Offshore drilling Vs Conservation

HomeandRanch, some good reading, the video was awesome.

It's the the politicians on both sides of the isle that meet in back rooms and broker deals for their money masters who are running the system in the ground. Not just the US but World wide.

It's going to take a World leader who isn't a slick politician and can bring the nations together with a true plan on a world wide scale. The UN is a joke, IMF and World bank are a farce. Not to mention religion - All.

It can be done!

I get the point though. Am trying to educate my kids about being self sufficient and conserving.

I do believe we need to live in the now, but also work towards a better future for the planet earth.

Need to stop here, sounding like a rant.

 

hyo silver's comment on walking as the solution - "Laugh all you like, but for some of us, that really is a viable solution. It's worked for me all my life" - has to be some kind of joke without smilies . . . because, if walking is a viable solution which has worked for him all his life . . . WHY DOES HE HAVE A 2004 PRIUS???
Couldn't he just walk . . . along with everyone else . . if walking is THE solution?

No one 'solution' will solve the problem. Yet here we have people saying 'increased oil drilling has no part in the multi-pronged solution.' WHY?

I don't think increased drilling is THE solution, but I do think it is ONE of the many solutions - albeit, a temporary solution until advancements in alternate energy production are realized . . . solar, nuclear, wind, tidal, etc, etc, etc . . . and yes, EVEN CONSERVATION! (hence, I own a Prius. I also own a Prius because I can not walk, ride a bike, take public transportation, etc. everywhere I need to go.)

Just who is saying "the only solution is drill, drill, drill"????

NOBODY . . . and I dare you or anyone else to provide links showing so.

Y'all saying that the other side's solution is nothing more than 'drill, drill, drill' is a childishly transparent Straw Man argument. PROVE IT, OR S.T.F.U!

Yes, the future is happening . . . but some of us . . . (YOU) . . . don't have faith in the abilities of future generations or advancements in technology.

In the future, they will probably look back on our era and laugh at us using natural oil for transportation when there are much better ways of doing things . . . much like we look back on our forefathers and chuckle at them using horse and buggy and having had an unfounded fear of speed.

The future can take care of itself. We need to worry about our realities today.

 

And this is further proof that this is all a democrat wedge issue:

08/15/08 IMPORTS in thousands of barrels per day:
13,917 - Crude Oil and Petroleum Products

08/15/08 EXPORTS in thousands of barrels per day:
1,474 - Petroleum Products
0,027 - Crude Oil
1,501 - Crude Oil and Petroleum Products

08/15/08 NET IMPORTS Incl. SPR
12,416

[Do the math . . . Imports - Exports = Net Imports.]


U.S. Imports & Exports

The Democrats would have you believe the "1.806 million barrels a day in May 2008" is crude oil . . . when the link I provided shows we are only exporting 27,000 barrels of crude oil.

First of all, oil is fungible!

If the US has a glut on the West Coast and a shortage on the East Coast AND a tanker leaving Alaska . . . what do they do???
Drive it all the way around the tip of South America?
Or do they sell it to Japan, China, etc. and purchase one of their tankers of oil in the Atlantic heading for Japan, China, etc.????

Such a 'sale' would show as an export, where in reality it was a win, win trade for both parties.

So what is this 1,474,000 - Petroleum Products???
Exactly that. PETROLEUM PRODUCTS!
Gasoline, refined motor oil, jet fuel, etc, etc.

So we are importing a RAW MATERIAL and exporting a higher value product?
Isn't that adding value?
Isn't that a good thing?
Isn't that lowering our trade imbalance?

YES, IT IS! Except for the importing the raw materials part.

Now where can we get more raw materials domestically???????????

- - - - - -

I have a question for all your no new drilling types:

If the oil from new offshore drilling is not needed, why are Democrats calling for oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

It's the STRATEGIC Reserve,
not the TACTICAL Reserve. :brick:

 

Good Point!

 

Not if you are a Liberal and wish to make a wedge issue out of nothing.

