Biden Administration Approves Controversial Alaska Oil Drilling Project 136
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Biden administration on Monday gave the green light to a sprawling oil drilling project in Alaska, opening the nation's largest expanse of untouched land to energy production. The multibillion-dollar project will be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and could produce nearly 600 million barrels of crude oil over the next 30 years, according to the Interior Department. The department noted in announcing the approval that it reduced the scope of the plan, called the Willow Project, by denying two of the five drill sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, Alaska's largest crude oil producer. The department estimated that the project could produce nearly a quarter of a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
The project had received forceful pushback from environmentalists, who pointed to its potential climate and environmental effects. The Native American community closest to the site has also opposed (PDF) the project, though others have supported it. The oil industry and Alaskan lawmakers had urged the president to approve the project for its energy production potential and its ability to create jobs. [...] But Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said the harm the project will cause "may not ever be able to be undone. This is the equivalent of putting dozens and dozens of coal-fired power plants back online. It makes it almost impossible to understand how the administration will ever meet its promises to reduce emissions from public lands."
A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines. Administration lawyers determined that the courts would not have allowed Biden to reject the project outright, as ConocoPhillips has long held leases on land in the petroleum reserve and could have levied fines on the government, the source added. The Interior Department announced Monday that ConocoPhillips would relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the petroleum reserve, most of which are close to the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, a major habitat for caribou and other wildlife that Native communities rely on. On Sunday, the Biden administration declared about 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean as indefinitely off-limits for future oil and gas leasing. The Interior Department said it is also considering additional protections for more than 13 million acres within the reserve that have significant natural or historical value.
The project had received forceful pushback from environmentalists, who pointed to its potential climate and environmental effects. The Native American community closest to the site has also opposed (PDF) the project, though others have supported it. The oil industry and Alaskan lawmakers had urged the president to approve the project for its energy production potential and its ability to create jobs. [...] But Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said the harm the project will cause "may not ever be able to be undone. This is the equivalent of putting dozens and dozens of coal-fired power plants back online. It makes it almost impossible to understand how the administration will ever meet its promises to reduce emissions from public lands."
A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines. Administration lawyers determined that the courts would not have allowed Biden to reject the project outright, as ConocoPhillips has long held leases on land in the petroleum reserve and could have levied fines on the government, the source added. The Interior Department announced Monday that ConocoPhillips would relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the petroleum reserve, most of which are close to the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, a major habitat for caribou and other wildlife that Native communities rely on. On Sunday, the Biden administration declared about 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean as indefinitely off-limits for future oil and gas leasing. The Interior Department said it is also considering additional protections for more than 13 million acres within the reserve that have significant natural or historical value.
... the Biden administration had little choice... (Score:5, Informative)
"A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines. Administration lawyers determined that the courts would not have allowed Biden to reject the project outright, as ConocoPhillips has long held leases on land in the petroleum reserve and could have levied fines on the government, the source added.
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>"A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines
Nail the coffin completely by mentioning which administration enacted the contract that allowed legal action and costly fines....
Re:... the Biden administration had little choice. (Score:5, Insightful)
And thank God for that.
Any oil we extract ourselves is the oil we don't buy from Russia, Venezuela, Iran or other similar bastions of goodness.
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In 2021 the US imported about 8.47 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum from 73 countries and exported about 8.54 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories, making the United States a net petroleum exporter of 0.06 million b/d in 2021. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
Buying petroleum is like buying "grain". You buy from a source that is cheap, has the type you need, or that you have the capability to process that other countries don't, then sell what you have excess of or hav
Re: ... the Biden administration had little choice (Score:2)
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We need to divert investment in new oil fields to new renewable energy sources, energy transition (e.g. to electric cars), and energy saving. One option is to tax profits on oil, but even better would be to make the companies thinking about investing in new oil invest in clean energy instead.
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We don't need to rob Peter to pay Paul.
