Lt. Cheese Weasel: Obama cannot be trusted or believed. He's an empty suit who will say anything to get elected.

Like no other politician before him. "Read my lips!"

I agree that drilling off our own coast is a bandaid to the oil issues. NOW. Bandaids are good they help you heal. It buys us time to really tell the car companies NO -you have to make us something more fuel efficient. Time to tell the Government - No ya really got to consider ALTERNATIVE's to ALL OIL. The Bandaid just buys us time. We still need the Bandaid to keep the dirt off the wound (which is my analogy for depending on foreign oil. THAT END.

Lt. Cheese Weasel: It's not trolling if it's true, which it is. Poor defense, but I understand as you have no defensible position to begin with. Obama cannot be trusted or believed. He's an empty suit who will say anything to get elected.

He's a politician, what's your point?

redcup27: Shaggy_C: Take your strawman

That's how far I made it. I stop reading when uses says strawman, false dichotomy, or any other term they've picked up on fark that they think makes them look smart when used but it really does the exact opposite.

////Slashies
//I must be a fark genius!!

You know, the problem with that is there are correct terms for things. Like grammar, for instance. If you say "I are smart" you have incorrect number agreement. There's rules and there are terms for when the rules are broken. These Fark threads are debates primarily, and it's useful for the those of us erudite enough to comprehend the terms to call the various debate tactics and logical fallacies by their technical names. That you are poorly educated or not intelligent enough to deal with that sort of makes your opinion on the subject irrelevant. There are rules and there are terms for when the rules are broken. The term for what you just did was the "fingers in the ears nananananananana" defense. It's mostly a diversionary tactic to try to anger the opponent. It makes the person who employs it look silly and they are subsequently not taken very seriously.

Lt. Cheese Weasel: it is indeed phyrric

Sounds like I'm going to need antibiotics.

Just when you though the thieves were done.

/don't give them 4 more years

I'm all for drilling off the coast, but the law that lifts the federal restriction for it needs to include some incentives and funcing for alternative energy, as well as make damn sure the oil companies follow environmental rules.

ANWR stays closed.

Now, just because the Fed's say it's okay, doesn't mean the states will be okay with it. I say leave the final go ahead in the state's hands.

HeadLever: red5ish: World oil prices are determined by O.P.E.C. and no amount of drilling in North America is going to have a significant impact on those prices.

BZZZZT. Wrong. OPEC has an influence on the price of oil because they control a large share of the oil production, but they do not actaully determine the price.

If by "influence" you mean that O.P.E.C. actually determines the price of oil then you are right.
Otherwise, bzzzt, you are wrong.
Perhaps you are thinking of something other than oil, such as gasoline.

the real solution to the energy crisis is for the Asian continent(selected because Asia contains India and China the 2 most populous countries that i don't live in) to suffer a massive deadly plague. and none of this slow killing HIV stuff that working to kill off Africa. I'm talking kills within a week type plague.

the earth just needs a major reduction in population. and the 2 most efficient way to do it is nuclear war, or disease.

lets face it, dead people don't buy gas.

HarveyBrooks: Can somebody please explain why the oil companies aren't drilling on the 60 million acres they already own?

Also, why aren't they building some new refineries with their record profits?

Oil companies are not building them here because they are practically not allowed to build refineries in the USA due to legislation/activists. I dare you to get approval for a new refinery and then try to build it without a million EPA lawsuits stopping you from doing so. The USA is now importing refined gasoline because oil companies can build a refinery abroad much easier with lower pollution standards. I think it would be better to bring the jobs here and make sure the companies aren't dumping sludge into rivers, but apparently buying refined gasoline from abroad at a higher price is a better environmental solution.

The problems are not exclusive to refineries either, power plants also get held up because of lawsuits and political rationale. (Although I think those last two words together are an oxymoron!)

red5ish: If by "influence" you mean that O.P.E.C. actually determines the price of oil then you are right.

How can a cartel that controls less than 50% of global production control the price? They influence it, yes, but they alone don't control it completely.

belize13: the real solution to the energy crisis is for the Asian continent(selected because Asia contains India and China the 2 most populous countries that i don't live in) to suffer a massive deadly plague. and none of this slow killing HIV stuff that working to kill off Africa. I'm talking kills within a week type plague.

Why them? A world-wide die-off would work just as well. Or maybe just the United States; we do consume 25% of the world's oil.

