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Correcting the record on Obama #2

By iwog   Follow   Sat, 24 Mar 2012, 1:16pm   7,663 views   112 comments
In Lafayette CA 94549   Watch (1)   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like   Dislike  

This one is particularly lame considering how hard Republicans are pushing this misinformation. Here's the argument:

Newscorp and Clear Channel: Obama is responsible for oil going up because he refused to open up new drilling and is ordering the EPA to squash production.

Reality: I'll just let the graphs do all the talking.

Looks like Bush is the one responsible for the oil crisis:

Drill baby drill

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/energy-oil-rigs-idUKN1E79D11420111014

Most Liked Comments

1. Patrick Follow Befriend (54) 5,181 threads 6,153 comments 46 male Menlo Park, CA Premium

   1   9:09am Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (4)   Dislike   Nomograph says The odd thing is that even after the lies are exposed and corrected, they will continue to spread the same BS. It's like some people just don't care about the truth at all. It's religion. How do you argue with religion? People want to believe things that make them feel good and I can understand that. They are not arguing about the facts as much as denying facts because they don't like the implications of the facts. So a direct frontal reality-based assault is not going to work. The way you argue with religion is to present another religion that also makes them feel good while reducing the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance of being required to believe unlikely things. So in more specific terms, you have to present a vision of a glorious future. You have to show they can still get rich (the American form of personal salvation) while having a fair tax structure. In fact, they are much more likely to get rich if the current 1% stops blocking their path.

2. Nomograph Follow Befriend (1) 104 threads 2,851 comments

   2   6:54am Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (5)   Dislike (2)   I would say that the folks who spread the most political disinformation on this site are: (1) Honest Abe (2) thomas.wong (3) TMAC (4) TPB Shrek and RayAmerica would make the list as well but they are gone. The odd thing is that even after the lies are exposed and corrected, they will continue to spread the same BS. It's like some people just don't care about the truth at all.

3. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

   3   11:11am Wed 28 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (3)   Dislike   YesYNot says These are only equivalent if you assume that oil is infinite. Oil, and particularly the stuff that is easy to get, is finite, as evidenced by it's price. This is an entirely different issue from EROEI calculations. Corn is renewable, however it uses nearly as much fossil fuel to produce as it returns in energy. Therefore it is a huge waste of resources. Extracting oil from a well might be temporary, but you can be assured that if you spend 1 barrel of oil, you'll get back 10 or 20. The reason I brought up EROEI was because Canada is operating at the margins of sustainable EROEI. As the pits get deeper, and the ecological damage gets more significant, the energy returned is going to drop to the point where it would be more prudent to simply burn the natural gas instead of using it to wash oil droplets off of grains of sand. The fact that we actually rely on this oil shows just how far down the road to collapse we've traveled. There WILL be billions of barrels of both Canadian and United States oil left in the ground forever. The laws of thermodynamics guarantee it.

4. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

   4   4:10pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike   Answer the question. Why are you so scared? thomas.wong1986 says B2B marketplaces for industries such as oil and gas, automobile manufacturing, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing and the travel industry. How in hell is this an answer to "show me a domestic-only oil exchange"? WTF is wrong with you??????

5. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

   5   4:14pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike   Thomas: Oil trading occurs on domestic exchanges with only domestic partners. Iwog: show me one. Thomas: blah blah blah tech industry Iwog: show me one. Thomas: blah blah blah B2B Iwog: show me one. Thomas: you're getting paranoid. This is why you can't have a discussion with a right winger. He's living in an alternate reality where English isn't even a common language.

6. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

   6   4:17pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says Way Way over you head on this one.... I characterized the conversation correctly. If you think this "debate" puts you in a favorable light, you're beyond delusional.

7. edvard2 Follow Befriend 34 threads 2,085 comments

   7   7:55am Tue 27 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says So yes today and for decades to come. Drill Baby Drill is really your only option! You have no other solution on a broad based consumer scale. Hopeing someone somewhere will have a miracle solution tomorrow is like hopeing for AIDS cure to be found next month. It just isnt gonna happen.. There has been a dramatic improvement in just the last 10 years in the development of alternative energy sources. On top of that the costs have come down dramatically. Solar panels used to be insanely expensive. Now they're a fraction of the cost that they were just a few years ago. Many will now operate even on cloudy days. Biofuels derived from algae is coming along. More efficient hydrogen fuel cells make it possible for some of the current drivetrains to operate for 250-300 miles between refueling. Are any of these solutions yet at a stage where they can replace fossil fuels entirely? No. But given that we apparently seem to have an abundant supply of fossil fuels it would be prudent to use the time we have bought as a result to further develop these alternative sources so that when the day comes ( which it eventually will) we will have a backup plan.

