Science With Six Two: ANWR Ain't No Answer

By Number Six

Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 01:27 AM

If one is to listen to the likes of El Oxycondo, and the rest of the neofascists, the answer to our prayers is to start drilling in Alaska...

Small problem, and in this little lecture, we again cover another scientific doodad: Those who call themselves conservatives either do not study well the math, or, they just fucking make shit up.

All we've heard now for a week from the AM radio hate mongers is, well, we'll do a fast summary here, shall we?

"If those tree-huggers and other enviro-wackos would get out of the way of Exxon and let the drilling start in Alaska, our prayers would then be answered!"

Okay, so that's their take, so to speak. Now, let's apply a little scientific process to these dunderheadish prattle and tear it a new anus, shall we?

Time to pull an Einstein here, and do a thought experiment. Suppose we do just as dear old recently-arrested El Windbag says we should?

Guess what. Does the term "pissing on a forest fire" sound familiar?

According to our own government's data, courtesy the EIA, the Energy Information Agency, drilling for oil in ANWR won't do much, if anything.

From an AP story: (03-16-2004, to be exact)

"Opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil development would only slightly reduce America's dependence on imports and would lower oil prices by less than 50 cents a barrel, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Energy Department."

In other words, the price, at the pump, would be totally insignificant. Notice the operand "slight", meaning, "fraction of a percentile". Meaning, ain't shit.

"The report, issued by the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, said that if Congress gave the go-ahead to pump oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crude could begin flowing by 2013 and reach a peak of 876,000 barrels a day by 2025."

2013. Won't help now for shit, will it. And a mere 876,000 barrels a day? For a nation that gobbles up 200,000,000 a day?

"But even at peak production, the EIA analysis said, the United States would still have to import two-thirds of its oil, as opposed to an expected 70 percent if the refuge's oil remained off the market."

Hmm. 33 and 1/3 versus 30. Stop and think on that for a moment with me. .33 versus .30. Meaning a total difference of only .03?

3 percent??????

You mean we fucking destroy a wildlife refuge for a whopping 3 percent difference in our energy needs? And why?

Worse, oh, yes, much worse, this is all based on some pretty big "if" data. IF the geological data is as good as many think it is, IF we don't run into "dry holes" as we often do when drilling, but then, that's the sort of giggly mistakes the oil companies often make, grin, write it off and then go fuck up some other piece of real estate in this madness.

3 percent. In the strictest of mathematical terms, it means, yes, pissing on a raging forest fire and calling it "fire control". I call it mental masturbation myself, but hey, that's just me.

And note, shall we? All we've done here is present strict mathematical reasoning. Okay, so maybe I vote for Bambi, being a soft-hearted lib, of course, but, the scientific data, well, sad to say, 3 percent versus Bambi?????

Summation: Even if we toss out completely the concerns of the environmentalists, drilling in Alaska to offset our energy needs won't bring in cheap gas anytime soon, and what percentage, if we wish fucking hard, won't make a goddamned bit of difference in oil pricing whatsoEVER.

See why the neofascists hate science? It tends to make any argument they fart out of their yaps look just as stupid as we thought it was all along. You treehuggers can now rest a little easier: We academics are right with you, it's asinine to drill for oil just so we can achieve a bare percentile of relief, and I'm too much like my old man, when I want a buzz, one beer won't cut it. No, we need massive relief from the pushers who call themselves "oil companies", and drilling holes in Alaska?

Quoth Bugs Bunny: "What a maroon!"