From: The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com
Senate Democrats on Tuesday abandoned all hopes of passing even a slimmed-down energy bill before they adjourn for the summer recess, saying that they did not have sufficient votes even for legislation tailored narrowly to respond to the Gulf oil spill.
Although the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, sought to blame Republicans for sinking the energy measure, the reality is that Democrats are also divided over how to proceed on the issue and had long ago given up hope of a comprehensive bill to address climate change.
…
“Ask anyone outside of Washington, and they’ll tell you that this isn’t a Democrat or a Republican issue, it’s an American issue,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired of our oil dependency that makes Iran $100 million richer every day that Washington fails to respond.”
h/t to Tom Nelson
I am sure you are going to tell the same to the doctor that tell you that you really should have a surgery of that tumor he just found…
Who cares how it’s made???? Can we use it economically? And once we take it from the ground, can we clean up after ourselves before we move to another location?
I spoke to my Two Senators via Conference Call. Here the long and short of what they said:
IT’S NOT THAT THE SENATE DOESN’T WANT TO PASS THE BILL, ask any currently serving lilly livered Senator in Closed Door Session and he/she will tell you that they really DO want to pass the Bill, we’ve already been paid more than enough, the problem is NOT the Will of the Senate but the Will of Some Stupid Worthless No-Account People in this country called VOTERS; about 85% of these ignorant idiots don’t want this Bill to pass and for any Red Blooded or Blue Nosed Senator to Vote for it would be worse than Political Suicide, they might even get Tarred and Feathered, and that hasn’t happened in over a century or two.
Remember, don’t blame your hard working Supreme Soviet Senate (or The Speaker’s “Peoples House Of Democratic Representatives”), it’s NOT their fault. BLAME the SCOTUS Gang of 9, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pope, the UN, the League of Nations, George II and George III Bush, your Parents, your Mother-In-Law, Jimmah Carteer, FDR, and Woodrow Wilson, Iran, Malta, George I (Washington). And if you want to know who the real troublemaker is, next time you spend a penny look up when you wash your hands.
__________
PS: Not sure what they ment with that crack about the penny.
@GM
“Really, I heard that this place was ranked first among the science blogs on the internet some time ago, yet it seems like a congregation of cooks of any possible kind. I am waiting for the anti-vaxxers and creationists to pop into the conversation any moment…”
So why do you behave like those you seek to accuse? Projection perhaps?
Once again – please simply tell us what are your credentials.
Please provide a link – any link at any point in time.
Although a clinician – I don’t discount anything from any other person exhibiting interest in my field or indeed any other point of interest. The growth of knowledge is a shared process and best conducted politely.
Your eloquence and force of argument count for nothing if you merely continue being bombastic in your presentation.
For example there are many people holding and expressing a faith who are complete scientists in every sense of the word, just as there are also atheists doing the same. Taking a judgemental and arrogant stance only serves to weaken your case and denies others of the genuinely sought validity of what you might have to offer.
Just wanted to correct my poor name spelling on the previous comment!
Doh!
GM,
Thanks for the response, while I won’t paste your entire response, I’ll paste this; You said”…In a way it doesn’t really even matter whether the globe is warming or not (although it is), because even if it wasn’t, the combination of the depletion of fossil fuels, phosphorus and other irreplaceable minerals, fossil aquifers, topsoil loss and exhaustion, etc. all, against the background of severe overpopulation and a social system that requires infinite growth to sustain itself would still do us. You can deny the existence/severity of one issue, but you have to a complete lunatic to deny them all, because a lot of them follow directly from the laws of nature and the basic principles of ecology. Of course, the unchecked dominance of free market ideology provides no shortage of people who deny them all…”
First, while I didn’t paste it into this comment, most here do not deny the earth is warming. I’m may be an extreme case that asserts you can’t prove that it is in any meaningful way and even if it is, it isn’t detrimental to the human condition. Your use of the word denier is a bit inflammatory to many here, but I’ve been called much worse so it doesn’t bother me as much in spite of the insulting tone.
