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Obama Blocks Offshore Drilling In Atlantic, Arctic Areas (npr.org)
Before the new administration takes over next month, President Obama took new action Wednesday to place large sections of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans off limits to oil drilling. NPR reports: The Arctic protections are a joint partnership with Canada. "These actions, and Canada's parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth," the White House said in a statement. "They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region's harsh conditions is limited," the White House added. "By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region -- at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels." Obama's action designates 31 Atlantic canyons "off limits to oil and gas exploration and development activity," totaling 3.8 million acres, according to the administration. It provides the same protections to much of the Arctic's waters, covering the "vast majority of U.S. waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas," totaling 115 million acres. Canada is doing the same to "all Arctic Canadian waters," the joint statement adds. Obama took these actions by invoking a law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president the authority to withdraw lands from oil and gas leases.
Why didn't he bother doing this before now?
Congress will overturn it one way or the other.
*this will be overturned in 20 days, by hook or crook
I was planning on putting in a fleet of oil wells there next week! /sarcasm
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
It will probably take quite a bit longer than that. Given current oil prices, I don't think there's much demand for these leases anyway and the GOP has other more pressing priorities.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
You need to fuck right off The conservatives are doing the exact same thing to incoming Dems. The NC governorship is but one example.
The idea is that Trump will have to actually do something, to make that happen - he can't just sit on his hands and pretend it's nothing to do with him.
FYI, it costs $150 to drill, process, and ship a barrel of oil from the Arctic. If you want to cover costs. Labor isn't cheap either.
So, putting it off for at least five years makes sense. Increases short term price for all oil, which helps Norway, Scotland, Canada, and the US (and that rogue state Russia), and when the time elapses the demand may be at prices where it makes sense, if we need it for lubricants or some other need.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
can we maybe slow down our use for business reasons? I'd rather have moderate-speed sustainable growth, at slightly higher fuel prices that help drive commercial advances in solar and wind, than find out in fifty years that we've drilled out all the easy-to-get wells and don't have nearly enough commercial investment in other fuel sources to keep up our demand for energy.
Besides, petroleum has some pretty nifty properties besides energy production that I'd really love to keep having easy access to. Like, cheap plastics. Burning it for energy is kinda like using our limited helium reserves for toy balloons.
I don't think there's going to be any kind of peak oil civilization-ending disaster...just that prices will go up. But if they go up a little right now, they won't have to go up by a lot later.
Oh yeah...and from a foreign policy standpoint. We have a ton of oil here in the USA. Energy independence is nice, but it's not critical right now. Wait until Russia closes its borders, the Middle East falls apart and turns off their spigots, and Europe is begging for fuel at any price...can we maybe use our massive national reserves then instead of now? (needing to have the infrastructure in place ahead of time does complicate things I'll admit)
Boy, there's an awful lot of people who are going to be mighty disappointed with Trump. That prediction is free.
Protecting nature is stupid?
Gotcha. You sound like a nice person to know.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Honest question. Do you actually believe that more than 90% of climatologists have somehow been bribed to lie?
If "yes", wouldn't "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" imply that one should find clear evidence of mass bribery before dismissing the climatologists' conclusions?
It would also mean that within a typical sample of scientist, that 90%+ are bribe-able. I also find that an extraordinary claim. It's never before happened on any other topic.
Table-ized A.I.
I sense there's recursion in that sentence somewhere
Table-ized A.I.
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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There aren't many incoming Democrats, though. So okay, deal .
. . . China is building yet even more artificial military base islands in the Arctic waters, to add more weight to their claim that the Arctic is part of China's territorial waters. This claim is not recognized by any other nations . . . yet.
The Chinese navy also announced that they have captured a US Navy drone in their waters. It is very large and coated with a blubbery black skin, that is probably "stealth" technology. The drone appears to be armed with a water jet weapon, that sporadically spews from the top of the drone. It is powered by bottom dwelling sea crustacean critters that it scoops up with a toothed dredging device at the front of the drone. Chinese scientists plan to disassemble the drone to discover how the crustacean critters are converted into energy.
