Drill baby drill!
As VoteVets travels around the country in their bus touting the need for energy independance, this should come as good news, eh?
Doesn’t exactly gibe with what you hear most the time, does it? This from Human Events:
I’ve read about gas companies working with environmental groups to not only have the smallest footprint possible, but to actually aid the local ecosystem. I am in favor of such synergy in working for the environment and for the worlds population. Of course, VV’s tour ws never about anything but their master Soros, so I would suspect this is not good news for them.
Because these are applicable, and my favorite episodes of one of the best shows ever, I give you Bullshit!
Category: Politics
Gee, they mentioning how we are helping Brazil with their own offshore drilling with a nice check and how Soros owns a nice chunk of Petrobas?
Hmmm, the environmental aspect has some caveats attached.
I’ll offer tour through WV that highlights a bit of the good and bad with coal. Once it’s out of the ground ALGORE is deadening it’s impact.
Natural Gas is another biggie here, and going through a non-trivial renaissance of note.
On a personal note: I have my own gas well, and a chunk coal mine. Had outrageous offers to drill new (and higher performing) wells on my patch.
But no. Oddly I can’t keep them from drilling in my backyard – literally. They would make it real pretty after the drilling was done, and the well was turned out, but…
So… screw VV and ALGORE in general, but beware of generalizations.
True Pons, and I am a closet Environmentalist, but there has to be someway to do it that offsets the damage, or mitigates it or something. I’m not much on this issue, but there has to be something we can do.
I’m more pissed about the ongoing ANWR crap frankly.
What you all fail to realize, is the horrible effects of mountain top removal that are required to get at the coal. We’re systematically leveling a gorgeous area to burn coal that miners are paid almost nothing for. The environmental issues are huge! And with accidents come bigger problems. Look at Centralia(sp) Pa, where a coal fire has been burning under ground for decades.
Just because we have more material to destroy nature to get to, doesn’t mean we should. Why not talk more about solar and wind? Hell, with the millions the coal and gas companies pay lobbyists, we could build solar cells enough to power a huge % of America!!
I wouldn’t be opposed to either of those either, but m understanding is that they don’t work quite as well as advertised. Indiana has a ton of wind turbines, and I am all in favor.
You say “a ton” but really how many do they have vs. How many could they have? Imagine if every building had solar cells on the roof, or if we could find a way to line the sides of skyscrapers with them. Hell, imagine if every median on the interstate was solar cells! There are better, sustainable ways to do this.
Er, um… I’m a full-tilt overt pragmatic environmentalist here, but I’m not foolish about it, I think.
The US has any number of options, including Nuclear, to meet the energy needs of the country.
Even without my small patch and the other NIBMY folks there really is no/zero/nil reason to think energy independence can’t happen.
I could offer chapter and verse, but the VV and the ALGORES have an agenda that I do not support. I’m convinced that those folks simply want to cripple the country. The explanation for that view is myriad and un-complicated so don’t get distracted by my comments.
I just don’t think it is “A or B” I think a compreghensive view is needed. As for “a ton” I lost count at 50 in about a 2 mile area on I65 about 50 miles north of Indy.
I am all for the clean coal campaigns and such, and understand it is going to be more extensive. But contrary to what the cap and traders would have us think, I don’t believe we need to kneecap our children and grandkids to get this accomplished.
I’m reminded of how the Kennedy’s blocked wind mills in Nantucket and Martha’s vineyard because of it affecting their vista, and all the Nimby arguments come back…
WVbyGod says: What you all fail to realize, is the horrible effects of mountain top removal that are required to get at the coal.
Yup. That was true yesterday. That’s the reason I wanna take TSO on a tour of what is.
When was the last time you were in southern WV?
Buffalo Creek happened, 50 years ago.
Yeah, for the record, was not intending to support mountain top removal if it sounded like that.
Strip mining does not equate with environmental catastrophe any longer.
It is true it once did…
Think about a hay field. It can be nurtured to make hay, or it can be returned to nature.
