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.

Comments

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't he bother doing this before now?

Re:So...

[ShanghaiBill]

Because it is a political stunt to get the Republicans to overturn it when Trump gets in

There is no political mechanism to reverse the decision. Congress could vote to reverse it, but that would be subjected to court challenges questioning the validity of the reversal. But even a congressional vote would be difficult, since it would need 60 votes in the Senate. Not even all Republican senators could be counted on. Why should a senator from Texas, Oklahoma, or North Dakota vote for more oil drilling in the arctic, to compete with oil from their own states? It is possible that there won't be much opposition from oil companies either, since big offshore projects don't compete well against shale oil. Shell recently cancelled a big offshore project in Alaska.

Deepwater Horizon showed that there is no guarantee of no spills, and an accident of that size would have devastating environmental effects in the Arctic Sea.

Re:So...

[SuricouRaven]

Because this isn't just an executive action: It's a power that was specifically granted to the president by act of congress. It'll take an act of congress to reverse, and that is going to be politically troublesome. It could be done, but it won't be fast.

Re:So...

[ClickOnThis]

how can the President pass an executive action that could not be reversed by another executive action ?

TFA explains that Obama is using the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Presidents from both parties have used the Act in the past.

Trump can't just take office and reverse it. In fact, it's not clear just how he could, because there is no legal precedent. The Act contains no prevision for reversals, so presumably Trump would have to go to court. And that could take years to play out.

Re:So...

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, Trump could reverse it, but if he does anti-oil groups will sue because the law does not specify that a President has the power to do so. It would then be up to the courts to decide if Congress has the authority to give the President the arbitrary authority to do this irreversibly (it is arbitrary because they specify no conditions the President needs to meet to exercise this power). If the courts decide that Congress does not have such power they can take two actions:
1)Revoke the law thus eliminating all such previous actions(and possibly opening up the government to lawsuits)
2)Rule that the law gives the President the implied authority to reverse such a decision.
If the courts decide that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to give the President they will probably choose option 2 (which is similar to a recent ruling concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).

Re:So...

[dywolf]

Why didn't he bother doing this before now?

He did.

if you had been paying attention mr ac, you'd have noticed he's been steadily protecting many areas over the past 8 years, typically naming a new one every 4-6 months or so. he has now protected more natural areas than any president ever before.

Costs $150 per bbl to drill in Arctic

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Re:Costs $150 per bbl to drill in Arctic

[Stephan Schulz]

The key to keeping the price of energy low is to always be ready to increase production. Putting it off for five years would put us five years behind the curve. Look for Obama's order to be replaced by late 2017.

The key to keeping the perceived price of energy low is to externalise a large part of the cost - e.g. the health costs of particulate emissions from burning coal and petrol, the cost of nuclear wast processing and insurance against nuclear accidents, the cost of military intervention to keep oil-rich regions under control, and yes, the cost of climate change. We should really find a way to internalise these costs, so that the consumer price of energy reflects the real cost to society, and we avoid a tragedy of the commons.

Well-operating markets are great tools for optimisation. But in order for them to serve the community, we must set them up to work appropriately. Otherwise the market will gladly optimise the destruction of "free" shared resources.

Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Tablizer]

further perpetuate the climate hoax

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.

Re:Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Tablizer]

happened to evolution

"Pssst, I'll give you $100 if you tell your students they are a monkey's uncle."

Re: Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Anonymous Coward]

As a PhD researcher who works with soft (research) money, I'd say you have no idea how grant funding and annual salaries work in the slightest. In addition, if we were to show conclusively tomorrow that human beings have absolutely zero effect on climate, the only people who might be out of work would be those in the direct employ of the fossil fuel industry who are paid to FUD and obfuscate. Real researchers with the math and physics and model expertise to work on climate can work on a wide variety of subjects.

Re: Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Tablizer]

If they didn't have a research topic that justified a lot of money, there wouldn't be a lot of money given to them.

