Palin talks energy on Facebook, annoys millions

Yesterday, we drew straws here at the office to decide who would get stuck with take on the assignment of blogging about Sarah Palin's latest post about energy on Facebook.

I lost.

Sigh.

Her Facebook note is so brief and devoid on substance that I can spare you having to click through to her fan page by quoting it here in full:

Where’s the Oil in Our National Energy Policy?
Yesterday at 3:41pm

America’s energy challenges are getting more and more serious every day, and yet the Obama administration just doesn’t get it. Please see this informative article that sheds light on one aspect of the president’s problem. It starts by explaining our energy demand will increase, and oil will be part of that demand.

Well, what do you know? The Obama administration, whose entire energy posture going back into the presidential campaign has been both ideologically and practically stridently anti-oil, both as an industry and as a form of energy, has suddenly become “concerned” about China’s oil grab.

This is, to say the least, disingenuous.

The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now — this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.

Read the rest here. I look forward to hopefully hearing President Obama acknowledge America’s need to ramp up domestic energy production, including oil and natural gas developments, during Wednesday’s State of the Union address. Let’s hope his advisers advise him accordingly.

- Sarah Palin

Translation: Drill, Baby, Drill! Lather, rinse, repeat. Also.

There are, however, several points worth making about this note:

1. The allegation that oil plays no part in Obama's energy policy is just plain wrong. Joe Romm helpfully points out that Obama's campaign plan specifically mentions oil and natural gas. Although they're not the centerpiece of his program by any means, oil and gas (unfortunately) are in the mix. Is it too much to ask that, in her zeal to attack the President, Gov. Ms. Palin could at least get her facts straight? Apparently it is.

2. The idea that expanding domestic oil production is some sort of panacea for our energy crisis is nonsense. Again, the indispensable Joe Romm:

Opening more federal acreage probably won’t lead to any significant extra drilling for at least another decade.  I had a long analysis of this last year — “The cruel offshore-drilling hoax.” The oil companies already have access to some 34 billion barrels of offshore oil they haven’t even developed yet, but ending the federal moratorium on offshore drilling would probably add only another several billion barrels, generating under 100,000 barrels a day in new supply — maybe 0.1% of world production — sometime after 2020.  A leading EIA analyst told me in 2008 that ending the entire federal moratorium is “certainly not going to make a difference in the next 10 years.”

3. For the hundredth time: our problem isn't that we're not relying enough on dirty, economically unstable and finite sources of energy like oil and coal -- it's that we're too reliant on them. Would anyone tell a heroin addict that the best way to kick their addiction is to do more smack? President Bush didn 't get much right on climate and energy, but he did diagnose much of the problem correctly: America is addicted to oil. (He forgot to mention coal, but then again, that's what we're here for.) The solution to our energy crisis is to kick our fossil fuel addiction once and for all by making polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions and investing billions in clean energy jobs here in America.

Some patriotic American needs to step up and introduce Ms. Palin to FarmVille ASAP...that would certainly earn a "Like" from me.