DrumBeat: July 17, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 17, 2006 - 9:30am
Topic: Miscellaneous
From the Wall St. Journal: Oil rigs leave Gulf of Mexico for more lucrative jobs
This is expected to accelerate production declines in the Gulf, putting upward pressure on domestic energy prices. The rig exodus is squeezing what was an already tight market for drilling equipment. In 2001, about 148 rigs were in the Gulf. Now, about 90 remain, and more are expected to leave soon.The rig migration will have the most pronounced effect on natural-gas production and prices because most of the rigs leaving the Gulf are jack-ups used to find gas in shallower waters. Gulf gas reservoirs are often quickly exhausted, so energy companies must keep punching new wells to maintain production.
Despite surging fuel costs, Americans keep on trucking
NEW YORK (AFP) - Soaring fuel costs have so far failed to dampen US enthusiasm for hitting the road in summer...."The American consumer's demand for gasoline is insatiable," said Jason Schenker, Wachovia Securities, who noted only modest changes in auto preferences of US motorists.
But it's starting to hurt: Pinched at the Pump
High fuel prices are pushing some drivers to the financial brink—and to the pawnshop for gas money. Low-wage earners are feeling the most pain.
Greenland makes oil companies melt
From Korea: High Oil Prices Take Toll on Firms
According to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), which in May surveyed 627 firms in the metropolitan area, 63.2 percent of local companies said they would have to halt business operations if international oil prices surpass $80 a barrel.
From Australia: Slashing greenhouse gas would cut GDP
Achieving deep cuts to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions would slash the nation's GDP and require massive reductions in industry output, a new report suggests.
India can't accept cap on its energy consumption
U.S.: House urges IT managers to buy energy-saving servers
WASHINGTON -- Power usage at fast-growing server farms became an issue for Congress last week. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring a federal study of ways to improve the energy efficiency of servers and data centers.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/the_canary_proj.php#perma
I was watching the Discovery channel
program last night hosted by Tom Brokaw
titled Global Warming - What You Need to Know ..
and it sort of hit me .. TPTB won't be mentioning
Peak Oil and depletion issues going forward to
engineer societal change .. the public focus for
change will be the GW issue .. The proposed
"solutions" or mitigation strategies would be
identical to those required to address depletion
and Peak Oil .. I got the distinct impression that
the PR wonks feel GW is a more 'saleable' issue
than depletion or Peak Oil would be for public
'education' purposes ..
Triff ..
Some Yes, some No. True for Conservation, Electrification of Transportation, wind & nuke. Not true for coal to liquids, tar sands, oil shale.
I think this distinction that you made is an important one.
It's not like we loose (we being enviro-peak-oilers) when politicians lead with GW.
Indeed, GWers and environmentalists would lose if politicians (as some do) led with energy security.
Peak Oil may undo a couple of hundred years of industrialization.
Global Warming threatens to undo a few million years of evolution.
The call to "care for the environment" has resulted in a good record of altruistic behavior in Americans, yeah say what you will, but you don't have the kind of "litterbugs" I remember as a little kid, etc there have been changes. If the propaganda is heavy enough, people will change if they figure it's "no skin off my nose, and it's a nice thing to do". And the anti-littering propaganda in the 70s was pretty pervasive as an example - it got results.
Peak Oil on the other hand is just plain fackin' scary. Scary stuff has always resulted in more selfish behavior - exactly what we don't need.
I think GW is scarier than PO, which is why I advocate only PO solutions that help both PO & GW. We would be better served with a Depression and less GW than with a recession & more GW.
http://www.countercurrents.org/po-church170706.htm
The opening qoute has never been more applicable:
"Down one road lies disaster, down the other utter catastrophe.Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose wisely." - Woody Allen
Yogi Berra
Maid with golden hair
Sunshine came along with thee,
And swallows in the air.
While we are PO-aware here, most people aren't unless one of us manages to talk one-on-one with someone. Lots of people like to scapegoat oil companies, Arabs, etc. for the ever-climbing gas prices.
But there is a critical difference between the two issues: With GW, we can choose to mitigate it and use less, but PO will force us to use less! Big difference. The gas prices (and its trickle-down effects) will force the mitigation. After all, tar sands are hard to extract. And shale is probably a done deal in terms of being too hard to extract.
Not even close. Does GW have the potential to cause die-back to pre-industrial revolution population levels (1.5 billion people or less)?? Peak fossil fuels is a far more serious problem for civilization in general and it's severe effects will occur much faster.
No need for summer vacations in Spain, etc.
Crocodile teeth have been found in the high Canadian Artic islands, along with warm temperate tree species.
Having plenty of rainfall, often fairly well distributed over the months makes it very easy to get fresh water and good crops and gives us plenty of hydro power.