Given all the problems you’ve listed, the one overwhelming point you seem to be making is that we can in no manner provide sustainability for the “severe overpopulation and a social system that requires infinite growth..” Later and finally you go on to say, “Of course, the unchecked dominance of free market ideology provides no shortage of people who deny them all…” I believe this is where the disagreement lays with you and myself. While a free market is a base tenet in my beliefs, freedom in and of itself is most base. While you pointed out that at times reliance on history is sometimes errant, it seems to me the improper interpretation of history is more the problem. History(or observations, which all are historic) is all we have to base our assumptions on and the extrapolation of the observations. Like the doom and gloom we are constantly bombarded by the AGW crowd, history shows us they’re wrong. They’ve been consistently wrong ever since they started their apocalyptic prognostications. So, also, is the case of the population doomsayers. In my lifetime we were supposed to all have starved several times over, yet, we remain. That stubborn reality of organisms and the will to survive I suppose. But more to the point, even if freedom and population causes a calamity on earth, it is better than the alternatives offered to us by the various apocalyptic prognosticators. Sir, I’ve seen the results of the alternatives. I’ve seen the effects the alternatives have on humanity. From Pol Pot to Stalin to the national socialists. I reject the idea of totalitarian population control and totalitarian rationing of energy. It is beyond me how anyone else can see these alternatives as preferable to the animating contest of freedoms and the innovations that accompany. I once read necessity was the mother of invention. I wonder if most still hold that to be true, for if it is, and we create a necessity from our own use of resources, would that necessity not give birth to another invention that frees us from that necessity?
Big Oil bashing. Koch bought Dupont fibres. You look good wearing spandex when riding your
TREK bike and make the oil company money when you protest oil. How about carbon fiber rims on the bike? Carbon free tires? On a non asphalt road?
Whenever the non thinkers get on a carbon free jag, I laugh.
The EPA wants to outlaw dust. (fugitive waste) For us that means all roads must be paved. How about some carbon free asphalt?
“It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us . . . .”
We’re dependent on foreign oil because Kerry and his extremist Green friends have made it all but impossible for American companies to tap into this country’s wealth of domestic oil resources. Let us expand production in the ANWR coastal plain, where there are between 6 and 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Let us accelerate production in the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota, a 200-billion-barrel oil field that could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, making America virtually energy independent. Let us harvest the huge deposits of oil shale reserves in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, where there are an estimated 1,466,000 barrels of oil. Let us license responsible oil companies to explore in areas now off limits to offshore drilling.
If Kerry and his eco-cultist friends have their way, we’ll once again be at the mercy of Mother Nature and the elements we’ve worked so hard to tame and control.
JER0ME says:
August 4, 2010 at 3:38 am
That, if the “convenient” lie about “fossil” fuels is right, which is not, as for the gigantic and recent findings in Brazil(in deeper water than the Gulf) and the Gulf of Mexico areas. That tale is just for keeping prices up.
Why? If here in WUWT was told, time ago, that there was no need of any legislation because your EPA had fixed it already.
As we say in spanish “swallow it and say you like it”
Many places called this the spill bill. Legislation regarding the spill. The day of the explosion and the spill, Rush Limbaugh said 75% of this crude would dissipate by means of evaoporation. He was correct. The heavy duty MIT PHD’s like Joe Romm said it couldn’t. They also said don’t burn it. It looks like the “scientists” now admit Rush was correct and most is gone. The slow PHD’s will need millions to do studies to see if it is gone. Then millions more to find out where did it go.
The models of course ploted dates when it would blacken the sands of Atlantic City and the prime new England shores. The models were wrong. Again.
Dave from the “Hot” North East of Scotland says:
August 4, 2010 at 2:36 am
we don’t no proof about any plan.
there is one thing we do know about our government. it is run by people who don’t care about anything, other than getting re-elected. THERE IS NO GREAT MASTER PLAN. PERIOD.
Plan B lives on with the EPA and its IPCC obsession.
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/epa-flubs-amazongate/
It doesn’t matter what happens in the Senate.
The Missile is Launched despite democratic consent.