We need both research and investment in renewable energy, but we put ourselves at great risk domestically and internationally if we try to cut the legs out from under the current sources of energy (fossil) before we are even at all close to being able to depends on and survive on renewables alone.
We aren't even in the ballpark
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There isn't time for that. We need to be switching away from fossil fuels much faster.
The best way to stop dependence on oil from places like Iran and Russia is to use less oil.
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No matter how much we would like to switch, we cannot until the technology is mature enough, widespread enough and we have the infrastructure set up sufficiently to overtake fossil fuel usage that currently provides the energy we need for our civilization to function at at least its current needs.
We currently have fossil fuels an
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The technology is already mature enough. The issue is the cost of rapidly deploying it.
Even if it wasn't mature enough, that would only be a case of throwing more money at maturing it faster. NASA went from only having done a sub-orbital manned flight to landing on the moon in 9 years.
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True...but that's only sending 2-4 people into space.
That's nothing compared to supporting all the energy and travel needs of 300M+ people in the US on a daily basis, 24/7.
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Is this a serious argument?
Re: ... the Biden administration had little choice (Score:2)
From a national security POV, we need to keep drilling until we have a cheaper substitute for O&G used in chemistry. However, because so many ppl, esp far lefties, continue to NOT switch to EVs, nor switch home's HVAC from Nat Gas, we need O&G for fuel.
Our current inflation is due to your goon squad messing with O&G drilling. Had you idiots not done Xi/Putin's bidding, America would have had plenty of O&G to replace Russia's output to Euro
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If we were not using so much oil and gas for energy, there would be more of it available for chemistry.
What you mean is you want burning oil and gas for heating and transport to keep the price low. There are other, better ways of doing that.
By the way, see how I make a rational argument using reason, instead of calling you an idiot and accusing you of doing some despot's bidding?
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Nail the coffin completely by mentioning which administration enacted the contract that allowed legal action and costly fines....
My guess is this was from the Obama administration. Had Trump been involved then every mainstream media outlet would make sure everyone knew about his involvement.
Re:... the Biden administration had little choice. (Score:5, Informative)
In August 2020, during the last quarter of the Donald Trump Administration, the BLM approved the development of the ConocoPhillips project option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There goes your theory. Oh since Fox has been the number one cable news channel for years, does that not make them mainstream?
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In August 2020, during the last quarter of the Donald Trump Administration, the BLM approved the development of the ConocoPhillips project option.
As much as it pains me to acknowledge that the former president did anything right, increasing access to domestic oil production is the right call. The demand for oil isn't going away and we're going to acquire it one way or another. I'd rather see it produced domestically than purchased from countries controlled by authoritarian regimes.
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You have been seeing the shit that Trudeau and govt. has been pulling lately, haven't you?
Jailing a comedian for telling jokes that "offended"...
Freezing and seizing bank accounts from protesters he didn't like?
Just a couple of examples.
I guess it helps when you don't have a "free speech" clause in your constitution.
Re: ... the Biden administration had little choice (Score:2)
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Also from your Wikipedia link...
In 1999, ConocoPhillips acquired the first Willow-area leases in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska called the Bear Tooth Unit (BTU).
Who was POTUS in 1999? Bill Clinton.
Also from that Wikipedia article...
In 2016, ConocoPhillips drilled two oil exploration wells, which encountered "significant pay". It named this discovery Willow. In 2018, it appraised the greater Willow area and discovered three additional oil prospects.
Obama was POTUS in 2016, and Trump was POTUS in 2018. It appears to me that there's plenty of presidential administrations to blame on this, from both major political parties. Oh, and don't forget Obama had a hand in this.
Obama could have done plenty to improve energy independence for the USA. I recall a debate between Obama and McCain when they were both running for POTUS. McCain argued for more nucl
Re: ... the Biden administration had little choice (Score:2)
Re: ... the Biden administration had little choice (Score:2)
And Carter had far more experience/understanding with nuclear energy of that time. As it was, he risked his life to stop the world's first reactor meltdown, before it turned into a total disaster. Someone like reagan or Trump would have allowed it to happen.
