Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence | Robert Bryce

Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence | Robert Bryce | A Powerful Indictment of US Energy Policy

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Gusher of Lies: Th...

	Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence Robert Bryce PublicAffairs, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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Everybody is talking about "energy independence." But is it really achievable? Is it actually even desirable? In this controversial, meticulously researched book, Robert Bryce exposes the false promises behind the rhetoric while blasting nearly everybody? Republicans, Democrats, environmentalists, and war-mongering neoconservatives?for misleading voters about our energy needs.

Gusher of Lies explains why the idea of energy independence appeals to voters while also showing that renewable sources like wind and solar cannot meet America's growing energy demand. Along the way, Bryce eviscerates the ethanol scam. Whether the issue is cost, water consumption, or food prices, corn ethanol is one of the longest-running robberies ever perpetrated on American taxpayers.

Consumers concerned about peak oil and the future of global energy supplies need to understand that energy security depends on embracing free markets and the realities of interdependence. Gusher of Lies is illuminating, vital reading.

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Exposing the Economic Fallacies of "Energy Independence"

This is an excellent book that exposes and refutes the many economic fallacies underlying the idea of energy independence. Robert Bryce's thesis is that not only is energy independence undesirable but it is utterly unrealistic. He backs up his claims with a lot of persuasive economic arguments. Several fascinating facts contained in this book include:

* Striving for energy independence amounts to embracing isolationism with respect to the energy market. History indicates that economic isolationism has never been to any country's advantage.

* Various estimates on the economics of energy conversion. For example, the author cites several studies, which collectively estimate that for each BTU (British Thermal Unit) of input into corn ethanol produces between .7 BTUs to 1.2 BTUs of output. In contrast, each BTU into crude oil typically yields 6 to 7 BTUs of output. Similarly, the estimates in this book indicate that 1 BTU yields 8 BTU for sugar cane ethanol, .5 BTU for cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass) and .73 BTU of soybean ethanol.

* Big oil is not multinational corporations such as Exxon Mobil and BP. According to this book, the ten largest owners of oil reserves are all national corporations such as Saudi Aramco and the National Iranian Oil Company.

* Ethanol production requires enormous quantities of water. According to the author's research, a gallon of ethanol produced from irrigated corn requires as much water as the amount contained in 25 bathtubs.

* When calculating the fuel efficiency for a given vehicle, the federal government counts only the amount of *gasoline* (i.e., not ethanol) that the vehicle consumes. Thus, flex-fuel vehicles have the illusions of getting better miles per dollar spent on fuel.

* Economically isolating Iran is essentially impossible, as there is hundreds of billions of international investment in developing the rogue nation's resources. This includes, but is not limited to, the national oil company of Brazil undergoing deepwater exploration in the Caspian Sea, China developing several of the North Pars natural gas fields and India and Pakistan financing the "peace pipeline" to transport natural gas from Iran into their respective countries. The author alleges that even Halliburtion (which is commonly associated with Vice President Cheney) was doing work in Iran through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands as recently as 2007. (!)

To read more detailed corroborations of the above discussion points, as well as other in depth discussions on important topics such as the sugarcane ethanol industry in Brazil, how increased ethanol content in gasoline will arguably result in *worse* air quality, how moving towards greater ethanol use will require an enormous usage of farm land, the neoconservatives who are being pushing for energy independence as a matter of national security, the individuals who lobby extensively for farm subsidies and so much more, you will need to check out this book for yourself!

For the sake of constructive criticism, I do have a few complaints about this book. First, the author seems to insinuate that terrorism will go away if ignored. I strongly disagree with this view but this is not the appropriate place for a rebuttal. Although this view is repeated a few times in various forms throughout the book, its detraction was dwarfed by the magnificent value contained throughout the rest of the pages.

Second, there are a few other ludicrous assertions periodically dispersed throughout the book. For example, the claim that "oil brings poverty and war" where Nigeria and Iraq are cited as examples. I highly doubt that oil is the *causal* factor here. Dictatorship and corrupt governments, more likely, bring poverty and war. As with my first complaint, although this was irritating, it is hardly frequent enough to undermine the value of this book as a whole.

Overall I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting a better picture of the global energy industry. Not only is this book clearly written, but it is also supplemented with an extensive amount of references as well as plenty of statistical figures that are quite illustrative.

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A Powerful Indictment of US Energy Policy

Robert Bryce does a great job of skewering various alternative energy special interest groups and the psuedo-science they use. A little more editorial restraint would have helped, however, as some of the positions he takes are so lopsided as to be unreasonable.

Also, some of his facts are dicey or plain wrong - "the electric power industry is a huge water consumer, using about 39 percent of all freshwater in the U.S." The next paragraph in the DOE report that this quote comes from makes it clear that the water is used to cool power plants and is returned back to the lake or river that it comes from.

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Pipeline to Truth

Bryce confirms what I had already suspected. The goals of energy independence and replacing fossil fuels with 'green' alternatives are utterly unrealistic. Conventional sources of power (coal, oil, nuclear) are conventional because these are the only economically viable means of providing energy to billions of people, especially those with modern conveniences.

Bryce deserves credit for taking the unpopular side of controversial issues. Energy is a serious issue, so the nonsense spouted by the left and the right needs to be rebutted. This book should be widely read because only a shift in public opinion will bring sanity to how we handle energy issues.

