[Rockhound76]

This thread cracks me up. I've been involved on both sides of the "issue", first as a student/diver at a marine lab 30 years ago, majoring in Marine Science and hoping for a career as a Marine Biologist or Environmental Scientist and now, as a geologist/geophysicist in offshore (Gulf of Mexico) petroleum exploration.

I can appreciate the attempts by some here to explain, in rational scientific terms, why offshore drilling and domestic production can be done safely, attempts to point out the significant reductions environmental risks of drilling when compared to the risks of ever-increasing import volumes when delivered by tanker. And never mind the attempts to explain the geopolitical costs of being at the mercy of unstable and unfriendly nations.

I can certainly appreciate the economic reasoning that suggests future planning, which involves the opening of potentially productive areas to careful exploration might reduce (but not eliminate) future price and production shocks, particulalry when compared to knee-jerk and ultimately more costly "forcing" actions.

I can appreciate the frustration at reading so many ill-informed opinions based on political snippets and media mythology.

But, I have to disagree with intent of these posters to ostensibly "rationalize the irrational mind".

You can explain some things to some people, but you can never understand it for them.

I am approaching retirement age. I love what I do for a living. It is interesting and exciting work. I has had it's ups and downs (mostly downs. anybody remember $9/bbl. and 400,000 American oil field workers out of work? Congress passed laws to protect Autoworkers during that time. Oil and Gas workers were excluded.

Yes, I love what I do. I am, however, tired of the business. So, go plug in your electric car, just don't forget to dispose of those batteries properly and oh, make sure you plug into a solar only grid (technically speaking, it would require several square miles of solar panels, which have their own environmental impacts, to equal the daily energy output of a single mid-market Exxon station) or to a wind grid (don't kill the birdies and I'm sure you'll get used to the noise and the fact they constantly break down). Or just pump your car up with ethanol, never mind the PETROLEUM fertilizer fed dead zone in the Central Gulf of Mexico or the algal blooms all along the Mississippi or the fact that it take more btu of petroleum to produce this product than you get out of it.

What folks in Florida and California and Massachuetts need to admit that the aren't exposed to any great environmental risks, they just don't want to see rigs on their horizon or oil field trash in their towns. No amount of logic in the world would change their minds.

To be honest, I don't really care what they think.