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Because the article says it's the *lease* (approved by Clinton) doing that, not the project Trump approved...
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From your link: "ConocoPhillips acquired the first Willow-area leases in 1999". Clinton was president in 1999....
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The Wikipedia article has plenty of citations. Did you bother to look? Also the Wikipedia article has a public edit history. Did you bother to look?The indiscriminate insulting of Wikipedia is an unfounded and lazy argument. Do better.
You've seen the "I did that" stickers on gas pumps (Score:2)
Biden also had little choice in the court of public opinion. Americans earning below the average median income can't afford the average-priced new car, let alone a brand new BEV. It's all well and good to imagine all the ways you'd like to change the transportation sector if given unlimited funds to do so, but here in the real world, people have to be able to earn a living using the vehicle they already own. Even progressives like Bernie Sanders have finally acknowledged that even if you heavily carbon t
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Biden also had little choice in the court of public opinion. Americans earning below the average median income can't afford the average-priced new car, let alone a brand new BEV. It's all well and good to imagine all the ways you'd like to change the transportation sector if given unlimited funds to do so, but here in the real world, people have to be able to earn a living using the vehicle they already own. Even progressives like Bernie Sanders have finally acknowledged that even if you heavily carbon taxed petroleum, you'd still have to rebate that tax back to lower income folks who would be unfairly burdened.
That's an inequality & poverty problem, not a carbon tax problem. There's no problem with rebating taxes to the poor. That would be a political decision not an energy security nor an economic one. It's about who they want to favour & ultimately the kind of people they want to be.
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"A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines.
You think ConocoPhillips had more financial stake than something that could be trivially bought out by the US government? Heck far larger oil and gas companies have been shown the middle finger by far FAR smaller countries, handed over a bit of money as fines to break leases and it's all done.
The Biden administration certainly did have a choice.
Choices in a free Society (Score:2, Insightful)
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You're absolutely right, but then you have to wonder why certain energy is cheap and plentiful while other isn't, and why that is so very different in the USA compared to some other countries.
In case you're wondering the phrase you're looking for starts with the word "industry" and ends in the word "lobbying".
Imagine what the poor people could be doing if the money subsidising oil and gas were instead spent on subsidising other things.
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Environmentalism goes hand-in-hand with socialism, because the people least able to afford clean energy are also the ones most likely to be affected by pollution and climate change. They are also the ones most likely to suffer from extremes of heat and cold.
It needs action at government level to help redistribute some of the wealth to helping people who e.g. can't afford to insulate their home. The UK was doing it for years and it worked pretty well. Basically you could get free insulation for your home, pa
Re: Choices in a free Society (Score:2)
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It's almost as if socialism and communism aren't the same thing, and that failures of leadership aren't the same as ideological flaws.
In any case, it's not true. Look at European socialist countries, best standard of living in the world and very clean in terms of pollution.
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This is why you can't have nice things, like consumer rights, or stable employment, or affordable healthcare.
Meanwhile, in the Irony Dept (Score:1)
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Remind me, what does "permafrost" describe? Oh yeah, ground that has been frozen solid for more than two years. [nasa.gov]
Are you afraid that a couple oil rigs will somehow melt the Alaskan Tundra?
Re: Meanwhile, in the Irony Dept (Score:2)
Maybe we should have given the US Navy more money (Score:5, Interesting)
For a very long time the US Navy has been building ships that burn no oil. We had more of them at one time but the funding was lost, with claims of this being too expensive. Perhaps at the time that was true but the policy makers in Congress had to know that oil wasn't always going to be cheap, and if there was an actual shooting war then oil would likely become a scarce commodity. So it would be in the best interest of national security to have as many vessels in the US Navy as possible to be nuclear powered.
