http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc

another 3 years at current government spending levels and we'll fail anyway. when we going to make some money, honey?

This is such a pile of dung. The people who developed and drove this video are the shortsighted fluffs who can't see past 100 years from now.

Disgusted,
Incin

Thats a really revolting video. What a load of crap.

good stuff

Complete horse fluff.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Anything specific you didnt like?

I stopped at the one generation ice age, the next global warming.

lmao.

If I wanted america to fail, I would just let the anti-scientific party in power, forever.

so forget that that is exactly what has happened?
in the 70's we were taught about the coming ice age...90's global warming....now it's called climate change
what's so funny about the facts?

I got sick from watching that fluff.

I KNEW there was a reason I was ignoring this thread...now I know.

Anything specific you didn't like?

Umm, was there anything likeable?

This video made me realize how much the Right Wing hates science.

I notice you posted this question twice, so I'll tell you what I didn't like about it.

When I first noticed the thread when it was posted yesterday, I immediately got this weird premonition that if I even clicked on the forum to see the thread, my brain would be mind-raped to the point that no amount of mind-lube would be enough to keep my IQ from slipping below the triple digits. So, I waited to see if anyone would reply to the initial post. Dibs replied first, which raised another red flag, so I didn't click to read the thread even then. And then, I had life to do, so I forgot about it until this morning.

Well, this morning, I found out the hard way that just reading the text in the thread's topic would be enough to steal my IQ's virginity, when I accidentally tapped it on my phone (instead of the LaF/SoF bully the server thread right above it). The thread was brought up, and once I saw the replies, I knew I had been correct (which immediately shielded me from any brain-rape). I posted my first post in this thread just to be sure my brain was inoculated against the effects of stupidity of such a high magnitude. Now, all I have to do is not click on the youtube link in the first post, and everything should be fine.

LOL

Well, I was just wanting to know if anyone wanted to debate any of the specific points, which I guess no one does.

Since I am a Republican and this batfluff crazy lunacy is coming from my own party I'll bite:

1.) Democrats do not want America to fail. They may be wrong on some things like everyone is but they aren't out trying to cause the collapse of western civilization.

2.) Cheap oil is gone and it's never coming back and the free market as it relates to oil is a myth. The oil markets are not free because OPEC essentially operates as a trust that would be made ilegal if it were within the jurisdiction of American courts. Simply increasing production isn't going to do fluff because OPEC wants to keep prices high. If you increase production by 2 million barrels OPEC will just cut production by that amount to keep prices inflated.

3.) The futures market is also interested in keeping oil prices high. Speculators are allowed to purchase oil ON MARGIN(ridiculous) and do not even take delivery(also ridiculous). Basically you have a group of financial investors making a buck off of everyone else without actually making a product, doing anything useful, or adding any value and they don't even have to use their own money to do it.

4.) The deification of the free market is insanity. The market is capable of being manipulated and corrupted by savvy businessmen and in those situations it does NOT benefeit employees or lift up everyone as this video claims. During the biggest period of laissez faire markets in the United States we had to end up regulating because monopolies and trusts formed and working conditions as well as product safety were severely compromised. It required Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, to go in and bust a lot of this fluff up because businesses behaved the way businesses do without regulation and that's like evil anti-competitive assholes.

5.) Conservatives need to get over the fact that peak oil exists. We don't know with any degree of certainty how long the world's supply of oil will last because demand is not stagnant. What we DO know is that humanity cannot rely on oil forever and it will run out eventually.

6.) The biggest stifling of innovation has nothing to do with government regulation. It has to do with copyright and patent law making it so no new media has entered the public domain in the last 90 years, patent trolls can patent IDEAS with no way to implement them and then sue people who actually do the work years later etc...

An intelligent republican!!

I will say on #6 though that the Democrats are some of the biggest proponents of harsh copyright/patent laws because many of them are in the pockets of Big Hollywood. The last holdouts in the SOPA/PIPA fight were Senate Democrats

1) He isn't saying anyone wants America to fail, he's saying the policies he's discussing will lead America to fail.

2) 20% of the world's untapped oil is in the United States. We can't access it because of regulations, and the media/government is attempting to make it almost immoral to suggest we should try to tap it. He is also referencing coal, America's most abundant and cheapest source of energy which the government has all but outlawed. Where I live, we are on the verge of a depression because of all the mines that have been forced to close in the past few years.

3) We absolutely need new regulations here. One of the cases of the rich taking advantage of the rest of us that no one talks about.

4) No one wants a pure free market. We advocate for a free market with smart regulations, not those that stifle business in favor of a special interest. It IS true that the free market is the greatest force in human history for lifting people out of poverty and creating wealth.

5) Who would deny that peak oil exists? Oil is a non-renewable resource. What we reject is putting a massive burden on the middle and lower class by forcing up the price of oil in order to force a transition to clean energy when the technology is not there yet.

I disagree that the technology is not there. We have all the energy we need in the form of nuclear power. The biggest thing we need now is better battery technology. Next time I buy a car I'm seriously considering getting a Volt. They are expensive now but the price of new technology goes down quite a bit over time. HD TV's cost thousands and thousands of dollars when they first came out too, now you can pick up large ones at pawn shops for a couple hundred.

