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Oil May Be Finite, But U.S. Production Is Ramping Up
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that the discovery of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers, and according to Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, if fully developed the field in Bakken contains 24 billion barrels, doubling America's proven oil reserves. One reason for America's abundant supply of oil and natural gas has been the development of new drilling techniques, including 'horizontal drilling,' which allows rigs to reach two miles into the ground and then spread horizontally by thousands of feet." Not surprisingly, Hamm considers some of the current administration's loans and subsidies for alternative energy ventures to be misplaced.
No matter how much oil we find here it would be unwise to burn. Hot planet!
So they maybe found enough for three years and a half years of consumption at current rates. The problem is now truly solved.
Has he never heard of CO2? Why would any sane person want to burn all that and turn it into CO2?
Oh, yeah, profit. Fuck the Earth and all future generations, there's profit to be made! I can own sixteen mansions instead of twelve and have a bigger yacht.
Because the only people who make any money are the CEOs with the twelve mansions you mention? What about the tens of thousands of jobs that we could use in our economy, right now - or the fact that energy prices are climbing precisely when Americans are suffering through the toughest economic times since the 1920s?
Not surprisingly, Hamm considers some of the current administration's loans and subsidies for alternative energy ventures to be misplaced.
That guy is an idiot.
24e9 barrels / 20e6 barrels per day just for the US / 365 days per year = a bit more than a 3 year supply, assuming it can all be recovered. Realistic recovery ratios are always WAY less than 100%... Figure just several months supply, realistically.
So, some 1%er will make hundreds of billions of profit.. nice for him... and 3 years later, we'll be wishing you had a solar panel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
He is probably one of those people who don't believe CO2 is responsible for the heating and worships that one graph where solar activity and temperature fluctuations match up, before it is cut off when it stops matching.
If he does believe in it, he probably sees it as an opportunity for his grandchildren to sell new beachfront property a couple miles back, along with re-breathers. The "bathtub" for their toy boats will become bigger.
If it becomes unbearably hot, it is a business opportunity to sell more powerful air conditioners. All of those people on those islands that are disappearing will eventually need to buy land, build approved houses, and will need loans from the rich to pay for it all.
It is win/win from their perspective. If it doesn't happen, they can continue pumping oil out of the ground.
Please note the byline at the bottom of the article stating, "Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board. ". This is an editorial, not a factual article. It's also informative to temper Mr. Hamm's personal enthusiasm with a look at the US oil production record from the U.S Energy Information Administration (205.254.135.24/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M). Although there is an upturn in US production since 2006, it is unlikely that we will drill our way out of the peak oil decline.
I don't think that the story is true. The dollar is going down and they try to make it stronger, They lie that USA is rich and have gold and oil etc. ....
Cosmetice profesionale
Everybody panic!
Oh, wait, nevermind, we keep finding more - and we keep developing new technology to get to the stuff.
Granted, processed oil isn't the friendliest thing to the world, there is a finite (though huge) supply, and cleaner fuels are a better alternative once they're economically viable without gigantic government subsidies. But for now we're just fine.
Love sees no species.
Gas prices have doubled since this insane crusade against energy started. It's killing our economy at a time when it doesn't really need any more help.
This might well give us the relief needed to weather the current political and ideological insanity that is making our energy policy self destructive.
We'll use other sources of power eventually. But right NOW... we need that oil.
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I love how "climatologists" are economically driven by grant money (as if a competent scientist couldn't make a better living easier working for private industry than working for government grants!) but oil producers are altruists who clearly have only humanity's best interests at heart.
Gas prices have doubled. It's killing our economy. We really don't have the luxury of entertaining your zealotry at the moment.
Someone environmentalists need to grasp is that environmentalism is itself a luxury. In poor countries they don't worry about it because they have bigger problems like how they're going to eat tonight.
By assaulting the US economy, environmentalists in the US have forced a realignment of resources AWAY from all unnessary spending. That includes nearly everything they care about. Obviously environmentalists will argue that their issues are just as or even more important. But they don't control the money and what they think at that point doesn't matter.
If the environmental movement is to save itself it had been find a way to do its work without trashing the economy. Because on top of everything else if people come to associate environmental policy with a bad economy then that alone could kill the movement.
This is survival time here guys. Time to adapt.
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Regulations are so tight that Mr. Hamm has only been able to make the top 50 wealthiest Americans. This administration is killing billionaires! When a hard working man can't go from say, number 33 to number 5 in total wealth, it is time for us to realize Obama is killing oil production! (and now for something completely different)
Hamm has the nerve to say Obama is killing US oil with regulations?? How the hell have we ramped up production in the last 5 years if the regulations are so bad? Why are companies developing the Bakken if regulations are so bad? More like they aren't making as much money as they want. Cause billions upon billions just is never enough... never enough. The greed is beyond repulsive; it's psychotic.
(Happily will admit that US production helps keeps gas prices from soaring. I am not complaining about oil production. I am pointing out the greed of these bastards is insatiable.)
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Call them "not economically viable"; or "in my opinion not good investments", if you like.
There are reasons for government to put some money to effective use in promoting alternative energy technology research besides expected financial ROI. In fact... the government is really the only organization that really can put money in something that doesn't make economic sense... the private sector will mostly only invest if there is a profit to be made in a relatively short amount of time; the exception would be non-profit organizations, and their resources are more limited.
Reasons like greater long-term viability of our civilization; liberating our people and our way of life from dependency on some scarce resources...
We might lose money on the investment for the next 20 years, but it could still be a good "investment", if there's an ultimate improvement in our way of life
Our government just needs to make sure it makes the spend intelligently, so as little of the money is spent on dead ends, fancy office furniture/meeting rooms/expensive/excessive office space, or bureaucrats' pocketbooks / other blatant waste as possible.
Horizontal drilling or so called fracking poisons the ground water thus making it undrinkable. It should never be allowed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEB_Wwe-uBM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A&feature=related
It is disaster and big companies shoudn't get away with this but apparently they do.
Because clearly the best way to fix a leaking ship is stuffing the holes with primed time bombs.
Economically, petroleum is even more of a finite resource. Currently Saudi and other middle eastern oil keep prices down. Estimates say it costs about $2 a barrel to extract oil in Saudi Arabia. Venezuela oil might costs three times that much to extract. US oil might be as much as $20 a barrel. At these extraction costs a barrel of oil is $80, and it costs over three dollars at the pump in the US. Now, one can blame the greed of the oil companies, but that is not going to change. Explorations costs are not going to decrease either.
OTOH, conservative extraction costs for so-called shale oil, the better name is tar pits, is $75 dollars a barrel. If the oil companies sell at a comparative markup, this means that the selling price would be $300 a barrel. If we just add $60 profit, that would still be $135 a barrel. This puts gas firmly in the $5 a gallon range.
Recall that the oil companies were going bust when oil was below $50 a barrel. This was still a large markup over extraction costs, but oil companies appear to be extraordinarily inefficient and require a large markup. It would be fantasy that the oil companies are going to give away the product. If shale oil forms a large percentage of the petroleum mix prices will go up, consumption will eventually go down as it did a few years ago. Oil companies will either have a choice of selling at higher prices for lower volumes, or find another product.
Therefore shale oil is not an indication of a long term prosperous oil economy, but a clear signal that oil is becoming too costly to base an economy on.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
As opposed to renewable energy sources who's sites are crewed by unicorns?
CO2 concentrations have already significantly increased due to human influence (burning of fossil fuels). So there should be more than enough for the growth of plants.
The contribution to the Greenhouse effect is estimated at 9-26% of all greenhouse gases according to Wikipedia. Not dominating, but not negligible either.
So GP was either uninformed or trolling. Probably the latter.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Funny how a game can emulate reality, and then reality can re-emulate the game: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy
After the initial rush, the Bakken wells settle down to about 100 barrels a day. The US uses about 18 million barrels a day. Do the arithmetic, then decide if it's even possible to drill that many wells.
"The sky is falling" AGW crowd funding is orders of magnitudes larger than any funding coming from the oh-so-evil oil industry.
Look it up, if you're truly interested. Start with Hansen's millions.
Finally proper goatse link, thanks!. Look at my comment to see how you can improve that further. (I got 13,000 victims already)
before it is cut off when it stops matching
That is different from the dendrochronology graphs cut off at both ends (pre 16th century and late 20th century) just how?
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/
it's in my head
My understanding is that new oil fields continue to be discovered, but the pace and size of the discoveries is trending downward or at least stagnating. Meanwhile global oil demand is accelerating.
Since oil price is the congruence of supply and demand, and because oil demand is relatively inelastic (it's very hard for people to do without the stuff), whenever demand pushes up against supply we tend to see outsized (and unpredictable) price increases.
Furthermore, while there's plenty of oil to be found out there, the cost of recovering that oil is expected to increase (tar sands, deep water oil fields, etc.).
And so far we haven't even dealt with the impact on the environment.
In any case, the point is not simply that our economy is dependent on oil, it's that our economy is dependent on inexpensive oil. Once you increase costs by a factor of 2-3, everything we take for granted -- trillions and trillions dollars of built infrastucture -- becomes completely unviable. When this predictable crisis actually rolls around, the cost of replacing this infrastructure (or switching energy technologies) will be unbelievably high.
The cost of doing something about it now is trivial by comparison.
Plenty of money to be made in renewable energy and lessening our environmental impact/stretching resources further. Finding a few years more harvestable oil is a good thing for our immediate future but isn't going to solve the problem long term.
More to the point it seems you're talking more about hippies than environmentalists. It's pretty safe to ignore the ones who've joined hands and begun swaying.
Alternative energy sources need to be researched and then they will create many, many more jobs without killing the climate.
Renewables are much more likely to produce jobs, and improve our economic outlook. Continuing to service the needs of the oil companies has not improved our economic outlook for a decade now. Why do you think it might suddenly start?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
If you really believed that, why did you post as Anonymous Coward?
there should be more than enough for the growth of plants.
In unrelated news, we're also cutting down tons of forests and rainforests. And there is a limit of CO2 up to which plants will grow, more than that and its just extra.
Pretty clear from the charts that the CO2 levels are rising because of man made contributions. It is also completely clear that the models linking rising CO2 to rising temperature are not quantitatively accurate (temperature flat for 10 years while CO2 continues the predicted rise). http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch . The question now is whether or not the the models are even qualitatively accurate. Being an engineer, I do not think the climate scientist have models to the 4th significant figure.
The price of the dollar is driven by supply and demand, just like anything else.
The thing that most people miss is that the total supply of "dollars" is consists of both currency units and credit. Credit is a much larger fraction of all the spendable dollars than currency so changes in credit available tend to dominate the behavior of the overall money supply.
Right now credit availability of credit is shrinking on a per-capita basis as loans default and new loans are more difficult to obtain than in the past so this tends to cause deflation. Every time Ben Bernanke injects another hit of credit heroin into the economy you see the price of the dollar fall for a short time before deflation takes over again.
or the fact that energy prices are climbing precisely when Americans are suffering through the toughest economic times since the 1920s?
But there was such a huge backlash against the banning of certain lightbulbs...
Over in this country the government gives grants for people to put solar panels on their roofs. They always get snapped up within half a week. Its an investment which pays for itself (granted over 10 years or so) - you have to pay less (its free energy), and you're not killing the environment.
That's the way forward. Not polluting more so we add farming problems due to climate change , enviromental damage, and lung cancers to the problem.
I'm going to endeavor to make a comment to this matter, without picking up any agenda about it.
Conservation of any natural or manufactured resource makes simple sense, as does a behavior of taking an approach in which we ensure the sustainability of our own economic mechanisms, also ensuring the sustainability of available natural and manufactured resources and our industrial and individual reliance on the same.
Granted, to say that without trying to appeal to any common agenda, it might seem as though it was to waste my breath. I don't suppose rationality needs an agenda, though, for its tenets to be proved, now and in the long run.
Uh no.
Carbon Monoxide is unstable and will eventually decay. Its only toxic if you're in a very confined space (which is why you shouldn't run a car in a closed garage).
Plants do use CO2, but we're also cutting rainforests down (good job) and anyway there is only a limit to how much CO2 plants can take. There was a balance before we started with heavy industry.
Other problems with fossil fuels are oxides of sulfur (which contribute to acidic rain and are toxic), Oxides of Nitrogen (pretty much the same), and lead (which is a metal poison which will kill you slowly over time).
Yeah -- let's eke out every last bit of strategic oil in US territory! And let's cram it into a bunch of stupid SUVs!! Because That's How America Uses Oil!!!
And let's do this all in the next decade or two, guaranteeing the current generation of oil billionaires a semi-permanent place in history, as the last such. They can get started on their even more gated communities, and wall their future families in thoroughly.
Unless there is a quantum leap in the efficiency with which electricity can be produced from non-fossil sources, we are eventually going to exhaust all the retrievable coal, oil and gas in the earth's crust. What is considered "retrievable" is a moving target determined by current extraction technology. Even if the U.S. were to institute subsidies that evened the playing field between fossil sources and green sources in the U.S., it is unlikely those subsidies would be duplicated across the entire globe. Ergo it would remain profitable to extract U.S. oil. It seems unlikely there will ever be the political will to forbid oil exploration and extraction altogether in the United States.
It's also worth noting that extracting and refining this particular cache of oil does not significantly alter the global price, and therefore does not significantly alter global consumption. It is not the case that more oil will be used because this particular batch was extracted. More U.S. oil will be used, on the other hand, which means more jobs, etc. for U.S. citizens.
Given the economy is in the dumps, the only reasons I can see not to extract it are:
* Strategic. When oil becomes scarce (and thereby prohibitively expensive) we want to have national reserves on tap for military consumption.
* Environmental, but in a local sense. You could argue that the environmental costs at the point of extraction are just too high.
