Offshore Oil Drilling and the Oil Rig Disaster in the Gulf

[BridgeTroll]

great questions k.

why do you think that our present technologies arent good enough?

Because they cannot compete with oil yet.  Not in cost nor energy output nor reliability.

can you back that up?

can anyone?

And how is the replacement of oil any different that oil's replacement of steam and coal?

I cannot defend the idea that it can.  But I do know that at present I don't know.

Perhaps someone can enlighten.

Try this and see if Solar can compete with JEA... It cannot for me...

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,2913.0.html

[Doctor_K]

^ Me either.

But again, not *yet*.

[BridgeTroll]

TVA:

Rates and Charges
Tennessee Valley Electric Cooperative Schedule Of Rates
Effective April 1, 2008

Residential    Customer Charge    $14.50  KWH Charge @    $.08297

---------------------------------------------------

JEA**         Jacksonville, FL         114.26 kwh

Not sure... will have to plug into the calc... much higher latitude though will require more panels than here which means a higher initial investment.  May turn out to only take 10 years to break even...

[Ocklawaha]

BTW, in Ock's California photos, the oil wells are on the beach.  Of course there will be some minor oil spills which affect beach goers in such areas.  The point is that now the oil wells will be far off the coast and far less likely to result in any oil reaching shore.

Huh?

Yes, the shot of the original fields back in the 1940's is on the beach, but the islands and off shore rigs sure as hell are not "on the beach".  I will say at night they put off quite the light show out over the water, burning off the natural gas.


Offshore Nuances: Santa Barbara's Problematic Oil Seeps


California USA Platform Los Angeles


Huntington Beach California in a storm


The sun sets over the Sunset rig


Beach Tech rig


Scenic view at night, California Beaches

... So someone was saying something about all the photos of the wells on the beach? NOT!

Oh, and just in case someone wants to claim (and I know one does via private messages) that Light Rail will be just as dirty as diesel because the power comes from JEA coal etc...


How about sit with me on the North Jetty and eat a peach?

OCKLAWAHA

[RiversideGator]

You have made conclusory statements that there were bad spills after Katrina but have never posted anything very persuasive.  Sorry but just because you believe something does not make it true.

Actually, guy, I sent you the Mineral Management Services report that stated "MMS also is releasing the following tally of hurricane-related oil/condensate/chemical spills in Federal offshore OCS waters as reported to MMS and the National Response Center. Six spills of 1,000 barrels or greater were reported; the largest of these was 3,625 barrels of condensate reported by the Gulf South Pipeline Company in the Eugene Island Block 51 area. A total of 146 spills of 1 barrel or greater have been reported in the Federal OCS waters; 37 of these were 50 barrels or greater."

http://www.mms.gov/ooc/press/2006/press0501.htm

Yes.  And as I explained to you, these are minor spills which caused little environmental damage.

[RiversideGator]

Also, while we are all discussing it:

Just days after John McCain reversed himself on offshore drilling, ten senior Hess Corporation executives and Hess family members each plowed $28,500 into the RNC's committee to elect McCain president.

Soooooooo, all these rich Hess family members or executives just happened to all donate on the same day; furthermore they just happened to pick the day on which McCain was announcing positions favorable to oil companies.  Jesus, are people not sick of this obvious selling-off of our government, yet? I mean, seeing as having 8 years of an oil/energy beholden White House has gone so well for us so far, right?

Are you arguing that people who work for the oil companies should not have the same rights to donate to political candidates that environmentalists (and everyone else) do?

[RiversideGator]

DR. K.

Normally I would totally agree with you.

But in the case of the present day I think its more like the scandal that brewed with Senator Prescott Bush was caught financing Nazi's during the 40s.

As you know, this is a total falsehood which I have debunked on many occasions.  Please stop trotting out this in an attempt to score points in a debate.

[RiversideGator]

great questions k.

why do you think that our present technologies arent good enough?

Because they cannot compete with oil yet.  Not in cost nor energy output nor reliability.

can you back that up?

can anyone?

And how is the replacement of oil any different that oil's replacement of steam and coal?

I cannot defend the idea that it can.  But I do know that at present I don't know.

Perhaps someone can enlighten.

Let me make this as simple as possible for you:

The US and world economies need cheap and plentiful energy to be successful.  Until non-fossil fuel generated energy is cost effective, energy will continue to be produced with oil and coal.

[Midway ®]

Not a "total falsehood" and you have proved nothing.

Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"
by Thom Hartmann


The Republican National Committee has recently removed from the top-level pages of their website an advertisement interspersing Hitler's face with those of John Kerry and other prominent Democrats. This little-heralded step has freed former Enron lobbyist and current RNC chairman Ed Gillespie to resume his attacks on Americans who believe some provisions of Bush's PATRIOT Act, his detention of American citizens without charges, his willingness to let corporations write legislation, and the so-called "Free Speech Zones" around his public appearances are all steps on the road to American fascism.

The RNC's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and Democrats was short-lived, but it brings to mind the first American Vice President to point out the "American fascists" among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman President), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents - John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945). In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni" - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

    " If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels. "American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information..."

Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American. When Windrip becomes President, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.

As Lewis noted in his novel, "the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy." And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used."

Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book "It Can't Happen Here." And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler. These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:

    " Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases."

Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state."

Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as "rule by the rich."

Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his new book "What's The Matter With Kansas" that, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America - 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush."

