Annoying "Facts"

So; only 12 days left in the election. I thought I'd take a quick minute to throw out one of the common party-lines from Democrats and voice my frustration over it. Note that I'm NOT saying that Republicans do not also have their own party lines. They most certainly do. In politics, who doesn't?

This one just grates on me because it panders to people as if they're idiots and it is consistently glossed over by any opposition; be it McCain in EVERY debate or opposing commentators on news channels. They never respond the way I think they should. And since I'm all-knowing, then they're wrong. (or was it a know-it-all? I forget...)

So there.

Back to topic - here's the "fact"oid. Americans consume 25 percent of the world's produced oil, but our nation holds less than 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves

The very first time I heard that it made me immediately want to get on the Internet to disprove its implication. I admit, I automatically got cynical about it, assuming (rightly as it turned out) that it was completely misleading, despite being based on facts. What irks me about this statement is that it implies that we consume 8 times what we can make. Admittedly, the wordplay is clever and has obviously pulled the wool over people's eyes, because it never gets clarified by opposition.
When someone hears it or reads it, their mind focuses on the 25 and 3 percent numbers and 25 is a lot bigger than 3, so we must use more than we make. This couldn't be further from the truth, though it's exactly what they want you to think. In actuality, when you look at the numbers, you find that our proven reserves are about 30 billion barrels. These numbers are from 2008. As for consumption, we consume about 20 million barrels per day.

So, 25% = 20 million/day and 3% = 30 BILLION. Hardly using 8 times what we can make. In fact, if we were able to extract and refine all those proven reserves today, we could subsist entirely on our own oil for almost 4 years without any imported oil.

However, the facts are that we'll never have to do that. Canada has just had revealed that they have - get this - about 180 BILLION barrels of proven reserves. They're nice to us and we trade well with them, so there's no reason we wouldn't be able to trade for some of that lovely oil. When you add in their consumption of about 3 million/day and their reserves of 180 billion, then we can now last TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. That's right - a quarter a century. This obviously doesn't take into account any increases in usage, but if we're smart we would actually LOWER consumption while we INCREASE production.

Now, if that were to happen, we'd obviously not want to sit idly and let the 25 years run out without doing something, so we'd need to use that time wisely to rapidly develop alternative fuels and power sources, as well as utilize our UNproven reserves. Cuba has supposedly found lots of oil off their shores, which by the way, is off OUR shores. I believe the facts of that find are still waiting to be verified, but remember that Brazil also found a TON of oil off their shores recently. It's more than likely there off our shore too, just waiting to be drilled and refined.Who knows, if we were able to reduce our own consumption and have a big find ourselves, WE could export oil to others...what a concept. In fact, our increased production could probably bring the price of oil so far down that there'd be little profit or money in it for anyone and entrepreneurs would look to other fuels as their next big buck.

Now, truthfully, we can't start refining all that oil we have and Canada has overnight, but we've got to start somewhere, and we should. It's not about politics, it's about common sense. Why should we rely on someone else for something when we can produce it (or purchase from friendly countries) now? You can't simply turn the country from oil to alternative fuels overnight either, but obviously advancement needs to be made in those areas as well. If we could kick all the damn lobbyists out of DC then we could probably get some things accomplished. Environmentalists lobby against any sort of oil expansion whatsoever and oil companies lobby against alternative fuels. It's got to stop!!

Sorry - got slightly off topic. My point was that statement by Dems just gets under my skin every time I hear it and NOBODY ever says anything. So consider something said.