Aaron, you say:

Some of Ose's local supporters are cozy tax-and-spend enthusiasts. A year ago, Placer supervisors passed two car taxes on Placer residents.

There is this other tax that folks who own cars pay which Placer supervisors had nothing to do with. It is a constantly moving upward tax. It is not called a tax per se, but nevertheless it is real money out of real folks pockets and it is causing big time headaches.

The cost of a gallon of gasoline costs 51.6 cents more in California than it did a year ago. Real peoplw are not liking this tax and they will show their frustration at the ballot box in November.

Lee - this was posted by Ken Campbell.

Please note that Gas prices were created in no small part by Ose voting against drilling for Oil we know we have on multiple occasions in multiple places.

High gas prices were created in no small part by:

Supply issues:
1) A war in Iraq
2) Tense situations in Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria (creates supply uncertainties)
3) Decline of American power and prestige and ability to influence countries like Saudi Arabia to change output
4) Speculation that supply is not going to get much better; consensus that the world's oil production capacity is peaking or peaking soon among oil economists "fuels" this speculation
5) Decline in the value of the dollar and shift from dollar as basis for oil sales (takes more dollars to buy a barrel of oil)

Demand issues:
1) Following oil crises in the 1970s a lot of very good economy cars were available. My 1985 VW Jetta Turbodiesel got 55 m.p.g. and had enough power to climb the Rockies at 70 m.p.h. But when oil prices fell in the 1980s U.S. consumers bought increasingly gas-guzzling vehicles and federal CAFE standards allowed this (e.g., SUVs and pickups exempt from CAFE). Result: Fuel demand has sharply increased per capita in the U.S.
2) Much larger American houses. Average home size in square feet has increased like the size of vehicles creating higher demand for natural gas and heating oil.
3) Emerging markets like China and India have sharply increased oil consumption. China will soon become the largest consumer of oil in the world.

Including ANWR U.S. proven reserves are only equal to three years supply at current U.S. demand levels. ANWR is not and never has been the key to reducing gas prices.

But the idea that a vote against drilling in ANWR has caused gas prices to double sure sounds good to the uninformed.

Bob...
I don't even feel I need to be nice when addressing your stupid comment. If the US starts drilling in ANWR and in other areas off shore, just the threat of more supply will drive oil prices down. And when that oil starts flowing prices will drop further. This is first grade supply and demand.

The side effect of falling oil prices will be all the deranged, tin horned dictators around the world will have less cash to pump into terrorism... and the terrorism problem is solved.

So Bob you are straining your lonely neuron by trying to over analyze... drilling is the simple solution. Dah!

BOB - put your sierra club kool-aid pitcher down and acknowledge that voting against drilling in ANWR - the CA Coast, the Gulf Coast and Great Lakes is a consistent pattern.

Ignoring these facts is willful ignorance and poor planning.

America would not be beholden to the absurdities of international politics if we could only extract our own resources.

That seems to be too much for Ose, Brown and their fellow Democrats to grasp.

Let me start with this interesting data: According to DOE if congress had voted in 1998 to allow drilling in ANWR there would still be very little oil produced. DOE estimates that it would take 7 to 12 years for production to BEGIN and peak production would occur between 20 and 30 years after approval for drilling.

In other words, whether Ose voted for or against ANWR would have made virtually no difference to world oil supply and therefore gas prices today. Before you argue that a commitment to drilling would have tamped down the expectation of reduced supplies and therefore the speculation about higher future oil prices wait, there's more. Much more.

What you guys also overlooked is that all that untapped U.S. oil is but a drop in the bucket, so to speak, in terms of worldwide reserves. A drop in the bucket. It will hardly move the needle.

According to the DOE, the January 2007 Oil & Gas Journal estimate for WW proved reserves is as follows:

WW - 1,317 billion barrels
U.S. - 21.8 billion barrels (including ANWR and offshore)
Saudi Arabia - 262 billion barrels (roughly 25% of WW)
China - 16 billion barrels

The CIA's data is virtually identical to the above.

In fact, tapping our remaining fields could be seen as as an act of desperation (because it is) and a sign that the U.S. will not be serious about managing demand and that could cause world oil prices to increase, not decrease. This view conforms to the law of unintended consequences. The ethanol debacle is a very good example.

Tapping our proved reserves also doesn't help reduce our demand for foreign oil since our demand will rise faster than the new production can supply.

Currently, U.S. oil demand is almost 21 million barrels per day while our production is just over 8 million. DOE estimates for ANWR production are as follows: "Projected ANWR peak production rates range from 650,000 to 1.9 million barrels per day".

I'm sure Ken has studied economics and knows that macroeconomic trends are not easy to understand and model. This means it's hard to make high-confidence predictions. History is replete with mistakes in this field. So don't tell me it's a no brainer that tapping the remaining U.S. proven reserves makes a ton of sense. It's not. It could be a huge strategic economic mistake.

Meanwhile, the U.S. comprises 25% of the world's oil consumption. Despite an increase in China's share in the future, DOE projects that by 2030 the U.S. will still consume about a quarter of the world's oil--and 20% more per year than today.

Here is what DOE has to say about ANWR's contribution to reducing our dependence on foreign oil: "Opening the coastal plain of ANWR is projected to reduce 2025 oil import dependence from 70 percent in the AEO2004 reference case to 66 percent in the mean resource case. The high and low oil resource cases project a 2025 oil import dependency of 64 percent and 67 percent, respectively."

Remember that peak ANWR production is between 20 and 30 years after production is approved; the 2025 estimates above are the early window when ANWR could be at peak production.

