allowed us to recover oil from conventional deposits that would simply have been impossible to extract using the technology that was available in the 19th century. You simply don't know what future technology will allow.

Technology isn't magic pixie dust. Companies have applied "technology" all along. It's how we got the first bits of oil from the ground. Companies haven't wasted the oil like they did the natural gas that's often found with it. They left the hard stuff in the ground. And, yes, there have been advances that have permitted companies to go back to some non-productive wells to squeeze the last bits out. 10% more from the old well is a Good Day. We're certainly not going to recreate the 60s and 70s with the oil that's been left in the ground so far.

As for oil shales and tar sands, they have production penalties that have kept them off the market until now, and there will always be a penalty associated with it. Getting hydrocarbons out of rocks or sludge will never be as easy as it was to simply pump oil from the ground. In most places, actually, there's been precious little easy pumping for years and years, and at today's scandalous prices there's still not a lot of oil shale or tar sand hydrocarbons on the market.

But it's comforting to know that when we want to pump out another doubling of CO2 into the atmosphere that there's plenty of carbon down there.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 23, 2008 3:10 PM

You simply don't know what future technology will allow.

So you're claiming that my reliance upon decades of work by thousands of chemists, geologists, petroleum engineers etc. over decades of trying to solve this problem (not to mention the estimates of the Canadian oil industry itself) is "utterly stupid". Really.

I guess that when the Vulcans arrive and give us dilithium crystals you'll get the last laugh and I'll sure look like a big dummy. I think I'll take my chances.

Beam Mixner up, Scotty...please!

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 3:29 PM

DMonteith,

So you're claiming that my reliance upon decades of work by thousands of chemists, geologists, petroleum engineers etc. over decades of trying to solve this problem (not to mention the estimates of the Canadian oil industry itself) is "utterly stupid". Really.

No, I'm saying that your assertion that "oil production from Canadian tar sands will never, never, exceed 5 million barrels/day" is utterly stupid.

It's like someone in the 19th century asserting that we would "never, never" be able to extract oil from fields five miles below the surface of the ocean, on the grounds that the technology to do that did not exist in the 19th century and therefore never would exist.

Posted by Mixner | June 23, 2008 3:52 PM

You're right Mixner.

After all, one of these days a million monkeys banging on typewriters will write Hamlet too. It's "utterly stupid" to think otherwise. I mean, when someone claims that monkeys banging on typewriters will "never, never" write Hamlet they are just revealing their risible ignorance of confidence intervals.

I'm so glad that your vast understanding of the probabilities at play means that the tar sands will render our oil supply problems moot!

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 4:40 PM

Besides, when people first postulated monkeys banging on typewriters, they had no idea that the monkeys of the future would be using word processors! Fools!

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 4:50 PM