From the Anchorage Daily News:
House Republicans, after long hours of scrounging for the votes to pass their five-year budget, decided Wednesday night to drop a provision that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
The news emerged late Wednesday night as the House Rules Committee prepared the far-reaching bill for a vote on the House floor today.
“There will be no drilling in ANWR,” said New Hampshire Rep. Charles Bass, one of the Republican moderates who led the effort to strip ANWR from the bill.
But environmentalists and drilling advocates alike said their decades-long fight goes on. Because ANWR development was in the budget bill the Senate passed last week, it’s still possible for it to become law.
“I think our biggest hurdle over the last many years has been the Senate, and we’re over that hurdle,” said Tara Sweeney, who represents the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. in Washington. “It’s just important for us to focus on what’s ahead.”
If the House were to pass its budget package today, members of the House and Senate would be appointed to hash out the differences between the two bills. The final version would have to go before the House and Senate for a vote.
“It’s good that they removed this,” said Brian Moore of the Alaska Wilderness League. Late Wednesday, he wasn’t sure how big a victory this was for his side. “Hopefully, there are assurances that (ANWR) is removed all the way through this process.”
More than 20 Republicans have told the House leadership they would not vote for the budget without a promise that ANWR won’t be added into the final House-Senate compromise, The Washington Post reported.
Quips an emailer to the Corner, “Twenty-five members of the House GOP have rejected the only thing they have on their plate at the moment that could prove they are willing to do anything about the energy supply issue. You have a period of high gas prices, Americans view energy as the #1 issue at the moment, ANWR drilling has already passed both Houses and it still can’t get through? These people need a seismic exploration program to find their backbones.”
Today’s GOP: Just because we control Congress and the presidency doesn’t mean we’re too afraid to surrender!
that’s right. we own the silly bitches.
I give up.
How very very…French of them.
Me too.
“A January bi-partisan national survey showed overwhelming opposition: 53 percent to 38 percent; a Zogby poll concurred: 55 percent oppose to 38 percent support.”
There they go pandering to those pesky constituents again!
Sure, Paul.
Question: Do you favor raping the pristine, untouched-by-man, ANWAR national treasure so that evil oil companies can reap obscene profits and oppress caribous, widows and orphans?
Yes or No.
Hey, Paul, what do recent polls say?
At any rate, the only reason I even bother voting Republican is my current rep: Cynthia “J-E-W-S” McKinney.
The fact that this came out on the same day as the grilling of oil executives is… what’s the word?
Question: Doesn’t Bush’s unseemly plan to exploit the unspoiled beauty of Alaska’a North Slope pretty much underscore your beliefs that he’s in the pocket of Big Oil?
Yes or No.
The fact that this came out on the same day as the grilling of oil executives is… what’s the word?
Smegma?
By the way, I love grilled oil executive.
Served with a nice red wine soy chipotle reduction with wild rice and wilted spinach.
Yummy!
“Twenty-five members of the House GOP have rejected the only thing they have on their plate at the moment that could prove they are willing to do anything about the energy supply issue”
ANWR doesn’t do much about the energy supply issue. But its good to see the GOP so on the run that they even forgo their symbolic gestures.
“even forgo their symbolic gestures”
And me my spelling: forego
You had it right the first time, Actus.
forgo = go without
forego = go before
Sorry to be a pedantic twit, but I do it for a living.
GOP: The New Defeatists!
“Oppress caribous, widows, and orphans?”…..Kool Aid on Aisle 1.
*ANWR doesn’t do much about the energy supply issue.*
Well, how bout we start there anyway.
Fuck the Caribou.
Uh, and I’ll take Iraqi Pipelines Straight to Houston for $10,000,000,000, too Paul.
They didn’t by any chance see how many could find ANWR, or Alaska for that matter, on a map I don’t suppose.
You can’t be serious. My esteemed State ankle-biter, the Esteemed Replacement For the Little Man from North Dakota, Dingy Hairy Reid sez in another pique of startling bipartisan reason:
[Source: 08-Nov-05 e-letter.]
I’ll leave you to sort this bullshit out. The man abviously studied at the Clinton School of Mendacity and Shameless Political Opportunity.
Hmmm.
The Republican Party; The France of Politics.
Frankly I’ve written this before and I’ll write it again now. The Republican Party has been a complete disaster for conservatives and neither Bush nor the GOP leadership has advanced one single conservative cause, issue or ideal one iota in the last 5+ years.
sw: “daily”. As in the Republican Party eagerly delivers a load of daily bullshit to my door.
The GOP: Only slightly better than the alternative.
Jim Walsh will not get my vote – I mean why vote for a Republican who pretends to be a Democrat when you can vote for the real thing?
GOP. Never miss a chance to piss off your supporters in a vain attempt to attract people who will vote for anyone but you.
Be sure to pay attention, class. It’s all the oil companies’ fault.
That sounds really reality based to me. We just need to like come up with something really cool, you know. Like fund scientists and stuff so they can make something really cool that works really good and is really clean and all.
Oh, and is really, really cheap so really poor people can buy it too.
Ahem.
Can’t an evil neocon like myself get some love for attempting to parody the eco-freaks?
Oops, sorry.
You can’t parody the left any more. They parody themselves.
ANWR–Strategic Caribou Reserve.
What amazes me is that the sheer cognitative dissonance of facing reality doesn’t burn white phosphorous-sized holes thru moonbat’s tiny skulls.
Actually, what really amazes me is that they can openly promote empty, rhetorical suits like the cadaverous Reid to places of power and still take themselves seriously. If the misguided Pubbie-zombies revived and pulled a transparent move like that, the planet would literally tip on its axis from the synchronized, televised release of billions of cubic tons of selfrighteous leftwing angst. Which, of course, is why Republicans engage in these ritualistic clockwork defeats.
I’m beginning to think that Savage is correct about the Left’s dysfunction … and how it’s corroded the globe.
You can bet your ass that in a few years, when gasoline hits $7.00 per gallon, these same political invertibrates will have their hearings and will wag their fingers at oil executives over the high cost of gasoline.
What a friggen joke.
So true. Bush is LBJ resurrected, and the Dems are completely gone into 1960s SDS territory. I’m beginning to understand compassionate conservatism. It means you favor your big donors and start up expensive handout programs to everyone else.
And now they’ve had to postpone the vote on the budget bill.
Nicely negotiated surrender, asshats. Yeah, I’m real motivated to go out and vote now.
ed–
Not true. The GOP cut taxes. At least that’s something.
BTW, anybody give a fig about federalism anymore?
I’ve often wondered what people have to do to get these people’s attention. And it’s even more frustrating that it seems to be mostly people from itty-bitty states in the northeast who can’t even comprehend just how freakin’ big Alaska is.
I can’t vote for a democrat at the national level. I’m not suicidal.
But I won’t vote at all if the choices don’t improve.
Fresh Air:
Yeah they’ve cut taxes, but any good from that is more than offset by their massive spending increases. With the budget deficit they’re running all the GOP is accompliching is giving people a tax cut now in exchange for a greater tax burden in the future. Hardly a plus for conservatism.
Check these links to see how wrong you really are about ANWR: (By the way, ANWR is not a deserted wasteland as many try to describe the area… it is a pristine wilderness and ecosystem full of plants and wildlife and their habitat.)
ANWR MAPS & OIL WELLS
Arctic National Refuge Saved by House – Maybe
F**k the Senate for F**cking the Environment
Drilling for Oil: Destruction of ANWR
Drilling for Oil in the Arctic
While everyone else looks to energy alternatives, Bush uses Katrina-Rita to scourge environmental laws
MORE FACTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT: Ethics and Nature
Read and learn. Try to think outside of your own petty human needs.
ANWR is an ice patch.
When I was teaching argument, I had a few students who researched ANWR, ice roads, the size of the footprint, ecological impact, etc. I’m quite comfortable with my position.
Sorry. My human needs aren’t petty. And even if they are, from the perspective of a particularly pernicious type of attack fly, well, that’s one of the perks of being atop the food chain.
Sure. 19 million acres of it and if we drilled there 99.99% of it would remain a pristine wilderness and ecosystem full of plants and wildlife and their habitat. That 99.99 percent works out to about 19 million pristine acres in case you don’t want to bother with the math.
It sobvious neither of you checked my links or bothered to look at the pictures of ANWR.
So, I’ll take your comments as being uninformed on the issue.
Top of the food chain is the problem. It comes with responsibility.
Did you click my link? It links to many pics of ANWR. From somebody who visited.
Here’s the direct link.
I am not sure what a pristine wilderness is, but anywhere on the planet is an ecosystem full of plants and wildlife and their habitat.
I am glad to see you recognize we are part of the food chain, therefore a part of nature and the most effecient predator and successful species on the planet, but our only responsibility is to ourselves. If we need the energy for the species to evolve, then the other creatures are going to have to adapt or die. That is the way the food chain works. Or are you an Intelligent Designer?
