Those of you that are in the "I believe" camp about Global Warming; how many of you are living your lives in an "earth friendly" way?
Maybe bought a nice hybrid or are using the bus to get to work, bought those new light bulbs, watching your CO2 emissions, bought one of those nice green bags to put your groceries in, stopped using your AC in the house and have opened up the windows?
Personally, I believe that people like to say they're for "saving" the planet but when it actually comes down to putting it to the test theyre just full of crap and dont change a thing in their daily lives.
It's possible that there haven't been any major oil discoveries the past 40-50 years ... but the oilcos, whose business it is to assess the value of oil deposits, don't seem to think so. From what I understand, the oilcos think that there is enough oil in Alaska, North Dakota, and offshore to justify the expense of drilling.
...but what about the speckled-pecker bull mouse!? you republican!!!!
I like mice just fine! I like all animals -- and if there's a REAL danger to this species or that one, then we ought to take reasonable measures to protect them. I'm totally fine with energy conservation and protecting habitats and species, clean air & water, etc. Those are REAL environmental issues, and I have no problem addressing them.
However, global warming is, at best, an unknown. We don't know if the world is warming. We don't know if it's being caused by man. We don't even know that global warming, if real, will cause real damage to civilization. And we sure as *ell don't know if we have the ability to fix it. But we do know this -- that restricting our access to oil and gas has caused real, tangible damage to the world economy (except the Saudis, they're fine), it's caused food prices to soar, caused stocks to be unstable at best, and switching to ethanol hasn't helped environmentally anyway! So before we apply amamie schemes to address big problems, we better be darn sure the problem is real.
Yet another article on the effect of more acidic oceans, this time in situ above a CO2 vent:
http://environment.newscientist.com/...ine-news_rss20
Viva - I don't give a why "they were added to the union". So, Alaska is just a resource to you? I'm sure the people that live there are glad to know that.
T Park - you still ignore the fact that the ANWAR/Gulf oil are negligible deposits totalling about 25bil barrels, which won't affect world prices one bit, nor delay the world running out of oil by more than a year. But keep ignoring the facts, please.
Don, look at the figures. Sure, there's enough oil there to justify drilling, but the point is that 15bil barrels is not a "HUGE" oil find when you use 31bil barrels a year as the world currently does. The US goes through about 7 bil barrels a year, so even if ANWAR and the Gulf have 15bil barrels each, which is more than the oilcos predict, that's only 4 years of oil for the US at current consumption rates. Why is this so difficult to understand? Oh, and as for "not knowing" about Global Warming, it's you who doesn't know - science knows, and there are tens of thousands of articles to prove it. We DO know that we have changed the composition of the atmosphere, we do know that the climate is changing 10-100x faster than the naturally observed rate, and we do know that these things are affecting rainfall, temperature regimes and extreme weather events. We know that animals are migrating earlier, that plants are flowering earlier, that ice sheets and glaciers are melting faster... how many indicators do you need? We also know that these changes will affect civilisation, how can they not? The world's food and fresh water supplies are currently balanced on a knife edge (just ask Californian farmers about water, for an example in your own country), and shifts in the climate will endanger both.
PEP - FYI, I have completely changed the way I live since learning about my impact on the planet. In the last 3 years I have reduced my environmental footprint by over 60%, electricity consumption by 65%, petrol consumption by 75%, and I just bought a car on LPG which produces about 25% less GHGs, so reduce that again. I did this by changing my behaviour - riding a bike, turning everything off at the switch when not in use, not using a heater very often, taking shorter showers, etc, etc. Most of the food I buy is locally produced, I consume very little but when I do buy something I buy second hand so that the product does have to be made again because I took it off a shelf. I walk the walk.
However, I agree with you that most people who say they are "green" don't really do much about it. Believe me, I hate that as much as you do because i have actually done a lot and made a big difference to my impact on the planet.
Y'all can bury your heads in the sand, but I've been studying this stuff for years and it's not horse , and not believing it does not mean it will go away.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 06-08-2008 at 09:06 PM.
Anyway, once again I'm wasting my time debating people who don't know what the they are talking about.
Enjoy your ignorance. They say that it's bliss... and I often wish I didn't know what I know.
Consider this. If we ignore such finds claiming they are too small, how many of them before it totals up to 20 years or more? Besides, the number is the known reserve of the area. Most areas keep pumping long after the estimated amount has been pumped out.
It is harmless to let the oil companies tap oil when found. We have modem technologies and safety methods that really limit the accident rates. I really wish people would be less fearful of progress.
