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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (610818)	5/9/2011 10:38:52 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578093

If you are stranded on a life raft and have a quart of water....do you drink it all the first day??? Do you put it off limits to ever drink it? And that's even going with your analogy, which is a poor one. If we have a day's supply of oil, including ANWR, then we are screwed anyway. We aren't anywhere near the "one quart equivalent". Also if a person gets fairly dehydrated they retain water more than they would otherwise. You not only don't want to drink that quart the first day you might not drink any the first day. Nothing equivalent follows with oil. If no one fills up their car tomorrow, we just have two days worth of demand on the next day. "So the weakest argument for the side you oppose is wrong. So what? Who cares? Its not quite bashing a straw man (because there are some who actually make or at least imply such an argument), but its not very useful. " Sorry, I don't know what you're trying to say here.... I was responding to your posting "but the oil companies and conservative toadies want us to believe the gasoline prices will come down next week". The oil companies actually don't say any such thing, but there are some people who make arguments vaguely along those lines. Its a false statement, but pointing out that its false is a bid "So what". It doesn't address the serious arguments for the other side and in particular doesn't address the arguments I'm making. Instead its just looking for the weakest argument made by anyone on the other side so you can beat on it, and try to make your argument look stronger. Its very similar to a straw man argument, but technically it isn't a strawman, since some people actually make arguments along those lines. It doesn't further the discussion any. No one has ever prevented drilling that would have made a difference today. False. Not only is ANWR off limits, much of the US coastline is as well. Thousands of wells have been drilled And more would have been drilled without areas being off limtis for drilling. and millions of square miles are available and leased that have never been touched Extensive analysis is done before drilling anything. Often the projected likelihood of significant oil from that analysis is low, and the cost of drilling (esp. in expensive areas like offshore, particularly deep off shore) is considered too high for drilling to be a good investment given current conditions. In other cases the analysis is still ongoing, so drilling hasn't started. None of which suggests that if other promising areas where not released for drilling, that the total amount of drilling and oil production would not go up. The "look at all the areas that haven't been drilled yet" is a worthless argument to anyone who knows anything about what is really going on with oil drilling.