All of the argumentation above is mute. Our planet is dying because we are choking it to death through the introduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at artificially inflated levels. Burning oil, and thus by extension drilling for oil, is a primary cause of this crisis.

The rise in temperature of sea waters, the melting of the ice caps (a process in rapid acceleration due to the significant reduction in albedo) and glaciers around the world (most notably those in the Himalayas which feed the rivers of China and India), modifications to the oceans' currents and the intertwined system of global air circulation resulting in rapidly changing climate and weather systems are all poised to cause immense havoc to our entire existence as is already evidenced by the disastrous reductions in crop yields in recent years among many other inter-related symptomatic issues.

Furthermore, the increase in global temperature is causing both permafrost and ocean based methane clathrates to melt which is now releasing an increasing load of methane into the atmosphere which itself is a vastly more dangerous greenhouse gas than is the carbon dioxide we are producing through fossil fuel consumption.

The bottom line is that I am not so much concerned about the environmental impact of the drilling itself. But every day that we do not take drastic action to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel consumption is another day closer to our own demise.

I know that many of you find this sort of talk both alarmist and idiotic and I'm certain that I am opening myself up to a vast number of Libtard comments. And yet it remains that these are the facts of our current situation. The price of gas will be completely irrelevant within our lifetimes...one way or another.

JohnJacobJingleheimerSchmidt: Shaggy_C:
The only people who need to live more than 5 miles from downtown are farmers those of us who don't want to live like over-crowded rats.

/Fixed

Yet you choose to be subjected to the rat-race of the commute. Or at least fighting traffic on your way to anywhere.

True leadership would emphasize both alternative sources and rational approaches to developing oil and natural gas.

Hilton '08!

TheIndependent Thank you for explaining that.
Now for the rest of you who think Obama is the savior to the oil issue I present his voting record.
Official Title of Legislation:

S 3711: A bill to enhance the energy independence and security of the United States by providing for exploration, development, and production activities for mineral resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and for other purposes.

Obama Voted no to drilling off the Gulf Coast.
He also Voted no to drilling off of Virginia.
THEN IT GETS WEIRD
He then votes YES to drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge.
It always makes me go WTF when I look at that record.

Now for McCain
Official Title of Legislation:

S 3711: A bill to enhance the energy independence and security of the United States by providing for exploration, development, and production activities for mineral resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and for other purposes.
Voted YES
Voted no on on offshore drilling in Virginia
and he voted the same as Obama on Alaska.

Apparently both of them have been out of the office since April.
I would vote for the guy who had actually made a vote since April. I mean yeah you are campaigning but stand behind your ass and vote while you are doing so. Anyway.

That is my little political rant.

"In ANWR, the environmental damage cannot just be written off as insignificant. And there is a reason it's called a "refuge"."

Uhhh...Yes you can. When the oil companies leave sites on the north slope of Aaska, they are requires to return it to the condition it was before they got there.

The W in ANWR stands for wildlife. I dare you to find ANY study that shows previous oil development in the Prudhoe Bay fields has caused ANY harm to wildlife. The Caribou love to forage under the Pipeline because it is a little warm. They also love to huddle on the downwind side of the Oil buildings, because they can get out of the wind, and have less snow covering their food. Also, if you want to make it a true Wildlife Refuge, than you had better stop all the hunting of the critters in it. That will have the consequence of destroying the Indigenous populations'subsistence culture and lifestyle, but better protect those "endangered" Caribou. The Inupiaq can starve I guess.
If it is the pristine Wilderness that you are protecting, then please realize that the footprint that they are going to drill is 2000 acres. Big area right? That is about 1/10,000th of the size of the refuge. Even with development, this are will be much more of a Wilderness area than Yosemite, Yellowstone or any other Lower 48 "Wilderness".

You need to see the area to understand. Don't drink the Kool-aid being fed to you by the people who just want your money to protect what is not in real danger.

The Icelander: canyoneer: If you're concerned about Earth's biosphere, the most productive thing you can do is agitate for aggressive population control. That's the cause of all this trouble. Everything else is a symptom.

I agree. Population control would work. But I also think promoting human colonization of space would be better. There's a huge amount of resources in space.

Which resources would those be? Volatiles (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen)? Nope. Closest source of those is Earth (unless you happen to be way over by Jupiter or possibly Mars). Hydrocarbons? Nope. Earth again (unless you are all the way out at Saturn). Rare metals? Possibly, but we haven't found any yet, and they are likely to be very far away (you know, like Mars or asteroid belt or Mercury).

