UPDATE: After some late night insomnia, and re-reading Steve’s essay again, I have decided to make this introduction to his essay a “top post” for a couple of days. New stories will appear below this one.
Readers, I urge you to read and digest this story, because it forms the seminal basis for everything that is wrong with Team paleoclimate science: the hard earned field work of Russian field researchers whose inconvenient data was excluded, warnings from colleagues ignored, tribalism exposed, testimony self-contradicted, whitewashes performed, and in a hat-tip to Leibig’s Law, even a “reindeer crap theory”. As one CA commenter, Peter Ward, put it:
My 13-year-old daughter asked me what I was reading. I explained at a high level and showed her figure 4. She grasped it immediately. How can we get this figure publicised widely?
I urge every climate blog to pick this utterly damning story of forensic investigation up and make it as widely known as possible. – Anthony
By Steve McIntyre
In The Climate Files, Fred Pearce wrote:
When I phoned Jones on the day the emails were published online and asked him what he thought was behind it, he said” It’s about Yamal, I think”.
Pearce continued (p 53):
The word turns up in 100 separate emails, more than ‘hockey stick’ or any other totem of the climate wars. The emails began with it back in 1996 and they ended with it.
Despite Jones’ premonition and its importance both in the Climategate dossier and the controversies immediately preceding Climategate, Yamal and Polar Urals received negligible attention from the “inquiries”, neither site even being mentioned by Kerry Emanuel and his fellow Oxburgh panellists.
I recently submitted an FOI request for a regional chronology combining Yamal, Polar Urals and “other shorter” chronologies referred to in an April 2006 email – a chronology that Kerry Emanuel and the “inquiries” failed to examine. The University of East Anglia, which seems to have been emboldened by the Climategate experience, not only refused to provide the chronology, but refused even to provide a list of the sites that they used to construct the regional chronology.
This refusal prompted me to re-appraise Yamal and its role in the Climategate dossier.
Read the full story here: Yamal and Hide-the-Decline
============================================================
It appears the cardinals of deadwood at UEA and CRU have learned absolutely nothing.
Note to the person who’s running the BOT to keep posting one star like you did the last top post where over 1000 “1” star votes were logged (a new record). I have your IP address from the widget. If you keep it up, I’ll register a complaint with your ISP. In the meantime, “grow up”.
– Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
@SteveE
“Each year we are using more oil than is being discovered, it’s not a question of will we hit peak all, it’s just a matter of when. Most estimates put it within the next 10-20 years with some suggestions saying we are already at the maximum capacity for oil production.”
Most who? Would that be the same people who ends up demanding we should all start living on one world under one government so much in touch with nature, excepting logic, and become vegans, oh and we should only use gold for purchasing power because for some reason, oil will run out “yesterday”, but gold, that has been mined for over four thousand years, we will, apparently, never run out off, and gold, apparently, exist in such vast quantities that everyone will get to put their hands in the treasure chests.
Why is it we supposedly ain’t gonna run out of rare earth metals anytime soon? :p
R Gates states:
“Then you’d have to find a mechanism to explain this warming. Then you’d have to find a mechanism to explain this warming. Search as you might (and climate scientists have searched and continue to search everyday), it’s tough to find one that doesn’t include the forcing (and related feedbacks) brought about by the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700′s.”
Correlation does not mean causation, here is something the warmists are unable to grasp for reasons unknown. There have been warming and cooling cycles in the past at least equal to or greater than the tiny warming of the 19th/20th centuries while CO2 levels were not what they are today. Even now as CO2 levels rise we are not seeing global temperatures increase and indeed for the last decade they have not risen as predicted by the IPCC and the supposed consensus and their computer models promised.
Now your claim of temperature increases since the 1700s means nothing firstly because from the mid 18th to the early 19th the planet experienced a cool phase and as you know when cool phases end they lead to warming, you see this time after time in the geologic and ice core records. So starting your time series at the end of a cooling period when temperatures are low and when temperatures are rising is disingenuous and misleading.
If you take the end of the 17th/18th century cooling phase as the start line you see temperatures rise and then CO2 increase following NOT preceding, do you follow? At first glance you see CO2 and rising temperatures together and the two look to be linked but then you investigate the detail and the start and end of cooling and warming periods and you see the same thing again and again, cyclic warming and then CO2 rises which are followed by cooling and CO2 falling. The models failed, the predictions of the IPCC failed, climate science failed to accurately predict reality. The supreme test of any scientific model and theory is of course observed reality.