"Global warming" doesn't seem like a compelling reason at the moment given the small percentage of global production these new fields represent. "Drill here, drill now, pay less" is a ginormous fallacy. To the extent "pay less" is fallacious, though, so is the notion that domestic drilling will lead to more consumption and consequently more atmospheric CO2.
But the taxpayer's investment is never paid back. Subsidies are not a solution, it's a broken window fallacy that replacing powerplants with solar panels makes things better.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
If we SAVE that oil for now, when the world's supply starts to run low, we'll have 3.5 years of reserves (more with rationing).
If we use it now, we'll have 3.5 years of reduced imports ... and fewer reserves when the other sources start to run low.
Which plan is in the nation's best interest?
There may be plenty of money to be made for specific people, like say solar panel or wind turbine manufacturers. The problem is switching to the more expensive renewable resources is a net loss to the economy, and we can't afford it right now as grandparent said.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
No one says it is solving a long term problem. Where I'm getting food tomorrow isn't a long term problem. It's a problem when you're hungry.
We're hungry now. We need the oil now.
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It's equally illogical to make the opposite assumption, i.e. that while the oil men are motivated by money, the climatologists are pure altruists. And yet this assumption is widespread amongst the faithful.
And also. A competent scientist certainly could make plenty of cash working in industry. But climatologists are academics, not industrialists. As such, they are experts at writing reports and acquiring grants. While one may be good at both bureaucracy and science, success as an academic only requires one to be good at bureaucracy.
This guy can't drill oil at low prices ... it's the increased price which is making shale oil profitable, and then only just (which is why he's crying for subsidies, to make even less easily recovered oil profitable). There are security reasons to have your own oil supply, but cheap it's never going to become again.
Wind/Solar and "synthetic natural gas" [sic] have much a better chance of getting large cost reductions going forward.
If we're using less oil, the energy costs should diminish by an amount, meaning that in the end we're doing better from a purely economic perspective.
Its not really broken window, because the upkeep you need on solar panels (aside from replacing every 25 years or so - by which time technology moved up), is incomparable to the upkeep you need on oil.
Current power plants produce pollution. Solar power plants would not. Solar power plants would absolutely, undeniably make things better.
For bonus points, tell us which logical fallacy you are engaging in.
He has a better chance of making it cheap then any of those ideas.
Half the problem with our gas prices is the refineries. An annoying issue is that many states have independent fuel standards that are different from the rest of the country. So gas sold in California often can't be shipped and sold elsewhere or vice versa. To make that worse these standards change by season so the gas you had a couple months ago can't be sold now because it doesn't meet the standards.
We could drop gas prices by at least 25 percent just by standardizing fuel. Beyond that, we have the gulf and Alaska to tap. We have to do it.
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Yes and Solyndra is a perfect example of this great job producing industry right? No you are talking about creating non sustainable employment with cash taken from the taxpayer. Green energy companies are not profitable and will not be profitable anytime in the future.
I would love to see it myself also but unfortunately I can do simple math.
Got Code?
Aha. I wonder how this can be moderated "Informative". First, it only contains a statement an opinion and no fact. Second, this opinion has been proven wrong over and over again. The only country which still believes that global warming does not exist or is not man made is the US. At least the US-media produces that vision.
Europeans think the CO2-production nowadays is a problem. China and India think it is a problem. The third world countries and pacific states think it is so. But obviously they all are hand in gloves with each other. Especially India and China.
That explains the Tractor I saw with DUBS and Mink Trim. Hey Bugatti: can I get that with a tow hitch ?
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
But the initial costs of solar are comparatively very large, means that you might be better off investing the money instead.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Gas prices have doubled. It's killing our economy. We really don't have the luxury of entertaining your zealotry at the moment.
Someone environmentalists need to grasp is that environmentalism is itself a luxury. In poor countries they don't worry about it because they have bigger problems like how they're going to eat tonight.
By assaulting the US economy, environmentalists in the US have forced a realignment of resources AWAY from all unnessary spending. That includes nearly everything they care about. Obviously environmentalists will argue that their issues are just as or even more important. But they don't control the money and what they think at that point doesn't matter.
If the environmental movement is to save itself it had been find a way to do its work without trashing the economy. Because on top of everything else if people come to associate environmental policy with a bad economy then that alone could kill the movement.
This is survival time here guys. Time to adapt.
But in the Amazon Rainforest, they sing koombaiya and live in harmony with nature we're just not poor enough... </sarcasm>
After reading TFA, I say this: "Not surprisingly, Hamm considers some of the current administration's loans and subsidies for alternative energy ventures to be misplaced." is a pretty disingenuous statement. He seemed not to be against the new energy subsidies so much as pissed they were harrassing his company over a minor bird kill... and if the situation is as de describes I agree with him. Anyways, we should be able to do both... help kick start new energy sources and allow the market to continue to develop traditional ones.
Ah, but is the reduction of pollution really worth the extra cost from an economic point of view, especially when the economy is down in the dumps?
Reducing pollution is a luxury we can ill afford at the moment.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
If I remember correctly, obviously depending on where you live - small panels pay for themselves in 5-10 years.
Panels are currently guaranteed for around 25 years.
So basically you're paying 5-10 years of your electricity bill now (sure, its a high cost, that has to be admitted), but then you're getting at least 15 years of a free ride.
I don't know too many places where investments are secure and give you 150%.
And this is just for you putting them on your roof. If you're investing in a large power station with focusing lenses and less Silicon, then the costs are likely to be much less.
Pink Invisible ones too, apparently.
ftfy :D
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Oh that is happening .... in China where the solar panel industry is heavily subsidized by the government. Of course, US manufacturers are going bankrupt because they can't compete, but free trade right, it's what's most important.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Well, it depends what you mean by "cheap". Cheap compared to, say, the mid/late-90s? No. We'll probably never see 99c/gallon gas again in our lifetimes (at least, not under any scenario not involving massive government subsidies to maintain artificially-low prices and rationing of that artificially-cheap (and almost certainly scarce) gas).
Cheap compared to $4/gallon? Probably. The magic price point for shale to become profitable is retail gas prices of approximately $3/gallon. Until the oil industry is convinced that the retail price of gas (taking inflation and taxes into account) will never sustainably fall below that price, it's not going to bet the farm on shale without government subsidies, because something like $2.50/gallon (retail price) is pretty much the absolute floor value at which it can even keep shale operations running without it being worthwhile to just walk away from them. On the other hand, if the US went enthusiastically into shale mining, we can feel pretty confident that no matter what happens to Saudi Arabia or demand from China and India, gas in the US won't ever creep much above $3-4/gallon ever again once production ramps up to maximum levels. The devil's in the $3 detail -- if Saudi-level oil reserves were conclusively identified in Alaska and Congress gave the go-ahead, or China and/or India suddenly found similar Saudi-like domestic oil reserves, shale would become cost-ineffective almost overnight, so it's going to be a LONG time before the oil industry as a whole will be willing to "bet the farm" on shale.
Put another way, environmentalists celebrating dwindling oil reserves in Saudi Arabia with the hope that it's going to force naughty Americans to conserve gas are likely to be in for a bit of a long-term disappointment. The US has a shitload of petroleum... it's just locked up in places we aren't currently allowed to drill and in forms that aren't very nice (economically or environmentally). The fact is, the US economy depends upon cheap petroleum, as does every modern economy on earth. Europeans (or at least Germans) might willingly march back to stone age lifestyles in the holy name of Mother Earth, but Americans (and Russians, and Indians, and China) won't stand for it. The medium-term alternative to oil isn't solar and wind power... it's nuclear fission and coal. Fight shale and nuclear, and the real-world outcome won't be sunny skies and clean solar energy... it's going to be skies that look like those over industrial cities in China, and overburdened reactors built in an era where redundant levels of safety weren't deemed to be important.
The smart "green" strategy would be to push for the replacement of old nuclear reactors with modern ones, and the construction of new ones, to keep energy prices low enough that it's cheaper for consumers to buy electric cars and charge them with nuclear-generated electricity than to buy gas manufactured from oil shale, ethanol, or processed coal. Solar and wind power are economic dead ends, because both have serious scalability and 24/7-availability problems. The fact is, it's just plain cheaper to generate a gigawatt of power in one place and transmit it a hundred miles over power lines than it is to generate a megawatt in a thousand different places, each of which has to be individually maintained and kept in good repair. It was true back when Tesla & Westinghouse argued with Edison, and it's still true today. If you need a point source of electricity far from existing infrastructure, solar and wind might be cheaper. If you need 24/7/365 dependable electricity in the middle of even a small town with existing power transmission infrastructure, it's almost inconceivable that any market-priced solar/wind solution could ever viably compete with any centralized power generation scenario.
Maybe we can zoom out and look at this more strategically -- we can either fund alternative energy initiatives with a weak economy, or with one that's strengthened by domestic oil production. Ramp up oil production, decrease costs of business, increase economic recovery and growth, and you'll have even more tax money to put into alternative energy. By accelerating on one front, we accelerate both.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Well, Bakken is certainly part of the old wealth and not new wealth for the US. It was discovered in 1953. The only thing that makes it profitable at this point, is the price of crude. Drilling in Bakken won't bring the price lower, because as soon as it could have such an effect, getting that oil will be a money loser.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
... of techniques. Nor is it new, for any meaningful meaning of "new". In fact, it was old hat a decade ago. As was "extended reach" drilling, which is likely to be next week's buzzword.
I've been doing horizontal drilling, in the oilfield sense, using Norwegian techniques from Finnish and South Korean rigs, with multiple nationalities, for longer than I've been posting on Slashdot. All of which time spans are bloody long times (in a non-geological sense of "bloody long").
("Extended reach" drilling ... about the same duration that I've been on Slashdot. Give or take a half-decade.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There are problems of course, otherwise everyone would be rushing out to buy these panels. For starters, things like cloud cover which reduce efficiency. Additional spending on things like grid-ties inverters. This is pretty informative: http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/solar-panels-cost-effective/ A large power station has different issues, it needs a suitable sunny location, or it won't work very well on cloudy days. Even in the desert there's the occasional cloudy day, so it may not be able to provide base power, and always has to be backed up with a conventional power plant.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Then use the German model: Subsidies by guaranteed, but gradually falling prices you get (from the electric utility company) for solar generated electricity.
Eventually, the subsidized prices per kWh will be lower than the normal end user price and we are back at normal market pricing.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Absolutely, I was just disagreeing with the notion that environmentalism has to mean a loss for the economy. Take for example recent breakthroughs in the sorting and recycling of plastics. (MBA Polymers is the company which comes to mind due to seeing a recent talk posted at TED.com by one of their head honchos.) This benefits our economy, allowing us to stretch the oil we do have farther.
1 informative, one overrated, and one troll. Two out of three mods got it right. The one who modded "informative" probably works in the oil industry, or holds a lot of BP and Chevron stock, or has simply been brainwashed by the industry propaganda.
Free Martian Whores!
> So in about 200 years we will be completely out.
No, even if "Peak Oil" estimates are right, we'll never be "completely out" -- it'll just cost more to use for the usual purposes than it's worth.
~200 years ago, the western world experienced "peak wood" -- the point at which cutting down trees and burning them for heat and energy was no longer a viable option in any remotely urbanized area. We lived. People switched from wood to coal, and eventually to oil. Furniture and paper still gets made from wood, and you can even spend $10 and buy a shrink-wrapped quarter-log big enough to look pretty burning for a few hours to throw in the fireplace on Christmas.
The world economy is driven by fossil fuels. Do we need to develop a more sustainable mode? Certainly. In the meantime we need oil and coal. There is also nothing wrong with turning a profit while providing people with a much needed product.
... Not all types. But certain types will.
If you do it intelligently and make a point of NOT enacting certain policies advocated by some of the more rabid enviros then we're fine. But if the line is crossed the whole movement is going to get damaged as it gets locked in a war it will LOSE with the rest of society.
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Look at the history of science: the scientific community is often wrong for decades on end, with the economic incentive being merely that people keep their jobs and keep getting past peer review. In the long term, science is self-correcting, but in the short term, its predictions and conclusions are dubious and unreliable.
Besides, while scientists by and large agree that CO2 and temperatures have increased due to human activity, there is no consensus whatsoever on the long term consequences or on effective interventions.
How would that help anything? When subsidies fall below a certain point, solar panel sales will drop. It is essentially the same as subsidizing panel purchases, but I suppose the drop will be more gradual.
Are you expecting a sudden drop in panel prices, a sudden improvement in efficiency or something like that?
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
STFU you fucking troll! They're green. Can't moderators do something about this blatant disregard for fact! There has never been any scientific data to suggest that they have ever been pink. It's a Hollywood fantasy. It's why leprechauns ride unicorns: for their stealth (green camo), speed, and their cunning ability to kill with their horn. Next you'll be trying to tell me that leprechauns aren't bad ass warriors.
Ok look at what popular media is spouting:
Do you really think Hollywood has a clue about leprechauns and their blood thirsty steeds if they can't even get Santa and teddies right? Wake up and smell the corporate America.
I want this account deleted.
I'm pretty sure the planetary effects from soaking up all of the power we need from solar panels would be something on the order of the sea level rise that would occur from me pissing into the ocean.
Yes, it's worth the cost. If you ever lived near a factory before the Clean Air Act you would vehemently agree. That pollution has costs in the most expensive of commodities -- health care. Monsanto didn't go out of business in 1970, and the cost of their goods didn't increase any faster than anything else (cost of oil caused the '70s recession after the Arab Oil Embargo; that and paying for the Vietnam War).
The fact that the price of gasoline more than quadrupled from 2000 to the crash in '08 surely was a big part of the cause of the ruined world economy.
BP should change their name to "Magrathea Energies".
Free Martian Whores!
Ask your grandpa what a factory was like before the EPA. Environmentalism a luxury in poor countries? Yeah, and so is food.
You have no right to dirty up MY air and water. Clean air is my right.
