Environmental global warming alarmists are not limited to North America and Europe...sadly, this delusional illness also exists in Australia and New Zealand. We must help them escape the quagmire of deceit known as the myth of man-caused global warming. Peter
ANDREW BOLT: DOOMED TO A FATAL DELUSION OVER CLIMATE CHANGE
The Herald Sun, 9 July 2008
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html
PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion"- and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon". "A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Bra(n)zen, but I digress.)
"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies." But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.
Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."
And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more forpetrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ." Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?
Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash. Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity, from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licences to emit carbon dioxide --the gas they think is heating the world to hell. The cost of those licences, totalling in the billions, will then be passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food, housing,air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power. In some countries they're even planning to tax farting cows, so there's no end to the ways you can be stung.
Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth. But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions. The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.
Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28 days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices will matter. And that's why Rudd's claim that we'll be ruined if we don't cut Australia's gases is a lie. To be blunt.
Ask Rudd's guru. Garnaut on Friday admitted any cuts we make will be useless unless they inspire other countries to do the same -- especially China and India: "Only a global agreement has any prospect of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels." So almost everything depends on China and India copying us. But the chances of that? A big, round zero.
A year ago China released its own global warming strategy -- its own Garnaut report -- which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions. Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth." In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: "It is quite inevitable that during this (industrialisation) stage, China's energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high."
Last month, India likewise issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change, and also rejected Rudd-style cuts. The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases. "It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of well being to its people." The plan's only real promise was in fact a threat: "India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries." Gee, thanks.
That, of course, means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes). Given it has one billion people, that's a promise to gas the world like it's never been gassed before. So is this our death warrant? Should this news have you seeing apocalyptic visions, too? Well, no. What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why.
Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the documented (climate) changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established." In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all. Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts and floods, or rain: "The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . ." It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: "While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses."
Nor was that the only sign that India's Council on Climate Change had kept its cool while our Rudd and Garnaut lost theirs. For example, the Indians rightly insisted nuclear power had to be part of any real plan to cut emissions. Rudd and Garnaut won't even discuss it. The Indians also pointed out that no feasible technology to trap and bury the gasses of coal-fired power stations had yet been developed "and there are serious questions about the cost as well (as) permanence of the CO2 storage repositories".
Rudd and Garnaut, however, keep offering this dream to make us think our power stations can survive their emissions trading scheme, when state governments warn they may not. In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are having delusions -- delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases without going nuclear, about saving power stations they'll instead drive broke. And there's that delusion on which their whole plan is built -- that India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too. So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fear mongers? Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well.
Join Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt
Copyright 2008, The Herald Sun
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Al Gore And The "Big Lie" Of Global Warming
The following is a concise summary of the global warming issue and the politics behind the myth. I think it is worth saving. (source)
Peter
The Cynical Politics of Global Warming and Its Hobgoblins
By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson June 11, 2008
“Cynical politics” may be a redundancy, but it is hard to imagine a mo1re cynical political issue than global warming (GW). In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “wrenching transformation of society.” Leftists, with their elitist penchant for social engineering, didn’t need any convincing. The challenge for Gore was the inconvenient truth that, in a democracy, a would-be central planner needs to get the masses on his side, too. To do that, he borrowed a strategy encapsulated in H.L. Mencken’s statement, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Apocalyptic GW became Al Gore’s hobgoblin of choice.
Gore needed the scientific community to back up his assertions and the media to spread the word. Enlisting the help of the media was easy (apocalyptic fantasies are sure ratings winners), but getting enough scientists on board was trickier. When Gore started his GW campaign in the early 1990s, a contemporary Gallup poll of scientists showed that only 18 percent thought there was any evidence to support Gore’s theory. Even a survey conducted by Greenpeace found only 13 percent of climatologists willing to declare GW “probable.”
Nevertheless, Gore repeatedly claimed that (literally) 98 percent of scientists agreed with him, and he exhorted reporters to ignore skeptics. Right from the outset, the GW cult (like other illiberal movements, such as communism and fascism) had to resort to the “big lie” technique to make it appear that the science of GW was settled. (See my prior article, "Questions About Global Warming," for some of the holes in the “science” of global warming.)
As senator, and then vice president, Gore used his power to channel money toward those who “played ball” and away from those who doubted GW. The latter found that grant money dried up, promotions were denied, and even jobs were terminated. Gore’s colleague, Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth, became Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs in charge of promoting GW theory and international agreements to address the alleged problem. Wirth was quoted as bragging that he could change a lot of minds with a billion dollars per year of State Department money. Indeed, recent estimates are that $50 billion has been spent promoting the GW theory (mostly governments and international organizations using tax money) and less that $1 billion to question it. Advantage: GW.
This is richly ironic. GW fanatics routinely accuse skeptics of having been bought off by Big Oil. They expect Americans to disbelieve private-sector scientists while trusting government-funded scientists (i.e., virtually all the scientists on the GW bandwagon) as if, a priori, government funding is holy, but private funding corrupt.
The Kyoto Protocol—which called for the developed nations to curb their CO2 emissions—was the international front of Gore’s GW agenda. For the last seven years, Gore’s media allies have denounced George Bush for “killing” Kyoto. Poppycock! The history is this: after the Clinton administration signed Kyoto, the senate voted 95-0 against implementing Kyoto’s provisions because they were slanted so unfairly against the United States. Clinton then signed an executive order barring the executive branch from enforcing any part of Kyoto. Bush didn’t kill Kyoto; he inherited a corpse. (Factoid: since Kyoto was written, greenhouse emissions in the countries that adopted it increased 21.1 percent on average, while U.S. emissions increased only 6.6 percent; yet, the United States has been singled out as the irresponsible global citizen. That’s politics!)