The US Coast Guard has been begging for new icebreakers for a long time. The US Navy wants the US Coast Guard to have new icebreakers, so much so that some of the icebreakers the US Coast Guard had built in the last 40 years were paid for out of US Navy funds. If burning oil is a problem then maybe these icebreakers need to be nuclear powered. If oil spills in the Arctic circle is a concern then maybe these icebreakers should be nuclear powered. Russia has nuclear powered icebreakers, but not out of concern for the environment. Russia has nuclear powered icebreakers because they can keep going for months at a time without stopping for fuel, and can break more ice in that time because nuclear powered ships can produce more power than any that burn oil.
What the US Navy has also been working on for a long time is making jet fuel at sea from nuclear power and seawater. Only recently have they got the funds to do some testing in actual ships. If the US Navy got the funds for this technology earlier then maybe we would not have to produce so much petroleum to keep Navy aircraft flying. Because oil burning ships can run on this same fuel we could be fueling smaller Navy vessels from this same synthesized and carbon neutral fuel. Since this technology can be used anywhere there is a nuclear power plant and access to water this fuel synthesis technology could be replacing petroleum that is burned for all kinds of other vehicles, including those not used by the military.
We have an administration that feels "forced" to allow oil and gas drilling while also denying funds for carbon neutral synthesized fuel research and denying permits for new nuclear power plants. With Democrats like this then who needs Republicans? No doubt the Democrats are reluctant to fund any military project but it seems that the Department of Defense is getting far better results on alternative energy, and doing this while the Department of Energy is largely distracted with building nuclear weapons. Seems a bit backwards to me. The Department of Energy isn't going to solve our energy problems because if they did then their reasons for existence is gone. The Department of Defense is highly motivated in energy production because without fuel and electricity there's no vehicles moving, no radar, no computing, no communications, and no so much else.
We should dissolve the Department of Energy, dividing up the staff and facilities into Defense, Commerce, Natural Resources, EPA, NASA, Transportation, and/or whatever is appropriate. The Department of Energy is highly redundant and quite bad at their primary reason for existing, get rid of it. Oh, and don't forget to give the US Navy a good sized chunk of the DOE funds, they have some smart people there with actual energy solutions.
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We have an administration that feels "forced" to allow oil and gas drilling while also denying funds for carbon neutral synthesized fuel research and denying permits for new nuclear power plants.
Did you miss that story yesterday about how the Fukushima plants are still a huge radioactive mess that the Japanese aren't sure how they'll ever entirely clean up? That's what happens when things go wrong with nuclear, they can go very wrong. It may have made sense to build nukes in the old days, but it's more economically viable to use wind and solar today, and those technologies don't have "turn into a pile of radioactive hell on Earth" as a failure mode.
It's not a conspiracy. It's the free market bal
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If any of the bullshit you gave was even halfway true then we would not be drilling in Alaska for petroleum.
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If any of the bullshit you gave was even halfway true then we would not be drilling in Alaska for petroleum.
According to a quick Google search, the United States transportation sector includes nearly 300 million internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
Those engines need petroleum and it's still not economically viable to produce synthetic fuels using techno-wizardry and some other source of input energy. In fact, the retail cost of electricity is already so high in some markets *cough* California *cough* that it's simply more profitable to sell the electricity directly.
33.7 kWh (the energy content of one gallo
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Using electricity to produce synthetic fuels would be the worst of both worlds.
Who said anything about synthesizing fuels from electricity? The US Navy fuel synthesis process currently under investigation uses electricity but they've already been looking at ways to avoid the losses of converting the heat from the nuclear reactor into electricity and then using the electricity to synthesize fuel. If given the option to use heat from the reactor to drive a thermochemical process the efficiency improves considerably. Without that energy lost in conversion the cost of the end product i
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Did you miss that story yesterday about how the Fukushima plants are still a huge radioactive mess that the Japanese aren't sure how they'll ever entirely clean up?
