Also, one opposition party candidate running for a senate position wants to reform health care...to a goddamned barter system. Really? Seriously? They gave this ditz the opportunity to backpedal and explain the "chickens for checkups" thing as some sort of analogy. But nope.
Chickens.
I have to stop now, the red flashes in my vision indicate I'm about to black out from a mix of fury and sorrow at someone else's stupidity.
You are reaching. Do you seriously want no offshore drilling? I want SAFE drilling. The article does not say anything about Palin's position on safety measures. I can't stand Palin, but this article doesn't provide enough information.
Her husband working for BP doesn't mean much. That's like blaming a postal worker for Obama's foreign policy. I think you may be on the right track, but you have to flesh it our more.
Kilarney: While I KNOW I am going to regret engaging you on this, the fact that she was all for drilling, then oddly silent when Obama brought it up as a possibility, then was berating of BP when her husband used to work for the company, AND used it as an opportunity to poke demagoguery about "foreign companies" is what I'm getting at. The article doesn't go into deep specifics, but more is easily found with a Google search.
On a side note, I found out that BP was leasing the rig from another company and didn't actually build it themselves. While their safety standards are being rightfully questioned, guess who built the rig?
I just want to point out that "safe" doesn't mean "risk-free." It means we have taken all reasonable precautions and the operation is relatively low risk. The confluence of circumstances that led to this particular spill are incredibly unlikely. It wasn't just one failure, but several equipment failures in a row that led to this problem. (The main failure being the emergency valve that is supposed to block off the top of the well if anything happens above. Also not made by BP, and used by pretty much all the oil companies, not just BP.)
Palin is being an asshole and taking advantage of the situation by appealing to the viscera of stupid people. The Daily Show is doing it too, albeit in a less politically harmful way. (They played audio clips of someone saying drilling was safe, and then the same person saying that no one ever said drilling was risk-free. Those statements are not necessarily contradictory. You can drive safely, but there is still risk involved with driving. Same concept.)
I just want to point out that "safe" doesn't mean "risk-free."
This is true. What should happen next in a person's internal debate over whether they desire off-shore drilling is a cost/benefit type analysis. What sort of risk are we willing to take with off-shore drilling? Do we have no regard at all for the environment, or are we so terribly thirsty for oil that the thirst overshadows any environmental consideration?
I submit that, where the environment is concerned, given the amount of oil that can likely be gleaned from off-shore drilling, and given the damage that even an unlikely spill can produce, we should refrain from off-shore drilling.
You can drive safely, but there is still risk involved with driving. Same concept.
. . . but not on the same scale. If one of the risks of driving was profoundly damaging an entire ecosystem, with all the environmental and human costs that can be reasonably be foreseen arising from such damage, I'll bet that I would be much more circumspect and cautious about driving my car.
If one of the risks of driving was profoundly damaging an entire ecosystem, with all the environmental and human costs that can be reasonably be foreseen arising from such damage,
On a large scale, that is indeed one of the risks of driving.
If one of the risks of driving was profoundly damaging an entire ecosystem, with all the environmental and human costs that can be reasonably be foreseen arising from such damage,
On a large scale, that is indeed one of the risks of driving.
So, If I get into my car this afternoon, I could potentially do as much environmental damage as the Gulf oil spill?
Perhaps what you mean is that the aggregate of all drivers driving all their cars damages the environment as much as the spill. That may be true, but I'm pretty sure that's not what Nuri meant when she said safe driving =/= risk free driving. I'm pretty sure she meant for that to be a statement applying to the micro-, not the macro- side of driving.
I think you guys are mixing up the metaphors. The danger of driving Nuri is speaking about is the risk of injury resulting from accidents, not the environmental consequences of the gasoline powered engine. The engine is a replaceable part of the car and a car may be powered by any number of forms of energy (with varying efficiency). The right comparison would be genocide as the result of people driving cars, not an environmental catastrophe.
While "safe" and "risk-free" are indeed two different concepts, HungryJoe is very much correct about the necessity of a risk-benefit analysis and in my opinion endangering such a major part of the environment as off-shore drilling generates is not worth the energy we can produce. Can we now please move on to cleaner form of energy production and invest in the development thereof?
I could potentially do as much environmental damage as the Gulf oil spill?
Well, you could. The odds are probably a lot lower, but it's certainly possible.
