Popular Mechanics explains why we need to keep all alternatives on the table right now, and get government out of the way as much as possible. And all those analogies you keep hearing to the early heyday of NASA, and putting a man on the moon? James Meigs tells us why they don't really apply:

Yes, the moon landing was a towering achievement. But, as aerospace analyst Rand Simberg notes, it was also a "well-defined engineering challenge, and a problem susceptible to having huge bales of money thrown at it." Retooling America's energy infrastructure is far more complex. It isn't one challenge, it's thousands—a total overhaul of the American lifestyle involving deep changes in every home, vehicle and business in the country.

Anyone who believes we should put all those myriad decisions in the hands of government officials should take a close look at NASA. No, not the agile NASA of the Apollo years, but the ponderous space agency of recent decades.

After Apollo, NASA set out to build an affordable, reliable vehicle that would make space travel routine. Instead, we got the shuttle, a delicate, dangerous craft that flies infrequently and costs nearly half a billion dollars a launch. So, while NASA still accomplishes some great things, it's hardly a model of efficient, long-term problem solving.

Before we decide that a bigger, better energy policy is going to fix our troubles, we should recall that the United States has had various energy plans since the Nixon administration. Unfortunately, such policies have often made things worse.

Look at natural gas. In 1982, Congress banned offshore drilling in virtually all U.S. waters. In addition to limiting our ability to produce more oil, that put at least 76 trillion cu. ft. of potentially recoverable natural gas off-limits.

And that's a shame, because natural gas is our most attractive major energy source right now. Solar and wind power are promising, but so far they've barely made a dent in our use of oil and coal. Natural gas is a practical alternative, and relative to other fossil fuels it's clean to produce and burn—and it releases much less carbon into the air. It can drive factories, heat homes and even, as Pickens advocates, power vehicles. But we're producing far less than we need.

. . . . Coal has been a national priority ever since Jimmy Carter put on that cardigan. Yes, coal is plentiful, but it is an environmental headache all the way from strip mine to smokestack.

Then there's ethanol. It was less than a year ago that leaders of both parties decided that ethanol made from corn would be a brilliant alternative to foreign oil. Speeches were made; sweeping mandates passed. The result? Food prices went through the roof—and energy prices did, too.

Where would a more sensible energy policy start? Pickens is on the right track with his plan to increase use of natural gas. And McCain's call to allow more offshore drilling would significantly increase production. Alternatives such as wind or solar look better by the day, and, indeed, every major energy plan stresses them. But, it will take decades for the alternative-energy infrastructure to match our needs. We must have those offshore oil and gas reserves to bridge the gap.

The government can play a role in advancing alternative energy. Tax incentives and regulatory relief can help. So can research money channeled through the National Science Foundation or DARPA. But let's tread lightly when it comes to giving handouts to corporations in the name of research. Obama's promise of billions in development funds sounds enticing. But who gets those dollars? It wasn't too long ago that investors and politicians alike regarded Enron as a brilliant innovator in the energy field. If copious research funds had been available in Enron's heyday, its executives would no doubt have found a way to pocket a share.

. . . In fields ranging from batteries to biofuels, there are hundreds of promising research projects under way. Some will succeed, some won't. But we need scientists, entrepreneurs and consumers to pick the winners, not politicians. Finding solutions to our energy problems isn't rocket science. It's a lot tougher.

Read the whole thing; it really is a beautiful summary of why we have to stay flexible, and keep trying things until we hit on the handful of solutions that will be most useful 10-20-30 years down the line.

Via Glenn Reynolds at PJ Media and the Sean Hackbarth of the Senate GOP's media room. (Sean's own blog is, of course, The American Mind.)

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David Foster:

[There are] plenty of other ways [aside from blocking oil/natural gas drilling, that the far-left can do to sabotage the economy and revamping/maintenance of our energy infrastructure]. They can protest the bulding of power plants and transmission lines. They can lobby for the destruction of existing hydroelectric dams. They can protest the building of new (energy-saving) rail lines and railyards. They can impose crippling taxes on all traditional sources of energy, and ensure that new sources are so politicized that they will generate only corruption, not megawatts.