“Then you’d have to find a mechanism to explain this warming. Search as you might (and climate scientists have searched and continue to search everyday)”
If you do not look then you surely will never find, if you discount everything else before looking at anything else then no wonder you come to the wrong conclusion. Climate science began with the belief that CO2 induced and promoted warming and discounted everything else. The climate alarm industry ‘knew’ that CO2 caused warming before they could prove it and so armed with lavish funding they set out to prove what they ‘knew’, this is the error that underwrites the entire CAGW fraud.
Starting off with the conclusion beforehand and then working to provide evidence for that conclusion meant that the scientific method was turned on its head, the theory was understood as undeniable fact and then evidence was sought to provide the ‘undeniable fact’ with a solid foundation, in simple terms climate science built the house and then tried to build the foundations for it afterwards, not a good idea eh? Climate science was born in the quest to prove CO2 induced CAGW, it has failed spectacularly in that quest, it looks like what it really is, a pathetic charade played by increasingly pathetic and desperate people unable to admit failure.
As I understand it, science comes up with a theory which other scientists strive to disprove it and IF the theory survives that hurdle then it must also overcome the hurdle of observed reality. Climate science started on the basis that CO2 induced CAGW was a fact and then worked to prove it even as they arbitrarily dismissed other theories and contrary evidence and now we see the awful and inevitable finale on the horizon that will ruin careers and reputations and the consequences will reverberate through science for decades if not centuries.
Climate change is natural and cyclic, the simple and yet profound product of billions of years of planetary evolution. Our climate is nothing more or less the refined product of the planets position around our star and that stars journey round the galactic centre, it has evolved a hearty and robust life supporting mechanism that could be termed natural cyclic climate variation, it is not delicate or finely balanced and this has been proven over the aeons by its response to regular and gigantic shocks. I have visited the Deccan traps and stood in the caldera at Yellowstone, examine the truly massive earth shattering events and we see on one clear truth shine out, our home is perhaps the most robust system we know of in the universe and a trace gas amounting to 0.039% of our atmosphere is not going to bring about the end of the world where an asteroid six odd miles smashing into the earth wide could not.
All due respect to your position/experience/field, but compared to Earth’s deep oceans our knowledge of the crust of the earth has got to be rather pathetic. The interesting thing is that we’re still discovering new life in Earth’s deep oceans, in entirely unexpected places. This tells me that we know next-to-nothing about what really happens beyond our ability to dig.
The only threat to the use and development of fossil fuels (hydrocarbons) here in Australia is the imposition by our federal government of this new carbon dioxide tax.
Woodside Petroleum and others have announced that if the carbon (dioxide) tax goes ahead in Australia, they will walk away from their investments in Australia. The LNG project in Western Australia is worth $180 BILLION alone.
The one Yamal tree has the potential of closing down Australia’s economy. All we have here is our natural resources and can supply the rest of the world in Iron, Gas and Coal into the distant future.
All I can say is, thank God for Steven McIntyre, he may have just saved at least one whole country, stuck down here at the bottom of the world.
Steve, keep up the wonderful work, Thank You.
R Gates: “Then you’d have to find a mechanism to explain this warming. Search as you might (and climate scientists have searched and continue to search everyday), it’s tough to find one that doesn’t include the forcing (and related feedbacks) brought about by the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700′s.”
The real asnwer is an increase in bright sunshine hours due to a combination of the PDO and cleaning SO2 out of the air (SO2 peaked in 1981 and has dropped as the air was cleaned due to the Acid Rain scare).
Strangely enough, the IPCC search engine can never find the word sunshien on the IPCC site.
GIS Model E ignore changes in bright sunshine.
Bright sunshine is measure at hundreds of weather stations. The difference between a cloudy day and a sunny day can be hundreds of watts/per sq m (depending on time and time of year and location).
Just because you and the IPCC deliberately ignore the major driver of climate doesn’t mean CO2 causes any warming.
In reply to R.Gates’ Comment:
“See, the problem is, if you accept that the Arctic is warming, and is the warmest in at least 2,000 years, as shown in these completely independent non-tree ring related studies: (and you link BBC news story and USA Today story)
Then you’d have to find a mechanism to explain this warming. Search as you might (and climate scientists have searched and continue to search everyday), it’s tough to find one that doesn’t include the forcing (and related feedbacks) brought about by the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700′s.”
