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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.
I am not a greenie and I don't tell others what they should or should not do but I don't drive a car by choice and it has nothing specifically do do with being an "environmentalist".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You know you want to. Time the market. Buy into an oil ETF. Better be at the bottom, though.
Global warming is a just another method of control, albeit much less effective than the war on terror.
As fracking destroys water supplies and replaces them with barium-laced debt fluids.
Sounds like we need another huge government bail out of these poor rich guys.
only an idiot thinks prices will stay this low.
seriously, this happened in 2008 as well.
...and put all my money into bitcoin! Oh wait...
And here's the problem with free market capitalism. Now we have abandoned wellsites that nobody wants to cleanup, unemployed oil workers & related fields, and bankrupt communities that were struggling to build infrastructure during the boom now have empty roads & schools. Give it 10-15 years and we'll start the cycle all over again. This carries across to other markets, we've seen it before with the steel belt turning into the rust belt.
Yes, the free market fixes it, but not until the damage is done. You end up with an economic system where capital is rushing from one end to other at the expense of labor. It's like some new era of hunter/gathering nomads; you have people following the buffalo around.
So, what's going to happen to the oil sands (aka tar sands)?
Greed breeds myopia. Always has. Did people investing heavily in oil really think it would either keep going up, or sustain at the price peaks it was at for years? At those prices, it's all but strangling the economy. It started to actually effect just how much people drove!
And there's the problem. Oil is still king of the economy. From home energy, to the dinner table. Oil is still king. I think a good many investors forgot who just has the real power in the world. Guess the Saudis thought they should remind them.
The frustrating thing with this though, is that we still won't see the prices drop at the grocery or market, even though it's cheaper to ship goods and produce. Why pass savings onto the consumer, when you can pad the profit margin for the quarter, and stock-holders. I think a lot of people forget that, milk, bread, fruit, etc... should all be a little cheaper at the moment. It won't be.
In the long run, it will fade away because most of the grouwth has already been consumed. That being said, trade is chaotic in nature, and short term prediction is difficult ("especially when it's about the future"), but in the long run, the trend is well known.
Sometimes, I like to think that the "Limits to growth" report will be regarded in some distant future as our epoch's Eratosthenes calculations.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
The many thousands of wells that are/were planned for completion will simply be postponed until the market responds more favorably, but don't kid yourself, they will become feasible again at some point.
Lower energy costs will fuel the self same economic recovery that will drive World prices back into the realm of profitability.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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
1) By definition, there is a finite supply of non-renewable energy.
2) And we use tons of it.
3) And for the good of humanity you want the price to be HIGH
Reasons you want the price to be high for fossil fuels:
1) Conversation of the resource. Airplanes must use fossil fuels the way they are designed now. Cars = no. You can have electric cars.
2) When the price of fossil fuels is low, they get wasted. Your neighbor who drives alone and isn't a farmer buying a huge truck is NOT how non-renewable energy should be used.
3) Complacency about alternative energy because the price of gas is low isn't a positive.
I am sure there are a lot of "lefty partisans" who are enjoying this because they dislike Big Oil -- and to that extent, it more proves that it isn't about results with partisans, it is about their "team". If the price of oil drops like a rock, there is a bit of financial relief but what really happens is consumption sky-rockets.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
already did it
my Ferrari is gonna blow the door off your Prius
"$70 per barrel ought to be enough for anybody" - Colonel Willie Sharp (Armageddon)
Turn off your computer. Don't heat or cool your house. Don't take a bus or cab. Don't use a cellphone or anything electric.
Please. Lead by example and we will all be happy.. Because we won't hear from nuts like you again.
The Rockefeller's are selling, not giving their stock away. They made a dirty profit! They will have carbon on their hands forever! I am happy to be a buyer. Stock prices are low. Dividends are solid. They are excellent investments. The benefits to the economy of cheap oil outweight the negatives 3 to 1. America loves cheap gas. We have all had $200 per month raise! I used it to buy a bigger car. You treehuggers can go bugger off.
an ill wind that blows no good
The best reason to stop burning oil is because it's so useful for other things. Very little oil is needed to make the dashboard in your car, or the case for your phone, or lubricants, etc.
they've already sunk the costs into producing large tracts of oil sand
the production costs going forward are low
the issue is the wells they're fracking in Texas and North Dakota
they only have a lifetime of about a year and they ain't gonna frack no more till the price comes back (which it will)
Saudi Arabia is trying to bankrupt the oil shale producers to get rid of potential serious competition. (Remember the stories of more oil than Saudi Arabia being found in the Dakotas?)