Chinese navy crew members have claimed to have seen a "white" version of the drone, but the Chinese Admiralty brushes this off as sailors who have been out to sea too long, with too much rice wine, and too little women folk around.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You may have missed it in all the noise, but Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Trump will undo the stupidity.
Not so fast.
The act gives the President "the authority to withdraw lands from oil and gas leases.".
It doesn't give the President the authority to make withdrawn lands available again.
I stole this Sig
... Congress can take away.
Obama has the authority to declare land off limits "permanently" only because Congress granted that authority. This authority can be revoked by a future Congress. Both houses of Congress will be controlled by the Republicans so I expect this "permanent" executive order to go away right quick.
What bothers me about the Democrats fanatical desire to free us from oil and coal seems to come with more words than actions. Obama only now made this declaration, only days before he is to leave office. If CAGW is a real problem then I'd think this should have been done much sooner.
We see the same with nuclear power. Obama during his debates with McCain talked about how we need to see more research and development in nuclear power to lower CO2 output. It took the Obama administration only 7 years to figure out how to issue a combined construction and operation license even though there were dozens of applicants. Don't tell me all of those applicants didn't know how to build a safe nuclear power plant. The federal government knows how to build safe nuclear power plants, they've been doing that for decades for the Navy. If the problem was a bad design, and the federal government thought nuclear power was a good idea, then the federal government had the ability to give the nuclear power industry all they needed to know on how to comply with the safety regulations in place.
What a bunch of hypocrites, they talk big about reducing CO2 output but they hold up nuclear power reactors, don't ban off shore drilling until now, what was stopping them for so long? Makes me think that CAGW is in fact a hoax. If the Democrats believed that nuclear power is a good idea, and drilling for oil is a bad idea, then they'd have made these fixes when they held the Senate, House, and Presidency.
Only when they see that the Republicans could possibly replace them all in the federal government do they do a dash to issue nuclear power licenses, and bar drilling for oil. Makes me think that they wanted to hold on to as many "fixes" for CAGW as long as they could, holding them up as "prizes" for the voting public to hand out for voting them into office, and then blame any thing holding up their fix on CAGW on the "evil" Republicans. Well, there were no Republicans to stop anything when the 112th Congress was in session. We should have seen those nuclear power plants and drilling bans then.
The Democrats have only themselves to blame for losing so badly in November.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Its going to take longer then January 21st. From the washington post article on this https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/20/president-obama-expected-to-ban-oil-drilling-in-large-areas-of-atlantic-and-arctic-oceans/
Shell, which said in September 2015 that it would shelve drilling plans after spending $7 billion and not finding significant amounts of oil, still has one remaining lease in the Chukchi Sea where it drilled a well earlier last year. Shell is also part of a joint venture with Italian oil giant ENI and Spanish firm Repsol in the Beaufort Sea that holds 13 leases.
Shell tried to drill in the area, spent a lot of money and didnt find much oil.
With Republican majorities in both the Senate and House, I don't think getting an amendment to that law will be all that hard. May take 2-3 years, but its definitely reversible, particularly if Trump decides to make case that the US would be ceding an economic advantage to the Russians who have much more lax environmental arctic drilling standards.
If that happen at the direct cost of human lives, yes.
Most of these new regulations and acts will have little or no meaning. True it's symbolic but under The Congressional Review Act:
Congress is given 60 legislative days to disapprove, after which the rule will go into effect.
For the regulation to be invalidated, the Congressional resolution of disapproval either must be signed by the President, or must be passed over the President's veto by two-thirds of both Houses of Congress.
While a 2/3rds majority of both houses won't happen, a mere majority resolution of disapproval that the new POTUS signs would nullify this. I believe this mainly on the grounds to revitalize domestic production after Saudi Arabia went on it's production glut.
I'm all for nature and renewable energy but our current POTUS has had a royal feast of land grabbing, this included. Not including the Waters of the United States.
Besides drilling offshore is not a really good idea anyway.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Well that escalated quickly. Which lives are we threatening here by not starting a dangerous construction and drilling job in an inhospitable climate?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Protecting nature is stupid?
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet? Under the concept of "protecting nature" we must stop you from exhaling. Under the concept of "protecting nature", however, we can accept the dangers of allowing you to continue to breathe because we theorize that you have some value to society that offsets the risk.
