A hotter climate implies longer growing seasons, implying larger crops.
Not everybody lives in moist temperate climates. Crops depend not just on temperature but precipitation. Some places will get less precipitation. Also, a lot of crops in the tropics are already near their upper temperature limits; hotter temperatures aren't good for them. This is true even outside the tropics, for particular crops. Regional economies have adapted to depend on certain types of crops. If you shift growing zones too fast, it can be hard for economies to adapt to the fact that they can't grow the same crops anymore, e.g. if Kansas gets a Texas climate.
The climate models used in this study are based on the laws of thermodynamics, you know.
Seems like kindof a lose/lose situation: either the water vapor stays up in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming as a greenhouse gas, or it precipitates out and warms the air right back up in the process.
Not if the vapor cools and radiates enough heat to space before it precipitates back down, or forms clouds which reflect more sunlight than they absorb.
I think the "new" part of this idea is to account for the latent heat transfer of the water vapor, not just the cloud-condensation effect. But until a paper is published, it will be hard to evaluate what exactly is novel in this proposal.
Your first comment seems to indicate that all we need to do is nudge the climate to some course other than the one it is one now. The amount of energy needed to produce such a random change might be small but suppose you put a small amount of energy into the process and nudge it into a direction worse that the one we are on.
It's not a matter of "nudging", it's a matter of reducing the excess heat currently being added to the system. That slows the rate of change and total amount of change.
First, you agree that if we try to force a change the system might react in a way we cannot foresee then you suggest that all we need to do is keep the existing system from changing. The natural state of the climate is that it is always in a state of change driven by the Sun
Yes, we know that climate changes naturally. The problem is that human additions are changing the climate a lot more, and a lot faster, than what natural cycles usually do over similar time periods. The point, therefore, is to dampen and slow our extra forcing to the system, so the total changes (natural+human) are less extreme.
Who knows how many Einsteins we lose every time Bangladesh floods?
Maybe that's a good reason not to raise sea levels by a meter.
Adaptation will occur slower and with more loss of life if we cripple the world economy trying to limit CO2 emissions.
Adaption is slower, but the climate damages that you have to adapt to are less, too. Most economists who have studied the problem find that it's economically beneficial to slow growth (not "cripple the economy") in order to reduce and slow climate change. Even the most conservative estimates (e.g., the "Copenhagen Consensus" analysis) find that it's worthwhile to include CO2 emissions abatement along with adaptation and R&D efforts.
You do know that the CO2 forcing that is "proven" only occurs in closed systems with uniform CO2 distribution?
Atoms don't stop absorbing photons when they're in the atmosphere. Atmospheric convection does alter the radiative transfer, but it doesn't make it vanish.
Given that we have multi-decadal weather patterns, and the sun itself (where we get all the damn heat to start with) is on a 11-year pattern, and with the data we have, we cannot yet break our temperature down into what cycle is responsible for what amount of temperature variation.
Yes, we can. We know what the solar output is, and we know how strong the greenhouse effect is. Even if we didn't know the latter, the solar cycle still isn't going to explain the modern warming: it disagrees in timing, rate, and magnitude with the observed change. As for handwaving about "multidecadal weather patterns", we know a lot about where the heat is coming from. It's not the oceans (heat is penetrating into them, not the reverse). It's not the Sun (see above). It's mostly the troposphere, and the accompanying stratospheric cooling is the signature of greenhouse gases.
No, the original poster said there'd be built-up pressure. There is no built-up pressure, as the pressure comes from the sun. The sun won't "build up" pressure that, once uncapped, will fry the planet.
It's just a poorly worded metaphor. The underlying point is still correct: the radiative forcing from CO2 is still there, even if it's being cancelled out by some geoengineered cooling. If you take the latter away, the planet starts to warm again, and rapidly (if CO2 levels continue to increase).
Additionally, it's possible that the cloud cover would be self-sustaining (i.e., would be in equilibrium) with our current greenhouse gas levels.
No, the current cloud cover is close to equilibrium with the current radiative forcing (clouds respond quickly).
