Allen, It's great that you have mastered the Freshman Comp term paper format, but do you have to post the same thing in response to every thread?

Allenwrench, if you had "come up with such a bold statement as 'America...a Democratic, Communist Nation Under God" then you must be V from other forums, posting the same message that you insist on repeatedly posting here.

Ever wonder why V doesn't last long on most forums?

Wayne

(OK Dirt, your turn. He hijacked your thread, after all.)

quote:

Originally posted by adirondackgardener:

Wayne

(OK Dirt, your turn. He hijacked your thread, after all.)

I was thinking about it but won't. Only because it's your birthday!

With warmest regards,
Dirt

PS. But it does bring to mind a line the Duke once used.

cruise control @ 55mph with rolling hills = a prius getting 58MPG



i think we should have a moratorium on driving
all across america

time to ditch the car and ditch the boat:
walk,bike,paddle,or carpool for 24 hrs

What everyone seems to miss is that there is more competition for oil from up and coming nations with a big thirst for oil, such as China. Supply and demand. More supply than demand keeps prices low. Less supply than demand and prices soar.

In blaming oil companies, people look at total amount they take in, and not what goes out. Their profit margines are lower than a lot of other industries and the profits not put back into exploration and development do go to investors, many of which are union pension funds and retirement plans.

Another thought-if off limits areas are to open to oil pumping, what guarantee do we have that we would get the oil and not another country like China, with the ability to bid higher?

Organicbaby I used to fish off those oil and gas rigs, the fish love them. I'm not in great sympthy with the people live on Dauphin Island having their view spoiled after all Mississippi doesn't even allow people to build on their barrier islands since Hurricane Camille. I would be a bit more upset if they had massive oil leaks from the wells but they didn't even during Hurricane Katrina. Every massive oil leak I can remember has been an oil tanker. Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama are all energy donor states. What makes California, Florida, and New England so special? Maybe their massive number of voters who I'm sure all ride bicycles to work.

quote:

but it will have to hit 8 before enough people become serious about conservation that we substantially alter our energy use.

Nope.

We'll develop alternatives. Sustained $8 gasoline will not be tolerated within the next forty years. If it can't be done with crude oil, it'll be done by coal liquifecation, or nuclear plants and hydrogen, or any number of alternative sources to power cars. The economic impact to the suburban development and suburban office parks would be too great; of people no longer traveling to visit family; of vacation communities left desolate. Sustained $4 gas won't be tolerated...if the markets become convinced this isn't a tulip bulb bubble we're in, those alternatives will be built and the political pressure to allow such alternatives will become unbearable.

quote:

Safe enough if it collided with it's own twin, or a brick wall, but a death trap in an altercation with a Hummer or an Excursion.

No, it would be a death trap in a collision with a brick wall, too. Or it's own twin. I've dealt with enough dead motorcyclists over the years, helmeted or not.

The reduction in deaths -- I'm not talking national statistics my my own personal involvement -- since about 1993 when car safety really started to become common place and the engineers had learned their lessons from the last 15 years of work is simply astounding.

Prior to that we would see a couple fatal auto accidents each year even in my small town; now it may be one every couple of years and usually that's in pretty spectacular circumstances. Some of the deaths in the older 1970s/early 1980s cars made you scratch your head that it was fatal since the collision didn't seem that bad; now some of the absolutely devestated cars people are alive in are mind boggling.

In many ways it's made life more complicated for the fire departments -- extrication takes much longer because the way the cars fold up to absorb the energy, and you have to be cognizant of the multiple safety systems that have explosives like air bags and seatbelt pretensioners that may not have fired. You're simply not going to have those safety features built into a motorized rickshaw.

I don't care if you want to drive a lightweight vehicle, I don't care if you drive a motorcycle without a helmet. People have freedom to choose, but don't for a moment think lightweight vehicles are dangerous only because of SUVs. They're more dangerous because they simply don't have the materials in them that make modern cars as safe as they are.

quote:

Energy, like food and water, is an integral part of American life

How far do you take it comparing corporations with criminal drug gangs?

In the war against those drug gangs, we don't allow anyone to grow Marijuana. Ponder what government control of food and water would mean for your gardening practices.

quote:

Another thought-if off limits areas are to open to oil pumping, what guarantee do we have that we would get the oil and not another country like China, with the ability to bid higher?

Oil supply impacts the global market, regardless of where it produced.

It's a highly transportable product. So transportable many European companies are taking advantage of a loophole in our subsidy programs to ship European grown biodiesel to the U.S., get it blessed for the subsidy by being in U.S. port overnight, and shipped back to Europe the next morning. That's a WTF of the first order.

The danger in protectionist schemes such as setting a minimum price per barrel of oil to encourage alternative fuels would place the U.S. in even more of an economic disadvantage to nations like China that would be buying oil for less then we could. Alternative fuels have to be competetive with petroleum on open markets because it is a global pricing structure.

What drilling in the U.S. would accomplish is to increase supply...if it's supply that's constraining the market. It would also reduce the trade deficit, keeping money at home by employing U.S. workers in good paying jobs and having them spend that money on their own homes, cars, vacations, etc...here in the U.S.

Moving past just domestic drilling, think of the economic impact if the U.S. had a vibrant nuclear industry, and used that power to drive electrified freight lines, home heating, and recharge plug-in hybrid electric cars. Hundreds of billions of dollars now going to foreigners for their oil would instead be buying electricity from plants employing well paid workers here in the U.S. to run them, and the profits from selling that electricity are going to the pension plans, mutual funds, and university endowments here in the U.S.

Unfortunately large scale production of electric or plugin hybrid cars won't begin before 2010 to 2011. Then it takes over ten years to replace the majority of the automotive fleet. No avoiding a lots of pain for a while.

I said on another thread about the environment: it baffles me that there would be people on an organic gardening website who deny we're in an environmental crisis.

It's equally baffling that there are people here who are apologists for the oil industry.

I've never ever heard anyone justify paying $4.20 a gallon because we're supporting the retirement nest eggs of blue-collar workers. I'm a populist, and that's a new one to me. So, uh, thanks. SUV drivers and people who leave their air conditioning on all day when they aren't home are really helping the working class, then? Wow, who knew.

Okay, first as a person who has only driven 4 cylinder cars getting between 26 and 38 mpg since 1977 I don't think I could be called an SUV lover. I also don't think I could be called an oil company apologist. As a person living within boating distance of oil and gas wells and right in the impact zone of Hurricane Katrina I can tell you that off shore oil wells are not a pollution hazard. The oil wells went through a catagory 5 hurricane without rupturing or leaking. What does leak are oil tankers carrying imported oil from the middle east. If you don't want oil wells in California, stop driving. If you still burning gasoline or diesel but not producing it in your state you are not part of the solution, you have just exported the problem.

As I have said the first mass produced electric cars or plugin hybrid electric cars will not be ready before 2011 or 2012 and it will take over ten years to replace the majority of the US automobile fleet. May I reference greencarcongress.com, wired.com, popularmechanics.com, gm-volt.com and Scientific American as my sources not Rush Limbough or Fox News.

BTW most airconditioners run on electricity and with a few exceptions like Nantucket Island(which rejected an offshore wind farm) electricity is not generated by burning oil.

We do need to develop alternative energy sources, but until we do we need oil - NOW.

Sign the Petition

http://www.americansolutions.com/actioncenter/petitions...5b-aa7b-346a1e096659

We, therefore, the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.

Well, Meshelle, that site has definitely got me wondering about things. Is that shale oil really something bad? Is that Sen. Ken Salazar a big environmentalist or working for big oil to keep us from accessing something that would help us out of this energy crisis?

You folks feel free to enlighten me.. But I need to learn more about our energy sources.

No, Meshelle, I will not be signing that petition.

For starters, there is no guarantee that once we open up our wild areas to drilling that the oil pumped will stay within the US. We had a law on the books that required that not one drop of oil pumped from Alaska's North Slope could be exported out of the US. That was a big selling point in Congress's authorization to build the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline.

Almost immediately, the big-oil whores like industry lobbyists and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens began to work to overturn the ban. Congress resisted until 1995 when it caved. But by then, less that 20 years later, the output of the oil fields that were supposed to be the answer to all our energy needs began to decline alarmingly to around half their initial production. And in the last 13 years, the production is in a much further state of decline.

So when you domestic-drilling advocates sign that petition, are you demanding that Congress reinstate a ban on exporting the oil from our last wild areas to other countries? A ban that they will hold to despite the lobbying offorts of the oil industry and the likes of their bed-mate Ted Stevens?

When you domestic-drilling advocates sign that petition, are you demanding that Congress require that auto-makers be permitted to sell only vehicles with high gas milages, not just a company average that allows pigs with enough money to buy vehicles like Hummers that get 8 MPG just because they can afford to? When you domestic-drilling advocates sign that petition, will you demand that all gas-wasting vehicles like Hummers be immediately ordered off the road?

When you domestic-drilling advocates sign that petition, are you demanding that Congress end the tax breaks for oil companies (to the tune of $18 billion of tax payer's money) that we Americans give to Big Oil as an incentive to find new or improve old sources? As if profits of over $114 billion for last year alone for only the 5 largest companies isn't incentive enough, Americans have to carry Exxon-Mobil and others on the welfare rolls? (I can't understand why a mother with three kids, abandoned by the father and receives welfare is a source of such disdain but we gleefully give 18 Billion dollars to companies that are raping us every day at the pump? Why are we Americans so ~bleeping~ ignorant?)

When you domestic-drilling advocates sign that petition, are you demanding that Congress guarantee that it will require Americans, both individual and corporate, to drastically reduce consumption and waste such that in twenty years we will not again be seeing our new oil fields production, to which we pin so much false hope, dwindling to the point that we are again faced with being shamelessly raped by Oil Company executives, shareholders and oil futures speculators?

No, Meshelle, I won't sign your petition. It makes no guarantee to provide relief to America's addiction to oil and only offers only cheaper, short-term sources for Big Oil to exploit (with the help of continuing corporate welfare from taxpayers) and with no guarantee that they will pass on even one penny of savings to the Americans paying for their record profits (and did I mention the corporate welfare we give them every April?)

No Meschelle, I won't sign your petition. When I mention that Congress caved to the Oil Industry in 1995 to allow American-produced oil to be shipped out of the country to increase oil company profits, the Speaker of The House was Newt Gingrich. Is it any coincidence that Mr. Gingrich happens to be the Chairman of the organization whose petition you are touting? No, I won't be fooled again by oil-industry whores like that.

No Meschelle, I won't sign your petition. Until Americans wake up and accept responsibility for their individual roles in America's addiction to oil, through simply leaving lights burning in empty rooms to the ultimate crime of driving vehicles like Hummers simply because they have more money than brains, we don't deserve cheaper oil. Yep, that's right, Americans are too stupid to deserve cheaper oil, plain and simple.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne for enlightening us. You are really on top of things so much more than I.. That shale oil thing sounded like an environmental disaster waiting to happen. I will do more research on this tomorrow.

I was really blown away when I went to a website about how congressmen voted. In the title it sounds like they are voting one way, but when you get down into the "fine Print" explanations.. They are not voting as one would think they are.. No Wonder I hate the English language so much.. Well, I'm a right brained person.. things should be black and white and always add up.. but in the world of government.. the opposite is true!