R.Gates, the 20th century warming is latitude specific with most of the warming at high latitudes. That observation provides support for Svensmark’s mechanism. (See Svensmark’s reference paper that discusses the Polar see-saw or as Svenmark calls it the Antarctic anomaly.) The observation that there has been a decline in cloud cover that correlates with and that can explain in excess of 70% of the warming is also relevant. (See Enric Palle’s attached paper.)
The current observational evidence does not support the extreme amplified CO2 warming with a factor of three warming due to feedbacks.
What the paleoclimatologist have failed to explain to the general public is the warming and cooling is cyclic. Paleoclimatic record shows cyclic warming and cooling punctuated by cyclic abrupt cooling, an example of which is the Younger Dryas event or the 8200 year ago abrupt cooling event.
(Remember the solar magnetic cycle was at it highest level in 8000 years for the last 50 years of the twentieth century.)
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
‘Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Attempts to account for it have included the hypothesis of a south-flowing warm ocean current crossing the Equator[17] with a built-in time lag supposedly intended to match paleoclimatic data. That there is no significant delay in the Antarctic climate anomaly is already apparent at the high-frequency end of Fig. (1). While mechanisms involving ocean currents might help to intensify or reverse the effects of climate changes, they are too slow to explain the almost instantaneous operation of the Antarctic climate anomaly.”
“Figure (2a) also shows that the polar warming effect of clouds is not symmetrical, being most pronounced beyond 75◦S. In the Arctic it does no more than offset the cooling effect, despite the fact that the Arctic is much cloudier than the Antarctic (Fig. (2b)). The main reason for the difference seems to be the exceptionally high albedo of Antarctica in the absence of clouds.”
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
(See figure 2. Note low level clouds are reduced by minus 0.065% per year, starting in about 1993.)
“Fig. 2 shows the global annual averages of GCR induced ionization in the atmosphere and low cloud amounts for the period July 1983–June 2000 (ionization data is only updated to December 2000). A quick look at the data reveals the good agreement between those two quantities from 1983 to 1994, however, from 1995 to 2000 the correspondence breaks.
On average, for a given cloud cell, about 3–4% of all other cloud cells trend over approximately the past two decades is seen in both the total cloud amount reported by ISCCP (not shown), and the low cloud data (Figs. 2 and 3). A simple linear fit to the yearly low cloud data (Fig. 2) has a slope – 0:065%/yr. If this trend is subtracted from the low cloud data the correlation coefficient rises from 0.49 to 0.75, significant at the 99.5% level.”
“The dependence of the correlation on latitude suggests that whichever mechanism might be acting to couple the low cloudiness with the solar signal (or GCR) it operates only in certain latitude bands. This could be taken to indicate that the latitudinal variation is controlled by a combination of at least three factors including: (1) the requirement that the clouds were in a liquid state, (2) the known latitudinal variation in cosmic ray flux, and (3) an electroscavenging process operating on liquid clouds (Tinsley and Yu, 2003), dependent on current density changes in the global electric circuit, which have a different latitudinal variation.”
There is smoking gun evidence that cyclic changes to the sun is the cause of both the cyclic warming and cooling and the very, very, abrupt cooling events like the Younger Dryas and termination of the past interglacial warm periods.
For example the paper: “The role of solar forcing upon climate change” Published 1999. (At the time of the paper’s publishing the author knew there was correlation with the solar magnetic cycle but did not understand the mechanisms. The mechanisms by which solar magnetic cycle changes affect the planet’s climate are understood now (explained in published papers) with the exception of the solar magnetic cycle restart that correlates with cyclic abrupt climate change events. Recently it has been shown the cyclic abrupt climate events correlate with cyclic abrupt changes in orientation of the geomagnetic field’s axis (10 to 15 degrees) and rotational axis of the planet. The strongest of the cooling events (termination of the interglacial periods and the Younger Dryas cooling event) correlate with geomagnetic excursions at which time the geomagnetic field becomes non-dipole with overall field intensity reduction by a factor of roughly 5 to 6.
When the geomagnetic field’s axis is tilted off of the rotation axis of the planet (By the solar event. With time a counter emf generates a field that is again aligned with rotational axis of the planet.)the GCR strikes lower latitudes of the planet and causes cooling by creating more cloud cover at lower latitudes. At higher latitudes there is depending the specific location on the planet the orientation magnetic field warming and cooling depending on whether the change results in a relative increase or decrease in galactic cosmic rays that create ions in the atmosphere that cause ion mediated clouds to form.”
