alternative hippopotamus

Recently I received this in email from a prominent political blogger. It's pretty close to what I've heard from a number of well-meaning liberals, so it's worth-while to pick on him or her just a little:

Personally, I wish we could make a deal on ANWR. I'd be OK with allowing drilling if we got something nice in return, like an increase in CAFE standards, which would really make a difference in oil consumption.

Of course, if we had even a slight increase in CAFE standards (the number of miles per gallon that your car consumes), we wouldn't need to have this discussion in the first place. That's a discussion we'll have soon.

Implicit in this attitude is that our technology is advanced to the point where we can do this in an environmentally friendly way. Perhaps we can dress up the drilling rigs so they look like Santa's workshop. And we'll paint stripes on the pipelines so that they'll look like enormous candy canes. And we can dress the workers in elf costumes so it'll be just like the North Pole we imagined when we were kids. See, we're not destroying the environment, we're making it better.

We have the technology. We can rebuild it.

This is only a slight exaggeration of what actual people have said to me.

Here's the village in the 1002 Area, where the Kaktovik Inupiat live:



The Bush administration is working overtime to win the natives of this sleepy village over. You probably won't be shocked to know that they're doing it the old-fashioned way: bribery (Reuters)

Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling would raise an initial $2.4 billion in leasing fees, half of which would be shared with the state of Alaska, the Bush administration said in proposed fiscal 2006 budget documents released on Monday.

That's a lot of cash. And, it raises an interesting question. If the Bush administration is willing to invest this much of our money for drilling in ANWR, how come he can't invest the same amount in reducing consumption? Because if he did that, we wouldn't need to talk about destroying a Wilderness Refuge. We'll get to that question soon.

For now, I just want to give you an artist's conception of what the village above will look like in 2010 if we do as Bush wants us to do. Unfortunately, I'm not an artist. Ordinarily, I'd pass this off to my editorial assistant, Pavlov Chien, but he's not speaking to me. I ask him to do something, and he just shrugs his shoulders and says: "What does an Eco Drama Queen like myself know?"

So, instead, I'll just give you a picture of Prudhoe Bay, which is where the existing drilling is going on. As I understand it, the Area 1002 drilling would use similar technology.



A lot like Santa's workshop, no?

Filer under: ANWR.
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Please forgive me for do something I don't like to do: I've removed this post because Norm Coleman's teeth are not appropriate for a family-friendly website. If there's a huge outcry, and I'm pretty sure there won't be, I'll restore the image of Norm Coleman's teeth.

There's almost nothing that I'd ever be willing to censor. Unfortunately, Norm Coleman's teeth cross that line.

I sincerely want to apologize to anyone who was offended by the image of Norm Coleman's teeth.
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Over the last day, I've collected some interesting data on the Kaktovik Inupiat and Gwich'in tribes as well as the Porcupine Caribou (the heard that drilling on the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would affect).

Some interesting stuff, but as I was going through the material, it struck me that this could take the discussion in the wrong direction. This is not about a "Save the Caribou" campaign. I am of course sympathetic to the notion of saving the caribou, it's just that the issue is bigger than that.

Drilling in a pristine wilderness to support some mouth breather's penchant for SUV's is profane. It is literally a crime against nature. It is blasphemous. As Teddy Roosevelt so eloquently put it, it's about:

"What nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed."

I'm also aware that anti-environment Republicans have a powerful weapon in this discussion: name calling. Anyone who brings up an environmental concern will be labelled a "tree hugger." (Let me hear you do the Dean scream, tree-hugger.)

It's important to have some kind of epithet to hurl back. My suggestion is: Eco-Drama Queen.

Here's my logic. On these controversial issues the Republicans tend to have dramatic, risky, radical solutions. The Democrats tend to have subtle, analytical, numerically-correct solutions. To make an analogy, if the Democrats are like Basil Rathbone in Hound of the Baskervilles, the Republicans are more like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. If the Democrats are Mozart, then the Republicans would be KISS.

Now, I couldn't find a really good definition of "drama queen" on the web, but this description is apt:

Their lives are like soap operas and their friends are always tired. NEVER date [ed: or vote for] a drama queen.

If I had to define eco-drama queen, I'd put it like this:

A man or woman who embodies the environmental sensitivity of a train wreck in motion constantly seeking its next victim

. file under: ANWR
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From SierraActivist:

"We are exerting the authority we have as a state, as opposed to being held hostage by policies that don't allow us to initiate any exploration on (refuge) land," he said.

Murkowski, who as a senator tried for two decades to pass an ANWR bill, pitched the lease sale as a contribution the state could make to the nation's energy supply.

He also mentioned a strategic value: If refuge drilling opponents see that the state is serious about initiating offshore exploration, they may rethink their position and opt for on-shore drilling in the refuge instead.

"It's clearly easier to maintain exploration on land and control the prospects of any type of spill that may occur," Murkowski said. "It may have some effect on some people who have been reluctant to support us on opening ANWR."

file under: ANWR, neanderthal.
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Thanks for your comments on the Elephants of ANWR. You've given me a bit of homework to do, and I'll start on it right away. It's important to get all the facts right, and given that deconstructing the arguments for drilling involves the fields of petroleum engineering, statistics, Indian burial grounds, and the mating patterns of Genus Rangifer (did I also mention you need to know Latin?) there's a lot of ground to cover. When I get something wrong, I will read up and try to correct it.