Why doesn't this phenomenon inflict OTHER fields? How come 90% astronomers don't claim bunches of asteroids are headed our way soon, or 90% of solar experts claiming the sun will go nova soon, or 90% of geologists claiming the Earth's core will stop spinning, ending our magnetic field, and frying us with space radiation; or 90% of SETI claiming fanged ET's are coming to kidnap all the women and mass cloning Justin Beibers with long hair to replace them?

Re:Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[z0idberg]

New plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environment crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires and oil companies.

**shamelessley stolen from a bunch of places online**

Re: Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Obfuscant]

As a PhD researcher who works with soft (research) money, I'd say you have no idea how grant funding and annual salaries work in the slightest.

As a PhD researcher who has worked under research funding for 25 years and continues to do so, I'd say I have a very good knowledge of how the system works.

In addition, if we were to show conclusively tomorrow that human beings have absolutely zero effect on climate, the only people who might be out of work

When did I say people would be out of work? Do you understand what tenure is? Or how research faculty can transition to teaching faculty when their grants don't get funded? I think I already pointed out that research scientists who lose grants will have to transition, which is a very different job with very different peer recognition. You don't write papers anymore, you don't have grad students to do research because you can't pay them. I said all of this already.

Real researchers with the math and physics and model expertise to work on climate can work on a wide variety of subjects.

Yes, they can. They can teach, or if they can find another topic that is as well funded they have a reasonable chance of getting a grant in a new area of research approved. If they are suddenly writing grants for topics in which they have little expertise or status they will likely find their grants don't get funded, and then they become teachers. The stories about huge grants to study trivial things like the mating habits of grubs are mostly apocryphal, even though they were the fodder for Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards. Money is getting tighter unless you are trying to solve a crisis; global climate change is one such. When it stops being a crisis, or someone wants to prove it is not one, money dries up. You can't keep the same number of people researching climate change when the money is cut in half and allocated to another more critical area of research. Even a grade school student should be able to understand that.

Re:Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious?

New plot idea: Scientists declare "demon rum" a threat to public health and morality.

Yup - was true then, is still true now. Just because getting drunk is legal and socially acceptable doesn't mean it's not a problem.

The size of government balloons, corruption becomes the norm.

Sounds like government as usual - pork barrel spending, lobbyists for every cause. Nothing specific to climate change here.

Constitutional rights become more "malleable", cities turn into war zones.

Well, we can thank the drug war for that, and Homeland Security, and the telecom companies, and paramiltary law enforcement - wait, what were we talking about again? How did we get here from climate change?

Black markets thrive, smuggling becomes too much for law enforcement.

Yup - totally see Joe Sixpack slow-riding up to some sketchy dame on a dark street corner to hook up some carbon credits!

The government uses new laws to poison known supplies of black market alcohol, dozens of people die and hundreds sickened.

So - you are insinuating that with all of the new-found powers that Guvmint has (due to climate change), they are going to pump some carbon monoxide into the executive offices and board rooms of oil & gas companies? That would be tragic, wouldn't it?

Only after years of public outcry does the government relent and lift the ban on alcoholic beverages.

So let me get this straight... a bunch of holier-than-thou Christian nutjobs make enough noise to convince Congress to ban alcohol. But the general American public disagrees, the alcohol still flows, and it causes enough problems until finally even the politicians have to admit they were wrong to listen to the religious wackos trying to force their religion on everyone? I can definitely see some parallels with modern times....

Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you cannot see the parallel to the way that the government is managing this global warming threat and how it handled Prohibition then I'm not sure I can explain it to you.

... but CLIMATE CHANGE? Um, no. And sounds like you don't even understand the parallels, if you can't explain it.

Re:Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[DamnOregonian]

I do not know what the percentage is, and neither do you, because no one has done a study that would give the answer (which is what it would take). I do know that the study which is used for the basis for saying that 97% of climatologists support AGW was utter garbage. Furthermore, how many scientists believe a theory is not the test of whether it is a good theory. The test is how accurately it predicts the results of experiments. So far, most of the predictions made based on AGW have proven wrong.