It's increasingly probable that we are going to have a major electricity crisis, and there is nothing that the environmentalists and lawyers will allow us to do to prevent it.

I fear he's right. We have to fight just as hard for electricity as we are for liquid fuels (both petroleum-based and the newer types). Tell 'em it's for those electric cars we'll all be driving in ten years or so.

We should all, BTW, review that segment from Soylant Green wherein everyone has to ride a stationary bike in his/her apartment just to keep the lights on for a little while. That's where we're headed.

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. . . on the Perdido Platform in the Gulf Coast. It's fascinating stuff, originally put together by the people who are investing millions in trying to keep our economy functioning and the country secure until we can perfect the next generation of energy sources Big Bad Scary Oil and Natural Gas People.

I hope it makes Engineering Marvels soon on The History Channel; the whole thing is quite an accomplishment. Here's a teaser, from my spies:

The Shell-operated Perdido Regional Development Spar has arrived in the ultra deepwaters of the Gulf of Mexico and is currently being secured to the seafloor in about 8,000 feet of water. Once completed, the Perdido spar will be nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and weigh as much as 10,000 cars. Perdido will be the deepest oil development in the world, the deepest drilling and production platform in the world, and have the deepest subsea well in the world; positioning the spar into place required carefully-orchestrated maneuvers.

Perdido will be a fully functional oil-and-gas platform with a drilling rig and direct vertical access wells, full oil and gas processing, and remote subsea wells. The facility is designed to produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day, and 200 million standard cubic feet of gas. The production from these fields will be transported via new and existing pipelines to U.S. refineries.

The Perdido Spar will bring in production from three fields: Great White, Silvertip, and Tobago. These fields are located in ten Outer Continental Shelf blocks in Alaminos Canyon, approximately 200 miles south of Freeport, Texas. This development will provide the first Gulf of Mexico commercial production from a Paleogene reservoir.

All three fields have been granted production units from the Minerals Management Service, and the accumulations are completely in U.S. waters, some eight miles north of Mexico's international border. The first production from Perdido is expected around the turn of the decade.

That makes me feel a lot better— and even more resolute in resisting the Gang of Ten plan, which doesn't even allow drilling off of Texas (or any other states that might have oil nearby).

For more info on the Perdido project you can drop byhere, where they even have some helpful maps.

And you can follow the project as it unfolds right here.

More later; but it's nice to see that every dollar the oil companies have pumped (so to speak) into R&D on domestic production hasn't just gone to government pork.

Via one of my contacts at API.

I had no idea, BTW, we were only a few years away from bringing production online in this part of the Gulf. Keep in mind that this area has reserves of petroleum competitive with those in ANWR. It's critical that this project be brought to completion on-schedule—not just for this country, but for the developing world. And, of course, for emerging countries such as China and India, that are experiencing their own Industrial Revolutions: the cleaner we can extract/use coal and natural gas and petroleum, the better. The cleaner our cars and A/C run, the better. Because the planet cannot afford for them to depend upon second-rate, polluting technologies and inefficient, decades-old means of energy generation. (Believe me: I'm an allergic girl who remembers what the air was like in certain parts of L.A. County in the 1970s and 1980s. There were days when I felt sick; I just couldn't breathe.)

We have to do this, because we will do it in a more environmentally responsible fashion than nearly any other country out there. We need to do it, because we know how.

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The Wall Street Journal takes an almost, well, skeptical tone:

It took a few months, and more than a few polls, but Democrats have concluded that they've lost the debate against more oil-and-gas drilling. The surrender became official on Saturday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that even she was ready to "consider opening portions" of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.

That's great news, assuming she and her fellow Democrats really mean it.

. . . . . . . .

For example, the [Democratic Party] platform draft now says that "We know we can't drill our way to energy independence." Then there's the bit about ending "the tyranny of oil," which will require "far more than simply expanding our economic and political resources to keep oil flowing steadily" from overseas and elsewhere. There's also no mention of drilling offshore, much less in Alaska, and nothing about exploiting our vast domestic supplies of oil shale.

Fortunately, Democrats have time to fix these political oversights. If they are serious, surely Democrats will have someone rise on the convention floor next week and offer an amendment that endorses offshore drilling and pledges not to extend the Congressional ban on drilling that expires on September 30. Come to think of it, Democrats should offer this amendment in prime time. How better to steal the drilling issue from Republicans?

