Crist says drilling 10 miles offshore won't bring Florida money. Need to drill closer, he says.

Run time: 01:37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO3l-W5_5JI   Posted on YouTube: June 10, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 11, 2009 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 2022

 
You had to know that big oil would win the battle for Florida's beaches. Of course they would. Money talks. Money has the power.

From the You Tube site:



Many of the gas and oil lobbyists pushing to drill as close as 3 miles offshore are from Texas, but they don't really want us to know that.

Unidentified oil and gas companies are bankrolling a last-minute fight to bring offshore drilling to Florida's coastline.

The brother of Pete Sessions is apparently one of the lobbyists from Texas.



There is a lot more to read in an article by David McGrath about the hazards of offshore drilling.

The hazards of offshore drilling threaten Florida

I am beginning to think, "let them reap what they sow."

They are going to drill in the Gulf where all the republicans are anyway, not the Atlantic Ocean.

Me, too.

Pinellas County and Hillsborough County, ie the cities of Tampa, St.Petersburg, Clearwater are by a majority democrats.
Check your maps and election results.

The last thing we need gracing our beautiful beaches are oil rigs.

Just think again! Your statement really angers me.

Crystal Beach (like the name) Florida 34681

http://schnittshow.newsradio610.com/globalwarming.html

And folks should take a look around his archives while they are there.

but that's what I think of when I think of Tampa.

I don't want to see drilling on our gulf coast. But it is annoying to me that the people that do want it are the people that live there. If it wasn't for South Florida, this state would be as red as Mississippi.

And, by the way, South Florida's Latino community is becoming increasingly less Republican as the older Cubans die off and non-Cuban Latinos emigrate to South Florida. So you may want to reconsider that stereotype.

Some of us have been fighting oil drilling for years, long before many considered the cause cool. As far as Latinos go, yes, many of the old Cubans are dying out, but they still have the numbers to keep Mario Diaz Balart, Ileans Ros Lithen, and soon, Marco Rubio in power, and let's not forget Mel Martinez.

Check the name "pam Iorio" out, she has been our mayor for a while, and she is routinely mocked because, unlike the rest of Florida pols, she is actually clean to the point of annoyance. Her main rival for Mayor was another Democrat, Frank Sanchez. Get used to it, cities are democratic. If we were to ruin a part of the state for supporting GOP, it would have to be SE florida, aka Northern Cuba.

...because I really don't like Floridians attacking each other, and saying "As long as it's not on my coast" or "they deserve the seeds they sow because they are Republicans(which we are mostly not) or Democrats (which we mostly are)".

That is just not called for.

Why don't we all attack the problem, and rally for a solution, rather then send it and blame to our neighbor's coast?

What's that about???????????????????????????????


That to me, regardless of republican, independant, democratic, libratarion, gay, black, female, white, cuban, hispanic, postal worker, pizza maker, baker, banker, potato maker, it's all nuts. We aren't talking about who we are, or our affliations, we are talking about our two coasts.

How many other states can say " Our 'two' coasts"?

Don't try my temper. Just don't.

We are The State of Florida. Not the east or west coast of Florida, the State of Florida. Got it????

We all love this state, your coast and my coast, our clean beaches on both sides and on our long tail end of keys. Something few of the other oil producing states can claim.

So instead of making snide comments and critisms about your own neighbors and trying to set us apart.

Let's protect our most beautiful asset

Our beaches...our birds, our fish, dolphin, mantatees, sunsets, and sense of well being

for all...

in FLORIDA

But I get really, really, really sick of people lambasting my area, just because some of the more vocal idiots come from there. It is the same anger I feel when I hear people on DU say "kick the South out", despite the fact that I can tell you I got called "Spic" up there just as much as I do down here.But yes, I do think we as Floridians need to stop the divisive crap, if for not other reason than it makes the as_holes in power happy. Crist does not care about this state, as he knows he is Washington Bound.

Where we have Democrat mayors, and we went Blue for Obama, unlike SE Florida, which is known as the nesting ground of the Cuban Conservatives. Next time you try to set yourself up as high and mighty, be prepared, lest you be shown as wanting.