You talk about people who are "mis-informed" or "lying".
You link to HuffPo.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Don't kid yourself. We may not all be pool-in-backyard-trip-to-Europe-every-year rich, but most readers of Slashdot are very firmly rooted in the middle class. This has little effect on us at all, we're neither investors, nor are we so destitute that the fuel bills are threatening to throw us to the curb. The smug, conceited "welp, I drive a Tesla S and think everyone should" is completely uncalled for, the poor drive shitwagons, all of which *gasp* run on petroleum. This will very much work in their favour, keep your electric car, but don't be a smug prick just because you can afford it.
I wondered when Saudi Arabia decided not to cut production, dooming OPEC to low prices and ticking off the likes of Russia and other producers with marginal economies, if they where not actually working a long term strategy here. Why are they not cutting production?
First, they repress many of the world's trouble makers by dropping prices to 1/3rd their original. Yes, they hurt some emerging producers who are good guys, but these are pretty small. Russia's economy is in free fall due to this and this will greatly diminish their military and economic ability world wide. Other "bad guys" are getting hurt too.
Second, The will succeed in jumpstarting their largest consumer's economy. The USA has suffered under the burden of higher taxes and higher fuel prices (which amounts to a tax on just about everything.) Yea, there will be segments that suffer, energy production companies and those who own the production facilities will be hurt, but over all your average consumer will have more to spend and moving goods will be cheaper as fuel prices drop.
Third, energy production companies who where looking at $100+ oil for as far as the eye could see just 6 months ago, are now looking at $45 or less. Much of their production is now netting below production costs so NOBODY will be drilling new wells and a whole bunch of companies will be hurting. For the most speculative of them they will go bankrupt in fairly short time. This will greatly depress the USA's ability to develop these resources and reduce future supplies and take years to rebuild the industry.
I'm not saying this is what the Saudi's are up to, but the theory does fit the pieces I'm seeing fall together..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"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.
This is all about OPEC producing more oil. Not some moronic campaign to divest portfolios of oil stocks. None of this will affect oil production.
In these same terms there's also zero proof that smoking causes lung cancer, but honestly the circumstantial evidence in both situations is fairly overwhelming.
The story was factual.... I don't usually go with their opinion pieces...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
we will never run out of petroleum And it is glorious.
Did you read the link? Look, there is ZERO connection with Fracking and contamination of ground water.... They've looked for it, and haven't found it. But it's hard to prove a negative...
So, do you have an example to show us?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
read your own article more carefully. Technically, in this particular case, the fracking did not cause the contamination. the contamination was caused by the well shafts that were drilled to extract the fracked petroleum. That is a subtle difference at best. The fact remains, the fracking sites, listed in the link you provided, created contaminated groundwater.
Here's a tip....
Post an example of where Fracking has destroyed a water supply...
I recognize that it is impossible to prove a negative, but the scientific evidence is all pointing the other way here. Not to mention common sense if you understand how this process works..... Fracking takes place thousands of feet down, below impermeable rock, well below any water supply. What gets pumped down there is not coming back up except though the well head it went down. Anybody telling you otherwise has no proof, that I know of anyway.
Do YOU have any evidence for your position beyond the wild claims of the environmentalists who started this lie?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We understand way less about economics than about climate change. Predicting what the price of anything will do in the future is really, really hard. A few years ago it seemed like oil prices would keep going up forever. Now they're going down and someone immediately says, "They'll keep going down forever!". But really we have no idea.
But we have a very good idea about what burning oil will do to the climate. If you want to argue for phasing out fossil fuels, do it based on the good arguments: they're destroying the planet. Don't bring in bad arguments based on wild guesses about what might or might not happen to oil prices over the next few years. That just weakens your position.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
...damn, we all better stop using computers!
Seriously, though, cheap energy (in absolute terms, not massaged by the heavy hand of regulation), is a good thing. Great, so we don't invest in more oil drilling...until consumption goes up, prices go up, and it becomes profitable. This is a *feature* not a bug.
Prices are momentary signals, not eternal mandates.
