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Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence"
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$ 14.81
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| Retail Value |
$ 18.99 |
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$ 4.18 (22%) |
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| Item Number |
1551725 |
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Item Description...
Everybody is talking about “energy independence.” But is it really achievable—or even desirable? In this controversial, meticulously researched book, Robert Bryce exposes the false promises and political posturing behind the rhetoric. 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 exposes the ethanol scam as one of the longest-running robberies ever perpetrated on American taxpayers. In a new foreword to this edition, he shows how energy independence rhetoric was used during the 2008 election, even as the heavily subsidized ethanol business fueled a growing global food crisis. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 416
Dimensions: Length: 8" Width: 5.5" Height: 1.1"
Weight: 0.9 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Mar 2, 2009
ISBN 158648690X
EAN 9781586486907
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Availability 6 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 04:35.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Good Information about Oil Interdependence, Poor Argumentation Jan 6, 2010 |
This is, sadly, a somewhat important book with a consequential and true bottom line, but one that is terribly marred by the author's idiosyncrasies.
The main point of the book is that geology, agriculture and economics just don't afford us the feasibility or even the desirability to be energy independent. Furthermore politics has latched on the popular desires and dreams of what energy independence would achieve to actually make matters worse.
As an energy journalist Mr. Bryce is clearly familiar with the technical details of his subject. He lays out convincingly that essentially all the popularly offered alternatives to oil at best don't work, and can sometimes actually make matters worse. Solar and wind technology are currently such that they can not provide anything beyond mere percentages of energy grid power, do so at enormous cost, and are of such an inherent nature to not be solutions at all even in the best case scenarios since solar and wind power can't provide baseload power. Since you don't know when the sun will shine and when the wind will blow you'll still need another primary power source to provide that baseload power, and since energy storage technology is inefficient solar can't provide power at night.
He holds his most vehement arguments against Ethanol, a basically horrible idea driven by politics and the Iowa caucuses far more than rationality. By turning cropland from food to energy production you are attempting to take an already tapped out resource and make it do a double duty there's not enough land in America for it to do, and which it does extremely inefficiently relatively to oil. It also has next to no actual advantages in reducing pollution, consumes far too much water, and reduces food production thus increasing prices and starvation. He convincingly shows it is a political kickback/subsidy to the corn ethanol industry and not an energy policy.
The author also thoroughly explains just how interdependent global energy markets are. Not only are oil alternatives unavailable to the US (and the world) should the US somehow achieve energy independences (which it couldn't unless energy demand and hence standards of living and national power declined precipitously) the rest of the world would still buy oil and enrich Arab countries that fund terrorism, and the world would still pollute tremendously. And they would quickly overtake America economically and militarily by continuing to use the most economic fuel to boot. It would be a lose-lose situation for us.
He further decries the politics involved in energy markets and how government intervention has, through both the law of unintended consequences and ignoring what people knew would happen anyway for political gain, made our energy (and our food!) more expensive, and sometimes even more polluting.
I will not attempt to repeat all the author's analyses, but suffice it to say renewable energy is a non-starter. Oil, coal and nuclear are the only primary energy sources that can actually provide the energy human civilization demands. The author suggests that it is best for government to get out of energy policy and let the free market decide. His main thrust is not solutions (although paradoxically in violation of his own suggestion that the free market for decide he calls on government to push more nuclear power), but that the Utopia of energy independence is more of a poisonous lie than something that can be achieved, and which should be abandoned in favor of more sober, rational and realistic assessments of energy options.
Where the author goes off base is in his writing and argumentative style. He is a man of the left, but one who has come to the conclusion that all the green technologies pushed by so many on the left (as well as some on the right) are Chimeras and false illusions at best. This seems to unsettle him, so he falls back on a safety: Blame it all on Bush and the Neocons. He tries desperately to convince the reader that solar, wind, especially ethanol, and many other energy independence movements are primarily the result of an evil neocon cabal that is trying to wreck America. For good measure he also concludes, by induction and without evidence, that all neocons are racist and primarily motivated by that. It's completely out of place and feels like the author is pushing a round peg through a square hole. He also has the debate style of a high school senior and it gets tedious to read quick. Every argument follows the same pattern: so and so say X, BUT according to such and such think tank Y is actually true. He has many facts at his command but doesn't do a good job tying them together, he instead just shotgun blasts them at the reader. Often times you get the impression he just relays any info from the first few links he finds on google, and as such he'll go into depth on energy consumption from source A in France, India, and Nebraska or something. It neither focuses on the forest or the trees. It also frequently has an angry and perturbed tone that is very off-putting. In one particularly egregious moment he calls Valero the US's largest refiner on one page (in context it would seem like he's talking about in terms of market capitalization but he doesn't say so) and two pages later declares a completely different company the US's largest refiner (although in context it would appear he's talking about actual refining capacity.)
Important data and conclusions that people should know, but someone needs to write a more readable and less emotional/political book. | | |  | GREAT BOOK!! Dec 3, 2009 |
| I wish everyone would read this book. I hardly ever read a book. But I started this and read straight through in a couple days (1 book normally takes me weeks!). Individuals, news men, scientists, politicians know nothing about energy problems or solutions. Energy should scare the pants off people because everyone has a misconception the government or energy industry has a clue about what to do i.e. ethanol, solar, wind, nuclear. This book gives cold hard facts, history and exact precise reasoning behind the impossibility of energy independence. Thank you Robert Bryce! | | |  | Great read but a little too much preaching,,, Aug 9, 2009 |
| The author does a great job with the material and he provides great footnotes. I work in the oil and gas business and may of these things I knew. He seems to get hold of an idea and beat you over the head with it. Each chapter could have been reduced by 5 pages without losing any meat of the topic. | | |  | Gusher of Lies is a completely accurate portrayal of this mendacious crp Aug 7, 2009 |
If there was ever a more disconnected, self-important, factually incorrect, and outrightly dishonnest drivel ! Bryce is a Big Oil, Big Nuke shill . His books cannot even be read through the first chapter without a near fatal dose of dramamine. His dismissal of the electric car is chicanery at its best ! I worked for Hughes Aircraft while we were putting the finishing touches on GM's wonder EV1 electric car. The lines to get one of these were years long ! The charging stations still languish at many Costo Stores, BART, CALTRAIN, and AMTRAK stations, and employ parking lots in Silicon Valley and the list goes on (that's just in California) ! Far from being a flop the EV1 was forcibly wrenched from an eager public by self-serving, profit maximizing oligarchies in Detroit and Houston (where, incidentally , Bryce hails from - surprise, surprise) who then turned around and brazenly lied that that same public had just not accepted it .
This book and writer would get no stars if there were such an option.
Avoid | | | | Energy and Debt Jun 15, 2009 |
| Energy independence might have made sense a few years back, but of what meaning is it if Red China alone owns $2,000,000,000,000 of our debt? Oil can be used for many things, but money can be used for everything! | | | Write your own review about Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence"
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