View Full Version : POTUS Speech: Transcript
Looks like we're going to get another Czar...
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/15/transcript.obama.speech/index.html?hpt=C1
I was too busy working to pay my taxes.
Had to get the quarterly taxes in or face the music.
Something Democrat officials don't have to worry about.
.... .... ... .......... ........ So not to offend anyone :rolleyes:
We need a puking smile
Buffalobob
06-16-2010, 05:16
Jimmy Carter tried to get a reasonable energy policy in place but future politicians felt that campaign contributions were more important than the economics of energy and national security. So here we are right back to trying to develop a long term energy policy based upon something other than campaign contributions and political party rhetoric.
I suspect that political party rhetoric will win again being as the public does not really wish to move forward.
:rolleyes:
Creation of the D[ept] o[f] e[energy]
President Jimmy Carter requested the creation of the DOE as his first attempt at reorganizing the Federal agencies. Congress created the new agency with one major change from Carter's request. Carter wanted the authority to set wholesale interstate electricity rates and crude oil prices to rest with the DOE secretary. Congress vested this authority in an independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The enabling legislation reflected the energy and environmental concerns of the late 1970s. The DOE was to "promote maximum possible energy conservation measures" and to give the commercial use of solar, geothermal, recycling, and other renewable energy resources "the highest priority in the national energy program."
The Carter era. President Carter's National Energy Plan had two broad objectives: first, to reduce dependence on foreign oil; and, second, to develop renewable and inexhaustible sources of energy. The DOE proposed energy efficiency standards for new buildings, created the Solar Training Institute, and worked with General Motors to develop prototype electric cars and trucks.
The new agency inherited ongoing investigations into allegations that several oil companies had conspired to overcharge consumers during the 1973 oil embargo crisis. These investigations were ongoing when another oil crisis in the spring of 1979 brought new allegations of price gouging against fifteen oil companies and further DOE investigations. By the end of Carter's term in office, the DOE had collected $1.7 billion in settlements with oil companies.
During the Carter era, the DOE's weapons laboratories developed nuclear warheads for air-and land-launched cruise missiles. The agency invested heavily in nuclear weapons safety research and cleanup procedures. Underground tests of nuclear weapons continued at the Nevada Test Site.
The newly formed agency generated a substantial amount of controversy across the full range of its activities. Some lawmakers immediately attacked the renewable-energy programs because of their high costs and slow production. In the summer of 1979 the DOE revealed that it had miscalculated key oil supply figures, resulting in $9 billion overcharge in favor of the oil companies, at the expense of the consumers. A DOE official admitted that petroleum industry lobbyists had obtained access to DOE documents in advance of public release. In the first two years of the agency's existence the DOE was subjected to over two hundred investigations.
The DOE also had to deal with mismanagement problems resulting from its predecessor agencies. The DOE announced that in 1975 secret documents pertaining to the hydrogen bomb had been erroneously declassified. A DOE official also testified before Congress on the exposure of at least nine hundred people to significant doses of radiation during atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and the South Pacific between 1951 and 1962. The DOE identified fifty sites in more than twenty states that were once used for nuclear research and still posed contamination problems for area residents.
http://www.answers.com/topic/department-of-energy
Nearly 40 years and counting. It's as frustrating as Army procurement.
IIRC Pres. Carter spent $40B to create synthetic fuels.
The DOE was tasked to reduce our dependency on foreign oil:(
A pox on DOE and the oil companies
(as Richard says) and so it goes
v/r
phil
All fluff - no stuff - blahblahblah...
And so it goes...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
GratefulCitizen
06-16-2010, 12:02
From the president's speech:
We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves.
Really?
Has he added up all of the mean values associated with each well?
Doubtful.
Simple questions:
If we're running out of oil, then why is a carbon tax necessary?
Won't the declining production rates assert themselves?
This particular bull market for oil is just about done.
Enough suckers have bought into the long positions.
Curious to see what happens over the next few weeks.
Utah Bob
06-16-2010, 16:01
Bullshit.
being as the public does not really wish to move forward.
I disagree. I think the public is more than ready to move forward and find renewable sources of energy, with one caveat, we want it for a decent, reasonable price. There have been numerous polls that indicate most voters want to develop this energy now. Just a couple of the articles: http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1141846987064.xml&catref=ag1001
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/07/renewables_not_drilling.html
Personally, even if it may seem to fall under the conspiracy theory side, I believe the hold up is due to the auto/oil companies. They do not want to develop this energy because they are comfortable with the profits and control they have now. A good example is the 1948 Tucker Sedan. That vehicle was way ahead of its time, having many of the features that didn't start showing up on other vehicles until the late '50s and 60s. He was run out of business because he was a direct threat to them at the time.
Buffalobob
06-17-2010, 11:03
I hope you are right and we make some progress that involves something other than more of the same.
I am fairly amazed at the acceptance of gasohol and nearly anytime I go out on I-70 or I-68 I see the big rigs with single blades for building wind turbines heading west.
I hope you are right and we make some progress that involves something other than more of the same.
I am fairly amazed at the acceptance of gasohol and nearly anytime I go out on I-70 or I-68 I see the big rigs with single blades for building wind turbines heading west.
Funny how everyone is for giant wind turbines - until they try and set it up in your back yard......
Or have to cut a few trees - or chop a few birds with the blades.