The former is the stupid way to "protect nature". The latter is the rational way. The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
As you have just demonstrated.
Any time you ignore the true beliefs of those whose opinions differ from yours and instead ascribe your own strict constructionism to what you think they ought to believe, and then accuse them of horrific things, you're playing that game.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
How is this any less reasonable than Obama's actual actions?
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How about blocking the offshoring of US jobs.
Why would Trump do anything about it? His pick for Secretary of State, Exxon's Rex Tillerson, has a $500 billion oil deal with Russia. Trump's business skills are pretty bad...ok horrible...but still he isn't going to create competition for either his crony Tillerson or his bff Putin.
I bet a lot of folks thinks it's partisan bickering. Environmentalists who just want to stop the planet from being destroyed.
But it's also businesses. For one, the fishing industry isn't exactly a fan of the oil industry. They team up with environmentalists and whoever they can - the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And there is also tourism. Yes, tourism. The last thing the arctic cruise companies want is have their mega-buck paying passengers who want to see pristine wilderness and whales and glaciers is some big dirty ugly oil platform.
Industry loves to place all the blame on the environmentalists but remember, we're talking about the commons here.
In addition, we should consider that industry has no concept of the future. It's profit now and the future be damned.
That's because people are short sighted. When oil prices were skyrocketing, people wanted to open ANWR, but the democratic response was that it wouldn't help because it'd take 10 years before it started producing, given not just the drilling but building a pipeline for it. My thoughts were exactly this: we were debating this freaking 10 years ago. If they'd moved then, it would have been done by now and we wouldn't be having this "crisis."
Don't get me wrong - I would like to spend resources on alternatives, too, but the demand for oil is not going to go away for some time.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
1. Obama does not actually care about this or he would have done it years ago, not a few days before leaving office. This is one of those things presidents do knowing full-well their successor will reverse and then they will have another talking point about their obviously evil successor. Bill Clinton did the same thing with drinking water standards - right before leaving office, he set new federal standards for drinking water that were too expensive for cities to meet. Bush43 then got into office and reversed the Clinton Policy, setting the standard back to exactly what it had been for Clinton's entire presidency, and the left pushed the meme that Bush wanted arsenic and lead in our drinking water. Lefties still use this as evidence (and for fundraising) that Republicans want "dirty water"
2. Obama DOUBLED the national debt (he called Bush "unamerican" and "unpatriotic" for adding far less debt) and the nation has a relatively painless way to knock-off a chunk of that debt by allowing some of this drilling and collecting the associated fees from the oil companies, like is currently done with Alaskan oil. By putting all that oil off limits, all the associated federal income is off limits too.
3.While this MAY be good for Obama's image with liberal supporters, in the long term it will only further fuel the desire of people on the right to just throw the baby out with the bath water and trash a huge swath of more-sensible eco regulations just to block this sort of garbage in the future. This sort of stuff is part of how the left is losing the American working class voters, and doubling-down like this particularly in such an obviously deceptive and very political manner will only make things worse for Democrats.
Will wet yourselves as he yet again destroys more jobs. Cant you all just GTFO of the country? Ignorant ass-hats.
This is an easy win for the Obama Administration on the way out. Arctic drilling is difficult from the climate and frankly oil prices are low, there's a glut of supply, and there's massive amounts of shale oil available that's cheaper to extract than Arctic oil thanks to fracking technology. It's easy to declare a bunch of land off limits to drilling that no one's going to go drill in anyways, but it qualifies as a win from an environmental perspective.
Of Vladimir Puting shouting "I drink your milkshake! I drink it down!"
So you don't think fucking up nature ultimately harms humans?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The oil is not going to go away.
This generation is not going broke or without toys if we save it for later.
There has already been a remarkable surge in oil production during his presidency.
(Perhaps due to economics, but thes a bit of everything energy policy didn't hurt.)
Offshore drilling, even with the best of companies is not without risk. (See BP)
So, what about the Gulf and Pacific?
I like driving big vehicles and walking on a clean beach.
Seems like this decision is in concert with that.
Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet?