. . . . . . . . .

The fossil-fuel love-in could also extend to oil shale. Abundant on federal lands in the Mountain West, these deposits could yield more than seven times more fuel than Saudi Arabia has crude oil reserves. While extraction technology is still a work in progress, the immediate hitch is that a pilot leasing program was deliberately killed last year in legislation offered by Colorado's Democratic Senator, Ken Salazar. His partner in imposing that exploration ban was none other than House Democrat Mark Udall, who is now running for Colorado's open Senate seat.

Mr. Udall recently had his own pro-drilling epiphany, after weeks of getting pounded on the issue by his Republican opponent, Bob Schaffer. Mr. Udall's lead in the polls has vanished. "We've got to produce our own oil and gas here in our country," he now says in a new TV spot. But a campaign ad isn't enough. Surely, Mr. Udall will now want to acknowledge his mistake of a year ago and fight to lift the oil-shale ban on the House floor next month. That is, unless his new pro-drilling rhetoric is merely campaign triangulation that he doesn't really believe.

We'll know Democrats are not serious if they limit their drilling support only to the so-called Gang of 10 proposal in the Senate. The bipartisan Gang would allow drilling only offshore of four states -- Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas -- and only if it is farther than 50 miles out. It would leave the most promising areas off limits, especially in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico.

And in return for this de minimis drilling, the Gang wants to spend $84 billion more in subsidies for ethanol and other "alternatives," while hitting the oil industry with a $30 billion tax increase. This proposal is a trick designed to give Democrats political cover while opening up very little new land or offshore area for drilling.

No doubt any or all of these three actions would enrage the green lobby, but politics is about choosing. In this case, the Democratic choice is between sticking with an anticarbon theology that opposes all new drilling, or siding with American consumers who want more energy supplies so they don't have to pay $4 for gas and blow their family budget to keep the lights on. [ . . .]

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. . . that offshore drilling is a done deal. One might hope that all is not lost, and that there are other ways to sabotage the economy and American/Western security.

Via a tweet from Hackbarth of The American Mind.

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Is there a connection?

The fact is, I'm perfectly willing to pretend I'm afraid of carbon. The more people are afraid of AGW, the faster we can get some nice, clean nuclear power plants built. Yay!

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Chris explains how that works.

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. . . the "Gang of Ten" proposal:

API must express its opposition to the approach outlined by the Group of 10 because it falls far short of what is needed.

Unfortunately, the proposal appears to be a classic case of one step forward, two steps back -- or in this instance "light on new production/heavy on new taxes." Current world events only reinforce the critical importance of ensuring that our nation develops the full range of its domestic energy resources for economic competitiveness and national security reasons.

The proposalÂ’s approach to access to federal oil and natural gas resources is far too limited in its scope. And, it is unfortunately paired with the imposition of at least $30 billion in new taxes on the oil and natural gas industry that would have the effect of limiting needed oil and gas investment. A lesson learned well in the 1970-80 period. These measures create an environment that will virtually assure a future with less, not more, domestic production.

While this new proposal would expand access in the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf, it unfortunately limits any expansion over current law to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and waters off four Atlantic Coast states in the South. Even in these areas, development in federal waters less than 50 miles offshore would be banned – despite the fact that offshore facilities would need to be 12 or fewer miles from shore to be visible from land.

Leasing in the North Atlantic and off the Pacific Coast would be banned and plentiful hydrocarbon resources in Alaska would remain off limits. Significant regulatory burdens on new development would remain in place. The imposition of $30 billion in clearly discriminatory new taxes, to pay for federal investment in alternatives and renewables, ignores the fact that the industry already provides more than 70 percent of all North American investment in research and development in emerging energy technologies.

Americans today are calling for Congress to do much more to supply their needs for additional energy. Our companies are supplying more energy – and more kinds of energy – to meet this growing demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration continues to point out that oil and natural gas will be an essential part of this nation’s energy future for decades to come. Opening all available domestic resources to safe and environmentally responsible development would significantly boost U.S. supplies of oil and natural gas; increase the nation’s energy security; add more well-paying American jobs; help with our balance of payments and economic growth during a time of recessionary fears and bring billions of dollars into the Treasury instead of sending them abroad.

