Saturday, August 16, 2008

QOTD

Jon Basil Utley makes "The case for drilling" in Reason magazine:
The media constantly repeat the claim that it would take a decade to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into oil production and about as long for offshore continental oil to start flowing. Most accounts promote the views of extreme environmentalists to make the issue appear so hopeless that we must instead "change our way of life" rather than tap into proven oil reserves. In July, CNN repeatedly reported that offshore drilling would take "seven to 10 years" to get into production. Yet Brazil's Petrobras expects its new finds in extraordinarily deep waters to already be producing 100,000 barrels per day in just two years. What is wrong with American oil companies that they would take so long?

In fact, the world oil shortage is political, not geological. In the U.S., the government prohibits drilling offshore. In Nigeria, civil strife has shut down major production. In Libya and Iran, Washington effectively blockaded and isolated the nations for years to inhibit new production. In Iraq, of course, the U.S. destroyed much of the infrastructure since the first Gulf war in 1991 and then blockaded reconstruction. In nations such as Russia and Mexico nationalism and corruption curtail increased production.

Outside of developed Western countries, the single largest reason for oil "shortages" is government incompetence and ownership of the subsoil rights so that landowners don't benefit from oil discoveries.

6 comments:

Geoffrey Britain said...

Democrats are simply following the old political strategy of obfuscation and misdirection.

They are afraid that if they simply laid out their 'position' regarding energy the public would reject them.

That is why you see green energy commercials that talk about "if enough people demand alternative energy we can make it happen" they know that scientists cannot 'just wave a magic wand', so the implication is that viable forms of alternative energy are purposely being held back by 'forces' inimical to environmental progress.

Their 'belief' in a conspiracy of and by big business/republican/'the rich' to maintain the oil dependent 'status quo' economy is such that they are convinced that alternative energy technology will be 'derailed' and implementation never allowed.

The secular liberal 'mantra' is that ALL the world's ills are the result of bad capitalists and their 'apologists' and the duped masses. It's socialism/communism 'lite'.

Anonymous said...

> It's socialism/communism 'lite'.

Seems pretty much like heavy-handed collectivism to me...

Geoffrey Britain said...

"Seems pretty much like heavy-handed collectivism to me..."

Relatively speaking, yes. But only when comparing it to traditional western standards. Any eastern european over 50 would laugh at the comparison that the american left is in the same league as the old bolsheviks.

The american left does want to control our lives but they are not going to send millions to the 'gulag'.

OBloodyHell said...

> Any eastern european over 50 would laugh at the comparison that the american left is in the same league as the old bolsheviks.

Ah, but I speak of its target, not its current location.

> they are not going to send millions to the 'gulag'.

LOL. You HAVE heard the calls for anyone who disputes Global Warming to be brought up on charges for "crimes against humantity", have you not?

If that's not a an invitation to "thought crimes" with the gulag as its eventual result 50 years down the road, I don't know what is.

Again, I speak of its target, not its current location.

;o)

.

Geoffrey Britain said...

"You HAVE heard the calls for anyone who disputes Global Warming to be brought up on charges for "crimes against humantity", have you not?

If that's not a an invitation to "thought crimes" with the gulag as its eventual result 50 years down the road, I don't know what is."


Yes i have heard them. But I do not give US leftists the credence that you do.

I don't discount the zealousness of those who wish to make politically incorrect speech a hate crime nor doubt that they deem it evidence of 'thought crimes'.

It is the 'quandary' they face that leads to my equanimity in the face of this fundamentally unamerican advocacy.

Other than a very small minority, US leftists are "trying to ride two horses across the stream" and their refusal to acknowledge this changes it not at all.

One one hand they favor PC...but on the other, their secularism's tenants are grounded in lip service to the freedom's we all espouse.

That is a house which cannot stand. They shall either fail or find that what they have created is not worth defending.

Were US leftists' to succeed in making politically incorrect speech a hate crime (as they are attempting to do in Canada)and establish the legal precedent of 'thought crime',
our 200+ yr experiment in freedom would be over.

Even this 'John Adams' could not but acknowledge it.

More importantly, leftists could not reasonably deny the charge of totalitarianism and that they had become tyrants.

For they would have unequivocally acted in a way that confirmed themselves to be the enemies of this country's founding precepts.

Any who love freedom would be compelled to resist them with whatever means necessary.

"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." Benjamin Franklin

When the first US citizen is sent to the gulag for 'thought crimes' then shall I bear arms in resistance.

OBloodyHell said...

> Yes i have heard them. But I do not give US leftists the credence that you do.

I don't grant them "credence" in the form of ability. I do believe that, if they had the power to achieve it, they would unhesitatingly do it.

You appear to presume that it's mere rhetoric, for some unjustified reason.

THEY MEAN IT.

> One one hand they favor PC...but on the other, their secularism's tenets are grounded in lip service to the freedoms we all espouse.

Trust me, when push comes to shove, those freedoms will be surrendered with slavish exhuberance to an overbearing State which promises them security and their misguided notion of "equality". That it will deliver on neither, while obvious to the most brain-dead among the observant, will not matter one whit to them, because they don't really grasp the idea of mutually exclusive concepts.

Think about that -- how many of them support
"a and b",
when it's quite clear that
"a requires not b"
??

Part of this relates to that Reset Button I mentioned previously. When they want a and b, they register both of them in their Officially Defined Liberal Positions(TM)... and from that point on, any reasoning which brings them into context, and thus conflict, is automagically expunged at Midnight.

Hence the tendency to avoid context, which you've seen me hammer bob about, repeatedly...

They subconsciously know from experience that this makes the Reset system work overtime.

To have context is to identify the conflicts inherent in their childish ideas of "What I Want" vs. "What Can Be Had".

> More importantly, leftists could not reasonably deny the charge of totalitarianism and that they had become tyrants.

LOL, Geoffrey, of course they could. See the discussion above. It would, at most, be recognized by them IF AND ONLY IF they themselves were subjected to its problems directly. And, if they adopt a contrary view (as opposed to just doing the French thing and spreading their buttcheeks obediently, which is more likely), then they would merely become a heretic, and be expunged from official liberal society, becoming an unperson.

We now have several generations of people raised using the Teutonic System of Indoctrination. If I was allowed to go back in time to kill one person, I don't believe it would be Hitler, it would be Horace Mann. That system does not just indoctrinate, it slowly but surely eradicates individualism and free thinking from the body politic.

There's a reason National Socialism developed in Germany first.

> When the first US citizen is sent to the gulag for 'thought crimes' then shall I bear arms in resistance.

Ah, but they'll TELL you it was for something else. You can already lose almost any job for thought crimes.

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"Crocodile Dundee" was based on a real person. Go look up what happened to him. Australia, yeah, not here, but it's just a matter of time.