" It can be rebated equally to every resident so government does not grow but it would still do what is necessary to wean us off of our addiction to fossil fuel."

It's up to you and every individual, far more than the government.

Have you gotten rid of your fossil fuel automobile?

Do you grow your own organic food?  It takes 10 calories of energy (mostly fossil fuel) to place one calorie of food on your table.

Is your A/C running today? That's 2.5 pounds of CO-2 per kilowatt hour. Figure 10 pounds per hour average.

Have you installed 3 or 4 Kilowatt hours worth of solar voltaic panels on your roof?

Are you willing to drastically cut your home heating in the winter?

Are you willing to pay much more for all your net energy use?

Are you willing to lower your standard of living by 50% going forward?

If so, and you can persuade 300 million Americans to do the same, it will happen.

don,

This has nothing to do with standard of living and everything to do with lifestyle as you partially point out.

As I recall, the fields in Alaska were supposed to bail us out. The "easy" oil pools have been depleated and presently steam injection is used to recover what is down there. I don't anticipate oil fields in Kern County is going to have a dramatic impact. If it reduces our unemployment significantly, if it gives our schools funding it desperately needs, if it keeps law enforcement personnel on the job, if it keeps emergency rooms and clinics open, by all means go for it. Drill, baby, drill!

Show hands--how many think that's going to happen?

Too many questions to be answered...what specific gravity is the oil...what zone/how deep....if you notice,oil companies shut down the pumps on wells when the price of oil goes below a certian price--saying that it costs more to recover than what they can sell it for---and when the price of oil rises--then the well is reactivated...

So the oil may be there---but just what will it cost to retrieve it at today's prices....alot of factors are involved on this one...

"don,

This has nothing to do with standard of living and everything to do with lifestyle as you partially point out."

Energy use has EVERYTHING to do with standard of living. No energy, no jobs. How do you keep the machine running without energy? Less net energy means less net capital, which means a lower standard of living.

Concerning alternative fuels and standard of living...

A bushel of corn contains about 400,000 BTU. Thus, about 14 bushels are needed to match the 5.8 million BTU in a barrel of oil if you just burned the kernals. That’s over 800 pounds of corn.

But wait, there’s more.

The EROEI of ethanol from corn is slightly less than 1.3 to 1. The conversion energy of corn carbs to liquid alcohol takes over 70% of the original corn.

So, 2,400 pounds of corn kernals are needed to replace a barrel of oil.

All the corn raised in America today (our biggest single food crop) would replace less than 10% of our liquid fuel needs.

What would we eat? What would the beef/dairy cows eat? What would the hogs and chickens eat? Food prices would go through the roof.

How would that help your standard of living?

Cows should not be fed corn, it makes them sick and they just need more antibiotics.  We produce this huge surplus of milk by using cheap fossil fuel based feed.  Making corn into fuel is also about the dumbest idea Archer Daniels ever came up with.   I think we are in agreement.  Now lets get the energy we can from the sun directly and use efficiency measures of all kinds to make up the difference.  I sure enjoy riding the train myself.  Going up to SF for a couple days on Monday.  $86 round-trip.  Now, that is an improvement in lifestyle over driving my car.

 If you don't believe fossil fuel use is causing global warming

I don't because there is no global warming.  It is a hoax, pure and simple.  But, leave it to the gullible to buy into Al Gore's "crisis",  but they would never hold him accountable for his 'carbon footprint'.  The man flies everywhere on his personal Gulfstream, but where is the outrage?  He and Tipper have a 6,000 sq. ft. Tennessee mansion for two, but no criticism forthcoming.  If 'cap-and-trade' is ever foisted on victimized Americans, Al Gore will become a billionaire.  Why?  He is heavily invested in the industries that would facilitate this nonsense.

Global warming is a ruse concocted by politicians who want to punish westerners who are productive.  

Gore does not have a "personal Gulfstream."

There is plenty of criticism of Gore's very large home--which is also his office--and that criticism ignores the fact that he's gone to great expense to make it more ecologically friendly as a demonstration of what can be done.  Most of that criticism, like the "Gulfstream" story, is funded by the oil industry.

Global warming--global climate change, to use the more accurate term, is a fact.  It's a fact as clear as the "fact" that fanatics flew aircraft into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.  Yet there are people who even deny *THAT*.

We will be changing our behavior to counteract it.  The question is whether we will be doing so soon enough.

If Gore becomes a billionaire by getting us to stop destroying man's investment in the world, then bless him.  What would you call people who work to destroy man's investment in and enjoyment of the world in order to hold onto their billions, at the cost of millions of lives? 

"Productive"?

It is a hoax, pure and simple.

Thank gawd you're a fringe minority. I've heard that ignorance is bliss. In your case, it's pretty darn scary.

Cat. I'm with you, drill baby, drill.  R.F.  Very few deign that climate change is taking place. Mother Nature does that from time to time. The big lie is that we are causing it...

Their press release said the majority of the find is natural gas.  CLEAN BURNING, ALTERNATIVE FUEL NATURAL GAS.

Still, a boon to us stockholders!

First it was global cooling in the 80's, then came global warming in the 90's, now it is climate change. It has been going on for thousands of years. Are we the cause of some of it? I'm sure we are but who you going to blame for 10,500 years ago. Maybe its how the planets and moon are lining up?