Free Martian Whores!
Get off the internet.
Global warming debate was so much simpler before the politicians got into it. Then it really was just scientists versus oil companies.
there is only a limit to how much CO2 plants can take. There was a balance before we started with heavy industry
You seriously just made that up. Why?
CO2 optimum for most plants is around 1000ppm, likely because plant life evolved at at time when CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere was much higher than today. There's never been a "balance" either but has varied by more than an order of magnitude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Photosynthesis_and_carbon_fixation
it's in my head
Good post, but a correction -- lead was introduced to gasoline as a cheap way to raise octane. It hasn't been used in gasoline (at least in the US) in decades.
Free Martian Whores!
energy prices are climbing precisely when Americans are suffering through the toughest economic times since the 1920s?
I don't see too many of them buying more economical cars, smaller houses or switching off their "security lighting" as a result of this crisis. The USA still has some of the cheapest fuel in the world, how can they not manage?
I know it's tough to believe in global warming in the USA because most of the time GW Bush was in power there were governmental campaigns to obfuscate it (in pretty much the same way the creationists use "teach the controversy" to pretend evolution is still 'unproven') but even they're starting to admit there might be something going on now.
Short version here.
No sig today...
The Clean Air act was about noxious compounds in the air - not traditionally components of the atmosphere, posing an acute hazard to the health and well-being of those who inhaled them. This affair is about carbon dioxide, already a major component of the earth's atmosphere, which poses no such immediate threat to human health and well-being.
Maybe we should be emitting less carbon dioxide, but it's stupid to put carbon dioxide and other sorts of pollution under the same banner.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The world as we know it must be close to an end in the short term, and those in power should know about it. How else you explain promoting everything that gives no future for anyone (ok, maybe except for the few very rich ones) in the middle term? After them, the deluge.
In the late 19th century we believed we'd soon reach the upper limit of how large our cities could be built, since we would soon not be able to remove all the manure from the streets.
Then we replaced horses with cars.
(Point left as an exercise to the reader. If you really want to cheat, click the link)
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
it's in my head
You want to see an economy that's really "down in the dumps"? Just ignore this issue and wait a few years...
I note that there's still plenty of money to pay for defense and bailouts.
No sig today...
Nobody's talking about repealing the Clean Air Act. There is/was a real issue with pollution, but it's possible to go too far in reducing it. The costs of any legislation also need to be taken into account.
Additionally, people can and do make that tradeoff, which is why people still work in coal mines, petrochemical factories and other polluted hazardous conditions.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure the planetary effects from soaking up all of the power we need from solar panels would be something on the order of the sea level rise that would occur from me pissing into the ocean.
Hehe you're right.
I hate to play double-logic, but Mr. Anonymous commenter also had two other points on solar:
2. More manufacturing (conversion) of *OTHER* resources must occur; there will be more plastic/glass/other covering material, Silicon, other conductive metals, wire and its insulation, etc.
3. What are we going to do with the waste products where the Si / absorption material has effectively become unusable along with wear and tear?
That could be an issue. Or not. Food for thought, though.
Flamebait, eh? Looks like I've exposed a convenient fiction of the political-enviro-industrial complex and they're out to get me now. :(
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Whoah. You think people care more about their "karma" than being right?
PS: Even anonymous cowards can provide citations.
No sig today...
But the taxpayer's investment is never paid back. Subsidies are not a solution, it's a broken window fallacy that replacing powerplants with solar panels makes things better.
You're right. I should opt to first-off, use which type of energy I wish to. To encourage me to use something that is "better", they first have to prove that it IS, in fact, better. Secondly, they need to show me that the end down-sides of it are lower than the current ones. Third, they need to make it affordable. In other words, I use my process called "CPA": Choice, Proof of concept, Affordability.
I'm lacking a few things in P and A to switch. The cost to switch my place over to solar is over $30,000. I don't have more than 10% of that which I am able to spend right now. If I could do it for 3 grand, it's a done deal.... as long as there isn't more long-term consequence (financially and environmentally) from solar.
The "price of gas" is almost all due to wall street speculation/manipulation - ie. people fiddling the books to get rich.
It's got almost nothing to do with supply and demand or any physical limitation.
No sig today...
Talk about an inconvenient truth! Horizontal drilling and fracturing have increased oil and gas potential by a factor of 100. Meanwhile, electric technology is languishing. The petroleum economy is here to say. I'm gonna get a big new SUV to celebrate!
an ill wind that blows no good
No really the guy has a good point. We've been hearing "Oil is running out! It'll be gone soon! We are so fucked!" for a long, LONG time. We have already passed many "It'll be gone," benchmarks from the past.
Thus maybe you can understand why people are more than a little skeptical when someone trots out a new "We are fucked," benchmark. Doomsday has been upon us so many times before it gets a little old.
I don't think anyone is saying that resources aren't finite... But doomsayers seem to underestimate what the actually limits are quite a bit. In most cases the problem is assuming that technology won't ever get any better. The oil we could get at with 1950s technology is rather less than the oil we can get at with 2011 technologies.
None of this is to say we should just blithely proceed to use oil as though it will never run out, but please let's stop with the stupid doomsdaying. It isn't just useless, it is actually actively harmful. When you cry "We are doomed!" enough people just stop listening. They've heard it all before and it is always wrong. So if you happen to be right this time, well they'll still ignore you and rightly so as it has been shouted so many times.
But essentially (weasel word) correct.
However I think that most (citation needed) climate change models that favor a warming earth show that the C)2 warms the atmosphere just enough to causes a viscous cycle of water evaporation coupled with subsequent warming.
An analogy - the CO2 is simply the match that starts the forest burning.
All that said, I don't believe the above comment is a troll. But what the hell do I know? I am an embedded developer not a atmospheric scientist.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The idea that only an oil-intensive economy is capable of adaptation is laughable.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I don't support the bailouts either. Defense is one of the few things that is actually necessary.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I disagree. They are just buzzwords and they have led to massive malinvestment and fraud by the Bolshevik Obama administration.
an ill wind that blows no good
Nothing changes until the vast majority of it (oil) is gone.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The irony of that statement is that they burn the rain forest down because they're poor.
My burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest. But if you impoverish this country then all your environmental issues will go right out the window because we'll have bigger priorities.
Grasp that. The best way to help the environment is to keep the country prosperous. Impoverish it and we'll slash and burn.
What do you want? Nature preserves and protection for endangered species or clear cutting and eating the same animals?
And again, burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest.
Why is everyone so shocking ignorant and insufferably righteous.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
A post from the Soviet Union prior to 1990 has somehow tunneled through time to appear on Slashdot in 2011. Impressive...
That, or the poster is a complete idiot.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The lesson that I extract from that is that horses were indeed an unsustainable technology and had to be replaced with something better and less polluting.
The same way, applied to the current situation, the point is that oil is unsustainable and needs to be replaced with something better and less polluting.
If back then things were like today, then we'd have lots of people insisting that manure isn't really a problem, after all it's an entirely natural thing, and that cars will spell doom for the economy.
Yes, I found that a good one too. I mean an engineer should know about exponential growth but I needed a refresher course.
Also it should be noted that we are not running out of humans rather the opposite of that is happening. That population pressure enables exponential growth of resource usage or at least demand.
The result of this is that we are running out of planet in general.
here is an interesting presentation on the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqURsUMHTOI
If you look at our politicians effectively doing nothing you can despair but you could also ponder the scarcity of options they have. The financial crisis is still the best mechanism of limiting our appetite for more and more resources.
If you think that renewables can replace Oil you are mistaken too the presentation also makes an attempt to explain that.
Maybe fusion could temporarily save us for a while but I doubt that it comes in time and that people will stop multiplying and begging for growth.
Je me souviens.
A little bit of that but not that much.
Besides you can get them to drop the price just as fast as they raise it. You know they make money either way.
They make money if the price goes up, down, or stays flat.
It's complicated but they can make money either way.
You can get them to spike the price down really fast if it looks like supply is going up. So rather then complain about them. Use them.
We can use them to spike gas down again and again and again.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The lesson is that sometimes* there's a currently unknown technical development that will alleviate the linearly projected future problem. The conference in the listed article had to be aborted since they could not even foresee how the problem would be solved. No subsidies or regulations were ever needed.
*) So far "sometimes" is "always". If you want to claim that this time is different, there would need to be a substantial burden of proof on your part.
it's in my head
Oh you want to see how quick one can get modded troll, watch this: Isn't kinda funny how the ONLY solution being pushed is cap and trade by Al Gore, who just so happens to have himself set up to be a billionaire off of crap and trade? or that the same ones that set up credit default swaps, aka economy killers, are now writing the laws for crap and trade? Maybe some ought to watch this video to see just how easy it is to make MASSIVE MONIES while scamming the fuck out of crap and trade?
You watch how quick THAT gets downmodded, because Rev Al Gore has made AGW into the new religion and all that oppose his massive wealth redistribution (much into his own pockets) into the new heretics. It would be like me moving money from my right to left pocket, calling it wealth redistribution , demanding AND GETTING a tax break for it! The guy lives in a McMansion, drives a personal Lear jet and a fleet of SUVs and then has the balls to tell ME to take the bus? To quote Mr Garrison "You go to hell Al Gore, you go to hell and you die!"
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because his "no warming since 1998" claim relies on some serious cherry-picking of temperature data, and he's afraid of people linking this dishonesty back to him.
(IANAL)
If you give a plant 1000ppm CO2, they will still depend on soil nutrients, temperature and sunlight.
You can't expect plant growth to flourish at a huge rate just because there's more CO2 in the atmosphere. And the fact that we're reducing available space for plants to grow in can't help either.
When I said balance I didn't mean that CO2 was stable, and 'before' did not mean compared to a few million years ago.
I will--as soon as irrational, ideology-driven nuts like you stop messing with politics.
The good thing is that we have alternatives right now. No need to wait for wait for something to magically happen.
Again, we're in a better situation: we have options, so we don't need to sit and wait until a solution happens to be found.
If you were back then, in a city full of flies, bacteria filled water and stinking of cow manure, would you want to try to push the change a bit faster, or would you be happy to wait a few more years until the transition happened naturally?
Also note that the oil industry gets plenty subsidies. This guy's point is that you shouldn't subsidize cars, you should subsidize this horse farm instead.
"I love how "climatologists" are economically driven by grant money (as if a competent scientist couldn't make a better living easier working for private industry than working for government grants!) but oil producers are altruists who clearly have only humanity's best interests at heart."
I need grant money to study if that asserted conclusion is based in fact.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I see no problem using the currently cheapest form of energy until it's surpassed by alternatives, which will happen soon enough.
it's in my head
We're reducing what? Please stop posting random unsourced claims.
it's in my head
Anyone as idiotic to make the statement you did about science, has no business even thinking about politics.
What's this horizontal drilling crap! You better not be aiming your drills north of the border! That's Canadian oil!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The US doesn't need to lead in these fields. We can route around local obstructions by investing in and buying from foreign companies who produce what we want.
Stop expecting America to be a force for good. That ended a long time ago. The WORLD is a bigger place than this Bible-Thumping Luddite hypocritical shithole.
Why shouldn't the EU and Asia take the lead in tech? The US didn't produce the solar panel I just purchased, CHINA did. I couldn't afford it were it made here.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Anybody who thinks that my statement is idiotic obviously has no idea how science works in the real world.
Do some reading in the history of science before you open your mouth again and more nonsense spills out.
I see many problems.
The important thing is not just oil, but cheap oil. This specific article is about exploiting the less available fields, which is expensive, complicated, and more polluting than the easy to access wells.
And of course, as can be seen with BP the industry will do anything they can to weasel out of paying for the damage.
Absolutely. I don't know how subsidized they are, but remove subsidies from everything. Food, nuclear, coal, oil and everything else.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_by_region
If it's expensive other technologies will be used instead. It seems it is currently the cheapest option.
(PS: I live in a country where we produce a lot of our energy using hydro. A technology responsible for the loss of many human lives, sadly, but that's still not a reason for us to stop using it)
it's in my head
Deforestation has nothing to do with your claim. On the contrary, rather, we're cutting down forests to increase the amount of arable land.
(Sadly some of it has been due to misguided "green" initiatives - ethanol production)
it's in my head
China and India think it is a problem.
Would we be talking about this China?
Solar power plants would not.
You have a pollution-free way to produce solar panels?
I drink your milkshake.
^^vv<><>BA
I was making a joke (note the blatant sarcasm tag?) about natives in the amazon who don't clear-cut.
Smog is another problem. And China is aware of it. Even though they do not enough about it. This also applies to the CO2-problem. Nevertheless they consider global warming a problem while some here in the forum and according to the media many US citizens believe it is no big issue.
Watch Potholer54's YouTube series on Climate Science.
http://www.youtube.com/Potholer54#p/c/0/52KLGqDSAjo
CO2 is a gas vital to all life on earth.
This doesn't mean that it doesn't have warming effects.
The concentration is very minute
Yes, it is. However, light interacts differently with greenhouse gases than it does other gases. Light passes through most gases without having any effect. Greenhouse gases absorb it and heat up. (On the topic of "concentration is very minute" the same thing could be said for chlorofluorocarbons which acted as catalysts for the breakdown of ozone - the same ozone that protected us from radiation. One molecule of chlorofluorocarbons helps catalyze the breakdown of 50,000 molecules of O3 within it's lifespan.)
Speaking of "very minute" concentrations of CO2: It's also worth pointing out that CO2 concentrations before 1850 AD were around 280 ppm. During the past ice ages, CO2 levels were around 180 ppm, and currently, they're at 390 ppm. If a "very minute" drop from 280 ppm to 180 ppm can be the difference between a normal global temperature and an ice age, then why can't a "very minute" increase from 280 ppm to 390 ppm (or more) cause global warming?
and its effects on global temperature are totally dwarfed by the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor.