Did you read the link? Look, there is ZERO connection with Fracking and contamination of ground water.... They've looked for it, and haven't found it.
In one single well in Western Pennsylvania. The Duke University scientist quoted in that article- that *you* posted the link to and are yelling at people to read- specifically notes 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," which proves you haven't read your own link yourself! See how easy it is to prove a negative?
Every well (vertical, horizontal, fractured) is drilled through the water table. Every one.
Most of the time, done properly, well casing protects the ground water table from contamination during the recovery of carbon products.
But. If only 1-2% of the 500,000 U.S. wells were completed improperly (with the rather ubiquitous human error factored in) that's a good deal of water fouling.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Solar and wind weren't this far along in 2008.
Neither were Republicans...
When they gain even more power in coming years, they will end the subsidies unnaturally fueling solar and wind power boondoggles.
Solar power will become healthy on its own eventually but for a lot of reasons will not displace carbon based energy (it's amusing to see electric car advocates claiming they will be charging a massive battery in the electric car overnight while also thinking they will have solar powered houses...).
Really only nuclear can do away with carbon sources so until we get serious with that we obviously are not serious about getting rid of carbon based power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
More champagne liberal propaganda? Yes, lets kill jobs and lets liberals come up with more ways to control every aspect of our lives. I'm shocked racism was invoked at least 3 times as per liberal quota.
On the contrary, there is zero proof (except now known fabricated evidence) that fracking does NOT contaminate water supplies. The evidence is in the tested water supplies, the data is available. Embrace science and learn for yourself, instead of listening to propagandists.
This is easily the most simple Google you will ever do. Please inform yourself.
But that 1-2% number of yours is basically the risk of drilling, not fracking. Now if you wan to argue that drilling carries risk, that you can prove easily and I'm not arguing that. I'm saying FRACKING is not causing any increase in risk for an already drilled well. It's a fine point I know, but it's important to make the distinction, because the public doesn't feel that drilling is a huge dangerous health hazard because we've been doing it for more than 100 years and it's not all that dangerous. Fracking doesn't add to the enviromental danger of drilling, it just increases the recoverable supplies from the wells that we drill....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Which agrees with my point that FRACKING does not add to the danger of drilling a well. Read what I said carefully because I'm not saying that drilling is 100% without environmental impact, we've been doing that for more than 100 years and although considered safe, there are risks with drilling, even a water well. What I AM saying is that fracking does not ADD to the risks of drilling and should not be touted as some huge risk to ground water when it's not.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
in a world where a producer sees the end of its market on the horizon, then every barrel sold at a profit is more valuable than a barrel that will never be sold. Current Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi had this to say about production cuts in late December: "it is not in the interest of OPEC to cut their production whatever the price is," adding that even if prices fell to $20 "it is irrelevant." Implied, if not explicitly stated, is that Saudi Arabia wants its oil out of the ground, regardless of how thin its profit margin per barrel becomes. - http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...
Yea, so where is a study that proves the link between fracking and polluting ground water? I have one where they specifically looked for it over a year and found nothing.
Here's a hint... I'll be surprised if you can find anything that proves that fracking does anything to ground water... There are a whole lot of theories and a whole lot of people looking, but nobody has found the proof.
Oh, and here's another hint so you can avoid getting tripped up. I'm discussing FRACKING, not drilling, here. Don't get confused by the two operations. Drilling, which we have safely done for 100+ years now, DOES have various risks. Fracking, does nothing to add to the existing risks when drilling a well, it just adds to the cost and possibly what we can extract from the well...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
As I've told others... This is about FRACKING not drilling, so be sure to carefully consider what you read from that Google search. There is inherent risks in drilling a well, Fracking that well does not add to the risks. We've drilled wells for 100+ years now and they are considered safe. Why do we now blame fracking? It's DRILLING you need to blame, it's just that is not as powerful PR tool when you couch it the correct way eh?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yeah, and there are people telling us that the recent increase in earthquakes in North Texas is unrealted to fracking. Though, nobody is proving it's cause, and the pro-fracking people are already coming out with the "the quakes are a good thing, many 3.x quakes mean you won't get a big one" line. As if they expect fracking to be blamed. Why would the people that defend fracking expect fracking to be the cause? What do they know that we don't?
Learn to love Alaska
I wish there was a "-1, Retard" mod option.
I guess the summary is "nobody can afford oil anymore, it's getting too cheap and there is too much of it around"!