The "transient geoengineering schemes", as you call them, don't solve the problem, but they do dampen the effects, which may buy us precious time.
It depends. You're right that their main purpose is to buy time. However, if they suddenly fail, then we can see a large amount of warming which occurs more rapidly than any scenario currently being contemplated, since the forcing changes instantly. That means that we have to be very sure that they won't suddenly fail (or we won't discover some bad side effect down the road that requires us to quickly stop).
The interesting part is that if number 3 is true, then the earth getting hotter would also cause more evaporation creating in essence the same effect.
No, it depends a lot on where and how the water is evaporated. The same climate model which predicts this cooling effect also predicts an amplified warming effect from global warming-induced evaporation.
Yup and a LOT of studies suggest his plan is backwards.
There aren't any studies of this yet, other than the one mentioned in TFA.
If you're going to claim that some well-known aspect of climate contradicts this theory, please note that the model used in this study is a pretty standard climate model.
When 9/11 happened, they measured a cooling effect of the lack of JEt vapor trails.
Cloud condensation from high-altitude jet vapor is a different process than low-altitude spraying and evaporation of water vapor.
You're right. Caldeira is working on writing this idea up for journal publication. He has published studies in the past which critique the side effects of other geoengineering schemes, so I imagine the final paper will address those issues at least to some extent.
The original poster is correct; with this method, if you stop evaporating excess water vapor to cool the planet, the climate rapidly returns to its warmer state. This is also a deficiency of other transient geoengineering schemes like stratospheric aerosol injection.
I don't know if Ken Caldeira has written any books, but he's a famous and highly cited researcher. He specializes in the carbon cycle, climate policy, and recently climate geoengineering.
Are we even sure that Global Climate Change is something that we need to stop?
Not completely sure, but pretty sure. The main problem is the rate of change: several degrees per century is a lot to try to adapt to. The goal isn't to stop it flat, but slow it down and reduce the final amount of change.
If this is all part of a cycle (all signs point to yes),
All signs point to "no", actually. But go ahead: Please tell me which natural cycle predicts the warming that was observed in the 20th century. Be sure to explain what the natural source of heat is.
The earth isn't a computer. We can't just reimage it and try again. There are no backups. If we fuck this up, we have to live with it.
Maybe that's why we shouldn't emit millions of years worth of fossil-sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the span of a century or two.
Seriously, all of these ideas like poisoning the ocean with C02 or spraying tons of extra water into the air seem to be completely and utterly retarded.
People want to AVOID "poisoning the ocean with CO2". That's part of the same problem: excess atmospheric CO2 strengthens the greenhouse effect and also dissolves into the ocean and changes its pH balance.
Has the earth been going through a similar climate change every few thousand years for as long as we can tell? Also yes.
The Earth has not been going through anything like the change predicted over the next century or two due to human CO2 emissions.
1/30th of a degree per year isn't much until you let it accumulate for a century or two and find that the temperature has gone up by 3-6 degrees. The upper end of that range is the difference between now and an ice age, except in the opposite direction.
It depends on what kind of clouds form. Clouds both trap heat and reflect sunlight. Low-lying clouds tend to trap more heat than they reflect, higher clouds are the opposite. Also, this cooling effect is not just clouds, it's from the heat transfer of the evaporation process.
Yes, water vapor is the major green house gas only being augmented by carbon dioxide. This just points out that most of the people in the global warming camp know about as much real science as most kindergarten classes.
Normally I try to be more civil, but this calls for a "Hey dumbass, Ken Caldeira has forgotten more about climate science than you will ever know".
In particular, he is well aware of the greenhouse effect of water vapor. See here for more discussion.
A more sensible fellow was interviewed on TV recently who said that most of our climate change is driven by the Sun
Why is he more sensible? Because it supports the conclusions you want to reach? In particular, why is this fellow's claim more sensible given the large amount of evidence that most of the modern global warming is not driven by the Sun (e.g., here, here).
and that the best way for us to spend our capital in regards to climate change is to learn to adapt
We're going to have to adapt regardless, because we're already committed to some anthropogenic climate change even if there were no natural change, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't mitigate the problem. It's less expensive to adapt if you have a less extreme climate to adapt to. A real solution, as noted by pretty much every economist who works in this area, is a combination of mitigation, adaptation, and technological R&D. Read Nordhaus's latest book for a good lay overview of the policy problem.
