Posted on 06/19/2011 8:08:26 AM PDT by SmithL
Hardly a day goes by without somebody in government or the media complaining about all the jobs that U.S. corporations have moved overseas, or lamenting the loss of the American heartland’s once-mighty industrial capacity. Lost amid all the shouting and cursing is this fact: Thanks to recent advances in drilling technology, especially the use of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” and horizontal drilling, this nation stands on the threshold of an incredible industrial renaissance powered by the availability of immense supplies of affordable natural gas and oil harvested from the continental United States and its offshore dominions.
Fracking and horizontal drilling allow energy companies to tap into billions of barrels and trillions of cubic feet of previously inaccessible oil and natural gas trapped in shale and other formations thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface and separated from the water table by immense expanses of solid rock. Fracking has been used to drill more than a million wells in this country, and in the past decade it has found new prominence with discovery of major oil and gas deposits in West Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New York. In addition, ExxonMobil just announced a huge new find in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
These abundant, affordable energy supplies could revitalize domestic manufacturing in countless ways. As Nucor Steel CEO Dan Dimicco recently told the Wall Street Journal, the potential is so immense that “we could change the entire manufacturing base in the U.S. if we just embrace what’s happening in natural gas.” Plentiful, affordable energy supplies are a key factor in attracting new manufacturing investments in the U.S. that will create thousands of new jobs, bring back many that are now overseas, and generate the new growth so desperately needed to get the American economy humming again.
Unfortunately, there is a very big “but” in this otherwise tremendously encouraging scenario: President Barack Obama and many of his key appointees prefer to make the U.S. turn away from fossil fuels and instead convert to alternative energies such as wind, solar and thermal. Such a transition will come someday, but it will be at least three decades before alternative sources can replace significant portions of energy production now generated with fossil fuels.
Alternative energy advocates are pulling out all their propaganda and lobbying to greatly limit the use of fracking or eliminate it entirely. They’ve succeeded so far in New York, which has all but banned fracking. And they are making progress in Washington where the Environmental Protection Agency has commissioned yet another study of potential environmental hazards to drinking water. The EPA study was ordered despite the fact that EPA administrator Lisa Jackson conceded during recent congressional testimony that her agency has never found a single provable example of ground water contamination traceable to fracking. So the issue here is clear: Will American technology be allowed to generate thousands of new jobs and economic growth, or will alternative energy diehards kill the U.S. industrial renaissance in its crib?
bfl, FR appears to be going down.
bfl, FR appears to be going down.
Like always, liberals seem to think they can make things appear out of thin air in defiance of basic reality.
Thn, they oppose those forms of energy as well.
Years ago, liberals supported natural gas (why do you think so many buses in our cities run on NG?) Now they oppose it.
Liberals previously supported wind power. Now some of them oppose it.
Liberals previously supported solar power. Now some of them oppose it.
Liberals oppose progress and they oppose the old ways at the same time.
Liberals don’t oppose solar or wind power, in theory.
What they tend to oppose is any actual installation that might have a negative effect on the environment, which is of course every installation. Especially any installation that they, as opposed to the peons, might have to see or be forced to live around.
Yes. I’m having lots of trouble. “Service Temporarily Unavailable.”
Liberals don’t oppose solar or wind power, in theory.
What they tend to oppose is any actual installation that might have a negative effect on the environment, which is of course every installation. Especially any installation that they, as opposed to the peons, might have to see or be forced to live around.
Liberals don’t oppose solar or wind power, in theory.
What they tend to oppose is any actual installation that might have a negative effect on the environment, which is of course every installation. Especially any installation that they, as opposed to the peons, might have to see or be forced to live around.
Nope, you don't get it at all. The fascists want both mandated demand and regulated supply. The greenies want to force people to use natural gas, but only from particular existing sources that their sponsors own. The one thing they don't want is for any form of energy to be abundant and cheap.
Would you be speaking about T. Boone Pickens? He has a fortune invested in nat gas, betting on the come.
Not specifically, unless he has a foundation making donations to green groups that I don't know about. I'm speaking specifically of the major contributors to the Natural Resources Defense Council and their various copycats. Go to the link above. It's a lengthy article, but it explains a lot, particularly as regards the current nominee for Secretary of Commerce.
>>Such a transition will come someday, but it will be at least three decades before alternative sources can replace significant portions of energy production now generated with fossil fuels.
I came of age in the Carter Administration, when energy was the “moral equivalent of war”, to use a Carter quote. I’ve forgotten more about Thermodynamics than most people will ever know. Alternate energy has been 2-3 decades away from commercialization and the replacement of fossil fuels for my entire adult life.
No. More. Subsidies. For. Alternative. Energy.
And kill the EPA, and bring in reasonable conservation / stewardship of the environment, instead of the extremism we now see.
>>Such a transition will come someday, but it will be at least three decades before alternative sources can replace significant portions of energy production now generated with fossil fuels.
I came of age in the Carter Administration, when energy was the “moral equivalent of war”, to use a Carter quote. I’ve forgotten more about Thermodynamics than most people will ever know. Alternate energy has been 2-3 decades away from commercialization and the replacement of fossil fuels for my entire adult life.
No. More. Subsidies. For. Alternative. Energy.
And kill the EPA, and bring in reasonable conservation / stewardship of the environment, instead of the extremism we now see.
Yes. They will. We need to start making it too costly legally for them to continue to lie.
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