With that in mind, a few miscellaneous notes:

• Sometimes when I mean to say caribou, I actually say canteloupe. I understand how this could be confusing, and want to clear up this bit of misinformation in advance. There are no canteloupe in ANWR.
• The Society for Neoconservative Ecology has loned me one of their best editors, Pavlov Chien, to help out with the series. His style is much different than mine, however, so if you see phrases like: "shrill American-hating tree-hugging youngsters," it's most certainly one of his insertions.
• Pavlov wants me to ask you whether the Native Americans of the coastal region (whichever tribe they might be from) wouldn't be much happier in a nice warm underground bunker somewhere, where they can watch "Survivor" on a 36-inch plasma television and munch on caribou-burgers to their heart's content. I have told him that the answer is most certainly "No." Someone can correct me if they know otherwise, however.

file under: ANWR.
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I've seen a number of estimates of how much oil there is in Area 1002, W's pet name for the coastal region of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now that I think about it, it's important to acknowledge the difference in the two names the Bush administration and environmentalists give this region. And by environmentalists I mean people opposed to drilling on the Alaskan coast, which this poll says is most Americans (by a margin of 53 percent to 35 percent).

Environmentalists (or as I prefer to call them, most Americans) hear the expression Wildlife Refuge, and they think of a place where animals live free from the demands of the manufacturing lifestyle. The Bush administration hears the expression Area 1002, and thinks that sounds like a place where WMD might be. Let's go invade it.

How much oil is there in ANWR? How much oil do we consume? To answer these questions let's take a look at a passage similar to ones I've seen on a number of sites that aspire to sound like Jonah Goldberg:

Reports put the amount of oil available under ANWR somewhere between 3 and 16 BILLION barrels. The common estimate is 1 MILLION barrels of oil per day could be extracted from the area. (By comparison, we get 650,000 barrels daily or 10% of our oil from Iraq.) By my math, this gives us somewhere between 8 and 44 years of oil.

By my math, or at least what I absorbed from those hazy college days when I wasn't reading poetry to my bonzai plant, I have to conclude that this wannabee Golbergian has no idea what he's talking about.

According to the most recent US Geological Survey we get this graph:



At an average price of $40/gallon it would be economically feasible to extract a total of 7 Billion barrels of oil. The US consumes oil at a rate of 20 million barrels per day (20.0 in 2003, 20.4 in 2004) . That means the total potential supply would last:

7 billion barrels/20 million barrels per day = 350 days.

And that's what could be extracted over the lifetime of drilling in ANWR. And that's assuming consumption stays at 2003 levels. And that's assuming that oil prices stay close to their all-time high.

To foreshadow a future column, it may be useful to put it in other terms. At the first year of peak production in the year 2020, we could get out about 1 million barrels per day. Currently, we consume by driving about 9 million barrels per day. In other words, the real question here is whether the the Dodge Dakotas, Land Rovers, and Humvees that some of us might drive are 9 times more important than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge . And allegedly we choose these vehicles to put us more in touch with nature.

file under: anwr.
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From 12-year-old twin singing sensation Prussian Blue:

Part of our heritage is Prussian German. Also our eyes are blue, and Prussian Blue is just a really pretty color. There is also the discussion of the lack of "Prussian Blue" coloring (Zyklon B residue) in the so-called gas chambers in the concentration camps. We think it might make people question some of the inaccuracies of the "Holocaust" myth.

via waiting for dorothy.

file under: nazis.
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Reminder for all DL'ers in the DC area. This Thursday, 6-9 we'll be in the backroom of Timberlakes. Timberlake's is a funky old restaurant two blocks north of the Dupont Metro stop on Connecticut Ave.

Hope to see you there!

file under: DC.
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Bush, Cheney & Gale Norton start the big push for opening up the coastal region of ANWR to drilling: (Reuters)

The full Senate could debate the budget during the week of March 14, before a two-week recess beginning March 21, said Senate Republican leader Bill Frist.

The White House says it supports attaching ANWR drilling language to the budget.

The administration is so confident ANWR will finally be opened that it included in its 2006 budget request to Congress $2.4 billion in fees it expects the Interior Department to collect from leasing tracts in the refuge for oil drilling.

U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Energy Secretary Sam Bodman depart this week with a congressional delegation to ANWR led by the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, New Mexico's Pete Domenici, and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Nobel laureate and former president Jimmy Carter has said: "It will be a grand triumph for America if we can preserve the Arctic Refuge in its pure, untrammeled state."

For an opposing view we turn to Jonah Goldberg, writer for the prestigious internet:

In short, the section that Lieberman claims as one of "G-d's most awesome creations" is a colossal fetid petri dish for some of the worst flying pestilence you can imagine. Every moment I was outside, the mosquitoes swarmed around me like John McCain near a TV camera.

file under: anwr
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Per Talk Left, Gonzales priorities as AG:

1. Obscenity. (You know, a burka on Lady Justice would be a nice touch.)
2. Judicial approval is a "broken process that must be fixed." (Also known as "Leave no Heritage Society Shill Behind.")
3. Renewing provisions of the USA Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the year. (You do the Crisco thing, too, huh?)