The climate is composed of myriad systems that we still haven't enumerated, cannot properly inter-relate (since we don't know them all) and already contain enough energy that we couldn't drive them in a particular direction if we wanted.
We can't dial in an exact climate state, but we can drive the climate in different directions. We're already doing it with CO2. Reducing CO2 will reduce and slow the warming due to CO2. This is not a difficult concept. The system doesn't respond instantaneously, and it's not realistic to completely halt emissions, but we can slow them to mitigate the resulting climate change.
if somehow we did manage to force a change, the system would likely react in a way we wouldn't be able to foresee
It is not really that hard to figure out that returning CO2 emissions to closer to pre-industrial levels will direct the Earth system to closer to a pre-industrial climate.
The effect of water vapor is complicated. As TFA notes:
"Among the side-effects: It absorbs latent heat near the earth's surface and transports it to higher altitudes, for a cooling effect. When it condenses at higher altitudes, it releases the latent heat, which then can radiate into space, producing more cooling. It's a greenhouse gas, trapping heat and causing warming. It can form low clouds that reflect solar energy, a cooling effect. It can form more high clouds, which block some sunlight but mostly prevent the release of infrared radiation from below, another warming effect."
That's why you need to do Earth system modeling to see which effect wins out in this particular scenario. As another article remarks, "Caldeira's computer results could surprise many scientists because water vapor is a greenhouse gas widely recognized to be more powerful than carbon dioxide. The simulation suggests, however, that water vapor's cooling effects overwhelm its heat-trapping properties."
The same computer model finds a net warming effect from excess water vapor evaporated due to global warming. I suspect the effect is different whether you're evaporating it directly from surface warming or spraying it into the air and letting it evaporate there.
The 2.2-meter telescope they're using is slightly smaller than the HST. My guess: the real advantage is that they can devote more of this telescope's time to exoplanet studies than can the HST, which has many more users.
It's really either that or actually act really scared and freaked out about whether or not you're going to survive the entire game and who the heck wants to feel like that for like 8 hours? You could just walk around New York City alone at night for free to feel that
Of course you'll have a bad impression of New York if you only focus on the pimps and the C.H.U.D.s.
In the same vein, when I was younger, I used to stick straight pins through the top layer of the skin on my fingertips, just because I could without it hurting one bit.
Now that you remind me, I did too when I was a kid. Don't ask me why.
It's pretty easy to tell how much money would be saved by cancelling Aries and Orion outright. Just look at how much money they have outlined in budget projections.
Then multiply that number by two. For the inevitable cost overruns...
How do I sign up for not lifting a finger all the while benefiting from another human being's labor?
You're totally missing the point. I didn't say that I wanted to get rich off their oil and let them have nothing. I said that I don't support drilling if the oil companies get rich but nobody ELSE benefits. If they drill in ANWR and the average citizen doesn't see any large lasting impact on prices, and we don't seriously reduce our dependence on foreign oil from it, why is this a good idea compared to its drawbacks?
Who are you going to trust--a bunch of government bureaucrats or the people who actually do the work daily?
I would trust the DOE over an oil company any day when it comes to this sort of analysis. They're not stupid and they're relatively neutral. Of course the oil companies have a huge incentive to say that drilling is going to make a huge difference to everybody, there's no delay and no possible downside, gas prices will drop in half and we'll never buy a drop of foreign oil again, and so on.
I'm not an economist, so I not in any way qualified to comment on how it will effect the fuel prices--but it would appear that a majority of the United States saying "shut up and drill!" caused the Saudis to get their act together and lower prices. That--and the president letting the executive ban on off-shore drilling expire.