Nonsense. Unless you're consuming food obtained from far under the ground, where it was out of the carbon cycle, your net contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere is zero. The food you eat contains carbon that was removed from the atmosphere. Now, your methane production is a somewhat different situation. It's also constructed of carbon and hydrogen that's part of the cycle, but you've converted it to a form that's a much more effective greenhouse gas than before you, er, processed it.
So, kindly recast your argument in terms of the rational value of allowing people to fart.
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You actually believe all that bullshit you just said, don't you?
Natural bodily functions and industrial energy production are not the same thing. False equivalence is fun! Whee!!
Thing is, your argument rests on this ridiculous idea. You're clearly not an idiot, so why would you make such a simple mistake?
The protecting of nature this is talking about is the literal protection of nature from industrial damage. You know about the Amazon, yeah? It is much smaller than it was just a few decades ago.
What crisis? Oil prices are at $40 per barrel in 2006 dollars. And the US is now a net energy exporter. There's zero need for additional drilling in Arctic.
I think the easiest way to use less oil, is for people to drive small cars. A big SUV is effectively two compact cars. Double the passengers, double the oil consumption, and double the PRICE. It is tempting to use government power to ban big vehicles.... but I think that has problems. I think that there are many people whom use a big SUV for less than 10 percent of their trips. I think good vehicle rental systems, for when people really need that SUV, will make people more willing to buy a compact car instead of a SUV.
In particular Home Depot renting trucks by the hour, and ride sharing services, such as Uber, for those times when you do need an SUV.
It's not just for lower oil consumption, it is also lower depreciation. I'd like for Uber to push this.
You demonstrate the reason why Obama did this.
Protecting nature is stupid?
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet?
No. Because the carbon we exhale originally comes from plants and is already in the carbon cycle. If your breathing exhaled twice as much carbon it wouldn't add to carbon in the atmosphere because you'd need to compensate by taking in twice as much carbon from plants.
The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
The scientific and technological concern is that it's extremely difficult to clean up oil spills and they are extremely harmful to the environment, particularly in the Arctic.
In this scenario the economic benefits don't outweigh the environmental costs (from both increased carbon and oil spills). The reason oil companies still want to drill is they're not liable for the full cost of the environmental damage in the event of an accident. We are.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
Waterboarding is inflicting pain and extreme discomfort for the purpose of breaking the prisoner's will and extracting information. Of course it's torture. The US has executed war criminals for waterboarding on the grounds that it is torture.
Are there more brutal and bloody forms of torture? Sure.
But waterboarding is torture.
I stole this Sig
No evidence for a scientific consensus on climate change? How about this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this?
Did you actually make an argument in there somewhere or was it all one big strawman
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
Holy shit. You are literally begging the question.
I think if we just put an end to anyone who is a climate change denier, we'd reverse climate change really quick, so much hot air coming out of that group of people.
With global warming, the Arctic coastline will be the new Florida beachfront, and nobody wants an oil spill on their beach.
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It's part of the cycle - (very simplified)
Carbon in food gets eaten, in the form of carbohydrates.
that carbon is combined with oxygen when the body processes the carbohydrates to release energy to keep the body running, this makes make CO2
That CO2 is released into the air.
Plants absorb the CO2 from the air and convert it to sugars/starches/whatever, using energy from the sun
Those sugars, starches, etc get eaten.
So any carbon that is "stored" in life forms is temporary - it will eventually get released in the form of CO2, barring geological capture.
The carbon cycle is integral to understanding how CO2 increases and decreases "naturally" - there is a seasonal cycle, but over a year, as much CO2 is released by natural sources as is absorbed by natural sources. (there are minor natural sources and "sinks", but they are dwarfed by the biosphere)
The artificial "non-cycle" is
Carbon or carbon containing materials are gathered.
They are combined with oxygen to release energy, thus releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. So all the carbon that is harvested for fuel becomes part of atmospheric CO2.
Now, since the natural cycle is fairly "balanced", the level of CO2 in the atmosphere stayed relatively constant over historical time - until the industrial revolution, since then it has been rising steadily.
So any discussion of carbon in this area is referring to carbon that is already part of the CO2 in the atmosphere, or is going to be. It's easier to say "carbon" than to say "carbon-based fuels and the CO2 they produce".