Colonizing the Moon may make sense since it is more than likely that we can find some resources there (Gold, Platinum, Aluminum, etc), but you would still have to ferry the volitiles up from Earth (or snag a comet and divert its orbit into one close by and stable). Mars is a long, long, long way away and there would be no sense in sending anything back to Earth considering the gravity wells, energy cost and time. Resources there would pretty much be used to keep any colony going, and that's if we can find the right kinds of them. No nitrogen, no food.

I am all for space colonization, but exploiting resources is not what will drive it. They are simply not there or are so far away it makes no sense to go get them. Even postulating advances in technology that would allow safe and efficient space travel, we still haven't figured out how to make a bottle city yet (Biosphere II if you recall, failed spectacularily).

There are many, many hurdles to overcome before space colonization is practical, and unless we get our sh*t together down here first, we will never get up there. Agressive population control, energy and resource conservation and intelligent sustainable agriculture are what we need, and soon.

Shaggy_C, I don't know if you're still in this thread, but thanks for answering my questions. It's rare to find someone on Fark who is reasonable and well-spoken (or written, as the case may be) so your insights are doubly appreciated.

Looking forward to seeing you in the next thread.
-TFer

We agree that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of energy, there are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain off-limits.



Let's kill birds by the jillions with wind power instead.

The drilling thing is not the worst Dumboshat screwup. They also have the oil shale off limits by legislation and there is more oil there than in all the middle east put together. The funniest thing is that with oil prices sky rocketing they recently renewed the restriction.

SuperCrackMonkey: meofcourse77: As it would have it, I have a solution. Kudzu HEMP CRABGRASS. It is not as good as corn, but it grows really fast (ask anyone in the south US with a lawn). It is not a food source. We could make Kudzu HEMP CRABGRASS farms and maybe even come up with some kind of hybrid that produces more energy.


FTFY!

No, FTF YOU!

red5ish: If by "influence" you mean that O.P.E.C. actually determines the price of oil then you are right.

Say OPEC determines they want the price of oil at 10/bbl. Can they do it? Hell, no. You have some major correlation/causation issues here.

Isitoveryet: I wish you would all just die ... the fact is we cannot currently live without oil .... try to get that through your thick hippie head ... go cut your wrists or something.

did you all read that?
i guess there is no question about it.
the facts have been written!
we're doomed. dooooomed!
(insert pic of Bender silver and gold)
i like Bender.
without oil humans would die. so then why with the cut your wrists or something? why not just live go without oil?

I don't plan on dying...but I have a very good idea that you will. Our planet cannot support the number of people we have currently. If you honestly think it can then you are simply an idiot. I don't plan to slit my wrists. No, I plan to live in my solar powered house with my greenhouse in which I grow all the food I need to live with water from a desalination system.

Frankly, I've past the point of giving a crap about idiots like you. I only ask one thing. Please, don't come knocking on my door when the sh*t hits the fan. I won't help you and most likely will respond with force...GET OFF MY LAWN!

dericwater: There's a lot of people wanting to stop you. Don't ever forget that.

*cue the "IT'S A CONSPIRACY!" tinfoil hat man pic*

Shaggy_C: red5ish: If by "influence" you mean that O.P.E.C. actually determines the price of oil then you are right.

How can a cartel that controls less than 50% of global production control the price? They influence it, yes, but they alone don't control it completely.

I'm glad you asked.
O.P.E.C. controls ~40% of the oil production in the world.
The other ~60% of production is maxed out. They cannot easily produce more oil per day and they won't decrease production because that costs them profits.
O.P.E.C. can. They can also reduce production.
In the past there were oil producers who tried to increase or decrease world supply to change prices but O.P.E.C. responded by increasing or decreasing their own production to stabalize oil prices.
Because they don't control 100% of world oil production O.P.E.C. doesn't have absolute control of oil prices, for instance they cannot produce so much oil as to make oil free, nor can they cut production so as to drive the price of oil to a million dollars a barrel, but for all practical purposes they do control the actual price of oil. Having united control of 40% of production does that for them.

delphiseus
When the shiat hits the fan- because I believe it will.. But in my opinion there will be no sense of order or law. So how long will you be able to sit in your solar powered house before an angry Mob with more gun power than you takes it?
Just asking because my friend and I had this discussion the other day. She said she was going to invest in more gold..because when the shiat hits the fan..and I said..."What are you going to do with gold? Eat it? Because let me tell ya when the shiat hits the fan..it is really going to HIT the fan-order and law right out the window."

