ANWR, the last pristine wilderness. Oh really?

Your typical one-sided and thoughtless diatribes would crack me up if there were not so many ignorant folk like you in places of power.

There is nothing lasting to be gained by drilling there so get over it and put your energy into working on viable long term solutions. I've yet to read one thread started by you that was productive. It's always blah blah liberals blah blah environmentalist blah blah democrats blah blah blah. It really gets old after awhile.

 

So a place is only valuable if large numbers of people live there or visit there? (And that they don't live in ramshackle huts? LOL) Migratory wildfowl and wildlife don't count for anything, or being a carbon sink instead of a carbon source?

I imagine ANWR will be developed someday, but might as well save it for when we really need it - ie. when we need oil just to run our farms, not so John Doe can go to the grocery store in a Chevy Tahoe. We're not hurting yet.

Not that ANWR would help much. Maybe a month's worth of our nation's current oil appetite (need to look up that number, but it's in the ballpark). Conservation is a much better, quicker and easier way of freeing up oil.

Another picture of northern Alaska:

 

welcome back f8l, dont let amped and the like intimidate you..my crap is bigger than them..besides we need more posters like you and i to enlighten these zealots for they know not what they say, do, hear, touch, see..did i get them all..a good read from wayne dyre or eckhart tolle would help there illness known as fear aka EGO. looking forward to more posts from you to come. i'm getting old and we need more insightful suggestions instead of hate and fear mongering

 

Well obviously this is my opinion but God put us on this earth to use it. He never told Adam and Eve to use everything except ANWR. As long as we use it in a responsible manner then I am fine with doing anything really. I mean seriously I have oil wells all around my property it is not a big deal. The deer, pigs, foxes, birds, coyotes, bobcats, and fish couldn't be happier.


We are really shooting ourselves in the foot. I mean who do you want to drill off the coast of Florida? China or the USA? Guess what China is going to start drilling, and it is going to be a sad day when they screw up and the keys are coated with oil. Because they will, they cant even make safe toys.

 

copy/pasted from florida gov approves off shore drilling thread...lets get some engineering minds in here to 1-explain how setting up drill sites takes place and its consequences 2-how long does it take before the 1st drop of oil comes out 3-how/where do we refine this oil when it comes out 4- how do we insure this oil stays in the USA

 

They don't intimidate me in the slightest. In some cases I would not have a problem enlightening them or at least enter an educated discussion where I could learn something but for people like this I would simply like to reach out and slap some sense into them because it is very obvious they have no willingness to learn.

Thank you for the post and in more productive thread subjects I'd be more than happy to add something worthwhile or sit back and learn something which is more often the case in those detailed alternative energy threads. One can learn a lot lurking in those threads.

Homeandranch, Maybe you could look into the "newer" teachings (old teachings revisited) that tell us that we should not defile God's work through exploitation to satisfy one's uneccessary "needs". Maybe do a search on Patriarch Bartholomew I (Archbishop of Constantinople) and what his take on the environment is. I'm sorry but your biblical reasoning doesn't fit this scenario at all. You are disrupting a natural system for what? So peole can choose to be inefficient with their energy usage and build a billion useless products to sell to consumers who will never use them past the first day of purchase? No, I don't believe that was God's intention if there ever was one.

Here are some memorable quotes from Patriarch Bartholomew I. The first is my favorite:

Funny, but the above is very similar to what is taught in ecology (and other sciences) and buddhism/taoism except for the "woven by God" part.

 

I don't think we should drill in ANWR. In fact I don't think we should use gas at all for private transportation.

 

You were wrong at the god part.

 

Drilling in ANWR is like a fat man drilling another hole in his belt, and he's running out of belt, and it takes seven years to drill the hole. He'd do a lot better to lose weight.

 

Not surprising that that is wrong, considering where it originally came from.

Cheney's false comment on oil drilling attacked -- Newsday.com

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged on Thursday that he was mistaken when he asserted that China, at Cuba's behest, is drilling for oil in waters 60 miles from the Florida coast.

In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney said on Wednesday that waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, long off limits to oil companies, should be opened to drilling because China is already there pumping oil.

"Oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida," the vice president said. "We're not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply."

He cited his source as columnist George Will, who last week wrote: "Drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."

Congressional Democrats pounced on the vice president's remarks and were backed up by independent energy experts, who called the assertion hyperbole at best and a falsehood at worst.

Cheney's office said in a statement to The Associated Press that the vice president had erred.

"It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there," according to the statement.

 

Most of the remain oil fields, particularly those within our grasp, are just band-aids. The production rates aren't going to be high enough to really reduce the cost of fuel. We need to get serious about sustainable, long-term solutions to our problems.

