The Oil "Shortage"

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

There is no oil shortage.

The US has mass proven reserves in N. Dakota, the Gulf, and the wasteland of ANWAR.

If Clinton hadn’t vetoed ANWAR we’d be getting oil from it now and if we started now, we could get it in about 2 years, if it weren’t for environmentalists.

Environmentalists wanted higher prices for oil and the Democrats seconded it. Now we have them and the Democrats are blaming Bush for higher oil prices, who is not blameless but not for the reasons they state.

Environmentally friendly corn for fuel has only exaggerated the crisis raising the price of food from top to bottom and even causing starvation in some parts of the world. On top of the high prices for corn, the farmers are getting subsidies.

Exxon only makes a modest 8% net profit while doing all the work and taking all the risks. What do you think state and federal governments tax oil for? $.40 to $.60 a gallon for doing nothing but expending some ink and paper. But the environmentalists and press excoriate the oil companies, while pointing to the sales of the world’s largest company and the gross profits.

We haven’t built an oil refinery for over 30 year, thanks to environmentalists.

Every state and locality has their own requirements for boutique fuel which causes production sluggishness. All together now, thanks to the environmentalists.

Environmentalists howl bloody hell and point to the propaganda film, The China Syndrome, and keep us from building any nuclear power plants.

Environmentalists hold up conservation wind,solar,and other minimal alternatives, but they’re a drop in the bucket.

I won’t even go into the absurd concept of carbon credits.

The environmental leadership are displaced socialists who want us to drop down to third world levels instead of the rising tide lifting all boats. The love of power is the root of all evil.

And if you think $4.00 a barrel is bad, wait till it hits $10-20, which it will fairly soon, and we haven’t even started correcting any of these problems–thanks to the environmentalists.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.
There is no oil shortage, there are only limits on oil production which will produce oil for centuries to come.

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Yeah, plenty of enviromentalists don’t know anything about any subject that they talk about. A lot of the popular environmentalism movements are equatable to religion.

You think they have a lot to anwser for because of this shit? Try screaming DDT destroyed bird species eggs with very little evidednce, almost none infact.

Do you know what the result of banning ddt is? Its a massive holocaust of dead children.

No one cared, no one cares now, most people stillth ink its justified.

  • Michael Crichton.

They have a lot to anwser for, environmentalists (the irrational kind)

  • fox news. (I think)

I know how distasteful fox news is, but check that shit yourself. (anyone whose interested)

3

Agreed; however, there is a limited production that can’t keep up with the demand. Tapping ANWAR would help create supply, but not nearly enough to make a huge difference. Save it for when the **** really hits the fan. Let people get used to higher prices.

The taxes on oil and fuel, more specifically, are NOT where we have seen a rise in price.

Agreed. The profits of the oil company have NOT changed and are NOT the reason for the rise in prices.

We haven’t needed to. We are on the down side of peak oil production in the U.S.

You mean $120 a barrel and $4 a gallon, but yes we are not far off. Why do you put so much blame on environmentalists?

4

As I pointed out later.

We haven’t needed to. We are on the down side of peak oil production in the U.S.
[/quote]
Because of extreme limits on production capacity.

Because they are the ones fighting oil and nuclear production at every turn, and the gutless wonders in both the Democrat and Republican parties are scared to death of them because there are so many uninformed environmental sympathizers to be emotionally manipulated. And the reason its so easy is because there are indeed environmental problems.

READ Michael Crichton’s State of Fear instead of Rachael Carson’s The Silent Spring.

5

I own state of fear and its been widely widely widely critisized on the subject, even by people who deny global warming in the same way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love crichton and haven’t got around to reading fear, and most of what crichton goes on about is solid, but there is a lot of criticism about that book.

I like the speech “aliens cause global warming” or caused, by michael crichton.

6

How many works of fiction have such copious footnotes. Of course it’s criticized. They can’t let it stand unchallenged, and their challenges don’t have to be any more rational than Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

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less demand will make the price drop… we need a reduction in consumers…

reduction in consumers indeed…

viva la revolution!!!

-Imp

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Ah…of course…reduction in consumers.

The Nazis were right all along.

9

Yes! Vote Republic, people.