I rather have rainfall and a green summer then a nice summer vacation where one can see brown vegetation. The other extreme, a new ice age, is of course even worse.
GW threatens to cause the extinction of a significant portion of the species on our planet. GW means leaving our children a home that is barren in comparison to the world we inherited from out parents. What are all the implications of that? I can't begin to imagine.
Here at the leading edge we will watch coral reefs and polar bears dissapear from the planet. But that is just the beginning. I am confident that 10 generations from now our children will look back and condemn us for poisoning the abundance of life on our planet. The fact that we burned through our oil so fast will just be a side note, a cause, but not an especially relevant effect.
GW "losers" will migrate or die-off and the disruption from that will carry over into social disruption and a decline in technological civilization (worst case).
First you create an evil bogeyman, (9-11=Iraq), in the case of Global warming it's anyone who disagrees with the supposed scientific consensus.
Now we are in the "you are either with us or against us" mode of thinking.
Next comes Colin Powell and his charts and graphs proving, or in this case, whichever scientists agree with the case that Humans are causing Global Warming.
Finally anyone who questions you can be considered an uncritical behometh intent on destroying the planet.
Or in the case of Iraq anyone who opposes the war is a coward and is giving into the terrorists. Who had the courage to say no? Certainly not our politicians.
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71042-0.html?tw=wn_politics_lifescience_12
Scary but not caused by humans.
The truth is the Bush admin has been on the BS side of both arguments, Iraq and GW.
BTW, how do you explain the WW GC that took place from 1950 to 1975?
Here's a good one:
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/
Meanwhile, back to PO ...
The world didn't look the same in those days; sea level was 80 feet higher...
How fast can this go? Right now, I think our best measure is what happened in the past. We know that, for instance, 14,000 years ago sea levels rose by 20m in 400 years - that is five meters in a century. This was towards the end of the last ice age, so there was more ice around. But, on the other hand, temperatures were not warming as fast as today.
How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece
Carbon dioxide level highest in 650,000 years
mongabay.com
November 24, 2005
Carbon dioxide levels are now 27 percent higher than at any point in the last 650,000 years, according to research into Antarctic ice cores published on Thursday in Science.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1124-climate.html
And it is ours. Isotope studies.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases -are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
I think that's called plate tectonics - the change in climate during that period occurred over the course of millions of years, not the 150 or so years during which anthropogenic warming has taken place...
don't confuse local warming with global warming...
classic technique from the naysayers - they can pick out every one year anomaly and use it to support their position but as soon as someone says wow - the hottest five years on record have been over the past decade - well, they are the first to scream "that doesn't prove anything, there's no trend, there's no trend, we were cold 750,000 years ago for 3 weeks how do you reconcile that ?"
Those that deny climate change just want to use smoke and mirrors to continually move the goal posts for the burden of proof. Nothing would ever be good enough. Scientists have been digging further and further back into the climatological record and keep coming up with the same answers - but if they give you 10,000 years well that's not enough; if they give you 100,000 years that's not good enough; ok, well we're up to 650,000 years now - yeah but what about 650,002 years ago blah blah blah blah... There was an ecologist (I think) who was quoted as saying we were going to go down in history as a species who studied every miniscule detail of our own extinction... Troll ostriches like "oil" seem to want to guarantee this happens as we roast the planet...
It's all a bunch of nonsense - the whole argument - the case is closed - we have been and are inducing warming. Now we need to figure out how to deal with it
My take on GW is, even if it's not caused by humans, it's proven that human activities can have a great impact on the atmosphere, land, ocean, so "whoever" caused it, there's a wide range of possible responses by us, to either act as responsible members of the biosphere and help counteract it, or act like dumb yeast and help the Earth become another Venus.
So I'd add "coal-to-coal" to Alan's list of problem technologies.
Of course, we are having power outages as we speak due to the hot weather. Surprise, surprise, July is hot this year. Who knew?
The question, of course, is what could be done to make a moratorium feasible. We could begin by mandating that all new capacity be solar, wind, hydro, or any other methods that doesn't add to the GHG problem. Second, we could require that air conditioners be universally required to cycle off and on during peak times of the days, as is currently done on a voluntary basis in California. No doubt there are dozens of other things that could be done almost immediately.
Where there is a will, there is a way. I know, what a cliche. But in this case, I think it is true. Also, we could shut down the internet. No, just kidding on that last one. But seriously though, there is apparently a lot that could be done to make all those server farms more efficient. The federal government is on the case so I'm sure that problem will be solved in short order.
How many power plants could we save by just replacing all our bulbs with CFLs. Or turning of the lights, for Chrissakes.