Yes, water vapor is a larger greenhouse gas than CO2 (see chart):
Gas Contribution(%)
Water vapor (H2O) 36 – 72%
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 9 – 26%
Methane (CH4) 4 – 9%
Ozone (O3) 3 – 7%
However: it's impossible to regulate water vapor going into the atmosphere, water vapor concentration is relatively static over time (unless something is causing it to increase; see below), water vapor has a short term effect on climate change (as opposed to CO2 and CH4, which affect climate change for hundreds of years), and it's known that greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 cause warming which increases the water vapor. So, the increase in water vapor is partially the result of CO2.
The "climatologists" are politically and economically driven, not scientifically.
Then I'm actually amazed that there aren't more climate scientists on the oil companies side, since the oil companies have billions of dollars to throw around to protect their industry. There are still over a trillion barrels of known oil reserves in the world. At a price of $100 per barrel, this means oil companies stand to earn $100 trillion in revenue from oil that's still buried in the ground. If climatologists are economically motivated, they should be jumping on the oil industry bandwagon.
And, again, to reiterate: watch potholer54's videos on Climate Science.
http://www.youtube.com/Potholer54#p/c/0/52KLGqDSAjo
Europeans (or at least Germans) might willingly march back to stone age lifestyles in the holy name of Mother Earth, but Americans (and Russians, and Indians, and China) won't stand for it.
Germans are hardly in the stone ages. They have some of the highest tech energy solutions available - and they have positioned themselves to be leaders in the new energy economy. They currently have 20% renewable energy sources and are on target to decarbonize midcentury. They are also the European country with the strongest economy. So how is Germany able to move beyond combustibles so far ahead of other modernized countries? Their primary advantage is that they don't have fossil fuel funded misinformation campaigns like we do here in the U.S. according to state minister Franz Untersteller.
Technically, it is not necessarily so. E.g, windmills (on land) have about the some lifecycle cost ($100/Mwh, according to wikipedia) as coal or nuclear, not counting external or subsidiaries. They, of course, suffer from the same as fission: too few wants to live near a windfarm. Hence, much of the world subs expensive energy production (e.g. offshore, solar). At least, that is the case around here (DK).
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I'd say their revealed preferences indicate that while they may wander around saying they care about global warming, they don't really give a damn.
What global warming proponents want to do is throw overboard the guy who put holes in the boat and patch up only the small holes, rather than bail out the boat and patch all the holes starting with the biggest ones first.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The switch will happen either way of course. But there are different types of changes. When it's clear that change is imminent anyway I'd rather have it happen smoothly.
Money isn't the only thing of value in life. I'd gladly have funded the transition to cars back then, to ensure that I have to spend less years drowning in manure. Life is short and I'd prefer to spend it as pleasantly as possible.
Money is simply a means to an end, not an end in itself.
CO2 is a gas vital to all life on earth. The concentration is very minute, and its effects on global temperature are totally dwarfed by the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor. The "climatologists" are politically and economically driven, not scientifically.
Confirming you need CO2 for photosynthesis, however we are putting too much into the atmosphere. I hear Venus has lots of CO2, maybe plants will grow there really well.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
My initial argument was not if they do anything about it. It was about that they accept that fact or deny that fact.
Or follow this link to the most relevant chunk of the video beginning at Part 5, which deals directly with peak oil.
Your brain is not a computer.
Bravo. I'm all for reducing consumption, smog, etc. Things that actually have an effect on our lives. Air quality, etc. I drive a hybrid not to save the planet, but to save money on gas and reduce my use of foreign-controlled resources. Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud. Environmentalism has become a religion in this country and others, and Al Gore is the holy prophet. People don't use logic and critical thinking when discussing environmental issues, they default to the flawed thinking that the planet is dying fast and we must save it any way we can, and the environmentalism movement has become 13th-century Catholicism, dominating public social and fiscal policy, and taking the Peoples' money for themselves under the guise of forgiving you for your sins. It's funny how many of these enviromentalists claim to be atheists, but walk right into the same traps that the corrupt Catholic church used so many years ago (and still does today to some degree).
OK, guys here's the deal.
First review the numbers around oil (i.e. how much we've got and what that means energetically). For that, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Then look here to see how much we have access to in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States.
I'd refer everyone to a web site for consumption rates, but the ballpark answer is that the world uses 28-30 billion barrels of oil per year, and the USA uses between 7-8 billion barrels per year. We have about 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable conventional oil left. Perhaps about 50% of that is economically recoverable today. Perhaps a bit more as prices rise, if prices don't rise enough to break the world's supply chains or cause nationalistic hoarding - two very distinct possibilities.
The most optimistic assumptions regarding conventional oil that's both energetically and economically profitable is about 40 years max. Realistically, expect about half that. After that, we're um, scraping the bottom of the barrel. Oil doesn't disappear (It never will). We just won't be using it as much. Too expensive energetically and economically.
Bottom line? All the "Drill ANWR and we're saved " idiots would have us destroy the Alaska ecosystem for about 2 years extension of our oil supply. Every moronic Reuters news story that so breathlessly reports that over 1 billion barrels of oil have been found ignores the fact that 1 billion barrels is less than 2 months supply just for the USA, much less the planet.
There are plenty of alternatives and solutions, just none that involve having 7 billion people or more living on Earth in the year 2100 using as much energy as an American uses today.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The more money and energy we make now from the resources we have, the more money and energy we'll have to spend to get resources later, and invent new ones. Human living standards do not decrease, ever, and we've burned through more different kinds of resources than you apparently think, with newer better stuff coming to replace them each time without a hitch.
I'm not opposed to environmentalism, but sustainability? No thanks, sustainability means stagnation. We should always be striving for more and more growth, more and more resources consumed, because we inevitably innovate our way out of each shortage we create. With that innovation, we get a higher standard of living, better stuff, and greater understanding. We can and should become more efficient, but never to conserve what we have left, only to maximize what we get as we burn through it as fast as possible.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Well make up your mind. Does global warming cause rain or does it cause drought, because it can't cause both because both happen all the time, global warming or none.
Actually yes it can. Adding heat (energy) to a system can sometimes drive it into oscillations, like the pendulum under an old clock. More energy, more oscillation. The system isn't necessarily linear like you are supposing.
So it's entirely possible that adding heat energy to the weather system could make it do all sorts of crazy things, like snow in July. The weather system is chaotic and terribly complex and complicated and driven by energy inputs - and that's what has people worried. It's hard to tell what the results of futzing with it will be.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Nobody with any sense suggests it may be infinite (the Earth is finite), but some consider that it may be a lot more than supposed, and a lot of it may be coming from other processes than supposed.
I don't think it enhances your position to label those who look at data you reject out of hand, and/or who interpret data differently, as "wackos." I submit that it is indicative of religious nuttery to so label those with whom one disagrees. It is in any case the mark of a weak debating position and an enemy of the scientific method. It is not known to a certainty that abiogenic oil is either completely fallacious, or does not contribute any component at all to the supply.
Some others of your suppositions are clearly suspect. For example why do you suppose all of the markup in oil from well to pump is multiplicative and none of it additive? In general, there are always both multiplicative and additive components to any markup. And even $5/gallon gasoline beats any known alternative to gasoline. In fact, worldwide data shows that consumers will pay closer to $10/gallon if need be. That doesn't necessarily mean shale oil is The One And True Answer, but it means that it needs to be seriously investigated as a national imperative, not to say a world imperative.
The proved petroleum reserves of the U.S. are about 21 billion barrels (and 263 billion for Saudi Arabia). It is estimated that 1.5-2.6 TRILLION barrels of shale oil reserves can be added for the U.S. alone. We don't know yet what it would cost to produce from those reserves because no one has seriously tried on any significant scale. It is apparent that it would be worth a large investment to find out. At some price level, those reserves become economically justified to exploit. That is simple economics. The need is to obtain an informed estimate of what that point might be, without preconceptions.
It is not an all or nothing proposition. Serious sums need to be spent on proving reserves and methods for exploiting shale oil and other sources of oil, in addition to continuing the effort to make alternatives economically viable. For example, if covering the U.S. desert areas with huge thermal chimney driven windmills would make a significant and economically effective dent in imported energy sources and/or dwindling energy sources, we should have that debate, not necessarily without passion, but at least without summarily ruling out options. And the same for shale oil.
I never post as AC and I say anything I believe. If you will look at my karma it is still Excellent. I often post against the grain. You just need to have an intellectual defense for anything you post.
Comparing the amount of water and CO2 in the atmosphere, and saying it doesn't matter how much more CO2 we pump in due to their being so much water vapor there is like comparing a scale balanced with feathers on one side and lead on the other. It doesn't matter how much lead you put on the other side, as it will never be able to reach the amount of feathers on the other side, but even the smallest amount of lead will begin to tip the scales more than even a dozen or so feathers will.
The environment is about balance, people. The environment that we live in now is what current life has evolved to live in. If we upset that balance, what do you think is going to break?
--- Keep the choice with the user..
No, three out of four moderators got it wrong.
The troll moderation does not mean "I disagree" or "You're a fucking idiot." Judging from the guy's posting history, he's just a fucking idiot. Maybe he's trolling, but I don't agree that's necessarily the case.
Likewise, the informative moderation doesn't mean "I agree", but just because someone used it in that capacity doesn't make them a shill or brainwashed. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what saying so makes you.
The insightful moderation also doesn't mean "I agree" and there is nothing insightful in your post. Inciteful, maybe.
This is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever seen on slashdot.
Literally every sentence in your post is complete, utter bullshit.
We are all dumber for having read it. I award you no points. And may god have mercy on your soul.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Why does that matter? You're both just as anonymous to me.
Worrying about using up our Si-resources is a bit silly. As for the panels, they would go to whatever we are going to do with the roofs.
The bit about worrying about the "Less sunlight reaches the Earth and heats it" is similarly silly. Whatever energy we extract, it will convert to heat. And the panels will likely go where there is little plant life anyway (like roofs).
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I agree that we need to use oil in the near- term, and quit throwing money at ridiculously expensive alternatives that don't have reliability. Nuclear is reliable, and newer plants will have safety measures that surpass the decades old standards of plants that have had issues. Modern combustion vehicles can be powered by on- demand generated HYDROGEN. No batteries. No BS with low power, high cost. You aren't storing miniature Hindenburg levels, you don't even have to store at all. Emissions... aren't.
While I strongly support ditching alternative garbage near-term, which supports the oil industry, I am quite certain that the oil industry is the leading reason why the hydrogen powered combustion never got off the ground much.
Please note that BMW has done this. I know of a real world converted vehicle that gets better power than gas.
I also know that, just like the 110+ octane fuel made from roadside "nuisance" grass in Indiana will never be mass produced.
We need to think like a country gone corporate. We need to promise big oil our love, and then ditch them with the reminder that they tried to usurp our authority as their boss (the consumer).
All my moderately informed opinion. Converting to hydrogen now would force a LOT of lost jobs, as an aside. We need to be back on top before doing this.
"Lovely piece of nature" is a complete lie. The place is a cold, barren, dark, mosquito-infested wasteland. It's one of the least hospitable areas on earth.
Why are you spreading falsehoods about it?
Also, the part they want to drill for oil in is ecologically insignificant.
The arguments against drilling there are all essentially "I hate oil" and "I don't care about the people who would benefit from drilling there. Screw them."
Except that the temperature did not stop rising in 1998. 1998 was just a very hot year. Check the graph yourself, you don't need advanced statistics to see that 1998 was no turning point.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Because there are more sources showing the same picture. I don't know why the points stopped matching in the 1960s, and I do not know that anyone do know. If it bothers you, leave out the data: You will get the same picture anyway.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Interesting.
So burning coal to generate electricity with steam moving a turbine, transmitting over lines, and being used at the destination generates some heat but also gets transferred to motors, light (yes, even TVs), and other heat generating units (a lot of them).... At the same time, solar energy is reaching the surface and heating the ground and longwave radiation is heating the atmosphere on the way back up...
Or, we have solar panels that capture solar energy and emit some from the surface of the photovoltaic cell back into the atmosphere, and convert the rest into electricity which undergoes the above processes from end-of-line transfer on down.... Less heat is being emitted from the power plants now, however.
Please explain how the simple law of conservation of energy doesn't apply to sunlight, thereby breaking the theory of relativity...? I need to learn this, apparently.
It is amazing that these same canards come up time and time again. Water vapor /does/ dwarf CO2, but because water stays in the air for weeks, (and CO2 1000s of years), a water vapor is a *feedback*. Increase a little CO2, you get some warming, which produces a greater average amount of water vapor. *NOT* the other way around.
Secondly, CO2 *is* a trace gas in the atmosphere. But the amount of warming it causes is an empirical question. By analogy, a drop of snake venom shouldn't harm a human being, right? It's only a small amount, after all.
Make no mistake, AGW is happening, and the counter "arguments" are as vacuous as the two that you just made.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You mean an intellectual defense like the implication that someone posting as AC is automatically wrong or being disingenuous?
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/how-much-co2-does-one-solar-panel-create
"Yes, it's true that making solar panels creates carbon dioxide, but over the life of a solar installation it produces on average of 30x less CO2 than coal power."
I don't need a pollution-free way of producing solar panels to make them a better idea than coil and oil. They're already better for the environment with current production techniques. A pollution-free production method would just be icing on the cake.
Speculation is a good thing. Speculators help to save scarce resources so that they will be available for future consumption.
It's the reason that oil production has been flat since 2005, as rising prices have spurred the development of beneficial alternatives instead of just more wasteful SUVs.
