Something I see repeatedly claimed is what I call the Bakken oil scam. The scam claim works like this. Some 500+ billion barrels of oil have been found in the Bakken formation North Dakota. The next thing the scam claims is that if only 10% of that is recoverable that's over 50 billion barrels, enough to replace all our imports from this one source for over a decade.
I don't know why people keep pushing this Bakken oil scam. Their fundamental flaw is that they make up an arbitrary number, in this case 10%, and say if only that amount is recoverable it's all we need for decades. The problem is their made up number is wrong. It's closer to only about 0.5% that's recoverable, about 3.6 billion barrels, only about a year's worth of imports. It's a good amount of oil, but nothing like what these people are claiming. Further that 3.6 billion is what is technically recoverable with economically recoverable being even less.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation
What is the point behind these exaggerations?
"A man never drinks anything that a plant lives in" --DBone (A Real Man).
http://vimeo.com/4938173