Wanna eat meat? Need to feed them cows during the winter.
There’s always an offset.
Properly done mountain top removal is only an atheistic issue, not a direct environmental thing.
Think about the interstate highway system as well.
You draw your lines, I’ll draw mine.
My (admittedly limited) understanding of mountain top removal is that it adversely effects what leaks into the water, damaging the ecosystem down stream. Not true?
As far as wind and solar they are pretty much a no-go. I work for a utility in Michigan and we commissioned a survey to put up windmills in the best locations. For us, the Western side of the state (Lake Michigan shoreline) was the best. Then came the environmentalists. No wind turbines within 3 or 5 miles (I forget which) of any great lakes…..migratory route for waterfowl you see. Then they said no wind turbines within 3 miles of ANY lake, to many bald eagles would get killed you see. Then they said no wind turbines within 1 mile of any river, migratory route for bats you see. If anyone has been to Michigan you know how many lakes and rivers we have…..alot more than Minnesota! This left us with 600 acres in the entire state which ain’t enough turbines to power one small town. Solar just needs too large of a footprint to be of much use either, and god forbid an eagle sees it’s reflection in the panel and attacks, we’ll have to ban them from all waterways too!!
Yea the enviros will be against any thing that works, that’s what they do. Consider west Texas, waste land by the hundreds of thousands of acres, plenty of wind, they objected to the cross country power lines that brought the energy to the cities.
TSO asked: My (admittedly limited) understanding of mountain top removal is that it adversely effects what leaks into the water, damaging the ecosystem down stream. Not true?
Well, find any human interaction that has zero impact on the environment?
What we can do is minimize and mitigate, sadly our government manages to do that thing in this particular case.
There is an odd corollary. It really has to do with whether you want to use your computer or not?
Dude, I’ll be emailing stuff in your direction in then day or so, if you like?
Absolutely Pons. As I acknowledged, my knowledge here is limited, so I may take it upon myself to search out some specialists from both sides and do a long piece for here and that other place I blog.
And yeah, I know there is always a trade off, and mitigation etc. At some point we clearly have to do something.
And, as always, I want to use my computer. It seems like we could start doing things like in ANWR that would have less of an impact than other things, and we get blocked by people who I believe are more anti-capitalist than pro-environment. Its like that great Penn and Teller Bullshit! program about the wacky environmentalists. That one guy who helped found Greenpeace that was ridiculing the wackos was a classic because he attacked them on their own ground.
WVbyGod: Do you have any idea of the enviromental impact that hybrid batteries have? Have you seen the nickel mines (open pit) that are the main source for hybrid vehicle batteries? How about the other rare earth minerals used in the manufacture of these vehicles? That’s not even going to the full electric vehicles (Chevy Volt, etc.). Plus, where does the elctricity come for rcharging electric vehicles?? Wind power is a very minute source, plus the impact on the airborne critters, the windmills are affectionately called bird blenders. The environazis won’t allow clean burning coal fired electric plants, they hate nuclear power; so what’s the answer? We give money to Brazil to help with their oil drilling, which they can do in areas we won’t allow our own companies to drill (does that make any sense to anyone?). We have oil shale in the West that can’t be touched, ANWR is off limits, even though the area they want to drill in is roughly the size of a playing card, if put on a football field for scale comparison purposes.
The enviros have blathered on about the impact to wildlife, yet they haven’t really mentioned that the Caribou are thick as ever around the Prudhoe bay oil fields, so it doesn’t seem to bother them. Plus, the area that they want to drill in is not really inhabitated by much of anything at the moment, yet the pictures they show are of areas hundreds of miles away, but it looks good on camera.
Drill now, drill here. We have the technological capabilities to leave a very small footprint, but logic is lost on the enviros. We have the ability to be energy independent, yet we choose not to be. That’s the leftist “victim” mentality in full bloom.
Grim had a post at his blog that I commented on with regard to building Nukes.