I for one am glad that speculators are ensuring oil will be available in 20 years so that humanity can continue to have useful things like paint, and polycarbonate lenses and PVC pipes rather than burning that oil moving around pointlessly inefficient vehicles.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Sorry if I came off as rude, I thought this was common knowledge. The electricity generated by the solar panel will be used somewhere, and in the process, be converted into heat. In other words, the electricity is temporary. The motion in the motors you mention will eventually be converted to heat (perhaps in brakes, or in tires); the light will eventually be absorbed by materials in e.g. a building. Admittedly, a tiny fraction of the light might escape earth, but mostly it will dissipate as heat.
Heat is sort of the ground state for energy: sooner or later, every form of energy degenerates to heat. I could give you the full lecture, if you wanted, but I am going off a limp and guessing that you would prefer the above 1000-feet explanation.
For the pedantic then yes, in principle you could use the electricity to, say, generate sugar for CO2 and bury it deep, thus postponing the eventual release of the heat for a (possibly long) time. I don't believe that will be a major activity, though ;)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
how the ONLY solution being pushed is cap and trade
that's a huge steaming pile, and you know it.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Why not just stand behind your opinions, then? When someone chooses to click that "Post Anonymously" checkbox--they must have a reason. Why would not the default be post as yourself. Do you go out in public with a mask on, also?
Besides, while scientists by and large agree that CO2 and temperatures have increased due to human activity, there is no consensus whatsoever on the long term consequences or on effective interventions.
The consensus on warming has been around for over 30 years now. What to do about AGW is a policy problem that is outside of the purvey of science, as is clearly stated in the IPCC reports. The consequences of AGW are poorly understood (also clearly stated). We are running a vast experiment, and the results could be great, benign, or tragic. It is a matter of risk management. So... how do you bet on the stock market? Do you put all your money on short-term options? This is the type of discussion we should be having -- not whether CO2 is plant food or not, which is an obvious politically motivated red herring.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
lol! And military research into swords has plummeted since the invention of gunpowder! A conspiracy!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Oh, no, you didn't come off as rude. I get pissed when I'm dumb. :)
The overall you explained is perfectly understandable. Apparently, not everything is common knowledge, either.
Having said that, the concern sticks not with the overall release of heat, it's the speed of release. In addition, there's more that factors in, such as storage (environmental - metals, acid, plastic), and cost.
Actually, factor all of it together and it comes down to cost for the average person. Make the prices reasonable and most would buy in.
Energy isn't free, and I'm still stuck at the "what am I missing" stage. There HAS to be a downside. If the only downside is cost, then case closed.
I can't hear you saying that when a bag over your head concentrates that "vital gas" for you. Not for very long, anyway. I encourage you to try it. Superglue a kevlar bag around your neck to show your confidence.
BTW, the couple hundred extra degrees of heat in a match are totally dwarfed by the many hundreds of degrees of heat already in the fuse. But that little bit extra is the difference between nothing and BANG!
The real question is what drives you climate change deniers to make such easily debunked statements. The pros are getting paid by the petrofuel corps. But peons like you are just stupid.
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Because it has been up to 8000 ppm without the Earth having caught fire befo
If you go back far enough in history there was no O2 in the atmosphere. Therefore it should be fine to do without it.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Nobody says climatologists are pure altruists. All people say is that they're generally competent at their jobs, and aren't especially corrupt. Because there's no legitimate reason to say otherwise. There are illegitimate reasons to say otherwise: liars, polluters, the generally corrupt and the stupid have plenty of illegitimate reasons.
Success as a scientist requires that a lot of the science profession agrees that you have professional integrity. Science has some of the most objective, testable and routinely tested criteria for integrity.
Climatologists are professionals who overwhelmingly say humans are making too much CO2, because it's causing the climate to change in damaging ways. Corrupt and stupid people lie about that for their own personal (or simply psychological) benefit. It's not any more complicated than that.
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I'm afraid not, cupcake. Trash the economy and it all goes away like frost in the summer sun.
Well, psychopath, you might be rich today, but tomorrow, it will be our children. Hopefully you will be the one hung-drawn and quartered, and not me.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Probably because /. is extremely averse to comments that go against the grain.
The no-warming since 1998 is such an obvious example of cherry-picking, and so obviously beside the point of a multi-decadal trend. Grow a brain.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The scientific community is rarely wrong about a major conclusion that many thousands of scientists agree with high confidence over many years of research. At least not as wrong as the climate change deniers say: "totally wrong - and by corruption". Whole large scientific fields can be inaccurate to some small percentage. Or sometimes in purely theoretical or cosmos-scale branches. Or perhaps many generations ago, without the benefit of large and accurate physical measurements, after generations of testing previous theories.
The scientific consensus is that the long term consequences of human activity's excess CO2 production increasing temperature is climate change large enough to extinct large numbers of species and disrupt agriculture and other large scale activities human civilization depends on. The scientific consensus is that the most effective intervention is to dramatically reduce CO2 production, to at most 350-400PPM, or face those long term consequences.
Look, you used to deny climate change completely. Then you denied humans were causing it. Now you're denying that scientists have the consensus I just repeated for you. None of this is news. You and the rest of the straggling deniers are just wasting the time we have left to do something about it. Just quit the FUD and stop making it harder to save ourselves - and you and your ilk with us.
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No you don't. You're just a liar.
That's different from actual professionals who need money to do their work.
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Because they're not truths. They're lies.
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The downside for solar is primarily cost, and the land used. Also, for non-Si-based cells, which is most of the high-efficiency ones, you'll be using expensive and/or toxic materials in production. Finally, they do not produce electricity at night, so either you will have to supplement the power generation by something else (wind, gas, something else), or you'll need substantial storage.
None of these problems are unsurmountable, but neither are they trivial.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
So people good at their jobs can't make a lot of money from them, because they're not oil corp executives?
Dick Cheney, is that you?
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No, there aren't. Please use the scientific method when evaluating claims - no matter which side you hope to be "right".
it's in my head
You're not arguing with me, dew drop. You're arguing with basic economics, politics, and human psychology.
If you want to get certain things then you have to go about it a certain way. And if you do certain things a given way there are going to be certain consequences.
Undermine the economy and the environmental stuff WILL be sidelined. You'll lose political and economic backing for it.
Again, look at the third world. How much energy to they put towards environmental protection? Not much. They have bigger priorities like what's for dinner.
And that's how it is all over the world. Why are the chinese so bad with environmental policy? Because it's expensive and they're poor. If the chinese were richer they'd have better environmental policy.
Make the US poor and our environmental policy will be terminated.
This is not a negotiation. This is me telling you what will happen. You can't bargain this away. This is like supply and demand. It's going to put pressure on everything and be generally indifferent to your arguments.
If you can't grasp the concept then you should really stay out of political conversations because politics is "the art of the possible." It means being deeply anchored in reality and what is and is not a possibility at a given point.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
For starters, the US would be the world's number three oil producer with or without the Bakken Shale. In fact it has been second or third (depending on what is going on in Russia and Saudi Arabia) since 1970. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Russia and note that the accompanying chart shows conventional oil production only. The US also produces about 3 million barrels a day of "Natural Gas Liquids" -- Basically liquid hydrocarbons that are coming out of gas wells along with natural gas.
And production from the Bakken Shale is about 400,000 bpd -- about 5% of total US production and about 2.5% of US oil consumption. Yes, the Bakken (and other formations) will help. No, these discoveries are extremely unlikely to solve the US energy problems. Anyone who is seriously interested in world and US energy issues should spend some time at www.theoildrum.org
I assume that "Hugh Pickens" is getting his information from the editorial page of the WSJ. IMHO. The Wall Street Journal editorial page should be read only by those whose goal is to be systematically and seriously misinformed on a wide variety of subjects. The paper version of the editorial page is excellent for lining bird cages.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Undermine the economy and the environmental stuff WILL be sidelined. You'll lose political and economic backing for it.
A sustainable economy does not imply that the economy is undermined. That is a tacit assumption that /you/ are making, which is just incorrect.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Perhaps they don't have an account. Perhaps they like posting anonymously for some reason.
In any case, I don't believe that if an anonymous commenter is wrong just because they are anonymous. "1 + 1 =2." Obviously, that's wrong because they're anonymous.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Someone astroturfed it. Windfarms are awesome, I look at them and realize that we might be able to kick fossil fuel down a notch.
"1000s" of years? Really?
This paper (linked from the blog post with the abstract) says 5-15: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/04/carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-5-15-years-only/
it's in my head
The scientific community is rarely wrong about a major conclusion that many thousands of scientists agree with high confidence over many years of research
Our latest chemistry Nobel Prize winner disagrees.
http://news.yahoo.com/vindicated-ridiculed-israeli-scientist-wins-nobel-183256852.html
it's in my head
There's a selection bias here: if it were different - if we'd failed to get said technical developments in time - we would not be here now. Most cultures didn't, and disappeared. As for a particular example, look at the history of the norse settlers in Greenland; that's a culture that failed to adapt their technology to changing conditions and died out to the last man. For an example of man-made ecological disaster wiping out a civilization, look at Eastern Island.
Basically, every one of your ancestors managed to breed before dying, but that doesn't mean that all of us necessarily will. As for evidence that this time will be different, just look at the economic chaos that strikes every time oil prices hike. Now imagine that the price tends towards infinity; what do you think will happen?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
just look at the economic chaos that strikes every time oil prices hike
Yes, you'd see something as horrible as ... the 70s.
We'll adapt. There's no shortage of solutions, they're just not currently economically vaiable. When they're needed they'll step in.
(And even if no shocks happen, they'll replace the old technologies anyway due to normal technical devolopment)
(PS: Don't bring up the Norse settlements. A lot of people here still believe there was no MWP)
it's in my head
You have a smoking gun! NOT
A single atom of CO2 going into the atmosphere might last 5-15 years. However, the ocean contains a lot of CO2, and it *slowly* seeps out as the ocean warms. (It takes a long time to warm the ocean, because the ocean has a large heat capacity.) So, CO2 goes into the atmosphere, warms the earth a tiny bit, which causes the ocean to release more CO2, etc. The process take 100s (up to 1000) years to stabilise.
Atmospheric water reaches new levels of equilibrium in a matter of days to weeks.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Rarely. The kind of lawyering you're using to argue something important wouldn't convince any judge but the most corrupt one.
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The post I replied to said "stays in the air", which is wrong.
The oceans are big enough to absorb our CO2 output with no ill effect. (Please, no unscientific crap about acidification now. The variance is orders of magnitude higher than any measurements we have).
it's in my head
(The discussion technique I used is Socrate's btw)
Do you think there are other such examples? Might your "rarely" be the word that needs modification perhaps?
it's in my head
wtf are you talking about. CO2 comes /out/ of the ocean as it warms up. As for "unscientific" acidification, you are so funny! Science must be the thing you do when you *ignore* evidence. All those scientists aren't actually doing any science!
Grow a brain.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
OT: I love your sig, I'd give a leg to see it happen for the sheer entertainment value.
weinersmith
A single Nobel winner is what we know as "rarely".
No, you're not using the Socratic Method. You're using the converse accident fallacy. Socrates didn't use logical fallacies to examine the logic underlying a disagreement.
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You do know what variance vs measurement meant in that context, I hope? Just to verify - what ARE the pH levels of the global oceans and by how much do they change for ... a doubling of CO2.
Please.
it's in my head
So, if I can find someone else - besides the so _random_ example of someone who was in the news just days ago, would that change anything?
(The Socratic Method is to point out an instance where your argument doesn't hold. I already know I can do that - I'm just waiting to see whether you would ever recognize it)
Science is never, and has never been done, by consensus.
it's in my head
Please.
You are obviously not interested in learning something. Go to school if you are. If you think ocean acidification isn't happening and the science is wrong, then make a scientific argument.
Quit the play-act of politics disguised as scientific skepticism. Or keep it up. Doesn't matter to me.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Well, I guess second hand. Anyway, my brother worked up on ANWR for an oil company. Every single thing was movable, including the building. It was insane what expenses they went through to protect the wildlife. He had a friend who was getting into his truck in the morning and a rabid fox was in the floor boards. When it tried to bite him he reflexively hit it with a flashlight - killing it. Rabies is really common up there apparently. The guy was fined $1500 and immediately fired. I thought that was really sad that killing a rabid fox in self-defense can cost an otherwise honest worker his job. Also, ANWR is a complete wasteland for 11 months out of the year. For 9 months it's a block of barren ice, and for the other two it's a giant mosquito infested mud pit. People have no problem with pumping oil out on their lawn in Oklahoma - yet a barren waste in the arctic nets such trepidation? I myself wonder why? The 1% can afford to protect some mystical northern fairy land, everyone else needs the oil and the jobs. Thankyouvermuch.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Citation please? because I provided links, where's yours? ALL I have seen Obama and the others in the AGW camp talk about is cap and trade, THAT IS IT. And with good reason as I provided, Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, their friends on Wall Street, all of them are set to make out like bandits on crap and trade, but where is any other policy being pushed? Because it sure as hell ain't on the MSM.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There is a correlation between the level of CO2 and the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is totally dependent on temperature. The temperature bump that CO2 causes increases water vapor in the atmosphere as a feedback. Water vapor is about 4% higher now than it was in the 1960's because of global warming.
How long a particular CO2 molecule stays in the atmosphere is not the issue. The issue is that we've increased the total carbon in the active carbon cycle. There is a balance between the various reservoirs in the carbon cycle and when you add carbon to one of them it rebalances between all of them. So the level has gone up in the atmosphere (CO2), the hydrosphere (ocean acidification), the biosphere and the lesser reservoirs. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere will remain elevated to maintain the balance even though individual molecules cycle through the different reservoirs.
IMO, the problem is -- it kind of freaks me out too, when I hear people go on and on about how "unsustainable" things are. The next jump in logic from there tends to be ideas about population reduction, including possibly putting something into the drinking water to poison a percentage of people, or maybe spraying chemicals in the air, or ?? (Don't laugh, the current science adviser on Obama's staff wrote a book suggesting some of this back in the 70's.)