They can make a temporary big drop in prices to get us to abandon the plan — even take a temporary loss, if the want — but if we went through with it, the actual sustained drop would likely be much less. ANWR drilling would cause prices to drop and OPEC to lose some money, but it's not going to make even a large difference to the price of gas because the supply isn't big enough.
If the global market could have simply released some of their reserves, why didn't they do that during the last year when gas was passing $3.40 a gallon in my area?
It wasn't yet sufficiently profitable for them to do so. They benefit from higher prices, as long as global (not just U.S.) demand doesn't drop too low. ANWR oil is simply a drop in the bucket compared to the global oil supply. It can affect prices, but not hugely. OPEC ultimately did release some of their reserves, as a chess piece. They're not the only ones who could, but they have the largest supply so they can afford to do so first.
Furthermore, there are plenty of other non-ANWR reserves that haven't yet been exploited, but could be. IIRC, the U.S. oil industry has 30-40 billion barrels of offshore oil on sites that they haven't yet developed.
Plus, there's no reason for the U.S. to be tied to the global market.
Right now and for some time to come, economically, there is. U.S. oil production peaked decades ago for a reason. The global supply is simply larger and longer lasting, and we haven't sufficiently developed any alternatives.
And while you may argue that U.S. 'big oil' would be no better than the Saudi, well, someone can always find a cheaper, better way--or an alternative.
Oil companies already invest tons of money in finding better, cheaper ways. It's not like there's no market pressure to do that.
The reason we are sticking with fossil fuels at the moment, is they are the best choice all around. It's cheaper to produce, it provides more power, it's easily transportable, etc... Once a fuel shows up that beats that, people will start switching.
The economic incentives to switching are wrong, because fossil fuels are cheaper than they should be: the market doesn't account for negative externalities like the environmental impact of CO2 emissions, costs of foreign conflict, etc. Fossil fuels have hidden costs and the market needs to be aware of them. Consumers don't have the right price signal to switch.
Slashdot Mirror
A hotter climate implies longer growing seasons, implying larger crops.
Not everybody lives in moist temperate climates. Crops depend not just on temperature but precipitation. Some places will get less precipitation. Also, a lot of crops in the tropics are already near their upper temperature limits; hotter temperatures aren't good for them. This is true even outside the tropics, for particular crops. Regional economies have adapted to depend on certain types of crops. If you shift growing zones too fast, it can be hard for economies to adapt to the fact that they can't grow the same crops anymore, e.g. if Kansas gets a Texas climate.
The climate models used in this study are based on the laws of thermodynamics, you know.
Seems like kindof a lose/lose situation: either the water vapor stays up in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming as a greenhouse gas, or it precipitates out and warms the air right back up in the process.
Not if the vapor cools and radiates enough heat to space before it precipitates back down, or forms clouds which reflect more sunlight than they absorb.
I think the "new" part of this idea is to account for the latent heat transfer of the water vapor, not just the cloud-condensation effect. But until a paper is published, it will be hard to evaluate what exactly is novel in this proposal.
Your first comment seems to indicate that all we need to do is nudge the climate to some course other than the one it is one now. The amount of energy needed to produce such a random change might be small but suppose you put a small amount of energy into the process and nudge it into a direction worse that the one we are on.
It's not a matter of "nudging", it's a matter of reducing the excess heat currently being added to the system. That slows the rate of change and total amount of change.
First, you agree that if we try to force a change the system might react in a way we cannot foresee then you suggest that all we need to do is keep the existing system from changing. The natural state of the climate is that it is always in a state of change driven by the Sun
Yes, we know that climate changes naturally. The problem is that human additions are changing the climate a lot more, and a lot faster, than what natural cycles usually do over similar time periods. The point, therefore, is to dampen and slow our extra forcing to the system, so the total changes (natural+human) are less extreme.
Who knows how many Einsteins we lose every time Bangladesh floods?
Maybe that's a good reason not to raise sea levels by a meter.
Adaptation will occur slower and with more loss of life if we cripple the world economy trying to limit CO2 emissions.