 

And to be stewards of the Earth. We can use it, but don't use it up. Since none of us knows when the second coming will happen (assuming it does, of course), it would be a grave mistake to take away options for our children and grandchildren to feed themselves by using all sources of oil now just so we can use our SUVs to go to the mall to buy the latest iPod. We need to be vastly more measured in how fast we use up this finite resource, since we don't have a viable alternative ready any time soon.

 

Nerfer thank you for your thoughts.


EJFB

GO read my post. I said they were about to. Why do you think they bought the leases? Our oil companies wanted to buy the leases but our goobermint would not allow them to do business with Cuba. I am not trying to spew forth propaganda for Dick Cheney, that what FOX News is for but what I said is factually correct.

They rest of you

The subject of God and anyones relationship to said being is totally subjective. So how can you guys say I am absolutely wrong? I am not catholic so I really do not care what St. Bart says, I am sure he was an alright guy though.

Look guys. We can wish wish wish for our problems to be fixed but they wont. We need to do EVERYTHING now. That means conserve big time and not act like spoiled rich kids, drill, build nuke plants, windmills, and Solar power generation plants. And most importantly we all need to downsize everything.

We need to do this not because we are destroying our world ( I think its BS) but because we are going to be the FIRST generation to hand our kids a crappier place to live and a lower standard of living.

Yay us.

 

No offence, but we SHOULDN'T DO EVERY THING. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. The first thing we should do is conserve. Costs little, gives big benefit. Then we should put as much $$ as possible into renewables NOT INCLUDING BIOFUELS!. Solar is already competitive if you factor in all the subsidies.

What we should not do is continue borrowing from our grandchildren and their childrens childrens children! We have no right to produce "cheap" nuclear power, only to leave the problem of waste for a 1000 generations.

It is time for us to make some sacrifice for the sake of the planet, as well as future generations. It is not a American birthright that we have cheap energy. Let's start paying the real cost, and learn how to use less.

I use 25% of the net energy that I did 10 years ago and my lifestyle has not been compromised one bit. (I was pretty efficient even before!) Get over it and grow up and take some responsibility for your actions!

Icarus

As I write this there is a report on the BBC as to how the Arctic ice coverage is the least in recorded history. Even if you don't believe in Climate change you should be alarmed!

 

Thank you Tripp for putting things in perspective. "Wilderness" is literally the "place of wild deer". ANWR qualifies, but not as "pristine" and untouched. People have lived here for 10,000 years.

As others have observed, we do not need minor distractions, but constructive, long-term thinking. We need a comprehensive approach to energy (efficiency) and transportation (walking & bicycle routes, electric light and high speed rail, trucks between rails and communities, not "warehouses on wheels" going across the country).

 

Again, China DID NOT buy any Cuban oil leases, not that they couldn't, but they DID NOT, that was a scare tactic. The reality is, that when it comes to Florida, the Republicans have been the hinderance to drilling, when it comes to ANWR, the Republicans have been just as equal to Democrats in hinderance.

If they want to sell more leases now, all Bush has to do is rescind Daddy's presidential order, get Republicans to get on board in Florida and then get going on it, still won't mean a damn thing to price or US dependence on foreign oil, but it makes a good carrot for people that don't know any better.

Its going to be hillarious when all of a sudden everyone and their dog is drilling in the Gulf, and when a hurricane heads toward land, the price of oil and gas triples in price because of all the hardware out there.

 

You understand that a great many christian organizations agree with him and work towards similar goals right? Or are you mormon? If so I can understand your stance, they are about as lost as a religious sect can get. lol All joking aside you seem to have your heart in the right place and that is important for us to come to find common ground. The last obstacle is to make sure everyone is aware of the situations in full and fully educated on the subject. This is no easy feat considering the complexity of the issues and generally requires much study to fully understand. But as Rev. Maclean said: "we can love completely without complete understanding." ~ A River Runs Through it

There are 1,360 qualitfied scientists that would disagree with you in this report: Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. Add 1 more for myself because I see the destruction on a daily basis in my studies and my line of work.

I also disagree that we will be the first generation to hand our children a crappier place to live (degradation has been rampant since the late 1800s) but I agree that we may be the first to subject them to a lower standard of living.

 

I say crappier because we have given away much of our freedom just so we can feel safe. So less free and a lower standard of living.

As far as nuke waste fuel goes. We have the know how when it comes to reprocessing the fuel, just not the facility large enough to do it. You can basically remove everything but the cesium and some other shorter lived radioisotopes. It has a 30 year half life so your looking at 300 years. the longer lived stuff can be put back into reactors and burned up. We can certify something for 300 years. If we are just going to stick it all in the ground(which is the current plan)then I will agree with you and I'm a nuke.


OK EFJB

I'll go take a look at this and get back to you. I just heard a guy on sqwuak box this morning talking about the Chinese signing leases off the coast of Florida. That was like the 3rd or 4th time I read or heard it. He was an oil guy obviously.