Must be my juvenile Alheimer's kickin in--- the second part is vaild, though.

Regarding offshore oil (such as the Atlantic oil you mentioned) see the quote I already posted:

This 2% of oil reserves ignores the hundreds of billions of barrels of oil that are in unconventional reserves like shale oil, and the massive quantities of coal that can (easily) be converted into synthetic gasoline and diesel.

Well in any case, a push for drilling decreases speculative demand--We all have seen it during the summer when gas was lowered b/c of the drill here rallies. Economics 101 :) Still it is a stepping stone and McCain does not want oil to be a perm. solution.

Extraction of oil from shale is experimental and very expensive / energy intensive. The only regular use of shale oil has been for electricity generation via burning (very dirty). Counting on it is another shot in the dark.

Regarding synthetic fuel from coal, it's also very dirty like everything else involving coal (even the so called "clean coal" technologies). It also competes with electricity generation for coal.

Had people listened to similar arguments against the oil sands in Alberta the world would have (approximately) 250,000,000 less barrels of oil per year.

Oil shale extraction is being tested, so it's not like it's impossible for it to become useful. It's still a shot in the dark though.

I really hope all countries try to move away from coal, but I wouldn't be surprised if people keep burning it all until the atmosphere is filled with carbon, mercury, radiation (burning coal generates much more radiation than the equivalent nuclear power plant) and all the other wonderful stuff coal contains.

There isn't really any reason to not go electric once we get better batteries. You can use any kind of energy you want in electric devices, not just fossil fuels.

Better batteries is not a really easy task though ...

From our understanding of chemistry at this point in time we ‘Know’ what the best chemical batteries are, they’re remarkably expensive and still not good enough to (fully) replace fossil fuels. New technologies are on the horizon, but they will (likely) not be high enough quality at an affordable price range for 25 years.

Now, I know people are going to say that “The Government” should do something to create incentive for people to develop this technology faster. The reality is that the government will not be able to provide an incentive which is (nearly) as large as the market will provide for itself …

Alberta is one of the world’s top suppliers of conventional and synthetic oil products in the world. Even at the rate we’re increasing oil-sands development, we’re barely increasing our total oil production because of depletion of conventional oil deposits. Even if we take advantage of our coal deposits and begin to produce liquid fuel from coal we will still not be able to increase production at the same rate the world’s demand is increasing. Long before we have a technology to replace oil, we will see prices of $250 to $500 per barrel of oil.

Most people assume that oil production needs to increase in order to prevent the world from adopting cleaner energy sources when (in reality) the change is needed to prevent millions of people dying in their homes because they can not afford heat or electricity.

@HappySqurriel: Nice post, but now there's an extra factor to take into account... the effects of the recession in oil demand and price. This could change the picture a lot, for example it could:

- make unconventional oil unprofitable
- stop drilling and development of new fields
- last but not the least, reduce investment in renewable sources of energy. If this happens, we'll get hammered by rising energy prices after the economy recovers from the recession, which may cause yet another recession. Not a pretty picture in any way, especially since there's no Central Bank for energy which can bail us out.

All in all, I have less and less faith in the system to adequately deal with energy issues. Let's hope the third item above doesn't happen...