The "drill baby drill" crowd can't decide what it wants to be angry about. First, they're convinced domestic drilling will "help get us off our foreign dependence, " and damned liberals won't let us. Then, when it's shown the proven totals off our shores are negligible, they freak out with "So!?!?! Let them drill anyway and find out!"... Nevermind that drilling isn't exploration, and drilling doesn't just occur blindly. Instead, incredibly expensive seismology is required before drilling can be conducted. When that seismology comes back with abundant proven reserve totals, THEN you weigh whether or not to drill.

To a proponent of "just dig deeper," the process of finding and extracting crude oil is apparently effortless, and we can just drill dry holes all over the place and move the infrastructure to the next zone like it's nothing.

Personally, I'm of the same mind that the administration is now taking. F' em. Let them drill. And go out of business in the process. They'll learn.

I'm totally cynical about his motivations for this stance, but I do agree with it nonetheless.

nice

A few orders of magnitude are missing from your calculations.

FYP

But wouldn't it be better to invest the millions of dollars going into this toward safer, stronger, and more long-term projects? At this point, investing much more money into our quickly diminishing oil resources when perfectly good alternatives are out there is, IMO, a ridiculous waste of our tax dollars.

Yea but there isn't a huge pie chart in the sky where we get to divide everyone's money into what WE think are good ideas. If the ROI on offshore drilling is more than the ROI of clean energy then drilling gets that investor's money and if not clean energy gets that money. To each their own.

Why not both? That's what I don't understand.

Really? Well, why don't you show me the proven reserve totals at these locations and global rates of consumption you seem to be working with.

Exactly, please be quiet.

You're just playing stupid little word games. We both know there are orders of magnitude greater quantities of oil than the "proven" numbers suggest.

Please educate yourself. Proven reserves are the only figures that matter, not tinker bell reserves. I've never deviated from that assertion. YOU are the one playing word games.

If your company "estimates" a trillion barrel pool 150 miles under the earth, who gives a ****?

"Hope" away all you like, if that's what you prefer to rest domestic energy policy upon, "Lord."

I'm sure if you keep digging deeper, there's bound to be guesstimated reserves down there somewhere. Maybe even at the mantle. Nevermind the costs to your company to get to it.

Anyhow, I knew you wouldn't site a source.

You're awesome.

Haha at Lord accusing someone of playing word games and then doing the exact same thing, well done chap.

Depending on how close to shore, the platforms mar the view (minor one).

We would probably have much more offshore drilling in this country if not for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Sa...bara_oil_spill

What large-scale solar and wind power really needs is a massive DC backbone built from the SW to the Great Plains. This will be a huge project and my guess is given the economy and the kerfuffle over healthcare that this isn't really the best time to introduce such a thing. But maybe in a couple years when the economy improves. (http://blog.sustainablog.org/scienti...ar-grand-plan/)

Or maybe we'll have to wait until a republican proposes and champions it. Since they refuse to reach across the aisle on anything anymore.

this...

although, time is a serious issue now. ... should have started this process 30 years ago, let alone 10.

You didn't answer my question at all, why not both?

Exactly. The fact is, if we're ever going to have some major shift away from oil (which WILL happen eventually), it'd better happen sooner rather than later. We can't just keep saying "drill, baby, drill" or "why not both?" when it continues to destroy the environment (ugh, here we go again with the environment ) or the fact that there's a limited amount of oil out there and consumption of it is reaching (maybe already at) insane levels.

Seriously, how long and how much money are we willing to put into oil before people finally admit, "You know what, this is a dying horse that we should probably stop beating."

It seems like drill baby drill is just one last hit off the crack pipe. Maybe even a resin hit at this point. By most accounts I've read they've already grabbed all the easy access stuff. The whole idea of gigantic untapped reserves just right offshore and that the dems are holding us back from oil independence is just another BS republican talking point. Like shale oil.

Because it's not a lightswitch you can flip overnight like so many people seem to suggest.

What exactly is your argument here?

That alternative energies research and offshore drilling can co-exist. If you dont think that BILLIONS upon BILLIONS are not being invested in alternative energy, you are insane. Can you imagine the profits some energy company will make by producing the first viable alternative to fossil fuels?

Personally I'm not opposed to all drilling if the economics make sense and the environmental impact is determined to be minimal. I just think putting the majority of our efforts towards renewable makes a lot more sense. For one thing if the oil can't profitably be extracted without a subsidy, forget it.

I'm with you, but it doesn't make sense to prevent offshore drilling in the meantime, because it isn't even your money (read: government funds) that are being used to pay for such drilling, it's the oil companies'.

While I wouldn't restrict them from losing money if they so choose if I were the administration, I would advise them not to do so. These are the same companies that will be leaned on to pave the way for innovation towards alternatives. It's in the government's best interest to keep them healthy and afloat.

That is, once they finally openly admit global light crude oil depletion, a reality which many of them still desperately dance around to this very day.

From the annals of Kos, I found this diary, which had a couple of noteworthy factoids.

First, the diarist argued that the entire announcement was a big bluff, because new drilling will not occur for many years, if at all:

The author states that "From 2001 to 2006, under George Bush, only one offshore oil rig was installed, off the coast of Louisiana. One, in six years." And then he includes this map"



And then the diary summarized some of Obama's statements in 2008 (the original text includes links, but I'm not bothering to copy those):

for ... how.... long?

a month? 6 months? ... there's no mention of how much.