Yes, oil is probably a finite resource. There are a few people going on about theories of it slowly seeping up from the center of the earth and re-filling formerly empty oil fields -- but I'm willing to toss that out as incorrect/unsubstantiated.... The thing is though, I'm not sure we're usually just best off, overall, letting nature take its course. If we DO manage to use up most of the oil, we'll simply see its prices increase until financial issues force a change. It becomes cheaper to use alternatives, so the problem self-corrects. If we try to "head the problem off at the pass" without even knowing how much oil is left in the ground, we spend more money than necessarily try to force through solutions that aren't really financially sensible yet -- and that encourages fraud. (Look how many companies take federal grant money for alternative energy plans and then go under.)
I said rarely. Your rare exception(s) isn't going to demonstrate where my argument doesn't hold.
Science of large systems is done by statistics. Science of small systems is done by logic. You have demonstrated you have competence in neither. But you're so incompetent that you think that shows you're correct.There is no point talking further with you about it, because you are propping up your foregone conclusion with fallacies.
Goodbye.
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You are making the assumption that stopping to burn fossil fuel will prevent climate change. It will not do so. The polar ice caps will melt no matter what we do. Coast lines will move around, that parts of the globe will become uninhabitable, and that other parts will become habitable. Change is part of living on this planet. If we set up societies that can't deal with that, we are doomed. Given that most of the houses and infrastructure we build doesn't last more than a few decades anyway, there isn't even a big problem with that in principle.
Wrong. Climatically speaking, we are still in the middle of an ice age. An "ice age" is any time when there are big polar ice sheets, and there are. We are merely at the end of a deep glaciation cycle within that ice age.
The normal state of earth is to have no polar ice caps and for the sea levels to be about 180 ft higher than they are right now. The temperature at the poles was about 12C (21F) higher 50 million years ago. Mankind already witnessed a 120m (360ft) rise in sea levels. That's why many archaeological finds are on the bottom of the ocean and why we have all the flood myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
We are "at the warmest" only within the rapid glacial cycles, but those cycles invariably will end. And they better end, because if we get another deep glaciation like we experienced before, we are in much worse trouble than any global warming.
You are "psychopathic", because your entire life and standard of living is based on burning huge amounts of fossil fuels and you don't even see it. You think there are some magic bullets that make CO2 emissions go away with minimal change, and that if we stop CO2 emissions, the climate will stabilize. Both notions are as ridiculous as believing that the earth is flat.
It is very much worth investing in. But it won't reduce our carbon emissions for many decades, and it certainly won't reduce China's and India's. And even if we could totally eliminated human carbon emissions, it still wouldn't prevent climate change.
There is also nothing wrong with turning a profit while providing people with a much needed product.
You mean doing stuff like fishing Atlantic cod into near extinction?
Is that OK so long as consumers get a few years of fish fingers out of it?
No sig today...
Obama has decided that all investments in Oil industries will go to foreign countries. After funding their development, we can then buy from them at inflated prices. However, American oil production is to be halted, in every possible way.
The only problem with that line is that US petroleum production is higher under Obama than it ever was under Bush II.
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." (Trenberth 2009)
The travesty that Trenberth was talking about is that we don't have enough instrumentation to determine where the heat has gone.
The default is to not even have an account, genius.
...which I read over my Christmas holiday, having jetted 12,000 miles, is "Oil 101" by Morgan Downey. Very very good information, written by an oil trader. Explains how they find it, how they get it, and what they do to it to make the stuff we use. One good point in this book is that now that a lot of the "low hanging fruit" has been tapped dry, the remaining wells produce a more sulfurous product which yields poorer quality feedstocks and requires more hydrogen (you know, the stuff we're gonna run our cars on in the Magical Future) to refine. Somebody please stand up and say we have to consume less of this stuff. Not "none", just "a lot less".
It wasn't "a single Nobel Prize winner". Racial theories, Einstein's relativity, evolution, the settlement of the Americas, deep space and time, quantum mechanics--most major scientific revolutions took decades, sometimes centuries, to be settled and widely accepted. Your faith in "scientific consensus" is based on your ignorance of science, nothing more. Science is ill-equipped to make definitive short-term conclusions. Really the only time a matter is settled in science is when almost nobody is working on it anymore.
I used to think the same way, but it doesn't make sense; the climate doesn't work that way.
We're currently at the peak of an interglacial period, and that process started long before humans put large quantities of CO2 into the air. Global temperatures have increased by about 9C and sea levels have risen about 120m compared to the last minimum about 20ka ago. We are still about 4C below the top of the last peak, 120ka ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
Even with the "worst" predictions from IPCC for 2100, we'd merely reach about the temperature of the last interglacial period. Last time (and the dozens of times before that that happened), that didn't even cause the polar ice caps to melt.
The normal thing for our planet to do now is to slip down into another major glaciation event, even worse than the last one if historic trends are any guide. That would mean that North America and Europe would become largely uninhabitable. That could happen within a century or it could happen a few thousand years from now.
Now assume the worst case AGW scenario happens: we burn all the fossil fuels, manage to melt the polar ice caps, and the current rapid glaciation cycle stops. What would happen? Sea levels would rise by about 60m and temperatures would go up about 8C. Coastal cities would get flooded, millions would have to move. But would that turn the world into an uninhabitable wasteland? Not at all: it would merely return us to the Miocene or Eocene. Life on earth, including mammals, were thriving. Compared to another glaciation event, that would be a far preferable outcome.
AGW just adds a minor amount of variation to the normal huge variation in climate our planet experiences. And as far as that variation goes, it is in the right direction, because warmer is a lot better for our species and civilization than colder. If we get another ice age like the one that just ended about 10ka ago, you can kiss civilization good bye. Unfortunately, even burning all the fossil fuel we can get our hands on probably won't keep us from going through another glacial cycle.
It is very much within the purview of science to predict what effects of different interventions are likely to have, but the IPCC has no consensus statement on that because nobody really knows for certain.
Yes there are more sources. To quote wikipedia: " Quantities such as tree ring widths, coral growth, isotope variations in ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, fossils, ice cores, borehole temperatures, and glacier length records are correlated with climatic fluctuations."
These other proxies agree with the tree ring data from about 1600-1950. Before that time, we have too little data to use the tree rings for this purpose in a sensible way, and after there is the famous divergence problem. . It is, of course, simply a matter of some other limiting factor for tree growth in the Northern hemisphere. It is an interesting problem, of course, but not for global warming, as we have much better records from direct measurements before 1950.
And for the record, I'd hope that the global warming wasn't true, but it'd be a vain hope. I prefer the facts over what I wish were true.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Statistics of large systems, not statistics of the random opinion of scientists.
Troed is right. It's you who is wrong and incompetent.
As I thought, you've never looked at the actual numbers. The truth is, there's no ocean acidification happening. The scientific argument is that we have no data points to show that there is, the variance is of orders of magnitude larger than any signal we think should be visible.
Which "science" are you claiming I think is "wrong"?
it's in my head
How long a particular CO2 molecule stays in the atmosphere is not the issue
Of course it is. That's the whole reason for the increased heat trapping. If the CO2 molecule is slumbering on the bottom of the ocean it doesn't affect outgoing radiation at all.
(Do you include rock weathering in your carbon cycle? If so, on what timescales? There's no basis for a steady carbon cycle of a specific ppm lower than what we've seen during the last 150 years if so)
it's in my head
I'm sorry, but cherry picking from proxies _only when they agree with your foregone conclusion_ is not science. In any way.
If I am allowed to do that, and also allowed to select from any proxy I'd like, I can create a graph to show anything. It becomes a simple etch-a-sketch.
it's in my head
I'm sorry, but cherry picking from proxies _only when they agree with your foregone conclusion_ is not science. In any way.
Of course not. Nor is that what is happening. Proxies are discarded when they disagree with known, better data... in this case thermometer data, and satellite data. Or are you suggesting knowingly using bad data? In order to get to a conclusion you'd prefer?
If I am allowed to do that, and also allowed to select from any proxy I'd like, I can create a graph to show anything. It becomes a simple etch-a-sketch.
Indeed, which should have told you you are arguing against a straw man. Proxies are only used when they, to the best of our ability to determine, lead to a better data set (where better = more correct, not "fits with whatever conclusion you prefer).
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Well, she's said she's not going to stand (if I heard a snippet on the news correctly - I don't waste more attention on foreign politics than it deserves), which is a pretty good sign that she's going to. Though it may be another election before she does.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't get how intelligent people can be so dumb.
Yes there is ocean acidification.
And for that to realize you don't need any scientific numbers about the ocean. You only need to use your useless brain.
Ocean = Water
Atmosphere = N2, O2, CO2 etc.
Last time I checked the ocean and the air was in direct contact. In other words there is no magic shield preventing O2, N2 and CO2 exchange between the air and the ocean.
If you really believe that increasing the CO2 concentratoin in the air does not result in an increased CO2 concentration in the ocean, you must be stupid as hell.
Ah well, and for your interest: http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html or perhaps simply google: http://www.google.de/search?q=CO2+increase+in+ocean
Oh I was insulting and arrogant again, wtf ... go off my lawn.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of course not. Nor is that what is happening. Proxies are discarded when they disagree with known, better data... in this case thermometer data, and satellite data. Or are you suggesting knowingly using bad data? In order to get to a conclusion you'd prefer?
That is exactly what's happened - like using a proxy upside down since that's how the algorithm automatically made the data fit the "known, better data" (which is another name for "only when they agree with your foregone conclusion")
Would you honestly accept this in any other scientific discipline?
http://climateaudit.org/2009/10/14/upside-side-down-mann-and-the-peerreviewedliterature/
it's in my head
And for that to realize you don't need any scientific numbers about the ocean
Yes you do. Again: What's the pH level of the oceans and what's the global variance.
The oceans are big. Really big. CO2 ppm levels in the atmosphere going from 280ppm to 380ppm doesn't make a dent in any fictive "ocean acidification".
(We've had CO2 at 8000ppm in the atmosphere without the oceans being any more "acidic" than they already are at various places today - completely naturally)
The scientific method is a good thing. You should try it - and observations always trump models.
it's in my head
You haven't even answered my question: Knowing the data is bad (as you do with post-1950 tree ring set), do you really think they should be included?
If you do, you are fraudulent. If you don't, you agree with me and the scientific community.
The only other reasonable position you could have is to discard the tree ring data set entirely. Which is fine, and will give you the same results as the science has today, if with lower statistical confidence.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
As far as I know, we don't know the data is _bad_. We only know that the proxy has a low level of correlation and that any series including that proxy will have huge error bars. That's fine and completely natural when dealing with proxies.
I also don't understand your focus on post 1950. The fact that earlier data is deleted as well is what makes it an obvious picked cherry, and there are plenty of more examples (bristle cones, the single tree in Siberia, the upside down Tiljander set etc) to invalidate dendrochronology completely, at least in trying to create a hockey stick.
Enlarge the error bars and we're back to science. It's also what the professional statisticians propose, but Mann (and others) refuse. That's fraudulent.
it's in my head
If you need those numbers before you can use your common sense, then why dont you jsut read them up instead of claiming there whre none? It is not the job of the ./ crowd to profide you with scientific data that you easy can find with google.
Sorry, I don't comment on you previous post, every single sentence is wrong ... pH values are also easy to find in the internet. Also the "decrease" of it over the last 50 years, also the effects of the decrease as migration/extinction of oceanic plant life and corals ... if you are to blind to see that its your problem, not mine.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Racial theories didn't use the scientific method. Einstein's relativity only slightly changed the predictions of what happens in phenomena science was actually already studying with the scientific method. Settlement of the Americas was decided by as unscientific a method as were racial theories. What we have in every one of those cases is a time during which science is actually used, instead of bigotry, pseudoscience or just making stuff up.
Climatology is itself a fairly new science. But climate models that predict climate change from documented manmade CO2 pollution are the result of thousands of actual scientists producing decades of actual science.
You're arguing that science can never be right. You're wrong.
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As I thought, you've never looked at the actual numbers
You never looked at the numbers.
The truth is
The truth is that *you* think you know better then people who spend their lives looking at the numbers, because you have some "insight" into their motivation.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I know the numbers well. They don't support the conclusions you post.
I can only postulate that you're more interested in the message than the actual science.
it's in my head
Of course I've looked at the numbers. Why do you think I already know that the claimed change (and don't ask how we could measure pH with three digit accuracy hundreds of years ago) is orders of magnitudes smaller than the global oceanic variance.
If you were really interested, you would've verified that yourself before you answered me.
it's in my head
Yes, we know the data i _bad_. We have thermometers to correlate with, and the data doesn't match. There is absolutely no question about this.
I did touch the "deletion" of the very old data. That is a matter of data density: Going back to pre-1600 (I think it was), the sample is too sparse to be stastically sound. Simple reason, and quite public too.
As I've said repeatedly: Discard the entire tree ring data set, and the conclusions are the same. To bend the this in metaphorical neon for you: The data cannot be included for fraudulent purposes because it does not change the conclusion to leave it out. The only way to change the conclusion is to *include* the *known bad* data of post-1950.
So, back to the question: Now that you know the data is, in fact, _bad_, do you agree that the post-1950 data (and the pre-1600 data, if you want to) should be discarded?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Oops, already underway.
Carry on.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I have already answered the question. Either include the data and raise the error bars, or leave it out. The conclusions do change if you leave it out - but leaving it in (as has been done) is not good science.
The claimed data sparsity is btw not a valid reason, if so you would through out all of Briffa's work as well. That was covered in the link I gave.
Why don't you want to do proper science?
it's in my head
You looked at some numbers on a website -- almost certainly with the same politics as you. That's like saying that you know all about something because you watched a news story on TV.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This is when you, many many posts ago, should've looked up the relevant papers yourself instead of posting in public.