Fracking does add to the risk of drilling. The pressures invoived are high and require better well casings. Now, the additional risk is probably small otherwise there would already be strong evidence of issues. But I don't think you can say there is no additional risk.
Um, then why exactly did the fracking industry get immunity from disclosing the stuff they are putting in the ground? What are they hiding?
Fracking takes place below. Except that fracking BREAKS the rock. It's the entire purpose of it. So cracks form and allow escape routes.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Fracking takes place thousands of feet down, below impermeable rock, well below any water supply. What gets pumped down there is not coming back up except though the well head it went down.
The devil is always in the details. Yes, the fluids go through the wellbore. Which is a steel pipe thousands of feet long sealed with a cement liner. Now, this liner is a complicated thing - it's deep in the ground and hard to see. The well bore / liner also has a number of seals and fail safes. If done correctly, there is very little chance of damage to the rocks from the fracture site to the surface. If done incorrectly, there is quite a bit of chance that liquids will push out and some chance that this liquid will interfere with the aquifer. Or worse (ie, Deepwater Horizon)
Not everyone in the oil patch is competent and compulsive enough to do everything right all of the time. We CAN enforce bore testing and make these sorts of issues very, very unusual. AFAIK, only Texas and Louisiana have strong enough oversight to drastically limit wellbore 'excursions' (obviously, nothing is perfect). The Dakotas, Pennsylvania, NY have very little regulatory control over the wellbore quality.
Thus, you can expect a higher number of failed wellbores and thus pollution. Remember, even in unregulated states this doesn't usually happen, but it can be quite expensive to test and re cement a failed well (ie. Deepwater Horizon). Anyone trying to cut costs is going to let a marginal casing job slide.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Does fracking ruin the scenery?
You do realize that charging a car overnight on solar power is entirely doable...today right?
Come on, how many people realistically have enough land to hold *150* solar panels??? And the multiple hydrogen tanks he's using to cache the power generated... even if you assume a doubling of efficiency (how long will that take?) that's easily fifty more solar panels (and god knows how many hydrogen tanks) than even someone with a large home can accommodate...
And with all that, how much power does he get? The article states 21 kilowatts (I'll assume per day). The Tesla battery today is 85kw!!! So that leaves you terribly short of a full charge even with NO POWER for your house for the entire night.
That article doesn't contradict me, it just shows how incredibly far we are from having both solar power AND fully electric cars... another reason why hydrogen technology in cars is inevitable, so that we can move house power to solar instead of people being held back by electric cars. A side benefit of the article is it's also pointing out out hydrogen fuel cells are coming down in cost and are more widely used over time, key to the use in cars (and power storage for homes).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is a good point however, consider the following:
- Tight oil fields (ie, the Baaken) need many more wells drilled than 'conventional' oil. Each well increases the risk of bore failure.
- The states where much of the frakking is currently happening (remember we've been frakking stuff for 50 years or so) have a history of poor regulatory supervision of the process. Texas and Louisiana have been bitten bad in the past and have tightened up drilling regulations such that they have very few bad wellbores. The other states, not so much. Why those states didn't just borrow the time tested regulations is an interesting question.
So, you're point that the actually hydraulic fracturing of a given well is unlikely to cause aquifer damage is a good one. It's a bit pedantic since most people consider the entire process as 'frakking'. It's pretty clear that frakking in tight oil plays does increase the risk for aquifer damage. Again, it's really annoying that the bad actors screw things up for everybody. In a way, there are parallels to nuclear power. If done correctly risks are low and manageable. However, doing things correctly yields an economic penalty. Some folks will try to take advantage of that, usually for minimal short term gain. So the entire industry gets pilloried.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
bit of financial relief but what really happens is consumption sky-rockets.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/i...
you may want to check your facts. oil consumption does not "sky rocket" if price falls. It's not an elastic commodity - it doesn't respond to prices very much at all.
Actually my biggest objection to fracking isn't benzene getting into well water in states I'll never live in, so much as the leakage of methane around the drill sites. The plumes of methane in these areas are beginning to show up in satellite imagery. Considering the greenhouse effect of methane, fracking might have a greater impact on climate change than burning oil or even coal.