I'm pretty sure she meant for that to be a statement applying to the micro-, not the macro- side of driving.
It's just a comparative statement, I think. Driving carries risks like any other activity we perform, and at some point, we do a cost/benefit analysis of said risky activity.
You also have to consider the proportional damage caused by each activity. Offshore drilling is a pretty huge resource-consuming activity, and those rigs are huge, so of course any problem in the rig turns into a very large problem. Crashing a single car is a smaller problem, but the proportional damage could be higher depending on what was hit. You also have to realize that an oil rig failing is probably akin to a major bridge collapsing.
but the proportional damage could be higher depending on what was hit.
I once worked on a project for a transit company that specialized in shipping chemicals. If you ever see a truck with what looks like a tank with a cage around it, that's transporting something far deadlier than this gulf oil spill.
It was a simple demonstration of how the terms are not opposites. It was not intended to be a metaphor for the oil-drilling industry. I was not making an argument that drilling for oil is safe. I was pointing out the difference between "safe" and "risk-free."
As for clean fuel, I'm all for it. Let's use it. It's still going to be a hell of a long transition, and we're going to have to do some environmental harm to get oil in the short term. Given that, the contingency plan that was in place for this oil disaster (basically, none) was egregiously lacking. There should have been a plan for what to do if the safeguard equipment failed. This was like having a fire break out in a building and the sprinkler system fail, but then having no access for the fire trucks to get to the building. (There, a real metaphor!) It's just plain stupid and irresponsible. That's what they should be focusing on; Not the safety of drilling for oil in an ideal situation, but the safety of drilling for oil the way we are doing it right now. They have little incentive to develop new technology if we are going to switch altogether to a new fuel source, even though we need oil in the meantime.
but the proportional damage could be higher depending on what was hit.
I once worked on a project for a transit company that specialized in shipping chemicals. If you ever see a truck with what looks like a tank with a cage around it, that's transporting something far deadlier than this gulf oil spill.
I've something like those once in a while moving back and forth from Chicago. One looked like a giant Dewar flask and had an NFPA 704 panel reading all fours, the other had some boxy structures covered by thick tarps and an NFPA 704 that had all fours AND a radioactivity trefoil.
One such truck apparently once jackknifed and rolled right in front of the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel at rush hour. One brave cop decided he wanted to ram the trailer off the road with his car so that traffic could get through. The boss of the company told him that if he decided to do so, to let him know so he could call his relatives in Connecticut and tell them to start driving north. :P
I've something like those once in a while moving back and forth from Chicago. One looked like a giant Dewar flask and had an NFPA 704 panel reading all fours, the other had some boxy structures covered by thick tarps and an NFPA 704 that had all fours AND a radioactivity trefoil.
What I sometimes worry about is a Large scale Liquid oxygen spill from a truck - I've seen what happens when you put LOX on a nice, sun-heated, oily asphalt road surface. Conflagration is putting it mildly.
What I sometimes worry about is a Large scale Liquid oxygen spill from a truck - I've seen what happens when you put LOX on a nice, sun-heated, oily asphalt road surface. Conflagration is putting it mildly.
A couple years back, a tanker of hydrofluoric acid rolled on a highway in Pennsylvania. HF is particularly fond of bonding to calcium. Within a couple of hours, the entire stretch of road had dissolved, and there was a cloud of HF in the area.
Extra fun bonus: You don't know when you're succumbing to hydrofluoric acid poisoning. It rather painlessly permeates your skin and mucosa, works its way to any available calcium, and strips you for it. The result in severe cases is the complete internal failure of your skeletal system. To treat it, they shoot you full of calcium gluconate to saturate the burn area with calcium ions. And then you sweat fluorite. Yes, you sweat stone out; calcium fluoride is insoluble in blood and can only escape through your pores. This whole process is about as unimaginably painful as you would think growing stone in your bloodstream would be. And if that fails, they amputate.
I've said for ages that I want us to end our dependency on oil. However, we need to have a good plan. If you stop off-shore drilling, the price of oil will go way up, and the poor will be hit the hardest. We need ensure that those who are less fortunate are not left in the dust. Much more so than Europe, development is the USA reflects our "car culture." As a result, many poor people have no choice but to spend lots of money on gasoline. As much as I am in favor of energy prices changing the way we develop our communities, we've got existing infrastructure that has been built with the automobile as king. Just look at cities like Los Angeles. The LA public transportation system is anemic. That's not going to change overnight.