8. Nomograph Follow Befriend (1) 104 threads 2,851 comments

   8   4:44pm Sat 24 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike (1)   I hear crickets chirping. Where's the response from the Rabid Right?

9. freak80 Follow Befriend (4) 52 threads 4,416 comments Corning, NY Premium

   9   6:29pm Sat 24 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   But...but...Hitler was a Socialist!

10. thomas.wong1986 Follow Befriend 16 threads 4,426 comments

    10   10:39pm Sat 24 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike (1)   Politifact ?? Suuuurrre! Wink Wink! Taranto of the Wall Street Journal called PolitiFact.com "less seeker of truth than servant of power", while a Wall Street Journal editorial wrote that PolitiFact is "part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." In The American Spectator, conservative analyst Matthew Vadum, citing several of PolitiFact.com's analyses, called their content "political opinion masquerading as high-minded investigative journalism." Civil libertarian Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald wrote of PolitiFact that "it undermines its own credibility when it purports to resolve subjective disputes of political opinion under the guise of objective expertise" and that the sources it cites in its analysis tend to be "highly biased, ideologically rigid establishment advocates" presented "as some kind of neutral expert-arbiters of fact."[

11. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    11   11:15pm Sat 24 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike (1)   thomas.wong1986 says no not running away... 134 billion barrels (200 years) all you gotta do is drill. It will pay down the debt, provide jobs, and self sufficiency. Bullshit. Total unmitigated bullshit. Increasing oil production results in increased exports and record profits into the private hands of the aristocracy. Because of idiotic tax policy, none of it will pay down the debt. Private jobs are temporary and evaporate once a field is fully explored. Self-sufficiency is a lie since you and people like you refuse to set limits on exports, resulting in this: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/us-exported-more-gasoline-than-imported-last-year/1#.T2627dVc1fs Your fucking free market means that the United States will be self-sufficient at a price set by the world market including India and China. If that price is $300 a barrel, that's what you'll pay. Not because it costs $300 to take it out of North Dakota and Alaska, because it might only cost $20 a barrel to take it out of North Dakota and Alaska. The $280 per barrel will end up in the pockets of billionaires while anyone who actually works for a living and has to drive to their job will get raped. Everything you believe is a lie.

12. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    12   6:40am Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (2)   Dislike (1)   You missed the article I linked about how the United States is now a net exporter of gasoline, didn't you. Pepsi isn't a limited resource. Pepsi Co. can produce all it wants. Your example is nonsense. thomas.wong1986 says Oil trading occurs on domestic exchanges with only domestic partners. Oil producers will adjust and scale their operations accordingly so exporting will not be a factor. Right, because corporations always put domestic national interests before profits. Are there any other fairy tales you want to discuss?

13. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    13   4:02pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says you create one.. business to business exchanges not visiable to the public are out there. They been around for some time now. You create one? WTF kind of answer is that? Lets try again: thomas.wong1986 says Oil trading occurs on domestic exchanges with only domestic partners. Show me a single domestic-only oil exchange in the United States. A business to business private contract is not a fucking exchange and no corporation that doesn't have a brain dead CEO is going to close bidding to foreign markets. Do you even know what a market exchange is?

14. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    14   4:04pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says i2 Technologies, based in Dallas, Texas, is a supply chain software maker that is becoming a force in the B2B industry as well. The company is working with General Motors and Commerce One for the automobile manufacturing marketplace and United Technologies and Honeywell to create a marketplace for the aerospace industry. It booked fourth quarter revenues of $173 million. I'm still waiting for you to answer my one simple question. What does any of your cut-and-paste have to do with your fictional domestic-only oil market exchange??????? Last chance, and then it's going to be very obvious you were lying.

15. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    15   4:27pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says There is no physical exchange to speak off.. its all digital now days.. this is way beyond the understanding of a landlord. Gosh yes. A new fangled digital exchange is far beyond my comprehension. Did you present a single example of a domestic-only space-aged digital oil exchange yet? No? Figures. Here's the updated conversation. Everything is 100% accurate: Thomas: Oil trading occurs on domestic exchanges with only domestic partners. Iwog: show me one. Thomas: blah blah blah tech industry Iwog: show me one. Thomas: blah blah blah B2B Iwog: show me one. Thomas: you're getting paranoid. Iwog: show me one. Thomas: Way Way over you head Iwog: show me one. Thomas: Blah blah blah private electronic market (PEM)

16. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    16   4:36pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says LOL! who is full of shit now ? Show me one.