More important is the waste issue which I answer in the same post. Hope this works, it is here.
Just to be clear, I’m talking STANDARDIZED DESIGN Nuclear Power plants-not the abortions we were building before where not only was every one different from the last BUT was being redesigned as we built it. That bis the main reason they are so expensive.
Old Tanker, are you aware of the MSU study on the number of wind turbines that would be needed to just stay even with electrical generation in Michigan? They concluded that 11,700, or so, turbines would be needed. And now GVSU is going to do a study in Lake Michigan, placing a monitor for winds, 12 miles from shore, where they “think” the turbines will have to go.
I’m sure they’re unaware, so far, that the USCG pulls ALL of the buoys from the lake over the winter. Seems there’s a small problem with ICE….
Not to mention, I think there might be a small drop in the electricity generated if you have to send it 10-12 miles to shore.
I think Old Trooper hit it out of the park, “We have the ability to be energy independent, yet we choose not to be”.
Long story short, neither wind nor solar power will ever be more than supplemental sources, barring heretofore unimagined methods of extracting vastly more energy from them than is possible with even theoretical, 100% efficiency forms of current technology. The amount of space required (especially when needing to account for the huge variance in day-to-day output) for both is simply prohibitive, not to mention the cost-benefit factor that is only viable due to government grants. As the technology and manufacturing techniques improve, I expect solar panels will become more common in a lot of unused, exposed surface areas, but they will still only be supplements. We need at least one major power source, and coal or nuclear are the only two available, with the possibility of natural gas becoming a bigger player in the near future.
The simple solution is to open up our oil reserves to new exploration and drilling, build up new refineries, and get back into nuclear power to lessen the need for hydrocarbon power plants, all of which would also produce thousands (lowballing it) of jobs that can’t be outsourced while killing off a major revenue stream for enemies and less-than-allies in the Middle-East. Of course, we’ve got a President beholden to the watermelons, and, last I heard, the long-term nuclear waste storage vault project got deep-sixed, so this is all kinda talking into the wind.
Cortillaen:
Did you read the post? Yucca Mtn has been ready for a decade and Reid is toast next year. This is doable if WE THE PEOPLE get off of our butts and vote the incumbents out.
Old Soldier
The generation 3+ plants being built now produce virtually no waste and the gen5 plants on the drawing board produce none. I heard a stat once (can’t verify) that 90% of all of the nuclear waste that will ever be produced already has. But hey, why put waste in Yucca mtn. when we can just leave it in warehouses around cities now….that’s safe right?
/sarc…..as if I needed that!
OldSoldier, yes, I read the article and the link you gave. Also, after double-checking, Yucca was not defunded (388 to 30 vote to ignore the Obama proposal I was thinking of), but O’s blatant hostility to the program makes it effectively impossible to make headway on plans to use Yucca for the next three years (plans that projected a 2021 opening date back in 2007), barring a near supermajority of non-RINO Reps in 2010. Even after that, it’ll face the same watermelon-led legal challenges that stalled the program since 1998 and Dems that may well decide to filibuster any legislative attempt to put it in use. As for a mass-driver, I expect it would face at least as much opposition (“You want to throw dangerous stuff into the sun!?!”, etc.) as opening Yucca Mtn., plus the time needed to build, test, calibrate, test some more, fix problems, calculate trajectories, test even more, check everything, and finally open, all while running everything by whichever mishmash of agencies claim supervision.
To sum it up, everything hangs on expediting movement through the legal and governmental challenges, and that’ll take a lot more than just clearing out the RINOs and taking a majority in Congress, unfortunately. More important, in my opinion, is terminating the current lobbying system in DC, although I have no idea how one would do that. My point at the end was just that discussion about how to fix our power issues will remain in the realm of the hypothetical until we get a legislature and President willing to let us implement those ideas. I’ll certainly be working on that front.
