Last week you were given 3 different articles focusing on the aspects of energy consumption/independence.
What aspects/arguments presented in the articles do you agree with? What aspects/arguments do you disagree with? Justify your reasoning.
You need to post a response no later than Saturday 11:59 p.m.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
We need more effecient sources of energy. If the articles are correct in that the use of alternative energies would create more jobs then that is only yet another reason why it should be invested in.
If we can manage to save our world and our economy at the same time that would be really legit.
I disagree with with the articles claims of nuclear energy's effency. It is a strong source of energy, however it' waste makes it a long term hazard that counter-acts its usfulness therefore making it quite ineffecient.
Not Only do we need more efficient sources of energy, we need a new way to run a regulate them. In the article by Newt Gingrich which says that our energy crisis is artificial, it is very interesting to me that he says this. It actually made me think about how poorly our energy is managed today. It is based completely on consumerism. If we were to completely change that to environmental stewardship and efficiency, it would be way more beneficial for every resource and issue involved.
In the Free at Last article, Zakaria made a comment that we need to be smarter about how we grow. This is a very valid statement, we cannot keep going like this: not caring for anything or anyone besides ourselves, eventually the resources will run out, so we need to be careful about how we proceed from here. "The real revolution that must take place is one of attitudes and ideas." said
Zakaria.
In Pulling the Plug on oil the author made a comment that we can just develop new liquid bio-fuels that will be direct replacements for diesel and biofuel. I disagree with this approach to reducing oil consumption. These biofuels still pollute, just in a different way, that should be reason enough to avoid creating these types of fuels. They are also created from high-energy grasses, which would require land to grow them, eventually causing the same amount of problems we have now.
Generally, both articles raised the point that we need to become more self-sufficient in our use of energy to achieve independence.
In the article "Free at Last", Zaharia explained that independence can happen by improving the construction of technologies that are energy efficient; and depend on other sources of energy such as solar power. "We can and should build smart grids, highways, and better insulated buildings..." If there is a way to implement more restrictions on our efficiency to decrease dependence on oil in foreign nations; while at the same time achieving economic growth, this is a valid point. Basically, Zaharia is ignoring the fact that building smart grids and better insulated buildings is costly. In the long run though, if these technologies were put into action the price compared to our dependence on oil is definitely less.
Newt Gingrich mentioned that our energy crisis is a result of government policies; such as making it illegal to drill in certain areas and setting restrictions on nuclear power. He calls our energy crisis an "artificial crisis." I agree with this statement, because energy is at our fingertips; we just are not taking advantage of it. What is keeping us from doing so are the negative effects more drilling and nuclear power could have on the environment-which it does. If we implement the actions that Zaharia mentioned as well, then offshore drilling would not be as harmful.
In the article “free at last” by Fareed Zakaria, Zakaria gives an estimate of the global demand of oil by the year 2050, to have increased by about 3.2 billion. Since the replacement rate of life is so consistent, and large in our species we will keep increasing exponentially, and each year add more and more to our already large population. Zakaria states that our consumption of oil will only rise till we can completely exhaust its supply. That’s why I agree with his idea of making longer strides in the way of recyclable materials, so we can at least have better control over our resource supply. I agree that we need to have energy independence, keeping energy at the whim of how far a dollar bill may stretch is not independent energy. Being able to have an abundance of energy to fit our needs means that the ownership of energy is none existent. We must change our attitudes so we look at energy less as business product, and more as an global effort toward sustaining the business and life structure we’ve already set up. Looking for energy shouldn’t be most convenient toward business’s budget but for our survival.
In the very first article, "Free at Last", it states in the very beginning that the United States of America should wean itself off oil to diminish its importance for the energy in the world. It makes a lot of sense and when the U.S. makes that step, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia will become less powerful, with less groups to impose terror upon other countries. By the year 2050, there will be over 9 billion people in the world and we will need to consume twice as much energy as we do right now! With those numbers, there is no realistic way we can still rely on oil and that is why, now, more than ever, we need to work harder at finding other sources and options for energy with no hidden costs such as environmental, military, or social. To acheive true energy independence, as stated in the first article, we need to take advantage of the amazing technologies available to us right now and put them to work so when we have 9 billion people living in the world, we wont have to worry about running out of energy, the immense costs, or harming the environment.
In the article, "the Great Ship Titanic" Steven Chu is being interviewed and offers a lot to think about when dealing with the energy crisis. When talking about how Earth is the ship Titanic, Chu says that its going to take half a century to turn the ship away from the iceberg, I disagree that we will even be able to "turn the ship". We are heading in such a bad direction in terms of the energy situation and our environment that its inevitable that we will crash into the iceberg. I'm not a pessimistic person but I observe many people these days who are still aloof and ignorant about the world's situation. Sure everyone can turn off their lights when they're not in a room or make more of an effort to carpool but we live in a society where there isn't a lot of change in our direction untill we have to. Necessity makes us change our ways.
"the United States should wean itself off oil in order to diminish its crucial importance in the world of energy" from the article by Fareed Zakaria i strongly agree with this statement. We need to use less oil so that we can become less dependent upon foreign oil, and find more environmental frienly ways to get energy. Also as the article said this would make other regions less powerful and they could no longer easily fund militias and terrorist groups.
I agree that there is no quick enery fix and that it will take many factors to make things change. With the rate at which the worlds population is growing now we will need to consume twice the amount of energy in the future and we need to plan for this and use a collaboration resources for energy.
