Hatred? Dude, it is cause for my 7%'er salary. Skeptic, sure. It costs too much, and that cost burden is paid collectively by all of society. OK, I take that back - half of society. The same half that pays ALL of the income tax government collects. No I take that back - there is an opportunity cost that does indeed effect all of society.Originally Posted by Havakasha
That's wierd. You all for the collective up to a point............ then you abandon it.
You STILL havent published a SINGLE positive article on the U.S. alternative energy field. Its stupefying. Whats your problem? Get off your ass and root for the U.S. to succeed.
Its one thing to be a skeptic its another to be ignorant or ideologically biased.
Last edited by Havakasha; 02-19-2012 at 12:39 AM.
EDITORIAL
Drill Baby Drill, Redux
Published: March 4, 2012
It’s campaign season and the pandering about gas prices is in full swing. Hardly a day goes by that a Republican politician does not throw facts to the wind and claim that rising costs at the pump are the result of President Obama’s decisions to block the Keystone XL pipeline and impose sensible environmental regulations and modest restrictions on offshore drilling.
Next, of course, comes the familiar incantation of “drill, baby, drill.” Mr. Obama has rightly derided this as a “bumper sticker,” not a strategy. Last week, he agreed that high gas prices were a real burden, but said the only sensible response was a balanced mix of production, conservation and innovation in alternative fuels.
There are lots of reasons for the rise in gas prices, but the lack of American production is not one of them. Domestic crude oil production is actually up from 5.4 million barrels a day in 2004 to 5.59 million now; imports have dropped by more than 10 percent in the same period. Despite a temporary slowdown in exploration in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil disaster, the number of rigs in American oil fields has quadrupled over three years. There have been new discoveries and the administration has promised to open up more offshore reserves. To say that Mr. Obama has denied industry access is nonsense.
Equally nonsensical is the Republican claim that Mr. Obama’s proposed repeal of $4 billion in annual tax breaks for the oil and gas industry — whose five biggest players posted $137 billion in profits last year — would drive prices upward. As is Newt Gingrich’s claim that a proposal now taking shape in the Environmental Protection Agency, and fiercely opposed by refiners, to lower the sulfur content in gasoline would add 25 cents to the cost of a gallon. Agency experts say it would add about a penny.
The truth is that oil prices are set on world markets by forces largely beyond America’s control. Chief among these is soaring demand in countries like China. Unrest in oil-producing countries is another factor. The Times noted fears in some quarters that gas could jump to $5 a gallon if the standoff with Iran disrupted world supplies.
Therein lies the biggest weakness in the Republican litany. A country that consumes more than 20 percent of the world’s oil supply but owns 2 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way out of high prices or dependence on exports from unstable countries. The only plausible strategy is to keep production up while cutting consumption and embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels.
American innovation is a big part of the answer. Two byproducts of the automobile bailout were the carmakers’ acceptance of sharply improved fuel economy and a new commitment to building cars that can meet those standards. The new rules are expected to cut consumption by 2.2 million barrels a day — more than America now produces in the gulf. These and other measures are not nearly as catchy as “drill, baby, drill.” But they have a far better shot, long term, of lessening this country’s dependence on oil imports and keeping gas prices under control.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/op...-redux.html?hp
March 2, 2012 12:00 A.M.
The Energy Snob
A real energy plan: drill, frack, repeat.
By Rich Lowry
President Barack Obama looks down on drilling almost as much as he does on people clinging bitterly to their guns and religion.
At a recent campaign event, he mockedRepublicans for their three-point energy plan, every point of which he said is a call for more drilling. When the hilarity died down, he assailed all this prospective oil and gas exploration as “not a plan,” but “a bumper sticker,” a cynical and witless attempt to demagogue soaring gas prices. Pity the fools who propose such asininity and the simple-minded souls who believe it.
In practically his next breath, though, the president bragged that “under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” The “under my administration” is particularly rich. It implies that the lights have been on late at night at the Department of Energy — compact fluorescents, no doubt — while bureaucrats figured out how to make the United States a pincushion for the great and good work of those much misunderstood oil companies.
While lamenting the bumper-sticker simplicities of his opponents, the president of nuance neglected to mention a few details. On federal lands, oil production declined 11 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the pro-drilling Institute for Energy Research. On state and private lands, production increased 14 percent. Natural-gas production on federal lands dropped 27 percent from 2009, and increased 28 percent on state and private lands. The president took credit for a trend with which he had nothing to do and which he has tried to obstruct.
Leases for onshore exploration under the Obama administration are down roughly 35 percent from the Bush administrationand 70 percent from the Clinton administration. The Obama administration deigned to look at opening new offshore areas to exploration in 2010; then the BP oil spill hit, and the administration locked down again. When he wants to pose as pro-drilling, Obama essentially pretends that he’s the president of North Dakota.
If the sheiks who run OPEC prospected for new members in America’s heartland, they’d be trying to sign up the Peace Garden State. North Dakota’s oil production increased more than 50 percent during the past year, and tripled during the past five years. This has nothing to with the president. It is the work of old-fashioned ingenuity — innovations in hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling that unlocked the Bakken formation — and the profit motive.
