The Oil Drum has the integrity and analytical depth to point out the absurdities of the Democratic position.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4388#more

So why isn’t the public getting the message? AGW proponents have thrown just about everything trying to convince the public. WHY is there growing doubt?
Enjoy your vacation Maine.

[JR: The public is getting the message -- denial works! Keep up the great, if self-destructive work!]

That this happened on the day after Bush Sr. indicated he would sell from the SPR is coincidental, not causal. Bush’s planners made the decision before the invasion that the SPR would be tapped and followed through with it even though it was not necessary from a supply/price point of view – the price would have collapsed anyway on the back of unmet expectations with or without the SPR release.

Later releases from the SPR have clearly failed to produce any sustained price suppression – when both Clinton and Bush Jr. sold from the SPR, prices rebounded within mere weeks.

If you buy Verlager’s theory about diesel refinement being the driver of world oil prices, then a release from the SPR as suggested by Obama might make sense. Indeed it might make loads of sense to let lighter crude out now when demand is high – but the flipside is that the US could not sustain releases of light crude long enough (until 2012) to get through the hump in refining capacity shortfall. Meanwhile, the increase in distillate demands is a secular trend. So, any SPR release would be the equivalent of running on fumes: good for a few miles (months) but you’re going to hit the wall eventually.

It would also be a stretch to say that the SPR is useless if prices don’t fall upon doing so – the SPR does not exist to smooth price volatility; that is the role of the future’s market, in theory. The SPR exists for two reasons: 1) to provide several weeks worth of import cover in the event of a major supply disruption to the US and 2) to partially meet the US’s IEA commitments. This is why it is a ’strategic’ reserve and not a simply reserve.

The one thing that might help longer term is switching New England from heating oil to gas, which the US has in abundance.

The media including most blogs I read, consistently give the oil and gas industry a pass on the environmental damage they do. They acknowledge past damage, but seem to believe that future damage can be avoided.

This is simply not true.

Usually the news story if interviewing a candidate or an editorial piece will end something like this: “and we believe that domestic oil and gas production should be increased with appropriate environmental safeguards in place.”

As if by magic, asking that “appropriate safeguards” be used will make environmental damage simply not occur. Well, that’s a load of absolute BS. Oil and gas development continues to incur significant and permanent damage to fish and wildlife populations and habitats as well as to the agricultural, ranching and forestry industries.

If oil and gas development occurs off of Virginia, how will the product get onshore? Will they directionally drill a 36″ pipeline across the Chesepeake or simply plow it through the seagrass beds and oyster reefs? Only one way it can pay and that’s to blot out a few hundred more acres of these already endangered and disappearing bay habitats. Of course there will have to be many lines built.

How many crew boats will ground on coral reefs if they seriously drilled off of Florida’s east coast? Wells aren’t just drilled next to existing shipping channels. And how will they get the pipelines across those reefs and grass beds that often stretch for tens of miles?

My experience with this industry comes from Texas, Louisiana and Alaska, and it isn’t good. They often bully their way through whatever environmental safeguards there are and often no matter how much money could be spent, there is no way to avoid damage. I still recall the day I saw a backhoe on top of the largest oyster reef in Texas (Galveston Bay’s Todd’s Dump) hacking away a path for a pipeline. No permit, but what the hell all was forgiven. That single oyster reef produced one-third of Texas’ oysters or about 10% of the U.S. Atlantic total.

Not many folks have noticed, but citizens and elected officials in New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming have a lot of not nice things to say about the booming gas industry in their states.

How about a little honesty: “and we should increase local production even though it means irreversible damage to large swaths of our country.”

this one by Thomas Friedman is way better. About how Denmark doesn’t import any middle east oil and 50 percent are on bicycles. And it works.

http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/ 08/ 10/ opinion/ 10friedman1.html?em

1.6 percent unemployment? Denmark? Huh?

Meanwhile the Online campaign also expands

http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energy-issues/
http://www.willyoujoinus.com/ media-gallery/ advertising/ print.aspx
And has some ‘kumbayah” touchy feelly video ads

Has some slick game simulations
http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energyville/

They now seem to embrace alternative energy sources.
The campaign seems to be sending the message of “we are your friends, we can do this together”