The impacts of increases in atmospheric CO2 since the midst of the 18th century on average seawater salinity and acidity are evaluated. Assuming that the rise in the planetary mean surface temperature continues unabated, and that it eventually causes the melting of terrestrial ice and permanent snow, it is calculated that the average seawater salinity would be lowered not more than 0.61 from its current 35. It is also calculated –using an equilibrium model of aqueous carbonate species in seawater open to the atmosphere- that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppmv (representative of 18th-century conditions) to 380 ppmv (representative of current conditions) raises the average seawater acidity approximately 0.09 pH units across the range of seawater temperature considered (0 to 30C). A doubling of CO2 from 380 ppmv to 760 ppmv (the 2 × CO2 scenario) increases the seawater acidity approximately 0.19 pH units across the same range of seawater temperature. In the latter case, the predicted increase in acidity results in a pH within the water-quality limits for seawater of 6.5 and 8.5 and a change in pH less than 0.20 pH units. This paper's results concerning average seawater salinity and acidity show that, on a global scale and over the time scales considered (hundreds of years), there would not be accentuated changes in either seawater salinity or acidity from the observed or hypothesized rises in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006.../2006GL026305.shtml
See, I don't do "politics". I do science. You should try it.
it's in my head
When I was growing up, I could go into the hardware store and pickup a small basket to hold purchases, and load needed items that I needed into it. When it came to screws and bolts, I could take a 1 pound paper bag, put the screws into it, with the quantity, and mark the price per dozen. I could even write the bar code information.
Today everything is blister packaged and to make matters worse, we are financing the big behemoth stores and their waste of blister packaging.
Instead of screws being twenty cents a dozen, you are asked to pay $4.00 for 6 screws inside a blister package.
Profit to the store is 50%. Worse, the packaging costs more than the screws. Why do we need to overpay for blister packaging and a waste of oil derivatives? There is something really really wrong.
In my view, when the big box store opens, it has a lot of square feet to have variety, and as soon as competition is killed, the prices of items triple or as I see it, increase by factors of up to 10. Six "two cent items" in blister packages should not cost $4.00. Visit your local hardware store and prove me wrong. We abuse the customers, we finance the next big box store due to overpricing items, and we wonder why we can't make ends meet.
Now they are putting 6 tomatoes into blister packages. Another waste of oil as the tomatoes have to be blister packaged and to cost double the price. Blister packaging is the bane of consumers.
Fortunately we can still buy eggs by the flats (2.5 doz) per flat, or eggs in cardboard containers. I believe that blister packaging of semi-perishable food does not improve hygene, but does add significantly to costs.
Is this related to blister packaging? I am opposed to wasting oil reserves. If we get 1-2% bank interest, corporate gross profits should not be more than 5 times that amount. or 5-10%
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You're missing the point that all of these are examples of how the scientific community--the experts, the people who advised politicians--held one opinion that differed from what we now recognize as the truth.
And those models are nice and interesting. But they also have big uncertainties and they don't even work correctly on past data. Furthermore, even the most dire predictions those models make only take us back to about the same interglacial peak temperatures we had before the last glaciation event. So even if those models are totally accurate, why should we do anything? In fact, the worst thing that could happen is if the current glaciation cycle continues like the last ones, because then we're really in trouble.
See, I don't do "politics". I do science. You should try it.
What do you do for a living?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Of course it is not. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a function of the total carbon in the carbon cycle and the balance between the reservoirs. If you increase the total carbon in the active carbon cycle then the level in the atmosphere rises until the slower acting reservoirs such as the geosphere (rock weathering) that act over thousands of years absorb it.
Perhaps *your* numbers are outdates then? How can it be that every ocean scientist supports the acidiation and you claim otherwise? You know more than the rest of the world?
Again: if there is science behind your thesis, you could e.g. start with an explanaition for the impossible: how is the ocean not get more acid when CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase? That would be interesting to hear :)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why do you believe "I" have numbers, and why are you under the false impressions that "every" ocean scientist claims the oceans are getting more acidic? Why do you think "I" have a thesis?
Have you looked up what the global pH levels and the variance is yet? If not, you have no idea what you're talking about.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006.../2006GL026305.shtml
it's in my head
Please let us know how outgoing radiation is affected by CO2 dissolved in seawater. I'm eagerly awaiting your fascinating research on the subject.
(The discussion started by someone claiming that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. I don't see you correcting that poster - why not?)
it's in my head
I'm a researcher - that's why you see me citing papers in discussions. I don't see the point in debating if you don't have supporting data.
it's in my head
Panel prices are in fact dropping. In recent years, they dropped even faster than the guaranteed (subsidized) price in Germany for solar electricity.
The idea is that the whole subsidies are only transitional, and eventually the solar panel industry will be a normal industry working in a free market. It seems to work.
C - the footgun of programming languages
A researcher? For who? Who pays your bills?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
A researcher in a completely unrelated industry (telecom). I do however practice the scientific method. Maybe you start doing the same, instead of posting random garbage, ad hominems and insinuations when you could've looked up the facts (which I told you about from the beginning) yourself.
Ocean acidification is a non issue. The global ocean pH levels vary by orders of magnitude more than the weak signal we think we see over the last few hundred years.
If I remember correctly, you're the one that claimed the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for "thousands of years". Please support that claim with peer reviewed research.
it's in my head
A researcher in a completely unrelated industry (telecom).
Right... so you know more about climate science and ocean acidification, then the scientists who spends all their days studying it!!!!
If I remember correctly, you're the one that claimed the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for "thousands of years". Please support that claim with peer reviewed research.
I could refer you to the IPCC reports, but what would be the point. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, right?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
So you are arguing for including data that is known to be bad (and raise the error bad, as if that would make it any better). *That* is not poor science, that is fraud, pure and simple.
So the question is: Why do you want fraudulent science? Because you have a conclusion you want to reach, and doing so makes it easier to draw that wanted conclusion - exactly what you are accusing other people of doing. People, I might add, whose works has been examined by independent scientists and even investigation boards, and come off as clean. This leads me to conclude that in this case, "The thief believe everyone steals".
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
No, those are not an example of the scientific community doing anything. As I pointed out, they're examples of some people doing something that's not science, regardless of what they called it. Which is different from climatology.
The uncertainties in the climate models are enough for the climatology community to warn that we must make substantial changes to prevent or at least slow climate changes that will cause intolerable damage to our civilization. Some of the changes are further analyzed by people who manage countries and support populations to mean even more intolerable changes from the social consequences, outside of climatology but nevertheless real and predictable.
You are arguing that pseudoscience is science, and that actually dire predictions are good news. Those are fallacious arguments. And I am now repeating my good faith answers, without you accepting them. I can't do any more use in this discussion. Goodbye.
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make install -not war
I don't "know more" - I linked you to one such researcher and his peer reviewed paper. If you want to dispute it, feel free to publish your own.
(There's nothing in the IPCC reports to support your claim about "1000s" of years. I suspect you haven't read them)
it's in my head
I'll give a GW-deniers link to you :
http://the-classic-liberal.com/friends-earth-greenpeace-against-cap-trade/
furthermore that :
"Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, their friends on Wall Street" --> how are these people environmentalists ???? the environmentalists would like taxes on anything put out into the environment, plain and simple, not a complex system in the hands of backers.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I haven't read all of the latest IPCC report because (if you have looked at it you would already know the answer).
If I dug up a few references to support 1000s of years, would that change anything for you at all? Would you say "Hey, I was WRONG, I really do know less then I think I do".
If the answer is no, then I just wont bother.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't understand how you can misrepresent a logic statement that badly, but let's try again:
1) Include the data, but raise the error bars.
2) Don't include the data.
Those are the only two options compatible with proper science. That is not what was done, however. Just as with the other cases I brought up, _some_ data that fit the preconceived conclusions was included. That's a big no no in statistics - and Mann has already been shown before to not understand statistics.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-2010.pdf
(Please note: The above paper _assumes_ Mann's proxies to be valid - it only tasks him on the subject of statistics)
it's in my head
Yes, it would. Peer reviewed papers please - just as the one I have you that supported all the statements I had made in this thread.
(I'm still awaiting your apology)
it's in my head
Yes, it would. Peer reviewed papers please - just as the one I have you that supported all the statements I had made in this thread.
Fate of fossil-fuel CO2 in geologic time
Of course, it is just one paper. Pretty meaningless by itself. A hot-shot researcher such as yourself should be able to find a few dozen papers on the topic in no time.
So why are you bothering me to find papers that you claim to be able to find yourself? Isn't this just a way to try and claim the intellectual high-ground -- belying a fear that you actually don't have it at all? Professional researchers don't jump up and down with "link me a paper" remarks.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The paper is here.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Uhhh...nice how the AGWers waited until it left front page to mod down, cowardly much? As for " how are these people environmentalists" that is VERY simple: Just as Dubya and Cheney hijacked the conversation after 9/11 and made every talking head say the word Iraq fifty times a day so Goldman and the Rev Al Gore have hijacked the AGW platform to get the talking heads to only dance to THEIR tune. Where is greenpeace on 60 minutes? Face the nation? Where is their prize for calling "an inconvenient truth" a bunch of bullshit designed to make Rev Al Gore a billionaire?
Answer? The same place my purple pony with a naked Xena on the back is, nowhere. greenpeace will be dumped on page 64 if they are even reported on AT ALL if they don't toe the AGW line, which is Rev Al and crap and trade will save us. How many times have you seen Al and his "truth" video being pushed? hell they have tried to even make it required viewing in schools!
So sorry friend, but just like dubya made damned sure nobody said Saudi when it came to 9/11 so too will Rev Al and GS make damned sure nobody is allowed to offer a sensible solution to AGW. What we will be offered is another Ponzi Scheme that GS and Al will use to blow a giant bubble before they short the living fuck out of it and make money on the crash as well as the upswing. final result? NOT A DAMNED THING will be done for the environment, if anything MORE carbon will be dumped as illustrated in the video I linked to, the average man will be out massive amounts due to high costs on everything from gas to bread, and AL and his buddies at GS will make so much money their great grandchildren will be snorting $10k Coke off of thousand dollar hooker's asses.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Pseudoscience is exactly what you are engaging in: you distort scientific results, misinterpret them, and misapply them.
The emphasis being on "faith". You have not made a single substantive contribution to this discussion. You are the left-wing equivalent of a young earth creationist.
Yes... leaders in the new energy economy who get most of their power from nuclear plants across the river in France. The day Germany's Parliament disavows the use of nuclear-GENERATED power -- regardless of where the plant is located -- their "green" agenda can be taken seriously. The fact is, nuclear power is far from perfect, but it's the only thing we have right now that's remotely capable of supplying the energy we need without visible pollution (the waste gets sealed in containers instead of getting blown into the atmosphere). If breeder reactors were used, there wouldn't even be much of a problem with spent fuel disposal.
Germany's anti-nuclear stance has nothing to do with love for mother earth, and everything to do with its political culture from the past 50 years. You can't necessarily *blame* them for being that way, but it's dishonest to ignore it & pretend it had nothing to do with current policy there.
Germany worked hard, became wealthy, and it's perfectly entitled to squander its own money on things that will never be economically viable for large-scale commercial power generation if it makes them happy and lets them feel smugly superior to everyone else. That doesn't mean it's an appropriate strategy for everyone else to blindly follow (or follow at all), and it certainly doesn't make them either admirable or above criticism. Few things that don't involve biology are genuinely impossible when the people involved don't really care how much something costs relative to its benefit.
YOUR problem is that your country has a corporatism problem. The problem you describe above isn't really connected to AGW, but a fundamental problem with your democracy.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
That paper does not support your statement (quoted below). Maybe it's a simple misunderstanding on your part?
Water vapor /does/ dwarf CO2, but because water stays in the air for weeks, (and CO2 1000s of years)
it's in my head
So... which statement in particular are you talking about. You just changed statements from under me.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Just an addition to your already informative post... Hydraulic fracturing has been done successfully over 1 million times since 1948 in the United States alone. These wells, however, were mostly vertical. The newness is in relation to combining hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling. This relatively new combination (horizontal drilling + fracture stimulation) has been hugely successful in the Barnett, Marcellus and Haynesville Shale plays here in the United States to release natural gas from "tight rock" (low permeable shale). This isn't to say that horizontal drilling and fracture are not used in wet (oily) plays as well. Recently, 21 discovery wells drilled in the Utica (Ohio) proved that its formations hold rich deposits of oil, wet gas, and dry gas from west to east respectively. 12 of these wells were drilled horizontally, 9 vertically (all were hydraulically fractured). When wells are properly cased before hydraulic fracture stimulation is performed, it is 100% safe, and there is zero chance of a water table being contaminated. There are scare tactics put forth by those whose agenda is to go cold turkey on fossil fuels; they usually lack an understanding of the drilling/fracturing process, and are unaware that alternatives (wind, solar, etc.) are economically infeasible at this time. I have seen multiple responses to this article that are marked "interesting", "informative", and "insightful", that have no scientific basis what-so-ever. Maybe I'm begging for a 'you must be new here', but really, slashdot, we can do better.
What is slashdot?
Quite. In fact, growing up in an oil state, I can remember when "horizontal drilling" used to be a euphamisim for stealing. Drilling sideways a bit under the ground is a real good way to swipe someone else's oil from your own (relatively oil-poor) franchise site.
Because you behave like you had a thesis.
All your claims contradict any law of physics or chemistry you learn in school ;D
And you neglect the numbers brought up the last 20 years.
And, furthermore: so far you only brabbled and gave no evidence for any claim you made.
Anyway, good luck in your research ...
What exactly does variance have to do with it btw? Hint: CO2 level in atmosphere increases ... you claim it is not dissolving in the ocean. Why? How? :) Sorry ... get at least a highschool basic knowledge of phyiscs or chemistry ....