No Democratic mayors?

Unfortunately, since Crist sold himself as a liberal local, he snowed the older population. However, if you want to see what said people think of him now, go to the opinion pages of the Tampa Trib.

As far as Schnitt goes, keep in mind, when Clear Channel bought WFLA, they purged out Bob Lassier, and put up Glenn Beck. This was part of a deliberate attempt to purge local radio of liberals. When Beck went national, they brought in Schnitt. However, I suggest you check out WMNF, our community radio station, which is hard left. Go to wmnf.org and tell me that there are no leftists in Tampa, and not enough to fund a community radio station that does not even get PBS help (namely because WUSF, our "public" radio station, is DLC.)

I will not dent that we have turds here, just as you still have the people that put Mel Martinez in office. However, you started with a blanket Judgment of Tampa, which as a Tampa lefty, I know not to be true.

This is the same SOB who just undid provisions that forced developers to pay for roads, water, and schools in the areas they overdeveloped. Even the Crackers are mad about that, as they know this is a sell out to land devlopers.

Crist is a snake, and we will sadly see more of him.

~

He'll sell out the land, doing away w all developer fees, when we are all already on strick water rations, (can't water our lawns or wash our car) and when we have an over-abundance of empty forclosed homes. Then to top it off he'll bring in the oil rigs polluting our pristine shores, to fund with ill begotten oil money, his red sail to the senate.

There's an old saying, "Red morning, sailor take warning. Red at night, sailor's delight".

Ain't enough cloud cover for this move. Sorry Charlie!

They rape what we sowed.

We have that deal to "buy" the everglades which is touted as a green move. How much you want to bet he is already cutting deals with Biofuel companies to make Ethanol?

Here's the thing. They've been drilling offshore in Texas and Louisianan for fifty years, there's lots of oil and gas out there, and there is solid expectation that there is almost as much more offshore of Florida, possibly on both coasts. The bulk of the negative environmental impact from oil drilling in Louisiana and Texas is in the form of coastal erosion from the canals dug for pipelines to carry the product to shore. Intuitively you might expect to find all sorts of grudge on the shores of Louisiana from oil drilling, but this isn't the case: there isn't that much oil pollution of the Gulf resulting from drilling offshore. Well over 80% of oil pollution of the oceans stems from run off from the land (Rand Corp)(you ever notice that when they lay down asphalt they spray a coat of oil on it!) and probably nearly 95% of the remainder stems from Marine vessels.

Floridians make a lot of money from tourism to their beaches and many of them feel that their beaches are their greatest treasure, so any potential threat to their beaches raises alarm, but I would argue much of it is irrational. The reality is that offshore oil production will not destroy Florida's beaches, and will significantly increase America's domestic oil production for probably the next 50 years. It will create a lot of good paying jobs that are independent of tourism and a lot of revenue for the State. IMHO. People from Louisiana, Texas, and any other state that produces oil look at Florida's panic over oil production and wonder, what's the big deal? And, Why can't they take their share of the environmental danger? Virtually everyone in Florida drives cars , but the domestic oil they use to power the cars is produced offshore in Louisiana and Texas (ok, only part of it, but for the sake of argument ...).

Two points: although international marine boundaries only extend something like three miles from shore, in the case of oil and gas production the Federal government sets the limit at which a state receives the tax revenue from production somewhere farther than that (not sure on this point, but I think it's something like 20 miles - Louisiana receives a lot of tax revenue from wells well out of sight from the shore). Once you get out into the deep water, the Federal government (meaning all of us) receive the tax benefits from oil production. It's anticipated that in the next two decades geophysical research and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will reach their highest levels as the price of oil increases and the technology to drill is deeper waters improves.

The horizon on the sea is four miles, that is, at sea level you can't see anything more than four miles away. Of course oil platforms stick up in the sky, making them visible more than four miles away, but if you put them 10 miles or more offshore, you ain't seeing anything but maybe a light like a beacon at night. Another plus is that oil platforms tend to attract a lot of sea life, making them great diving destinations.

