Fed Judge deep-sixes Barry O's offshore drilling moratorium

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...ifted-today-by-new-orleans-federal-judge.html

Wonder if this will bring back any of the rigs that went to Brazil to drill there.

Because once they're drilling down there, they ain't coming back for at least a year and a half - moratorium or not.

Ooohhh... They'd better watch out! Just as soon as the President's lawyers are through with Arizona, they'll be coming after Louisiana!

Ha!

Yaaaay! More spills! We're finally gonna die!

Amazing how this Administration seems to be hamstrung by rules...except when they're pandering; then the rules suddenly don't matter any more.

The rigs were inspected after the BP incident and were found to be satisfactory. What more do you want? Putting a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf--after ONE accident in 40 years--is only going to cause more harm...

No...I don't "want", things anymore, that leads to disappointment.

Wow. What would it take to justify stopping offshore drilling?

It's not like they would consider shutting the borders to immigration after some similar outrage...

A total and complete end to the demand for oil.

An alternative to oil that's cheap, plentiful, better for the environment, and doesn't require miracles or government subsidies to exist.

It also has to run the millions of existing vehicles and the numerous oil-burning powerplants on which our economy depends without expensive replacement or modification.

Unless you got that somewhere, you go get the oil where it is.

Regardless of the environmental disasters caused?

EDIT: And I'd note that the oil industry recieves huge subsidies, so best complain about those too.

Show me a comparable alternative that's better for the environment.

What if there isn't a comparable alternative? Do we just accept any amount of destruction to the biosphere?

Assuming that we learn nothing from accidents like this one and so fail to improve (a big assumption), what other choice you got?

Our ability to use energy for productive work and creation makes our lives much, much better. So if you ask me if I'd rather give up my car, my energy consumption, etc. or risk a once-in-forty-years oil spill, I say I'll take the spill.

10 million gallons of oil (much of it re-captured) is not going to ruin 625 million million million gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill is tragic, but it's just not that big a deal.

The choice is to use other sources of energy, including oil from other sources, even if it's more expensive. Or to move towards more efficient transportation systems including rail.

You may not like it, but there is such a choice.

This decision appears to be unwise.

A comparison might be a judge ordering Space Shuttle flights to continue immediately after the Challenger and Columbia accidents.

One of the really, really obvious choices is to allow more drilling closer to shore where it's easier and safer.

Or in ANWR...

You may not like it, but there is such a choice.

That would indeed be a comparison.

But a very silly one.

A reasonable comparison would be a judge ordering shuttle flights to continue after inspection of them showed that they had no signs of the problems which had been determined to cause the previous accident.

Which has nothing to do with how things actually happened. Which is why your comparison is silly. It appears to be based on either a willful desire to misdirect information, or else a woefully insufficient understanding of the situation.

Yup, at a rate of one every 60 years we are surely all doomed.

Put me on ignore!

Have the events that lead to the oil rig accident been fully determined, and have steps been taken to ensure that they do not occur again?

I do not think that is necessarily the case, particularly in such a short time frame.

A better comparison might be made to a president suspending all tanker operations after the Exxon Valdez.

Indeed, oil is constantly leaking from tankers as a "cost of doing business" so surely we pretty much ought to ban all of them.

or hey, how about a moratorium on all underground mining operations because miners keep getting killed?

How about a moratorium on all air travel for six months after 9/11 while we review security practices?

All are better comparisons than yours - there is indeed an act which "appears unwise" here, but your god-like vision seems to have misidentified it.

Amtrak disagrees!!

After all, there have been far more tanker accidents than drilling rig accidents over the years.

This action by the Obama administration smacks more of political opportunism than of real necessity.

Sounds good.

After 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl we reacted pretty much EXACTLY as you suggest to Nuclear power because we were fraught with concern about "destruction" of the biosphere - while France and other countries put a reactor on every street corner.

Feel free to list for me the numerous nuclar disasters which have imperiled our biosphere since Chernobyl.

In the mean time, one can hardly begin the calculations of how much more money we've spent, and how much more damage we have done environmentally using less clean sources in America.

I'm sure the obvious play here is to repeat that same flawed logic again.

This "drill baby drill", horseshit is such a delusion.
As if we're "drilling our oil".
As if "drilling our oil", makes us "energy independent".
It all goes into one big pot on the international market.
We're drilling someone else's oil, and vice versa.
We wanna be energy independent, we've gotta get off the oil tit, simple as that.

But we won't.

This species is too stupid to make it.
Hey, prove me wrong kids, prove me wrong!

But Dicky thinks we ought to ban tankers! I'll bet he's against drilling domestically in places like ANWR too (to say nothing of bad-old offshore rigs)

Wonder if he thinks we can build his next computer out of wood?

See post 28.