Bush ok's Gulf of Mexico Drilling

[mase]

Could you please explain "not clean"

Doe's your Geiger counter wake you at night?
Seen a three eyed billy goat?
Are people parking on your lawn?
Or simpler, you'd like to see the place painted a very groovy art deco color?

Really to throw a statement like that with out support is laughable.

Sounds like a sound bite off the "Colbert Report."

 

[mase]

I've read through this entire thread and tried to keep an open mind. Both sides have made valid points. If we can avoid the Liberal v. Conservative labeling which immediately puts an end to rationale discussion we might possibly come up with a workable solution. America is looking for Black and White answers but we live in a gray World. We need energy but we must remember we are the custodians of the earth. Is oil the best answer? Doesn't alternative sources of energy make sense? When we stop being advocates for one point or another and remain open to alternative ideas, then we get something done.

 

[TCDiver1]

Yep, a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage and a Mr Fusion in every car.

 

[stillhope]

This discussion of clean nuclear power is pretty amusing, in a sick sort of way. Let me add one element that has been overlooked. Where there's enriched uranium, there's depleted uranium. Please sign and forward the petition below:

Dear Secretary Gates,
You have my condolences for inheriting the controversial program to use depleted uranium for weapons and armor. Some of us realize, as did your predecessor and many before him, that it is perfectly safe, and that its danger has been exaggerated by those same rabble rousers who wanted to use fluoride to taint our precious bodily fluids.

But we SCUBA divers are a solution (pardon the pun) oriented lot, and we have a proposal for you. As you may know, those same nay-sayers have sullied the good name of lead and weighted it down with so many regulations about proper handling that the price of lead weights has skyrocketed into the dollars/pound range. The vast stores of depleted Uranium are a godsend for us. You could eliminate the huge costs of secure storage for that waste product by turning it into diving weights, give them away for free, and still come out mega-dollars ahead. We would not only get free weights, but they would be half the size of our lead weights easier to manage. Win-Win!

As you can see from the number of signatures below, the dive community is rallying behind this idea to help save the U.S.A. lots of money and make diving voters happy. Merry Christmas!

 

[FredT]

so... what are the chances of oil or some other crap leaking from these platforms and ruining the environment?

(as for the oil, it's barely enough to keep the US going for a couple of years, at best; the only people to benefit will be the oil companies... but i digress)

Nill

In the GOM oil is food for the bottom of the chain. As a minor counterpoint there are roughly 10000 barrels (440000 gallons) of oil gong into the GOM from natural seeps every day. The ecosystem is very well adapted to exploit it as food. Even the Ixtoc spill was devoued inside of 2 years.

The worst part of this is the 125 mile buffer. That makes for a minimum 250 mile round trip for each dive day.

 

[FredT]

you can't shoot within 5 miles of the pipeline?

hmmm... hey, that actually makes sense


(oops... you know, i thought FOR SURE i wouldn't hit the darn thing with a .30-30 at 300 yards)

Please note that a 30-30 at point blank range wont even dent the steel of the pipe line. 300 win mag with armor pierce black tip projectiles Might make it through though.

 

[havnmonkey]

oh how you believe what the media tells you..............

if you hear the earth is square umpteen times, you may start to believe that too.

from best friends and even MY WIFE who has been to the middle east fighting the good fight, I get the REAL News of how we are wanted and loved. Of the "things" they never had that we are disposing of at this moment. AND, how the "bad guys"
will thrive on our(recent elections) show of weakness.
Sorry, I get FACTS and not media blips from Wolf Blitzer...........

I'm not talking about Iraq/terrorism or whether the world likes us or not... I meant that any U.S. leader gets a ton of public exposure worldwide. And thus they are susceptible to public opinion good or bad.

I was actually trying to give the guy some credit, because whatever actions he (we) take is going to face the worldwide popularity contest.

