Posted on 06/07/2008 11:21:44 PM PDT by Libloather
McHenry's gas solution: Drill in Alaska
Congressman discusses alternative fuels, presidential battle and general election
BY ANDREW MACKIE
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
HICKORY - The time has come to increase oil refinery capacity in the United States and open up oil exploration in Alaska to better deal with wallet-busting gas prices, says U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry.
“We must increase our supply in a major way. We should increase capacity and invest in alternative fuels for the long term,” McHenry said Monday in an exclusive interview with the Record. “We can’t allow extreme environmentalists to determine our energy policy. That’s what they’ve done for the last 30 years.”
Liquefied coal should be developed as an alternative fuel, McHenry said, to take advantage of the nation’s high concentration of coal.
Environmentalists question the ecological impact of such a move. Drilling for oil in Alaska is even more controversial.
Oil companies and the Bush administration have proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, (ANWR), comprised of 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska.
The area is believed to contain one of the best remaining prospects for substantial oil discovery in the country. However, the refuge was established to preserve wildlife such as caribou herds, polar and grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines and birds.
**SNIP**
The general election
McHenry and Democrat Daniel Johnson exchanged heated news releases in the weeks after the primary. McHenry labeled Johnson as a trial lawyer, handpicked to oppose him by House leader Nancy Pelosi and “stuffed with cash by Washington liberals.” Johnson took offense to the characterization.
“It’s liberal trial lawyers that many of us in business have problems with,” McHenry said. “Trial lawyers have increased the costs of goods across this country.”
Johnson is a former state prosecutor and now works for Hickory firm Sigmon, Clark, Mackie, Hutton, Hanvey and Ferrell.
Johnson described McHenry’s comments as the same type of politics people are tired of.
“He’s trying to distract from the fact that we’ve seen skyrocketing gas prices, healthcare costs, food prices, inadequate care for veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and absolutely no leadership or action to resolve these problems,” Johnson said.
McHenry said he is prepared to debate Johnson and exchange ideas, but declined to offer specific dates. McHenry said he hopes the race is issue-oriented and not about personal attacks.
“I think it would be wonderful,” Johnson said of the prospects of a debate. “I think people in the district would like to hear we are going to solve the many problems we’re facing.”
So far, both campaigns have been in attack mode. When asked if his labeling of Johnson in various ways constitutes an attack, McHenry responded with an emphatic “no.”
“It is an issue when you go to Washington and vote,” he said. “You can see my record and that I’ve fought for the Tenth District every step of the way.”
“I think this is an honest discussion point. Will he vote for Nancy Pelosi? Will he vote for Barack Obama?” Johnson called McHenry’s comment another type of distraction.
“I’m not going up there to represent a partisan agenda and a continuation of politics we’ve all watched and become frustrated with,” Johnson said. “I’m going to Washington to show leadership for this district.
Regardless of who the president is, I’ll stand up for the people of this district. I look forward to working with the president to find real solutions to the problems we’re facing.”
McHenry visited five of the 10 counties of the 10th District in the past week. He spoke at Ashbrook and Hunter Huss high schools Saturday night. Later Monday, McHenry was to appear at a Hickory gathering. He is heading back to Washington this morning.
“Liquefied coal should be developed as an alternative fuel, McHenry said, to take advantage of the nation’s high concentration of coal.”
One of the smartest things I’ve heard in a long time. The technology to convert coal into gasoline (and now apparently a form of diesel, too) has been around forever. It’s a fairly expensive process as of now, but IMHO it would be worth it just for the long-term domestic energy security it would bring. It could mean thousands of new mining jobs, too.
It's past time to take out the trash and throw the liberal envirotards onto the scrapheap of history. These idiot envirotards have been wrong about everything for the last 40 years. Worse, the environmental movement was taken over by extreme leftists and America haters in 80's and 90's. I'm am absolutely sure that most of their funding comes from nations that are hostile to the U.S. and U.S. power.
We should drill more, but it would only be a stopgap.