Thank-you for the article. I wasn't going to take my time looking for such an explanation. I did say earlier, that:
I was specifically thinking of undersea vents, but RandomPropagandaGuy would then demand I prove it. They are simply the best example of high CO2 sources I know of. I have no proof, and I'm not even willing to say that's the cause of the declining ocean PH. It a very complicated subject, and I only know atmospheric CO2 is too insignificant to be the cause.Nature alone makes changes that dwarf what mankind can do.
again. you stupid, stupid man.
Viva - I don't give a why "they were added to the union". So, Alaska is just a resource to you? I'm sure the people that live there are glad to know that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKwZNwdowa4
choke on this for awhile. and please post any news articles about the people of alaska revolting over this very eye opening interview. please release the tree you're hugging while you watch this, professor.
Cobra - nature dwarfing man was true when there were less than 1 billion people, and before massive industrialisation. With 7 billion people and a high level of industrialisation, that's not true any more. Man has transformed the planet, and if you can't see that you are blind. A 35% increase in the atmospheric concentration of atmospheric CO2 certainly WILL result in a change in the absorption of CO2 into the oceans, and the consequential pH change.
As for the smaller oil finds, you miss the point. The point is that continuing to increase consumption of oil, as the world is doing, is a dead-end strategy that will lead to economic collapse. Transition to a less-oil dependent economic system has to start now and happen quickly or that collapse will occur some time in the next two decades. The current skyrocketing in oil prices is the first sign that the financial system has twigged to peakoil as a reality.
As for the size of finds, petrogeologists put confidence intervals on their results. For eg., they predict roughly 5-15bil barrels in ANWAR, and it's only a 5% chance that the real find will be beyond those limits. However you look at it, it will not be another supergiant field.
Viva - you call that journalism?
Either way, you ignore the fact that ANWAR is not going to save America from its dependence on foreign oil, nor change the world oil price. You fail to look outside your frame and see that the entire economic system needs to be modified because oil is a finite resource that is running out quickly. The incredible growth experienced in the 20th/21st centuries has been funded on a piggy bank of FINITE, NON-RENEWABLE resources, and that growth cannot continue once those resources run out. The fact that I have to explain that to you demonstrates that you are a stupid, stupid man. OPEN YOUR EYES.
I'll also point out that, just like Scott warned us all about the coming credit crunch 4 years ago (3 years before it happened), people like me have been talking about peakoil for a decade, and those really in the know have been talking about it for 25 years, same with climate change - they were both big issues in 1990-02 before the lobbyists buried them. If the world had started to act on these problems 25 years ago we could probably have avoided the looming crises, but the problem is that no-one was listening then, and no-one is really listening now. The ignorance and self-interest of the masses combines with spineless political leadership to maintain the status quo, and so shall it seemingly always be...
Oh, and don't accuse me of being a Communist because I'm not. Markets are fine. It's the idiocy of rampant overconsumption that needs to change. In beautiful poetic symmetry, rising prices and the contraction of credit should do exactly that - reduce overconsumption. However, I fear the contraction will be too little too late for many of the natural systems we ALL rely on. We shall see.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 06-09-2008 at 04:13 AM.
You've also missed my point about the politicization of the entire peer-review process in this field...not just the IPCC. Where is the open sharing of data? What about the algorithms used to draw their conclusions? Even scientists who are still "true believers" have backed away from the Kool-Aid pitcher because of the tactics being used by the "custodians" of said data and algorithms.
And why would this happen, you might ask? What would scientists have to gain by gaming the system...even as badly and as heavy-handedly as they have? Please don't tell me you would actually ask those questions...I am only speculating you might. If you are half the scientist you tell me you are, you should already know the answer.
Secondly, when large temperature rise PRECEDES large CO2 increase, but theories REQUIRE THE OPPOSITE, it is clear to me that not all climate mechanisms are even CLOSE to being understood...or at least, are not being taken into account. Cloud cover being one of them. When estimates/models can change wildly due to (relatively) small changes in modeled cloud cover, I can say with some certainty that people involved either don't fully understand what they are doing or they flat don't care because it goes against their own paradigms.
Thirdly, "global average temperature" is not merely misleading...it is USELESS. And as such, presented as it is as some sort of talisman, it is a lie. You speak of the Earth being a system in equilibrium. True statement. However, the science (and scientists) treat it most often as a system in STATIC equilibrium. Never has been, never will be. And a system in DYNAMIC equilibrium behaves differently. It's harder to model. It requires lots of data and lots of computing power...in both cases, much more than there is available.
Did you even attempt to read ANY of the links I posted.
