All because they want to protect the profits of big oil companies. DRILL, DRILL, DRILL. These douche bags insist on being stuck in the last century, and then wonder why they're in such electoral trouble.

http://features.csmonitor.com/environme ... edit-bill/

http://vetvoice.com/showDiary.do;jsessi ... aryId=1700

People that hate innovation are unpatriotic.

I'm not so sure about that connection, but politicians who criticize those who vote against troop funding as troop haters, then turn around and vote against troop funding in order to protect oil company profits are the lowest form of scum that there is.

Now now, calm down young man.

Innovation is a basic American value, and opposing it is un-American. Theoretically, expanded drilling is an acceptable stopgap measure while next-generation infrastructure is built up, investment in which many pro-drilling folks are opposed to on ideological grounds.

As for the "troops" thing -- American soldiers shed their blood on the beaches of Normandy and Guadalcanal so we don't have to live in a country with a warrior cult. That is the irony of liberal democracy.

fuck them for blocking the solar tax credits. not surprising, but fucking lame nonetheless. uggggggggggggh.

as for the troop funding, what's new? they tout the interests of the troops but let partisan bullshit get in the way of things. suck it up and enjoy your pain-in-the-ass minority while it lasts - it'll only be shrinking come november.

So the Dems recessed Congress for the summer, but a few Repubs are still there trying to make a symbolic gesture about voting on more drilling (to which one Dem cleverly remarked, "They must think Big Oil is paying them by the hour"). More drilling, more drilling, because, they say, that's the solution to our current economic problems.

Now, everyone knows that's not true, including them. Allowing for more drilling will accomplish absolutely nothing for another twelve years at the minimum, and will accomplish almost nothing after that. But these guys are making a stupidly grand show about it. In fact, drilling is such a canard that Obama has hinted that he might just give it to them so Dems can finally get shit done without these Republican jerkoffs blocking everything.

Why the obsession with drilling? Are their constituent really this dumb to believe that drilling means anything?

I can't stand the way legislation is passed in this country.

Troop funding - Solar Tax Credits.

Two separate bills please.

As to drilling. Will it change the current economic issues we're having? Not in the slightest. That said, it should be done, and it can only help in the future.

I don't however understand why you seem to think it will have so little effect Beeble? You do realize the Arctic holds over 13% of the world's undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids. It will help, it should be tapped, why depend on Canada, South America, and Saudi Arabia when we can drill a much larger portion ourselves?

But all that said, drilling is only an answer to our current problems if it was done 15 years ago. Still, we can do it now with FAR less environmental impact, it can help us 15 years from now (likely sooner), and looking to the future is the smart thing to do.

Aside from the political/environmental issues and the fact that those quantities would only be a tiny stopgap in the big picture - - don't those percentages seem awfully precise for undiscovered resources?

You're not even taking into account how difficult it is to drill in the Arctic. Forget legal problems, you need cash, you even need your own gas supply to get oil, you need time, you need equipment, and because it's in the Arctic, all of that is way more difficult.

It's not a solution at all. It's a distraction. Our parents and grandparents should have been seriously looking at radically transforming our energy sources thirty goddamn years ago, and instead they are making us eat the shit.

It's not drilling that's an issue. It's using drilling as an excuse to stick our collective heads in the sand. Of course Arctic drilling is feasible -- the problem is incorporating that into a plan that strengthens the geopolitical position of the United States. I'm a commodities trader, I should know. What we need to do is drill while investing in an alternative-energy New Deal, to have expanded drilling rights as a temporary stopgap as we wean our economy away from oil. That this issue is even deemed a "liberal" or "conservative" issue is an insult to my intelligence; it's an American -- and indeed, global -- challenge.

Oh, and just as a reminder, the solar tax credits got blocked. A little sliver of betterment for our posterity, snubbed as pork barrel spending.

Alternative Energy doesn't need a "New Deal". What it needs is increased manufacturing capacity in the U.S. - none of the big Wind companies can meet the demand in the U.S.

This is very simple. People who say this are either ignorant or dishonest. Congressional Republicans are being dishonest. You are being ignorant.

It will NOT help the future. The BEST estimates for when the oil from ANWR will hit the market are 2020 at the SOONEST. The BEST estimates for how much oil will come from ANWR are about 10 billion barrels TOTAL. And there's only a 5% chance that there is that much. Peak production from ANWR would be about 1 million barrels per day.

1 million barrels per day at its PEAK. The US currently consumes 20 MILLION BARRELS PER DAY. We currently produce 8 million barrels of oil per day and import the rest.

Finally, the BEST estimates for how ANWR oil will affect pricing in TWELVE YEARS when it finally hits the market is about 3 cents a gallon of gas.

So it won't help consumers at all, unless you think 3 cents a gallon is going to rescue the economy in any meaningful way. What it WILL accomplish, however, is making the oil companies about $1.4 TRILLION in revenue at today's prices.

As for offshore drilling, the effect is even less. First of all, of the total acreage the US has surveyed for oil, the oil companies already have leases to drill on 80% of it. Yep, they already have millions of acres to drill and have simply chosen not to. The reasons for this are complicated, but the bottom line is that, at current prices, they can't make enough money. They have to wait for the price of oil to reach a price per barrel that warrants the expense of tapping those offshore wells.

One of the ways you get there is tax credits that encourage increased investment from the private sector. That's what Republicans are blocking in order to protect the profits of Big Oil.

It was two separate bills. Republicans blocked both of them.

Yes, one of the ways - at the taxpayers' expense.

Are you under the impression that any energy solution is NOT going to involve tax payer's expense?

It doesn't have to, indeed why should it?

That's a poor excuse for tax credits for alternative energy. That's a very good argument for removing tax credits from other energy solutions.

Dems are trying to remove tax credits for oil companies, which the Republicans have also blocked.

Normally, I'd agree with you about tax credits for ANY business. But I think we're in a deep bind here that is going to need government and private industry to work together. In order to meet power demands over the next ten to fifteen years, we'll need a much more substantial investment in infrastructure than what the private sector is willing or able to meet since the profit incentive is likely to be more long term. You'd need about a thousand T. Boone Pickens-type angel investors out there willing to delay profit return.

I also wanted to point out that in a speech this week, Obama made the point that simply by making sure that our tires are inflated and our engines are tuned, we could save more gas than we would be able to get from all of the offshore drilling that Republicans are screaming about.

Obama got his info from the Dept of Energy AND the auto industry, who estimate that we could save roughly 800,000 barrels of oil PER DAY.

Newt Gingrich and the other right-wing bloviators have ridiculed Obama's suggestion as "looney tunes." Except that Obama is right and Gingrich and the other conservatives are lying sacks of shit.

Oh, and unlike the Republican plan that provides those barrels around the year 2030, Obama's solution is available RIGHT NOW.

Tell us a bit more about what state the domestic wind power industry is in right now. You're the expert here, having done substantial work in the industry on the business side. Is it only a matter of capital investment? What kinds of policies would be helpful toward the industry?

Right now all of the big European manufacturers and GE are expanding their presence in the U.S. What is missing still is the ability to nationalize the supply of raw materials - a lot of that stuff (like 50% of the value of the turbine in our case) comes from Europe. Because of this, we still can't fully leverage the cheaper U.S. Dollar. Many people say that this is due the Congress not renewing Production Tax Credits. While that is partly true, it has more to do with the fact that we have not been very aggressive in pursuing our key business partners from Europe to move over here - although there have been some successes - our suppliers of composites and of blades have moved over stateside.

Another huge challenge is our internal quality problems - this comes with the territory when you're trying to jump start a huge manufacturing plant from scratch. I can't go into too many details here, but I'll just say that the union is being less than helpful with these issues.

Finally, our company's inexperience in dealing with construction firms in the U.S. (we are also in the business of installing and commissioning wind farms) has reared its ugly head - managing costs has been very problematic.

I am sure our competitors are dealing with some, if not all, of the same issues.

By the way the U.S. market just became the biggest wind energy producer in the world: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... wer.energy (note, this is not by installed capacity, but by energy produced).