So demand goes up, supply is topping out, the U.S. ability to contribute to increased supply is extremely marginal--what do you think will happen to domestic gas prices?

The only real answer to the problem of declining oil supply and U.S. dependence on foreign oil is reducing demand and shifting to alternative energy sources.

C'mon guys--at least think this through before posting next time.

I don't want to come across as dumb, but what evidence is there that really supports ANWR having enough oil for us to lose reliance on the Middle East? I personally think we need to start focusing on Canada's shale-oil. If China gets their hands on it like they are planning, we're in BIG trouble as a nation.

3:8

Watch out or you'll get called stupid or a sierra club kool-aid drinker or something.

You know they don't stand on facts when they resort to name calling and partisan attacks.

Bob, why is this so difficult for you? You spin your wheels throwing up a bunch of smoke... This is all you have to know, more supply, prices go down. It is that simple. This is first grade economics. So start drilling, start exploring and start building refineries. It is the eco-freaks in Congress that are stopping the solution to high gas prices... and yes Ose was one of those liberals that helped cause high gas prices.

And while Ose worked to stop drilling, China moved in to the Gulf to drill for our oil and Russia is trying to move into Alaska to drill for our oil.

Thank you Doug Ose for our outrageous and unnecessary gas prices.

Bob,

You may have missed this on the other post, so I will copy it here as well: PLEASE notice that Mr. Williams is quoting the same type of "experts" that you are using to make us look 'stupid' so that makes you...

John

Environmentalists' Wild Predictions

By Walter E. Williams

May 07, 2008

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

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John, you must have missed my reply to your last paste of this Walter E. Williams article. This is the same guy who wants a bunch of like-minded conservatarians to move with him to New Hampshire and secede. He never saw a market that couldn't run better without any interference from government at all. And he offers no science to refute AGW...just pointing out that some isolated people made bad predictions almost forty years ago.

Point me to a peer-reviewed article that refutes the theory of AGW. Still waiting.

And Ken--you didn't offer anything at all in your post except bad manners. Have you ever been in a debate and do you understand how to win? There's no evidence of either in your posts. In a dabate you rely on facts. The problem with your posts? No facts. Fact free. Free from facts. Full of assmuptions and lacking any logic.

Every time I gut and skin your positions (such as the Ose social security nonsense) with a pile of facts and logic you resort to name calling and throwing me into a big bucket with eco freaks and first graders or whatever. That's immature. And it doesn't work. You don't fool anybody. Read my posts carefully and think about them. I don't care if you don't agree with me but to respond without even thinking, to call me names or call my intelligence into question is just rude and obnoxious. Is this how you treat people in person? How can you possibly succeed in politics with such odious behavior? You treat me like Ose treats McClintock--badly. You should be ashamed.

Bob, I am not trying to debate you, I am trying to educate you....
If you increase supply, price will go down. That is a non-debatable truth.

Let me give you an example, if you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, I promise you, you will fall into the Bay. It doesn't matter what kind of nonsense you want to throw up... atmospheric pressure, weather, wind, the shoes you are wearing, the socks you have on your feet... 100% of the time you will fall.

In the same way, if you increase supply, you will lower price, period.

So Ose and his pals should get out of the way and we need to start exploration, start drilling and start building refineries. That will lead to an increase in supply and lower prices. That should make sense to any one who believes in gravity.

"Ken Campbell said:
Bob, I am not trying to debate you, I am trying to educate you....
If you increase supply, price will go down. That is a non-debatable truth."

Uhhmmm...just to stir it up..you lose. Should of taken economics past the first grade.

Hello, Ken! You could pump ALL of the oil in ANWR into storage tanks tomorrow afternoon and it would do virtually nothing to affect the price of oil because ANWR equals less than 1% of the world's proven oil reserves. But you can't pump it out tomorrow afternoon--it will take seven to twelve years. So let me ask you this in first-grade math so you can understand:

If Sally has a $1.00 today and Tommy gives her a penny in seven years, how much money will Sally have tomorrow?

Even today oil is in plentiful supply worldwide. There is no shortage. The price pressure is because people have rightly figured out that we are running out of oil. Given the size of current reserves and the expectation of increasing demand, prices will inevitably go up. Based on that expectation, prices today are rising. Couple the grim demand and supply picture with the threat of supply interruptions through war, civil unrest and cartel actions and you get a very sharp rise in prices.

I'm sure you are familiar with the price-demand curve, Ken. What happens to prices when demand falls? Answer: Same thing that happens when supply rises only we have a lot more options on the demand side of oil than we do on the supply side. According to NRDC data (OK, go ahead--attack it) if the average m.p.g. rises in steps to 55 by 2020 the U.S. will have saved 14 billion barrels of oil. My 1985 Jetta Turbodiesel, which seated five comfortably and had a large trunk--got 55 m.p.g. AVERAGE--and over 60 on the freeway. So don't tell me it can't be done. 14 billion barrels is more than the high end of the ANWR proven reserves.

My whole point is that it is asinine to think that drilling ANWR is going to move the needle on domestic gas prices or that if it does, that it would last very long. I recommend you stop simply reading the talking points people (with large investments in Exxon at stake) send you and instead start to think for yourself.

Bob,

A couple of thoughts: Since you join with the "experts" that Mr. Willimas quoted in saying that we are running out of oil, why don't you join with them and let us know when you think the end of oil will be?

And second, I would like to see a "peer reviewed" article that shows that CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming, i have waited a long time for one of them, and while you are at it, something along you line of oil running low.

John

PS: This would be a fun argument if folks were not REALLY suffering with the high price of energy and our dependence on a bunch of terrorists putting our nation at risk.