If that Jonah Goldber link was supposed to impress me, it didn’t. It was useless and the guy is obviously a moron. Wilderness areas are not urban indrastructures for crying out loud. That’s the point, they aren’t supposed to be developed. At all. I’ve lived in Alaska and actually been to this area several times. It is magestic and pure and beautiful.
The Heritage Foundation is about as unlikely a resource for environmental science and policy as say…BUSH.
And, they are dead wrong.
PS. I looked at his pictures. It’s interesting he did this from an airplane and not on the ground. Yeah, close observation there. See mine…they are more intuitive of reality.
I’m sorry, are you suggesting Jonah’s pictures are lying? And how is he an “obvious moron”? I may not agree with him all the time (and I’ve taken him to task for his discussions of postmodernism and his apologia for the press after Katrina, to name just two examples off the top of my head), but I certainly don’t think he’s a moron. In fact, he strikes me as very sharp.
And on what authority should environmentalists be able to tell the voters of Alaska what they can do with an ice patch the size of a small airport?
The Caribou thrived in earlier drill and pipeline areas. Why would they not now?
Follow up question: how do you feel about nuclear plants? Because I’m all for cutting down on the use of oil and gas (though I hold out hope for shale oil technology), but I also recognize that we are limited in our choices.
Bridliant. And you vote too?
Well, hell, neither was your own backyard only 1/1,000,000,000 of the age of the world ago.
I suggest you relocate right away.
To where the land is sacred enough for your emotional ass.
God posting comments here again? Congrats, Jeff.
tr: children. Who let em in again?
I hate to think what this debate is going to be like a few years down the road, when the petroleum squeeze is going to be even tighter, and the fickle public less concerned about ecology.
Change is inevitable. It’s best to try to embrace it while there’s still the opportunity to guide its direction.
A very good friend had the tumerity to actually spend a number of years of her rightwing life working on the ‘line and then actually tell us stuff about it.
Apparently caribou love big man made shelters like large diameter pipes that stretch for miles. Only makes sense, I guess.
Which explains why we can’t do it, naturally.
tr: Moment. Consider the logic longer than a.
LMFAO!
You just can’t make this shit up.
Yeah, I thought so.
tr: Try. Please.
I looked at your links, but they don’t have to lease all 1.5 million possible acres just because environmental groups say they will and nothing in your links refutes my point. If you’d read my link, you’d see they only need to lease around 2000 acres for development.
That’s about the the same as building something the size of a major airport and leaving an area slightly smaller than South Carolina untouched.
Even if they did lease out all of area 1002 for development that would still leave 17.5 million acres that cannot be developed under any circumstances. That’s about the size of West Virginia.
So if they drill we’re basically talking about an area almost as big as South Carolina out of an area almost as big as South Carolina remaining totally untouched. The absolute worst-case situation is that an area almost the size South Carolina is reduced to the size of West Virginia.
So we either elect the team that can’t get it right, or we elect the team that will get it wrong. Great choices we have here.
Kill the body and the head will die.
1. Open up the ANWR coastal plain for drilling.
Size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: 19 million acres (100%)
Area closed forever to drilling: 17.5 million acres (92.1%)
Coastal area within which exploration is proposed: 1.5 million acres (7.9%)
Maximum total area allowed for drilling: Two thousand acres (0.01%)
2. Allow drilling off the coast of California. This would be environmentally a good idea, since the deposits are so close to the surface they regularly leak huge amounts naturally. A major earthquake down there could spill a million times more oil than the Exxon Valdez. Let’s pump it out and get some use out of it.
3. Start building new nuclear power plants based on simple, safe designs like the CANDU, the PIUS, or even the Westinghouse 309. And get a fuel reprocessing plant on line as well.
Then the Saudis–and in fact, the bulk of OPEC–could keep their damn oil and go back to wandering the desert on their camels. With their oil supply no longer useable as a threat, and their flow of petrodollars squeezed to a trickle (meaning no money to buy weapons and fund assorted mischief), they’d be of no more concern to us than any of the other Mideastern dictatorships that lack oil. Which is to say, just about not at all.
It’s not an overnight solution, but it’s nicely long-term.
And why is it that the environuts have a full-blown grand mal seizure over the thought of drilling for oil on 2,000 acres of wasteland in the ANWR–an area from which we could get an estimated 1,000,000 barrels of oil a day–but think windmills are a fine idea…2,000 acres of which provide the equivalent energy of 1,800 barrels of oil a day?