Ahh, the 'oil crisis', where the wheels of the "Anything George Bush does is automatically wrong and evil bandwagon" finally fall off.

This is what happens when you reflexively disagree with anything somebody says. Eventually they'll advocate something so obviously correct you sound like a jackass disagreeing.

what about the article the other day claiming we are currently exporting something like 1.6 million barrels a day? (the equivalent of what the proposed offshore drilling is expected to produce). If we're so hard up for oil, why don't we just stop selling it internationally?

NeoMort: If we're so hard up for oil, why don't we just stop selling it internationally?

Oil companies like to circumvent American environmental laws, so they utilize our refineries to produce dirty gasoline using our oil and then send it to South America and Mexico. Taking advantage of those wonderful 'free trade' agreements, because, you know, everyone loves freedom and if you don't you're probably a communist.

You don't think we should be sending our country's natural resources to tyrants on one side of the world, only to turn around and send money to tyrants on the other side of the world, huh?

What's your problem? Why do you hate Free Markets? Why do you hate America?

NeoMort
Because Japan OWNS it. It is more cost effective to sell it to Japan to be refined. Japan is closer to Alaska than the US Mainland. So we cut a deal with Japan to have our oil. For a while we would buy back some of the oil from Japan after it was refined. They fulfilled their contract on what we asked for and now we have none of our oil that they refine because we DO NOT OWN it literally.

Shaggy_C you are wrong. OPEC Alaska. Look it up.

Lt. Cheese Weasel: SuperCrackMonkey: Lt. Cheese Weasel: Obama cannot be trusted or believed. He's an empty suit who will say anything to get elected.

Like no other politician before him. "Read my lips!"

Well ya got me there, but then again, if you look at the result of Bush 41's taxes, that he initially promised to never create, those taxes led to nearly 65% of the surplus that Bill Clinton is given credit for creating that liberals claim was so farking great. So if you have a point or victory to claim here, it is indeed phyrric.


Regardless who caused the surplus, a surplus is very important. The debt this administration has caused will never be repaid and will likely lead to a huge economic meltdown. For the same reason as GM and other companies are going to fail... The more you pay in interest, the less you pay against the capital, and the capital keeps growing.

I hope you don't have children with an attitude like that. Future generations are farked. Either there will be huge tax increases or huge inflation due to incredibly poor fiscal policy.

Cup_O_Jo: delphiseus
When the shiat hits the fan- because I believe it will.. But in my opinion there will be no sense of order or law. So how long will you be able to sit in your solar powered house before an angry Mob with more gun power than you takes it?

Yeah, I agree. It is going to be bloody. I've been studying ancient fortification design.

Cup_O_Jo: Shaggy_C you are wrong. OPEC Alaska. Look it up.

I don't know where you get your information, but it's incorrect. Japan is hardly one of our biggest export recipients of oil.

The 1.6 million barrels a day in record petroleum exports represented 9 percent of total U.S. refining capacity of 17.6 million barrels a day.

However, with refiners operating at 85 percent of capacity during the January-April period, the shipments represented a much a larger share of total U.S. oil products produced.

The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.

The biggest share of U.S. oil products exported went to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Singapore and Brazil.

U.S. consumers are paying record prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, which the Bush administration blames in part on tight supplies.



While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier.
U.S. gasoline shipments in April averaged 202,000 barrels a day, the most for the month since 1945, when America was sending fuel overseas to ease supply shortages in other countries during World War II. Gasoline exports in April 2007 were almost half at 116,000 barrels per day.

Residual fuel exports in April were 377,000 barrels per day, the fourth highest level for any month, and up 10 percent from 344,000 barrels per day a year earlier.

John Felmy, the chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, said a portion of the oil products exported, especially diesel, was fuel that did not meet U.S. clean air requirements and therefore could not be sold in America. "You may have some that you're not able to use," he said.

Also, while U.S. gasoline demand is down due to high prices and a weak American economy, there is "strong economic growth outside the United States" where fuel is often subsidized and demand is high, said John Cook, director of EIA's Petroleum Division. (new window)

danielsangeo: Oh, this is a load of bullshiat. You're trying to claim that, since there are naturally occurring forest firest, that we should go ahead and purposefully burn down forests.