Nice job moving your goalposts. The argument was about wind and solar power -not hydrogen- even if that hydrogen is electrolyzed via solar derived power. Good to see people are trying new things and I support those endeavors, but I just have to call out logical fallacies when I see them. Even if I agree with your sentiment.
even in the nuclear industry, we regulate, and monitor - - obsessively. Yet, accidents happen.
In the drilling industry - we're FAR less strict. I think it's almost guaranteed that accidents in fracking are more the rule than the exception.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Again, it's really annoying that the bad actors screw things up for everybody.
Tragedy of the Commons, eh?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Even IF a majority of humans switched to those green methods so as not to be hypocrites and lead by example, you'd still bitch and refuse. You'd claim "we didn't also do X,Y, or Z so we need to STFU". Moving goalposts is your type's "thing".
Embarrassed more like it. As of 22:25 CST, he no longer has a sig. He be trollin, mon!
3) And for the good of humanity you want the price to be HIGH Z
Well someone sure is ignoring history!!
Because the cheaper energy of any form has been cheap, the better lives people led. That includes environmentally...
With more power you have more education, more industry, more jobs, more success period. With all that comes more leisure time which means more free time to devote to a healthy Earth.
If you want the best for "humanity" you want cheap energy - from any source.
Renewables will come along, but you can increase viability only so quickly. Until then don't screw people over my artificially limiting their access to energy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.project-syndicate.o...
A very interesting long term analysis on relationship of oil prices and costs of production. Essentially the argument is that we're now off the monopolist market which oil was for last decade and a half due to growth of China and back to the competitive market where the ceiling of the costs is the costs of shale extraction operations + reasonable profit margins while floor is the extraction costs in conventional oil fields in more expensive points of extraction like Siberia and Arctic Sea.
Apparently the author of this article is another one of those stupid humans who have very little understanding of the benefits and necessity of oil. Too many stupid humans have this perverted belief that oil and gas make up the largest usage and benefit of oil production. "insert losing sound buzzer here" Take a good look around you right now. Almost everything in your field of view requires oil production. Your car, your computer, your lipstick, earphones, tennis racquets, life jackets, Tupperware, the list goes on. Take a look here stupid humans ---> http://www-tc.pbs.org/independentlens/classroom/wwo/petroleum.pdf
We have to divest ourselves from these stupid humans who pop up everywhere with their global warming anti humanity ideas. These people are brainwashed itdiots with no understanding of how the world works. They would see you living in caves and eating bugs to save their precious Gaia from their paranoid delusions. Get informed or become victims of stupid humans.
Apparently the author of this article is another one of those stupid humans who have very little understanding of the benefits and necessity of oil. Too many stupid humans have this perverted belief that oil and gas make up the largest usage and benefit of oil production. "insert losing sound buzzer here" Take a good look around you right now. Almost everything in your field of view requires oil production. Your car, your computer, your lipstick, earphones, tennis racquets, life jackets, Tupperware, the list goes on. Take a look here stupid humans ---> http://www-tc.pbs.org/independ...
We have to divest ourselves from these stupid humans who pop up everywhere with their global warming anti humanity ideas. These people are brainwashed itdiots with no understanding of how the world works. They would see you living in caves and eating bugs to save their precious Gaia from their paranoid delusions. Get informed or become victims of stupid humans.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Oil gets HUGE subsidies.
That's because it actually can deliver enough power to provide real utility today, and people rely heavily on that power. I have no problem with subsidies that prop up a technology that isn't aimed to helping a tiny fraction of the populace.
Solar and wind don't have to replace oil to crush oil prices. At best they need to reduce demand by 5% and the market will do the rest.
That's pretty un-realistic. And it doesn't matter if oil prices are "crushed" because there's currently nothing that can realistically replace them on a wide scale. Lets say solar power is suddenly half the cost of oil. No way you can build enough panels (or find someplace to put them) to supply power for even a single major city. No way you are going to replace even 20% of the cars on the road with electric cars in ten years. It would drive some behavior that direction but it's not technically viable as a replacement for fossil fuel on a large scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This means an investor took a risk andit didn't pay off!!!
The system is flawed, investors who are already billionaririeries should have a 100% chance to become more rich with each investment!
What comes to mind is "cap and trade" aka the giant carbon scam.
Taxing and quantifying emissions in an effort to widen the gap between the rich and the poor (because it does only that and NOTHING more) and the sheep just keep lapping it up.