I do not approve of any cable news "anchors'" views because they are not reporting the news but their own opinions on their own conclusions. However the Daily Show is always right


Solar/Wind and yes nuclear power(even though we must be very careful) should get WAY more attention than they are getting, I can't wait until shingles are replaced with solar cells.

 

[H2Andy]

Please note that a 30-30 at point blank range wont even dent the steel of the pipe line.

ah yes.. note my choice of weapon (and a snub-nosed subsonic round at that)

it was... you know ... irony

 

[Bill51]

Nill

In the GOM oil is food for the bottom of the chain. As a minor counterpoint there are roughly 10000 barrels (440000 gallons) of oil gong into the GOM from natural seeps every day. The ecosystem is very well adapted to exploit it as food. Even the Ixtoc spill was devoued inside of 2 years.

The worst part of this is the 125 mile buffer. That makes for a minimum 250 mile round trip for each dive day.

LOL You must have seen the TV interview I did in Panama City after the DoI hearings. The off camera expression on the reporter’s face was priceless when I mentioned one of the reasons I was supporting a 50 mile offshore drilling boundary was to conserve energy. She gave me this confused puppy dog look and asked how that would conserve energy, so I told her the dive and fishing boats wouldn’t have to travel nearly as far – or as fast to get to the prime diving and fishing sites. I still don’t think she understood what I was talking about – or what the hearings were about in general.

Just as famines are not natural phenomena but political designs, we’ve had the major piece of our energy solution for 55 years as of yesterday, but in 1977 it was made politically off limits in the US while many other nations are using it. President Eisenhower built his long range energy strategy on FBRs (Fast Breeder Reactors) but before we could get it implemented and the engineering (not scientific) bugs worked out political fear mongering and myth killed the second best hope for a global clean energy solution – with the hope for true cold fusion being the ultimate goal. Photovoltaic, wind, wave energy, geothermal, and dozens of other alternative energy solutions may have applications in specific geographic areas and would be great for peak load generation, but only a sound integrated nuclear solution will meet the demands of modern man.

Cleaner portable energy storage solutions such as hydrogen and new battery technologies will never get a major developmental push until we find the source to keep them charged, and that is going to ultimately be a nuclear source that is clean without large nuclear waste disposal requirements, without weapons grade transitional products, and in strategic locations to feed the energy grid system. This year with little public notice (other than President Bush mentioning it in his State of the Union address) the US signed an agreement with France and Japan to develop a more efficient, safer, and cleaner FBR that will also be able to recycle the tons of spent fuel rods around the world while preventing them from being used to extract Plutonium-239. Unfortunately I fear the science and engineering will be available long before the public realizes how mislead they’ve been by emotional and political myths.

While I’m on a roll, lets look forward 20 years to a potential economic and political problem caused by a sound scientific energy solution. Prior to 1977, hydrocarbon energy markets were somewhat kept in balance by the smaller producers being able to keep the larger producers honest. That changed when regulatory hurdles became so great that most small producers (both drillers and refiners) no longer had the economies of scale to compete and either closed or were absorbed by the large firms that could afford to deal with the governmental requirements. The problem I’ve heard bounced around some think tanks is how do we keep the barriers to entry into the nuclear power production industry low enough to prevent a future near monopoly like we created in the oil industry while maintain the high levels of safety and security of facilities needed. One portion of that was addressed this year in the President’s Energy Act that would protect power plant (and refinery) investors from undue risk due to changing federal regulations, but even that doesn’t have all the bugs worked out. Once we provide the right balance of oversight while encouraging healthy competition we will finally see President Eisenhower’s dream of total energy independence – and a much cleaner environment without lower our standard of living. If anyone has the solution I will forward it to my think tank contacts.

 

[Bill51]

Solar/Wind and yes nuclear power(even though we must be very careful) should get WAY more attention than they are getting, I can't wait until shingles are replaced with solar cells.

If you really care about the ocean and the environment I’d hold off on those PV shingles until someone can show how to make them without huge heavy metals contamination problems during their manufacturing - and then a way to safely dispose of them at the end of their life cycle.