| OCR Text |
Show Page 6 The Utah Independent The Paper That Dares To Take March 6, 1975 Despite Doomsayers, U.S. Has Abundant Energy Resources Reprinted from Human Events anti-scientif- ic universities otTer courses in astrolosiv while their enrollment in the hard sciences and engineering is decreasing. Science is increasingly coming under attack. Not only from outsiders who do not understand science that type of attack as old as science itself hut now h. m fire since, by this theory, the bottom of the harrel will be reached sooner or later anyway? We are given no answer to this question, for example, by the authors of The Limits to Growth , whose most desirable d world model shows a world whose resources are relentlessly going down and down. semi-starve- semi-pollute- d, Stand ' The electric power industry is shackled uh hand and foot by a myriad of regulatinc lea agencies. The rates charged are "not de trv termined by the need of new capital in vie vestments, but in public hearings which N have become forums for propaganda against corporate profits, and the regulatory find it popular to pass the profits on to the consumers. Until people wake up to what the consumer advocates are doing to them, the utilities will continue to do what they are dome now: cannibalize their capital spending budgets under a policy that amounts to 10 save now, run out of power later. By PETR BECKMANN The present malaise of society includes a strong trend. Reputable A of energy available to us. The sun will shine for another 50 billion years, and nuclear fusion cannot run out of fuel as long as there is water in the oceans. To bridge the gap of the next three decades before these sources can effectively be harnessed, there is enough uranium to fuel hundreds of nuclear plants, there is enough coal in the U.S. to last lor several so-call- ed second obstacle is environmentalism, which originally had the laudable aim of a clean environment, but is now being used as a horse on which to crusade against business, profits, A industry, technology, and similar that allegedly plague us. pc fo nv ga ini en evil w: Cr in It is beginning to border on the impossible to construct a new power plant, oil refinery, coal gasification plant or is th P other energy facility. Much of the blame for this must go to the character of presently required impact statements, which always stack the deck against the innovator who wants to change "the status quo. Prize-winne- rs anti-nucle- ar The fact is that the harrel has a very elusive bottom, for does not mean irreplaceable. Moreover, history shows that with very few exceptions (such as whale oil) raw materials were replaced not because they ran out, but because something better became available. centuries, and the oil deposits in the continental shelves are estimated at 100 billion barrels, together with trillions of cubic feet of natural eas. The change from glass bottles to plastic bottles, for example, did not come about because the world ran out of sand from which to make glass. Untenable as the theory is for mineral resources, it becomes absurd for energy, for it would Uranium can be mined in low concentrations at a higher cost, for fuel costs represent only a minor part of the operating costs of nuclear power plants, and breeders running on thorium could extend the supply to some 2,000 years. Coal can be gasified and liquefied with little pollution to produce gas. oil, gasoline, methanol, hydrogen, and other fuels. It can also be utilized in situ with minimal environmental effects. In situ processing of oil shale is under investigation and appears feasible. As for offshore oil. the technology of preventing oil spills, and cleaning them up quickly if they do occur, has come a long way since the Torrey Canyon and the Santa Barbara oil spills. Clearly, then, there is no lack of energy: there is not even a lack of clean energy But the access to that energy is blocked by obstacles. chief among which are. in my opinion, government interference with free markets, and environmentalist technophobia. Until last year, the price of oil was controlled at an unrealistically low level, resulting, on one hand, in the rapid decline ol exploration and capital investment. and on the other, in making oil so cheap that it was burned under the boilers of power plants. Oil now has a two-tiprice structure which, rewards those who produce a little oil and punishes those who produce lot non-renewa- botlom-of-the-bar-r- Blatant disregard of the facts is what the various and anti-tecanti-grow- th h- ble el Among the most cherished myths of the technophobes is the ancient theory of the bottom of the barrel If we don't watch our step, we are told, we will deplete this planet's finite resources. ' nology movements have in common. At a time when the fertility rate in the U.S. has dropped below the replacement value, we are being scared by the evils of population growth, vividly expounded by those whose attitude is theres too many of you others. Lake Erie is declared dead at a time when it has more fish than all the other Great Lakes combined. The dangers of nuclear power, far and away the safest form of large-scal- e energy conversion are invented, yet magnified by those who callously disregard the 50,000 coal miners afflicted with black lung and the 100 times higher accident rate (per energv produced) in coal mining. Pollution is blamed on technology when, in fact, only more and superior technology can