Huge and discriminatory new taxes on the U.S. oil and gas industry make no sense. The only beneficiaries of such an ill-advised approach would be international competitors in the global oil markets, who would benefit as US companies were made less competitive in the quest to find and develop global energy supplies. Already, the top 27 U.S. energy-producing companies have seen their annual tax liability rise to more than $100 billion, an 80-percent increase from 2004 to 2006. New taxes on these U.S.-based energy companies would drastically cut capital that otherwise could be invested in domestic oil and natural gas production and expanded refining capacity. The net result could be to stifle high-risk, capital-intensive projects in the U.S., leaving Americans more
dependent on foreign sources of energy, while jeopardizing U.S. jobs and economic growth.

Other than that, it's a great idea, you know. Read the entire text of the API Letter (it's a PDF), which was sent to all senators. We need a bill, but the GoT proposal ain't the one. And even one of the "DontGo" recommendations reportedly contains that "50 miles off shore" proviso for coastal development. That's at least twice of what's necessary for environmental safeguards. (Unless, perhaps, you're a yachting enthusiast; in that case, you might have to negotiate around the occasional oil platform that people on the beaches simply cannot see. Unless you get everywhere you go on sail-power alone—with no backup motor involved whatsoever—you might want to consider taking one for the team.)

The API site is here, by the way. They know their stuff, and because they have ties to the people out in the field who are doing the exploration and conducting the research on oil and natural gas, they can give much more pragmatic recommendations on how to solve the energy crisis in the short-term/medium-term, as we continue to work on alternative forms of fuel and creative ways to generate electricity.

So, let's be clear: having a relationship with the industry is a feature. Not a bug. But there's your disclosure, anyway. They are an invaluable think-tank and public information source on oil and natural gas, and we should listen to their input.

(If you're too much of a purist/anti-capitalist to do so. In that case, I assume you also ignore anything the American Booksellers Association has to say about the printed word.)

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Ace has the full story, complete with blockquotes--the last paragraph of one showing the distinctive signs of Ace-tampering.

I just can't see the problem with drilling in ANWR (or the coasts, for that matter) given:

1) the high international stakes for failing to do so;
2) the fact that our environmental safeguards are more sophisticated than they were when we developed Prudhoe Bay (and some of the installations off the California coast);
3) given that the caribou in Prudhoe Bay seem perfectly happy and healthy anyway;
4) the fact that Americans seem to think it's fine to "despoil" the wilderness areas / oceans of other countries in order to attain the petroleum we still use on a daily basis (and in some of these cases these countries' environmental safeguards are so poor that the word despoil does not belong in quotes); and
5) the fact that Alaskans overwhelmingly want this to be done. They need the jobs; they really do.

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Here.

Their news feed is here.

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Via #DontGo:

The Republican Senators joining this Gang are Lindsey Graham , John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson.

As of now there is no solid evidence showing the Gang of Ten will succeed. Especially considering the fact that these Senators organized BEFORE #dontgo kicked off. I would imagine there are conversations going on that suggests the Gang of Ten should back off because Republicans are now dominating on the #dontgo issue.

But if the Gang of Ten sticks to its guns, even after a full week of movement style activism and center-right based rallying, I think a revolt against these Senators might be in order.

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Well, let's see:

“Faced with the prospect of having the ban on offshore energy production expire at the end of September if Congress does nothing, this headline-hungry gang decided it had to do something before leaving town for the August vacation,” Murphy said. ““The New Era plan is the same as the era we find ourselves stuck in today – flush in subsidies, tax credits, and various other government handouts, but short on the energy supplies our economy and our consumers need to prosper. American families would be better served if the Gang and the entire Congress simply stopped trying to help, stepped aside, and let the offshore ban expire.”

IER Analysis: Key Flaws in the ‘New Era’ Plan:

• The Gang of Ten calls for additional offshore production in areas currently under moratoria, but proposes a process that fails to guarantee/deliver any new supplies whatsoever. New production on federal offshore lands is left to the discretion of several state legislatures.