Nope, didn't miss it, and I actually read TFA unlike you who apparently only read the title and alarming summary written by someone with an agenda. a) Fukushima plant is not a huge radioactive mess, as the radioactivity is contained and b) Japan has a plan and roadmap on cleaning it up. What do you think happened for Three Miles Island?
That's what happens when things go wrong with nuclear, they can go very wrong
If you want to look at somethingf that can go very wrong, you can look at the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975 (~170000 deaths, quite bad for a "clean" energy, which can
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You can't power an aircraft carrier, submarine, or battleship with Wind or Solar... If we can't use nuke's or burn oil, are we just handing control of the sea to those countries willing to build ships that either burn oil or run on nuclear power?
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Did you miss that story yesterday about how the Fukushima plants are still a huge radioactive mess that the Japanese aren't sure how they'll ever entirely clean up?
Did you miss the part about how the car you drive today isn't an on rails chassis without crumples zones, without seatbelts, and without airbags, and that no one builds cars like that anymore?
When people are proposing we build nuclear plants precisely zero of them are proposing we build anything like Fukushima which is a 60 year old GenII BWR. A permit to build something that old and *that unsafe* would not be granted now. Not even the Chinese Russians or Indians build such unsafe designs.
That's what happens when things go wrong with nuclear, they can go very wrong.
Indeed. Which is p
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What you failed to mention is that the fuel they produce is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide: https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
In other words it releases a lot of CO2 that was stored in the oceans, into the atmosphere. When burned in a jet engine, about 25% of it becomes methane, which is even worse than CO2 for climate change.
Even if it worked, the US military wouldn't want to share the technology anyway. And even if they did, it would be produced using renewable energy, because it's cheaper and be
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For a very long time the US Navy has been building ships that burn no oil. We had more of them at one time but the funding was lost, with claims of this being too expensive.
I am unsure where you are getting your information from, but when I was in the Navy, they told us that the reason that only subs and carriers are nuclear is because it doesn't make sense for ships smaller than a cruiser and the reason cruisers are no longer nuclear powered is that the captains would end up damaging the hulls of the ships, pushing them too hard.
Re:Maybe we should have given the US Navy more mon (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't synthesize fuel.
Of course we can synthesize fuel, we've seen it done all over the world since at least the 1940s.
You're going to lose energy somewhere in the process.
Of course there will be energy lost in the process. We lose energy in charging up batteries but that's not stopping anyone. There's also things more important than thermodynamic efficiency. We could make a lot of things more efficient but doing so would cost more money than it is worth. Consider how well electric aircraft development is going today. We could build a passenger jet that could cross the Atlantic Ocean today but it would be the size of a Boeing 747, carry maybe a dozen passengers, and take twice as long to reach its destination. How is that electric conversion on the F-35 Lightning II going? And the electric M1 Abrams battle tank? Are there electric icebreakers for the US Coast Guard? Any electric Navy destroyers? Are our long haul semi trucks electric yet? Agricultural and construction equipment have all become electric powered? Have we even got to a point where some high school student can expect to get a beat up but still functional electric car for the $2000 they saved up by flipping burgers?
We will need hydrocarbon fuels for a very long time yet. If only to keep aircraft flying. We can get those hydrocarbons from petroleum, or we can synthesize them using some energy source that is not fossil fuels. The process for producing these hydrocarbons will mean an energy loss but also a gain in allowing us to maintain so much of what our economy has become reliant upon. It's an energy loss but a gain in wealth, like so much of what we do in life.
Imagine telling the middle east we no longer have a need for their product.
That sure would be nice. Maybe we should make that a part of the energy policy from our governments. It appears we have already made significant developments in getting there. If only we had the support from government to make that happen. This doesn't mean subsidies and taxes, the government just needs to stay out of the way.
It's a pipe dream from people who don't understand physics.
That's how people that don't understand economics think.
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If was even remotely economical then why doesn’t anyone synthesize fuel?