Adaption is slower, but the climate damages that you have to adapt to are less, too. Most economists who have studied the problem find that it's economically beneficial to slow growth (not "cripple the economy") in order to reduce and slow climate change. Even the most conservative estimates (e.g., the "Copenhagen Consensus" analysis) find that it's worthwhile to include CO2 emissions abatement along with adaptation and R&D efforts.
May the best man win indeed.
You do know that the CO2 forcing that is "proven" only occurs in closed systems with uniform CO2 distribution?
Atoms don't stop absorbing photons when they're in the atmosphere. Atmospheric convection does alter the radiative transfer, but it doesn't make it vanish.
Given that we have multi-decadal weather patterns, and the sun itself (where we get all the damn heat to start with) is on a 11-year pattern, and with the data we have, we cannot yet break our temperature down into what cycle is responsible for what amount of temperature variation.
Yes, we can. We know what the solar output is, and we know how strong the greenhouse effect is. Even if we didn't know the latter, the solar cycle still isn't going to explain the modern warming: it disagrees in timing, rate, and magnitude with the observed change. As for handwaving about "multidecadal weather patterns", we know a lot about where the heat is coming from. It's not the oceans (heat is penetrating into them, not the reverse). It's not the Sun (see above). It's mostly the troposphere, and the accompanying stratospheric cooling is the signature of greenhouse gases.
No, the original poster said there'd be built-up pressure. There is no built-up pressure, as the pressure comes from the sun. The sun won't "build up" pressure that, once uncapped, will fry the planet.
It's just a poorly worded metaphor. The underlying point is still correct: the radiative forcing from CO2 is still there, even if it's being cancelled out by some geoengineered cooling. If you take the latter away, the planet starts to warm again, and rapidly (if CO2 levels continue to increase).
Additionally, it's possible that the cloud cover would be self-sustaining (i.e., would be in equilibrium) with our current greenhouse gas levels.
No, the current cloud cover is close to equilibrium with the current radiative forcing (clouds respond quickly).
The "transient geoengineering schemes", as you call them, don't solve the problem, but they do dampen the effects, which may buy us precious time.
It depends. You're right that their main purpose is to buy time. However, if they suddenly fail, then we can see a large amount of warming which occurs more rapidly than any scenario currently being contemplated, since the forcing changes instantly. That means that we have to be very sure that they won't suddenly fail (or we won't discover some bad side effect down the road that requires us to quickly stop).
The interesting part is that if number 3 is true, then the earth getting hotter would also cause more evaporation creating in essence the same effect.
No, it depends a lot on where and how the water is evaporated. The same climate model which predicts this cooling effect also predicts an amplified warming effect from global warming-induced evaporation.
Yup and a LOT of studies suggest his plan is backwards.
There aren't any studies of this yet, other than the one mentioned in TFA.
If you're going to claim that some well-known aspect of climate contradicts this theory, please note that the model used in this study is a pretty standard climate model.
When 9/11 happened, they measured a cooling effect of the lack of JEt vapor trails.
Cloud condensation from high-altitude jet vapor is a different process than low-altitude spraying and evaporation of water vapor.
You're right. Caldeira is working on writing this idea up for journal publication. He has published studies in the past which critique the side effects of other geoengineering schemes, so I imagine the final paper will address those issues at least to some extent.
The original poster is correct; with this method, if you stop evaporating excess water vapor to cool the planet, the climate rapidly returns to its warmer state. This is also a deficiency of other transient geoengineering schemes like stratospheric aerosol injection.
I don't know if Ken Caldeira has written any books, but he's a famous and highly cited researcher. He specializes in the carbon cycle, climate policy, and recently climate geoengineering.
Are we even sure that Global Climate Change is something that we need to stop?
Not completely sure, but pretty sure. The main problem is the rate of change: several degrees per century is a lot to try to adapt to. The goal isn't to stop it flat, but slow it down and reduce the final amount of change.
If this is all part of a cycle (all signs point to yes),
All signs point to "no", actually. But go ahead: Please tell me which natural cycle predicts the warming that was observed in the 20th century. Be sure to explain what the natural source of heat is.