The price of oil is set at the whims of the likes of OPEC
Right now, OPEC (well, the scumbag murderers who run Saudi Arabia...but that's all it takes) wants to see the American shale gas industry crash and burn, so they're making oil cheap as hell. The only thing they need to do to push oil back up over $100 is cut their production again.
It might happen tomorrow, or in two weeks, or (most likely) in about six months. What is certain is that It will happen.
Don't worry about the climate - if we make too much of a mess it will be self correcting over geological time.
Worry about the people who won't have enough to eat as part of the correction. If you don't live on a farm in a very fertile area that could be you.
It's just not considered "core business" to get that methane and do something about it.
We're acting like Nigeria a few years ago, instead of Nigeria now where nearly all of their electricity is generated using the heat from flaring off the gas from wells instead of just having the flame do nothing like they used to.
It's a useful resource that's just thrown away.
Not an option until some effort is put in to make it so. No bank on the planet will touch it and not many governments are going to stump up the cash for civilian nuclear. Then there's the US nuclear lobby that decided the 1970s stuff is good enough and lobbied to shut down the thorium project and anything else with potential that pops up. If the future is nuclear it's either going to be a Chinese knockoff of 1980s German technology or you'll be getting it from India, and the taxpayers will be footing the ball.
By being sold below cost.
The Saudi stuff isn't going away due to low production costs and being backed by a government if it does end up being sold below cost. The stuff we are discussing is more expensive to produce and has to stand on it's own without the wealth of a rich Kingdom (so strange in 21st century) behind it.
Thus the big carbon producers that were already skating close to the edge financially can be kissed goodbye Enron style if this keeps up.
The others that are sensibly managed but sitting on reserves that cost a bit to extract will take longer.
There's going to be carnage, lots of unemployed in Texas, knockon effects from governments living off oil revenue etc, and the degree of damage depends on how long this goes on.
The problem is that the universities are going to put money wherever it is going to make a return on investment. If the universities do not invest in these companies it probably won't effect them. Someone else will just get the pay out instead.
So what is the point of yet another pointless "moral" stance that accomplishes nothing.
if you want to tackle big carbon, then provide an alternative that isn't a fucking bad joke. Absent that... fuck off.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"There is zero proof that fracking does anything bad to water supplies beyond using some of it"
You are a liar and a faggot for money.
"We" have to "kiss off" "big carbon" because ... there's so darn much of it that it's not as profitable as some investors thought?
Oy ...
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.
Take whatever savings the current fuel prices allow you and invest it in renewables and energy conservation right now. The price of oil will certainly rise again, but you won't care.
Why we should kiss off economic prosperity and live a life of energy poverty by switching to renewable energy.
Since low prices lead to waste and even more carbon in the atmosphere, and we're concerned about the Federal deficit, wouldn't *now* (really, 20 years ago) be the right time to put, say, a $30/bbl tax on oil?
A high price would allow using the resource more slowly, but it does not support keeping it in the ground, in fact, just the opposite. It is clear that the only oil we can still burn is oil that cost very little to produce, so a cap on the price of oil is what is really what would work to keep from burning too much. http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
Because, you lumbering imbecilic drivel-headed baboon faced cocksmoker, the fucking drilling is to enable the fucking fracking.
Without fracking, there is no need to drill. Any impacts from drilling are directly attributable to fracking.
Now go away.
The article is about divestment. It points out that the reasons for divestment are multiplying.
http://www.engineering.com/Ele...
Won't somebody think of the billionaire oil barons! Oh the humanity.
I can't believe the number of people that suggest that long term changes/commitments should be made because "now, oil is cheap". From the morons who think that means we should raise the gas tax to the idiots who think the U.S. Fracking industry can be killed.
Oil prices will go back up. And the second they do, the Frackers will open up shop again/increase drilling. etc. And, of course, that tax that was increased because "oil cost so little now" will make the increases all that much worse.
And the supreme irony is that all those Solar Panels MDSolar endlessly shills for cannot be made without oil. From creating plastics to generating the energy to make the glass to fueling the construction equipment to transport them, etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not sure what you mean by "immunity from disclosing". The backing ingredients in frack fluid are well known. However, the exact mixture may be protected for intellectual property reasons, as getting it right for a given formation can have a big impact in how successful the well is. Nothing to do with environmental concerns.