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.gg.rhbnc.ac.uk/elias/teaching/VanGeel.pdf
“A number of those Holocene climate cooling phases… most likely of a global nature (eg Magney, 1993; van Geel et al, 1996; Alley et al 1997; Stager & Mayewski, 1997) … the cooling phases seem to be part of a millennial-scale climatic cycle operating independent of the glacial-interglacial cycles (which are) forced (perhaps paced) by orbit variations.”
“… we show here evidence that the variation in solar activity is a cause for the millennial scale climate change.”
Last 40 kyrs
Figure 2 in paper. (From data last 40 kyrs)… “conclude that solar forcing of climate, as indicated by high BE10 values, coincided with cold phases of Dansgaar-Oeschger events as shown in O16 records”
Recent Solar Event
“Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) “…coincides with one of the coldest phases of the Little Ice Age… (van Geel et al 1998b)
Periodicity
“Mayewski et al (1997) showed a 1450 yr periodicity in C14 … from tree rings and …from glaciochemicial series (NaCl & Dust) from the GISP2 ice core … believed to reflect changes in polar atmospheric circulation..”
Don Shaw says: April 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
“The peak oil lie in the US is a self fulfilling event because of all the restrictions the administration places on exploration and production.”
How can something that happened over 40 years ago be a lie. It is not that it is going to run out, but the difficulty and cost of either extracting oil or converting from other sources that will increase. Oil is a very useful energy source that has many advantages over other types.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Oil_Production_and_Imports_1920_to_2005.png
1) Political tyranny is the ONLY thing preventing the USA from developing our vast hydrocarbon resources. If this is not the case, why do the Dims find it necessary to prevent our energy companies (through FORCE OF LAW) from developing those resources?
2) The EIA produced a slightly more sober assessment of Peak Oil:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/06/peak-oil-oil-shale.html
Like ALL assessments of Peak Oil, the EIA analysis examines ONLY those resources which global governments have allowed to be developed. Open up our VAST resources and the entire world will EASILY have enough inexpensive oil to last for at LEAST the next 100 years:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/07/oil-resources-in-usa.html
Proof? Here, you will find quantitative proof that ANWR alone could have prevented the ENTIRE global price spikes of 2008:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/07/world-oil-balance-vs-price.html
The same is true today:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2011/01/price-of-oil-here-we-go-again.html
3) Government subsidies for alternative energy development do NOTHING but subsidize and encourage FAILURE, corruption, theft, waste and tyranny:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2011/02/gangster-government-general-electric.html
If government would simply get out of the way, private enterprise will — when the time is right — develop the next generation of energy sources which are practical for the real world. If government does NOT get out of the way, we will NEVER GET THERE (the outcome I believe to be virtually certain in the age of global tyranny).
Ecclesiastical Uncle says:
April 10, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Re Mac the Knife April 10, 2011 10.45am.
“I do not really understand your comments. ”
That much is apparent.. or you are an artful dodger, feigning lack of understanding. Your comments come across as careful apology for individual and bureaucratic malfeasance, attempting exoneration by selective explanation of individual actions that never acknowledges the individuals responsibility to not lie, cheat, or steal. I find that repugnant, to put it mildly.
If your parents didn’t ingrain the fundamentals of honesty in you at an early age, you will have difficulty understanding it now. It comes down to this: We always have a choice. We can be honest and ethical or we can be deceitful cheats.
You choose – I’ve made mine.
[Snip. Your gratuitous insults are not appreciated. ~dbs, mod.]
Anthony,
Speaking of late night insomnia, I highly recommend you grab this completely free piece of software for Windows, Mac, and Linux which reduces the color temperature of your monitor at night, and gives you back nice bluish colors (normal), the color of the Sun, during the day. It was made by the guy who developed Google’s Picasa, so it’s a legitimate piece of software (and I love it; pretty much everyone who tries it does).
Once you install it and configure it with your location, you do nothing at all. Yet I bet you dollars to doughnuts that you feel more relaxed working with your computer at night once you get used to it (a day or s0). Less “burn your eyes out bright” and more “serene, peaceful, gets out of the way so you can work late at night, but paradoxically, doesn’t artificially keep you up by mimicking the Sun).
F.lux Better lighting…for your computer
http://stereopsis.com/flux/
Some thoughts on Ecclestiastical Uncle’s comments.
