Pat, you're our resident environmentalist - anything new about the disaster in the Gulf that you've read?

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mechaphil

Unions good...clean water bad

http://www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC-SCOTU ... Act-waiver

/facepalm

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Boosh and boosh.

(I won't comment on the rest of the stuff like BP continuing to dick around with immunity, because I agree it's horseshit.)

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mechaphil

Gibb's response was "there are no pending requests".
...because the initial offers of help were refused...

So yeah, that would kind of clear the queue.

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everything is litigation. cross does that crap. i worry about the earth.

Drill Alaska and get out of the ocean.

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Wheelhouse

get solar and stop making new drill sites

The Jones Act, also known as The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, states that goods being transported between US ports over water are to be carried on US ships owned by US citizens, etc.

The Jones Act does not apply to foreign vessels working in US waters, so no waivers of the Jones Act are required to perform spill or cleanup response, although that may be covered under other laws.

The waivers of the Jones Act post Katrina were to allow foreign ships to transport oil and natural gas. That waiver was also granted by Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff, not President Bush.

I'm not happy about a lot of the administration's handling of this incident, but let's get our facts right and leave the hackery out of it, shall we?

Not that easy. Gotta fund a transition like that pretty heavily. Money's gotta come from somewhere.

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Wheelhouse

we have enough active wells to fund that transition

The Dutch still want to help...


http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/us ... 41579.html


even the most optimistic estimates say in maybe 15 years we could get 10% of our energy from solar.
That's not enough to get us off fossil fuels by a long shot.

No existing alternate energy source is the answer so everyone should get these windmill and solar panel thoughts out of their heads when considering solutions.
They may incrementally help, but they're not the answer.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

If you want to criticize the administration for not accepting help that's offered, I'll go right with you.

But, that article you posted is just utter hackery.

"Oh, Obama won't waive the Jones Act because he's in bed with unions." The Jones Act DOESN'T NEED TO BE WAIVED for this.

"Oh, Bush waived the Jones Act right after Katrina. Why won't Obama?" Chertoff waived the Act, not Bush. Again, it doesn't need to be waived for this.

Fine, then take the quote from the Dutch Embassy.

Same net effect.

Maybe it's a brilliant plan to get those fishermen back to work cleaning up the beaches...that's why we wouldn't want extra skimming capacity.

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Like I said, if the administration is turning down legitimate help from other countries, I'll be raging right along with everyone else.

those estimates are wrong. and i don't expect that we are off oil at all, but if we were to switch to a system of renewables (all of them) we could feasibly decrease our demand for oil by 20%.

not even going to speculate what would happen if people used electricity responsibly.

The real problem is overpopulation.

If we don't get our numbers under control, mother nature is going to do it in a way that we aren't going to like very much.

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Wheelhouse

Spot fucking on, Adam.

Problem is, people don't like talking about population control. I've been called a Nazi far too many times than I'm comfortable with for sharing my views on population control.

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mechaphil

Well, if the problem is overpopulation, then the US isn't really a source of the problem.

The *real problem is consumption

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I think that's a peripheral issue.

Much of the power we generate now via burning carbon is wasted. Our power transmission system is inefficient, and a shitton of power is wasted to zombie devices drawing power when they're off.

If we could make our transmission system suck less, and not waste so much power, we could greatly reduce our dependence on burning shit. Renewable energies COULD end up being a larger chunk of our needs.

Either way, it can't hurt.

Ahh but if we just had a clean way to burn coal that everyone would be happy with we'd be energy independent tomorrow.
We're the Saudi Arabia of coal.

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Hold my beer and watch this...