Looks like rising gas prices is swaying the public towards increasing production rather than reducing consumption.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/884/gas-prices

Reading further into the link, the partisan gap (political) over exploration is gone. Guess we'll wait until the tap runs dry before we conserve.

 

I have relatives in Oklahoma who went broke drilling for oil and gas.

Bob Wilson

 

I have relatives in Kansas who have oil and gas wells on the property. The problem is that they easy oil and gas has been developed already, and what's left is hard to get at. And, of course, we don't really know how much more is down there. And, of course, however much it is, it will eventually run out. The wells in Kansas don't produce nearly as much as they used to.

 

People are terminally stupid.

They don't believe that oil is a finite resource. And they believe the economics crap about all natural resources being essentially infinite. They do not believe that the planet earth is finite; a bounded sphere, at least not on any meaningful intellectual level.

And they are also suspicious enough to believe that someone is always trying to cheat them or pull the wool over their eyes. This cripples their ability to objectively evaluate data. It doesn't help that they are also too lazy to study complicated data. In truth, many people (probably most) are incapable of taking in complex information, evaluating it, comparing it to counter argument and then distilling a result possessing any logic and clarity.

This is very unfortunate. I'm beginning to think that "old europe" was right; an aristocracy is justified because most people are idiots. And the great American experiment in rule by an informed citizenry is doomed to become a failed experiment in self government.

 

Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and they deserve to get it good and hard.—H. L. Mencken

 

I disagree,

Nationally, fuel usage is DOWN.
Dealers are scrambling to get small car inventory.
Prices on gas guzzlers and suv's are falling, as is demand.
Electric car talk is growing.
Hybrids are in high demand.

Although not everyone is changing, the higher gas prices (and everything else prices) are starting to sway the previously wasteful thought process....

 

I agree with every statement you make and that is in part why I was surprised to see this poll which shows a significant shift from February to June of this year.



The shift is even more surprising by the people identified as "democrats" or "liberals".



We all have to remember that this country is made up of a variety of opinions, values, etc. I spend many weekends on the coast of SC which is visited by a mix of people from Georgia up to Canada. I am always amazed to see people carrying their trash with significant recyclable content (aluminum cans/bottles, etc) past the convenient recycling bins and into the trash (landfill). So when good and convenient alternatives exist, many will still take the "old" path

 

There is an odd problem in this country right now that has to do with people debating questions of policy without being able to agree on the basic FACTS that underly the issues they are debating. Hypothetical scenario: One talking head (or Republican Congresswoman) will say something on TV along the lines of 'gas prices could be back at $2/gallon almost immediately if we would just drill offshore and in Alaska' and even though the other talking head says 'that's crazy!' and cites independent studies, government research, any economist alive to try to explain why that just isn't going to happen, the so-called moderator at the table, the 'objective journalist' who is interviewing both of them tends to leave it at that. Instead of stepping in and saying, there IS an objective truth here, and one person is simply WRONG, the media leaves it open as if the viewer ought to decide who to believe, as if it's just about credibility and not actual truth.

When the facts say that the new drilling being proposed *might* lower gas prices by a nickel - in 15 years!- according to objective government reports, how can people get away with making such outrageous claims? But they do. See the ridiculous Michele Bachmann as an example of what I'm talking about here. (http://www.startribune.com/politics/...ghlightModules)

Look, people, the US has less than 2% of the oil reserves in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves) and we use about 25% of the oil produced in the world. These numbers, approximately, are not in dispute, and they are not imaginary, arguable, or an opinion. You can't drill what isn't there, oil doesn't go on forever, and even more particularly, you can't drill *in the US* for oil that isn't there. It is a FACT that the US cannot simply increase domestic production to meet the demand for oil in the US market- we import more than half the oil we use and have since the 90's. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._energy_independence). The only reason it isn't even higher as a percentage of imports is that our production is already relatively high- we're pumping ourselves dry faster than anywhere else in the world already. Note in the Oil Reserves wikipedia page that the US only has twelve years of oil left in its reserves at current production rates, while the other main oil producing countries tend to be much higher.

However much the talking heads rant, **we cannot drill our way out of the oil issue.** It isn't possible, whatever the latest polls say people want. We need leadership, and we need better fact-gathering by more responsible journalists, to make sure people hear the facts that exist, even if those are not quite what people want to hear right now.

We wouldn't have unfortunate poll results like these if more people understood the agreed-upon facts. Drilling is not the answer!

 

One of the central problems in our society, leahbeatle, is that there are NO agreed upon facts. "Facts" are all subject to the litmus test of whether or not they first pass philosophical, political or religious acceptability.

Examples:
The "facts" of evolution do not pass the litmus test of religious acceptability for Fundamentalist Christians.
The "facts" of gun control do not pass the litmus test of liberal political philosophy.
The "facts" of oil depletion do not pass the litmus test of conventional economics theory.
The "facts" of industrial/commercial degradation and damage to the environment and natural ecosystems do not pass the litmus test of conservative economics philosophy.

The "fact" that the earth revolves around the sun did not pass the litmus test of Catholic theological teaching in Galileo's day.

A big part of the problem is that the credibility of the scientific community has been eroded by the public perception that science cannot conclusively resolve issues. It doesn't help that science education has been neglected. But a greater problem is that too large a portion of the public is incapable of understanding (let alone actually applying and using) scientific theory to resolve problems. People are too stupid (see my previous post).

We have a population whose intellectual comprehension level is completely outmatched by its culture's technical complexity.

 

I look at it as the ripple of the Age of Enlightenment. Those of us who fully embrace empiricism and the scientific method have moved so far beyond the Age of Faith that we have a hard time understanding that mindset. We both can use the same words but the meanings, the definitions are so apart that we might as well be speaking (more often SHOUTING) past each other.

Over the years, I've found that when the person I'm discussing something with begins to suffer "selective audio accuity," it is time to change the subject to something we can agree on and let them get the last word. I also realize that in some cases, it will take painful 'reality training' before they can get their hearing back.

Bob Wilson