10

How North Americas debate the ecological catastrophe wreaked on the world by mass oil consumption…

“… we need a reduction in consumers…” A cull would cure the American culture disease. Global Year Zero.

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We’ve already started to cull the third world with food shortages thanks to the environmentalists. Probably not what they intended, but they don’t care. And even if they’d thought bio-fuels through they’d still have done it, because wealth envy and anti-American socialism are the dogma that justifies any means to their end.

12

Production is not limited by environmental laws. It is just maxed out. Environmentalist, as much of pain in the ass as they might be, have nothing to do with the problem. If you want to continue believing that, go ahead, but the supply will never increase, whether we build more refineries or not. If we were to tap ANWR, that would increase supply slightly, but for how long? We need to start getting used to the problem now. We will take ANWR when we are desperate.

13

Yes, but we’re talking about research that crichton uses to make a point and the people who did the research say that crichton took it out of context or whatever. Again, I do find it hard to believe that michael crichton would make such a blatantly bad book (as the people suggest) because he talks sensically about global warming in lectures and he’s scientifically educated.

No one, including you, should feel comfortable with the amount of criticism that book has recieved a lot of the times from the people whose research he used.

(that doens’t neccessarily imply anything as reseachers find information that doesn’t always fit into their theories, no matter how much they think it does. Some researchers are certain research X they did supports their belief B, when in actuality it brilliant evidence for the exact opposite. This shit certainly does happen).

I guess i’m just more comfortable with crichton exposing facts like the 95 climate panel coming to these huge conclusions based off massive evidence (that we couldn’t predict if global warming was even happening without understanding more about the climate, and that the gathered evidence did not indicate human caused warming, thats what the panel found. That was removed and in its place was put “There is a noticable effect to global warming caused by humans”

They took their own research and somehow, someone or some organization or political pressure forced the change.

For example, statistically it was found most women did recover from rape (they weren’t mentally fucked for the rest of their lives) The apa seen this and thought it was insanely insensitive to women who had been raped, and in place of real evidence/statistics about rape victims mental states later in life, it was put down, officially, that these women very rarely recover to normal mental states.

This wasn’t born out by the evidence but because of public policy became so mixed with science no one really knew the difference.

On top of that science and scientists in environmentalism uh… they’re less scientists and more lying spin doctors, when did science need to have scientists reviewing books and saying they could never pass peer review (when they did) and the scientists then trying to cause issue with the publishers who published the book calling it irresponsible and etc.

Science in environmentalism has become so mired in politics and belief that seperating them for a casual outside observer is impossible. Which is why I do take some issue with the dozens of criticisms from crichton’s book, i’ve read numerous books on global warming, i’ve inspected a lot of the science, and its still not easy to say with any certainty which claims are true.

I’m not saying I disagree with you, only that in-so-far plenty of those scientist criticisms have gone unawnsered, and when they did the research crichton is talking about, well fuck, that raises red alarms in my head even when I don’t believe in global warming in such a doomsday way.

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again don’t get me wrong i’ve read so much shit from panels of climate scientists who talk about how the global warming shit makes no sense, isn’t consistant and relies on non rational models, ignores hundreds of years of past temperature levels to extrapolate based on small periods of heat rising and ignore the subsequent falls, or talking about melting ice when never talking about ice re freezing a few years later.

stillthat many cricitisms based on the research.

14

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the information I’m finding is saying that Ethanol is the brainchild of the Bush Jr. White House. There are some environmental groups that did support biofuels, but the big three I am finding are, one, the UN which can hardly be called an environmental organization, two, the IPCC, which is an office of the UN; and three the EEB which is an umbrella environmental organization of more than one-hundred groups with agendas ranging from mercury to biodiversity.

At any rate we can easily say that biofuels are as harmful if not more than are fossil fuels. Environmentalists continue to advise as they have for decades reducing and stopping energy consumption.

From personal experience I can tell you that palm plantations (biodiesel) are not pretty. Nothing but palm trees spaced at about ten feet from one another, there is no other vegetation, just gray soil. The contrast with the indigenous neon green jungle, teeming with different plants and animals is very striking.

