Quote:
Originally Posted by tim3058
I'd say many predictions of the future are factual:
-You pull over for flashing lights predicting he/she wants to get by you, or give you a ticket. Either way, based on past events (and general consensus, which is correct in this case), you predict you are supposed to pull over.
-You take off when the light turns green predicting that conflicting traffic has yielded for a red light on their side. You can't see their red, but from past events you predict your green light means its safe.
-I can predict a tank mpg of 42.7 mpg +/- in the Civic for next week based on past tanks trending towards that range. Its a prediction of the future, based on observations of the past.
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I'd say most, if not all of those things, are
suppositions, and not
predictions. There is a difference.
I'm not ready or willing to get involved in an ANWAR (sic) discussion. Probably never will be. I always suggest that by the time anything is done about ANWR's oil supply, it won't matter anyway. Fuel consumption will have increased to the point that by the time ANWR becomes feasible to extract, the oil/energy consumed during the extraction will outweigh the amount of usable oil/energy that can be extracted.
There are supposedly over 800 billion barrels of shale oil in the US, though. Mostly in the mid-west. Currently, a large portion of the NE is suffering drilling operations right in their back yards, and falling into the "spend it now" way of life.
Marcellus Shale can be naturally found in the NE portion of the US in large quantities. An additional byproduct of Natural Gas welling is the upheaval of shale oil from Marcellus Shale, which gives an even greater ROI for the initial energy expenditure.
From something I've read, the best proved stores in Saudi Arabia are just over 300 Billion barrels. While consumption in the
world has gone up, so has US importation of foreign oil.
With all the oil we "have" in our own back yards, and the dwindling supply of other oils, maybe we're suffering through this "recession" of ours (which I still don't personally see at all...) just to come out on top of yet another market?
When we can provide oil to the world cheaper than OPEC can, who will be the rich ones? (Obviously, someone other than the "people" of this country, since the Status Quo will never actually change, mostly due to the lack of economic and fiscal sense trained into and passed on in our culture.)
Of course, that's all based on a few things I've read, which I can't prove one way or the other, and have only feigned interest in.