There's zero need for additional drilling in Arctic.
Can you say with any certainty this will remain true in the next five to ten years it would take before any drilling started now would start producing? I don't believe you can.
We will be burning oil in significant quantities for at least the next 30 years. How can I say this? Because the average lifespan of a container ship, passenger jet, train, and so many other consumers of fossil fuels last about 30 years. People keep their cars for an average of about ten years, which means many of the cars sold today will quite likely still be driven 20 years from now.
The only thing that can shift us off of fossil fuels is some huge technological development that makes fossil fuels obsolete.
Electric cars won't do it, the rules of physics are against it. Wind and solar? Not a chance. Bio-fuels? Sure, if you want to see a real environmental disaster. Hydrogen? Methanol? Ammonia? Those aren't energy sources, only storage and transport technologies. Nuclear power? Now, that might work.
We can't pour nuclear power into a fuel tank to fly a plane or drive a car but we can use nuclear power to make synthetic hydrocarbons, hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, or whatever makes a good replacement for crude oil derived fuels. It's not like there's a shortage of nuclear fuel. If we can make it safe enough for Navy submarines then we can make it safe enough for putting just about any where else. Even if "anywhere else" means building nuclear reactors in submersible containers so they are insulated from earthquakes, surrounded by coolant, protected from terrorism, shielded from emitting any radiation, and out of sight.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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Yes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No. He's saying that your clearly observable fact is misleading bullshit.
Come on, you're a PhD, yes?
As I try to restrain my sarcasm, can you clearly state how a human exhaling upsets the carbon cycle?
Extra credit- what if he's a strict vegetarian?
As someone lecturing on climate science, I'm just certain you know all about carbon cycles.
But that natural cycle is dependent on there being enough plants to convert CO2, correct?
Into more plant matter- yes.
So the natural cycle would tend to stay in balance unless there was a critical mass of people or a critical shortage of plants.
Yes.
So even without releasing CO2 outside of this natural cycle, there is a threat of imbalance, right?
Not really. Plants will basically grow to take up as much earth and atmospheric carbon as they can. We are all that really slows that process down, and it's not our eating, since we re-plant most of that biomass.
Theoretically, there could be enough plants to convert "unnaturally" released CO2
Absolutely. But they'd need to cover just about every square inch of the planet.
In the end, our breathing is a function of our metabolism. Unless we are eating ourselves into starvation, our metabolism is remaining carbon neutral. For every cow we eat, we grow another. For every plant we eat, we grow another.
Breathing does in fact make a contribution towards the greenhouse effect.
Technically, yes. The exact same way that taking a shit contributes to weight loss.
If you really want to look at it from the big picture, every human added, in terms of carbon biomass, is net negative toward the atmospheric carbon budget. From the air, to plants, to cows, to our parents, to us. All your carbon comes from the air. Your body mass took a whole shitload of CO2 to make.
>Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet? Under the concept of "protecting nature" we must stop you from exhaling.
No I don't. And neither do you, or anybody else. Carbon has to come from somewhere. The Carbon in the CO2 you breath out comes from the food you ate, food which (Even if it was a steak) ultimately came from plants, which got it from taking the EXACT SAME amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere last week.
Exhaling is completely carbon neutral. When your reasoning is built around a completely bullshit claim the stupidity of which is trivially obvious... what can we conclude ? One possiblity is that you are just too damn stupid to figure such a trivial thing out... but then, you wouldn't be able to learn to write either (let alone feed or clothe yourself). So it's unlikely. The only other conclusion is that you did figure out and are lying because you think everybody else is too stupid to also figure it out.
Well busted, we're not dumb enough to fall for your scam. Go try it on breitbart- they are full of people who also figured it out but will pretend they haven't so you can all make each other feel smart.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
This is a big scale move, i wonder what could it means?!
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NFAPECRP? Seriously? That sounds like something gaseous that swooshes out between your buttocks about an hour after eating way too many beans. I thought you Americans were supposed to be masters of inventing silly names for things to get a cool acronym?
That deal was as the CEO of Exxon, not his own personal deal. He is no longer CEO of Exxon. He is (or will be soon) the Secretary of State of the US. People can make a deal working one job, then changing jobs work on deals directly in opposition to the prior job.