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Some interesting facts, but the reader must be wary indeed

Had Robert Bryce confined himself to reciting and explaining indisputable facts about the fallacy of "energy independence", "Gusher Of Lies" could have been a valuable resource.

Instead Bryce takes a relatively few facts - many of which are well-researched and documented - and surrounds them with legions of distortions, selective information, omissions and the occasional outright falsehood, all to support his favored political solutions, which read like a script from the left-wing media.

Bryce begins with a declaration of his political neutrality, an assertion quickly belied by his own rhetoric.

His basic contention that the idea of the United States becoming "energy independent" is a fallacy is a distortion in itself to a large extent. He interprets the idea of "energy independence" as being totally independent of all forms of imported energy, an obviously impossible goal. But the left-wing, to advance its political agenda, twists the phrase in order to demean their opponents and make them appear ridiculous. In fact, the term "energy independence" means not being reliant on energy imports from unstable or hostile governments who might use their energy resources as a means to extort, blackmail or dominate. Energy independence also means fully developing energy resources available within the United States, even if it means displeasing so-called environmentalists. (I wish I had "Gusher Of Lies in electronic format so I could count how many times Bryce uses the word "neocon". Easily the count would be in the hundreds: neocon is Bryce's favored bogeyman - everything he objects to or finds wanting is the fault of neocons. Anyone who actually knows what neocon means will laugh the first few times he sees Bryce using the term.)

Bryce does provide some interesting factual information about the history of the oil industry, some of the political and economic factors. As long you have the ability to isolate these nuggets, the book is worthwhile.

The problem is that Bryce buries these nuggets under loads of disinformation. For example, Bryce cites the widely discredited Lancet "study" alleging massive Iraqi civilian casualties.

Seductively, Bryce tries simplified logic in an attempt to make imported oil seem different than, say, imported semiconductors. He points out that the US imports up to 100% of many other natural resources, compared to 7% of its oil. Why doesn't the US deploy its troops to protect our supplies of bauxite? Appealing logic, but false. Bauxite isn't oil. Bauxite in most cases doesn't come from political regimes that promote terrorism and a brand of religious fundamentalism that demands the destruction of a nation (Israel) and a people (Jews) as well as the submission of all infidels (the rest of us). A stoppage in the flow of bauxite would not, as would the interruption of oil flow, cause tremendous damage to the world's economies and billions of people.

In short, Bryce doesn't get it.

"Gusher Of Lies" is filled with falsehoods, distortions, omissions and logical fallacies. For example, Bryce gushes (pun intended) over China. China, he tells us, gets all the oil it wants without, in his term, "militarizing" the Middle East. Bryce also paints the First Iraq War as being exclusively an America effort, with no mention of the dozens of nations - including China - that authorized the use of military force. In other words, China didn't have to send its soldiers to into Iraq in order to free Kuwait: it instead allowed its surrogates, the United States and dozens of other nations, to do it for them.

Bryce also has nothing to say about China's rapidly increasing military expenditures over the past several decades. If China is so peaceful, why does it need to spend more on its military than any other nation aside from the United States? If China is spending only to defend its own shores, why does it feel it needs a "blue ocean" navy, including aircraft carriers?

As with the discredited Lancet study, his promiscuous use of neocon, Bryce uses other distortions. For example, he mentions the Three Mile Island incident as a reason why nuclear power development faces hard sledding without ever mentioning that Three Mile Island was mostly hype: no one was injured, no one killed and experts have said that the miniscule release of radioactive gas is unlikely to result in any increased incidence of cancer.

Bryce is of the "kumbiya" school of diplomacy. If only we talk, talk, talk, nations like North Korea and Iran will become tractable neighbors in the world community. Bryce tells us that we must "engage the Arab and Islamic worlds". Yet he says nothing of, for example, the Danish cartoon riots that killed innocents across the Muslim world, fed demands for the suppression of free speech and the threats of murder against those who exercised their right to free speech. Instead Bryce pokes fun at the idea of Western culture being endangered by a "dishdash-wearing jihadist" making bombs. Ignored are the thousands of incidents where jihadists and fundamentalists have murdered in the name of Islam in such places as Denmark. Bryce, in short, ignores reality.

Bryce argues that the world is now and will become more interdependent in the future. He is correct, though he seems unaware that in advancing this argument, he undoes his initial claim that the US seeks complete "energy independence". In short, Bryce says whatever he needs to at any given moment to advance his own argument, regardless of consistency.

I wish I had the time and the interest to classify every one of Bryce's logical fallacies. There are many, most of them gross and readily apparent to the thinking reader, but many quite subtle.

Ultimately Bryce undoes himself in his conclusion, the first line of which is "[e]nergy is the most important commodity in the global economy". In that one line, Bryce explains why the United States has been called upon to protect with its military strength the flow of oil from the Middle East to the rest of the world - but Bryce refuses to acknowledge the undoing of his own fallacious claims.

In all, if you read very carefully to screen out the distortions, omissions and falsehoods, "Gusher Of Lies" has a substantial quantity about the nature of the energy markets and the world's increasing need for energy. But, in reality, "Gusher Of Lies" accurately describes this book's contents. Approach it with great care.

Jerry

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