I suspect drilling into this area is about as likely to cause an eruption as sticking a hypodermic needle into your butt is likely to cause you to bleed to death. Unless the magma chamber is extremely shallow it will most likely solidify and plug the borehole long before it hits the surface.
I'm skeptical that we can do anything to change the course of a supervolcanic eruption. If the Earth decides it want's to erupt somewhere I think it's going to happen. At best we might put it off for a few years or force it to erupt in an adjacent area.
Do you have any evidence to back that up? That it was approved over the objections of the OMB? This PolitiFact article says the Bush administration was as eager as the current one to approve the loan guarantee.
According to PolitiFact the Bush administration tried to get the loan guarantee through before they left office but the Energy Departments credit committee held it up for more analysis. I think it's difficult to make the case that it's all the Obama administration's fault.
I agree with you that money in politics is a bad problem that neither party seems to want to tackle. It's ridiculous that congresscritters have to spend so much of their time raising money rather than doing the peoples business.
It seems to me that a survey of the peer reviewed literature in a scientific field would usually be a pretty good indicator of scientists current thinking. The survey found 42 papers predicted global warming, 7 papers that predicted global cooling and 19 neutral papers. Judge for yourself (Peterson 2008).
The first papers to mention global warming as a potential issue were in the late 1950s. The first briefing of a US President on the issue of global warming due to increases in CO2 was Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Such a new concept wouldn't make textbooks for a while so I'm not surprised they didn't mention anything about warming.
The whole program that Solyndra got the loan guarantee from was over $16 billion. The Solyndra default is 3.3% of that. The program had a budgeted default rate of over 12%. So far there have been 2 defaults, Solyndra and Beacon Power that amounts to a total default rate is only 3.6%. 90% of the loan guarantees went to wind and solar projects that have contracts with utilities and are unlikely to default.
It's just a made up controversy being used to make political hay.
No, when you were a kid (assuming you're talking about the 1970's) the consensus was still global warming. Some papers on the cooling effects of industrial aerosols were talked up in the popular media but between 1965 and 1979 there were more than 6 times as many papers published about global warming as there were about global cooling.
Except the predictions that he made about temperature increases are the same predictions made and/or promoted by most "reputable" global warming advocates.
Not even close. At least if by reputable you mean the actual climate scientists making the predictions.
More than 100% simply means that if there were no anthropogenic influences on global temperatures there would be a small cooling trend. So the part above 100% accounts for negating that cooling trend.
— Precisely what part human activity plays in concert with natural global climate cycles,
The studies of attribution that I've seen lately mostly fall between 80% to 120% of the current warming is due to human activity, primarily the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
The problem with Global warming/ Climate Change is that the uncertainty is too high right now to draw conclusions as to the true relation between emissions and impacts on the environment.
Risk management theory says the greater the uncertainty about a risk the more value there is in mitigating the risks. If you're not at all sure how bad the risk is but there's a relatively small possibility it could be really bad then best to avoid even that small possibility.
Hansen is an astrophysicist. He started out by studying radiative transfer of energy in the atmosphere of Venus then moved on to applying it to the other planets including the Earth. Radiative transfer of energy is the primary driver of our climate. He is eminently qualified to discuss the climate.
Maybe what he's saying is there is twice as much oil available from tar sands as the amount of conventional oil we've burned so far. It's also true as Immerman mentioned that it takes a lot of energy to process the bitumen into a usable product.
... and way over the top scenarios (50 feet higher eh?)
Here's what James Hansen actually said about that:
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
There's nothing over the top about that statement, just a simple statement about the science as we know it.
I think he must be talking about gigatonnes of carbon, not carbon dioxide. The carbon atom in CO2 is about 27% of the weight of the molecule. 9 gt of carbon translates to 33 gt of CO2.
Ice cores such as Vostok don't have a yearly resolution. Their resolution is more on the order of a century. So the graphs you cited only really cover up to about a century ago. So thinking the end of the graphs (the year 0) reflects the conditions in 2012 (or even 2000) is erroneous. At best they probably reflect conditions in 1900.
Your assumption would be incorrect. Natural variability means that short term temperature variations occur. A true measure of the temperature of the Earth would look not only at atmospheric temperatures but ocean temperatures as well (and even land temperatures). On average about 90% of the warming that occurs each year goes into the oceans. But cycles such as El Nino/La Nina cause large transfers of energy between the oceans and the atmosphere so in the short term the atmosphere can cool. A recent statistical analysis found that it takes 17 years of temperature records to distinguish the signal of the global warming trend from the short term noise of natural variability. So it's not realistic to expect temperatures to monotonically increase year after year. It's only examination of the longer term records that will give you the true trend in temperature.
True skepticism is not irrational. For example Richard Mueller of the BEST study was skeptical of the existing temperature analyses (CRU, GISS, NOAA) until he got the results from his work which matched the others well. He was willing to be convinced by the evidence. What's irrational is using the same old arguments time and time again which have been thoroughly debunked or are just unscientific to begin with. What's irrational is to be unwilling to be convinced by the evidence because it doesn't fit your worldview.
What you fail to mention is that while the Bering Sea ice has set records the Barents and Kara Seas above Europe have unusually low. So the overall ice extent has still been below normal. This page at Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis explains it pretty well. The high extent of ice in the Bering Sea has as much to do with high winds pushing the existing ice south which opened up leads which subsequently freeze over as it does with cold temperatures.
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I suspect drilling into this area is about as likely to cause an eruption as sticking a hypodermic needle into your butt is likely to cause you to bleed to death. Unless the magma chamber is extremely shallow it will most likely solidify and plug the borehole long before it hits the surface.