On this point I concur with you strongly, though with different conclusions. A scan of the documentary film library shows very quickly that there are very many anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-US government documentaries, they are well produced, full length films, for instance, Money as Debt, Yes Men or Zeitgeist. On the other hand, search for “endangered species”, “biodiversity” or “West African Black Rhino” and you’ll find dry academic lectures and 44 second clips. Why is that? Not too many people are angry about animal extinction; but a lot of people are angry with envy at corporate profit.

This is part of what made me come to the conclusion that attacking the establishment is useless. Since I watched a Silent Spring documentary on your recommendation; I recommend Adam Curtis’ Part III of The Trap to you. He gives a very interesting history of the wars against the people and against Western culture that have been waged in the last half-century. From Sartre and Fanon, to the KR’s massacre of the Cambodian middle-class, to the MB and Qutb in Egypt, to the group today known as al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and their activities against the population during the Algerian Civil War. Charles Manson and Timothy McVeigh are Americans who have used violence against the American people and their culture. Jemaah Islamiyah on Bali is another recent example. In fact “communal violence” is relatively common in both Indonesia and India.

15

Gasoline is not expensive. While the price, in constant dollars, has fluctuated along with most other commodities, if you take 1950 as a baseline (which is a good baseline, for several reasons) gasoline is only a few cents more expensive than it was then.

But any given moment in time is never a good measure of the price of a commodity. Look at the averages. Gasoline has been cheaper, but it actually has been just a bit more expensive than it is now, again, in constant dollars.

Taxes do account for more than do oil company profits. But at the moment, oil traders have driven the price up a bit - they are more responsible than any other factor for the recent spike in prices.

16

I guess thats what happens when people stick to shitty tv documentaries.

Lots of people care about animals and endagered species and biodiversity and so forth, which is why david attenborough is so insanely famous. Not to mention people truly interested in the subjects read books and watch science lectures, not shitty tv documentaries.

17

Thanks for pointing this guy out. Yet, here are the search results on Google Video for David Attenborough,

Mostly 2 minute clips about birds; though a few do look interesting, I think I’ll stick to my theory that there are far more anti-corporate documentaries than nature documentaries.

This from the guy praising Michael Crichton as a scholar. Perhaps you are not aware that David Attenborough and Adam Curtis have very similar biographies; prestigious education, followed by BBC careers; though Attenborough does have about 25 years on Curtis. Both look to have had most of their major documentaries aired on BBC. At anyrate educate yourself however you like, I had thought The Trap was very educational. Parts I and II are footnotes to part III.

18

Well, I know attenborough is in the ol shitty tv documentary as well, though… by definition all of attenborough’s shit is amazing. AS to google video, the rate of nature documentaries on google-video flucuates.

You might be right that currently we are going through a time where animal documentaries aren’t as popular as the ones you mentioned, over the last 10 years or so though, they have been. Like, theres *A LOT of famous animal documentaries that people eat up.

Look at how many discovery type channels there are based around nature. That is entire channels which air numerous documentaries, or specifically made shows about animal researchers.

David attenborough is pretty famous over it.
Theres some big cat trainer who is pretty well-liked and appears in numerous documentaries or shows.

I think that all the animal documentaries produced + shows about animal tv and so forth and so on probably do indeed eclipse documentaries about other things.

You have your crocodile hunter and about a thousand offshoots of him, I mean, he may have been a hick, but he did express concern for animal welfare and at least gave some rudimentary information about the animals.

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theres a lot of shows with large predatory experts or whatever.
animal face off

its all over tv.

19

two sources or whatever is not really a huge endorsement of the idea.

If you look at documentary sites across the net, there is absolutely no shortage of animal documentaries, no short-age of tv programs either.

I’ve watched dozens of animal documentaries online; just about tigers. Every aspect of tiger life, to the dreaded swamp tigers.

look at wikipedia under ‘david attenborough’

theres dozens of documentaries he alone has been critically envolved in, all top QUALITY too.

(thats another thing the quality of animal documentaries exceeds the quality of documentaries about other subjects by leaps and bounds)

20

People might not be worried about some abstract plant-eater going extinct.

But people love their tigers, bears, lions, and other predatory megafauna. I can’t turn the tv onto discovery channel for ten seconds without being bombarded with sharks.