Until battery tech takes a major leap and thorium reactors become viable, were still going to need fossil fuels. But me thinks we wont be needing them for too long.
It does sound like it would make a lot more sense to build a refinery or two in Washington State than transport crude by rail and sea, have it refined in some other country, and then buy the resulting petroleum products (with a double shipping markup).
Sure, it takes a long time to get a refinery online, but I don't hear anyone saying the export plan is supposed to be temporary.
That is a very, very weird way to justify deprioritizing mitigation of anthropogenic climate change (I've heard arguments that make a hell of a lot more sense).
What short-term threats to the economic and political survival of the United States of America or the State of Washington do you have in mind, when you say that?
China's share of the US trade *deficit* is maybe 30%, which amounts to just over 1% of US GDP. And when one country has much higher productivity than another, a trade deficit is exactly what you ought to expect to see: that trade deficit is an indication that the economy of the US is stronger than that of China.
And it's shrinking, and will continue to shrink as China's productivity catches up with that of the developed nations. China currently has a bit over half the GDP of the US, with four times the population. China's "economic independence," to use your curious notion (the economies of all free nations are of course deeply intertwined) is far more compromised by trade with the US than the other way around.
You normally seem pretty levelheaded and skeptical; it's awfully strange to see you parroting alarmist nonsense about The Chinese Economic Menace.
@ 12 There are already refiniries in Washington that support all refined goods used in Washington, Oregon, and N. California. There is no additional demand for refining capacity in the region.
@20: What are you going to replace coal and oil with? Solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, silage biofuels, et cetera. What are you going to replace aircraft with? *crickets*
Period
Oh, and Retsol is testing US and Canadian oil in Spain in preparation for stupidity like that
Washington Laws and Incentives for Hydrogen Fuel Cells
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/laws/laws/WA/…
And they certainly aren't living up to this law:
RCW 43.19.651
Fuel cells and renewable or alternative energy sources.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?…
The bedrock of Constitutional government is the Rule of Law.
Washington State does not live up to that mandate.
Washington State is a lawless state.
But that's okay because we'll never run out of fresh water.
global warming is such a bullshit non-issue. Nothing but a power and money play.
Sure, it takes a long time to get a refinery online, but I don't hear anyone saying the export plan is supposed to be temporary.
That is a very, very weird way to justify deprioritizing mitigation of anthropogenic climate change (I've heard arguments that make a hell of a lot more sense).
What short-term threats to the economic and political survival of the United States of America or the State of Washington do you have in mind, when you say that?
Moron.
then maybe we should start building de-salinization plants up and down the east and west coast.
Uh, what?
China's share of the US trade *deficit* is maybe 30%, which amounts to just over 1% of US GDP. And when one country has much higher productivity than another, a trade deficit is exactly what you ought to expect to see: that trade deficit is an indication that the economy of the US is stronger than that of China.
And it's shrinking, and will continue to shrink as China's productivity catches up with that of the developed nations. China currently has a bit over half the GDP of the US, with four times the population. China's "economic independence," to use your curious notion (the economies of all free nations are of course deeply intertwined) is far more compromised by trade with the US than the other way around.
You normally seem pretty levelheaded and skeptical; it's awfully strange to see you parroting alarmist nonsense about The Chinese Economic Menace.