When the rains came

Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile Valley. Being so crowded, prime real estate in the Nile Valley was difficult to come by. Disputes over land were often settled with the fist, as evidenced by the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba where many of the buried individuals had died a violent death.

But around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land.

This opened the door for humans to move into the area, as evidenced by the researcher's 500 new radiocarbon dates of human and animal remains from more than 150 excavation sites.

"The climate change at [10,500 years ago] which turned most of the [3.8 million square mile] large Sahara into a savannah-type environment happened within a few hundred years only, certainly within less than 500 years," said study team member Stefan Kroepelin of the University of Cologne in Germany.

Frolicking in pools

In the Egyptian Sahara, semi-arid conditions allowed for grasses and shrubs to grow, with some trees sprouting in valleys and near groundwater sources. The vegetation and small, episodic rain pools enticed animals well adapted to dry conditions, such as giraffes, to enter the area as well.

Humans also frolicked in the rain pools, as depicted in rock art from Southwest Egypt.

In the more southern Sudanese Sahara, lush vegetation, hearty trees, and permanent freshwater lakes persisted over millennia. There were even large rivers, such as the Wadi Howar, once the largest tributary to the Nile from the Sahara.

"Wildlife included very demanding species such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, and more than 30 species of fish up to 2 meters (6 feet) big," Kroepelin told LiveScience.

A timeline of Sahara occupation

• 22,000 to 10,500 years ago: The Sahara was devoid of any human occupation outside the Nile Valley and extended 250 miles further south than it does today.

• 10,500 to 9,000 years ago: Monsoon rains begin sweeping into the Sahara, transforming the region into a habitable area swiftly settled by Nile Valley dwellers.

• 9,000 to 7,300 years ago: Continued rains, vegetation growth, and animal migrations lead to well established human settlements, including the introduction of domesticated livestock such as sheep and goats.

• 7,300 to 5,500 years ago: Retreating monsoonal rains initiate desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara after 5,500 coincides with population return to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society.

http://www.livescience.com/...

Thank you rwestfall.  I for one don't buy the popular notion that ANY of this global warming crap is man-made.  It's just the latest catch phrase which politicians and even scientists (who blame man) have latched on to.

Our planet goes through alternate heating/cooling cycles for billions of years and we're looking a long timeline of events with the benefit of only a few decades (centuries if we really stretch it) of recorded records.  It's the proverbial image of trying to discern a barn by looking at one section of it through a straw.

There are obviously several external factors at work which we are not detecting or which we are ignoring.  The idea, though, than man is solely influencing the climate is ludicrous to me.  We can't even predict, much less cause, a rain shower and we have the hubris to assume we're affecting the climate on a global scale?  Give me a break.

What gets me is all of the conflicting data that's thrown around.  "We're having global warming because last summer was the hottest I can ever remember" are just some of the ignorant statements I have heard.  Contrast that with the falling temperatures caused by a volcanic eruption, which are predicted to reduce the earth's average temperature by 1 degree Fahrenheit, then how can one account for the fact we may be warming up given that the temperature is falling?  Who do you believe?

I know one thing - changing climate can affect us all but that doesn't mean it will impact us (here) negatively.  Change is the name of the game.  So what if Africa swelters in heat and people starve?  The permafrost in parts of Canada may melt as a result and there may be a crop boom there.  Who knows, Bakersfield temperatures may fall to the mid 70's, and we could get double the amount of rainfall.  When the next "Big One" strikes we could have ocean front property in Taft and it will be the paradise that everyone (on the City Council) believes it is today.  So embrace it, or check out..!

you cannot even prove that CO2 does anything bad to the atmosphere.  im getting sick and tired of people with sketchy science, at best, who wont let their experients be replicated (probably because they know its all BS) with an agenda to solely generate "revenue" for the government and the companies that OWN polticians...ie  PG and E

the US is one of the CLEANEST nations in the world...maybe you should press your agenda somewhere else, like China

 global cooling, global warming, swimming polar bears, ice disappearing..........I have one answer for all the crap you spew.

4.5 billion years of change......look it up

or..allow the data sets ofthe studies that the EPA and CARB are basing their policies and agenda on to be released so the "studies" (by people who claim they were a phd, when they really werent) can be replicated.  we should wait to see if the same conclusion is reached

all good scientists allow their experiments to be replicated, so that they can be proved right...so why wont the EPA and CARB? 

its because its all a money grabbing farce...the utilities are pissed off that the oil companies make a killing, and they are jealous.

maybe you should quit attempting to "educate" the educated public on your ridiculous claims, and find the gullible welfare class, and preach your crap to them

"...maybe you should press your agenda somewhere else, like China" Or Mexico...or India...or any number of disgusting, dirty, polluted, corrupt crapholes all over the world. Oh, by the way, those crapholes are where 99% of our production is, since we have chased it out of the US. We could produce those things far cleaner and better than anyone else, except you people won't pay for it. Oh well, you wanted it cheaper. Now you have to pay the hidden cost.

  It's just the latest catch phrase which politicians and even scientists (who blame man) have latched on to.

That catchphrase has only been around for 25 years or so.

the US is one of the CLEANEST nations in the world...maybe you should press your agenda somewhere else, like China

If that's the case, the world is a dirty place.

I'm H8cloz on this one.  America's need for cheap consumption is a big part of the problem.  China and India produce for us because we'll buy.  Getting away from fossil fuels is the answer but how politically and socially viable is it to totally get away from fossil fuels?  Are people really willng to give up cars?  I'm not.