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Also for electric aircraft long distances, the weight of the batteries would eat its efficiency. Then you need batteries to carry your batteries. It could become energy-saving to take a ~50% efficiency loss to convert that energy to chemical fuel (eg hydrogen). Chemical fuels have high energy density due to not needing to carry their oxidizer, and also the used fuel need not be carried.
Re:Maybe we should have given the US Navy more mon (Score:4, Interesting)
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We have an administration that feels "forced" to allow oil and gas drilling while also denying funds for carbon neutral synthesized fuel research and denying permits for new nuclear power plants
You can't synthesize fuel. You're going to lose energy somewhere in the process.
Yes, but energy is free, mmkay? Green energy that is, that's the propaganda greenie liars have been pushing. So just use green energy and problem solved, right? We don't have to care about inefficiencies then the resource is free.
Congress (Score:2)
There is a way to screw this project (Score:2)
That cuts oil use by 20%, makes the project unprofitable.
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Biden got the US the heck out of Afghanistan. Could it have been cleaner? Sure. But a dirty cut is better than no cut at all, and Trump was too much the coward to make the cut.
Nice little revisionist history you've got there - Biden inherited the Trump plan, have you forgotten that Biden said "he had no choice" but to withdraw from Afghanistan. The Trump administration brokered the deal, defined the terms of the withdrawl, and set the timetable (in Trump's planned second term). Joe Biden took office, found the negotiated agreement and timetable in a drawer in the resolute desk and acted on it - in the worst way possible (withdraw soldiers, give up military air base, and let the
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Biden got the US the heck out of Afghanistan. Could it have been cleaner? Sure. But a dirty cut is better than no cut at all, and Trump was too much the coward to make the cut.
Nice little revisionist history you've got there - Biden inherited the Trump plan, have you forgotten that Biden said "he had no choice" but to withdraw from Afghanistan. The Trump administration brokered the deal, defined the terms of the withdrawl, and set the timetable (in Trump's planned second term). Joe Biden took office, found the negotiated agreement and timetable in a drawer in the resolute desk and acted on it - in the worst way possible (withdraw soldiers, give up military air base, and let the Taliban screen/vet all refugees trying to leave Afghanistan).
Biden admin scooped up 125K random afghani that the Taliban let onto the airfield and called it "historic".
That is bullshit. The "plan" was always a tentative timetable for an attempt at withdrawal, *if* the Afghani forces prove up to the task. And to be modified/halted if that turns out not to be the case. It was the fucking moron Bidet who turned that into "we withdraw no matter what, let shit go to shambles, and blame it on Trump". "Inherited it from Trump" my ass. That senile moron has full executive power, including the right to modify any "plans" of his predecessors as new facts become apparent. If he does
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For that matter Putin is now deeply mired in it himself.
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You must get your news from Rupert Murdoch and his minions or one of the other oligarchs. What a spin!
Biden is average and Trump was objectively worse (terrible numbers). But the oligarch owned propaganda machines are huge and churning.... the rich don't want to pay taxes (more loopholes, more politicians (grifters) in pocket!) and must ensure their kids continue to reign, so the middle class are spun left and right -- emotionally triggered by endless false narratives so they never follow the money and un
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The tax loopholes you "accuse" the rich of "taking advantage of" were voted into the tax code by the very politicians now blaming the rich for taking advantage of the tax code the politicians wrote!
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What we see here is what is called adults engaging in politics. Nothing canâ(TM)t be negotiated, there are nothing off the table. If everyone had this notion and did not focus on the culture war, whether men wore dresses, we in the US could do a lot.
On the other hand, the adults can not be
Re:Carter? (Score:5, Informative)
He also served with some distinction in the Navy, including being lowered into a faulty nuclear reactor that was in danger of going critical, and helping to make it safe.
He has spent his life after politics helping people, and not by hosting lavish "fund raisers" but by swinging a hammer helping to build actual houses for people to live in.
Americans should see him as a hero. Hopefully some of you do.