The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage." He added, "Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself."

But American fascists who would want former CEOs as President, Vice President, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of George W. Bush's recent suggestion that civilization itself is at risk because of gays, Wallace continued:

    " The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination..."

But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations - who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media - they could promote their lies with ease.

"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added, "They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

Finally, Wallace said, "The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."

This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).

As Wallace's President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "...out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man...."

Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core: "These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power."

But, he thundered in that speech, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!"

In 2004, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II. Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "compassionate conservatism." The RNC's behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

It's particularly ironic that the CEOs and lobbyists who run the Republican National Committee would have chosen to put Hitler's fascist face into one of their campaign commercials, just before they launched a national campaign against gays and while they continue to arrest people who wear anti-Bush T-shirts in public places.

President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace's warnings have come full circle. Which is why it's so critical that this November we join together at the ballot box to stop this most recent incarnation of feudal fascism from seizing complete control of our nation.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk radio show. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," and "We The People: A Call To Take Back America." His new book, "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy," based on four years of research in Jefferson's personal letters, begins shipping this week from Random House/Harmony.

[BridgeTroll]

Cmon...   Thom Hartmann    It is like RG quoting Limbaugh...


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thom HartmannThom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, and liberal political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs throughout the United States on Air America Radio and has over 1.5 million unique listeners every week.[1] He is a lay scholar of the history and textual analysis of the United States Constitution, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), electronic voting fraud, and environmental issues like global warming. Hartmann's original article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007.

[RiversideGator]

Not a "total falsehood" and you have proved nothing.

I'm sorry but the article you posted says nothing about Bush's grandfather and the Nazis.  And, are you such an incredible poor judge of character than you find Thom Hartmann to be authoritative on this or any other issue??

Thom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, and liberal political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs throughout the United States on Air America Radio and has over 1.5 million unique listeners every week.[1] He is a lay scholar of the history and textual analysis of the United States Constitution, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), electronic voting fraud, and environmental issues like global warming. Hartmann's original article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Hartmann

[Midway ®]

Cmon...   Thom Hartmann    It is like RG quoting Limbaugh...


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thom HartmannThom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, and liberal political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs throughout the United States on Air America Radio and has over 1.5 million unique listeners every week.[1] He is a lay scholar of the history and textual analysis of the United States Constitution, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), electronic voting fraud, and environmental issues like global warming. Hartmann's original article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007.

Don't be soooo contemptuously smarmy, it doesn't suit you, leave that to the experts. Since you had to look Hartmann up on Wikipedia, i guess you have never heard of or heard him. I suggest you listen to him before making your pronouncements, just as i listen to limbaugh, Boortz, Oreilly, hanity.  And sorry, there's no parallel between Hartmann and Limbaugh, none at all. To make that comparison belies a total ignorance of the composition of their respective offerings.

And try to find a citation where the word "scholar' and Limbaugh appear on the same page.

[Midway ®]

Not a "total falsehood" and you have proved nothing.

I'm sorry but the article you posted says nothing about Bush's grandfather and the Nazis.  And, are you such an incredible poor judge of character than you find Thom Hartmann to be authoritative on this or any other issue??

Thom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, and liberal political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs throughout the United States on Air America Radio and has over 1.5 million unique listeners every week.[1] He is a lay scholar of the history and textual analysis of the United States Constitution, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), electronic voting fraud, and environmental issues like global warming. Hartmann's original article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Hartmann

It speaks volumes about you, though. And as for a poor judge of character, you are the one who voted for Bush, so stop casting stones.

I would be an incredibly poor judge of character if I found you to be authoritative on this or any other subject.

And as for your compulsion to make things as "simple as possible", why don't you just concentrate on making them correct instead?

By the way, how's your Rezko investigation coming along?

[RiversideGator]

River. Im sorry, you have clearly come back from some time in the future, in a reality that hasnt happened yet and don't realize the time slip.

Apparently in this 'future' of yours, you 'debunk' the historical record of Prescott's treachery against both the US and its duly elected president 'many times'.

Let's see.  You claimed that "Senator Prescott Bush was caught financing Nazi's during the 40s".  You and I both know that this is patently false.  But, since it is your claim, please post ANY evidence from a legitimate source to substantiate your contention.  I dare you.   

[RiversideGator]

Also, while we are all discussing it:

Just days after John McCain reversed himself on offshore drilling, ten senior Hess Corporation executives and Hess family members each plowed $28,500 into the RNC's committee to elect McCain president.

Soooooooo, all these rich Hess family members or executives just happened to all donate on the same day; furthermore they just happened to pick the day on which McCain was announcing positions favorable to oil companies.  Jesus, are people not sick of this obvious selling-off of our government, yet? I mean, seeing as having 8 years of an oil/energy beholden White House has gone so well for us so far, right?

Are you arguing that people who work for the oil companies should not have the same rights to donate to political candidates that environmentalists (and everyone else) do?

River, just to guarantee that you wont post on this thread again, would you like to share with us what your definition of 'corruption' and 'influence peddling' is?

Just curious.

Your answer will say a whole lot about why your fellow radical republicans couldnt see Abramoff or Delay coming.

I think the definition of corruption does not include accepting political contributions from people who hold similar views as you or, alternatively, giving money to the campaigns of candidates who are in agreement with your political views.  This is totally legal and is an element of free speech.