The earth isn't a computer. We can't just reimage it and try again. There are no backups. If we fuck this up, we have to live with it.
Maybe that's why we shouldn't emit millions of years worth of fossil-sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the span of a century or two.
Seriously, all of these ideas like poisoning the ocean with C02 or spraying tons of extra water into the air seem to be completely and utterly retarded.
People want to AVOID "poisoning the ocean with CO2". That's part of the same problem: excess atmospheric CO2 strengthens the greenhouse effect and also dissolves into the ocean and changes its pH balance.
Has the earth been going through a similar climate change every few thousand years for as long as we can tell? Also yes.
The Earth has not been going through anything like the change predicted over the next century or two due to human CO2 emissions.
1/30th of a degree per year isn't much until you let it accumulate for a century or two and find that the temperature has gone up by 3-6 degrees. The upper end of that range is the difference between now and an ice age, except in the opposite direction.
It depends on what kind of clouds form. Clouds both trap heat and reflect sunlight. Low-lying clouds tend to trap more heat than they reflect, higher clouds are the opposite. Also, this cooling effect is not just clouds, it's from the heat transfer of the evaporation process.
Yes, water vapor is the major green house gas only being augmented by carbon dioxide. This just points out that most of the people in the global warming camp know about as much real science as most kindergarten classes.
Normally I try to be more civil, but this calls for a "Hey dumbass, Ken Caldeira has forgotten more about climate science than you will ever know".
In particular, he is well aware of the greenhouse effect of water vapor. See here for more discussion.
A more sensible fellow was interviewed on TV recently who said that most of our climate change is driven by the Sun
Why is he more sensible? Because it supports the conclusions you want to reach? In particular, why is this fellow's claim more sensible given the large amount of evidence that most of the modern global warming is not driven by the Sun (e.g., here, here).
and that the best way for us to spend our capital in regards to climate change is to learn to adapt
We're going to have to adapt regardless, because we're already committed to some anthropogenic climate change even if there were no natural change, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't mitigate the problem. It's less expensive to adapt if you have a less extreme climate to adapt to. A real solution, as noted by pretty much every economist who works in this area, is a combination of mitigation, adaptation, and technological R&D. Read Nordhaus's latest book for a good lay overview of the policy problem.
The climate is composed of myriad systems that we still haven't enumerated, cannot properly inter-relate (since we don't know them all) and already contain enough energy that we couldn't drive them in a particular direction if we wanted.
We can't dial in an exact climate state, but we can drive the climate in different directions. We're already doing it with CO2. Reducing CO2 will reduce and slow the warming due to CO2. This is not a difficult concept. The system doesn't respond instantaneously, and it's not realistic to completely halt emissions, but we can slow them to mitigate the resulting climate change.
if somehow we did manage to force a change, the system would likely react in a way we wouldn't be able to foresee
It is not really that hard to figure out that returning CO2 emissions to closer to pre-industrial levels will direct the Earth system to closer to a pre-industrial climate.
The effect of water vapor is complicated. As TFA notes:
"Among the side-effects: It absorbs latent heat near the earth's surface and transports it to higher altitudes, for a cooling effect. When it condenses at higher altitudes, it releases the latent heat, which then can radiate into space, producing more cooling. It's a greenhouse gas, trapping heat and causing warming. It can form low clouds that reflect solar energy, a cooling effect. It can form more high clouds, which block some sunlight but mostly prevent the release of infrared radiation from below, another warming effect."
That's why you need to do Earth system modeling to see which effect wins out in this particular scenario. As another article remarks, "Caldeira's computer results could surprise many scientists because water vapor is a greenhouse gas widely recognized to be more powerful than carbon dioxide. The simulation suggests, however, that water vapor's cooling effects overwhelm its heat-trapping properties."
The same computer model finds a net warming effect from excess water vapor evaporated due to global warming. I suspect the effect is different whether you're evaporating it directly from surface warming or spraying it into the air and letting it evaporate there.