And why should people be looking for the gas and oil companies to come up with new stuff that puts them out of business?
Peregrino
06-17-2010, 11:46
I'll believe in alternative energy AFTER we've seen a nuclear fusion "Manhattan Project" powerplant succeed. Until then, everything I've seen looks like another Al Gore "redistribute everybody else's wealth into my pet rock's pocket (gotta have a cutout in the wealth conduit)" program. Nothing that is being done today meets the simple math test.
Bordercop
06-17-2010, 12:20
The link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_presidents_oil_reserves_li.html
Tuesday night, following a tour of the Gulf Coast area, the President of the United States addressed the nation regarding the state of the BP oil spill. In his speech from the Oval Office, President Obama spoke regarding our nation's dependence upon oil and how we need to break that dependence.
During his speech, the president made a statement that was blatantly false. The president noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."
We are not running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. In fact, it is due to the president's party of extreme environmentalists that BP had to drill some forty miles from the coastline in deep waters to extract oil. Imagine if this oil leak had happened in the shallow waters off of the East Coast or even, dare we say it, in the pristine ANWR region. How much easier it would have been to cap the leak and clean up the oil?
Consider our nation's vast oil reserve resources that are currently unavailable for use due to government ownership of the land or outright bans on drilling in certain areas.
According to a June 2008 article in Kiplinger Magazine, the United States has enough oil reserves to power the nation for upwards of three centuries. That's three hundred years, Mr. President. We are not running out of oil reserves -- it's just that those oil reserves have been declared off-limits due to decades of environmental lobbying of our politicians, especially those on the Left. This lobbying has driven the likes of BP and others out deep into the Gulf of Mexico to extract the nation's needed oil.
Note the following statement from the article:
... untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today's levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.
Think about that. The nations that currently hold us hostage by their massive oil production actually have far fewer reserves than our own nation. Put another way, some of the very nations on which we are dependent for oil are also the same nations that help to sponsor worldwide terrorism. Were we to extract our own oil, it would make our nation and the world a safer place. But isn't a spotted owl more important than the safety of the world?
Among the areas the article mentions are the oil shale located underneath land in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. These lands are federally protected, but they alone could provide about two hundred years' worth of oil for the nation. Others mentioned include oil reserves located under Montana and some reserves located on protected lands in Texas, California, Utah, and Kentucky.
In fact, our own government has acknowledged the vast oil resources available to us. In an April 2008 study conducted by the United States Geological Survey, the group began its press release with the following: "North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation."
The report acknowledges that the available oil reserves could be much larger, but the 3.0 to 4.3 billion figure represents oil recoverable right now with today's technology. In fact, there may more than 100 billion barrels eventually recoverable with continued developments in the technology necessary to extract the oil.
Then there is the most famous government-blocked area of oil reserves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuges (ANWR). With 10 billion barrels available, ANWR is the most accessible of the major untapped oil reserve locations in the United States, and claims are that this oil could be extracted in a way that would have minimal negative environmental impact.
Yet with all of these resources, here we sit, importing oil at a feverish pace, and a significant portion of it from our enemies and those who support terrorist organizations around the world. And here we sit watching oil float towards our shores through unnecessary deep-water drilling when we could be drilling on dry land.
Yes, the president is correct when he calls for the need to use more alternative energy sources. Some of these may, in the long-term, actually be more efficient than the use of oil and be more readily accessible. However, until then, we would be wise to tap our God-given resources in the safest of areas first before we go drilling more than a mile beneath the ocean for the same fuel that is available on dry land.
Therefore, if we're tossing all the blame towards BP for this catastrophic oil spill, then we're ignoring other perpetrators. The reason BP and other oil companies are drilling 40-plus miles off the shoreline and more than a mile deep is because of the stranglehold that environmentalists have held on politicians and their resulting energy policies for decades.
Let's use some common sense. Drill first on land, then in water. It's really not that difficult.
YMMV...but I don't think I'm gonna give up my internal combustion engine just yet...
The link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_presidents_oil_reserves_li.html
YMMV...but I don't think I'm gonna give up my internal combustion engine just yet...
As the article states, everyone knows it is there, its just a matter of getting it.
One thing that has puzzled me in the last few years is the cost of diesel. It used to be much cheaper than regular gas. It doesn't cost as much to produce yet it costs more at the pump, often more than mid-grade gas. The only reason I can come up with is the popularity of diesel engines, especially in pick-ups.
On that line, you don't hear as much about bio-diesel as you used to either.
I don't understand why there has to be this immediate cutoff of using fossil fuels. Why can't we slowly build on the use of greener energy?
Also why not just give tax breaks to corporations who emit less pollution and also to companies who research in renewable energy. Not punish companies who use what is available now.
The Reaper
06-17-2010, 18:24
One thing that has puzzled me in the last few years is the cost of diesel. It used to be much cheaper than regular gas. It doesn't cost as much to produce yet it costs more at the pump, often more than mid-grade gas. The only reason I can come up with is the popularity of diesel engines, especially in pick-ups.
Taxes.
TR
Peregrino
06-17-2010, 21:06
Taxes.
TR
And the regulatory intrusion of the Feds. Ultra-low sulfur diesel costs a bit more to refine. That and taxes. Oh - and lets not forget the taxes. :mad: