ANWR -- Down in Flames, Baby!

Three cheers for government, drilling for ANWR has gone down in FLAAAAMES.

Didn’t even need a Filibuster, h a !

Where’s my tally book? That’s another mark for the Democrats, and another loss for the plague of evil. Are there any Republicans for ANWR, with their frontal lobes freshly drained of moron-juice, that would care to either:

A) Clarify their buffet of bullshit

or

B) Recant their attack on common sense & the Environment

I’d be ever so greatful. Don’t worry, though, kiddos, there’s 7 more months of owning the House of Representatives – that’s oodles of time to rape and pillage and overthrow Oil-Exporting nations, buck up!

Or maybe it’s because certain people lied through their fucking teeth about what would happen to the caribou herds around oil pipelines.

The ‘they’ll all die’ mantra was QUITE in opposition to the actual facts: the herds along the trans-Alaska pipeline quintupled.

But hey, why don’t we just continue to depend on foreign oil and be completely sure that when Saddam does finall build up his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, we’ll be completely fucked because we don’t have a domestic oil source!

Woo baby, lemme sign on board.

I don’t suppose anyone would like to talk alternative fuels and conservation, would they?

Just think! If we don’t need Foreign Oil, we can be isolationist again! No more involvement in messy Mid-East flare-ups! Wouldn’t many right-wing reactionaries actually like that?

I am so going to Republican Hell for this!

You do understand catsix that the ANWR oil wouldn’t have been available for at least 10 years, right? Do you really think that this current administration is going to allow Saddam to be in power for that long? My guess is that they will kick into that war right before the 2004 election to ensure popularity ratings.

If we are “completely fucked”, it is because we have neglected to develop alternative fuel sources. This administration has played a major role in catering to the fossil fuel industry in this country so if anyone is completely fucking us, look to the white house.

I never quite understood the vehement opposition to ANWR drilling. From everything I’ve seen (admittedly, not much) the operations seemed to be very small and unobtrusive, with minimal disruption to the environment.

I’ve seen pictures and such of various drilling operations, and they seemed fine to me. I did not see a single picture or factual cite that they were really all that dangerous. Just a bunch of protestations about how horrible it will all be. I felt a distinct lack of data on the anti drilling side, but an abundance of emotion.

Musicguy, please do not tell me that you are going to blame the Bush administration for a lack of alternative fuel sources, he’s not even been here for a year and a half, fer god sake! If you are unhappy about the state of alternative fuels, you know who to blame…

Originally posted by Tranquilis:

Is that the one filled with pristine golf courses, and everyone wears polyester?

And, catsix, the figures showing that herds had quintupled were effectively cancelled out by figures showing that nothing of the sort had happened. Granted, caribou genocide was also not bloody likely.

Hell, I see this as a slap at the Rs and therefore consider it a win.

Waste
Flick Lives!

You know, I’ve been working in e&p for 12 years now, been on over a hundred rigs, on and offshore, and in all that time I’ve never seen an exploration project you could call unobtrusive.

Maybe they’d be more careful on this one. Maybe for once they’d manage to contain all the drill cuttings, use a water based drill mud that managed to breakdown in under a decade, and generally not be too obtrusive to the local ecology.

But for some reason, I’m still sceptical. Sorry.

You can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. How many things has this administration done, supported, or proposed that helps the environment or the advancement of alternative energy? Conversely, how many things has this administration done, supported, or proposed that helps the fossil fuel industry? Check out which list is longer. Hell, in forming their energy policy, they ONLY spoke to people from the energy industry. Somehow there just wasn’t time to even listen to an environmentalist. Of course they then fought to keep us from knowing this but luckily a federal judge saw otherwise. This adminsitration admits to being against conservation, even refusing to back the idea of higher fuel efficiency standards, the kyoto treaty, etc. My guess is that Gore might have done things a bit differently, dontcha think?

But you are probably right, it must be all Clinton’s fault. Everything is, right? :rolleyes:

All I have to say is that if the Administration has to resort to embarassingly disingenuous figure-cooking to justify what they wanted to do up there, then we should all be questioning their true motivation.

In conclusion, fuckingly Hitler scrotum-scab douchebag egg-nog salad.

Nah, that’s the Ralph Nader version. Republican Hell is run by Ruth Ginsberg, Janet Reno, and Hilary Clinton, the only thing to eat is tofu-burger, everyone rides bicycles, and you never get to speak in plain language.

Bush the First? Regan? I assume that this is some veiled Clinton thing. The reality is that alternative fuel has pretty much been fucked off since Jimmy Carter.

Musicguy, Gore was the VP for 8 fucking years, where are all the alternative fuels he helped to develop during that time? Where are the higher fuel economy standards that he and Clinton fought for? Why couldn’t they get Kyoto done and done during their term in office?

Would Gore be different than Bush? Sure, but why do you think that in a year and a half he would do something that he didn’t do in the last 8?

None of these things happen in a vacuum, and none of them show up overnight. If you don’t like the state of alternative fuels, CAFE, Kyoto, etc. feel free to place blame on Bush, but don’t give me this crap that it’s ALL HIS FAULT.

Gary Kumquat, I can appreciate your skepticism, I haven’t the foggiest idea how damaging these things can be to the environment. The problem with making an informed decision is that everybody who provides any info seems to have an agenda to push. It just seemed to me that in this case, the slanted views of the oil guys seemed to have more meat than the slanted views of the environmentalists.

I’m happy about it because the entire ANWAR debate is a big, fat lie. I keep hearing about how the big, bad Arabs have us over a barrel (a barrel…get it?) so we have to make sure we have a domestic supply. Bullshit!

The US produces roughly half it’s own oil. They import 25% of their oil from the Persian gulf and of that only 14% is for domestic use (the other 11% is refined and exported). Of the imports from Persian gulf most of that is from Saudi Arabia (63%) and Iraq (25%) “oil for food”.

So the real number is 14%. The US only counts on the mideast for 14% of their domestic use. catsix I hope you can sleep better now.

Oh… the obligatory cite

You know what the problem is? It’s that too many damn people see this as a binary thing. It’s not binary, not at all.

Why the hell are all the people so opposed to the drilling going to assume that we can’t drill for oil AND develop other fuel sources?

For one thing, drilling and getting oil is something we know is possible. We have a time frame. We know that cars will run on gasoline, and we can build more gasoline efficient cars. Research in alternatives for automobiles (electric, natural gas) has been slow, and I have yet to see any kind of reasonable time estimate for when these things are going to be feasible on a large scale. Like it or not, we need oil sources to supply us with oil for gasoline until technology improves on alternatives and makes them affordable enough that Joe Consumer can buy an alternative type of car.

So drilling in ANWR wouldn’t have to mean ‘fuck alternative fuel’ even though that’s what the most rabid liberals seem to think it means. And developing alternatives shouldn’t have to mean we stagnate in our current oil position like the most rabid conservatives seem to think.

But no, it’s either ‘You can’t drill in ANWR because the animals will all die’ or ‘You just want us to stagnate for years because there are no viable alternatives.’

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s keep seeing this as a binary issue so that we really can be screwed!

Welcome back, Tranquilis! You’re not going to Republican Hell, you’re coming back to earth! I’d be more than happy to debate, discuss, masticate, what have you the rational options to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, like alternative energy and conservation.

Now if only we could get catsix down from his tree. Cat, are you really saying ANWR would have passed if it weren’t for those dastardly caribou? Maybe, just maybe, it was the flimsy rationale – hey, I’ve forgotten what is is this week – that did ANWR in. Or, hmm, scratch my head, maybe the junk science? The transparent lies laden with bile and ridicule? Calling it specious is an understatement. Calling it paper-thin is an insult to the thinnest of paper. The caribou? The caribou?! C’mon, you can get Clinton in there somewhere. How’s’bout “He had sex with Juanita Broaddrick and their hellspawn caribou blocked ANWR!” Shout that into a paper bag six times and think rational thoughts, you should be fine in the morning, goober.

One-hundreth of one percent. Sounds pretty unobtrusive to me.

No, I pretty much think that between the lies about the enviornment and the over-dramatization about how much of ANWR would really be used for oil exploration (2000 out of 19 million acres) and Tom Daschle’s gigantic interest in ethanol and hardon for a fillibuster, the ANWR thing was pooch screwed by lying since day 1.

The people who were out there protesting it claiming that it would destroy the habitat for all the animals were lying through their teeth, because they knew that only a tiny fraction would actually be explored, that the tiny fraction was mostly composed of arctic desert, and that the drilling plan was to only be enacted during times when wildlife wouldn’t be in mating season. Tom Daschle just added a nice touch with the whole “I want a fillibuster” thing, because he has a decent interest in less petroleum being used in gasoline. He’s from South Dakota. Many of his constituents are corn farmers. He wants them to vote for him, so he fights against petroleum exploration and for increased ethanol limits in gasoline, since ethanol is made from corn.

Hell even other Democrats and some environmental groups were pissed at him for that. Feinstein wasn’t into the fillibuster and gave a pretty rousing speech mentioning Daschle’s corn farmer interest - underlining the point the enviornmentalists made in favor of drilling in ANWR: gasoline, although not very clean, creates less smog than ethanol.

But of course, the American public got to hear on NBC all about how the drilling of ANWR (implying it was all of ANWR) would destroy wildlife habitats, and nothing at all about the environmental concerns raised about petroleum alternative ethanol (increased smog).

Then again, most of the time it seems the American public doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the actual facts.

And BTW, catsix is not a ‘he’.

Because we haven’t been for 50 years!! The only reason things are changing now is people are scared! The only way to make people change all the way to alternative fuels is to scare the hell out of them! Or convince them they will make billions, but it is easier for oil companies to due the status quo and make billions then to spend billions on some crazy project.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from these boards, it’s that anything coming out of Gale Norton’s mouth should be taken with a heaping handful of salt. (Thanks, Sofa King!)