Great post, Wretchard.
As to the US becoming energy-independent in the manner of Brazil in the next decade, that’s a pipe dream for a variety of reasons, with one small asterisk that may allow it to happen.
Brazil is ethanol-rich because they can grow sugar cane, with 8x the ethanol potential of corn, and they can do so with labor costs no American would tolerate. Secondly, you have to consider the per-capita energy usage of the average Brazilian versus the average American. Seeing as we’re #1 in energy consumption worldwide, we have to be using more joules per person than Brazil is, so we would need not only their infrastructure but proportionately more. The question is not energy equivalency (at least, not right now), it’s what other tangible benefit we would get for the investment. At the moment, biofuels have nothing to offer.
Thirdly, if you subscribe to the biotic theory of petroleum/natural gas origin, we are hauling up from the sedimentary depths thousands of years of compacted, heated and chemically-transformed sea bed and plant material at a time. We are literally burning the past, likely many times faster than the material was accumulated in places and conditions whereby it could be turned into petroleum and natural gas. From this perspective the rate-limiting step is our topsoil, which is finite. If your intent is to grow something like corn, or even assume a viable cellulosic ethanol system and grow switchgrass, you cannot replace 70% of our petroleum consumption with organic matter indefinitely. The resources in our soil were deposited there over thousands of years, drilling for oil is in effect using the product of the topsoil of eons ago but trying to have our current batch supply all our needs is bound to fail. We have to eat, too.
If we went hard into nuclear, and went heavily into coal gasification (Fischer-Tropsch) for transport fuel we might make it in 10 years, albeit at a very high cost. The only way that we wouldn’t end up at a competitive disadvantage with our world peers would be if they were really serious about paying more than they need to for fuel for “climate change” reasons. Quite frankly I trust more in their ability to seize an exposed jugular than I do in their concern for Gaia, so I expect that any cost we might incur that was higher than their prices they would exploit as an economic advantage.
The only biofuel way out of this I see is algal biodiesel, and to get that to work we’ll need a) sunlight, b) CO2, c) copious amounts of water and d) a very, very special algae. I think it’s doable, the magic bullet is an algae that loves water we can’t use anyway (saltwater, brackish water, wastewater) and still grows like a beast. I think we’re close, but we aren’t there just yet. Algal biodiesel is one of those things I hope comes along before The End starts, it would be one of those things that can stave off collapse, but there’s a lot of development between here and there and I am becoming increasingly convinced that the folks steering the ship of state are lost, yet firmly convinced of the rightness of their course.
Most liberals I find to be entranced by what they know. They are inspired by BHO and what he knows, it is taken as given that he knows more than GWB ever knew and it is taken as given that knowing more will equate to better performance. The more I look at the world around me, though, the more thankful I am to Nassem Taleb for pointing out to me that what I don’t know is much, much more important. We are well and truly living in a “fat-tail” world and our leaders do not show much in the way of cognizance of that fact and their limitations. If only the world were Harvard Law School, I would feel our government was in the right hands. It is not, and the less the world resembles an Ivy League institution the less important that credential becomes. To me, anyway.
