[sailaway21]

CD, for all his bloviations, cannot answer the question. Cam and other's have given him the answer and now, finally, he shows some signs of acceptance. A miracle I'd say. (g)

I'll throw my two cents in. We have to drill or we have to continue to pay the piper. It's our only option. Other options will make themselves known as time goes on and the price stays high. Again, if you're depressed that it takes so long to bring new oil fields to market just consider how much longer it takes to bring a viable and economical alternative energy source to market. It's tough to do because, while we've been working on many alternative energy sources for decades, there's about zero percentage of them that have developed to a point where they can even begin to replace that 25% of the oil we use.

CD and the government could throw 100 trillion dollars at alternative energy tomorrow and it's still take ten years to have even a minimal effect on energy use, let alone 25%. there's been more money invested and wasted on alternative energy in the last quarter century in this country than there were losing wagers on Big Brown. That doesn't mean that something won't work out in the future, or that gains were not made. What it does mean though is that we were colossally stupid in the past by spending government money on these projects instead of letting private industry do so, absorbing not only risk but reward. The only effective engine for change is the market. And at $4/gallon the market is looking real interested even in those Catalina bugs. The ones that eat waste material and excrete oil.

You can still try to answer the question if you'd like, CD, but I think the rest of us know it's unanswerable.