It's really tough, since there are lots of consequences. I'm confident that we will solve our way out of this problem, but we need to work hard to do so. The sooner we develop and/or improve alternatives, the sooner we can start building an infrastructure to replace oil. Until that time, reducing oil production will present serious social consequences.
One frustrating complication is that the market isn't linear. Decreasing oil production by 1% does not equal a comparable rise in the price of oil. Turning off production in the Gulf of Mexico would likely have a huge impact on the price of oil, even if it is a fraction of our overall supply.
It really stinks that we built our infrastructure based on a product that we knew would run out. We can solve our way out of that problem, but we aren't there yet and the clock is ticking. Ending offshore production may be noble, but it's going to have tremendous social consequences. Any decision must be the result of an analysis of the entire system, not just a reaction to one specific concern.
Less war and more funding for alternative energy. That's my formula for the time being.
If you stop off-shore drilling, the price of oil will go way up, and the poor will be hit the hardest.
If you stop offshore drilling temporarily, subsidize foreign oil while running out their supplies (your own natural reservoirs nicely intact), and then use future technology to cheaply extract it when foreign oil is scarce, you'll maintain economic and military superiority for generations (maybe). ^_~
As some or other general said a few years ago, "there aren't any electric jets: oil will determine the military future of the world."
If you stop offshore drilling temporarily, subsidize foreign oil while running out their supplies (your own natural reservoirs nicely intact), and then use future technology to cheaply extract it when foreign oil is scarce, you'll maintain economic and military superiority for generations (maybe). ^_~
As some or other general said a few years ago, "there aren't any electric jets: oil will determine the military future of the world."
If you stop offshore drilling temporarily, subsidize foreign oil while running out their supplies (your own natural reservoirs nicely intact), and then use future technology to cheaply extract it when foreign oil is scarce, you'll maintain economic and military superiority for generations (maybe). ^_~
The key word is maybe. If technology makes oil obsolete, your investment won't look so good. You also assume that there is sufficient oil from other sources to allow the economic model of subsidies to work.
I recall hearing a physics professor say that cheap oil is limited, but that there is plenty of expensive (to extract) oil out there. The threat right now is that we will run out of affordable oil, and not all oil.
One other thing to keep in mind: If we reduce oil production, coal will replace much of that oil. Is this really any better?
A lot of environmentalists are swayed by emotion. They may have good intentions, but smart decisions stem from facts. It sucks that many environmental causes have negative consequences, but it's important to recognize that fact. This is one reason that there is division amongst environmentalists.
Locally, we've got environmentalists on both sides of proposed industrial wind turbines. Each side has valid arguments. This is good evidence that no matter what decision is made, there is something negative that will come with it. At the end of the day, it may come down to a judgment call. There really might not be a "correct" answer.
Comments
Ebooks for schools can't come soon enough.
Scott Murphy can't explain why he opposes the financial reform bill.
Also, one opposition party candidate running for a senate position wants to reform health care...to a goddamned barter system. Really? Seriously? They gave this ditz the opportunity to backpedal and explain the "chickens for checkups" thing as some sort of analogy. But nope.
Chickens.
I have to stop now, the red flashes in my vision indicate I'm about to black out from a mix of fury and sorrow at someone else's stupidity.
Her husband working for BP doesn't mean much. That's like blaming a postal worker for Obama's foreign policy. I think you may be on the right track, but you have to flesh it our more.
On a side note, I found out that BP was leasing the rig from another company and didn't actually build it themselves. While their safety standards are being rightfully questioned, guess who built the rig?
Haliburton.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Palin is being an asshole and taking advantage of the situation by appealing to the viscera of stupid people. The Daily Show is doing it too, albeit in a less politically harmful way. (They played audio clips of someone saying drilling was safe, and then the same person saying that no one ever said drilling was risk-free. Those statements are not necessarily contradictory. You can drive safely, but there is still risk involved with driving. Same concept.)
I submit that, where the environment is concerned, given the amount of oil that can likely be gleaned from off-shore drilling, and given the damage that even an unlikely spill can produce, we should refrain from off-shore drilling. . . . but not on the same scale. If one of the risks of driving was profoundly damaging an entire ecosystem, with all the environmental and human costs that can be reasonably be foreseen arising from such damage, I'll bet that I would be much more circumspect and cautious about driving my car.
