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Most oil spills are caused by nature. Drilling would help to reduce this.
Scott
Diogenes, search no further, I think?? 🙂
#29 Paddy-O. Very true!
What Barack either doesn’t grasp or doesn’t want to grasp is the way the stock market works. As the rest of us know, the stock market can and does move for the flimsiest of reasons.
So it doesn’t take a genius to see that the futures market will go down if there is the perception that oil will be available in the future.
Now that only brings temporary relief. China and India are going to suck up whatever is out there anyhow, so offshore drilling will only alleviate the problem for a short while.
So… Change to electricity is paramount.
But… I fear his dependence on technology that doesn’t exist.
That’s why oil has dropped $30 already.
No. Oil (WTI) dropped since the intraday price volatility softened and US oil reserves increased.
Dead cat ceiling. Hmmmm, I might just patent that phrase.
#31 – MikeN,
Most oil spills are caused by nature. Drilling would help to reduce this.
Are you out of your mind?Oops. I mean do you have some data on that? Would you mind comparing it to this?http://tinyurl.com/3ckvvk
Note not only the number of spills but the dramatic increase in them over the years as asshole oil execs decided it was cheaper to settle cases than to take real precautions, thus leading to entirely foreseeable spills like Exxon Valdez where the fuckers didn’t even come close to meeting the legal obligations of the contracts they signed to get the rights to use the port in the first place.
http://tinyurl.com/39j9rz
Yes, the second link is to my blog, but it has other links to back up my claims. Read them before dismissing this claim. Drunk captain had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t even on duty at the time.
#36 Misantropic, some very good links! Very interesting.
I was thinking about MikeN’s comment and came up with this link. It’s a bit dated but I haven’t found anything else as detailed.
It states that about 600,000 metric tons (~6,892,500 barrels of oil by my quick calculation) naturally seeps into the ocean each year.
I don’t know if it is more or less than man-made spills, but it’s quite a lot nonetheless.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/184/4139/857
#37 *cough*
What type of oil is naturally seeping into the oceans? I assume we’re talking refined West Texas Intermediate? Or maybe light sweet crude?
How much in one natural “spill”. Are we talking 10 million gallons in one day in a single location?
#37 – Ah_Yea,
That is an interesting link. However, it says absolutely nothing like MikeN’s claim that our drilling for the oil will reduce the seepage. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have to drill. We could just sit by the seepage sites and mop it all up.
I’m thinking that our spills just add to the problem. Further, our spills occur where there are none naturally. So, the wildlife in the area is not prepared to deal with it.
So, interesting information, but probably irrelevant to concerns of human spills in the same way that the natural amount of CO2 burped into the atmosphere by volcanoes is irrelevant to the increases in atmospheric concentrations due to humans.
There are lots of nasty natural processes. The life on this planet has evolved in concert with them. The human caused nasty processes* tend to happen much more rapidly and in ways that the biosphere is ill-equipped to deal with.
* Yes. Humans are part of nature. Everything we do is natural. Our structures built by humans for humans are every bit as natural as dams built by beavers for beavers. Still, we cannot escape the fact that we rely on nature for our very survival. We damage the biosphere at our peril. And, it will come back to bite us. Things are genuinely looking quite dismal for the near term future.
Oil spills are completely trivial compared to the problem of high fuel costs forcing people to change vehicles. Drill everywhere right now. new oil could be brought on line in 5 years or less. Usuable alt-tech will take 20 years or more, so start working now, but drill in the meantime. (Smart car like vehicles are not usuable anywhere that’s worth living. A usuable vehicle has to be the size of a Suburban and be able to tow a boat at least 800 mi in one days mostly non-stop drive.)
Global warming is nothing to worry about at all. The worst thing will be needing more power for air conditioners. This could be helped if we started immediate construction of 500 nuclear plants and if we evacuate Arizona and tile the whole state with solar panels. Nothing is more important than generating more power by all means possible.
Paris would be far less dangerous as President than O’Vomit. (but that’s not saying much.)
Paris Hilton is a PR genius. I got flamed here for saying that before, but this video proves me right.
She’s a friggin’ genius. (in that one skill, I assume)
BTW: Isn’t Paris Hilton’s energy policy just a shortened version of Obama’s?
He said he was willing to increase some off-shore drilling as part of a larger independence effort.