We should want to replicate North Dakotas everywhere we can. Yet we deny ourselves access to oil and gas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, off about half the Gulf Coast, and in and around Alaska. We could be sitting on as much as 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil. That’s an enormous amount of wealth that we turn up our noses at. If nothing else, recovering our oil and gas would create thousands of the blue-collar jobs that Democrats — rightly — say we need more of.
And oil companies will pay the federal government for the privilege. Imagine if Solyndra had given the feds $500 million to build its solar-panel plant in California, rather than the other way around. At the same time the Obama administration has thrown billions of dollars at green energy — the president’s latest enthusiasm is algae — it has denied the government billions of dollars of revenue from new leases.
It also happens that fossil fuels actually work, and even have unexpected benefits. The always-fascinating energy experts Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger note that carbon emissions in the United States have been declining and are projected to continue to do so. The short-term decline is a byproduct of the recession, but the future decline will have to do with new supplies of cleaner-burning natural gas. Europe, meanwhile, hasn’t made progress on emissions despite its cap-and-trade system. Fracking is helping us do what Euro-regulations are failing at.
The president may snicker all he likes. But the first three points of any energy plan worthy of the name should be drill, frack, and repeat.
Read more here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...nob-rich-lowry
So many great points in this article.
Obama on the Chevy Volt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOoUwJV8WY8
News for the Chevy Volt
Chevy Volt sales so slow, GM idles production
Chevy Volt sales should be perking up with high gas prices. Instead, General Motors has decided to stop producing the Chevy Volt for five weeks.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/La...les-production
High price soured Chevy Volt sales
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/auto...ney_topstories
It's hard to sell a product people don't want or can't afford.
Why do Rove and conservatives root against the United States?
By Jonathan Capehart
As is his way, Clint Eastwood grabbed the nation by the lapels. This time through a powerful commercial for Chrysler aired during the Super Bowl. He delivered a message that should have every red-blooded American cheering as if they had seats on the 50-yard line.
“How do we come from behind? How do we come together and win? Detroit is showing us it can be done,” rasped Eastwood. “And what’s true about them is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked down with one punch. We get right back up again. And when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it’s half-time, America. And our second half is about to begin.”
What’s not to like? An American icon touts the resurgence of an American icon and the nascent comeback of one of this nation’s iconic cities (not to mention what it means about the country itself). After all this nation has been through, an optimistic, “Hell yeah, America!” message that reminds us of who we are and what we’re capable of is exactly what’s needed now. While it’s unfortunate today that even a car commercial can be politicized, the reaction of some Republicans is just ridiculous. None more ridiculous than Karl Rove.
Yesterday on Fox News, Rove called the Chrysler commercial “a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best-wishes of the management which is benefited by getting a bunch of our money that they’ll never pay back.” Charles Blow at the New York Times does an excellent job of shining sunlight on the entirety of Rove’s rant and rewrite of history.
But I have questions for Rove and those who would follow his lead. Why are you rooting against Detroit? Talking down the fighting spirit of that city, which has endured wave after wave of hardship, is wrong. And why are you rooting against this country? That seems a logical query for someone who politicized patriotism in the past decade.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...OUwQ_blog.html
I thought liberals loathed the conservative view of American exceptionalism?
"And history, which might explain the conservative hue and cry about "American Exceptionalism." Liberals respond more to positive images (cute kids, baby animals, cloud images, balloons). Conservatives respond to pictures of car crashes and open wounds."
http://www.sierrastar.com/2012/02/29...o-hate-me.html
The GOP messaging plan has been to paint Obama on the wrong side of energy independence. From speeches to Capitol stakeouts to op-eds, top Republicans have been hammering this notion on a daily basis over the last few weeks, blaming the president for rising gas prices and citing his rejection of the Keystone pipeline and various other House GOP deregulation bills as evidence that he opposes domestic energy production.
House Republicans and Obama have spent their last two weekly addresses duking it out. The GOP needled Obama for rising gas prices in its Saturday address, with Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) declaring that prices have “on average doubled” under his watch in part because the president has “consistently blocked American energy production, most recently by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.” On Sunday, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) advanced the message, calling Obama “hostile to fossil fuels” and saying his policies regarding oil drilling are “not matching his rhetoric.”
Blaming a president for rising gas prices makes little sense in reality, but the White House has for months been conscious that the issue could damage Obama politically, with prices set to continue rising over the summer and put the squeeze on American families. And so Obama has hit the stump to push back.
“Anybody who tells you that we can just drill our way out of this problem does not know what they’re talking about, or they’re not telling you the truth,” Obama said last Thursday in New Hampshire. He brought along a chart illustrating that net oil imports as a share of domestic consumption have declined in each year of his three years in office. Production has also risen during his presidency. Bringing this message home is one key to the president’s strategy.
