ANWR: Don't Ask, Don't Drill

The longstanding debate over whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve may be drawing to a positive end, i.e., environmentally sensitive extraction, so the creshendo from the Greens is rising. As usual, it's just wind with no substance, but it's strong enough to push around the weak.

Heard Here gets it right. (h/t Greenie Watch):

We are talking about an area the size of South Carolina and developing a part of it smaller than the Charleston International Airport.

Most of this doomsaying is coming from those who say they support conservation and alternative fuel and energy sources such as wind energy as long as it's NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) such as the denizens of Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod off the coast because it might ruin the aesthetics out the window. These are also the same ones who block at every turn new refineries or nuclear power plants. ...

We were told without doubt that the Alaskan Pipeline would devastate wildlife and totally wipe out the caribou herds. The population of those herds have risen from 3,000 to 30,000...a tenfold increase.

The post also provides summaries and links to articles which detail how the natives in the ANWR area are indeed concerned about the effect of drilling on their livelihood, but have studied the matter carefully and are now convinced that the drilling poses no threat.

Environmentalists are racist; they assume native people are not capable of cognitive thought. And they are manipulators; they know just how stringent environmental regulations are, but they want us to assume development comes without planning or mitigation.

Daily Kos is a frequent purveyor of this sort of propoganda. Today he posted this from Reuters, which itself is often caught with its Lefty pants down:

If you want to get into really worst-case scenarios, via a Reuters story about the same NCAR study:

If completely melted, the Greenland ice sheet would add 25 feet to overall sea level and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise it by 16 feet -- enough to swamp most of Florida, Bangladesh and New York City's Manhattan island.

Excuse me ... who said the Greenland ice sheet would melt away? And did they say the Antartic ice sheet is getting thicker?