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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?
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)
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.
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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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
I am arguing SPECIFICALLY with OPs claim that "90% of climatologists" believe in AGW. That is based on a flawed study which found that 97% of peer reviewed scientific papers supported AGW (the flaw was that if the paper did not specifically say that AGW was false it was counted as supporting AGW...even when AGW was irrelevant to the topic of the paper).
I think either you or your sources are getting their wires crossed. The study did no such thing. The study in question broke down papers into pro, anti and no discernable position (in the abstract of the paper). The authors of the study tried to contact the authors in this third group. They then put authors who responded pro or anti into those those categories. This still left a large group of papers which were then ignored, the next step would have been to read the papers in full but with over 10,000 papers I understand why they didn't do that. 98% is a reasonable number but should have error bars on it. Since not all research in the field needs to list a position WRT global warming I would be very suprised indeed if the actual number is lower than 90%. Some people have pointed out that if you limit the papers to those published in the last 20 years the number is higher than 98%.
Having reviewed your linked articles, the studies they refer to ALL suffer from selection bias. They rely on surveys of climate scientists who are studying climate change and who published a large number of articles. Yet we know that there have been numerous, at least partially successful, efforts to prevent those who disagreed with AGW from getting published. I am sorry, there is no reliable evidence that 90% of climatologists agree with AGW and it is unlikely to be possible to get such evidence.
If you can produce scientific papers which were rejected by peer review that shouldn't have been then I am all ears. The only thing I am aware that is remotely like this was in the hacked emails where a group of scientists talked about possibly trying to veeto a paper then not actually veetoing that paper.
It was published then very quickly critised for using faulty methodology.
More importantly, such efforts are a waste of time because science is not done by consensus. Science is done by developing a theory and making predictions. If those predictions come true, the theory has value and may be considered true until such a time as studies show it to make predictions that are not true. The proponents of AGW have REPEATEDLY made predictions which have failed to come true.
Science kind of is done by consensus, In that the predictions are made the observations made and the experts come to a consensus on what the data means. For us who are not expert in the particular field knowing that the people who live and breath the stuff all agree about particular details is a valuable hueristic. We can get a better picture by cross referencing what the experts are saying but past that point you really have to become an expert yourself.
Now as for failed predictions I am willing to wager a small amount of money that you don't know what the actual predictions made my mainstream climate scientists are. The media doesn't do a really good job of explaining these (either on the pro or anti side), partly because as you know this stuff is more complicated than one can fit into a 5 minute news segment or a soundbite.
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.