This is what the Reps did when the lights turned off.
Update 7: Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. He stood on the other side of the chamber and listed all of the GOP bills that the Dems killed.
He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered.
No, because we're not doing nothing. The more gas prices go up, the faster people will begin pushing for a sustainable (not ethanol, for god's sake) energy source development project. The faster we develop something that doesn't kill us (global warming or not, you can't argue that pollution isn't real), the better. Not that I'm saying gas prices shouldn't go unbridled- the only reason we have a crisis right now is because a bunch of speculators decided they were going to do some funky shit to oil futures trades, and drove the price to kingdom come. We need regulation, but just enough to keep transportation viable, while making people realize they can't go on doing the same things they've been doing for 40 years.
Not really. Off shore drilling won't effect gas prices anytime soon. This sure would benefit big oil though, which is a cause worth fighting for as far as the GOP is concerned. Political grandstanding is annoying on both sides of the aisle but expect more of it as the election nears.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption (if the US went on total self-reliance). Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. The production today already stands at around 8 million a day which will last for around another decade, it imports the other 13 million.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
"No, because we're not doing nothing. The more gas prices go up, the faster people will begin pushing for a sustainable (not ethanol, for god's sake) energy source development project. The faster we develop something that doesn't kill us (global warming or not, you can't argue that pollution isn't real), the better. Not that I'm saying gas prices shouldn't go unbridled- the only reason we have a crisis right now is because a bunch of speculators decided they were going to do some funky shit to oil futures trades, and drove the price to kingdom come. We need regulation, but just enough to keep transportation viable, while making people realize they can't go on doing the same things they've been doing for 40 years. "
We can look for an alternative source as well, but in the meantime we need oil.
"No, because we're not doing nothing. The more gas prices go up, the faster people will begin pushing for a sustainable (not ethanol, for god's sake) energy source development project. The faster we develop something that doesn't kill us (global warming or not, you can't argue that pollution isn't real), the better. Not that I'm saying gas prices shouldn't go unbridled- the only reason we have a crisis right now is because a bunch of speculators decided they were going to do some funky shit to oil futures trades, and drove the price to kingdom come. We need regulation, but just enough to keep transportation viable, while making people realize they can't go on doing the same things they've been doing for 40 years. "
That is exactly how I feel. Ridiculous gas prices should be a wake up call and simply looking for more oil is not the long term solution. There are solutions but we lack the infrastructure to make them practical. What we need to commit our tax dollars towards is making these solution practical with forward thinking R & D and infrastructure to make the impractical, practical.
If in 20 years we're still looking to suck the Earth dry of every source of fossil fuels, mankind is doomed.
The Democrats are showing exactly why I left the party and became a moderate. The Democratic Congress voted to go on a 5 week summer recess, while the rest of us work hard to try to pay for gas. Pelosi shut Congress down just right before a vote to lift the ban on off shore drilling. Republicans had garnered enough support from the Demcrats to defeat the ban, but Pelosi had C-Span shut off, microphones turned off, lights turned off, and reporters kicked out. The Dems departed for a 5 week vacation while the Reps were still on the floor trying to solve our gas problem. I think it is obvious who is for the American people and who is not.
And before someone comes at me with "we won't see the effects of off shore drilling for 10 years" crap, we have already seen some effects by just talking about it. The same Democrats that would not vote for off shore drilling 10 years ago, are the ones who won't vote for it now because they say it will take 10 years. If they had voted for off shore drilling 10 years ago, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in now.
"The Democrats are showing exactly why I left the party and became a moderate. The Democratic Congress voted to go on a 5 week summer recess, while the rest of us work hard to try to pay for gas. Pelosi shut Congress down just right before a vote to lift the ban on off shore drilling. Republicans had garnered enough support from the Demcrats to defeat the ban, but Pelosi had C-Span shut off, microphones turned off, lights turned off, and reporters kicked out. The Dems departed for a 5 week vacation while the Reps were still on the floor trying to solve our gas problem. I think it is obvious who is for the American people and who is not.
And before someone comes at me with "we won't see the effects of off shore drilling for 10 years" crap, we have already seen some effects by just talking about it. The same Democrats that would not vote for off shore drilling 10 years ago, are the ones who won't vote for it now because they say it will take 10 years. If they had voted for off shore drilling 10 years ago, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in now."
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. Until the technology is there, and until it becomes cost feasible (both of which may never happen), it's a pipe dream.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us.