GOP attacks thread a fine needle. Conscious that oil and natural gas production are soaring, Republicans can’t claim Obama’s been stepping on the industry; they’re saying, essentially, that the nation is enjoying an “energy boom” that could be stronger. In much the same way as Democrats’ “the economy is bad but could have been worse” message fell flat in 2010, the White House sees the GOP’s “energy production is booming but could be better” as equally anemic.
Beyond that, the White House intends to energize progressives by highlighting Obama’s support for ending tax breaks for highly profitable oil companies, a policy that Republicans have either danced around or rejected.
“Americans know there’s no silver bullet to bring gas prices down overnight, but they also know the ultimate answer is a long term energy policy focused on new clean energy technologies and reducing our dependence on oil so that our economy isn’t subject to the whims of the global oil market,” the White House official said. “They also know it’s absurd to ask Americans, on top of the very high prices they are already paying, to shell over another $4 billion a year to these companies while they are already making record profits — and that’s one thing Congress can fix right now.”
Several studies suggest prices for alternative fuels will be competitive with petroleum by 2018 or soon after, said Tom Hicks, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy. Current energy initiatives, he said, are preparing the service to take advantage of the expected drop in the cost of clean energy.
“It’s going to be critical to meet the goal and get the price point where we need it,” Hicks said in an interview. “We really see what we’re working on is not political in any way, shape or form.”
One of Mabus’s key initiatives is to have half of the Navy’s total energy consumption come from alternative sources by 2020. The service plans to sail its Great Green Fleet by 2016 — a strike group powered largely by biofuels.
Leaders of the Marine Corps also have focused more on energy in recent years — a result of the high cost of moving huge volumes of fuel to U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan. Currently, the corps consumes more than 200,000 gallons a day there.
“For every 50 convoys we bring in in fuel, a Marine is killed or wounded,” Mabus told lawmakers last month. “That is too high a price to pay.”
In all, about 3,000 U.S. troops or contractors have been killed or wounded protecting convoys, POLITICO has reported. Roughly 80 percent of convoys carry fuel.
The Marine Corps has set two major energy goals: to cut its battlefield requirements for energy by half by 2025 and to have half its bases produce as much energy as they consume by 2020.
“At the tactical level, we have seen some very promising results using renewable energy technologies in Afghanistan,” said Capt. Gregory Wolf, a media officer for the Marines. “It’s a huge battle space in Afghanistan. We have Marines all over Helmand province, and they’re widely dispersed. The reason we’re able to conduct such distributed operations is because of improved communication and surveillance systems, and those require batteries.”
Wolf pointed to SPACES — portable solar panels — as an example of a project that’s already making a difference by allowing Marines to charge equipment on the battlefield, reducing the need for batteries.
Still, the issue remains touchy for many Republicans, especially in light of other White House energy initiatives, including the Energy Department program that backed a loan to the now-bankrupt company Solyndra.
“Should the Navy have an open-ended budget to buy fuels at whatever cost makes sense?” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) asked at the Navy’s budget hearing. “Because renewable fuels will always be more expensive than conventional fuels.”
“Your premise is absolutely wrong,” Mabus shot back. “I know that what we are doing is making us a better military.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz1oVKc9Y6x
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/o...212950677.html
Oil is ‘the fuel of the past,’ says President Obama
By Olivier Knox | The Ticket – Wed, Mar 7, 2012
President Barack Obama on Wednesday dismissed oil as "the fuel of the past" as he made an unapologetic election-year pitch for his alternative energy industry policies and sniped at Republicans over painfully high gasoline prices.
"They get out on the campaign trail—and you and I both know there are no quick fixes to this problem—but listening to them, you'd think there were," he said at a Daimler Truck manufacturing plant in the battleground state of North Carolina.
Obama said that because the United States accounts for 20 percent of the world's consumption of oil but has only 2 percent of its petroleum reserves, "we're not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices. Anybody who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or they aren't telling you the truth."
"Here is the truth. If we are going to control our energy future, then we've got to have an all-of-the-above strategy," he said in his speech. "We've got to develop every source of American energy—not just oil and gas, but wind power and solar power, nuclear power, biofuels."
A top congressional Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, hit Obama on his call to end subsidies for oil companies while directing government help to so-called green energy firms, some of which have political ties to the administration.
"When it comes to rising gas prices, the American people don't think it's particularly fair that at a time when they're struggling to fill up the tank, their own tax dollars are being used to subsidize failing solar companies of the president's choosing, not to mention the bonuses that executives at these companies keep getting," McConnell said.
And "if higher gas prices hurt the economy, then why in the world is the administration calling for higher taxes on energy manufacturers?" said the Kentucky lawmaker.
Obama, his hopes for a new term threatened by high gas prices, pushed Republicans in Congress to support ending oil subsidies.
"We can place our bets on the fuel of the past, or we can place our bets on American know-how and American ingenuity and American workers like the ones here at Daimler. That's the choice we face. That's what's at stake right now," said the president.
Obama also used the speech to roll out some new initiatives to promote the use of alternative fuels and electric-powered and other "advanced vehicles."
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