They said it again:

“We can’t drill our way out of this.  We produce 25 percent of the world’s oil, but we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserve.”

I’ve heard this from Hillary, Pelosi, Obama and recently at the veep debate, I heard it from Biden.

It is a talking point.  It is a talking point in the sense that everybody says it.  Nobody thinks about it. It is not a thinking point.

But like all statistics, it says something very specific, but it doesn’t say what they say it says.

What does it say?

It compares our production to the world’s production.  They produce three times what we produce (25% vs. 75%)

It compares our reserves to the world’s reserve.  They have about thirty time the reserve that we do (3% vs about 90%).

All this really means is that the rest of the world has a heck of a lot of oil.  Much more than we do.

What doesn’t it say?

It doesn’t compare anybody’s production to anybody’s reserve.

It doesn’t say anything about what how much we need to become energy independent. Specifically, it doesn’t say anything about how much we would need to “drill our way out of this.”

I am not saying we can or can’t drill our way out.  But they are offering this statistic as proof that we can’t and we just can’t conclude that from this statistic.

What can we conclude?

We can conclude that we would run out of oil way before the rest of the world does.

What can we not conclude?

We don’t know from this statistic WHEN we would run out of oil. Since there is no comparison between anyone’s reserve and their production, we don’t know if we will run out in 10 years, 30 years, or 1000 years.  We can conclude that we will run out first, but if we will run out in 1000 years, knowing that we will run out first doesn’t really matter that much, does it?

We also don’t know from this statistic how much we can increase production.  Since there is no comparison between our production and our reserve, we could, conceivably,  double our production.  We might run out sooner, but since we don’t know from this statistic whether that would be in 15 years or 500 years, this statistic doesn’t preclude increasing production.

Therefore, we don’t know from this statistic whether we can drill our way out of this or not.  It doesn’t tell us by how much we can increase production and it doesn’t tell us how much we would need to increase production to drill our way out.

I am not offering statistics that say we can drill our way out.  I’m sure the numbers are out there and smarter people than me can figure this out.  But I know this statistic—this talking point—doesn’t make that case.

The next time I see this statistic in the context of a debate, I want the opponent to really take them to task.  Don’t let them get away with using this shabby statistic.  If they can prove—really prove—that we can’t drill our way out, make them prove it.

Readers of my previous post may wonder if I hold Clinton responsible for 9-11.  Let me clarify.

I do believe that his actions and his inaction directly led to 9-11.   The structural faults in our intelligence machines, the treatment of terror attacks as criminal matters rather than something more serious, the ineffective responses to acts of war against us, the cutting down of the military all added to or allowed the Jihadists view that we were a paper tiger and that we would not prevent them from attacking us and, if attacked, we would not respond effectively.  Fortunately, Bill Clinton was not in office when the attacks actually occured.

Having said that, there is no way that Clinton could have known definitively what the consequences of his actions would be.  There may have been people around warning him, but there are enough conspiracy people around that it is difficult enough to hear the soothsayers among the cacophony of cooks.  We may question the wisdom of his actions, we may say that it was not hard to foresee the consequences, but there was no way someone with his world view could see what was coming.

So I do not blame him.  He may have been negligent, if you will, but not criminally so.

Then we come to today, or rather, pitifully soon after 9-11.  First, the complaint was that the administration was incompetent for not connecting the dots and preventing the attacks (of course, this doesn't include the loonatic fringe that believe the administration orchestrated the attacks).  It wasn't long after that people were complaining about airport security, about the Patriot Act, about "domestic eavesdropping."  You have to wonder if, after having seen what Jihadists are capable of, how people can critique the then administration for not connecting the dots and preventing the attack.  One could argue that if we did not know what might happen,  the measures that we were an unnecessary and inconvenient infringement of our freedom.  But having seen what Jihadists are capable of doing, how can people strain under the yoke of what has been determined to be necessary to prevent the next attack?

So when Pelosi and her accomplices allow the FISA to expire, they will be responsible, criminally negligent, for any attacks that occur because we didn't have our ear to the ground.  When Obama Billary bring our soldiers home, followed on their heels by the Jihadists, they will be responsible and criminally negligent.

And what does that say about the people who elected them?  Particularly the conservatives who decide to protest by not voting for the only candidate who might keep us safe?  The people who recognize the dangers and vote (or don't vote) in a way that endangers our safety?