I'm not saying the Democratic congress is doing anything worthwhile either. The pussies go and take a majority, say they'll do good things with it, and then wobble around like rich toddlers afraid of offending the Nanny Bush. Those idiots could easy override any executive veto they could possibly have thrown at them. Especially with public support.
The problem with our government is that it's supposed to be a representative democracy- an expansion of the direct democracy of Athens, where instead of each person casting a vote, we elect representatives to do what we would do. Representatives, for some reason or another, decided to just sit there in plush chairs and dick around, wasting all of our money and time. Now- this would be all fine and dandy if they could possibly have a better idea than any of us could, but for the most part, they're just power grabbers with some charisma. You couldn't find a useful brain in the entire group of them. Even with public outcries for different votes and representation, these people seem to think that they somehow know better, and then ignore us.
"I'm not saying the Democratic congress is doing anything worthwhile either. The pussies go and take a majority, say they'll do good things with it, and then wobble around like rich toddlers afraid of offending the Nanny Bush. Those idiots could easy override any executive veto they could possibly have thrown at them. Especially with public support.
The problem with our government is that it's supposed to be a representative democracy- an expansion of the direct democracy of Athens, where instead of each person casting a vote, we elect representatives to do what we would do. Representatives, for some reason or another, decided to just sit there in plush chairs and dick around, wasting all of our money and time. Now- this would be all fine and dandy if they could possibly have a better idea than any of us could, but for the most part, they're just power grabbers with some charisma. You couldn't find a useful brain in the entire group of them. Even with public outcries for different votes and representation, these people seem to think that they somehow know better, and then ignore us.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us. "
Canada is selling oil to you right now. They have vast resources of oil. Their own untapped oil reserves come from oil-sands which is not oil shale. Most of that is easily recoverable (surface mining) and is still small scale at the moment at around 1.2 million a day. The US oil sands are much smaller and much different.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us. "
Canada is selling oil to you right now. They have vast resources of oil. Their own untapped oil reserves come from oil-sands which is not oil shale. Most of that is easily recoverable (surface mining) and is still small scale at the moment at around 1.2 million a day. The US oil sands are much smaller and much different. "
Oil sands is the same thing as oil shale, it's what Canada is getting their oil from, and we have more of it.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us. "
Canada is selling oil to you right now. They have vast resources of oil. Their own untapped oil reserves come from oil-sands which is not oil shale. Most of that is easily recoverable (surface mining) and is still small scale at the moment at around 1.2 million a day. The US oil sands are much smaller and much different. "
Oil sands is the same thing as oil shale, it's what Canada is getting their oil from, and we have more of it."
The oil in shale is actually kerogen and the oil in oil sands is bitumen, completely different minerals.
Learn up before posting. Google them and you'll get vastly different searches. Oil shale as technology stands today is almost a myth, it's not even true oil. Oil sands is still extremely small scale, even with tens of billions of dollars of investments Canada will only be able to produce about 5 million barrels a day by 2030. That's small scale in a world where demand for oil especially from China and India is increasing every year. The US alone today produces around 8 of its 22 million barrels it consumes daily.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us. "
Canada is selling oil to you right now. They have vast resources of oil. Their own untapped oil reserves come from oil-sands which is not oil shale. Most of that is easily recoverable (surface mining) and is still small scale at the moment at around 1.2 million a day. The US oil sands are much smaller and much different. "
Oil sands is the same thing as oil shale, it's what Canada is getting their oil from, and we have more of it."
The oil in shale is actually kerogen and the oil in oil sands is bitumen, completely different minerals.
Learn up before posting. Google them and you'll get vastly different searches. Oil shale as technology stands today is almost a myth, it's not even true oil. Oil sands is still extremely small scale, even with tens of billions of dollars of investments Canada will only be able to produce about 5 million barrels a day by 2030. That's small scale in a world where demand for oil especially from China and India is increasing every year. The US alone today produces around 8 of its 22 million barrels it consumes daily. "
1) you can't believe everything you read on wikipedia
2) we can still use the oil shale, because we can turn it into a synthetic oil. just because it isn't "real oil" doesn't mean we can't use it.
Why? They're pulling for domestic drilling here, and that could save us a crapload of money on gas."
Short term solution to a long term problem. "
It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?"