Re:Carter? (Score:5, Funny)
Trump was a businessman before he went into politics
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What I should have put was that adults don't believe he was a businessman anymore. He continues to make a lot of money from suckers who still believe it however.
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He's the last president you guys ever had who actually worked for a living before he went into politics.
I took "you guys" to mean Democrats - Clinton, Obama, and Biden went right into politics after graduating.
Reagan, Bush (H. W.), Bush (W.), and Trump all had careers before running for President.
I guess if the OP was not from America, then the comment could be read with "you guys" meaning "Americans", but that seems doubtful/
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Trump was a businessman before he went into politics
No good businessman ever goes into politics. It's an erosion of power and wealth. Oh wait... I see what you did there.
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But conducting foreign diplomacy to undermine the first President Bush during the Gulf War by asking foreign countries to oppose the US coalition, I really wish he had stuck to building houses. Not content to underm
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Carter has his virtues but that doesn't make him a good president or even a good ex-president.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that he was incorrect, only that Americans had different priorities. He didn't say what the majority wanted to hear—he said exactly what his intentions were. At least there was no confusion about a what you see is what you get campaign – for both candidates, really.
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He has done so much more than that. The Carter Foundation has nearly eradicated [cartercenter.org] the guinea worm in Africa. That is a stunning accomplishment that acts as a foundational change for those affected. They also do a tremendous amount of work with election monitoring around the world. Undoubtedly, I am forgetting things but those are the two i
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Americans should see him as a hero. Hopefully some of you do.
Carter was my favorite living President since I first was old enough to vote, and he lost re-election, up until his death. He was an exceptional human being, and a genuine leader. His Presidency may not have measured up to his ambitions, but his ethics and lifelong faith and commitment to humanity are profound.
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There's nothing redeeming about shutting down drilling projects and pipelines domestically and then begging other countries to increase their petroleum production.
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The 2008 meltdown was in fact caused by Clinton (banking deregulation, etc).
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The deregulation started with Reagan and Thatcher. Once it started and people were making lots of money, nobody else had the balls to reign it in.
Re:Carter? (Score:5, Informative)
You think Carter caused the 2008 meltdown? While I respect your right to opinions, but why did you not name Obama? He was in charge wasn't he? You blamed the 2008 meltdown on a former President who was in office two decades before?
Not sure if you're serious, but the 2008 meltdown happened in 2008 and Obama took office in 2009. He was a Senator (and a presidential candidate) but he wasn't "in charge", other than being in charge of cleaning up the massive economic mess he inherited after winning the election.
Re:Carter? (Score:5, Funny)
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If you're going to be mad at Carter, at least blame him for the worst thing he did - killing the US nuclear industry by banning reprocessing of fuel.
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Volcker was the best thing that ever happened to the Fed. If only he had been in charge through the last 20 years.
Re: Carter? (Score:2)
When Carter came in, stagflation had already taken hold. You seem to have forgotten WIN ( whip inflation now) via Nixon (Ford?). Carter inherited a total mess from Nixon/Ford.
so Carter came along and solved it by deregulating rail, trucking, shipping, commercial aviation, and oil to help stimulate the economy. This was followed with putting Volcker in the feds who worked with carter to kill inflation and restart the economy.
Re: Carter? (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:and you call him left wing (Score:5, Insightful)
No diesel for the tractors or combines and the large majority of the people will starve.
Or we can convert a great deal of farmland to oilseeds and run the tractors on that, then only 10- 20% of the people will starve. Feeding horses takes three times the land that feeding the tractors would take, so that won't help either. Horses eat every day, tractors only while they are working.
And you still have to move the crops to town without diesel.
You really haven't thought this out very well.
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No diesel for the tractors or combines and the large majority of the people will starve.
That seems a bit non-sequitur. I mean you didn't consider the over time drop in oil consumption that is occurring as customers shift to oil alternatives, nor did you consider that tractors and combines may themselves actually shift to alternatives.
Claiming you need to expand oil production in Alaska to prevent people starving is just stupid.