I'm a big fan of madfloridian's posts so I hate to take an opposing stand here. But the simple fact is that unless Floridians are willing to make a big sacrifice and move toward clean, public transportation, their stand against offshore oil production isn't morally supportable. Why should the rest of the Gulf Coast states take the brunt of environmental impact from oil production and Florida be exempt?

Oil production in the Gulf isn't even a significant environmental threat. The single biggest environmental threat to the Gulf is the fact that every chemical plant, municipal sewage treatment plant, every factory south of Chicago, east of the Rockies, and west of the Alleghenies, (and every drop of oil that falls from a car or truck or finds its way to the ground from the atmosphere where it ended up from exhaust) dumps its treated and untreated product into what eventually becomes the Mississippi River, and that flows right into the Gulf of Mexico. So far it has created a huge and growing "dead zone" off the coast of Louisiana (Google it yourself - it's alarming) that looks to have no end and may eventually cause the collapse of the ecosystem that is the Gulf of Mexico. When I was a kid I'd walk the beaches and if you found a dead fish in the water it'd be covered with crabs. I could walk 100 yards out on a pier and crab for six hours and come home with a large metal garbage can filled with crabs. And when I went to the harbor and walked out of the docks the fishing boats and the docks swarmed with boat roaches (don't know the real name for them) and the pilings were covered with barnacles. Now if you find something dead on the shore it just lays there and rots, I haven't seen a boat roach in thirty years, and there is a really strange lack of barnacles on the pilings. This is just anecdotal evidence, and you're welcome to do your own more scientific research. The point is that it oil production isn't the main, or even a significant, threat to the Gulf of Mexico.

If Floridians want to be exempt from the environmental impact of oil production, they should make some cogent argument why it should be so. Why shouldn't the rest of America benefit from oil production forty miles offshore of Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale? If Floridians were leading by example, e.g., abandoning their cars for public transit and building walkable cities, I'd be their biggest supporter. But they're not. Not even close. There seems to be a mindset of entitlement in Florida that goes back a long way. During WWII, when the rest of the East Coast was blacked out so that Merchant Marine vessels would be difficult for U-Boats to see, the City of Miami left it's lights blazing, claiming that the impact to it's tourism would be too severe. Men on Navy and merchant vessels offshore felt like they were being targeted by spotlights for the Germans.

Hey, I like a nice beach as much as the next person. But I can't for the life of me figure out why people in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, and the rest of the country should have to make environmental sacrifices for the sake of making America work and Floridians shouldn't.

Just because the oil comes out of the ground in the US, doesn't mean it stays in the US to benefit Americans.

Yeah let's screw up the only remaining pristine coastline we have nationally so we can say we are all equally doing our part to destruct it.

If we sent another Exon Valdez here to mess us up real good, would it you feel any better that we did our part?

Your statement "Why should the rest of the Gulf Coast states take the brunt of environmental impact from oil production and Florida be exempt?" makes me wonder, and makes me wonder who the hell you are working for???

Other Gulf Coast States not only take the 'brunt' but take the profit too. And look what has happened to those coastlines over the years..

Maybe we aren't as interested because we have a different set of priorities or 'value' system here in Florida.

You call it Tourism. I call it
...
a clean place for people who live here and for those many who come here to visit to enjoy.

Did you read the article on the increased Whale deaths around Exxon facilities in Alaska yesterday?

Have you read anything about all the undeveloped oil fields in the Gulf that the Oil companies already own and haven't take advantage of or utilized, but in their greediness are just trying to earmark others???

So in your world, in the future, there will be no place, no beach, no water/beach left unturned, drilled upon, left for future generations, because we would have been unpatriotic? Sounds like an oil man's point of view to me, not that of a kindergardener making a sandcastle by the beach w a little pail and spade.

Maybe the issue is not more oil, but is how to do w less oil?

(Interesting concept if I don't say so myself).

I live in a designated, legal 'Golf Cart' community, and that's even though we don't have a golf course. Yeah get that!