Maybe but the US proven reserve is only about 20 billion barrels recoverable (at best), including arctic territories. That is enough to keep the US going for less than 3 years at todays consumption. Maybe the destruction to the environment and wildlife may not be worth the extra few months of oil production. "
Ah that oil shale BS again. Oil shale isn't even oil it's kerogen, which has to taken out of the rocks and transformed into an oil like substance. It's not even classified as oil. The US oil companies tried to derive oil from oil shale and failed in the 70's, costing them billions of dollars. Some say with the advance in technology it may be possible now, whilst many scientists believe it's all BS, even if the technology was there the amount of oil you could derive is small from oil shale and extremely costly.
There's a reason why greedy oil companies haven't pumped out oil shale and it has nothing to do with environmentalists but cost feasibility. "
Canada is using their reserves. In fact, they're selling it to us. "
Canada is selling oil to you right now. They have vast resources of oil. Their own untapped oil reserves come from oil-sands which is not oil shale. Most of that is easily recoverable (surface mining) and is still small scale at the moment at around 1.2 million a day. The US oil sands are much smaller and much different. "
Oil sands is the same thing as oil shale, it's what Canada is getting their oil from, and we have more of it."
The oil in shale is actually kerogen and the oil in oil sands is bitumen, completely different minerals.
Learn up before posting. Google them and you'll get vastly different searches. Oil shale as technology stands today is almost a myth, it's not even true oil. Oil sands is still extremely small scale, even with tens of billions of dollars of investments Canada will only be able to produce about 5 million barrels a day by 2030. That's small scale in a world where demand for oil especially from China and India is increasing every year. The US alone today produces around 8 of its 22 million barrels it consumes daily. "
1) you can't believe everything you read on wikipedia
2) we can still use the oil shale, because we can turn it into a synthetic oil. just because it isn't "real oil" doesn't mean we can't use it."
I don't believe everything I read on Wiki, but when knowledgeable people say Oil Shale and Oil Sands are different and when I do google searches on them and it proves that yes they are different then I know they are right. They are different and stop denying it.
As for oil shale, unlike oil sand there is no big drilling operation anywhere in the world for oil shale right now, as opposed to oil sands, and the reason is simply that kerogen is not feasible. How many more times must I say this. There's this BS going around that oil shale can just be drilled like normal oil, it can't. For a better explanation read this and this. And I never said "it can't" be used I said the technology and feasibility just isn't there. You need massive energy and resources to mine the shale and extract it. The technology just isn't there.
Now unless you can inform me of how scientifically you'd go about drilling this oil shale (kerogen) and using it cheaply of course, no point if it costs you hundreds of dollars per barrel, then this conversation is over.
As you probably know, you don't "drill" for oil shale like normal oil. You mine it, which has already been done. And if you look here, you'll see that at least one man believes he has found an efficient way to convert oil shale into synthetic oil. The technology is available, we just need to take advantage of it.
Besides this, the big thing the GOP was trying to do today was uplift the ban on offshore drilling for oil, which would also help in our current situation. See Peaceful_anger's post for more info.
I can't stand Nancy Pelosi. This has pretty much sealed the deal that I don't like her. Let's do the offshore drilling if only to stall until we come up with some other solution to the gas problem. Chevrolet just made a hydrogen-cell car and a sports-esque car powered by electricity and I think Japan just made a car powered by air! Trust me, there will be a change soon. It's already happening.
"Off-shore drilling won't help shit for possibly ten years; it definitely won't lower gas prices any time soon. "
We can't just sit around picking our noses waiting for something to happen either. And as peaceful_anger said, just by talking about it we've already seen effects, and if the ban had been lifted 10 years ago, we wouldn't be in the situation we're now.
It's a step in the right direction but the wrong path to take now that we're at a fork in the road. Gasoline could alleviate our troubles slightly, but we're still royally fucked if we don't start doing something progressive. The pressure is visible in the amount of people now willing to explore the offshore drilling among other things- now we've got to direct everybody to the right choice. New progress with fuel cells and harnessing hydrogen (through water or other means) are made every day, and a Japanese firm claims they're close to being able to run an engine on anything containing H20 in it.
The myth about fuel efficiency is that you're somehow doing something better than you were before. Sooner or later, you're going to burn through all the fuel anyway, and all of your pollution will still accumulate- the end gain is the same, just the way of getting there is different. Better MPG may stall for time, but it will not be any kind of savior in the long run.
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