To Oil or Not to Oil

[Snark]

I'll do some mining of my archives for the Russian oil theory. The Second Law defines how unorganized materials will not turn themselves into organized materials spontaneously. Collections of disparate organic matter doesn't condense into very specific substances. While it can happen, it takes both extremely unusual timing, energy and conditions that are highly unlikely to occur over large areas of the world at about the same time. Nature supports greater chaos, not lesser.

Found it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold. A rather brilliant individual who liked to shake things up. While frequently called a crackpot, was just as frequently found to be correct.

The hotspot and the path to the surface are both in transit. As to which is the more mobile and which the more stationary, to me the point is moot - geothermal resources are not either stable nor stationary.

Both TMI and Chernobyl are textbook examples of "if you try to break it, you will succeed." Both plants were undergoing tests by operators who were unprepared to run them. In both instances the reactions that resulted were predictable but unknown to the dimbulbs doing the testing. Fukishima #3 was in the process of being decommissioned, all of those plants are of designs that are now way past obsolete. The plants were not unsafe. Richter #9+ earthquakes and 70foot tsunamis are unsafe. Go to: http://mitnse.com/, the nuclear engineering site of MIT (that technical college in Massachusetts.) They also have an excellent comparison between TMI and Chernobyl.

I have no problem with solar or wind. But they are not replacements and they are not competitive. Fuel costs are not the driving issue in the cost of delivered energy. They do have an impact, true, but are not the sole determinant of the cost of the delivered erg or btu or watt or horsepower or jule or whatever unit of energy measure chosen. Regardless of what "progressives" (who changed their name to 'Democrat' due to the association with communists in the early 20th century) try to imagine, the laws of physics don't really lend themselves to congressional change or presidential veto.