eliminatoit. violate a physical law: Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be converted from one form into another. So the enemies of technological advance have taken refuge behind another physical law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which, roughly speaking, says that in every conversion of energy from one form to another, some fraction must irretrievably be turned into heat. Therefore, goes the story, if we convert too much energy, we will generate so much waste heat as to endanger the world hy changing its climate. There are, indeed, some problems w ith high concentrations of waste heat: there are also ways of turning waste heat into useful heat. But the gist of the argument is a colossal exaggeration. To reach even per cent of the energy incident on the globe from the sun. we would have to convert energy on a g scale: every American man. woman, child and infant on the breast would have to consume, from midnight to midnight, no less than 2 MW of power, which he could do by running 600 clothes dryers all day and all night, or by cleaning his teeth twice a day with 15 million electric toothbrushes. And the rest of the world would still have to consume twice as much. 1 Among. the most cherished myths of the technophobes is the ancient theory of the bottom of the harrel. If we dont watch our step, we arc told, we will deplete this planets finite resources. But what if we do watch our step? There is obviously something wrong with this theory, for if we do watch our step, we will merely deplete the barrel somewhat later: why is it better to die over a slow Mr Beckmann is a professor oj electrical engineering at the L niversity of Colorado. I he above article is reprinted Jrom Imprimis, the journal of the Center Jor Constructive Alternatives. Hillsdale College. Hillsdale, Mich. mind-bogglin- But enough of countering unfounded charges. Let us take a look at the amount There is more oil in (he oil shale of the mountain states than in the entire Middle East. . er broadly-speaking- a , of it. This year the number of small wells drilled has. for the first time since the '60s. surpassed 30.000: but the total domestic oil production continues to decline. I his is not surprising; if government decrees fixed the price of potatoes grown in fields, but allowed a free market in potatoes grown in flower pots, there would be a o boom, but the total potato production would decline. flower-pot-potal- to al ki se He is required to demonstrate, and rightly so in my opinion, that the innovation will not unreasonably harm the environment or have other undesirable consequences. But he is put on the defensive: his opponents have no comparable responsibility in considering the undesirable consequences of not proceeding with the innovation. Prof. Beckmann states "there is more oil in the oil shale of the mountain states than in the entire Middle East." Above (left) is the entrance to the Paraho oil shale demonstration site at Anvil Points, near Rifle. Colo. At right. Parachute Creek, located in the Colorado shale-ric- h Piceance Basin. also from disrupters within. Holders of scientific degrees are telling us that the trouble with the world is too much science and technolog. Nobel are lending their names to organizations whose emotional propaganda blatantlv disregards the facts. The" authors of The Limits !o Growth fed their computer programs with carefully manipulated data that would bring about the preconceived result of catastrophe under all conditions. oi of D d( Ik cc in sh tw en A judge is required to decide whether a new power plant may harm the marine vii ev eh life of the adjacent river if the plant is built: he is not required to decide how many women might one day die in childbirth for lack of electric power if the plant is not built. M di n th And so what we are witnessing is certainly no exhaustion of energy, but blocked access to that energy. CI ai Let me take one more example, the oil imported from the Arab countries, which is produced at an operating cost of about 20 cents a barrel and sold for upwards by of pi fa ar b al cartel since the OPEC g has quadrupled the price in a single year, SI 2 price-fixin- Apart from exposing the U.S. to po- litical blackmail, the flow of S 00 billion to the OPEC countries this year threatens to bankrupt the economies of the indus- - -- 1 trialized countries and to bring famine to the underdeveloped countries for lack of fertilizer. It wont even do the OPEC countries any good, for their primitive economies are utterly incapable of ab- sorbing such astronomic sums. What can be done about that? . , q First, one can use strong language, as President Ford and other high U.S. ol- - js ficials have recently done. This could 0 goad the OPEC countries into taking an b; even stronger hand, but more likely, they 0 will merely laugh it ofT. o i Second, one can wait for the cartel to c break up. The same greed that gives rise to a cartel in the first place eventually causes its members to cheat on each other. Libya is already cheating, and Saudi Arabia is chafing at the high prices, liven so, it could be a long wait. Third, there is a forceful military solution, which is, at present, unthinkable for anybody acquainted with political realities. countries Fourth, the might band together and take counter- measures. They might, but they won t. Last October the EEC countries voluntarily rushed in a mad scramble to get (Continued on i tge -- ' ' |
