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Why We Have To Kiss Off Big Carbon Now
mdsolar writes When the fossil-fuel divestment movement first stirred on college campuses three years ago, you could almost hear Big Oil and Wall Street laughing. Crude prices were flirting with $100 a barrel, and domestic oil production, from Texas to North Dakota, was in the midst of a historic boom. But the quixotic campus campaign suddenly has the smell of smart money.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
As fracking destroys water supplies and replaces them with barium-laced debt fluids.
I hope this is an attempt at a joke...
There is zero proof that fracking does anything bad to water supplies beyond using some of it (about 40,000 Gal/well). Fracking takes place well below domestic water supplies and is no more of a hazard than the drilling was in the first place. People who think otherwise are mis-informed or lying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/pennsylvania-fracking-study_n_3622512.html
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Make sure you are an informed investor, though. The reason oil prices dropped is because of a massive new increase in supply. At least some of it can be profitable at $40 a barrel (shale drilling techniques have rapidly gotten cheaper).
The last time oil had a drastic drop in price due to new supply was in the 80s. Back then, it was nearly two decades before prices came back up, as increasing Chinese demand started to max out the supply.
Now is not the same as the 80s, either. Technologies are being developed that can drop demand by 40% or more. As electric cars become more and more common (and there's every reason to believe they will), oil usage will drop accordingly, and oil prices will drop as well. In some scenarios, it could be a century before oil prices return to what they were.
Or maybe not. But you should know what the risks are before you make any investment (and don't believe it just because some loudmouth like me said it on Slashdot, go investigate it yourself. Take responsibility for your investments).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"This is good news," said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a "useful and important approach" to monitoring fracking, but he cautioned that the single study doesn't prove that fracking can't pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
Here's a tip: if you post a URL to a story, read it first.
One is about the IR absorption properties of carbon dioxide. What you choose to *do* about certain undesirable consequences of that piece of physics, that can be about all kinds of things. But global warming itself is just about radiation transport.
Actually there won't BE any fuel taxes. As in no gasoline fuel used. The 'gas tax' is dying and needs too. Paying based on your annual mileage x vehicle type needs to be the new metric for funding roads. Even before we get off gas, cars are more and more efficient, reducing the amount of gas used per mile driven. The cost of maintaining the roads is FAR exceeded by the cost of not doing so. When the roads start breaking down, the delivery trucks need that much more maintenance and now everything costs more to deliver. Regular maintenance spending is always cheaper.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Gravity is made up. What holds everything down on planet earth is suction. The earth sucks.
The Koch brothers don't need to buy scientists - they bought climate denying politicians. The Republicans then put climate deniers in every environment and science role (and if you don't believe me, look it up yourself - just recently they added anti-science/climate denier Ted Cruz to head NASA and have had a climate denier running the EPA since late last year). I'm not saying jump two feet into cutting all emissions like some nuts on the left, but just give science an effing chance and see if it affects anything. These guys just outright deny it is and can happen.
The summary, most of the article and most of the posts here are completely missing the point.
The oil, coal and natural gas need to stay in the ground, regardless of what we are paying for it, $50, $150 per barrel, people still pay for it.
Is civilisation going to end when we stop using fossil fuels? Of course not.
Far better article about global warming:Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Perhaps you didn't read the study that the pacific has been absorbing the energy causing the seeming 'hiatus' in rising temps. linky So it's quite plausible that the pacific has been redistributing the heat lower into the ocean columns. Eventually though it stops being able to do that and the atmospheric heating continues...now with a warmer ocean to boot.
It's a complex system and we don't know everything but we continue to study and learn. As opposed to your ilk who just say 'nope, no problems' with no evidence to explain the workings of the system.
Much like claiming a snow storm means the climate isn't warming. It IS warming and has been for decades but because of a single blip in the trend you're ready to throw out decades of factual solid data on temps.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people