As for breaking the rock. It's true that is what fracking does, but it does so well below the water table, with several layers of rock between it at the water table. The potential for water contamination comes from a leaky wellhead casing as it passes through the water table. But that can happen regardless of whether the well is fracked.
So when the price of oil goes back up to $120, they will suggest that philanthropists* re-invest? They should be divesting because fossil fuels are screwing up the planet, not because they are not giving the best returns.
*Leaches who take a lot more than their fair share and then think they are good because they invest is shitty corporations and then donate some of the interest to charity.
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I lived trough the majority of the Cold War. I saw the "love" in the managed economies of some countries. They worked just like the good old feudal societies of a 1000 years ago. The "elites" had all of the prosperity of the society, the majority of the people lived at the bottom of the economy and there was a small, nearly untolerated middle class. If you happen to be part of the elite life was good otherwise life pretty much sucked for one reason or another.
If one thinks that by being a Leftist they will be part of the elite of a planned economy, think twice. Planned "societies" end up being more like the world of Hunger Games than they do of the Utopian Society that is in many peoples minds.
RTFA
What about fracking induced earthquakes? That's just as bad as contaminated groundwater.
immunity from disclosing - The Haliburton Loophole Courtesy of Dick Cheney
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This volatility is a big economic reason why we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. In 6 months, the cost dropped by half: can a free market ever adjust so quickly? Energy investments tend to be long term but we use fossil fuel capacity so efficiently that a small percentage change in availability can cause huge price differences. It's just as easy for the price to double in six months, or quadruple, on small changes on production or demand. Can you change your car, transportation needs, or home quickly enough to adjust? No. Do you think industry can? No. Do you think power process can? Not a chance.
Given the short term outlook of the free market, we do need governments to think long term to reduce volatility and prepare us for the spikes in both directions.
That doesn't contradict what I said at all. It's not about environmental sensitivity. It's about protecting intellectual property.
I've heard lots of thoughts on both sides of this issue, and seen a number of studies on both sides of the issue (studies always appear to push the group's agenda though -- I have yet to see a study by someone without a vested interest in the outcome they derive in their conclusion).
The summary goes like this though:
As you say, Fracturing takes place well below *current* domestic water supplies, usually in a deep shale bed (the result being that water will no longer accumulate there either, due to the fracturing). So at first glance, there's no problem with poisoning the water table.
Second, as you say, a properly drilled well has to be sealed and lined anyway, so with a properly drilled well, there is no further hazard than you'd get from a leaky shaft pumping crude (which is just as bad for the water table as the chemicals used in fracturing).
The issues with fracturing appear to be:
1) Loosening dormant fault lines (rare, but we've had a few cases documented now)
2) Bad drilling and disposal practices.
The second one appears to be the real issue here; one study that was conducted found that the official site inspections tended to give notice, and the sites inspected generally had proper treatment of the shaft and proper site care and fluid disposal (which makes sense, as the fluids are usually re-used between wells, and it's not in the fracker's interests to have to re-invest in the fluids).
However, a third party who did unauthorized site checks found that the same sites sometimes ended up dumping toxins on-site AFTER being inspected, and that sites that were never visited had flawed shafts and should never have been re-used for fracking -- and often had sub-standard disposal practices as well.
So this seems to be one of those cases where there's reason to be concerned (especially now that the industry needs to cut costs to stay profitable), but the concerns usually aren't the ones that people get up in arms about. The problem isn't so much with the fracking as it is with the well placement, well care, and toxin disposal. If these can all be done responsibly (which is expensive), fracking itself doesn't appear to be an issue.
They used 'intellectual property' to hide the outright pollution. You don't see the amazing coincidence there with Cheney being the driving force to help a company (and industry) he owns millions of stock in?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
What no one seems to realize is that it always takes energy to get oil to market. If it takes the energy of more than 1 barrel of oil to get a barrel to market, it doesn't matter what you charge for that barrel. You are losing money. Extreme tax breaks and subsidies can hide this fact, deniers can obfuscate it but it is what it is. Hence, for over 20 years people have sold oil shale as profitable if oil costs twice as much as it did. Implying that one burns 2 barrels to get one. This phenomena will end the oil economy, without the need for legislation. It's getting closer all the time. Enjoy your lifestyle, then kiss it goodbye.
is that they want investments that only increase in price.
Think about the manipulation that would have to occur in order for that to happen.
