To the editor,
I am flattered that Steve Earle takes such a liking to my letters but I have to correct him on some things he claimed. In his letter, "Anything that threatens to raise the cost of oil is indeed my business", he makes some odd claims. Firstly, Neil Young's letter was a joke, not something to cite. The meanest people on the planet are right wingers. Secondly, I did not viciously attack Christianity; I attacked the fundamentalist wing of all religions. Fundamentalists of all religions seem to hate true liberty and the right to privacy. It's their DNA.
In this country it's the right wing Christians that are the dangerous ones. While they rail against Islamic Sharia, they embrace the same kind of religious madness, so it is not Muslims nor Jews I worry about here, its the crazy wing of Christianity. Liberal Christians are people I am proud to know. If I lived in a Muslim country, it would be the Muslim fundies I would be against. I am against religion in government because it just always makes a divisive mess of everything. That is why the founders left God out of the Constitution, banned religious tests for oaths and ended state sponsored religion. There is no hate in my letters; just scorn where scorn is deserved, disdain where disdain belongs. Would you like a hanky, Steve? I feel your pain.
Mr. Earle says the Keystone pipeline was approved but actually it was not yet approved by the State Department. Further studies were required in order to move the pipeline away from the water supply for three entire states. If you look at the present pipeline, it goes around the water supply. Smart! The State Department was eventually going to approve it with a new pathway but when the House GOP forced the State Department to make a decision within 60 days, they stupidly blew it. The pipeline will come but only after it is steered away from the aquifer under the three states.
Mr. Earle also passes off the statement that we have "the largest proven oil reserves in the world". The problem with this statement is that the oil he speaks of is really "Kerogen" which is a pre-petroleum hydrocarbon substance which has not completed the petroleum formation process. It is commonly called shale-oil but the rock is not really shale and the hydrocarbon is not really oil. But it certainly does have potential if we get desperate. First, there needs to be a freeze wall surrounding the deposits in order to prevent heavy metal contamination of ground water. Nice! With freeze wall in place the deposits are heated in some manner to 600-700 degrees Celsius. The heat causes the Kerogen to accelerate the natural process to oil. It takes about four years of heating then we have to bring it up. At this time, these methods have only been tested in small locations. It is a costly way to get energy at this time. But like renewable energies, the costs will come down when technology improves. Mr Earle also errs in that he seems to think the reserves are a new discovery. In fact, the knowledge of these locked up reserves of immature hydrocarbons dates to the first quarter of the 20th Century. President Taft saw the fields as future fuel for the Navy. The March, 1874 Scientific American reported Shale-Oil was first discovered when rocks used as a barricade by workers caught fire.
The question is whether we wish to develop natural renewable energies that don't leave huge environmental problems or do we wish to stick to the old ways held on to by people who desperately cling to their own past and can't envision the future world of their children and grandchildren.
And as far as blaming the non-approval of the Keystone pipeline for any increase in gas prices, that is simply hilarious. The real culprits in these matters are usually Wall Street speculators and the volatility of the Middle East. We will never learn it seems. Dead soldiers for oil, decade after decade.
James Veverka
Tilton