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are totally misunderstanding what I am saying (on purpose?). If you removed all of the CO2 from the atmosphere it would quickly get replaced by outgassing from the oceans, presumably at a slightly lower level because you've removed some carbon from the carbon cycle.. Look up the concept of partial pressure. Individual molecules may cycle through the various parts of the carbon cycle but a balance between the various parts remains. The parts of the carbon cycle that actually semipermanently remove carbon from the active cycle such as rock weathering and the burial of biological materials takes thousands of years to act. Therefore the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will remain higher than it otherwise would be for a thousand years or more because of the elevated levels of carbon in the overall carbon cycle.
Wouldn't that be OUR problem friend? Or do you live in Mrs Falbo's TinyTown, where everything is lively and gay?
And do you agree or not that simply blowing another bubble while giving carbon indulgences to the worst polluters won't do shit? at this point you HAVE to be against AGW simply because your choice is that or drop your pants and spread them cheeks because here comes Goldman Sachs!
This is like standing on the Titanic and having someone go "I know what to do! Just give me all your money or we're going down!" Now how is giving that guy ALL YOUR MONEY gonna stop the boat from sinking? Its not, he is just gonna hop in that powerboat he has sitting off to the side and power his ass away from you.
Sadly this is a classic case where doing nothing is better, simply because the something they are proposing won't do jack shit except move money from the poor and middle class to the 1%ers, no different than "bailout baby bailout!" was supposed to save our banking system and in reality they just profited their asses off while giving us the finger. Rev Al will make out like a bandit, GS will too, AGW? Won't be affected in the least, in fact if you watched the video i linked to you'll see the most likely result is CO2 going UP not down. Now you tell me friend, what good will THAT do?.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If I recall the corporate bullshit correctly, they were involved in one of the first "claim-stealing" lawsuits somewhere in Texas, when Sun Oil proved that someone else was "stealing" oil from under their claim. Which opened up a whole big new can of worms for technical measurement of wells.
Of course, that was back in the 1930s. Back when men were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
And hand me your CV - I need to get this dog shit off my shoe.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Your posts would make a lot more sense if you followed the links I gave.
it's in my head
That is one model run, yes. The biosphere reacts much more quickly, something we've already observed.
I'm of the Popperian kind when it comes to science. Models are interesting, but are always trumped by actual observation.
it's in my head
The link is a bit dated, isn't it? And bottom line it supports my standpoint anyway ... perhaps you have trouble to interpret the numbers given in yout link?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
leaders in the new energy economy who get most of their power from nuclear plants across the river in France.
I'm glad we agree that Germany is not marching back to the stone age but rather blazing a trail towards the future. I'm not sure that shutting down nuclear is a great strategy. I'm also not sure that Germans would care if they imported nuclear from another country that was willing to take the risk. But the fact of the matter is that Germany is a net exporter of electricity:
Since nuclear power generates almost a third of the electricity in Germany, many thought that the country would have to import energy as the nuclear phase-out progressed. However, Germany is still selling more electricity than it buys, due to its renewable energy industry.[18] Renewable energy supplied a record 20.8% of Germany’s electricity in the first half of 2011, from wind power, solar power, biomass and hydro. Germany installed over 7,400 MW of solar in 2010 and another 7,000 MW will be added in 2011. Solar and wind capacity is expected to grow by 32% from 2012-2013. The surge in renewable energy is credited with driving down the price of electricity in Germany.[18] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany
No, it's not. I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand how research is performed.
it's in my head
There are opinions, and there are opinions. If you are of the opinion that the earth is flat and express that in a comment, I'll mod it "overrated". If it's an opinion I disagree with that isn't so cut and dried, you're likely to get an "interesting" from me, or more likely I just won't moderate that thread and will respond. If it looks like someone is just trolling but may simply be uninformed, he'll still get a "troll" moderation from me.
Free Martian Whores!
And you don't understand law of physics and chemistry it seems ;D ... as said before, all modern data clearly shows pH levels droped significantly. We already have desasterous killing of corals and other seal life because of it. This are facts, you are the guy ignoring them ... not me.
Ah yes, I know ho research is done
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Considering that the original source of the fossil fuels was the biosphere sequestering the carbon over thousands and millions of years I see no reason to believe it will happen any faster now unless we proactively help the process with things such as biochar. Even that at best will take centuries.
No, we don't. We've had coral reefs bleached due to warm waters (and cold waters) and they've recovered faster than expected. The pH variance in the oceans is way way more than any slight signal we think we might've detected.
My comment to your knowledge about how research is done was about your use of the word "dated". Either it's been falsified or it hasn't. Age is completely irrelevant.
I can only assume you're trolling.
it's in my head
No, you where trolling, thats why I answered to you.
"Dated" and "falsified" is the same if newer data falsifies ... or more precisely: supersedes old data. WHO cares what was 2006? When we now have 2011? And the pH value has dropped even farer?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
WHO cares what was 2006? When we now have 2011? And the pH value has dropped even farer?
Well, at least you're funny.
it's in my head
Whether by a reckoning of classical Newtonian physics or Quantum physics, wave theory or particle theory, we can't but deduce that a semi-closed system bombarded day and night, with less than 100% reflectivity and no alternative means of transmission or radiation, must increase it's energy level, i.e. increase in heat.
I stopped reading here. I've been trying to be more polite in my comments lately, but allow me to say: you're an idiot. You're a huge idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, and is probably too arrogant to bother trying to learn, because you'd rather make up your own assumptions about how things work, however incorrect they may be.
Are you under the impression that the Earth has always been continually getting hotter because its initial albedo is less than 100%? The energy gets re-emitted to space mostly in the infrared spectrum, or used to drive chemical reactions (photosynthesis, etc). Were the ice ages just a liberal myth too? According to you, global average temperatures should never go down.
Germany worked hard, became wealthy, and it's perfectly entitled to squander its own money
Actually Germany works much LESS than us. With a 35 hour workweek it's not like they have had to toil day and night to adopt these new technologies. Naysayers had predicted that adopting new technologies would destroy the economy. The Germans have proved them wrong.
"I stopped reading here."
And obviously disengaged your cognitive processes which pretty much discredits the balance of your commentary. But, failing to read that to which you pretentiously respond, you go on...
"Are you under the impression that the Earth has always been continually getting hotter because its initial albedo is less than 100%?"
No, I'm convinced that the Earth has been warming because its net albedo is less than 100%. Are you under the impression that energy entering the system by way of radiation can somehow escape through anything other than radiation? Are you expecting to find Brownian Motion in space where there is virtually no matter for purpose of transmission thereby? Other than radiation and transfer through convection (Brownian Motion) or direct physical contact, are you privelaged to know of a form of transmission which has escaped discovery by the rest of science and mankind?
If you concede that the sole source of entry of energy into the Earth's system (other than the occassional meteorite, asteroid, or man-made space junk), answer this. If there is anything less than 100% reflection of inbound radiation, where does the energy that isn't reflected end up? You can fight this concept because it doesn't fit your ideological bent, but I'd be interested to hear how you deal with this very simple question.
To respond to your further inferences:
"The energy gets re-emitted to space mostly in the infrared spectrum"
So, you are saying that 100% of the energy is "re-emitted" to space? There are three discrete possibilities (and results), 100% exactly is emitted (total thermal stasis), less than 100% is "re-emitted" (global warming), or more than 100% is "re-emitted" (global cooling). Because of system complexities, there is very very little probability that exactly 100% is being "re-emitted", either upon initial entry or particularly as a net effect over time. If not, then is the net albedo greater than or less than 100%, or more to the point, is the earth cooling or warming over time? If you assert that net albedo is in excess of 100%, I'd like to know more about the material you've discovered in abundance on planet earth that has 110% reflectivity and let me be the first to congratulate you on a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physics.
But you betray your lack of understanding of laws of thermodynamics with the following:
"used to drive chemical reactions (photosynthesis, etc)."
Energy used to "drive" chemical reactions have zero net effect on the system once said energy has entered the system. The initial introduction of the energy, or the improbable exit (other than that reflected or that which we "beam" or "re-emit" into space using giant laser beams) is the only influence on the net effect. Chemical reactions only amount to internal conversion between kinetic and potential energy, with no net sum gain or loss to the greater system.
"Were the ice ages just a liberal myth too?"
Let me guess, you are a liberal? Is science just another playground for the liberal mind to which neither reason nor logic applies? Perhaps science to you is a faith-based dogma? Personally, I have no opinion on ice ages, there being insufficient evidence either way, other than regional and temporal fluctuations in climate. But I'm intrigued now that you bring it up, because ancient ice ages would strongly support the theory that the Earth has been warming since time immemorial (at least from the time it has been within the proximity of Sol).
"According to you, global average temperatures should never go down."
It's obvious you "stopped reading". You've missed the point. My thesis is that the net energy of the earth is and will continue to increase over time, so long as it is in the curr
The newest technologies of solar power stations are able to handle cloudy days. Solar thermal uses liquid sodium as the storage mechanism within underground insulated storage tanks. When it is cloudy it just works off of the sodium "battery".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Power_tower_designs
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
My thesis is that the net energy of the earth is and will continue to increase over time, so long as it is in the current orbit around Sol and that Sol doesn't run out of fuel.
Which is why I say you're an idiot, since as far as I can tell you pulled this thesis out of your ass without realizing the Earth, or any orbiting body really, has an equilibrium temperature where the radiated energy equals the incoming, and doesn't simply get hotter forever. You also seem to be under the impression that every climate scientist on the planet forgot the existence of the goddamned sun in their modeling, which only you managed to remember.
Energy gets stored in chemical bonds, I'm not sure what's controversial about the statement. The biosphere didn't exist in the past. It may be a miniscule amount in the Earth's total energy budget, but it's still a form of radiative energy capture.
Believe it or not I don't actually have much of an opinion on AGW, as it's a complex subject I haven't looked into extensively, and I know better than to rely on mainstream science reporting for relaying scientific knowledge. It's also become highly politicized, which always leads to obfuscation and exaggeration in reporting. That doesn't mean I just make up my own theories and state them as fact, without looking up basic principles on the subject.
"Which is why I say you're an idiot"
Just can't put a lid on the ad hominem, eh! Reading your response, it makes sense though, because you don't have a fact-based, logical, or substantive argument to offer as an alternative. Nonetheless, I'll respond...
first, skipping the explicatives...
"without realizing the Earth, or any orbiting body really, has an equilibrium temperature where the radiated energy equals the incoming, and doesn't simply get hotter forever."
Interesting theory from your own colon... If you've observed equilibrium temperature, then please share the data because the AGW enthusiasts are off their rocker claiming a doomsday scenario and I think your findings will give them a moment of calm until they can conjure a new man-made calamity/fundraising cause. Or, if you accept ancient ice age epics and the demonstrative lack of equilibrium in the climate since mankind began recording the temperature, please provide the causality behind this alleged equilibrium which doesn't seem to exist. Is there a new Fourth* Law of Thermodynamics regarding orbiting bodies that just hasn't made it into print yet? Please explain the cause for this alleged equilibrium.
(* There are four, but the first has the appellation of "Zeroth", so a new law might be called "the Fourth")
"You also seem to be under the impression that every climate scientist on the planet forgot the existence of the goddamned sun in their modeling, which only you managed to remember."
Neither my impressions, nor yours, nor those of UN funded climate "scientists" are substantive to the debate. If their calculations and prognosis, or their attempt to predict cause and effect are wrong, irrespective of peer review (or lack thereof as in the case of IPCC's melting glaciers in the Himalayas) and consensus, any "beliefs" are irrelevant. Cite a fact and my impression will change upon verification and synthesis, but give me rhetoric and hyperbole and you've proven nothing. In the mean time, I can only assume from their Anthropogenic theories that even if the high priests of climatology remembered that there's a sun around which we orbit, they forgot that it is through vacuous space which our orbit travels.
"Energy gets stored in chemical bonds, I'm not sure what's controversial about the statement."
I don't recall you making that statement nor myself averring that there was any controversy...? However, would you like to explain how that mitigates a net increase of energy in the Earth's system? Except for inbound meteors, the transference of energy into the planet's ecosphere is through radiation which is kinetic. It is within the (semi) closed system that said energy is converted to potential energy (chemical bonds) via chemical reactions, those processes being terrestrial. You still have a net increase equivalent to the gross amount irradiated minus that reflected or "re-emitted" through infrared or other means. There's no "flow" of heat outside of the system which would occur through some ethereal space "gases" as if the Earth were in a room shared by other bodies with which thermal equilibrium could be reached through Brownian Motion (convection).
If you can demonstrate that the energy naturally emitted is equal to (or greater than) that naturally received, you have a good argument for natural equilibrium (or natural global cooling). Do you have such data or a theory beyond your proprietary "Fourth Law of Thermodynamics" that is based on fact?
"The biosphere didn't exist in the past."
How is this relevant? What is the context with which you are referring to the existence of the "biosphere" and how does that relate to the warming or cooling (or alleged thermal "equilibrium") of the planet? Are you suggesting that the net energy of the System is held in equilibrium by the biosphere, but be
It's hardly my theory that objects radiate more as their temperature increases, I supposed the Stefan-Boltzmann law, or a derivation thereof, is what you're looking for. You can observe experimental proof with a damn lightbulb. And you're not allowed to bitch about the "blackbody" formalization; greenhouse and other effects change the equilibrium temperature, not the underlying principle. For the record, I believe Earth actually radiates slightly more energy than it takes in due to geothermal output.
Re: The biosphere- I was simply making the point that not all of the sun's energy goes into raising the Earth's temperature or gets re-emitted, some gets stored in chemical bonds. That's it.
The reason I call you an idiot is because you're being kind of an idiot. Even I know that no scientist thinks the Earth is going to get infinitely hot, they're worried changes to the atmosphere are going to increase the equilibrium temperature, on a scale that may be minor by interstellar and even planetary history standards but disastrous for the current biosphere. You'd rather just assume that everyone you disagree with politically is incapable of understanding basic physics.