The oil crash is intentional and temporary (how long, nobody knows). It's intended to cripple certain economies and businesses, and it may accomplish its intent. Eventually the action is unsustainable. Prudent business (and individuals) will take the necessary measures to ride out the storm. Could have serious long term implications however, including shifts in world centers of power (political).
While consumers in the US might be enjoying a respite from excessive gas prices, there could be much deeper, longer damage to the economy, currently unseen. This would not be the case if there had been a slow gradual decrease in oil prices due to increased competition in a free market environment, instead of an overnight price collapse. This current situation occurred by design, not due to market forces - there is a monopoly in oil (OPEC) and excessive involvement by political parities (governments). This would not have happened in a true free market.
75 x 75 miles square forest = 10 billion tons of CO2 released per year.
Not counting whats buried beneath the forest floor.
(If that included, may be 50 x 50 mile square.)
So conservatively that last 100 years of CO2 emissions
would easily be balanced by a forest 750 x 750 miles square.
Thats a pretty DAMMNED small forest if you ask me.
Ummm...fracking started in the 40s. Drilling for oil started well before then. Maybe you're the lumbering imbecilic drivel-headed baboon faced cocksmoker,
The drilling industry, a subset of the fossil fuel industry, released a powerpoint prez, surely a mistake, that showed that 5% of wells leak from day one.
In the past few years, we've drilled thousands of frakking wells, so there's your math exercise for the day.
First this is a good opportunity because we have decades of natural gas and oil at low prices. Now is the perfect time to do it. I really hope that the west gets going on the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors because if we don't start now we will be buying it from China because they are starting into it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/86787/kirk-sorensen-update-thorium-story
While I am all in favour of getting cleaner fuel for our civilization to run on I refuse to sell my soul for 30 pieces of silver to the "CO2 controls climate" nonsense.
A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
All 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and almost 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/03/the-great-pause-lengthens-again/
Your theory of damages is entirely ridiculous. If I burn a mount of coal in Kentucky, then the best you can say is that technically, perhaps, I helped make global sea levels rise. That would suck if you were living in New York or on the coast.
But, let's review the science:
a) CO2 is making sea levels rise and warming the planet and changing the climate. But no mathematical or climate model has been remotely accurate. The models do NOT actually predict climate, and that's really a huge problem. So you can't remove my burning coal mountain, then re-add it, and hold me culpable for anything, with any degree of certainty at all other than your lunatic religion.
b) Any contemplated action proposed by the environmental left, from carbon taxes to transaction taxes, has the effect of creating an enormous economic problem for the poor and middle class. If I 'm poor, I don't care if the coastlines sink. I don't own my building. Landlords do. So screw them! I'll move! Why should I care about your solar panel house in New Jersey with your scenic rich yardwork, when I'm poor in Kentucky? Answer is, I don't. All I see is that you want to make my fuel more expensive, my food more expensive, everything more expensive, when I'm trying to get the basics, and that cuts into whatever savings I have... makes me poorer, and having your cronies take those taxes to build a library for "me" doesn't cut the rusk as some kind of compensation.
So the bottom line is that. If you really want to save the planet, then go right ahead and invest your money in whatever it takes to make green stuff. If it is cheaper, I'll buy it. But if you are going to spend your life making my life miserable to save your beachfront property, when I don't even have property worth saving other than a burning pile of coal and a rifle, then show up claiming you are coming after me, then you're gonna get the rifle, and deserve it!
This is my sig.
You invent externalities as if there is some kind of mandate that "Society has to bear the solution to some problem." Here's the reality. I absolutely do not. You can't argue in generalized terms about the affairs of humans in a digital age where everyone is perfectly capable of understanding their economic interests. If I live on a big hill, I don't have to care if your beachfront sinks. If it is cheaper for me to burn coal to heat with, I'm going to burn coal. It's that simple. Raising the taxes on my energy is really, to me, you screwing up my life so that you can have your fancy beachfront house. It's equally not fair, either way, and there's not so much as the notion of external costs as it is you are looking to raise a rent on the poor to preserve your beach property and fancy solar sailboats while the rest of us try and buy bread. We don't need you. We don't need your coasts. There's too many people already, as your side is fond of saying!
This is my sig.
That a large shareholder would advocate a policy that benefits the company he holds shares in should surprise nobody. But that does not prove your point that this has anything to do with environmental sensitivities.