It doesn't deny the President the authority to undo such a withdrawal therefore he has the authority. Our legal system is permissive, for something to not be allowed that must be specified as not being permitted, failure to specify permission does not indicate a lack of permission.
And it's already been done once.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Nonsense.
Are you saying that a clearly observable fact is "stupid"?
No, I said it's not a fact that your exhalations add to the net carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Your farts, however, do add to the net methane.
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Bush left 8 years ago and Trump hasn't taken office yet.
you really need to get with the times.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
there is no f'ing way that you're a "phd researcher of 25 years" and still spouting this kind of obvious and easily debunked stupidity.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You misspelt Reagan/Bush/Trump.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Initially thought about what is stopping an immediate reversal once Trump comes in, however I think it is a moot point.
Key:
"By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region."
So unless he is just doing it for optics, there really isn't much drive to do anything about it. Indeed, the act itself on Obama's part is pretty empty when you think about the fact that the basic infrastructure just doesn't exist to do it in the first place, it would take a very long time to build it, not to mention being expensive, never mind the actual technical difficulty of drilling in the first place (never mind the obvious political realities, one being the very large elephant in the room: Russia). So you aren't going to have companies lining up to do it anytime soon, there are plenty of cheaper and easier places to drill. Sure, at some point some will start to look seriously at the region, but it won't be in the next 4 years, nor likely in the next 8 years... Meaning why would Trump care one way or another about an act that prevents an action no one is trying to do, and won't for his foreseeable tenure as President.
Will not even have time to take effect before revoked by Trump.
For me, the main problem with the church of AGW is not that the science is questionable, although there is always a responsibility to be rationally skeptical of any claims, but that the solutions are not scientific. Rather, the "solutions" are always cached in socialist propaganda. It has stopped being about the environment, stopping pollution, providing clean energy, etc. It is generally far more of a watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside)--control of money, punishing the wealthy, redistribution of wealth. Without a doubt there are many above-board climatologists and environmentalists for whom the science is key, and finding real solutions (e.g., fusion power) are the most important thing. But they have let their science be co-opted for political purposes.
Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC : “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month [back in 2010 actually] is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
"I’m Camille Risler. I’m from France but I’m living in Thailand. I’m working for a feminist network that is called Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development and I’m working for the Climate Justice Program...So what we want to highlight here is that Climate Change is a clear symptom of an unequal and unjust world...So if we are to address the Climate crisis we need to challenge the structural causes of the crisis which lies on unequal distribution of wealth, of carbon, and of power. Whether it’s political power, economic power, or even military power."
Christiana Figueres, who serves as the Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
Welfare reform from the Clinton administration was supposed to be bulletproof but Obama managed to find a way to kill it. If Trump wants to reopen these areas, he will find a way.
. . .check-fucking-mate, bitches!!
What crisis? Have you seen how low oil prices have been?
And not a very good one. The "waterboarding" you are talking about consisted of shoving a hose down a persons throat and then waiting until their belly is full of water and then beating them in the belly until it burst. Not even close to the simulated drowning that was briefly used by the US.
Even if subsection (a) does not contain a provision for reinstating formerly withdrawn lands for leasing...
1341. Reservation of lands and rights
(a) Withdrawal of unleased lands by President: The President of the United States may, from time to
time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.
Obama is hanging his hat on the fact that there is no counterpart for reinstatement (i.e., it doesn't say "withdraw or reinstate").
However, subsection (d) provides a nice easy workaround:
(d) National defense areas; suspension of operations; extension of leases : The United States
reserves and retains the right to designate by and through the Secretary of Defense, with the approval of the
President, as areas restricted from exploration and operation that part of the outer Continental Shelf needed
for national defense; and so long as such designation remains in effect no exploration or operations may be
conducted on any part of the surface of such area except with the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense;
So SecDef and Trump could just designate the lands Obama withheld from disposition as "national defense area" then get the concurrence of the SecDef to allow operations.
They just found a 20 billion barrels.
The watermelons are going to have seizures!
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Everybody knows that anthropogenic CO2 is especially hard to the biosphere to sequester, it's got the Evil(tm) bit set!