We all bum around here going under 25 miles an hour in our electric non-polluting cars. Our neighborhood is also a designated bird sanctuary. Birds like it here. So do dolphins.

Neither the city or the county takes care of our park, our little beach, we do. We mow it ourselves, we clean it ourselves, we provide our own hand painted doggie disposal boxes. We replenish them ourselves w recycled grocery bags.

We have a community fishing pier. We built it and paid for ourselves. It's lined w plaques of our families who donated it into existence!

Same as our youth center with volleyball court and our community center, both separate buildings. No taxpayer funds pay for any of our stuff. We do it as a community. We paid for them.

We have elections each year. $1. per vote, as many as you want. We all buy many. many votes. They pay for our center, youth center, park, pier.

For two years in a row our honory mayor was a dog named 'Bo'.

Some people just see things a through a little different eyes than you do.

I like it here, so do the kids and the grandparents and our dogs.

We like our clean water and our little beach.

We keep it nice, contribute and respect nature.

Something wrong w that???

in Chicago, Pittsburg, Houston, and the rest of the country have to make environmental sacrifices" either.

I hear there are some problems getting the oil companies to come through with all the big dough they promised.

You sound like that since they have damaged beaches and killed sealife elsewhere, that Florida deserves to be next. What a hell of a bitter argument.

Here is only one article, there are more.



http://www.centralfloridasierra.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=273&Itemid=46

The whole thing is another money grab by oil and natural gas companies.

Don't say you appreciate my posts and then use bullshit arguments like if it is other backyards it should be in ours as well.

Weak, lame argument.

Before oil Louisiana had virtually no paved roads. And until Huey Long those c**ksuckers basically owned the state legislature and paid no taxes. But then they were forced to start paying taxes and that money was used to build the state. Don't get me wrong, I hate the place (except for New Orleans). But let's work with facts - without oil Louisiana and Texas would be essentially farming states and probably with zero prosperity.

The only problem I have with oil production in Florida is that it seems to promulgate America's continuing car culture. As for pristine beaches, Florida's seem to be pretty well bought up and owned by the upper middle class and the rich (mostly Yankees), so why would I give a f*** what happens to them. That said, there isn't any appreciable damage to beaches in Alabama, Mississippi or Texas (there aren't any beaches in Louisiana) from offshore oil. You can drive down something like 100 miles of gorgeous beach on Padre Island and not find any oil spills. The damage to Alaska's coastal areas was due to a Tanker, not offshore production. The oil was all drilled on-shore. And Alaska's coastal environment is exponentially more fragile than any on the Gulf Coast. By the way, I've been all along the Gulf Coast of Mexico, and there's considerable off shore production there, and there aren't massive oil spills and isn't massive environmental damage from offshore activity. If you want to protect Florida's environment, don't site any refineries there.

As for benefit, yes, producing states do benefit more. But Florida enjoys, more or less, the same price of gas as Texas. Maybe Texans should get a substantial price break in Federal Taxes they pay at the pump to compensate them for siting production and refining in their state? Floridians getting their gas at the same price as Texans reminds me a lot of the situation in Nigeria and Peru, in which the rich and middle class get the bulk of the benefits of production while those living at the site of production pretty much get screwed.

Yea, the oil companies will take and take and destroy if you let them. It's up to you to make sure they don't. But don't make an unsupportable argument that "that nasty offshore oil production is going to ruin our beaches." It's bullshit. I get the impression I'm hearing a lot of "save the environment" and "I love the earth more than you" crap from people that drive gas guzzlers one mile to the drugstore or that own gas guzzling four wheel drives so they can get into the wilderness (instead of walking into it). I live within three blocks of two grocery stores, two pharmacies, four restaurants, the bus line. I don't use 10 gallons of gas a month. I realize that this wouldn't be entirely practicable for most people, but what have you done to start making your environment less dependent on oil? That's the solution, not NIMBY.

I am updating my list and I won't see your posts. I don't mind a good argument, but you are being petty.

Proving my point by hiding your head in the sand

I keep looking for gas stations that sell that sweet sweet domestic oil at a discount to US citizens but I can't find any.

:evilgrin: