From a thread about Obama opening up offshore drilling:
Damn. You stupid fucking drill baby drillers are just sad. This was SO PREDICTABLE!!! And I predicted it! And so did MANY others. But hey, keepng gas 25 cents a gallon cheaper at the pump … that’s IMPORTANT!!! That affects people in the US!
I spit in your general direction …
Jus pointing out that the blowout you are referring to did not occur in one of the new areas to be opened to drilling, and although the mess is quite bad enough, the oil from it hasn’t actually hit Florida’s shores, so it would appear your predictive accuracy is not exactly stellar. But hey, otherwise, right on, baby, right on.
I’ve been wondering: the spill has barely hit the shore anywhere yet, but is clearly expanding generally throughout the Gulf. If not stopped or contained, it will hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and of Mexico. Right?
You’re right, it makes more sense to continue to rely on stable regions of the world such as the Middle East for our oil. What could go wrong with that?
Is there enough oil available from offshore drilling that if we went after all of it, we would no longer be reliant on foreign countries for oil?
Not at all and I didn’t say that. We don’t even get much of our oil from the Middle East but what happens there damn well affects the supply of oil around the world and here.
Why not introduce the GEU? Green Energy Unit. A GEU is an amount of energy equal to an offshore rig’s production, only produced by a green source instead. Count production for automobile consumption, assume engine efficiency at 25% in calculating joules/gallon, other restrictions may apply. For instance, ‘Luna Vista Solar has just installed 5 GEU’s of solar panels at their Phoenix facility.’
You’re on pretty safe ground there, since, as you note, they have yet to be drilled. Creating an oil spill there would challenge the incompetence of even Haliburton.
Where else but to someone’s shoreline would you expect it to go? So far, the prevailing drift is towards US beachfront, think it’s going to do a one-eighty and head out to the Atlantic? Maybe it’ll hit Haiti, they’re boned anyway…
Groovy.
I’ve been wondering also, has the spill hit the shore yet? They kept saying that it was going to hit last week, but I can’t recall seeing any stories (or pictures for that matter) of the oil actually hitting the beaches.
Good question. Most of the projections I’ve seen show quite a lot of interface between the slick and outlying parts of the Mississippi Delta, but IIRC these are mostly relatively uninhabited areas, so if it has been blowing ashore it doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of press notice. Otherwise, there seems to be some combination of prevailing wind and maybe ocean current that is keeping the thickest parts of the slick offshore. I have no idear whether this is something inherent in the meteorology of the Gulf, or whether we’ve just been damn lucky so far. I note that the projections for the next 72 hours seems to show the slick just sort of pooling around the site of the blowout, suggesting that winds are more or less calm for the moment.
This isn’t in an area Obama opened to drilling. Are you just happy that an oil spill happened eventually like was eventually going to happen and continue to happen in the future until we don’t use crude oil, just so you could try and blame one person instead of the billions of people that insist on using it?
My understanding is that the well that blew out was already drilled and working at the time the “Drill, baby, drill,” line was used. Is that right?
So this particular disaster would have occurred regardless?
Now, instead of drilling, I suppose we could simply continue to import crude oil, getting it by tanker from the Middle East. I’m sure no oil spills could possibly result from that process, as Professor Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood’s well-known study proves.
I don’t know anyone who believes we shouldn’t be trying to reduce our dependence on oil in some way.
But it’s not clear to me what course of action the OP believes we should be following.
Other than, of course, vote Democrat, early and often.
However, beaches have yet to be spectacularly befouled:
The Big Picture - Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico
This light oil does not seem to be making for a thick surface slick like the Alaskan stuff did.
Drill Baby, Drill dates from Michael Steele’s speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention:
Steele Gives GOP Delegates New Cheer: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’
I don’t think we should govern by catastrophe, changing our policies because of one spill. On the other hand, those opposed to the people shouting “drill baby drill” weren’t saying that the additional wells would be extra super dangerous.
X number of wells produces X amount of danger of a spill. Increasing this to 2X will, all else being equal, will produce 2X the danger. It’s not that hard to see.
I don’t think this danger magically increased to astronomical levels just because of this spill, but I don’t think that the old wells were automatically safe because they were already there. No one as far as I know was making that argument.
Are you kidding? Making laws on immediate emergencies is the perfect way to make an end run around the ability of the representative republic to calm the temper the ‘passions of the masses’. You don’t need to waste time with deliberation and calm. Just do something, and do it now.
/sarcasm
I’m a lawyer, and have found that any law that has a name attached to it, especially if it involves the death of a child (eg. Brady Bill or the Polly Klaas law) is usually poorly thought out and often doesn’t do what it’s intended to do.
Very fair point. (And thanks, Squink, for the correction on dates).
Of course, 2X wells also produce 2X oil, so presumably if the risk-benefit analysis says X wells make sense, it may well also say that 2X wells make sense.
And that’s kind of the underlying point here. We don’t seek to ban airliners because some crash; we don’t ban boxing because some boxers get brain damage.
But we do ban CFCs in aerosol spray cans because of their effect on the ozone layer.
Each of these is the result of a cost-benefit calculation.
What are the odds of a given gallon of oil ending up as part of a spill if its ship borne as opposed to pumped from a well? Glancing at a list of worst oil spills is there are at least equal chances of spilling from both sources, and my vague feel is that far more oil is shipped by tanker then is pumped up from wells (especially since a good chunk of oil pumped from wells presumably ends up on a tanker afterwords). Of course, my guesstimates could easily be wrong, but I suspect that shipping oil in from elsewhere is safer, at least as far as protecting the US coast from spills, then drilling off the coast.
The Brady Bill is named for former White House Press Secretary James Brady, not a child.
I think she got her Parenthical Aside Chocolate mixed in with her E.G. Peanut Butter.