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Comment by daxorid | Hacker News Reader

Fracking and horizontal drilling are the only things that have kept us out of a global energy crisis.

Without their application to tight oil and gas fields, the world would be firmly on the downslope of the global Hubbert peak right now.

Ban it at your peril.

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If we had invested the Iraq war money into solar infrastructure including batteries in the grid, we would be ahead of the game and peak oil would be moot.

"Take all that money we spent on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and WE CAN EXPLORE SPACE, TOGETHER, BOTH INNER AND OUTER, forever … in peace"

Really depressing that this is considered an extremist view.

Who said it is?

The millions of politicians around the world act like this is an extremist view.

That's a Bill Hicks quote.

And the EU would not be dealing with a migration crisis.

While the US refuses to take Sirian migrants.

I really feel really bad you are getting down voted. There is lack of understanding of how shale revolution reshaped America and its energy independence here in this forum.

What has energy independence actually done for America? We are still fighting wars in the Middle East.

For decades people were saying we need to end reliance on foreign oil. Well, we've ended it. What has that gotten us besides underpriced gasoline?

Cheap energy inputs make everything else cheaper.

Financially cheap (in the short term), but environmentally very, very expensive.

Don't worry, the rest of the world carries the cost - more so now that the US is out of Paris.

Then the US likes to point out how "unfairly" they are being treated on trade ...

Not really. Nobody is buying American LNG. It is not a competitive product hence the Russia-hate and tariffs on imported solar panels. Plus renewables are cheaper. British shipyards are raking it in making giant wind turbines instead of Titanic sized ships. Because of the shale 'revolution' America has missed the boat, the only bright light being the much-shorted TSLA.

The global "energy" crisis is only an oil crisis.

I don't see much crisis going on with solar, efficiency improvements, or even coal and gas...

An oil crisis is an energy crisis. Half the energy used in the US comes from either Petroleum or Natural Gas. Look up how much of it is solar.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/

Exactly. When a large chunk of a low level of the economy gets upset all the higher levels get screwed up.

Maybe those fractions would be very different if oil and gas were more expensive.

Oil and Natural Gas are very difficult to replace. Look at the German Energiewende program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende_in_Germany

Q1 electricity production in US:

Natural gas 409,806GWh

Wind 104,801GWh

Wind is significant.

https://renewablesnow.com/news/wind-solar-farms-produce-10-o...

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