• Production potential is severely limited. Only four coastal states would be granted the ability to “opt out” of energy bans. Arbitrary 50-mile buffer zones would exclude potential resource deposits, such as the Gulf of MexicoÂ’s Destin Dome, which is some 25 miles offshore.

• The plan ignores the urgent national need to repeal the offshore energy exploration and production bans that have contributed to the very problem their plan purports to solve. It may even give the ban the force of permanent law for the first time ever. This is an especially short-sighted, as the Congressional ban is set to expire in less than two months, on October 1, 2008, which will open the entire 1.76 billion acre outer continental shelf (OCS) to energy production.
Spending $85 billion on tax credits, subsidies, and various other federal handouts in lieu of increasing domestic oil and gas production is the kind of failed approach to energy policy that helped deliver the crisis we find ourselves in today. Government continues to be the source of the problem; government-centered ‘solutions’ will only compound our problems.

• Dedicating additional, inordinate sums to biofuel programs is especially unwise, as they represent up to 75 percent of the recent spike in food prices, according to the World Bank. They are not as “renewable” as their proponents claim, and may not even provide any environmental benefits whatsoever.

Except (to a very small degree) for that point, since I think ethanol is part of our energy future, along with methanol. But it looks like the subsidies might be skewed, and I'd rather save our mandates for flex-fuel vehicles and let the market sort this out to the degree that's possible.

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Rage against the machine . . . and the "Gang of Ten."

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. . . discusses energy possibilities with the "Don't Go"/"Drill Now" people. (Video is in the upper-left-hand corner.)

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Keeping the pressure up on Reid and his Senate, too:

Nice to know that the Republican Senators are working as hard as our guys in the House to keep this issue on the front burner—and that they also favor an all-of-the-above approach that includes alternative electrical sources, innovative vehicle designs, increased use of biofuels, and conservation.

Via a Twitter Tweet from Sean Hackbarth of The American Mind.

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Hm.

I'm actually of two minds about the ethanol situation; corn ethanol seems a lot less destructive to me than a lot of other things we do in order to prop up agribusiness, and I don't believe that corn/soy ethanol are behind the rise in food prices, simply because we have increased production in corn in the past few years by a greater margin than we've been diverting it for ethanol production.

Also, as Zubrin points out in Energy Victory, enhanced world-wide markets for crops that can be used for biofuels (which, as the research rolls along, will be darn near anything, including a lot of material that grows well in the developing world) will lift a lot of people out of poverty, because if ethanol use goes up, the richer countries can lift that tariffs that keep poor countries poor.

But let's look back at Brazil for a moment, and remember that part of the reason they are energy-independent is that their consumers have a choice in which types of fuels they use: because most of their vehicles are flex-fuel, their petrochemical companies have to compete with their biofuels. Service stations are required to have pumps that dispense both types of gas.

How to give ourselves the same flexibility? (And I'm still borrowing from Zubrin, here.) Well, we could impose huge overhead costs on gas stations, by requiring each one to add an ethanol pump or two (for thousands of dollars), or we could impose a miniscule cost on the car companies by requiring that new cars be flex-fuel (which adds $100-$500) to the cost of each vehicle, and would lead the market to get ethanol—and methanol—pumps into our filling stations. (Yes: our cars must be able to take all three kinds of fuel: ethanol, methanol, and gasoline. And that goes for hybrids, too. Even the electric type. As the power grid expands to accommodate plug-in "mostly electric" hybrids, those "backup" internal combustion engines shouldn't be handcuffed to petroleum. After all, we don't want motorists stranded as we continue to work on those nuclear power plants, wind farms, and solar panels.)

I mean, I like a laissez faire policy as much as the next girl. But that isn't what we have now anyway, and energy is ultimately a national defense issue as much as anything else. We do much worse when we pay farmers not to grow anything than we do when we pay them to grow corn so we can continue to research biofuels.

I don't think the future of biofuels lies in corn or soy, but we have to start somewhere while we drill for more oil, work on methanol, and get algae to yield ethanol in a cost-effective way.

The trick is—for the next two decades, at least—to make our vehicles into energy sluts.