I have NEVER stated any strong view on "global climate change". Officially, I am an agnostic on the subject, for many reasons. However, because of what I see in what I am reading on the subject, I find that I can trust pretty much nothing coming from the so-called "mainstream". Too much sloppy work, too much data "massaging", too much flat-out ignoring ALL the data and only keeping the stuff they can make fit into their own theories. They've poisoned the well for me.
We do have an effect, but it is very, very small compared to what nature herself changes.
Do you know chemistry and mathmatics? An increase of 35% is just over a third increase in level, but the PH scale is a log10 scale. The article I debunked appears to have assumed a 1/3rd chnge in PH for a 1/3rd change in CO2. It doesn't happen that way. When you apply the varies known formulas and tested theories, the equilibrium is a factor of 100 rather than ten in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to make a 1 PH change in the ocean. It would take approximately a 20 fold increase of CO2 in the atmosphere to change the ocean PH by a third of a PH unit.
Keep in mind the scale of things. With the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, it takes all our CO2 outputs well over 100 years at current levels to double the levels with the asumption that there is no sinking of the added CO2. With the natural sinking of CO2 by the oceans and biomass, it is well into several thousands of years.
So forget about opening up more oil for the needs we have and go without?
The way I see it, we go ahead and tap as much as we can, and hope we find alternatives in the mean time. Otherwaise, our economy will callapse any way.
The range of confidence I've see is from 1.9 to 16 billion. Close enough. Still, hat's just that very tiny patch in ANWR. Looking at the high side, with what we already produce, we are looking at a sigificant increase in the world supply. It will drop prices.
You are focusing on too s,mall of areas. There are several other places we can tap oil from. We just are not allowed to. Chances are, we can produce 100% of our own oil. I am pissed we do'n't have the opportunity to find out.
I don' agree with the peak oil assessments as normally speken of. Sure, the supply is not endless, but we keep dicovering more and more oil, and have no clear point of running out.
How would we have avoided the crisis? Only by not blocking the new oil fields! Untill we find good aternatives, we need oil. The only viable replacement we have now is Nuclear Power making Hydrogen fuel. These biofuels are not what they are cracked up to be, and other methods are lacking too.
Bump...
I would like somone who is solid in chemestry with the proper reference material tell me how much CO2 it would take in the atmosphere to change the ocean PH enough to damage it. I see it as next to impossible. Am I missing something?
I'm going to answer all these points soon - right now I'm just about to submit a thesis (due Friday).
You mean like the "enviros" in the billion dollar fishing industries?
You mean like the "enviros" in the billion dollar tourism industries?
You mean like the "enviros" that own the trillion dollars or so of beach front property in those states?
There are a uva lot of dollars at stake that are fighting widescale drilling and the risks of spills ing things up and destroying entire industries.
(shrugs)
I gaurantee you that the capitalists in those industries and that own those assets are a *bit* better at stopping that drilling using armies of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists at state capitols than the "eviros" are there, sport.
You are guilty of drinking the right-wing cool-aid.
Discovering oil and being able to get it out of the ground economically are two different things.
Large fields, as have already pretty much been discovered, take very little effort to get oil out of, and offer much higher total recoverable percentages.
The medium to small fields that are left here and there, take a lot more energy to get oil from and offer smaller percentages of total recoverable oil.
Less recoverable oil is being discovered than is being pumped and drilled. Peak oil says this trend will hold up after the "peak". We have seen this happening, which suggests the peak has passed. This doesn't mean there isn't a lot of oil left, it just means that there will be a much lower supply relative to demand.
Now we have to deal with this.
You need two things.
A good sample of the basic plankton that form the basis of the food chain, and the PH range at which they can thrive on.
Once you have your range you simply have to study basic pressures and so forth to figure out the ultimate effects.
They have already noted some PH effects from carbonic acids formed from CO2, so it should be fairly straighforward to simply extrapolate based on this data.
I assume you are talking about this:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...-to-drill.html
Yawn.
1) Cuba doesn't give a rat's ass about US fishing industry
2) Cuba doesn't give a rat's ass about US real estate.
3) Cuba doesn't give a rat's ass about US tourism.
4) 36 wells is rather miniscule, and that "50 miles" bit was the distance measured to the drilling from the southermost of the Florida keys.
Please don't make it sound like some "other country" is hovering just outside the 50 mile limit in thousands of miles of coastline. It's misleadning, bordering on outright lying. All of those wells are in one region that is closer to Cuba than the US, if you will look at the map, dumbass.
Why should I be worried about this again?
Seriously, what is your point?
We have more oil reserves than all of the middle east countries combined. We just aren't drilling it due to liberal propagandists' fear mongering. I believe this truth will become self evident to the general public soon as we continue to see gas prices skyrocket. We need to drill this oil to save the economy.