Ehhhh.
The model(s) are certainly piles of horse shit. But really- how could anyone expect otherwise? The systems being modeled are more complicated than our understanding of all of astrophysics.
Trying to model local effects when dealing with something that's planetary scale is a fucking daunting task. Maybe they're silly for even trying. Don't know. But the the warming of the earth is a fact. Period. The fact that it is anthropogenic is also a fact, based simply upon core principals. Whether they can measure how the hell it affects the weather of Seattle, WA or not, our alteration of the carbon cycle can only lead to this planet warming. I'm not on either side of the debate regarding what should be done about it, but saying the "theory" (seriously, what the fuck are you talking about) of AGW is bupkis because their models suck is a bunch of bologna.

There is one core prediction of "Teh Theory of AGW" (whatever the fuck that is), and that is: if you continue to add carbon to the gaseous stage of the Earth's extant carbon cycle, the motherfucker will get warmer. Because thermodynamics. Because QED. Because fucking reality.

Re: Mass Bribery? [Re:So...]

[silentcoder]

Of course the fact that the anti-climate change bloggers, writers and thinktanks DO take bribes and HAVE been REPEATEDLY caught in the act doesn't harm their credibility. But the unproven alegation that scientists do does.
Of course they soften that ridiculousness up a bit. It's not "bribes" its "grant money" and then they claim the whole system of science funding is so corrupt it's impossible to get grant money unless you support climate change.

The only problem with that narative is that there is such a thing as private grants - and those trillionaire fossil fuel companies that fund the bloggers, writers and thinktanks will be very happy to give a massive grant to any scientist who can disprove the theory. It would be a much better use of the billions their spending trying to discredit it. Right now they are already paying quite large sums to any scientist who is willing to use deliberate deception and misleading arguments to try and pretend he's disproven climate science (the terrible job these people do just shows how little they have to work with).
A scientist who could actually show strong evidence the theory is wrong - would have a billion dollar grant tomorrow, and a nobel prize next year.

You want the next door. This is News for Nerds

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Slashdot: News For Angry Partisan Echo Chamber Recitation Practice

Meanwhile, in the Chinese Arctic Seas . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . 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.

Re:This permanent ban...

[gfxguy]

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.

Re:Annnnd on day 1

[swillden]

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.

Re:Annnnd on day 1

[quantaman]

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.

Strong scientific consensus

[Layzej]

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?

Re:Strong scientific consensus

[Layzej]

Which one? There are dozens. They all find the same thing. There is a strong consensus. Regardless of the method. Some look at the literature. Some survey scientists. All find a strong consensus This result is not surprising in the least for anyone who has reviewed the literature.

Re:Strong scientific consensus

[kayoshiii]

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.

Re:Even without environmental concerns

[blindseer]

What you really want is advances in batteries so that electric cars can take off. Mind you the only thing really keeping them back is mindset.

I disagree. Around here what is keeping them back is this thing we call "winter". Cold weather is bad for battery car range, if it isn't the capacity loss to the batteries getting cold then it's the range lost to the energy needed to heat the cabin. When the snow gets deep one needs four wheel drive to get around. I've mentioned this to people before and some smartypants will say, "What's the point of four wheel drive? It doesn't make you stop on the ice any better." Well, you see there is this issue of getting moving. Anti-lock brakes, traction control, and all those electronic gizmos are really nice when it snows but if you don't have power to all the wheels then you are not going to enjoy the winter. I can call into work about being snowed in only so many times before it looks bad on my yearly review. If everyone else is at their desk because they have a four wheel drive car or truck then I'm at a disadvantage with my Chevy Bolt.

Winter storms also have a habit of causing power outages. Things have been getting better but they are still common and can last hours, or even days. An electric car leaves one with a problem there too. Oh, and solar panels on the roof to charge the car? Oh, please.

It's going to take more than just better batteries to solve this problem. I know people that have bought old oil drums to keep a reserve of gasoline for when storms strike. If you can make a battery that can compete with gasoline like that then you'll be a megaquadzillionaire. Put those batteries in four wheel drive F-150 to sell and you'll make more money than... I don't know, I think you'll have ALL the money.

Re: This permanent ban...

[blindseer]

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.