As Jeralyn puts it:

Gonzales should focus on enforcing the law, not creating it.

Of course, if it were up to me, I wouldn't even give him that much leeway.

File under: bush administration
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As I mentioned in the Introduction, in some cases we have Elephants in the room, and some cases we have Canards. No, Virginia, drilling in Alaska will not help us fight the war on terrorism, or any other Orwellian misadventures, may I add.

Here, the ANWR Anti-terrorism Canard travels on the back of several elephants whose names are Economically Recoverable Oil Reserves, Hegemonic Foreign Policy, and Anti-Conservation Energy Policy.

We'll get to know these elephants a little better in future posts.

file under: ANWR.
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From Hanjismatter:

This guy might thought it was a great idea to tattoo "essence" (精) on his elbows. But by spliting the character into two halves, he got "Green Rice".米 = hulled or husked uncooked rice; meter青 = blue-green; young

Out of curiousity I wonder what the symbol for "Absent Without Leave" is?

file under: satire
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No matter what you think about Bush, you've got to admit the guy has nothing in common with people who actually work for a living.

For instance, while he's looking at a budget that could gut a number of entitlement programs, while he's trying to eliminate Social Security, while he's trying to prevent universal health care, he's throwing dinner parties like this one for the nation's governors: (Froomkin)

Accompanying the wild rice soup with pheasant, the White House served the Patz & Hall Chardonnay "Alder Springs" 2003 (about $55 a bottle), which the winery describes as "just a little less fruity than it is big and bombastic. . . . It trades first on toast and minerality, and it shows a fair bit of heat in the finish."

Accompanying the tenderloin of beef in a Texas marinade, the White House served the Caymus Cabernet "Napa" 2002 (about $80 a bottle), which one reviewer described as "solidly fruity at its heart [ed: emphasis mine. But it helps if you imagine W when you read it. For the next phrase, it's hard for me to stop picturing Condi in her dominatrix outfit.]. . . quite ripe, fairly full in the mouth and surprisingly supple."

Then, with the wild raspberry apple pie and cinnamon ice cream came a dessert wine, the Bonny Doon Muscat "Vin de Glaciere" 2003 (about $18 a half-bottle). The vineyard says it has "racy and exaggerated notes of apricot, elderflower and rampant pineapple-ocity" that "sent shivers down our spines."

Say, remember when Candy Crowley inferred that John Kerry was out of touch because he ordered green tea at a restaurant? In retrospect, kind of funny. Okay, maybe not.

file under: politics
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In discussions about drilling in ANWR I often hear it said that just 10% would be set aside for drilling. This is our first elephant.

Neil Boortz, whose authority and understanding of the issues can only be compared to a cranial cavity filled with pureed excrement, puts it like this:

By the way ... do you know just how much of ANWR would be affected by the drilling? Here's an illustration. Take a look at a chair sitting on a nine foot by twelve foot rug. The rug represents the total size of ANWR. Now, look at the space on that rug occupied by just one leg of that chair. Just one leg. That's the representative area of ANWR that would be disturbed by the drilling. Didn't know that, did you?

I hope Mr. Boortz publishes this in the Journal of Irreproducible Physics. Folks would like to know that Republican Talking Points are causing a dramatic contraction in the space-time continuum.

Here's the 10% (i.e., chair leg) we're talking about. In case you're wondering if I took this from a biased source, I kind of did. It's from the pinko anarchists at the US Geological Survey:



One of the first things you'll notice is that "chair leg", also known as area 1002, takes up almost the entire coast of ANWR. That way we can fuck up both the ecology of the coastal plain region and the Arctic Ocean at the same time.

What you can't tell from this map is that the coastal areas are inhabited by the Gwich’in Indians. They live off of the caribou who also live there. And in case this point got lost earlier, despite what Gale Norton says, this is precisely where the caribou are concentrated.

This we'll discuss soon.

file under: ANWR
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Bill Walsh, in the Elephants of Style, discusses a variety of bete noire's of American English. While he never defines the word elephant in this context, its use goes well beyond a simple animal pun, not that there's anything wrong with that. It takes on the meaning of that lumbering pachyderm that needs to be acknowledged before we can move on: the Elephant in the Room.

Further there is the expression White Elephant, which Webster defines like this:

Something requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit; any burdensome possession. [Slang]

It is in this sense that I discuss the Elephants of ANWR. Vis-a-vis a mushing together of these expressions we have:

lumbering pachyderms of half-truth requiring much care to perpetuate, and of little or no actual value.

Here, I would like to distinguish an Elephant and a Canard. A canard is an out-and-out deception. From webster:

An extravagant or absurd report or story; a fabricated sensational report or statement; esp. one set afloat in the newspapers to hoax the public.

Now that we know our elephants from our canards, and rest assured we will meet both along the way, let us begin.

file under: ANWR
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