Oh TSO,
You poor naive dear. “I’ve read about gas companies working with environmental groups to not only have the smallest footprint possible, but to actually aid the local ecosystem”. Well I can tell you here in Colorado the oil and gas companies have fought even the slightest common-sense regulation tooth and nail. Their corporate shills will start screaming about the imminent death of the oil and gas industry at the drop of a hat, and threaten to take thier business to another state. They play one state off against another. Meanwhile, communities that never had any problems before new gas wells went in are experiencing exploding water wells, tap water that you can light with a match, houses that spontaneously blow up, mysterious chemicals showing up in the water table, drastic declines in native species, and on and on. You would get a laugh at some of the lame excuses the industry gives when these catastrophes are brought to light. The only way they’ll ever be responsible citizens is if stringent new rules are applied. Don’t let them scare you – the oil and gas is there, they will still be able to get it out at a profit, whether this year or a couple of years down the road, and we can have safe drinking water, intact animal habitat, fewer exploding houses, and a national oil and gas industry. We just have to hold their feet to the fire.
Gosh, Joe, I never experienced any of that when I lived in Colorado. I never even heard of any of tat happening. In fact, I’ll call my buddy and a cousin tonight and ask them if it’s happening. I’m pretty sure I would have heard about all those disasters, had they occurred.
I think you’ve been watching too many lifetime movies again.
OldTrooper…I will gladly defer to your expertise,but I think Joey is refering to the little known fact that all of that liberal hot air combined with unicorn farts creates a lethal and volital combination…perhaps you could verify this for future referance just in case joe and his friends bring it up again…thanks
AHF: That’s funny. I don’t care who ya are, that’s funny right there.
Given our current relationship with the Islamist version of the Third Reich(Saudi Arabia), I don’t see where there is much to talk about on this issue. Let the domestic drilling commence already.
No, it’s happening all over Colorado, would take a book to document all the problems – maybe it doesn’t make the national news. Recently a state law passed that added new rules that the companies have to follow, but many will tell you the law is watered down, doesn’t have teeth. The companies should be able to get at the oil and gas, just do it in a responsible way. My county, for example, is very dependent on oil revenues and royalties, so no one wants to kill the goose…… Individual rights vs. corporate rights is usually a kind of abstract concept, until they put a wellpad in your back yard and start pumping secret proprietary chemicals into the ground – then it becomes a little more real. I am just arguing that there should be a balance – right now in Colorado, with its “split estate” laws, the playing field is tilted strongly towards the corporations. If you don’t believe me, read about just one incident here: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13690160
Cortillaen: I guess my primary point is this – if we, whom it would appear have at least a modicum of foresight and common sense, educate ourselves first, and then carry the fight to that group I loosely define as the EcoNazis, I am certain we can make significant inroads into the power base of groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc. I’ve seen it happen. I liken the EcoNazis as unto what is going on in A-Stan. You’ve got your hardcore, take no prisoners types that will never change their minds. These are a small minority compared to the whole. The rest go along because it is popular, the “in” thing to do with the under thirty set. These are amenable to reason IF it is done circumspectly – anger, name calling, etc is right out. It comes down to Info Ops, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. That extremely vocal fraction of our population has been dictating national energy policy for decades and that needs to stop. I believe that is doable. How? Look at how the Gathering of Eagles shut down the anti war/troops protesters of International Answer, Code Pink, Black Bloc, Hanoi Jane, etc, on March 17, 2007. I know because I was there. I saw the minds of young people get changed as irrefutable facts were presented to them. But nothing is going to change if we just give them the field unchallenged. The term Domestic Insurgency has perhaps been over used, but IMO, it does in fact apply to what is and has been happening in America for at least a generation. The days of sitting on the couch and yelling at the TV, then changing the channel to watch football, are over… if we want to pass on the Republic we inherited to our children. As a final note, TAH is a Milblog, so I’ll point out some of the Military aspects of what I have suggested. We need, desperately IMO, to get into space. From the time of at least the Greek Hoplites and the Phalanx, one of many Military Axioms has… Read more »