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Seriously it doesn't matter, the CO2 has to be consumed without out regard for it's origin; that is if this AGW is real and is not just some kind of Watermelon Anti-humanity population control conspiracy. A gram of CO2 from a volcano is the same as a gram from a person's respiration is the same as from a fossil fueled vehicle is the same as from a "Carbon neutral source"!
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Do you mean that we tend to replace the food we consume because we will want more food, or that this replacement is unavoidable?
Both. But the timescales involved for the rebalancing of the cycle are different.
We do in fact grow more because we want to keep eating. That's the fast-path toward non-photosynthesizing organisms carbon neutrality.
Should we fail in that task, the slower-paced action will take place- the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the stronger and faster plants will grow, just by themselves, and spread.
Of course, sustained destruction of photosynthesizing biomass (and an overall systemic decrease) can and does ruin that neutrality, but it isn't the act of us breathing that does it.
I would think otherwise, but I will have to read about it I guess. Considering that humans are getting energy from this chemical synthesis and producing a waste product that accumulates in the atmosphere. It seems to have been established, in this conversation at least, that if there weren't enough plants to convert it back then humans breathing would be enough to cause the greenhouse effect.
I think I see where you're coming from. You're thinking extant plants are an ongoing cycle balancer... That isn't the case. A fully grown plant is carbon neutral.
They provide the engine that moves carbon from the atmosphere to solid biomass by way of their growth... There can never be not enough plants to offset what we breathe... unless we prevent them from growing.
But it's still not our metabolism that's altering the cycle. It's our reduction in photosynthetic biomass that is the engine the moves that carbon from the atmosphere into carbohydrates, and eventually, hydrocarbons.
In the end- every molecule of carbon you exhale, got to you by way of the air to begin with. All you're doing is sending it home.
The most common solutions I've seen proposed are geoengineering and a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and the latter is an attempt to harness the free market into coming up with a solution. There are indeed people who co-opt science for political purposes, but the science is pretty clear. If you want to push for a free-market solution, go ahead. What is likely to happen if we do what is a scientific question. What we should do in the light of that is a political one. What bothers me is all the influential idiots who deny the science for their own political purposes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Decisions themselves are not science and cannot be science. Science cannot say one should do X instead of do Y; at best it can only tell you the consequences of doing X or doing Y.
As far as which side has the most "propaganda", well, that's a long and messy topic.
Also note there are idiots who spew stupidity on both sides of the argument. Thus, pointing out specific cases of stupidity of one side doesn't tell us anything about the aggregate. It's generally not useful information. At best it's one sample point when thousands are needed before a statistically useful statement can be made.
Table-ized A.I.
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I just don't see how adding another human would be carbon neutral.
Where do you think that human's carbon came from? Adding a human isn't carbon neutral- it's a net decrease in atmospheric carbon for as long as he's alive.
If there isn't enough plant life to recycle all the CO2
Plants don't recycle the CO2 in the sense that you're using it. They are the primary converter of atmospheric carbon (CO2) into solid carbon (carbohydrates. They convert CO2 into the food that all non-producer life on this planet requires to live)
it doesn't matter if the CO2 came from humans or fossil fuels.
The only atmospheric carbon that comes from human is from fossil fuels. We are otherwise just a part of the cycle. It took CO2 to make us, and we will convert lots of converted CO2 back into CO2 in our lifetimes. But it all came from the atmosphere to begin with. Every link in the chain extracts some energy from what the plants originally put into it when they combined it with sunlight to make complex molecules.
The carbon cycle is the food chain. You're just a step in it, minus the part where you consume massive amounts of previously non-cyclical carbon in the form of energy produced from it. Nothing you ate came from fossil fuels. It came from the atmosphere. Therefore, not a single breath of CO2 you exhale didn't come from the CO2 itself less than a few years before you took that breath.
If you've never seen the clip, which I think is on YouTube, of the late Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded (voluntarily), do so. It may not be on par with the variety carried out by the sociopath in Pan's Labarynth, but it is, unequivocally, torture.
A gram of CO2 from a volcano is the same as a gram from a person's respiration is the same as from a fossil fueled vehicle is the same as from a "Carbon neutral source"!