Hey, I’m just asking.
Question: When the lights finally go out—not for want of energy but because everybody basically whored the US out to moonbats, media, and Marxists—will any of these lying 535 vermin actually regret handing the keys over to the psychopaths from the mideast?
Just curous if they’ll one day do a quick palm to the forehead before a dull scimitar sends it flying.
1. Em, from what I understand about evolution and the survival of the fittest: we at the top have no responsibilities other than to ensure the perpetuation of our species. Protecting the environment is what we do out of our own grace and bounty.
2a. Environmentalist hype is just that.
2b. Your webpages are taking too long to load.
2c. Do you have any information from a neutral party? By default I do not trust information unless it is from a neutral source or from I source I trust. An example why: it is in the best interest for self-survival of environmentalist groups to offer information or interpretations of facts that support their mission and perspectives. Any information or interpretation of facts is biased and selective to this end. Let us also not forget cognitive dissonance by which people and organizations may be prone to ignore or devalue facts or information that challenge, change, or refute their arguments, beliefs, or mission.
3a. I would like to add that I recently learned that one of the many reasons the US was such a powerhouse after WWII, able to dominate the world, was that it was the largest *producer* of oil. It would be nice to move up that scale, to gain more cards with which to have more leverage in the world.
3b. It is imperative to develop new sources for oil if only because the demand of oil is increasing and we should not let our own needs suffer. One of the reason oil prices are high now is because of China’s increased need. There is only so much oil pumped out: getting more oil from our backyard (whether to use or save in reserve) would help us, indeed.
4. At the risk of sounding crude or heartless, I really don’t care how this would affect the environment if it means depending less on fickle and unstable countries whose people hate us. Tin-pot dictator Hugo Chavez in Venezuela does not help any, and we’re still some time away from buying oil from Iraq (a lot needs to be done, a lot of investment is still needed, and those darned terrorists keep attacking oil companies, employees, and sites).
Years ago, when this whole ANWR thing got heated up, I remember reading that most of the oil will be sold to western Pacific countries. Cheap. I know more about the slant of the MSM news now, versus then, so I’m a skeptic. If this thing goes through and we don’t directly benefit from it, I’ll be pissed. Okay, I’m actually pissed now.
To echo Toren at 10:45, there’s lots of oil elsewhere, and there’s lots of alternatives, or there’s this. Pick one, I’m going out for a walk.
Excellent plan, Toren.
I like it very much.
I wish someone would implement it, though.
They aren’t all that neighborly to windmills, as it turns out.
I heard some eco-pinheads waxing poetic on NPR a few months back, they couldn’t understand why we couldn’t have another Manhatten Project, only this time devoted to something good, like alternative energy sources. I would have crawled through the fuggin radio if I could just to smack them up the side of the damn head. Is nuclear energy ever going to get a fair shake in this country?
Without much attention from the media outside of industry journals, a project to build a natural gas pipeline from the arctic to the southern markets is currently being negotiated. Maybe the media are under the impression that Canada’s involvement makes for less controversial headlines. Maybe we should lease ANWR to the biggest blue state of them all, and let them drill it with a cut going to the state of Alaska…the Canucks seem to drill all they like, but just don’t seem to get the treehuggers as fired up, eh?
Lifted from AK’s MMS (minerals management service)
http://www.mms.gov/Alaska/re/natgas/akngases.htm
Alaska contains 39.88 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas remaining in developed and known undeveloped fields
Ninety-seven percent (26 tcf) of Alaska’s exportable gas reserves occur within fields in or near the Prudhoe Bay field in northern Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay area gas reserve base totals 30.90 tcf.
The stranded gas reserves at Prudhoe Bay are presently attracting proposals for construction of a gas transportation system that can take the natural gas to markets outside of Alaska.
Wouldn’t it be grand if there were another Manhattan Project, and it turned out the best renewable alternative energy source was tundra moss and caribou meat?
The Manhatten Project already created the best known alternative energy source: nuclear power.
Considering even the French manage to use it without problems, its reputation as dangerous is clearly vastly overrated (more people are killed every year simply transporting coal than have been killed in all nuclear power accidents in history combined).*
As for this bizarre demand that any oil we get from the ANWR be kept in America, do these poeple not know the meaning of the word “fungible”…?