“All these people were merely doing their jobs … the way people have behaved is the consequence of the institutional arrangements”
Have a think about this. One of the other long term lefty scams, that of labour market regulation, is partly to blame for this.
Set minimum wages. Tell people it’s for their own good. Sell it as a “safety net”. Say that it stops “exploitation”. Make the gullible masses think that “the government” is looking after them.
Either ignore, or fail to understand, the real effects. Pricing people out of jobs, so that permanent unemployment results. Those in jobs have less security and market power. Those out of work have very little or even none.
Then, in response to permanent unemployment of those who are most disadvantaged, instead of removing the regulation that destroyed their opportunity, create antidiscrimination laws, and associated parasitic bureaucracies, to stop people choosing those they wish to employ, rather than leaving the market to clear itself and permit people to demonstrate their true value and work their way up. More dumbing down.
Then wonder why parasitic jobs flourish and people in such jobs willingly tolerate and even perform corruption in their work.
Not hard to see the connection with the fact that people in shonky research jobs are afraid to speak out.
“The question is how is the institutional situation to be arranged so that all those who work within it are free of the dilemma of whether to behave ethically or whether to do what their employer wants. Evidently, the answer is not obvious to government (or to me).”
Wise up the majority. Then the scam of labour market regulation can be abolished. Good luck with that.
“I expect all but a few of us here would have behaved in much the same way in the same circumstances”
No again. Maybe a few, but I feel that the great majority of people who post on Anthony’s excellent blog would expose and if necessary quit.
“If blame has to be placed somewhere, I suppose it should be with Government.”
Absolutely not. Certainly, governments have failed dismally on the climate hoax matter, as in other matters including the labour market one that I mentioned, but ultimately every individual capable of exercising discriminating judgment must do so to avoid easily corrupted power seekers, ie basically weak paranoid people, getting themselves into positions of power.
“the UEA crew departed from that path in order to establish a particular truth”
You mean a particular lie, or set of lies. No lie can be established as a truth, only misinterpreted as one.
“try and lay off the people” by which I assume you mean “try to lay off the people”
Again, absolutely not. Feed them with valid information. Expose them. Make them squirm increasingly until the continuation of their corrupt parasitic jobs becomes even more uncomfortable than exiting into the corrupted labour market with the risk of not being able to find another job any time soon.
Staying in their jobs longer, until the excrement finally and spectacularly impacts the air circulation apparatus, would mean that they would be even less likely to find work again in a similar field.
Matthew said “Losing/destroying one’s raw data, especially on a project this large, is the scientific equivalent of eating one’s young. There is no excuse for this, and the most generous explanation is that these are a bunch of incompetents who should never be allowed near a lab.”
I agree, including with the “most generous explanation” bit.
“They would defend themselves by claiming that they were only bending the truth a little and that such behaviour is commonplace amongst the politicians for whom they work.”
As above, the answer is in wising up the masses, not in permitting more excuses.
“So, I suppose, if you shoot the crew, you shoot the lot. Well, now, that’s an idea”
Now, that is an idea.
Electoral power wielded by people who are sufficiently wise to be free and remain so is the answer.
Dave Springer – good comment re ice ages, the one we’re in now and the desirability of warming.
I like your comment “the CAGW boffins should STFU and get off my ass” 🙂
This guy seems to have some idea of what he’s talking about.
http://www.climatechangehoax.com/
Eastern Australia has just had one of the coldest years in a century. Yet recent plant growth rates have been staggering due to the vastly increased water availability.
William,
Thanks for that. Exactly the kind of reasoned data that keeps me partially skeptical that CO2 is the only culprit involved in causing the Arctic to be the warmest in 2,000 years. Excellent…thanks again.
1DandyTroll says:
April 11, 2011 at 11:26 am
No it’s the people in Shell, Exxon and Aramco that are saying this.:
“All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas. ”
— William J. Cummings, Exxon-Mobil company spokesman, December 2005
“It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil. Any new or unconventional oil is going to be expensive. ”
— Lord Ron Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell, October 2008
“[World] reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so-called reserves are in fact resources. They’re not delineated, they’re not accessible, they’re not available for production. ”
— Sadad I. Al-Husseini, former VP of Aramco, presentation to the Oil and Money conference, October 2007
Don Shaw says:
April 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
If there was plenty of easily accessable oil in the US then why are you a net importer of oil?
It’s because the oil you have in the ground cost more to get out the ground than it’s worth on the open market. Now if you’re happy for the price of oil to be +$200 a barrel then yeah you have lots of oil. I doubt most of the people can afford that price though and the increase in cost of everything that goes with it.
A typical oil field might leave about 50% of the oil in the ground, not because they can’t get it out, but because it costs more to extract it than the can sell it for.
As an energy source oil is pretty cheap, but that’s the problem, the cheap oil is running out.
Yeah you can convert coal and natural gas to run your cars, the reason it’s not being done is because oil is cheaper. So if you want to use those methods then the cost is going to have to go up which is my original point.
It’s better to find alternative source to oil now rather than wait until oil is $250 a barrel and be forced to.
SBVOR says:
April 11, 2011 at 8:31 am
SteveE says:
April 11, 2011 at 1:45 am
Curiousgeorge says:
April 10, 2011 at 6:45 am
“The entire CAGW edifice is designed to eliminate modern energy production and the benefits that brings. What I find incomprehensible is that so many people are willing, even eager, to stake our energy supply and our civilization on something as unpredictable as the weather!”
Well it’ll happen because we choose to do it, or because we are forced to do it when the oil and gas runs out in a few years time.
SteveE would — no doubt — be surprised to learn that the USA has — in untapped resources — about 6 or 7 times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. And, one reaches that number by examining only a FEW of our untapped resources:
————-
Resources are not reserves, the earth’s mantle has lots of diamonds in it, doesn’t mean it’s cost effective to mine ’em out though.
The US has lots of potential for oil shale, but there is currently not significant production from them as they cost a lot to get out the ground. More than the oil is worth on the open market at the moment.
You see One Tree, you’ve seen Yamal!
MarkW says:
April 11, 2011 at 10:22 am
10-20 years is when peak all will be reached, not run out. At this point the price of oil will increase dramatically. We’ve seen the price increase by 50% due to the unrest in teh middle east. What do you think will happen when there isn’t enough production to meet demand?
“I supose you have managed to keep yourself ignorant of the huge discoveries being made in the rest of the world.”
You mean like the Tupi field in Brazil? 7-8 billion barrels of oil that is recoverable when current global consumption is ~30 billion barrels a year.
It should also be noted that you can’t just turn the taps on and produce the oil, it’ll take decades to produce all the oil from a multi-billion barrel field.
It makes me laugh that many people on this blog say that they are sceptical about climate change and that you shouldn’t believe what the scientists tell them.
However they are perfectly fine with being told that there’s loads of oil left in the US and everything is fine, no need to worry.
Even if comsumption remains flat the world will have used 750 billion barrels of oil in that time, a few billion barrels on the Atlantic margin won’t even make a dent.
They claim that there is loads of oil in the Atlantic margin… how much has been found on the Atlantic margin of the UK, France, Spain and Norway? A few billion barrels? Global consumption is 30 billion a year! Even if you discovered it in the next 5 years it’d take another 5 to start extracting it and then at least 10-15 years to produce it.
There might be production from oil shales, but that hasn’t been done in any significant amount because it costs much more than it does to produce oil and gas and so isn’t economical.
Oil won’t run out, but the rate at which it can be produced will become less than the rate at which it is being consumed.
Am I missing something – I don’t see this as a “game changer” just another example of poor communication and some sloppiness by scientists rushing about their work. Any feedback on exactly why UEA opposed the FOI request?
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
Forget Mullen. Just rehash the ‘hide-the-decline’ nonsense. Must evolution go back in order to get GDP into infinity and beyond? It will not work.
Chris in Hervey Bay says: (April 11, 2011 at 3:04 pm)
All I can say is, thank God for Steven McIntyre, he may have just saved at least one whole country, stuck down here at the bottom of the world.
Fully endorsed and cheered, Chris… except for the last 9 words. Printing atlases and maps upside down is a shame and a conspiracy against us…
SteveE:
At April 12, 2011 at 1:20 am you assert:
“Yeah you can convert coal and natural gas to run your cars, the reason it’s not being done is because oil is cheaper.”
No, it is not “cheaper”. The reason crude oil continues to be used is infrastructue investment.
There is plenty of oil. ‘Peak Oil’ is an urban myth. And the possibility of oil-from-coal is one of the several reasons why.
Therefore, you are wrong when you assert that, “It’s better to find alternative source to oil now”. People will look for alternatives if they still need oil when it starts to become scarce which – at the earliest – would be centuries in the future. Monies spent on finding alternatives now would probably be a waste because we cannot know if oil will be needed centuries in the future.
Richard