That's where you're wrong though. They're not the same.
The gram from a volcano, and the gram from fossils fuels came from outside of the cycle.
The gram from your respiration came FROM the cycle. The gram of CO2 you just respired came from CO2 only a few years earlier, was turned into carbohydrates and other organic molecules with the addition of sunlight by plants, converted a few more times by other heterotrophs, and eventually into your dinner. But it came from the air. Before the air, it came from some other heterotroph. It is a CYCLE. Unless of course, you're keen on eating rocks, or plants that have never and never were going to die.
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Because the carbon from fossil fuels has been removed from the cycle for millions of years. It has been sequestered. We're putting it back INTO the cycle. If we were to put it back into the cycle as *mass* (offset every pound of CO2 from coal/whatever with a pound of carbon biomass), then even the insertion of fossil fuel into the cycle would be neutral to the gaseous portion of it.
The problem isn't necessarily the reinsertion of that carbon back into the cycle, it's that we have no way to balance it equally amongst biomass and CO2, to keep the homeostasis of the cycle intact. We are inserting carbon into the cycle in pure gaseous form, relying on nothing but nature's carbon fixation methods (mostly, plant growth) to equalize it. That's a goddamn slow process. In the mean time, we have a rise in atmospheric carbon levels, and a corresponding rise of temperatures caused by the simple fact that the shit is opaque to infrared light, the way our planet sheds the heat it gets from the sun's radiation being absorbed by all the shit down here below the atmosphere that is largely transparent to those wavelengths of light.
Electric cars won't do it, the rules of physics are against it. Wind and solar? Not a chance. Bio-fuels? Sure, if you want to see a real environmental disaster.
Care to expand on that? It sounds like you're just thumbing your nose.
And, BTW, the average life of a car is about 11 years total. 30 seconds on Google would have fixed that for you.
I'm all for discussing the situation because I know the rainbow brigade isn't very realistic about things but at least take the time to look up the stats instead of making up numbers.
Care to expand on that? It sounds like you're just thumbing your nose.
Not really. Spend a few minutes with Google and a pocket calculator and you will see that while electric vehicles might be able to replace some fraction of the oil burned for fuel but the big consumers, ships, planes, trains, and tractor/trailers, cannot be converted to electricity like a soccer mom's minivan.
And, BTW, the average life of a car is about 11 years total. 30 seconds on Google would have fixed that for you.
Another reason I'm not motivated to give a detailed reply. If you are going to nitpick like that then why should I bother? Especially when you are wrong, the right answer is 11.4 years.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Dude it's a molecule, it has no memory, it's not self-aware, there is no EvilBit(tm) set if it comes from athropogenic source or inside or outside a cycle. There are no magic faeries sorting out the inside cycle CO2 from the outside cycle CO2. A mole of CO2 from burning coal in a power station is exactly the same as a mole of CO2 from a fermenting mud bog. Saying the is a difference just makes you sound like a superstitious simpleton.
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No, but you have made yourself look rather ignorant.
Let's propose an experiment.
Let's say you're locked in a glass bubble with a pool of water at its lowest point, and a bush on its edge. You drink from this water, and you urinate on that bush. Over time, your urine evaporates, eventually condenses, and eventually ends up back in that pool of water.
Drink as much as you want, piss as much as you want, the amount of water in the cycle is static.
Now, this process, it's too slow for you. It's locked up in the cycle for too long before it turns back into potable water. So you have someone hook up a hose to the outside of this glass bubble. It sends you some extra water every day.
Slowly, you notice that puddle of water is starting to get deeper.
No sentient molecules required. No magic faeries. No physical difference between the molecules.
But when you drink from that pool, instead of that hose, you're water-neutral. Get it? I thought so. You're no simpleton.
There is no hose from outside the glass bubble, there is a white guy, a brown guy, two elephants and a warthog inside the bubble too, but only the urine from the white guy is "counted".
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There is a hose from outside the glass bubble. Only it's a drill down to a pocket of carbon that has been removed from the cycle for millions of years. Importantly- for the duration that mankind has existed as a species.
So this will be in effect for what? 25 days before Trump rescinds it? Way to go OB-moron...