What is John McCain waiting for?
Or when France - France!!!!! - is getting 85 percent of its electricity from nuke power - which we Americans invented!!!
"Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. "
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html
[...time to take out the trash and throw the liberal envirotards onto the scrapheap of history. These idiot envirotards have been wrong about everything for the last 40 years. Worse, the environmental movement was taken over by extreme leftists and America] HATERS
Well said, such truth bears repeating. The majority of Americans want lower gas prices and yet so many are not blaming the people in America causing the problems, the extreme leftists and their politicians and even worse, the America haters. A powerful minority who whips the majority and always blames the Big OIL Corporations and not the pols that make twice as much profit as they do.
America is at a crossroads and the liberal communists are destroying our nation and the next generations future.
I like that. He has turned the old time-worn term "extremist" back on the liberals who have been using it as a pejorative for years, when the title has always fit them far better.
enviro ping
Between not be allowed to drill because of a bunch of federal regulations and high gas prices which have to affect Alaska's other source of revenue, tourism, the state economy is going to tank real soon. Most people in Alaska know it because the state economy tanked in the 1980's after the pipeline was finished and construction pulled out. It was ugly. Home prices in Anchorage dropped by something like 50%.
Oil companies and the Bush administration have proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, (ANWR), comprised of 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska.
That's 5% of Alaska and given hearing North Slope weather reports daily, if the wildlife can deal with sub-zero temperatures, a few oil wells aren't going to bother them.
Alaska is also worried about wildfires in certain areas because a beetle infestation killed miles and miles of pine forest and all those dead trees are just waiting to go up in flames. They might have avoided that little problem if the federal government had allowed a bit of logging.
Those old enough to remember, or smart enough to look it up, realize that it's the same crowd now whining about the fraud of global warming and holding down domestic oil & gas& coal production that stopped the expansion of the domestic nuclear power industry back in the 70s and 80s. Part of their arguments were the alleged difficulties of storing the nuclear waste and then when Yucca Mountain was proposed as the solution to that they've kept fighting implementing it. Meanwhile the French have proved nuclear waste never was a problem:
Then there is the problem of what to do with the left over nuclear material after it is used, the “waste.” As Tucker describes it, 95 percent of a used nuclear fuel rod is Uranium-238, found in the dirt in all Iowans’ back yards. Only 5 percent of the spent fuel is really required to be stored in a safe area. Much of this can be further recycled by industry and medicine, converted for example into medical grade Uranium used to treat cancer patients. However, regulations signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 prohibit the recycling of nuclear fuel for national security reasons. In Canada, Great Britain, France, and Russia, nuclear fuel is being recycled today and sold to the United States. In France, where 80 percent of their electricity comes from nuclear power plants, the true “nuclear waste” is “stored in a single room at LeHavre.” Based on the French experience with recycling, the 56,000 tons of terrestrial energy “waste” in the United States could still “generate enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years.”This is taken from Institute Brief vol. 15, number 13 of March 2008 by Public Interest Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College. They are an excellent conservative/libertarian think tank. You might need to register before the above link will work, but they're free (albeit donation worthy.) The original is heavily footnoted with the "single room in Le Harve coming from Imprimis.
Thus the nuclear waste "problem" is the invention of the Democrat's chief idiot, Carter, a prominent member of the current environmentalist crowd. What Carter said needed to be stored for thousands of years is either uranium 238, which is safe as is, or can be burned for energy or is useful in industry and nuclear medicine. That Imprimis said "It is only cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have half-lives of 28 and 30 years, respectively, that need to be stored in protective areas." As for the alleged national security risk Carter then claimed, recall that he was key, as an emissary from the Clinton-Gore administration, to letting the terrorist state, North Korea, get nukes, and that the same crowd is working to enable the worst terrorist state, Iran, which Carter let be created, get nukes as well. Carter and the environmentalists are the real national security risk. Sadly their half-lives seem to be longer than the real nuclear waste. I wonder if they'd all fit in Yucca Mountain?
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