Nobrainer’s Think Tank

In an effort to provide fair treatment to the candidates, I quote John McCain.

I’m going to lead our nation to energy independence.

No, you’re not, John. You are lying out your straight-talking ass. We’re not going to be energy independent any time soon. You and I both know that. The difference is that I’m not trying to sell my soul for political gain.

And, from the same article, how’s this for a stinky dump of ideas.

One goal is to put at least 1 million so-called plug-in hybrid vehicles that would get as much as 150 miles to a gallon of gasoline on the road by 2015. That effort would be spurred by a $7,000 tax credit for consumers who buy them. Automakers would get $4 billion in loans and tax credits to help them retool factories to build such cars and trucks, Obama said in Michigan, a battleground state that has been especially hard-hit by the slowdown in the U.S. auto industry.

He also proposes requiring that 10 percent of U.S. electricity come from renewable sources by the end of the next president’s first term and cutting U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by the end of the next decade.

So Obama wants us to use the grid to power our cars, and he wants use to use less electricity overall — not the underlying fuel, even. But electricity overall. That doesn’t seem to add up.

As much fun as that sounds like, he’s audaciously hopeful and bold to attempt to require that 10% of our electricity come from renewable sources. Of course, I’m being audaciously sarcastic. As of 2006, we got 9.49% of our electricity from conventional hydroelectric and other renewables. Bold. BOLD I SAY!

I also love this proposal. As I mentioned yesterday, he reversed his position such that he is now in favor of releasing oil from the strategic reserve.

In what an adviser called a “refinement” of his stance on using the reserve, the Illinois senator proposed releasing light crude, which is easier to refine, and replacing it later with heavy crude oil in a swap intended to retain reserve levels.

Elgie Holstein (MoooOOOOO!), an energy adviser to Obama, said the swap wouldn’t reduce the size of the reserve “for any extended period of time,” and that it would still protect America’s ability to tap into the reserve in the event of a “real supply” disruption.

I may have added some commentary into that last quote.

Anyway, Obama’s official plan is basically “Lower prices now, higher prices later.” Whew boy!

In other energy related news…
Obama said something about conservation by keeping your tires properly inflated. I have absolutely no problem with him making such a recommendation. In fact, can and do recommend such things. But somehow parts of the internet have now taken to establishing as fact that if the nation’s tires were properly inflated we’d be saving 800,000 barrels of oil per day. That represents a bit less than 4% of our total daily consumption of oil, and about 6% of our daily consumption of gasoline + diesel. For some reason that seems a bit much. Perhaps it’s because some of the same sources seem to suggest that proper inflation can increase mileage up to 3%. 3% of of our roughly 13.3 million bbl/day transportation fuel consumption is ~400k. Reckon then that perhaps 1/4 of that 3% is actually achievable and that 800,000 barrels of day is now 100,000 per day. It’s just under an order of magnitude. What’s the difference?

Actually, as I go back and re-read the original source from the Huffington Post, I realize that I have to quote it word-for-word, with my commentary in [italics].

This week, Senator John McCain made clear that you shouldn’t try to combat the rising cost of gas by checking your car’s tire pressure, so your car gets more per gallon (something everyone from Al Gore to President Bush, from Joe Lieberman to Barack Obama, from NASCAR to environmental groups say you should do). He’s even mocking the idea by handing out “joke” tire pressure gauges, and has a new childish web video out making a joke out of it.

But this is no joke.

In fact, it’s so serious that I’d ask everyone to buy tire pressure gauges - available at sites like this [87 cents + $12.94 shipping (I'm not kidding)... nothing like encouraging people to spend $13 having shipped to their door what they could find at almost any gas station, grocery store, or auto-parts dealer... because that's fuel efficient]– because ultimately this is about our national security and our troops. Maybe John McCain wants to mock those things, but I sure don’t.

Using less Middle East oil puts us in a stronger position to demand security in the region and fight terrorist organizations which often get much of their funding through oil profits. Using less Middle East oil could also keep us out of future wars, and save the lives of those Americans serving in uniform.

According to TIME magazine, John McCain’s sole idea to “drill here and drill now” won’t produce oil until the year 2030 [That's not what it actually says: "The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030."], and then it will only be 200,000 barrels per day. In comparison, the government estimates that if everyone made sure their car tires were fully inflated, we could start to reduce our oil consumption by 800,000 barrels per day, right now [No link for this, of course. But Time goes on to say "efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points.]

Imagine how much less Middle East oil we would consume if everyone checked their tires and made sure they were at full pressure. Over the course of the Bush administration, that would be about 18.72 billion barrels of oil we could have not gotten from the Middle East [Let's divide 18.72 Billion barrels by 800,000 barrels per day. The result is 23,400 days. He's claiming that the Bush presidency has already lasted for 64 years! It's just another one of those "order of magnitude" rounding errors... close enough for government work progressive blogging!]. All just by using the simple tire pressure gauge that John McCain thinks is a joke.

In still other energy related news, I saw the first in a 7-part series of Anne Korin’s (I have no idea who she is, but she has scary eyebrows) speech today about oil/energy. I was miffed because it was introduced to me as “Real Clear Talk on Oil and Solutions”. In the first 9 minutes she made 3 big mistakes.

1 - Characterizing oil purchases as transfers of wealth. Trade is not a wealth transfer.
2 - Characterizing gasoline demand as effectively unchangeable. She actually notes that this is wrong because she kinda says “well we could just drive less, but then we’d actually have to change our behavior and no one wants to be troubled.”
3 - Nuclear power has no effect on oil. She says that since nuclear — or anything that generates only electricity — can only be
used for electricity and it will therefore have no effect on transportation. I’m sorry, but if we have abundant electricity, then electric cars make much more sense. Or, if we don’t end up with a bunch of surplus electricity generating capacity, we’re going to free up a lot of other fuels for use doing something… Gee, I wonder how we could use them?