*: And don’t get me started on the non-problem of nuclear waste. See here:
http://tinyurl.com/7s42x
A) It wouldn’t matter what source of information I actually gave you people, you would find a way to turn it around into something else all together. Some people are open to info, some some are not, even if science has proven facts and liabilities. I suspect none of you believe there is a global warming problem either. New fact: recently some researchers found that you urine can run a battery? It’s true. And, a new turbine has been created that harnessed up to 80% of wind power.
B) Nuclear Power. I tend to have a long-term view on just about everything. I have no problem with nuclear power. I have a problem with waste containment. That in 300 years that waste is still more radioactive than uranium, does not make me feel any better. I’ve also toured the Las Vegas repository site…it has a fatal flaw which is the main problem. The area has several fissures that make it unsafe for containment. It is also within the falt line and the area is prone to earthquakes. This is why the ‘environmentalists’ believe this site is unsuitable.
C) ANWR: It’s not worth the trouble to drill.
D) Thanks for informing me my pages are loading slowly. I know it and I am trying to figure out what to do about it. My site is so graphics heavy that it’s hard to know what to cut or how to reduce the images without losing clarity.
E) Oh, and excuse the hell out of me for making a typing error previously – and yes, I do vote, every fucking election just so I can cancel yours out. Happy Veterans Day.
F) And no, I do not believe in Intelligent Design, I am not a Christian, and ID is complete bullshit under the mantle of creationism.
G) If gasoline goes up to $10 a gallon, yes it will hurt, but maybe it will get people to move toward cleaner sources of energy and mass transit. So, I hope oil prices continue to rise.
I’m done posting on this subject “here” with you folks, this isn’t a debate…..it’s something all together different. And, I was addressing Jeff anyway, who at least tries to provide information.
Thanks, Jeff, for the links, I did read them and look at them all. I appreciate the information even if I did not care for the source and believe the Heritage Foundation to be the least likely source for environmental or science related data. I believe that people only look at the isolation of the area and believe it to be unviable as an ecosystem important to preserve – unfortunately, it is the last of it’s kind. The problem here is, that most of northern Alaska is already riddled with oil fields and the oil preserves encompass most of the area already. It only takes one foot in the door to ANWR to open the whole are up to oil eventually. I apologise for calling your friend a moron – the comment was intended for another link outside of yours. A 2 year supply of oil isn’t worth the effort nor the destruction.
Great, now go piss off.
I’ve also toured the Las Vegas repository site…it has a fatal flaw which is the main problem. The area has several fissures that make it unsafe for containment. It is also within the falt line and the area is prone to earthquakes. This is why the ‘environmentalists’ believe this site is unsuitable.
And here I thought it was Yucca Mountain, not Las Vegas as a proposed nuclear waste storage site. Maybe that’s why the word ‘environmentalists’ get the scare quotes. More palatable than ‘ignorant activists’, I guess.
“Some people are open to info, some some are not, even if science has proven facts and liabilities.”
open wide, moonbat:
Yucca Mountain has changed little over the last several million years. Extensive scientific studies of potential natural hazards at the site show it is highly unlikely that volcanoes, erosion, or other geologic processes and events would disrupt a repository at Yucca Mountain. In addition, by locating the repository in solid rock about 1,000 feet under the surface and on average 1,000 feet above the water table, the waste would be protected from the impacts of earthquakes. Damaging ground movement is the most intense at the earth’s surface and decreases with the depth underground.
No, Harry Reid spearheaded shamelessly political opposition to YM in order to make hay with our state’s growing population of over-the-mountain SUV-driving Beatty wannabees.
I saw it happen firsthand in the papers we have out here. The predictability was as nauseating as the obstructionist Left’s habitual denial of solutions.
Today, the YM debacle should only serve to keep Dingy Harry backed into the political corner he deserves to inhabit, Daschle-like. His publicly implying what could only mean terajoules of free electricity, a cold fusion miracle, and/or zero-point energy in the next 15 minutes (in his meaningless but imminently polished leftist rhetoric) is about as intellecually honest as your various comments have been.
TW: Values. Oh, the irony.
F) And no, I do not believe in Intelligent Design, I am not a Christian, and ID is complete bullshit under the mantle of creationism.
But you do have religious beliefs don’t you now.
Crichton has it right. Environmentalism is every bit as much a religion as Christianity.
Does anyone else suspect the House Republicans were jealous that their Senate counterparts get all the great press for screwing their base?
That’s as good of an explanation as any, McG
Well, of course it is, friend. The only origin theories the enlightened abide are those that include Gaia and sacred hunks of hardscrabble wilderness, thousands of mile away, frozen to 10 below.