Offshore drilling bill passes house - CONTACT YOUR SENATORS!

[H2Andy]

When I drill a hole in a board, it is so I can put a piece of pipe through it and make money for doing so. However, the end result is that you have water to flush your toilet or take a shower.

that assumes i need the water to flush my toilet or take a shower.

if i have those covered, you're providing water for somebody else's needs, not mine.

now *IF* you putting more water into the system would make my water cheaper,
then yes, you're doing me a service.

but additional drilling will simply not make a significant impact on the price of oil.
the demand will continue to outstrip supply so lopsidedly that drilling off the US
coast is simply not going to make a difference at all. the only people who will benefit are those who can sell the oil at higher prices down the road.

if instead of doing that they would spend all that money finding an alternative
fuel that would be cheaper, then i would benefit, because my costs for fuel
would go down.

but that would deprive them of their profits, so they'll never do that until they have
no other choice. that is NOT a forward thinking strategy. in fact, it seems like
a recipe for disaster to me.

 

[DallasNewbie]

The WSJ relied on a flawed study:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/26/wsj-gore/

The WSJ didn't rely on anything. The column was written by "Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT."

Should I feign surprise that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims there is a consensus that we are changing the climate? Next you'll tell me that the National Rifle Association is in favor of gun ownership.

How about a List of names of Scientists who opppose the IPCCs theory of climate change?

Arguing that "everyone agrees with me" is the most transparant form of appeal to authority. It just isn't convincing. Well, maybe it's convincing to people who care more about what others think of them than what the right thing is.

There are persuasive arguments on both sides of the debate. Claiming consensus isn't one of them.

Of course, this thread is about drilling for oil and diving. All of the dive boats I've ever been on run on oil products, so I'm in favor fo getting as much as we can. There's no "environmentall friendly" way to recover oil, so until we all drive cars and boats that run on fission (none of you have a problem with nuclear power, do you?) we'll be burning hydrocarbons all the way to the dive site. Whether it drops prices, increases supply, staves off "peak oil" (snicker), or just makes me cash in my oil stocks (you can buy them, too) I say drill it!

 

[scubafool]

Andy, you are assuming that the whole reason for drilling offshore is neccesarily to lower oil prices. I don't think that it is, rather, the idea is to reduce the amount of oil that we import from unstable sections of the world. If an oil company makes money in the process, so what? That is what for-profit business ventures do, and I don't have a problem with that.

Indeed, I would say that high gas prices are what is actually needed. With the prices being as high as they are, there is finally some serious attention brought to this issue, and some actual effort being made to come up with alternative fuels, because (pesky profit motive) someone can make money off of it.

 

[H2Andy]

right ... what i am saying is that our demand is increasing so fast, that our internal
production is NOT going to make a difference in how much we need to import

in other words, it will have no effect in the price the US pays for oil, or I pay for oil

i also agree with you that the one incentive to find alternative energy means
is for oil to become so uneconomical that everybody is desperately looking around
for a solution.

i just hope we don't wait too long to get started, or we're going to be in a hole
from which we may never climb out. we need to be forward-thinking about this.

we outproduced the British Empire and became the big kids on the block. our
economy of scale was one of massive energy use. we need to start shifting
to "efficient" energy use. we need to change our paradigm.

will China under-consume us (oil wise) and do the same to us we did to the
British?

 

[ChillyWaters]

How about a List of names of Scientists who opppose the IPCCs theory of climate change?

... There are persuasive arguments on both sides of the debate. Claiming consensus isn't one of them.

Hahahaha... The funny thing is that your own link disagrees with your claim -- you may want to choose a better reference next time.

First of all, the list contains 11 names. The article even claims "This view is held by the majority of climate scientists and those doing research in closely related fields; however, there are also a small number of scientists who actively disagree with this statement."

The idea that global warming _is_ a consensus is even in the title your given link! Hahahaha...

- ChillyWaters

 

[bruehlt]

There are persuasive arguments on both sides of the debate. Claiming consensus isn't one of them.

Depending on your definition of concensus - it appears that

Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003 (Oreskes, 2004). Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy)

Additionally -

A 2004 essay in Science [10] surveyed abstracts of peer-reviewed research articles related to climate change. It concluded that a scientific consensus in favor of the global warming theory exists.

Global warming skeptics dispute the claim that (or relevance of) a consensus of scientists supports the view of global warming presented by the IPCC, and say that even the IPCC report authors do not all support the reports. However, of the 120 lead authors of the TAR, only two are known to have complained.

 

[ChillyWaters]

For those interested, there's a piece on this right now on CBC Newsworld... I think it's called Oil: World Over a Barrel...

- ChillyWaters

 

[bruehlt]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1992629256196958115&q=oil

A good watch that discusses peak oil, and the geopolitical motives behind oil and the future - and why we need to find a different energy source as soon as possible - if not to prevent evironmental disaster - but to save humanity.

 

[captain]

Humans are so vain and give themselves too much credit for everything that happens to the enviroment.

 

[H2Andy]

or play dumb and refuse to take responsibility for what is clearly their doing

the dodo? what dodo?

oil spills? what oil spills?

destruction of rainforests? what rainforests?

species after species becoming extinct thanks to our activities? what?

surely, none of that is our doing .... it can't be ... we can't have that effect on our environment. we simply can't!

and no amount of evidence is going to convince me otherwise