 

>> wow find myself agreeing with Sufferin' on this

 

You guys just think too much.
US Policy is all about filling the pockets of oil companies and keeping the oil flowing. That why electric car was killed and why they are inventing thousands of lies, why hybrids are not cool, ranging from lack of noise killing thousands of blind persons to CO2 generated during its production melting the ice caps.
The reality is, oil companies control US government and many foreign ones, too. And if they can not sell oil, they are simply out of business. Ant there are trillions of barrels of oil which can still be sold for enormous profit. Simple as that.

Just my way of thinking (being from EU and in country with only few litres of own oil, but plenty of hydroelectric power plants).

Ogo

 

The most truth in this thread so far. Thanks, Ogo.

 

It is this attitude that got us where we are today.

 

Sure you did . . .

. . . as soon as the discussion wasn't going your way. :suspicious:

And that is ANOTHER fallacy you are repeating.

It is offshore drilling which is the "minuscule" component of the environmental impacts of oil spilled on the oceans.

"A report by the National Research Council found that offshore oil and gas drilling was responsible for just 2% of the petroleum in North America's oceans, compared with 63% from natural seepage and 22% from municipal and industrial waste."
Worth the risk? Debate on offshore drilling heats up - USATODAY.com

32 times more comes from NATURAL SEEPAGE!
Want to clean-up humans' impact of oil in the oceans?
after municipal and industrial waste!

 

Yes it is! Thankfully Luddites don't rule.

The people of the future will be able to take care of themselves or whatever legacy we leave them.
They will be smarter and have vastly better technologies . . . ones we can barely imagine.
Of course, that is no reason to just trash the Earth . . . but offshore drilling is NOT trashing the Earth.

 

With the fact being that it is those who came before us got us where we are today, whether we like it or not, we need to conserve and do a combination of things to reduce our dependency.

We are going to an event over the holidays and it's a miniature city with old powerhouses run by various different types of generation, wood, coal mostly, natural gas, they have an old steam engine, saw mill etc from the midd 1800's on. My wife mentioned it to night that when we get home we are black from the soot.

I realize we are still polluting with internal combustion, but can't imagine what it would be like if it where still like that today if every one still did it. I think each generation whether knowingly or not is trying to become more efficient and less wasteful.

Releasing any of the national reserves to drive down the price is nuts, I don't care which side wants to do it. We need to sit on it in case the hot heads in the middle east yank our chain. I would think the time to do a release would be a heating oil shortage (refining manipulation again)

 

Jared Diamond's book 'Collapse' provides a great many examples where the opposite happened. The lack of foresight and planning doomed the future generations to misery.

 

That was me. That is not what I said. Wind Energy is a great solution. The point was that the southeast is a very low wind region of the country and wind plants would not be the choice of sustainable energy solutions. The solar options, however, are quite good.

 

See if you agree or not with my view. Term Limits is not the problem, or solution. The real core problem is the defacto "committee by seniority" that controls what is actually presented and voted on in Congress. Even with term limits, there still would be a very closed, very limited set of committees that would still 100% control the key legislation behind closed doors. This present setup reduces what new senators and congressmen can fix since they are excluded completely from the formulation and generation of virtually all legislation.

 

The one thing we have discovered, is that our assumptions - based on "best practise" and usually WAG's - +20 years ago, no longer hold up WRT environmental issues

The TLV (Threshold Limit Value) for occupational exposure to almost every chemical I know of, has over the course of 20-30 years been dramatically lowered. What was a "safe" exposure in 1970 is now considered a carcinogenic exposure level

We can thank those "environmental whackos" (Or whatever Rush, O'reily, and the other neoconservatives call them) for cleaning up our lakes, rivers, and air. We have a long way to go

Take a business trip to China, you will discover their interpretation of "clean" is far different than ours. Maybe they have planned an easy way to solve their crushing population issues

You were Air Force, right? Were you in before 1980? I'm just curious if you were exposed to any haloginated solvents .... how's that bone marrow holding up??

 

Navy. :usa2:

And the bone marrow is doing just fine, thank you.

I was always proactive with using proper safety equipment and just plain staying away from chemicals . . . including second hand smoke, even before it became fashionable.

But, should my bone marrow start to fail me, thank God for medical advancements over the past 20 years.

I just can't imagine what they will have in 20 or 200 years from now.