The 2.2-meter telescope they're using is slightly smaller than the HST. My guess: the real advantage is that they can devote more of this telescope's time to exoplanet studies than can the HST, which has many more users.
It's really either that or actually act really scared and freaked out about whether or not you're going to survive the entire game and who the heck wants to feel like that for like 8 hours? You could just walk around New York City alone at night for free to feel that
Of course you'll have a bad impression of New York if you only focus on the pimps and the C.H.U.D.s.
They are not an unbiased agency.
You're hilarious.
In the same vein, when I was younger, I used to stick straight pins through the top layer of the skin on my fingertips, just because I could without it hurting one bit.
Now that you remind me, I did too when I was a kid. Don't ask me why.
No, I don't think we'll be telling them that.
It's pretty easy to tell how much money would be saved by cancelling Aries and Orion outright. Just look at how much money they have outlined in budget projections.
Then multiply that number by two. For the inevitable cost overruns ...
How do I sign up for not lifting a finger all the while benefiting from another human being's labor?
You're totally missing the point. I didn't say that I wanted to get rich off their oil and let them have nothing. I said that I don't support drilling if the oil companies get rich but nobody ELSE benefits. If they drill in ANWR and the average citizen doesn't see any large lasting impact on prices, and we don't seriously reduce our dependence on foreign oil from it, why is this a good idea compared to its drawbacks?
Who are you going to trust--a bunch of government bureaucrats or the people who actually do the work daily?
I would trust the DOE over an oil company any day when it comes to this sort of analysis. They're not stupid and they're relatively neutral. Of course the oil companies have a huge incentive to say that drilling is going to make a huge difference to everybody, there's no delay and no possible downside, gas prices will drop in half and we'll never buy a drop of foreign oil again, and so on.
I'm not an economist, so I not in any way qualified to comment on how it will effect the fuel prices--but it would appear that a majority of the United States saying "shut up and drill!" caused the Saudis to get their act together and lower prices. That--and the president letting the executive ban on off-shore drilling expire.
They can make a temporary big drop in prices to get us to abandon the plan — even take a temporary loss, if the want — but if we went through with it, the actual sustained drop would likely be much less. ANWR drilling would cause prices to drop and OPEC to lose some money, but it's not going to make even a large difference to the price of gas because the supply isn't big enough.
If the global market could have simply released some of their reserves, why didn't they do that during the last year when gas was passing $3.40 a gallon in my area?
It wasn't yet sufficiently profitable for them to do so. They benefit from higher prices, as long as global (not just U.S.) demand doesn't drop too low. ANWR oil is simply a drop in the bucket compared to the global oil supply. It can affect prices, but not hugely. OPEC ultimately did release some of their reserves, as a chess piece. They're not the only ones who could, but they have the largest supply so they can afford to do so first.
Furthermore, there are plenty of other non-ANWR reserves that haven't yet been exploited, but could be. IIRC, the U.S. oil industry has 30-40 billion barrels of offshore oil on sites that they haven't yet developed.
Plus, there's no reason for the U.S. to be tied to the global market.
Right now and for some time to come, economically, there is. U.S. oil production peaked decades ago for a reason. The global supply is simply larger and longer lasting, and we haven't sufficiently developed any alternatives.
And while you may argue that U.S. 'big oil' would be no better than the Saudi, well, someone can always find a cheaper, better way--or an alternative.
Oil companies already invest tons of money in finding better, cheaper ways. It's not like there's no market pressure to do that.
The reason we are sticking with fossil fuels at the moment, is they are the best choice all around. It's cheaper to produce, it provides more power, it's easily transportable, etc... Once a fuel shows up that beats that, people will start switching.
The economic incentives to switching are wrong, because fossil fuels are cheaper than they should be: the market doesn't account for negative externalities like the environmental impact of CO2 emissions, costs of foreign conflict, etc. Fossil fuels have hidden costs and the market needs to be aware of them. Consumers don't have the right price signal to switch.
Right now, if
Hmm, TFA mentions brain implants, but the patent application only discusses contact and needle EEGs as alternatives.