In the article "In the Great Ship Titanic" I agree that global warming will still continue to get worse even with the potential shut off of carbon emissions but i think that if we could achieve to cut off our carbon emissions that would be amazing. That alone would make a huge change and its a resonable place to start.
In "Pulling the Plug on Oil" I believe that everyone agrees that our dependency on oil is dangerous. With about 60% of our oil being imported from other countries we are taking money away from America and giving it to other places. With the economic position that we are in now this is the last thing that we want to do. We need to keep the money circulating here so that we can come out of this recession.
after reading and underlining the 3 articles. I found that I really agreed with everything.... that was until I began reading "Our Tanks are on full."
"Nuclear Power is a clean source of energy that produces zero carbon emissions"
this is extremely misleading. in the article it says this is reference to the fact that we should rely more heavily on nuclear energy for our increasing demands. It completely leaves out that fact that it produces toxic waste!
"in addition to opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and the shale-oil deposits in Colorado and Utah for drilling, we should change our federal law to give all states with offshore oil and gas the same share of federal royalties that other states get for land based resources"
This quote suggests the theme of this piece. The piece consistently hints at the fact that the states everywhere should tap into their natural gas and oil reserves (i.e. off-shore drilling). It's so dangerous, it will destroy habitats and ruin wildlife reserves... for OIL. We are going to run out anyway, we might as well direct our efforts towards improvement.
in other articles I agreed with almost everything. they had a lot of relevant facts that really supported their arguments too. The main idea of most of the articles was that we should become more energy independent; the difference is how these different articles approached this energy independence. My opinion is that we should most definately become more energy-independent. However, this doesn't mean we should tap natural gas or oil (combustion) resources. We should become leaders in the world of green energy. We should lead the front for sustainable energy and vehicles! Then, we would rely on ourselves, things would be better economically because we wouldn't be exporting all of our money, and we would be able to sleep at night as the Country we always claim to be.
I believe that all of these articles were saying that the U.S. in general ans the rest of the world need to start embracing more efficient and alternative energy sources. I agreed with all of them except for the ones that preached about nuclear energy. I do believe that if the world would switch to nuclear energy today we could turn back or at least slow down global warming, but this would only be a short term fix. We would only be fixing one problem and creating an even larger problem for the future.
We should not be hasty about solving the current problem of energy dependence and global warming without looking at the future. We should find out ways to solve our current problems without creating future problems. I believe that nuclear energy is not the answer, and that the answers are alternative energies, and more efficient appliances and buildings to utilize our energy, with a mindset of conservation.
We need more effecient and renewable sources of energy and we need a way to regulate them. Fareed Zakaria said in the article "Free At Last", "The United States needs to wean itself off oil in order to diminish its crucial importance in the world of energy". I strongly agree with this statement. We as a country and as a world need to be less dependent on foreign oil and find new and more renewable and enviornmentally friendly ways to obtain energy.
In the article "In the Great Ship Titanic" I agree that global warming will still continue to get worse even with the potential "shut off of carbon emissions". It maybe a pessimistic view of seeing things but we have already done so much damage that I feel as if it's too late to reverse the effects that we have brought upon our earth. We can do everything we can now to stop the effects of global warming but the worst has already happened. It's like breakng a vase into a million pieces and tryng to put it back together with scotch tape; some of the pieces will stick together but the majority of it is unrepairable.
In "Pulling the Plug" the author made a comment that we can develop new liquid bio-fuels that will replace diesel and biofuel. I don't think this is the right approach to reducing oil consumption because these biofuels still pollute which is what we DON'T want and is what we are trying to get away from. Also, these biofuels are created from high-energy grasses which would require land to grow them and in the long run would have the same effects of crude oil and we would be just back where we started.
Ian Fox: Was at Out Door School
"United states should wean itself off oil in order to diminish it's crucial importance in the world of energy." I find this idea very legitamite, if we stop relying on oil before it becomes a sparse object, we will be ahead of the game! Alternative options such as biofuel come from materials that are renewable and will be available forever, by switching to such a fuel we would solve our problem ahead of time.
It was suggested that Global Warming is inavoidable, and that focus should be put on lowering global centigrate by 1 or 2, as opposed to trying to reverse it completely. I disagree... it is my belief that through education and laws, we can completely avoid a weather/heat problem.
God bless America.
Not Late: At ODS Last week
I agree that our dependency on oil is dangerous and shortsighted, and he United states has abused its right to obtain oil by going to other countries, and gathering it there. it is obious that oil is starting to becoming scarcer as the years goes by, which brings me to a very important point, its because of this shortage that we must seek an alternative energy. There us about 6.7 billion on earth and we all share the same resouces and do business with these resouces which i dissagree with because morally i think we should depend more on what the people need and how the enviroment is reacting to the resouces i use,politics are struggling with desicions and don't want to change anything. I think if everyone was independent on a resource and used it with precaution it would be run more smoothly and enviromenally friendlier.
i don't think we can prevent global warming and we should considing learning to adapt to the new changes it will bring us.
if we made energy cheaper it would indeed create job opportunites creating a new system of using energy and at the same time fix unemployment. its a win win. a thing i also agree with is changing fuels with different liquids, biodieseal and regular diseals are much cleaner and don't pollute as bad as oil, its a good step in reducing waste from cars.
Post a Comment