“EPA control of CO2: Obama’s Vehicle To Destroy The US Economy is Launched”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/26082
GM says:
August 4, 2010 at 8:15 am
Once again for those who have missed it – prices do not matter here
Maybe that’s true on your planet.
Here on planet earth, it is precisely the cost of energy which is the issue. Alternative energies up to this point are simply far too costly. We still need coal and gas for electricity, and oil for heating, transport, as well as thousands of products. In 50 years, who knows? Our energy sources then could be very different.
Rob Schneider says: August 4, 2010 at 1:12 am
Question: is there a link where we can read the bill they are debating?
No.
Per Nancy Pelosi, you have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.
“Senate Democrats on Tuesday abandoned all hopes of passing even a slimmed-down energy bill”
The ‘slimmed down’ energy bill was tacked onto a Defense Appropriations bill about a month ago.
That kind of insanity is the root of the crisis. When people think that the laws of thermodynamics are secondary to the laws of supply and demand, it is no wonder that we’re where we are
Rob Schneider says: “Question: is there a link where we can read the bill they are debating?”
It’s a tradition that Democrat-sponsored legislation has to be passed before the peasants are allowed to read it.
Given the majority the democrats enjoy, blaming republicans for not passing legislation (they cannot) is like blaming slaves for slavery.
GM says:
August 4, 2010 at 3:46 am
“proven reserves” is a ever changing number. as our ability to draw oil from the source improves, the number keeps changing.
as for the shale, the energy balance is quite positive, thank you. and there are multiple techniques we can bring to this game: physical shock, solvent extraction and thermal release are the three we are looking at. what we do not know is the depth & extent of environmental damage we will cause and what the final pumped price will be.
as for time…. we know it is not 5 years. but not much more than 10 years. and as for demand, it will continue to keep going down in USA. at about 2-5% per annum, depending on the price.
Any number for “proven resource” in number of years is the kind of follish thing ignorant people will engage in.
Mike McMillan says:
August 4, 2010 at 9:58 am
Rob Schneider says: August 4, 2010 at 1:12 am
Question: is there a link where we can read the bill they are debating?
No.
Per Nancy Pelosi, you have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.
_______________________________________________
Funny but sadly true.
GM wrote: Really, I heard that this place was ranked first among the science blogs on the internet some time ago, yet it seems like a congregation of cooks of any possible kind.
I’ve never seen someone work so hard to prove themselves to be the embodiment of their own pet theory.
Near Term Peak Oil hysteria is just another form of the Eco/Psycho/Politico/Religion
http://www.businessinsider.com/exxon-found-way-more-oil-than-it-produced-in-2009-and-has-been-doing-it-for-16-years-2010-2
Collectivist political ideologies are actually religious cults a-la Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, etc. They’re just larger. Like their smaller brethren, they ultimately turn to Genocide, often thru denial of basic staples (starvation). See any similarity to efforts restricting US consumption? Agenda 21?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_agenda_21_coming_to_a_neigh.html
Long chain hydrocarbons are strings of Methane Molecules. The Russians aren’t the only ones who’ve signed on to Abiotic oil theory.
http://vodpod.com/watch/3821383-peak-vs-deep-oil-debate-3-cnbc-abiotic-oil-in-nutshell
The USA has the worlds largest known reserves of Coal.
http://www.clean-energy.us/facts/coal.htm
And extracting that coal (while a dangerous business) is a beloved business of many thousands of highly paid union workers. We need to be building clean burning coal fired power plants (1 each week) just like the Chinese. Dig Baby, Dig!
We need refineries and far more domestic exploration. We will never know what we have to work with if we don’t explore.
I work in the aircraft industry. Every few years we redesign air frames and re-engine existing models. There is constant evolution of efficiency. Today I can fly across country cheaper than the cost of fuel to drive it, and make the trip at 600 mph!
Yet I read that a recent expansion at Heathrow was postponed/cancelled over CO2 hysteria. The danger of this eco-political cult of collectivism destroying the western world is very real and very malevolent. Every one of us needs to become active in turning the tide.