Not a good choice of analogy, because this is exactly what we do. Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, and with our campaigns of preventing fires for so many years, we've unbalanced a variety of habitats (and increased the danger of fire to ourselves in the process). So, to remedy, forest scientists and the like burn patches of forest to mimic natural processes.

Carry on.

Infinite Insanity: Regardless who caused the surplus, a surplus is very important.

Too bad we never really had one. The national debt grew every year that Clint0wn3d was in office.

Isitoveryet: delphia the opening of my post was a quote from seminole87 sorry for not formatting that properly.
do you read everything or just a few posts? i tend to try and read all of them. anyway let me simplify my statement.
i would like to live without oil without the death.

now with face palm repellent.

Sorry about the reaction...too many posts to keep up. I'm just tired of people who continue to deny that we are destroying ourselves and keep looking for the 90-day payoff. We have to start thinking long-term as a collective. I, and many many others have already started thinking long-term as individuals. If we don't ALL get our act together then I fear that we will very soon fall into a pattern of massively increased violence and chaos on a global scale. I know that the typical resident of Omaha or Atlanta can't even fathom the complete collapse of their social structure but it is coming and when it does it will happen fast and without mercy.

Shaggy_C
I got my information from OPEC.
http://gas2.org/2008/03/10/us-will-export-440-billion-for-oil-in-2008/The countries you listed we actually IMPORT from and EXPORT money too.
Until May 2000, when exports stopped because of declining output and oil company
mergers, about 7% of crude oil production from the Alaska North Slope (ANS) was
exported to South Korea, Japan, and China. Unfavorable public reaction to exporting
domestic oil during times of high prices and tight U.S. supply have from time to time
focused renewed legislative attention on the Alaska exports issue.
http://www.ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RS22142_050506.pdf
So anyway. You have one resource. It is also a resource I consider to be bias. Apparently we are not exporting to Japan anymore.

Cup_O_Jo: So anyway. You have one resource. It is also a resource I consider to be bias. Apparently we are not exporting to Japan anymore.

You consider OPEC less biased than the US Energy Information Administration?!? Wow...just...wow.

But regardless, your link says Alaskan crude exports ended in 2000. We're talking about different things here anyways; I was referring to refined product exported to circumvent environmental standards. You're talking about raw crude from a decade ago.

Please stop demonifying 'libruls' as people that want you to live like a homeless person. All we want is you to be ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE/CONSCIOUS. MINIMIZE it is all we're asking, and be open to making some minimal pocketbook sacrifices for the greater good, so future generations have a chance to experience what little bit of unspoilied natural beauty on this planet still exists (that's currently being covered in our filth at almost an exponential rate). Unfortunately anything that goes on in one ecosystem effect another, so you have to try to be that way in ALL aspects of your life.

And arguing that some environmental damage from drilling is ok because other things we do already kills wildlife/flora/fauna, too, is completely pathetic. Human actions will inevitably always accompany life or habitat loss at SOME level. What we each think the level of 'acceptable' life/habitat loss is is what differentiates us. Some of us just put a higher value on biodiversity and life 'in general' than others. (Ironically, it's usually the least religious people that seem to value it the most (unless it's unborn (aka 'not alive yet') that is))*

/*off topic. please ignore flame-bait. :)

SLASHIE!!!

HeadLever: red5ish: If by "influence" you mean that O.P.E.C. actually determines the price of oil then you are right.

Say OPEC determines they want the price of oil at 10/bbl. Can they do it? Hell, no. You have some major correlation/causation issues here.

That example falls into the "can God make a rock so big that even he can't lift it" category. The usual response to this sort of question would be to hit the back of your hand with a ruler.

tuxmaska: I'm not opposed to drilling per se, but I also do not think that 5% of the population (the US) should be consuming 20-25% of our world's oil resources.

Dude, we consume 20-25% of the world's oil reserves because we produce 25-30% of the world's industrial output. The two are closely related. A nation of people living in mud huts whose only industrical output is clay pots would not consume much in the way of oil reserves, but if they use steel pots and wear plastic flip flops produced by another more technologically advanced country, the other country would be consuming more than their share of the world's oil reserves per capita because they would be producing industrial goods that are being consumed in both countries.

The only drilling the democrats want to do is in our wallets.

What is John Edwards view on drilling his cancered up wife?

/Yeah, I went there

Obviously, the Washington Post is a Right-Wing neocon paper, spouting propoganda in favor of Big Oil.

Paris Hilton '08

/I'ld rather be behind Paris Hilton on the Polls than any male politician.