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. . . . or something like that The "Don't Go" movement responds to the speculation that Nancy Pelosi's antics are designed to provide political cover to vulnerable Democrats who are feigning an interest in domestic energy production:

This weekend, the Politico reported that Nancy Pelosi has released vulnerable Democrats to pay lip service to domestic drilling and ‘all of the above’ solutions. The Democrats are intending to divert the ire of the American people towards Speaker Pelosi and away from weak Democratic members who are enabling her inaction on energy. The Democratic leadership thinks vulnerable Democrats can get away with nothing but talk and decieve their constituents because Speaker Pelosi refuses to schedule a vote on the issue. We need to act now to stop the Democratic/Moveon.org ‘diversion and deception’ strategy from preventing the passage of a comprehensive solution to the energy crisis.

The American Energy Act, HR 6566, is precisely the kind of comprehensive, ‘all of the above’ solution that the American people have shown themselves to support in recent polls. According to Zogby International, 74% of Americans support offshore oil drilling in US coastal waters and 69% favor building new nuclear power plants in the US. According to a July 31st USA Today poll, Americans support tax incentives for conservation, eased restrictions on offshore drilling, and building more nuclear power plants by 49 percent, 26 percent and 6 percent margins. All of these real solutions to either conserve or produce energy are included in the American Energy Act.

. . . . . . . .

We need you to call the offices of vulnerable Democratic House members while they take their five week vacation and ask that they sign the petition to call Congress back into session and to sign the forthcoming discharge petition for HR 6566, the American Energy Act. If a majority of the House of Representatives signs the discharge position, the Speaker will be forced to allow a vote. We are confident that the House will respect the wishes of the American people and a majority will vote to approve the ‘all of the above’ energy legislation their constituents support. We also want to put the spotlight on their decision by encouraging those of you represented by these members to contact the local press and make them aware of what’s going on.

The following are conservative Democratic members with close races and their home office numbers:

Joe Donnelly (IN-2) 574 288-2780

Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-0 520 881-3588

Tim Mahoney (FL-16) 941 627-9100

John Barrow (GA-12) 706 722-4494

Melissa Bean (IL-0 847 925-0265

Brad Ellsworth (IN-0 812 465-6484

Baron Hill (IN-09) 812 288-3999

Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20) 518 581-8247

Mike Arcuri (NY-24) 800 235-2525

Zack Space (OH-1 866 910-7577

Chris Carney (PA-10) 866 846-8124

Nick Lampson (TX-22) 281 240-3700

1. Ask these members to sign the petition at www.callcongressback.com and respectfully ask Speaker Pelosi to bring the House back to work now.

2. Ask these members to sign the discharge petition to HR 6566, the American Energy Act, when it is introduced after the House returns to work.

3. If you are represented by any of these members, call local newspapers, tell them about the #dontgo Movement, the Call Congress Back petition and the American Energy Act, and refer them to this site and the Politico article about the Pelosi distraction strategy.

We cannot stress this strongly enough: The Democrats' willingness to sign the petition that would call the House back into session and get them back to work on this issue is where the rubber meets the road. Anything less than a signature on the discharge petition is just talk.

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Keep going, Babe; we need your voice.

And I shall see you at the clubs, Doll. And I'll explain why you're so great. Syllable by syllable.

UPDATE: I got enough complaints to break through my denial that the slightly larger-than-usual format of the video was messing up the look of my page on most browsers (even though my version of Safari handled it just fine).

So since my video-fu isn't good enough for me to figure out how to downsize the way the "Paris for President" displays, I'm sending your over to the AltHouse. I kind of like her dissection of it anyway: Of course it's a pro-McCain ad, even though I'm sure my lib-Dem friends will get a giggle out of it. Althouse is absolutely right on that.

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It's poetry pornography. It is an anthem for Free Genitalia Everywhere.

If I hadn't already had a pash on Gerard, this would have taken care of the matter, but as it happens I'm stalking him hard.

(Naturally, I'm looking for the rough equivalent in a treastise on the American Clitoris. But that might be a while in coming, and be a bit labor-intensive to produce. You know how that goes . . .)

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So if we add significant numbers of electric vehicles--plug-in models in particular--how do we buff up our electrical grid to keep up with the demand? Especially in California?

Insty's got a great discussion on that going on here.

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