Ok. I will concede that there is a political component to energy. Be that as it may, I would hope that the relatively intelligent and inquisitive people here would go beyond that and actually investigate the geological facts surrounding fossil fuels. Here’s some recent info on coal that may surprise you. – http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4061 .

It helps when debating the politics of fossil fuels to have the facts ( or at least an equivelent set of guesses ) at hand, rather than just yelling at each other.

The problem with all this is that all of the “estimates” by USGS or anyone else come complete with a set of probabilities, which is usually what the argument centers around. IE, “My probabilities can whip your probabilities”. Kind of pointless actually, because until somebody sticks a straw in the ground or digs a hole, you don’t really know shit. All you really know via ground sensing radar, and other techniques is what kind of rock is at what depth. And geology tells you that certain kinds of rock formations “usually” will have some kind of fossil fuel associated with them. That doesn’t mean you can afford to gamble with finding out or that you can actually recover anything. Success rate is about 50% for most of this stuff. Often a lot lower. All the easy FF is already being used.

Have fun.

What better way to control the country and its populace than to control the access to energy?

I think we give the Dem’s far too much credit for thinking, planning, plotting to rule the nation. They are responding to their Left-wing base who is very radical to say the least (and agressively mean-spirited and destructive when need be); they will destroy their own people when they don’t do what they want, in much the same way that radical revolutionaries will “eat their own” as we have seen in the old USSR, China, Iran, etc. The Dem leadership is scared stiff of their own offspring.

When you cap supplies with demand remaining the same, the price goes up.