Perhaps what you mean is that the aggregate of all drivers driving all their cars damages the environment as much as the spill. That may be true, but I'm pretty sure that's not what Nuri meant when she said safe driving =/= risk free driving. I'm pretty sure she meant for that to be a statement applying to the micro-, not the macro- side of driving.
While "safe" and "risk-free" are indeed two different concepts, HungryJoe is very much correct about the necessity of a risk-benefit analysis and in my opinion endangering such a major part of the environment as off-shore drilling generates is not worth the energy we can produce. Can we now please move on to cleaner form of energy production and invest in the development thereof?
You also have to consider the proportional damage caused by each activity. Offshore drilling is a pretty huge resource-consuming activity, and those rigs are huge, so of course any problem in the rig turns into a very large problem. Crashing a single car is a smaller problem, but the proportional damage could be higher depending on what was hit. You also have to realize that an oil rig failing is probably akin to a major bridge collapsing.
As for clean fuel, I'm all for it. Let's use it. It's still going to be a hell of a long transition, and we're going to have to do some environmental harm to get oil in the short term. Given that, the contingency plan that was in place for this oil disaster (basically, none) was egregiously lacking. There should have been a plan for what to do if the safeguard equipment failed. This was like having a fire break out in a building and the sprinkler system fail, but then having no access for the fire trucks to get to the building. (There, a real metaphor!) It's just plain stupid and irresponsible. That's what they should be focusing on; Not the safety of drilling for oil in an ideal situation, but the safety of drilling for oil the way we are doing it right now. They have little incentive to develop new technology if we are going to switch altogether to a new fuel source, even though we need oil in the meantime.
One such truck apparently once jackknifed and rolled right in front of the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel at rush hour. One brave cop decided he wanted to ram the trailer off the road with his car so that traffic could get through. The boss of the company told him that if he decided to do so, to let him know so he could call his relatives in Connecticut and tell them to start driving north. :P
Extra fun bonus: You don't know when you're succumbing to hydrofluoric acid poisoning. It rather painlessly permeates your skin and mucosa, works its way to any available calcium, and strips you for it. The result in severe cases is the complete internal failure of your skeletal system. To treat it, they shoot you full of calcium gluconate to saturate the burn area with calcium ions. And then you sweat fluorite. Yes, you sweat stone out; calcium fluoride is insoluble in blood and can only escape through your pores. This whole process is about as unimaginably painful as you would think growing stone in your bloodstream would be. And if that fails, they amputate.
It's really tough, since there are lots of consequences. I'm confident that we will solve our way out of this problem, but we need to work hard to do so. The sooner we develop and/or improve alternatives, the sooner we can start building an infrastructure to replace oil. Until that time, reducing oil production will present serious social consequences.
One frustrating complication is that the market isn't linear. Decreasing oil production by 1% does not equal a comparable rise in the price of oil. Turning off production in the Gulf of Mexico would likely have a huge impact on the price of oil, even if it is a fraction of our overall supply.
It really stinks that we built our infrastructure based on a product that we knew would run out. We can solve our way out of that problem, but we aren't there yet and the clock is ticking. Ending offshore production may be noble, but it's going to have tremendous social consequences. Any decision must be the result of an analysis of the entire system, not just a reaction to one specific concern.
Less war and more funding for alternative energy. That's my formula for the time being.
As some or other general said a few years ago, "there aren't any electric jets: oil will determine the military future of the world."
I recall hearing a physics professor say that cheap oil is limited, but that there is plenty of expensive (to extract) oil out there. The threat right now is that we will run out of affordable oil, and not all oil.
One other thing to keep in mind: If we reduce oil production, coal will replace much of that oil. Is this really any better?
A lot of environmentalists are swayed by emotion. They may have good intentions, but smart decisions stem from facts. It sucks that many environmental causes have negative consequences, but it's important to recognize that fact. This is one reason that there is division amongst environmentalists.
Locally, we've got environmentalists on both sides of proposed industrial wind turbines. Each side has valid arguments. This is good evidence that no matter what decision is made, there is something negative that will come with it. At the end of the day, it may come down to a judgment call. There really might not be a "correct" answer.