17. marcus Follow Befriend (5) 166 threads 5,053 comments

    17   4:36pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   thomas.wong1986 says here is some reading material.. I remember in 1999 when B2B was going to be REALLY big. In fact weren't much of the lies at Enron based on B2B potential over the internet ? Then here we are in a future year that start with 20 (2012 in fact), maybe still in the great recession, and we don't even have flying cars. I must say our phones are pretty damn cool though ! But I digress.

18. freak80 Follow Befriend (4) 52 threads 4,416 comments Corning, NY Premium

    18   6:25pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   It seems that both the "left" and "right" can fall prey to the false notion that oil is priced domestically. 1) the "left" sometimes accuses domestic producers of price manipulation, when domestic producers control relatively little of the globe's oil reserves. Oil is priced on the global market. 2) the "right" seems to think if we could "drill baby drill" here at home, we'd see a dramatic reduction in what we'd pay for gasoline. The fact is we don't have that much oil compared to places like Saudi Arabia and Canada. Proven Oil Reserves, from the CIA factbook:

19. freak80 Follow Befriend (4) 52 threads 4,416 comments Corning, NY Premium

    19   7:40pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   Ok, I missed your link the the Dept of the Interior's estimate. My mistake. But I wonder why there's such a huge difference between the CIA and the Dept. of the Interior? 21 billion vs. 134 billion is a big difference. I don't believe for a minute the 1442 billion estimate. I think that's pure propaganda. Regardless, I think it makes sense to open up more domestic drilling. We need the good-paying jobs and tax revenue. And it gives the Saudi's a little less revenue. And if you thought regular oil production was bad for the environment, just look at the impact Canadian tar-sand mining has. Yikes!

20. iwog Follow Befriend (48) 272 threads 12,446 comments 47 male Lafayette, CA Premium

    20   10:22pm Sun 25 Mar 2012   Share   Quote   Permalink   Like (1)   Dislike   It doesn't matter how much recoverable oil is in the United States or the world for that matter. The only thing that matters is how much fossil fuel can be extracted using less energy than you recover. This physical property is well known in engineering circles but does not exist in the world of neoconservative propaganda. The term is energy returned on energy invested or EROEI for short. Anyone reading this should take the time to memorize this ratio because it's going to become extremely important in your lifetime. Traditional oil fields are extremely efficient and generally have an EROEI in double digits. The problem with all these billions of barrels thomas keeps talking about is that they are locked in oil shale and cannot be recovered without expending nearly the same energy in extraction. Don't believe me? Much has been made of Canadian oil sands and indeed we get much of our oil from Canada. However the hidden secret about the Canadian oil fields is that they require MASSIVE, and I mean MASSIVE inputs of natural gas in order to extract the oil. Estimates of the EROEI for Canadian oil range from 7:1 to 3:1, however it's very possible that after you apply a correction for the fuel costs necessary to deliver this energy to your car, we're talking about an EROEI of almost 1:1. Canadian oil sands are decimating Canadian natural gas wells. Should Canada ever face a depletion problem in natural gas, the oil sands will shut down. Period. This isn't an economic issue, this is a thermodynamics issue. You cannot budget away physics. Now regarding thomas' much hyped reserve estimates. It is impossible to recover 100% of America's oil. It might even be impossible to recover 50% of America's oil. The deepest ocean wells MIGHT be capable of an EROEI of 3:1, and as these wells are depleted, that number approaches 1. At 1 an oil well is shut down. It doesn't matter if there's 1 barrel left or a billion barrels left. It makes no sense to get it. Unfortunately American energy policy is in a death spiral, and capitalism is to blame. Cars burn oil but unfortunately most don't burn natural gas. We have abundant cheap natural gas. So given a free market, what happens if the EROEI of an oil well is 1:1, and $1 of natural gas is burned to extract $10 worth of oil? Isn't it obvious? An oil corporation will destroy cheap energy to extract expensive energy, they will pocket the profits, and they will sell this country into hell without a peep from the Republican party. They will destroy enough natural gas to drive your car 1000 miles so they can sell you oil to run your car 1000 miles. Democrats don't really get this either, but Democrats are capable of crossing the mythical free market line in the sand. Republicans are not. This country has no future with Republicans at the helm. None. http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-10-28/two-more-ethical-challenges-canadas-oil-sands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested