Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Obama, on the eve of a 3 day flying tour of Alaska, to highlight the effects of global warming, has been forced to defend his decision to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic.
According to Obama;
“Our economy still has to rely on oil and gas. As long as that’s the case, I believe we should rely more on domestic production than on foreign imports.”
However, green groups have gone on the attack, accusing Obama of hypocrisy, and of undermining his own global warming vision (same article).
“There is a very obvious contradiction between meaningful action to address climate change and continued exploration for remote and difficult hydrocarbon resources,” said Michael LeVine, Arctic campaigner for Oceana.
“Moving forward with exploiting Arctic oil and gas is inconsistent with the Administration’s stated goal and meaningful action on climate change.”
Credo, another campaign group, accused Obama of “self-defeating hypocrisy”.
In my opinion, Green groups are once again demonstrating that there is no compromise with fanaticism. Either you support every line item of their radical agenda, or they treat you as the enemy. By any reasonable metric, President Obama is the best friend green groups have ever had in the White House. Yet rather than recognise that President Obama is a green president, environmental groups are on the attack, because Obama has not fulfilled every one of their economically destructive and environmentally pointless demands.
He is probably thinking about funding for his future presidential library and is pandering to the deepest pockets out there. He’s an idiot but he isn’t stupid.
Baloney. It’s a military consideration. Oil is still National Security Item #1 ever since the 1973 embargo when the embargo left global military sites, planes, ships, trucks, supply lines, troops and personnel with a one-to-two-day supply of fuel, and terrified the military. Also, just look at the Chukcki Sea (where they are drilling) on a map. What? 45 miles from Russia? The US wants that field. Obama is playing chicken with Putin, after all.
MRW
“Obama is playing chicken with Putin, after all.”
Hmmm – on Ukraine – and the MH jet shot out of the sky?
How many innocents killed in a terrifying fashion [think about it. On a scheduled airline flight – hit by a missile].
On the Baltics and the Estonian officer kidnapped in Estonia – and now jailed for 15 years?
On key Russian ally Iran – and their resuscitated nuclear program.
Hmm – Sanctions dropped. Checks and Balances?
Energy blackmail of the old Warsaw Pact nations – Gazprom diplomacy?
===
As the lead author, Eric Worrall, writes: –
“By any reasonable metric, President Obama is the best friend green groups have ever had in the White House.”
Ahhh – perhaps I can give another encomium for POTUS:
“By any reasonable metric, President Obama is the best friend Russian Communists have ever had in the White House.”
Fixed – no?
===
Auto
You say that like you believe the current president wants his army to be successful at something. How did a notion like that form in your head?
Auto, you forgot the canceling of antimissile installations in Poland and Czech Repub. (so as not offend the bear).
West Coast sea level still below 1983. No major US hurricane strikes in 10 years. Global temps 3 degrees Celsius lower than 8,000 years ago during Hoiocene Climatic Optimum, and 8 degrees C below Eemian interglacial 125,000 years ago. Ignorance is bliss, at least for politicians. For the rest of us, it’s economic suicide, unless you are a developing nation and are having nothing to do with climate change alarmism.
West Coast sea level still below 1983. Are you saying sea level is not rising. If you are, you are wrong
No major US hurricane strikes in 10 years. Are you saying globally hurricanes are down, coz if you are you are wrong. Already well past yearly average for cat 5’s in 2015
Global temps 3 degrees Celsius lower than 8,000 years ago during Hoiocene Climatic Optimum… I call BS on this.
8 degrees C below Eemian interglacial 125,000 years ago…. really, let’s have a reputable source.
National Hurricane Center: Historical U.S. Hurricane Strikes by Decade
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
Also, Stormfax Weather Almanac
http://www.stormfax.com/hurdecad.htm
Atlantic Basin hurricanes.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html
@Simon, re: global hurricanes
What’s your source for this?
Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray predicted on August 4, 2015:
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2015/aug2015/aug2015.pdf
I guess “because” is too difficult to spell.
Why do you blatantly lie? The facts quoted were west coast gauges and U.S. major hurricane landfalls. Starting your lies with “do you mean…” doesn’t change what was written correctly.
The corruption of Cat 5 claims does not mean major hurricanes are increasing. Qld was hit by a “Cat 5” this year. Roofs untouched, BOM showing Cat 2 speeds before data disappeared. Tacloban had a “Cat 5” based solely on an obvious error in BBC reporting (sustained wind speed in km/h transcribed as mph). But trees and buildings intact except in storm surge areas.
I said “West Coast sea level still below 1983.” The tide gauge records 1983 to 2013 confirm this. Sea level is rising; it has been since the end of the Ice Age, at an average rate of two feet per century for the past 200 centuries. The rate for the past century is eight inches, and the major increases occurred as a result of El Ninos – see 1983, 1997, and the current surge. The rate 1961 to 1985, when atmospheric CO2 increased rapidly, was four inches per century globally, The global rate 1900 to 1961, and 1985 to date, has been almost one foot per century, but the rate has diminished during the past decade.
I said “No major US hurricane strikes in 10 years.” Have there been any? What were their names and dates?
Your ignorance of past natural climate change is par for the alarmist course. For temperatures the past 10,000 years read “The Two-Mile Time Machine” about the Greenland ice core studies. Even alarmists agree the Eemian interglacial was much warmer. A very recent ice core study found: “Previous climate warmth: So far the ice cores can only provide us a glimpse into the Eemian warm period. But we can already tell that Eemian climate was significantly warmer than the climate of the current Holocene interglacial – probably about 5°C warmer.” http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/climatechange/glacial_interglacial/eemian/
Simon, since you have no reputable sources for anything you wrote, and don’t seem to comprehend the written language, maybe you should try something you know something about. However, for what you have shown so far, that would be quite limited.
majormike1
Why is it Americans have the view that what happens on their patch is the planet? Atlantic hurricanes are only some of the action that happens on the planet at any one time. It has been said many times by many people that 2015 would be a quiet season for the Atlantic. Why… because it is par for the course in an El Nino year. But the Pacific will fire up. That’s what we have seen…. a record start to the season in the Western Pacific
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/06/08/northern-hemisphere-hurricane-season-off-to-record-start-fueled-by-el-nino/
And please don’t dribble the “we are coming out of an ice age” nonsense. We should have stopped warming some time ago. But we haven’t, which is why the ice is melting, the sea is rising and 2014 was a record year for heat till along came 2015.
“And please don’t dribble the “we are coming out of an ice age” nonsense. We should have stopped warming some time ago. But we haven’t, which is why the ice is melting, the sea is rising and 2014 was a record year for heat till along came 2015.”
The real warming did stop a long time ago, almost 4,000 years ago at the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Since then there have been four warm periods – the Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and the present. Each has been less warm than its predecessor, so the Earth has been on a cooling trend for over 6,000 years.The sea rose following the Ice Age over 400 feet, but in the past 6,000 years has fallen a net of about ten feet from the highest point during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. I just returned from an Arctic journey, and one of its highlights was seeing the beaches in Iceland that were formed far above and far inland from the present beaches. Since then sea level has fallen, then risen, several times during the lesser warm periods since. Sea level fell recently during the Little Ice Age (1400-1850AD) – it was higher than now during the Medieval Warm Period (850-1400AD) – and the current sea level increase is just the natural rebound from that period.
The Greenland ice core studies (“The Two-Mile Time Machine”) show that 9,100 of the past 10,000 years were warmer than any one of the past 100 years. Put another way, we are in the coolest 10% of the past 10,000 years.
If you were a student of natural climate cycles, you would know that for the last 2.6 million years, 100,000-year glacial periods have alternated with much shorter interglacial periods (roughly 15,000 years), You would know that most previous interglacials were warmer than the present one. You would realize the obvious: climate changed a great deal without anthropogenic causation. However, your self-professed ignorance: – don’t dribble about coming out of an ice age – shows you are blinded to the historical pattern of natural climate change.
“Climate change: it’s what climate does.”
Simon sez:
We should have stopped warming some time ago.
Global warming stopped almost twenty years ago, so you’ve been wrong for a long time.
And:
…the ice is melting, the sea is rising and 2014 was a record year for heat till along came 2015.
Only in your fevered imagination. In the real world, 2014 was far from being the warmest, and 2015 isn’t much different from 2014:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9549-Jun.-17-21.12.gif
Those are satellite measurements. Compare them with Simon’s baseless assertions, which are all he has.
DB…. Sorry…. I meant the measurements down here where we live. You know the place you stand and walk around and do stuff. All those are pointing up.
majormike1
There is so much nonsense in your last post I can’t possibly begin… nor would I waste everyones time addressing each point. But, you quote past temp increases and decreases as if they are somehow proof todays warming is not important. But to Quote (loosely)Dr Richard Alley (read what he has to say about ice cores from Greenland) Past temp rises and increases have pretty much been accounted for. We know those factors are not in play now.
You are hung up on treating your opinions as facts, and facts provided by others as opinions.
majormike1
I think I m a realist. I listen to people who really know this stuff. When I see BS I cal it. Take 1 hour of your life and listen to this talk by Dr Alley (a world renowned expert in what the planet is telling us historically) and you will see why the bum fluff you have been writing is… well… just that bum fluff.
Simon, can you write anything factual about the Eemian interglacial of 125,000 years ago, or the previous warming periods of the Holocene interglacial? How much greater was the sudden cooling, then warming, of the Younger Dryas than anything since? How many times more did the glaciers of Glacier Bay, Alaska, retreat prior to 1900 than after (hint: over 10 times)? How much farther north was the Arctic tree line 6,000 years ago than now (hint: hundreds of kilometers)? What was the coldest period of the past 10,000 years (hint: the Little Ice Age (1400-1850AD)? How much higher was sea level during the Eemian interglacial than now (hint: up to thirty feet higher)? Did the Kilimanjaro ice cap shrink more before or after Hemingway wrote of it in 1939 (hint: before)?
Those who do not understand that climate change is natural are doomed, as you are, to display ignorance of climate change.
“Climate change. It’s what climate does.”
“Climate change. It’s what climate does.”
Climate only changes when it is forced to. The trick is to understand why so you can understand things better. What did you think of Dr Alley’s talk?
Simon
I read Dr. Alley’s book, “the Two-Mile Time Machine.” What did you think of it?
Here’s the Amazon summary: “Richard Alley, one of the world’s leading climate researchers, tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. In the 1990s he and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. Here Alley offers the first popular account of the wildly fluctuating climate that characterized most of prehistory–long deep freezes alternating briefly with mild conditions–and explains that we humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate. But, he warns, our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years.
The Two-Mile Time Machine begins with the story behind the extensive research in Greenland in the early 1990s, when scientists were beginning to discover ancient ice as an archive of critical information about the climate. Drilling down two miles into the ice, they found atmospheric chemicals and dust that enabled them to construct a record of such phenomena as wind patterns and precipitation over the past 110,000 years. The record suggests that “switches” as well as “dials” control the earth’s climate, affecting, for example, hot ocean currents that today enable roses to grow in Europe farther north than polar bears grow in Canada. Throughout most of history, these currents switched on and off repeatedly (due partly to collapsing ice sheets), throwing much of the world from hot to icy and back again in as little as a few years.
Alley explains the discovery process in terms the general reader can understand, while laying out the issues that require further study: What are the mechanisms that turn these dials and flip these switches? Is the earth due for another drastic change, one that will reconfigure coastlines or send certain regions into severe drought? Will global warming combine with natural variations in Earth’s orbit to flip the North Atlantic switch again? Predicting the long-term climate is one of the greatest challenges facing scientists in the twenty-first century, and Alley tells us what we need to know in order to understand and perhaps overcome climate changes in the future.”
Among many key points, beyond the fact Alley demonstrates that most of the past 10,000 years were warmer than now, is that CO2 was not a driving factor; at most, CO2 trails warming by hundreds of years as ocean waters warm and release CO2 to the atmosphere. Then when CO2 is relatively high, orbital variation causes the start of the next glacial period, and the cooling waters absorb CO2, as you should have learned in basic physics classes: warming water releases CO2, cooling water absorbs it. There is nothing in the even and symmetrical cooling and warming cycles of the past 2.6 million years that shows CO2 as a triggering factor for initiating warming. In fact. the opposite is the case. The driving factor for these periods of significant and extremely rapid climate change has been proven without doubt to be orbital. It has been warming slowly since the end of the Little Ice Age (1850). Alley shows that larger changes occurred rapidly naturally, sometimes in only three years.
“Climate change. It’s what climate does,” and has been doing for billions of years without human help.
“Climate change. It’s what climate does,” and has been doing for billions of years without human help. No one would dispute that. It’s just we are giving it a rather large nudge at the moment. As Dr Alley says…
“Ice cores give us two pieces of the climate story. One, they confirm that our understanding of climate is actually pretty good. Climate changes for a lot of reasons, but CO2 is a big one. The ice records of climate change confirm really what is fundamental physics. If we raise CO2, it has a warming influence. Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Well, yes. Does more of it have a warming influence? Yes. Is there any real question about that? No. How quickly is CO2 rising? Very. There is nothing in the ice core record for almost 800,000 years—which is as far back as the ice core record goes—that has been as high as this. So the basic picture is that our energy system, which is good for us, is also pushing the climate pretty hard through CO2.”
Simon
Notice Alley never quantifies the effect of CO2, and does not attribute the cycles of alternating glacial and interglacial periods during the past 800,000 years (actually 2.6 million years) to changes in CO2. It is obvious why he doesn’t and can’t. His studies show CO2 is highest for the past 800,000 years, and current warming is very modest to the earlier part of the Holocene interglacial, and previous even warmer interglacials, such as the Eemian 125,000 years ago. You can’t have lower CO2 and greater warmer previously, and higher CO2 and lower warming now, and say that increased CO2 is the driver of greater warming.
The Vostok ice cores clearly show that warming preceded increased CO2, and logically you can’t have something that occurred later causing something that occurred earlier. Notice how each interglacial ended when CO2 was at its highest point, and the Earth entered the next glacial period instead of higher levels of CO2 causing runaway warming.
If increasing temperature causes increased humidity which triggers even higher temperature, i.e. runaway warming, then why hasn’t previous periods of greater warming caused runaway warming? Since it never has, why would it this time, when the warming is modest compared to previous periods, and when the level of atmospheric CO2 is modest compared to previous periods?
Makes no sense, right?
Majormike1
And this…
Among many key points, beyond the fact Alley demonstrates that most of the past 10,000 years were warmer than now, is that CO2 was not a driving factor; at most, CO2 trails warming by hundreds of years as ocean waters warm and release CO2 to the atmosphere. Then when CO2 is relatively high, orbital variation causes the start of the next glacial period, and the cooling waters absorb CO2, as you should have learned in basic physics classes: warming water releases CO2, cooling water absorbs it. There is nothing in the even and symmetrical cooling and warming cycles of the past 2.6 million years that shows CO2 as a triggering factor for initiating warming. In fact. the opposite is the case. The driving factor for these periods of significant and extremely rapid climate change has been proven without doubt to be orbital. It has been warming slowly since the end of the Little Ice Age (1850). Alley shows that larger changes occurred rapidly naturally, sometimes in only three years.”
… is called misrepresenting someones work. Alley would in no way agree with your main point here which is CO2 plays little if any part in warming. He (if you had read his book) is of the opposite opinion. For the record, I’m picking you have not read his book.
Simon
Once again you struck out. I’ve read Alley’s book – I took it with me on my Norway/Svalbard/Iceland trip two months ago – and it’s equally obvious you haven’t read it. What part of Alley’s description of a ten degree change in temperature without any CO2 driver don’t you understand? Alley agrees CO2 is the highest in 800,000 years, yet his studies of Greenland ice cores led to his conclusion that it was much warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum than now.
Are you telling me that Alley said rising CO2 ended the last ice age? Or any ice ages? Atmospheric CO2 was under 280 ppm when the ice age ended, and stayed that way, according to the IPCC, for thousands of years. During those thousands of years there were four periods of greater warming than present, as Alley shows in his Greenland temperature charts.
For your own proof, go to the Arctic shore and observe tree trunks that are now hundreds of kilometers north of the current tree line. Go to high and dry beaches in Iceland that are now several kilometers back from the shoreline. Observe coral mounts on tropical islands that are ten feet above current sea level.
Then remember:” Climate change is what climate does.”
Naturally.
Simon sez:
Sorry…. I meant the measurements down here where we live. You know the place you stand and walk around and do stuff. All those are pointing up.
No, all those things are not “pointing up”. And satellite data is the most accurate. You just don’t like what it’s telling us.
Next, Simon says:
please don’t dribble the “we are coming out of an ice age” nonsense… I think I m a realist.
It isn’t nonsense, and if you believe the planet isn’t significantly warmer than during the Maunder Minimum then your alarmist blind faith trumps a mountain of data. A ‘realist’ you certainly are not.
Next:
…you quote past temp increases and decreases as if they are somehow proof todays warming is not important.
It’s not important. At all. There has rarely been a century in the geological record when global T has fluctuated by only a tiny 0.7ºC over a century+. That is extremely flat. What do you want? A zero degree change?? That has never happened.
Just prior to our current Holocene climate, global temperatures changed by TENS of degrees — within only a decade or two! And that was before human emissions began. (That’s per the same R.B. Alley that you enjoy speaking for.)
It’s amusing to see the alarmist clique running around in circles and hand-wringing over a tiny 0.7º wiggle over 150 years, when the planet has naturally warmed and cooled by well over ten degrees within a decade or two; now that is scary!! But 0.7º over a century and a half is not only not scary; we have been in a true “Goldilocks” climate. Only the truly deluded alarmist contingent would look at this, and claim that it’s a bad thing:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg
Next, Simon asserts:
Climate changes for a lot of reasons, but CO2 is a big one.
Simon, you always rely on baseless assertions like that. I understand; you believe that. But you cannot produce a single verifiable, testable measurement quantifying the warming effect of CO2 — much less any measurements quantifying global warming caused by human-emitted CO2. Because you see, Simon, global warming stopped many years ago.
Thousands ofscientists have been diligently searching for measurements quantifying the degree of global warming caused by human CO2 emissions for at least the past 50 years. Because if one of them found such a measurement, that discovery would put them on the short list for a Nobel Prize. Every scientist craves that honor above all others. Some even lie about receiving a Nobel Prize.
Next, Simon says:
If we raise CO2, it has a warming influence. Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Well, yes. Does more of it have a warming influence? Yes. Is there any real question about that? No. How quickly is CO2 rising? Very. There is nothing in the ice core record for almost 800,000 years…
It may surprise Simon, but I agree with those statements. The question is this: How much does CO2 raise global T, at its current concentration of ≈400 ppm? The answer is clear: the rise in CO2 has not raised global T in any measurable way. For almost twenty years now, there has been essentially no global warming. There can be two explanations for that:
Either CO2 has no warming effect at all, or its effect is so minuscule that it is unmeasurable with current instruments. (Personally, I accept the second explanation.) Since CO2 does not cause any measurable warming, it can be completely disregarded for all policy purposes. It is a non-problem.
As for CO2 being higher than during the last 800k years, that is a good thing. There is no evidence at all that the rise in CO2 has caused any global harm. Thus, we can state with confidence that the rise in CO2 is ‘harmless’. And there is plenty of evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere: agricultural productivity is rising in lockstep with the rise in CO2.
So there is no downside to the rise in CO2, and plenty of benefits. The alarmist crowd gets all of its predictions completely wrong because its basic premise — that a rise in CO2 would lead to runaway global warming and climate disruption — was flat wrong.
In reality, more CO2 is a good thing. Cherry-picking the past 800,000 years is not done because that’s as far back as the ice core evidence goes. We have other proxies besides ice cores, and they show that the biosphere is starved of CO2:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
[Click in chart to embiggen]
Simon, I can provide verifiable links to back up every statement I’ve made here. Just ask, and I will provide them. That’s the difference between us. Assertions are fine, but don’t expect others to take your word for something just because you believe it. This is a science site, not s Scientology site.
DB.
Satellites don’t even measure temperature, they measure light and then the data is tortured/adjusted. And they don’t measure the oceans (where most of the heat is going) or the ground where we live. And DB what are you going to say when later this year they break their own records? You will have nothing left to use to fight with from the corner you have painted yourself into.
Simon
The torture and adjustment of surface temperature measurement, which covers less than 25% off the Earth’s surface, is monumental compared to the satellite adjustments. Before you make a further ass of yourself, investigate how satellite temperature is calibrated. Also, look at the RSS record for lower troposphere warming – over eighteen years and no significant warming, and RSS is an alarmist organization.
For ocean temperature, look at world tide gauge measurements, which show a low and decelerating trend (less than a foot per century) in sea level rise. (go to PSMSL.org http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/map.html to have your ignorance dispelled).
Climate change. It’s what climate does while alarmists make fools of themselves.
Simon,
After ignoring all my points, you deflected into this irrelevant comment:
“Satellites don’t even measure temperature…”
By that specious ‘reasoning’, thermometers don’t measure temperature either, they measure expansion. It’s amusing watching the deflection you resort to, trying desperately to defend what everyone can see is your failed conjecture. A Jehovah’s Witness has nothing on your green religion. You both dig in your heels, never acknowledging any point that deconstructs your eco-faith.
And now, we have a prediction! Simon says:
“…what are you going to say when later this year they break their own records? You will have nothing left to use to fight with from the corner you have painted yourself into.”
Simon, my credulous young friend, we will all see what happens “later this year”. Time will tell, won’t it? But if you believe you can predict the future like that, the stock market is the place for you. Since you know what will happen, we can stop wasting all that money on satellite measurements, because Simon has the answers. He sees the future: 2015 will be the hottest year EVAH!! But Simon, global T will have to shoot straight up for that to happen. This is September. You have just 4 months to get it right — in your case, for the first time evah:
Simon, I have plenty of facts to “fight with”. My problem is that you ignore every inconvenient fact posted; you deflect, you go off on irrelevant tangents, you never answer questions or respond to the evidence I post, and you use baseless assertions and predictions as your primary tool to “fight with”. You follow no rules, except for the usual alarmist tactic of “Say Anything”. You emit your assertions and then sit back, comfortable in your own mind that you have once again ‘painted me into a corner’. But al you have done is to avoid the evidence presented.
We can’t both be right, Simon. So we will observe what Planet Earth tells us over the next 4 months. Either global temperatures will break all previous records, in which case I will be the first to admit that you were right and I was wrong… or this will be just another ordinary year, in which case you will probably be nowhere to be found. Because although climate alarmists have been consistently wrong in the past, they never admit it.
So what will you say, Simon, if 2015 is not a record breaking year? I think I know the answer. But I won’t make any predictions. You could always surprise me.
DB You have already lost the 2015 debate. We would have to freeze over from here for it not to be warmest year on record.
And “Simon, I have plenty of facts to “fight with”. Fact from cornflakes packets don’t count DB.
Simon
The extent of your fact-free comments is breathtaking.
DB… anyway, why would you want to use a data set that doesn’t even measure the ocean. (where most of the energy is going) Like measuring the horsepower of a car with the engine idling.
Meanwhile in other news, a see a trio of Cat 4 hurricanes has just formed in the Pacific. And it is relevant because…. warmer water more intense storms was the prediction. Is this what is ahead of us as a larger area of the planet is above the 26.6 C needed to form these storms? Makes sense if you give it just a little thought.
majormike1 says to Simon:
You are hung up on treating your opinions as facts, and facts provided by others as opinions.
Exactly right. Simon presents his baseless assertions (his opinions) as ‘fact’, but he disregards verifiable evidence as opinions. For example, Simon sez:
DB You have already lost the 2015 debate. We would have to freeze over from here for it not to be warmest year on record.
Simon, that is just another of your baseless assertions. I posted a graph of satellite data showing that 2014, and so far in 2015, global temperatures are nowhere near past highs.
Reality has no place in Simon’s world view. The man-made global warming scare has colonized his mind. It has become his catechism. No rational arguments or facts can penetrate his religious conviction. As majormike1 observes:
Simon, the extent of your fact-free comments is breathtaking.
Yep. And Simon asks:
…anyway, why would you want to use a data set that doesn’t even measure the ocean.
Since satellite data provides measurements that include the oceans, that is just another example showing that Simon’s learning curve is still at the beginner’s level.
Simon argues based on his belief. When facts are presented that contradict his belief, he simply moves the goal posts. The ‘dangerous AGW’ narrative has colonized Simon’s mind, and facts only get in the way. That’s why his baseless assertions are so comfortable for him. They require no critical thinking. His eco-faith is enough.
It’s no wonder then that Simon is wrong about what he asserts. But he won’t let that stand in the way of his belief system. Even the embarassing fact that global warming stopped many years ago has no bearing on Simon’s belief. Beliefs are like that. They are the reason that martyrs will die to be right… even when they’re wrong.
Simon,
Despite your alarmist beliefs, hurricane activity has been steadily declining:
Simon,
IMO it’s more accurate to say that hurricanes need 80 F to maintain their intensity, not to form.
You said:
“And please don’t dribble the “we are coming out of an ice age” nonsense. We should have stopped warming some time ago. But we haven’t, which is why the ice is melting, the sea is rising and 2014 was a record year for heat till along came 2015.”
Why should we have stopped warming? Warm periods following cold periods like the LIA last for centuries, with ups and downs in temperature both before and after their peaks, which occur at roughly 1000 year intervals.
The fact is that the planet has indeed stopped warming, just as its previous three multidecadal warmings since the end of the LIA reversed into cooling.
Nothing is happening now that is any different from prior ups and downs during both warm and cool periods of the Holocene and other interglacials.
The ice is not net melting. Globally ice is increasing. The sea is rising at less than its post-LIA average. Last year was far from a record for heat. Only in the cooked to a crisp “surface records” of the professional liars at Hadley, GISS and NOAA is that “true”. The satellites and balloons show their false claim to be a blatant lie.
PS:
Pacific Hurricanes Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena are all weakening. Correct me if wrong, but aren’t they all Cat 3 or lower today?
Update:
Kilo has crossed the IDL to become a typhoon. It could strengthen again into a super typhoon. The other two hurricanes are still petering out though.
Tropical Depression Fourteen E off Mexico might become a hurricane, but the waters there are so unusually cool that it also might not make it to hurricane strength.
Meant Tropical Storm, not hurricane, for TD 14 E.
Gloria
If you can supply a “reputable reference” for this “wildly inaccurate, downright wrong, couldn’t be more stupid comment” ….
“The ice is not net melting. Globally ice is increasing”
I will be very impressed and will apologise for my direct comments above.
All you have to do is go to WUWT’s Sea Ice pages. Global ice has rebounded strongly from its 2012-13 low. Is this reputable enough for you?:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
It’s below average at the moment, due to seasonal variation, but has been above it for most of the past two years or more. Antarctic sea ice keeps setting records.
Thanks, Gloria, for that reputable reference.
Now I’ll sit back and wait for Simon’s promised apology…
…as if. Instead, we will get excuses.
I hope Simon is honest enough to apologize for such rude, unwarranted accusations.
It is true that at the moment Antarctic ice is a little below its record last year, and has been so since mid-July, but it’s still right on the 1981-2010 average:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
If supposed global warming were happening and sea ice extent be controlled by air temperature, then Antarctic sea ice should not have set a record extent in the alleged “warmest year ever” 2014.
Gloria…. GLORIA!!!!!… ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Sea Ice???? I’ve read some of your posts and they are pretty well written… but sea ice? The long term trend for the arctic is down my friend…. down down down. And yes (despite the recent blip) the Antarctic is growing. But we are losing 80% more ice in the arctic than has grown in the Antarctic. And that is only sea ice, which is a fraction of what is on the planet.
Land based ice is the real concern.
Take a look at this graph of glaciers world wide…
Now come on they tell a melting story.
And the GRACE satellites are confirming both Greenland and the Antarctic are melting.
So I think an apology is due…. but not from me. What do you think?
Simon
Well, the MOST the Arctic can ever lose is that 2.3 Mkm^2 residual at its lowest (September 2012) minimum value. At that moment, the arctic sea ice area anomaly was -2.5 Mkm^2. Now, that 2012 2.3 Arctic sea ice minimum area is down from its satellite-era minimum of about 4.6 Mkm^2. But, in 2014, the Antarctic sea ice sea ice set an all-time record high anomaly at 2.06 Mkm^2. So, last year, the excess Antarctic sea ice covered an area the size of Greenland!
Now, you claim we have lost 80% more sea ice in the Arctic than we have gained in the Antarctic. What numbers are YOU using? 2.06 (max gained) divided by 2.5 (max lost)? Why do you believe that number is relevant to anything?
Through almost all of the past two years, Arctic sea ice has steadfastly remained within 2 std deviations of its long term average levels. Through almost all of the past three years, the Antarctic sea ice has remained more than 2 std deviations ABOVE its long term average.
Simon,
Arctic sea ice is growing an in the average zone already. The trend from 1979 is misleading because that was at or near the highest extent of the past century. Just years before, in 1975, it was about the same as now.
Clearly global air temperature is not what mainly drives sea ice or the Antarctic would have lessened along with the Arctic. Antarctic sea ice is five times more important in planetary albedo than Arctic.
Antarctic land ice mass is growing, not shrinking. The little West Antarctic Ice Sheet was losing mass due to subglacial volcanism, but no more. The hugely more important, vast East AIS is gaining mass. It quit retreating over 3000 years ago.
Mother Nature every day in every way shows your fantasy ever more ridiculous.
Gloria
And what about the glaciers?
And what about the Grace satellite measurements?
And here is the clincher…. if ice was growing again sea level would be falling. It’s not it’s rising.
And frankly you are dreaming if you think the long term trend for the arctic is anything but down. Any scientist on the planet who looks at that stuff will tell you.
As for Antactic sea ice being more important to albedo… Shish!!!! I give up. The antarctic area may be, but not he sea ice on it’s own
Simon
Dead wrong. Again.
See, we we actually compare the effect of Antarctic sea ice against Arctic sea ice over the entire year, we find that the Antarctic sea ice – NOT the Antarctic land ice! – is 1.68 – 1.72 TIMES the effect of the Arctic sea ice on the earth’s heat budget.
More important, from today’s Arctic sea ice extents, reducing Arctic sea ice extents even more only serves to INCREASE heat losses from the Arctic Ocean 7 months of the year. (For only those summer months of April, May, June, July and August can the Arctic heat up. The rest of the year? More sea ice losses = a colder planet due to increased evaporation, convection, conduction and long wave radiation.)
Around the Antarctic? More sea ice means more energy is reflected, and the planet cools even more. And, since 1992, the Antarctic sea ice has been steadily increasing. Since 2011, Antarctic sea has been consistently over 2 standard deviations above average.
Simon,
I don’t have time to educate you on elementary science, but will simply point out that Antarctic sea ice is far more important than Arctic in its effect on planetary albedo because it extends much farther toward the equator. I’ll let you figure out why more sunlight is reflected at lower latitudes than higher.
GRACE, which is beset with all kinds of problems, shows the gigantic EAIS gaining mass, while, until recently at least, the little WAIS was losing mass. Nothing the least bit worrying.
As I told you already, sea level rise has slowed notably. Ice melt is not the only reason for sea level rise since the end of the LIA.
As for montane glaciers, some are growing and some are still continuing their post-LIA retreat. But they grew mightily during the LIA, so they should be expected to retreat over the past 150 years. There is zero evidence that rising CO2 causes their waxing and waning.
Gloria
And I shouldn’t have to teach you how to read a graph that is plummeting. What part of this graph didn’t you get?
NSIDC is not to be trusted any more than any other federal agency, but even if its data up to 2005 were remotely accurate, so what?
The warming since the end of the LIA is clearly not correlated with CO2, so how can whatever glaciers might be doing be so?
Check out the data for the past decade, BTW.
RACookPE1978
September 1, 2015 at 4:17 pm
Well said.
Consider also that the growing EAIS contains 90% of all the surface fresh water on the planet. Next to it, montane glaciers are a drop in a bucket, and the Greenland Ice Sheet and WAIS pale in comparison.
Simon’s religious conviction trumps all facts, no matter how numerous or convincing those facts are to rational readers.
Fact: The Antarctic contains more than ten times (10X) more ice than the Arctic.
Fact: Antarctic ice cover has been rising steadily.
Fact: Antarctic ice volume is increasing.
Fact: Global ice has remained the same for at least thirty years.
Fact: Sea level rise has not been accelerating, deconstructing one of the central beliefs of the climate alarmist cult. Sea level rise remains at about the same rate, both before and after the Industrial Revolution.
Fact: Global warming from any/all causes stopped almost twenty years ago, thus debunking the central prediction of the climate alarmist crowd.
Fact: Every alarming prediction, including (but not limited to) disappearing polar ice, and/or vanishing polar bears, and/or the “hottest ever” years, and/or runaway global warming, and/or ‘climate disruption’, etc., etc., have all been shown to be flat WRONG.
When every scary prediction made turns out to have been 100.0% wrong, rational people will eventually conclude that the basic premise of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ scare has been falsified. Natural climate variability is sufficient to fully explain all observations.
The only people who have not arrived at that conclusion are those who are ruled by their emotions. Thus, their belief system is based on religion, not on science.
Simon is one of those people. He accepts every factoid that could possibly support his eco-religion, because confirmation bias rules his thinking.
Likewise, Simon rejects every verifiable fact that falsifies his beliefs, the same way a new religious convert rejects any contrary facts as being the rantings of an apostate. His belief system has no room for science, or for the Scientific Method, or the climate Null Hypothesis, or Occam’s Razor, or anything else that could possibly contradict the bubble of True Belief he lives in. He sees only what he wants to see.
The comments from everyone else here are not intended to convince Simon of anything, because he is not capable of being convinced. Rather, we are pointing out facts, versus Simon’s enviro-cult beliefs, so that new readers will not see only Simon’s unscientific world view. Readers can then make up their own minds.
In science, a conjecture or hypothesis is falsified if a prediction is shown to be wrong. All it takes is one time. But that has happened so many times that no honest scientist still accepts the ‘CO2=cAGW’ conjecture any more.
They may not speak out publicly in the interest of their job security. But anyone who still believes that a rise in (harmless, beneficial) CO2 from 3 parts in 10,000, to only 4 parts in 10,000 over a century and a half is going to cause runaway global warming and climate disruption is not an honest scientist.
Instead, they are ‘rent seekers’, repeating the alarmist cult’s false narrative for self-serving reasons — or they are like Simon, and they accept the “carbon” scare as their new religion.
Either way, their position is not scientific in the least. It is emotion-based, or promoted for self-serving reasons. Because as we have repeatedly pointed out, there are still no verifiable, testable measurements quantifying AGW. Their belief is all they have.
Science requires data. Measurements are data. But there is still not a single AGW measurement. So the only thing left for folks like Simon is religion. Catastrophic AGW is now officially their cult. Just ask Pope Francis. Or ask Simon…
DB… Thank you. I am humbled to be mentioned in the same sentence as the pope. Back to Obama (the topic of this thread). What a great thing he has done renaming the country’s tallest mountain from Mt. McKinley to Denali. There goes a man of integrity.
Simon
Your rush to irrelevance is breathtaking, and highlights your disassociation with any facts pertaining to natural climate change.
majormike1
I think you will find roughly 97% of climate scientists would agree with almost all I have said. So where does that you on the relevance scale?
Simon
Repeating such unscientific blather confirms you are a stranger to science, as have your fact-free comments on this topic:
“The 97% “consensus” study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook’s study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it, “The ‘97% consensus’ article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country [UK] that the energy minister should cite it.”
– Mike Hulme, Ph.D. Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia (UEA)
The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook’s (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% “consensus” study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook’s study is an embarrassment to science.”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html
Simon, you are an embarrassment to science.
Simon
Thanks for your tireless efforts to demonstrate your science illiteracy. More about the “97%”:
“Summary: Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts of papers (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW and found 7930 (66%) held no position on AGW. While only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (Humans are the primary cause). Their methodology was so fatally flawed that they falsely classified skeptic papers as endorsing AGW, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. Cook et al.’s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.”
That you defer to such chicanery and at the same time avoid the irrefutable facts we have presented here concerning past periods of natural climate change shows that you are dedicated to belief, not science. And as are all true believers, you are deaf, dumb and blind to reality.
majormike1
Nice to hear from you again. That’s why I said roughly 97%. Actually I couldn’t care or less about Cooks Paper. In fact, I never mentioned it. Funny how people here talk about it more than serious observers in the outside world.
But….. there is a consensus and it is reflected in the IPCC reports. Reports that are written by the most informed minds we have at this point. The reports, (as they should) change as we learn more about our world and the forces that drive our climate. But let’s be clear here, as they improve, they are ever more convinced of the effect our burning fossil fuels is having on the place you and I live.Planet A. And do I need to remind you, there is no Planet B?
But then I suspect (actually I’m pretty confident) you will dismiss the IPCC as a communist/socialist/environmental plot, determined to rob hard working people (mostly republicans/conservatives) of their hard earned money. Am I right?
President Obama, on the eve of a 3 day flying tour of Alaska…
His flight engineers asked him if he knew what that plane ran on
Whatever your opinions on Obama or Greenpeace, surely drilling in the Arctic does not seem a sensible option to pursue, especially as the amount of available oil is minimal. We need to leave some places alone and the Arctic seems to be high risk with little gain financially and considerable consequences environmentally.
tonyb
Climate:
We need to leave some places alone and the Arctic seems to be high risk.
________________________________
Why?
What is the difference between drilling in the Arctic desert and drilling in a Saudi desert? And if you lobby that the US should import oil (until some other energy source can be found) then you are tacitly endorsing and encouraging drilling in the Saudi desert (and other locations, including Venezuelan tropical rainforests).
So why is it fine to drill a hot desert, but not a cold one? Is this a matter of out of sight out of mind? Or have you been suckered by the cuddly seal and ‘cuddly’ poly bear syndrome, whereas the Saudi and Algerian desert fauna is less cuddly??
Is this all about you feeling ‘nice’ and ‘doing good’ – your own ego – when the result of your policy might be a quadrupling of energy prices, industrial decline, economic instability, unemployment, foreclosures, and widespread poverty and suffering. Do you care about the people of America, or is your own ego the only thing that concerns you? Please do explain.
Ralph
Oh. It is not minimal.
The only reason why Prudhoe Bay was opened up in the 70s was to stop Russia from getting it with their new slant drilling techniques. Numerous fields were tested, closed, and decreed as US property. There is tons of oil in the Arctic.
ralfellis
I have spent very considerable amounts of time writing sceptical articles on climate for nearly a decade so I find your comments completely unnecessary. Its nothing to do with my ego or feeling good. I have no time for Obama or for Greenpeace on most matters.
What other countries decide to do is up to them. However, there is only one Arctic and in it is, relatively speaking, a small amount of oil. Do we just drill wherever and whenever we want?
Please clarify how not drilling in the Arctic will cause a quadrupling of energy prices? Thanks
tonyb
Where did you get that statistic, Tonyb?
@ ralfellis
“So why is it fine to drill a hot desert, but not a cold one? Is this a matter of out of sight out of mind? Or have you been suckered by the cuddly seal and ‘cuddly’ poly bear syndrome, whereas the Saudi and Algerian desert fauna is less cuddly??”
Try looking in the other end of the food chain.
SasjaL
????
Are you implying the “other end” of the Arctic food chain is even more evil than the Dark-Age mentality and religious fanaticism of the Saudi, Quatar, Libyan and Iranian deserts that now control the western Europe’s oil and gas supplies?
Wrong food chain, the one in the Artics …
I try again. ralfellis was refering to seals and polar bears. The other end of that food chain …
>>Try looking in the other end of the food chain.
I have not seen the Greenpeace “save the krill” campaign. Did I miss it?
And is there any evidence that North Sea, M.E. Gulf, or Mexico Gulf micro fauna have been adversely effected – long-term – by drilling? So what problem are you trying to highlight?
R
>>Please clarify how not drilling in the Arctic will cause
>>a quadrupling of energy prices?
Projected Arctic reserves are three times greater than the entire current US reserves. You don’t think that is a prize worth exploring?
The US has been running on a reserves/production ratio of just over ten years, for the last 8 decades. If further US exploration fails the US would run out of oil in ten years, and that is not a great deal in terms of strategic reserves. And what would happen to prices, if the US was 90% dependent on imported oil, and the Saudis knew that they had the US over a barrel? You think they would be nice and drop the price a little, to help out? You are not that naive, I presume.
The amount of oil minimal?
This is the sort of nitwit stupidity and willful ignorance we were all treated to during the 2007-2008 election season, when gas and oil prices were spiking to unprecedented levels.
At that time the drill baby drill mantra was countered with all manner of claims by those on the left that there was not enough undiscovered oil in the US to amount to anything.
Since then, even though federal lands have been off limits and no new offshore fields have been opened to exploration (Even though the Chinese were drilling and discovering oil in the Florida straits and around Cuba), AND new exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has been halted (even though the Macondo prospect proved that vast and highly pressurized deposits line the floor of the Gulf), we have still entered a new era of US production, one which could easily wind up with us being totally and 100% energy independent, or even a net exporter. Even though coal is being abandoned this is true.
So much new energy is being found and utilized that prices are now crashing, and we saw oil with a $35 handle last week (Something I predicted on a thread here on WUWT a few months ago, when prices were still in the 50s), and we may not have seen the bottom yet. Oil may hit $20 before a floor is in and the market has undergone full capitulation.
Minimal oil t be found!
HAH!
Fools like you could fill an encyclopedia with what you know that ain’t even so.
“leave it alone” for whom or what? Few live there, few visit and the polar bears are doing fine with or without people around. So what are we saving it for??
I am some what in agreement with climatereason. Have any of you considered the possibility of the human race taking a “back step”? We should leave a few oil fields that a reemerging society can access. Just in case. We know of natural disasters, etc. If it should occur it would be helpful for them to to have the arctic fields for a boot strap.
That is my only reaason.
michael
ralfellis on August 30, 2015 at 4:19 am,
Basically they have done that, by trying to protest against the Russian exploitation. Ending up behind bars and getting their ship basically destroyed ended those attempts.
Also, the fishing and food supplement industri are putting heavy interest into krill (eg. Omega-3), a market that are obviously expanding, competing with spieces that needs the krill far better and in large amounts. It is considered as a quite sensitive region, that used to be protected from any kind of harvesting. Some countries have ignored this now and some are thinking about it …
I have hard to realize that you don’t notice the difference between the Artics and the other regions you mentioned …
tonyb/climatereason do have good points …
Mike the Morlock,
Oil reservoirs that have been tapped will refill in most places. It is only a matter of time.
The formations only trap the oil in a way which makes it feasible to extract in usable quantities….they do not represent all of the oil which exists underground.
In fact, I think some wells which were capped off decades ago are once again being reopened and new oil extracted from them.
Besides for that, if our entire technological civilization fails, then why should it be replicated?
And how likely is it that underwater Arctic exploration for oil will be possible as a starting point for a new stab at an industrial revolution?
Menicholas Thanks for the info on wells refilling I did not know that.
As for a “back step” depends on how far and how much records and tech survive. They would only have to make it to wood burning steam to make the next leap. Just as the human race first did. But without oil that they can get to using that tech they would be hoosed. The arctic would be tough but I think its do-able using 1850s tech.
Again if the wells tend to refill my concerns are moot.
As for our civilization failing. sigh we tend to learn from mistakes believe it or not. Last, I like the human race to much to ever give up on us.
And Menicholas its simply michael
michael
Menicholas is right. Read these:
“Geochemist Says Oil Fields May Be Refilled Naturally” (1995)
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/26/science/geochemist-says-oil-fieldsmay-be-refilled-naturally.html?pagewanted=all
“Are Oil Wells Recharging Themselves?” (2012)
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Are-Oil-Wells-Recharging-Themselves.html
tonyb at climate reason
In a NY Times article today: “United States Geological Survey (estimated the Arctic) to include 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas.” And minerals. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world/united-states-russia-arctic-exploration.html?_r=0
In the Times article, it is obvious that Russia does not agree with your analysis, and neither do China and Korea.
Even these newer and more optimistic estimates of recoverable oil are almost surely vastly understating the actual case.
Every few years, new estimates increase the amounts of such. This is a trend which has gone on almost since the first oil well was drilled in the 1800s.
For one thing, even after primary, secondary and tertiary recovery methods have ben employed and a reservoir tapped out and shut, about half of the oil in that reservoir remains in the formation. So it is likely that merely in closed off wells, there is a volume of oil equal to that which was recovered.
This is without any subsequent recharge mind you.
Now, estimates I have seen indicate that about one trillion barrels of oil have been produced in the world since 1850, when commercial production commenced.
One barrel is 0.16 cubic meters, so a simple calculation has shown me that the total amount of oil ever brought out of the ground is about 160 cubic kilometers or a single cube about 5.43 km on a side.
Rounding up or down to 5 or 6 kilometers cubed should account for a good bit of error in the initial estimates of production, whether too high or too low.
So we are talking about a cube roughly as high as somewhere between Mount Rainier and Mount McKinley.
Big for sure, but even Everest is so small compared to the entire Earth that if the Earth was the size of a billiard ball, Everest would be the size of a bacteria!
I am still working on a good estimate of the total amount of sedimentary rock on the Earth.
Tired now, more later…just wanted to anyone interested in this line of thinking some food for thought.
Basically, compared to the volume of the crust of the Earth, or even one good sized organics bearing rock formation…al the oil ever extracted is not even a demodex folliculorum mite on a flea on a buffaloes ass.
>>Sasjal
>>Basically they have done that, by trying to
>>protest against the Russian exploitation.
I saw no ‘save the krill’ posters during that campaign. That was all about cuddle seals and poly bears.
Greens are dreamers. They have no contact with reality. They have no capacity to see the consequences of their actions. They exist in a dream world where humans can stroke gentle lions and poly bears, because we are all nice creatures. And so we can swim with cuddle poly bears, because they are all so nice and gentle creatures.
And then reality bites back:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rtvChUMcuAI/hqdefault.jpg
These are the kind of dim-witted fools who are now influencing government policy. So now you know why we could send a man to the Moon in the 60s and fly at mach-2 in the 70s, and now we cannot do a damn thing.
Ralph
>>Morlock
>>We should leave a few oil fields that a
>>reemerging society can access. Just in case.
Agreed. But in the Arctic? What good will that do? We can hardly drill there with out current technology, let alone a reemergent society.
What we should be doing is drilling a largish well in each continent. Capping it off, and leaving a huge great sign above it (that will last for 100,000 years) saying ‘energy here’. Then a reemergent society would have the energy needed to rebuild civilisation. Unless the Desert Creed was still around, of course, and then nothing would reemerge whatever you did.
Ralph
i agree tony. the difference between a saudi desert and an arctic desert is the ability to deal with the inevitable screw ups resulting in large scale oil spills .
despite being vehemently against the cagw/gaia crowd ,i see no reason why we cannot leave the more remote regions on the planet in as natural state as possible.
Climate Reason: My understanding is that the regions Obama opened may, or may not, be xexplored and drilled by private companies. I doubt that they will spend money in the Arctic unless they expect the drilling to be profitable. If you think drilling in the Arctic is not sensible, you are free not to drill there, or to sell stock of any company that does drill there, should you own such stock.
Is that a real polar bear attack?
Where and when?
Can a polar bear eat such a large walrus?
The caribou, bear, wolves, breeding birds and other Arctic wildlife love the pipeline and drilling that already exist there. Should oil extraction operations there ever present a problem for breeding caribou, which so far has not been the case, indeed quite the contrary, we can just suspend operations during their calving season.
I see no reason why the Arctic should be any different from drilling elsewhere, be it temperate desert or tropical rain forest. As a caribou hunter, I appreciate the huge increase in Alaskan population which Arctic oil production has caused.
Your opinion of green groups is correct .
Well, at least he made one good decision during his last 6.5 years. Now what about that mine in Alaska. And ANWR, and the fact that most Democrats think that Alaska is a National Park.?…
that and both Obama and Clinton approved the Alberta Clipper pipeline from Canada all the way into the US.
At the same time, Clinton turned down Keystone and Obama sent his Lofos running in that direction.
.
It was a win/win for O and Clinton.
Her Global non-profit got large donations from Canadian oil people that was not required to be reported in the US but is required to be reported in Canada.
O made sure his large donor Buffett got the rail contracts for shipping Keystone fuels.
Lofos got something to chase after and fund raise on. I can’t even call them green since the last thing they care about is the environment, only the green donations to their non-profits.
Obama is only picking a fight with the Russians.
>>Hughing
>>Obama is only picking a fight with the Russians.
Or Russia may be picking a fight with the West. The following report is a bit overdone. Putin is probably posturing for domestic effect, like it has always done. The people of Russia can be more easily controlled if there is a perceived external threat, and will accept more privations and subjugation. Putin enjoyed the total control of the Soviet era, and probably wants to return to it.
Russia planning a war in Europe:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3194745/Is-Putin-plotting-war-Europe-Experts-warn-Russia-actively-preparing-conflict-NATO-announcing-plans-4-000-military-exercises-year.html
R
Half the stuff we’re hearing about Russia is horses**t. Classic example is the Putin-illegally-grabbed-Crimea story, the basis for the sanctions. Unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, and obviously the uneducated foreign service novices advising Obama, is that in 1992 the newly-written Ukrainian Constitution gave Crimea effective independence within Ukraine. That was the Ukrainian Constitution, not a Russian one. It legally grants Crimea effective independence within Ukraine and the right to determine its own path and relations with others. Crimea exercised their right with a vote in the first quarter of 2014. Had nthing to do with Putin.
Here’s another folktale: Complete Media Fail in Blaming Russia for Last Year’s US Bank Hacks. Turns out it was two Israelis and two American frat brothers from Florida who pulled the heist. The bros were arrested in July this year, and I think they’re trying to get the Israelis extradited.
“Time after time, given the policy choice between one that was moderate and one that was extreme, they went for the extreme one on every occasion. The movement never understood what every politician learns early; there’ll always be a gap between what you ultimately want and what’s achievable and more importantly, sustainable in a changeable world.”
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/the-decline-of-the-environmental-lobbys-political-influence/
If Stalin couldn’t please the Left, what chance does Obama have with the Greens?
Pointman
It’s time everyone recogonize that environmentalists don’t give 2 **its about the environment but only about implementing their agenda, which is anti-growth. They see mankind as a scourge on the earth so deep down they are really anti-life since man can only survive by exploiting earth’s resources and turning those resources into life-giving industrial made “stuff”.
Possibly the Climate Industry has exhausted its credibility? One can only hope they have finally used up all of their goodwill!
The “saving the planet” mantra seems as shallow as a teaspoon.
Don’t read much about the Italians, Norwegians and Russians a.o. continuing their drilling in the Arctic. Perhaps the greens have realised that there is no publicity to be gained from that, which is interesting in it’s own.
But when all is said and done, last I read about potential “reserves” in the Arctic they were talking about 9 billion barrels. An estimated 20% of the unproven reserves. Sounds a lot does it not.
90 odd whole days worth of oil at current consumption. Which by extension means that it is thought that there is 450 days worth of oil still unexplored.
Obviously not everyone thinks of it like this, but in my opinion if that is all there is leave it there, it won’t make one bit of difference.
And while it would be a great achievement if we can extract it without f****ing it all up, is it really worth the risk for 90 days?
Considering the limit imposed by the Alaskan pipeline is a bit over 1Mbpd, 9 billion barrels will last something like 30 years. As for the Arctic environment, the real concern are what the Russians are planning to do.
Wrong – TAPS can cary just over 2 MMBOPD; currently production more like 0.4 MMBOPD. Chukchi sea oil (ie what Shell is doing , Burger prospect) just as likely to go to market via a new line to an ice free port in western AK than going all the way over to TAPS (around 1000 km away)
Total world consumption 100Mbpd, 9 billion barrels estimate. Do the numbers.
Key point to remember regarding Alaskan pipeline, once production falls below about 200 MBOPD (M is Thousand, not million), the pipeline will need to be shut down. At such low flow rates, wax buildup due to temp drop will cause maintainance costs to skyrocket. In accordance with the law, the pipeline MUST be dismantled at that point. If new reserves are not developed soon, we will lose the chance to use the existing pipeline forever.
To my knowledge there doesn’t exist an Italian arctic?
Check what ENI is doing. Since when does your country need to border the Arctic for a company to send a rig there. If so what is Shell doing there being Anglo Dutch. Ah yes they got approval from the US to check in their waters.
ENI was planning to go further north then any of them but has stopped that for this season at least.
ENI (Italian company) has operation in the offshore arctic in AK. See Nikaitchuk field …. perhaps that is the reference to “Italian”
How many times can the defeatist and small minded thought process, expounded here by outtheback, be voiced, before these people who are always wrong begin to understand that they have no idea what they themselves are talking about?
90 days worth was how much the left was claiming was to be found in the entire continental US during the big debates about 7 or 8 years ago.
This was the response to “drill baby drill”.
They said there is not enough to even bother with.
Wrong then.
Wrong now.
Wrong forever, I suspect.
Some people are just incapable of learning from mistakes.
Some people just have no clue about how vast the Earth beneath their feet is.
M
Even if there is 10 times as much in the Arctic, it will not make much of a difference for oil.
For me we can burn every bit of carbon fuel we can find.
But I do think that the risks of extraction in some areas are far higher and less manageable then others. The Arctic being one of them.
Link that with: does it really make any material difference in the big picture if we extract it?
90 days of world consumption or even 900 days.
If oil is finite it does not and if it isn’t then we can extract it elsewhere far cheaper.
I think the people that do the exploration for outfits like Royal Dutch Shell know where it is worth investing billions on gigantic drilling rigs and spending even more to dig expensive holes.
If you are correct, they will lose money and leave.
But you seem to be saying that any reservoir that does not solve our energy problems forever is waste of time.
From that point of view, why bother getting out of bed in the morning?
In the long run, they will have to look elsewhere.
In the long run, we all die.
So what?
Using your logic, no drilling would be done anywhere.
The optimal plan would be drilling on land, in the ANWR area reserved for drilling. It could only be done in Winter when the mud has frozen, but it’s far more safer, sensible and cheaper than drilling the inhospitable Arctic ocean.
Next you’ll argue that it will take ten years to bring that oil to market, the same argument made ten years ago.
Exactly.
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/obama-and-ignorance-an-infectious-disease/
Question is , who is paying the bills for the activist groups? I think that might be quite illuminating.
Rockefeller funds.
I don’t follow the argument of the last paragraph of this article. Is the author suggesting that it’s a “radical agenda” to oppose drilling in the arctic? I think not. I think what is radical is to suggest that “greenies” should “be happy that they have a friend in the White House and stop complaining”. Ain’t gonna happen. It is not sufficient for governments to talk the green talk, while pursuing the opposite agenda.
Are there any golf courses in Alaska?
Yes
http://cdn.gdol.com/app/courses/image/preview/34316.jpg
According to Obama;
“Our economy still has to rely on oil and gas.”
Or even more importantly, your very lives rely on oil and gas. He almost gets it, though.
>>Ralfellis
>>”The people of Russia can be more easily controlled if there is a perceived external threat…”
Just like the West, then.
How about the people of Ukraine?
Are they being controlled by the perception of an external threat?
Alan Robertson
Well, those people in the Ukraine who are under Soviet/Russian control are under Putin’s army and military and government state police control. Or, they are willingly going BACK under Putin’s military-army-government police state control because they feel they gain something (security, dominance of others, power, self-image) from the government arms wrapped around their throat. Those people in Ukraine who DON’T WANT soviet military government state police control are trying their best – AGAINST the opposition of Obama, his Mistate Department and his DOD and his statist socialist national press corpse – to remain free to make their own future.
President Obama is forgetting the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-Canada-Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement, both of which offer treaty protection against discrimination in trade of products, including petroleum. His remarks, and the conduct of his Administration with respect to the Keystone XL pipeline, demonstrate discrimination against Canada. On one level, this can be taken as evidence of how Americans treat their friends, a treatment that will be long remembered. In purely legal terms, this provides justification for legal action against the United States under the treaty.
The only problem here is whether these treaties give foreign governments and foreign corporations more rights than the citizens of the United States. That is a big issue with the TPP. It gives foreign corporations rights that are superior to those of the citizens of the US.
What are these rights that foreign governments and corporation have that US citizens don’t?
The treaties to which I referred give the citizens of each country the right to “national treatment” in the sale of goods and services in the other. In other words, A Canadian selling a product in the United States is entitled to do so without being treated any differently than an American, and vice-versa for an American selling a product in Canada. The treaties also prohibit other forms of discriminatory treatment. There is no preference whatsoever granted by free trade.
climatereason
August 30, 2015 at 12:00 am
Whatever your opinions on Obama or Greenpeace, surely drilling in the Arctic does not seem a sensible option to pursue, especially as the amount of available oil is minimal. We need to leave some places alone and the Arctic seems to be high risk with little gain financially and considerable consequences environmentally.
tonyb
Some people just cannot relate to how a drilling rig in the Arctic is but a pin prick in the millions of square miles that is covered by the Arctic. The danger is miniscule, but the economic benefits to the American people are huge. Even an oil spill. god forbid, would have minimal long term effects as with all other oil spills that have occurred across the World, since oil drilling began.
+10
@george Lason. It has always amazed me how little people understand that oil is a hydrocarbon and organic, time and again it has been proven that it breaks down naturally by bacteria and other organisms the same as happens with your left over greens that get eaten up and composted in your garden composter .
George
Here is a reasonably balanced article from The Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11080635/Arctic-drilling-is-inevitable-if-we-dont-find-oil-in-the-ice-then-Russia-will.html
The arctic basin represents five years of global oil consumption with the reserves spread amongst a number of areas.
As someone who lived through the boom and now almost bust of North Sea oil it is clear that in a hostile environment there are two key factors. The first being that oil in ‘difficult’ areas needs to be sold at a high price for it to be economically recoverable. The second being that we need to have the technology to overcome the formidable technical challenges. In this case that much of the oil is out at sea, under ice, subject to ferocious weather conditions, with the possibility of a spill with the resultant fines such as BP’s 16 billion dollars.. To counter all that the oil -which will not become generally available until 2030- needs to be sold at a very high price.
Perhaps it would be better to ‘bank’ the oil and instead spend the money on developing other reliable energy sources-such as nuclear whilst continuing to improve general fuel efficiency and insulation levels?
tonyb
The problem with your plan re nuclear Tony, is that others with your anti fossil fuel agenda have shut down every attempt to build nuclear plants, let alone build them in the sort of quantity which would/will be needed to replace fossil fuels.
Even hydroelectric is being targeted for shutdown.
A five year world supply is a lot of oil. A dozen (or so) more like it moves us into another century.
Besides, at every point in time the amount of recoverable oil existing has been drastically underestimated.
To this day, with demand higher than ever and generally growing, the number of years of “proven reserves” is about where it has always been.
Peculiar, aint it?
The more we use, the more we have, but we are always just around the corner from running out.
I wonder if you contemplate what will happen the day that blackouts start, or people cannot get to work because of lack of fuel, or people start freezing to death in their homes in large numbers?
Do you want to see that day?
Anti fossil fuel?. That is quite ludicrous. Of course I am not. I just don’t believe that we should drill, frack or mine absolutely everywhere and anywhere without limits. The arctic is a fragile and hostile environment and securing oil there will come at a price we May be unwilling to pay if we want the cheap energy that has fuelled the industrial revolution.
The north sea at 120 dollars a barrel was becoming uncompetitive. Arctic oil is likely to be much more expensive. That’s too much. We need cheaper energy and that’s unlikely to come from the arctic so let’s leave it alone.
Tonyb
It is their money. If you are correct, why are they doing it?
Do you suppose them to be fools, these professional geologists and oil exploration experts?
Private industry is not like the government…if money is wasted, people lose jobs, stocks drop in value, shareholders fire the board.
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. As has been observed, we will need to keep the tractors running and the furnaces burning when oil is back to $120. If it takes a long time, all the more reason for them to get busy now.
You cannot wait until you need it tomorrow, if it takes years to develop, eh?
@tonyb,
They’re drilling in the Chukchi Sea. Have you looked at a map, or checked the depth? It doesn’t have “ferocious weather conditions.” It’s protected by Alaska and Russia.
The Russian-US border goes right through the middle of it.
My problem with that (and I have Exxon Stock as more than half my retirement portfolio) is that we keep pursing oil instead of nuclear and nuclear is a million times as dense as chemical energy. Nuclear is much better for the environment than fossil fuels are. But we need much better nuclear. Like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. And they may be coming faster than expected given that someone has come up with the bright idea of going to nuclear power plants and burning up all the transuranic waste on site in LFTRs.
http://copenhagenatomics.azurewebsites.net/pdf/CA_Whitepaper2014.pdf
This is everyone’s problem.
I wonder why you have such a huge bet on one company. This is not very shrewd, if you ask me.
I know you did not ask me…but that stock has lost over 40% while the overall market has gained.
Diversify. If another Democrat wins the White House, I would not want to be heavily invested in fossil fuels. Not that we will not be using oil, but who knows what these climate scaremongers will do next.
Look what happened to the value of coal stocks, even though steel production still needs coke, and 40% or more (last time I checked…it may have changed again) of electricity is still made from coal in the US.
But stocks what were huge companies has evaporated to pennies on the dollar.
As someone who has watched people ride elevators all the way to the basement…you do not want to sick with losers in the stock market. Some other companies will go way up before oil companies do.
Good time to be in cash…buy stocks back on sale after the capitulation washout.
climatereason
August 30, 2015 at 2:35 pm
” The arctic is a fragile and hostile environment and securing oil there will come at a price we May be unwilling to pay if we want the cheap energy that has fuelled the industrial revolution.”
Tonyb
We know that the Arctic has a hostile environment, it always has and will continue to have, but on what basis do you conclude that it is a fragile environment any more than any other environments around the World? And the price of oil from that source is surely the decision for the oil companies and not of environmentalists.
I do not know what it is about “frozen and God forsaken wasteland” that translates to some as “fragile place which must be protected above all others”.
I think that Obama is praying for another well blowout like DWH so he can blame it on the greedy capitalists. The Alaska pipeline is also nearing shut down from insufficient use. but does the Left consider this sort of thing?
Clearly you aren’t aware of the new big finds by Repsol over the last couple years. Pipeline use will be going back up substantially & won;t be shutting down anytime soon.
http://www.repsol.com/es_en/corporacion/prensa/notas-de-prensa/ultimas-notas/02062015-repsol-completa-exito-campana-invernal-exploracion-alaska.aspx
Jeff, I like what you are thinking, but unfortunately it is going to take a lot more oil than that to keep the Alaskan pipeline open.
Dear Eric (and Anthony),
May I suggest a new (easy-to-read in plain English) LIST of PLAIN EXPRESSIONS.
(Rather like the “Glossary” page under the WUWT tab “Reference Pages”)
Here’s my thinking on this, with just e few examples here.
Take for example some very “Misleading Expressions” : there are dozens and dozens of them but here are just a few which really get my goat …
“Misleading Expressions”
Greens – Environmentalists – Clean Energy – Fossil Fuels – Climate Change – Skeptics – Warmists – carbon footprint – carbon capture – carbon (when really referring to CO2) – tipping point – biodiversity – 3rd. world country(s) – climate scientist – global temperature !!!
Each of the above fifteen (15) expressions is BLIND; they are also meaningless, shifty, vague or just plain nonsense.
They have each been criticized before now in various WUWT threads but I really think that some form of WUWT “glossary” or list of PLAIN EXPRESSIONS would be a mighty powerful weapon to have, especially because the strength of WUWT seems to depend upon its’ writers and the way they use their words.
Reason for my Suggestion
Carbon-dioxide is the ENTIRE basis for a corrupted belief system within and without the EPA.
Their system depends upon money, other peoples’ money (OPM) which they use in order to “perpetuate the myth”; therefore, until such time that they are brought to a complete halt, the world’s most viewed site on global warming (WUWT) has the power, through its’ many writers, to cut through all the nonsense and give the world (including the shyte-hawks who are watching and reading here) a fresh way of thinking using PLAIN EXPRESSIONS.
Regards,
WL
I don’t think its that simple – I don’t think its just about the money. Sure, some players are probably just opportunists, but I think many of them really believe – they are so sure they are right, they disregard evidence which contradicts their theories.
The greens can rest assured that the Indians and others will point out the same to Obama when they are telling him where to put his CO2 treaty in Paris.
There must be some good golf courses in Alaska.
Huh, this is the first time I’ve heard of “Oceana.” It’s almost impossible to keep up with all the “green” groups/NGOs/lobbyists/leaches out there. The one common thread, of course, are their predictable, scripted rants against development and humankind. Oh, and send us more money because we’re saving the planet.
The problem with the Arctic is getting the oil to a refinery. The sea ice makes oil production basically impossible without an undersea pipeline to a sea ice-free port.
Prudhoe Bay, for example, is next to the coast and the oil is sent by pipeline across Alaska to Valdez on the southern coast.
Ice-breaking oil tankers have been tried many times and it seems that they just don’t work reliably enough to stay in operation. They just get sent to the scrap yards eventually.
Mr. Illis, have you not heard…the Arctic is melting and will soon be ice free.
I think the date for the last of it to disappear is two weeks from Tuesday, around 4:27 PM local time.
+10
The pipeline from the North Slope to Valdez cannot operate below a certain volume and that minimum is being approached. I believe the pipeline throughput is now on the order of 1/3 its peak as Prudhoe Bay production declines. I also believe that, as a condition of its federal permits, the pipeline must be dismantled when it is no longer in use. The ANWR coastal plain, a 7 mile wide strip by the shore of the Beaufort Sea, is the area proposed for oil development. I understand that it is flat, mosquito-infested muskeg during the summer and frozen tundra in the winter. If so, it is much like the endless stretches of uninhabited land that I have visited in western Alaska. The oil opponents evidently wish to block development of the ANWR coastal plain until the pipeline is dismantled, at which point the oil will be inaccessible.
Pipeline shut down won’t be happening anytime soon; see above – significant new oil being found onshore
Thanks. Your reply prompted me to look at the most recent Alaska Dept of Revenue North Slope oil production forecast — the only informed and published source I know and have used. Their forecast is 508 million barrels per day in 2015, increasing slightly over the next 2 years, and then declining to 320 million bpd in 2024. One implication is that the pipeline can still operate 9 years from now at that lower production level, which I’m glad to see and hope is correct. The other is that the Alaska DOR is currently sticking with a continuing long term decline outlook. See page 12 of spring 2015 revenue sources book. (The link below looks a bit crazy — hope it works.)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCUQFjABahUKEwibiNDrzNHHAhXCf5IKHQyVAFo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tax.alaska.gov%2Fprograms%2Fdocumentviewer%2Fviewer.aspx%3F1143r&ei=bmHjVZuZLcL_yQSMqoLQBQ&usg=AFQjCNHGv2PSUmsqqSdlYzTc3LSBAxpKeg
Oops. I used “millions of barrels per day” in my reply on North Slope oil production, just as labeled in the chart I referenced from the Alaska Dept of Revenue. However, that must really be “thousands” of barrels per day, now that I think about it. Points still valid, I think, but the magnitudes I blindly copied must be wrong.
re – former alaskan
“Oops. I used “millions of barrels per day” in my reply on North Slope oil production, just as labeled in the chart I referenced from the Alaska Dept of Revenue. However, that must really be “thousands” of barrels per day, now that I think about it”
No you were correct it is mbbls/day. See page 8 (10 / 14).
Confusing! But “mbbls” means thousands of barrels, not millions.
Yes, mbpd is thousand and mmbpd is million.
The Respol find is significant, but not significant enough to keep the pipeline open.
Even The New York Times is a bit edgy about the U.S. being a laggard in the Arctic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world/united-states-russia-arctic-exploration.html
Okay, here’s my tinfoil hat moment.
At the beginning of April 2010, Obama opened new areas to offshore drilling http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033100024.html to the delight of drilling interests and the disdain of environmentalists. Less than three weeks later, the Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred and pretty much all offshore drilling was shut down for quite some time. Now Obama opens the Arctic to drilling. How long before some colossal spill up there that gets massive publicity?
@ taph, but where is that oil that was spilled now? It seems nature took care of most it if not all of , tourism and coastal fisheries are back to normal. But I see New Orleans took a lot longer than DW Horizon to recover ( after Kathrine) and as a documentary showed it still is not recovered.
Katrina.
Exactly. The after effects of the Deep Water fiasco are gone, so a new crisis is needed to demonize oil drilling.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Green groups are once again demonstrating that there is no compromise with fanaticism. Either you support every line item of their radical agenda, or they treat you as the enemy.”
And those green ‘fanatics’, the guardians of clickbait climate memes; “The science is settled”, “97% of all scientists”, “tipping point” etc etc
Buyer beware.
Obama seems to almost get it regarding oil and gas. Too bad he is clueless about coal. We still need that too.
We need nuclear. Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors. 200 times as efficient as light water reactors. All ready melted so no meltdowns and can be used to burn up transuranics in existing reactors. We really don’t need coal. See my post above.
David
I agree with nuclear, especially liquid fluoride thorium reactors, but coal is still needed in China, India, and even Germany. The key to abundant global prosperity is abundant energy production, and coal plants will be a big part of that for quite a while longer. There are several coal plants opening every month, sometimes every week.
Sounds great but meanwhile, back in Reality land, we still need coal, and probably will for quite some time. Without coal, as someone once said “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket”.
Obama should now go to the Hudson bay area and Eastern Canada where they been having colder then normal temperatures for a while. Alaska has seen a warm trend for a while which is what they will see generally if they are not in a cool trend or an in between trend. I’ve heard a lot about the hysterical Alaskan claims of changes due to cagw like receding permafrost and coastal erosion on the Arctic sea due to of course climate change somehow. i remember Neil Degrasse had a film on it where also warned us of the ominous “tipping point.” I’ve seen the temperatures in Alaska over the last few years. They are not out of the ordinary historically if you go far back enough. I think leaving out the marine influence of Alaska’s climate when writing hysterical articles about it is key for climate journalists then of course just making up stuff too involved for the vast majority of people to ever investigate.
This site discusses the utter BS shoveled out by alarmists all the time. Most here are skeptics of the alarmism and skeptics of most of the published, pal-reviewed papers by the “experts”.
I am a skeptic in other areas also as I think “science” is dying as it has become totally corrupted. (don’t know if it was ever “clean”) So, I thought the following quote might entertain some folks here:
I see a sad state of affairs in many areas of “science”.
I dont believe science can be corrupted. Only people can become corrupt. Science will stay the same but good luck with people.
What does that even mean, Charlie?
Science has no life of it’s own.
yes exactly. Science can’t change.
Oh, now I understand
*eyelash flutter*
I was told a few months ago by a senior charity executive that the ‘scientists’ working for cancer charities and other research bodies across the world could have found a cure for cancer by now, but in doing so it would massively reduce their funding from the public and other bodies that service their grants and comfortable life styles. So ‘a cure is still some way off’ I hope it is not true, but it has crossed my mind that the global warming fraud might not be on its own when it comes to spending other peoples money on their pet research programmes. It is sad to think that excessive amounts of money available to research might now be having a negative effect on the purpose of the research. Does anyone have any proof of this in other directions?
It is a fact that Phil Spector refused to release 90% of the songs that the Ronettes recorded, including many that other people later had huge hits covering.
He was afraid that if they got too big, he would lose Ronnie Bennett.
If that is not a shame, I do not know what is.
BTW, the cousin, Nedra Tally, was the hottest Ronette.
marcstoval. Good post. I’m retried now, but I practiced Internal medicine for 33 years. In training, early on, we were advised, when reading a published study, to first check who funded the study. If it was a pharmaceutical company, the findings and conclusions could not be trusted, with rare exceptions. Nowadays, any climate study funded by an NGO or the US government (among others), is IMHO, corrupted. Eisenhower warned us of this in his 1/17/61 farewell address, right after he warned us of the dangers of the Military Industrial complex. “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
Amazingly (or not) new hydrocarbon deposits continue to be made, the latest BBC news from Egypt:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34102656
On the one hand, we have people saying that no one gives a damn about people’s opinions on this site. On the other hand though, there are people who don’t give a damn about those people’s opinions, and they’re happier than heck to extract “carbon” and burn it. So shove your “climate justice” BS.
Meanwhile back home , gritters and snowploughs prepare for winter:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-34096333
Anyone know if Obama has begun proxy investing in near bankrupt coal stocks a la Soros? Or, for that matter, how many members of Congress have done so?
Watch who buys up all the fracking companies down on their luck this coming month.
Seems interesting given rumors Soros buying up old coal entities
Interesting that Obama opens up drilling to non-American interests. Same as in the Gulf.