I'm skeptical that we can do anything to change the course of a supervolcanic eruption. If the Earth decides it want's to erupt somewhere I think it's going to happen. At best we might put it off for a few years or force it to erupt in an adjacent area.
You forgot the /sarcasm tag.
Do you have any evidence to back that up? That it was approved over the objections of the OMB? This PolitiFact article says the Bush administration was as eager as the current one to approve the loan guarantee.
According to PolitiFact the Bush administration tried to get the loan guarantee through before they left office but the Energy Departments credit committee held it up for more analysis. I think it's difficult to make the case that it's all the Obama administration's fault.
I agree with you that money in politics is a bad problem that neither party seems to want to tackle. It's ridiculous that congresscritters have to spend so much of their time raising money rather than doing the peoples business.
It seems to me that a survey of the peer reviewed literature in a scientific field would usually be a pretty good indicator of scientists current thinking. The survey found 42 papers predicted global warming, 7 papers that predicted global cooling and 19 neutral papers. Judge for yourself (Peterson 2008).
The first papers to mention global warming as a potential issue were in the late 1950s. The first briefing of a US President on the issue of global warming due to increases in CO2 was Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Such a new concept wouldn't make textbooks for a while so I'm not surprised they didn't mention anything about warming.
The whole program that Solyndra got the loan guarantee from was over $16 billion. The Solyndra default is 3.3% of that. The program had a budgeted default rate of over 12%. So far there have been 2 defaults, Solyndra and Beacon Power that amounts to a total default rate is only 3.6%. 90% of the loan guarantees went to wind and solar projects that have contracts with utilities and are unlikely to default.
It's just a made up controversy being used to make political hay.
You do attribution studies. There are several links here that eventually lead back to peer reviewed attribution studies.
No, when you were a kid (assuming you're talking about the 1970's) the consensus was still global warming. Some papers on the cooling effects of industrial aerosols were talked up in the popular media but between 1965 and 1979 there were more than 6 times as many papers published about global warming as there were about global cooling.
From the confusion of ideas in your post it sounds like you should be in school learning rather than wasting my time on /.
Except the predictions that he made about temperature increases are the same predictions made and/or promoted by most "reputable" global warming advocates.
Not even close. At least if by reputable you mean the actual climate scientists making the predictions.
More than 100% simply means that if there were no anthropogenic influences on global temperatures there would be a small cooling trend. So the part above 100% accounts for negating that cooling trend.
— Precisely what part human activity plays in concert with natural global climate cycles,
The studies of attribution that I've seen lately mostly fall between 80% to 120% of the current warming is due to human activity, primarily the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
The problem with Global warming/ Climate Change is that the uncertainty is too high right now to draw conclusions as to the true relation between emissions and impacts on the environment.
Risk management theory says the greater the uncertainty about a risk the more value there is in mitigating the risks. If you're not at all sure how bad the risk is but there's a relatively small possibility it could be really bad then best to avoid even that small possibility.
There just is no mandate for the EPA to regulate CO2 at this time.
Sorry but you are wrong. In Massachusetts v. EPA the Supreme Court rendered their decision on April 2, 2007. They found:
Greenhouse gases are air pollutants, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency may regulate their emission
Hansen is an astrophysicist. He started out by studying radiative transfer of energy in the atmosphere of Venus then moved on to applying it to the other planets including the Earth. Radiative transfer of energy is the primary driver of our climate. He is eminently qualified to discuss the climate.
Let me guess, you weren't around in 1978. I was. I recall no such campaign for government to raise taxes and implement programs to fight it.
Maybe what he's saying is there is twice as much oil available from tar sands as the amount of conventional oil we've burned so far. It's also true as Immerman mentioned that it takes a lot of energy to process the bitumen into a usable product.
Here's what James Hansen actually said about that:
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
There's nothing over the top about that statement, just a simple statement about the science as we know it.
I think he must be talking about gigatonnes of carbon, not carbon dioxide. The carbon atom in CO2 is about 27% of the weight of the molecule. 9 gt of carbon translates to 33 gt of CO2.
Kind of like this graph.
Ice cores such as Vostok don't have a yearly resolution. Their resolution is more on the order of a century. So the graphs you cited only really cover up to about a century ago. So thinking the end of the graphs (the year 0) reflects the conditions in 2012 (or even 2000) is erroneous. At best they probably reflect conditions in 1900.
Your assumption would be incorrect. Natural variability means that short term temperature variations occur. A true measure of the temperature of the Earth would look not only at atmospheric temperatures but ocean temperatures as well (and even land temperatures). On average about 90% of the warming that occurs each year goes into the oceans. But cycles such as El Nino/La Nina cause large transfers of energy between the oceans and the atmosphere so in the short term the atmosphere can cool. A recent statistical analysis found that it takes 17 years of temperature records to distinguish the signal of the global warming trend from the short term noise of natural variability. So it's not realistic to expect temperatures to monotonically increase year after year. It's only examination of the longer term records that will give you the true trend in temperature.
True skepticism is not irrational. For example Richard Mueller of the BEST study was skeptical of the existing temperature analyses (CRU, GISS, NOAA) until he got the results from his work which matched the others well. He was willing to be convinced by the evidence. What's irrational is using the same old arguments time and time again which have been thoroughly debunked or are just unscientific to begin with. What's irrational is to be unwilling to be convinced by the evidence because it doesn't fit your worldview.
Pol Pot!?! Do you work for the Heartland Institute?
What you fail to mention is that while the Bering Sea ice has set records the Barents and Kara Seas above Europe have unusually low. So the overall ice extent has still been below normal. This page at Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis explains it pretty well. The high extent of ice in the Bering Sea has as much to do with high winds pushing the existing ice south which opened up leads which subsequently freeze over as it does with cold temperatures.