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Or in simpler, less tense terms: If you know you're getting a new couch next year, do you throw out the one you have today and hurt your back sitting on the floor till the new one arrives?
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I think the implication is that while you're waiting for alternatives to be developed and adopted, people will be starving.
No one suddenly starves because America doesn't approve new oil and gas extraction. The 10 million barrels of oil extracted each day doesn't suddenly disappear. We're talking about new leases, not telling existing facilities to stop pumping.
The implication I'm making is that thinking even a single person is even going to risk their obese level (let alone starve) is just absurd.
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No diesel for the tractors or combines and the large majority of the people will starve.
That seems a bit non-sequitur. I mean you didn't consider the over time drop in oil consumption that is occurring as customers shift to oil alternatives, nor did you consider that tractors and combines may themselves actually shift to alternatives.
Claiming you need to expand oil production in Alaska to prevent people starving is just stupid.
What drop in oil consumption exactly? [ourworldindata.org]
Maybe you should demonstrate your ability to bend that curve down (in non-pandemic reality) FIRST, and advocate for stopping exploration for new sources SECOND.
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Not sure if your comment is an advertisement for Specsavers or for a basic course in reading graphs, but ask your grade school teacher if the far right of the graph is the highest point or not.
And snark aside, there is an actual shift in the world already burred in the trends since about 2017. I remind you that unrealised permits on new projects take between 5 and 10 years to realise depending on complexity meaning that Conoco won't be pumping oil until at least 2028.
And since you decided to quote "Our Worl
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Not sure if your comment is an advertisement for Specsavers or for a basic course in reading graphs, but ask your grade school teacher if the far right of the graph is the highest point or not.
And snark aside, there is an actual shift in the world already burred in the trends since about 2017. I remind you that unrealised permits on new projects take between 5 and 10 years to realise depending on complexity meaning that Conoco won't be pumping oil until at least 2028.
And since you decided to quote "Our World Data" which in turn sourced its data from the bp Statistical Review of World Energy, it may be prudent to ask the very person responsible for preparing that historical data what he predicts oil demand is doing going forward (see bp doesn't only publish the statistical review of world energy, but also publishes a yearly energy outlook based on those trends). You can find that answer here: https://www.bp.com/en/global/c... [bp.com] Directly from Spencer Dale, the very person whose numbers you're quoting.
Okay, "genius", you really think that what happened in 2020-2021 is representative of a trend that's going to continue? Google up "covid" one day because it seems you've been living under a rock.
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Hm... so your position is that without new exploration and opening new reserves, the world, and the US in particular, would run out of oil and everyone would starve, so the Alaskan fields need to be opened?
Do you see a problem with that strategy? What comes after Alaska? After that?
After that there's other untapped oil fields, and in the meantime we will be gradually transitioning to renewables-based synthethic fuels. Except on a reasonable timetable, in a controlled fashion, and not the "shut everything down NOW and fuck the consequences" scenario that greenie morons want.
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The OP didn't say shut everything down now. They said shut down new exploration. Excepting the far out theories, reasonable estimates of undiscovered reserves are a small fraction of known ones, so new exploration isn't going to buy much time. It does buy oil industry growth though. The OPs point is that if you don't allow new exploration you incentivize energy companies to think more about developing other sources of energy rather than racing each other to the remaining scraps of undiscovered oil.
Unless yo
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Fair. It was immediately followed by "nationalize them" though. I didn't read it as "burn them to the ground and stop production" but rather corporate death penalty for past crimes and turn over their assets to someone else, "someone else" possibly being the public.
It seems pretty clear at least some of the oil companies covered up their discoveries in anthropogenic
climate change, similarly to how the cigarette companies covered up the link with lung cancer. I hesitate to call corporate dissolution as punis
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We just need to make sure the more liberal end of the govt doesn't tie our energy companies' ability to find and extract it...especially till renewables becomes a bit more feasible and dependable.