Consider this from Fact Sheet: Reducing Gas Prices and Foreign Oil Dependence:
If ANWR is large enough to replace Saudi Arabia's oil for 20 years, then think about adding that 18 billion and some oil shale too. We can be oil independant.1. Increase access to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Experts believe that areas under leasing prohibitions on the OCS could produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. Actual resources may be greater, but we will not know until exploration is allowed. The problem is that Congress has restricted access to much of the OCS since the early 1980s. Since then, advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills. With these advances – and a dramatic increase in oil prices – these Congressional restrictions have become outdated and counterproductive.
* Republicans in Congress have proposed several promising bills that would lift the legislative ban on oil exploration in the OCS. President Bush calls on the House and Senate to pass such good legislation as soon as possible. This legislation should give the States the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores and ensure the environment is protected. There is also an Executive prohibition on exploration in the OCS. When Congress lifts the legislative ban, the President will lift this Executive prohibition.
2. Tap into the extraordinary potential of oil shale. Oil shale is a type of rock that can produce oil when exposed to heat or other processes. In one major deposit – the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming – there lies the equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If it can be fully recovered, it would equal more than a century's worth of currently projected oil imports.
* Oil shale is a highly promising resource. For many years, the high cost of extracting oil from shale exceeded the benefit, but today, companies are investing in technology to make oil shale production more affordable and efficient. While the cost of extracting oil from shale is still more than the cost of traditional production, it is also less than the current market price of oil.
* Democrats in Congress are standing in the way of further development. Last year, Democratic leaders used the omnibus spending bill to insert a provision blocking oil shale leasing on Federal lands – President Bush calls on Congress to remove that provision immediately.
3. Permit exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 1995, Congress passed legislation allowing oil production in a small fraction of ANWR's 19.6 million acres, yet President Clinton vetoed the bill. With a drilling footprint of less than 2,000 acres – about 0.01 percent of this distant Alaskan terrain – America could produce an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. This is the equivalent of roughly two decades of imported crude oil from Saudi Arabia.
* Scientists have developed innovative techniques to reach ANWR's oil with virtually no impact on the land or local wildlife. These techniques are currently being utilized successfully in other areas. President Bush urges Members of Congress to allow this remote region to bring enormous benefits to the American people.
4. Expand and enhance our refinery capacity. It has been 30 years since our Nation built a new refinery, and upgrades in our refining capacity are urgently needed. Refineries are the critical link between crude oil and the gasoline and diesel fuel that drivers put in their tanks. America now imports millions of barrels of fully-refined gasoline from abroad, imposing needless costs on American consumers and depriving American workers of good jobs.
* President Bush is proposing measures to expedite the refinery permitting process. The President proposes that challenges to refineries and other related energy project permits must be brought before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals within 60 days of the issuance of a permit decision. In addition, the President proposes that the Secretary of Energy be empowered to establish binding deadlines for permit decisions and to ensure that the various levels of approval required in the refinery permitting process are all handled in a timely way. And Congress should allow new refineries to be built on abandoned military bases.
The United States actually has more oil than the rest of the world combined. Also, adding CO2 to the atmosphere doesn't cause warming, it actually causes the air to be a comfortable 68 degrees, like a global San Diego. Glaciers are actually growing and populations are increasing. When I was down in the Amazon last week, I spotted 11 new species of frog that weren't there last time.
If it weren't for Democrats, we'd be able to exploit our 589 brazillion barrels of oil reserves. Gas would cost 5 cents a gallon and we could all drive Chevy Tahoes. We don't even need the Middle East. We're in Iraq in spite of the fact we don't need them, simply because we love freedom that much.
But, see, Democrats are all secret jihadist Muslims who were in on 9/11, and they want to take over America and kidnap your Christian children to be their sex slaves. They rigged it so we get oil from the Middle East because they want their fellow Muslims to get rich and help them take over the world.
The Democrats want gas to cost $10 a gallon so you become desperate. Then they come to your house and say, "Convert to Islam and get free gas." It's all very tricky. Once Obama gets in office, then they blow up all the churches, and declare him the leader of the new global caliphate.
If you don't send this to your 10 closest friends today, radical Democrat Muslims will behead a kitten.
Extra: Decent caricature. I'd give it 6 out of 10.
So when do you plan to do the global-warming believers?
I don't know who's caricature is funnier, Stout's or Tlong's
As far as I know, this is false. Russia presently has the largest amount of natural resources, including oil, within it's borders. The problem is that it's all buried under perma-frost. They can't even speculate how much is in the soil of that country, but given it's size, it's probably a phenomenal amount, if we can ever get to it.
Just food for thought.
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