Now that being said the government giving fluff tons of money away to solar companies is stupid. The government's role in renewable energy should be realized through research at universities and not via handouts to private companies. On the flip side of THAT there's nothing wrong with solar and wind. They can be a good supplement to primary energy sources. If I could get my own wind turbine I'd certainly do it.

Also on #4) it relates to #6) which you ignored. Patent and copyright law is the biggest thing holding back the free market and acts as a bigger detriment then ANY government regulation.

I'm officially un-hating you. Make yourself an atheist and you'd be me.


Klown, I'd LOVE to see where you pulled that "20% of the world's untapped oil is in the United States" bullfluff number from. I assume you are talking about oil shale, which means you don't understand the difference between a resource and a reserve. Resources are not reportable to the SEC (or any other market) as an asset, whereas reserves are. A resource cannot be a reserve unless it is financially viable, getting oil from oil shale to market is about as financially viable as recovering gold from seawater.

The real driver behind the oil market is neither OPEC nor speculators (both easy dogs to kick) but the rapid growth of the BRIC nations. When western economies flagged in 2008-9, it slowed the growth of emerging market economies enough that the energy price run-up we saw in 2008 was delayed. Now that the global economy is slowly chugging back up the hill, we are going to see continued exponential growth of fuel demand from Brazil, Russia, India, China, et. al.

"A resource cannot be a reserve unless it is financially viable, getting oil from oil shale to market is about as financially viable as recovering gold from seawater."

Really? http://www.nytimes.com/...shale.html?pagewanted=all

20% figure: http://energyforamerica.org/...Energy-InventoryFINAL.pdf

So what? What retards besides the oil companies really want us on oil when nuclear is better for the environment, cheaper, and renewable. The scare mongering over nuclear is ridiculous.

If I wanted America to fail, I'd just put out my leg and trip it so that it falls into an oil well.

republicans / democrats they are the same thing!

There isn't any reason for the grid to be on oil, but we need to run our cars.

Are you confusing oil shale with shale-gas and bbl's of oil with gas bbl equivalency? Yep, you are. A lot of the Times article is about incidental production of oil from shale-gas fields, and the reserve numbers they are talking about are totally unsubstantiated (because oil-field developers NEVER hype their fields). I'll actually be drilling a brine injection well in the eagle ford field in May if you'd like to come out and visit.

As far as the 20% figure - your source, the 'Institute for Energy Research, is composed of some former enron guys funded by the Koch brothers. Strike 2

I think that's actually a very good video.

I'm all for environmental regulations and I'm all for national minimum standards...but that's they should be, minimum standards! The EPA needs to work more to develop and distribute scientific information to state regulators concerning negative environmental impacts or even (shock of all shocks) relatively positive environmental impacts. Let's see the EPA work with state regulators and industry to minimize environmental damage.

Let's take one environmental issue where a state raised an issue with an oil company...the Keystone Pipeline through Nebraska. Nebraskans raised a fuss over the proposed route through the state and TransCanada agreed to change the route (full disclosure, people have objected to the compromise as it does not fully address the issues of protecting Nebraska's water supply). A state was able to object and see a compromise. The EPA should be working with the relevant states to ensure that the pipeline has the best possible route. Maybe with the EPA working with and not against the states, the Nebraska issue would have been fully addressed.

I don't advocate for an unregulated free market. Unregulated free markets tend to not be free because of what businesses do. That being said, we need to regulate against uncompetitive markets; we should not be regulating into uncompetitive markets. Alongside government regulations, we should also include government taxation. Quite simply put, if the tax code feels like a brick when it hits your head, then it's probably not simply enough. The point is that we can squeeze more tax revenue out of businesses and people. By simplifying the code, we can squeeze more useable tax dollars out by becoming more efficient. Were to move this way, it's not inconceivable that the corporate tax rate could be raised while still lowering the corporate tax burden (the taxes and all other costs associated with taxation).

The problem with Democrats is that they just want to raise taxes without first making the taxcode more efficient (perhaps more correctly said as remaking the taxcode into a more efficient code). The problem with Republicans is that they offer staunch opposition to tax increases without explaining that their real purpose is to not increase the tax burden. Remake the taxcode to be efficient and then let's see where we stand.

As to patent laws, I'm all for investigating recent patents and how the patent laws have affected those patents. I'm willing to investigate whether all recent patents should have been granted. The Supreme Court has ruled recently to strike down several patents and I expect that any investigation would find several patents for this that should not (though they may legally be) be patentable. However, we cannot deny that government regulations stifle innovation. Can't we address both issues? Is that too much to ask for? Don't try to avoid talking about government regulation stifling innovation by changing the subject; we can discuss both.

You do realize that the EPA is a myth right? I've been an environmental consultant for 15 years and I've only ever seen the EPA involved twice, whereas I see state regulators every week. All the EPA does is develop minimum standards which the states are responsible for implementing - some meet the bare minimum and some go way beyond it - but the EPA has almost no role in actually permitting or regulating industry. They obviously do have influence because they are setting the compliance standards, but they don't knock on doors, they just waddle along ten years behind the curve.