Kyoto’s agenda wasn’t to save the world, but to shackle economic activity in this country through curbing energy consumption. It’s easy to understand why foreign economic competitors would want this, but why would Gore and American liberals want to do this to the American people? The answer is simple: the lust for power and importance. Remember: control energy and you control people.
There are signs that Gore’s movement is losing credibility. An English judge ruled that Gore’s award-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” may not be shown in U.K. schools without disclaimers and the inclusion of opposing opinions, on the grounds that it is a work of political propaganda, and not scientifically sound. Various scientists on the political left who formerly endorsed the GW dogma now repudiate it. Remarkably, 31,000 scientists have signed a statement urging our government not to take any rash, costly actions to curb CO2 emissions.
Unfortunately, taking rash, costly action may be the eventual outcome. Last week, the Senate considered setting limits on CO2 emissions through the colossally expensive and grandiloquently named “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.” Fortunately, this destructive proposal doesn't have enough support to pass now, but it raises the possibility that Al Gore will get the last laugh after all. What an irony it would be if, even as scientific support for his GW theory crumbles, his years of propagating the “big lie” of the GW hobgoblin were to cause Congress to impose the “wrenching transformation of society” that he has long yearned for.
Peter
The Cynical Politics of Global Warming and Its Hobgoblins
By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson June 11, 2008
“Cynical politics” may be a redundancy, but it is hard to imagine a mo1re cynical political issue than global warming (GW). In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “wrenching transformation of society.” Leftists, with their elitist penchant for social engineering, didn’t need any convincing. The challenge for Gore was the inconvenient truth that, in a democracy, a would-be central planner needs to get the masses on his side, too. To do that, he borrowed a strategy encapsulated in H.L. Mencken’s statement, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Apocalyptic GW became Al Gore’s hobgoblin of choice.
Gore needed the scientific community to back up his assertions and the media to spread the word. Enlisting the help of the media was easy (apocalyptic fantasies are sure ratings winners), but getting enough scientists on board was trickier. When Gore started his GW campaign in the early 1990s, a contemporary Gallup poll of scientists showed that only 18 percent thought there was any evidence to support Gore’s theory. Even a survey conducted by Greenpeace found only 13 percent of climatologists willing to declare GW “probable.”
Nevertheless, Gore repeatedly claimed that (literally) 98 percent of scientists agreed with him, and he exhorted reporters to ignore skeptics. Right from the outset, the GW cult (like other illiberal movements, such as communism and fascism) had to resort to the “big lie” technique to make it appear that the science of GW was settled. (See my prior article, "Questions About Global Warming," for some of the holes in the “science” of global warming.)
As senator, and then vice president, Gore used his power to channel money toward those who “played ball” and away from those who doubted GW. The latter found that grant money dried up, promotions were denied, and even jobs were terminated. Gore’s colleague, Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth, became Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs in charge of promoting GW theory and international agreements to address the alleged problem. Wirth was quoted as bragging that he could change a lot of minds with a billion dollars per year of State Department money. Indeed, recent estimates are that $50 billion has been spent promoting the GW theory (mostly governments and international organizations using tax money) and less that $1 billion to question it. Advantage: GW.
This is richly ironic. GW fanatics routinely accuse skeptics of having been bought off by Big Oil. They expect Americans to disbelieve private-sector scientists while trusting government-funded scientists (i.e., virtually all the scientists on the GW bandwagon) as if, a priori, government funding is holy, but private funding corrupt.
The Kyoto Protocol—which called for the developed nations to curb their CO2 emissions—was the international front of Gore’s GW agenda. For the last seven years, Gore’s media allies have denounced George Bush for “killing” Kyoto. Poppycock! The history is this: after the Clinton administration signed Kyoto, the senate voted 95-0 against implementing Kyoto’s provisions because they were slanted so unfairly against the United States. Clinton then signed an executive order barring the executive branch from enforcing any part of Kyoto. Bush didn’t kill Kyoto; he inherited a corpse. (Factoid: since Kyoto was written, greenhouse emissions in the countries that adopted it increased 21.1 percent on average, while U.S. emissions increased only 6.6 percent; yet, the United States has been singled out as the irresponsible global citizen. That’s politics!)
Kyoto’s agenda wasn’t to save the world, but to shackle economic activity in this country through curbing energy consumption. It’s easy to understand why foreign economic competitors would want this, but why would Gore and American liberals want to do this to the American people? The answer is simple: the lust for power and importance. Remember: control energy and you control people.
There are signs that Gore’s movement is losing credibility. An English judge ruled that Gore’s award-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” may not be shown in U.K. schools without disclaimers and the inclusion of opposing opinions, on the grounds that it is a work of political propaganda, and not scientifically sound. Various scientists on the political left who formerly endorsed the GW dogma now repudiate it. Remarkably, 31,000 scientists have signed a statement urging our government not to take any rash, costly actions to curb CO2 emissions.
Unfortunately, taking rash, costly action may be the eventual outcome. Last week, the Senate considered setting limits on CO2 emissions through the colossally expensive and grandiloquently named “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.” Fortunately, this destructive proposal doesn't have enough support to pass now, but it raises the possibility that Al Gore will get the last laugh after all. What an irony it would be if, even as scientific support for his GW theory crumbles, his years of propagating the “big lie” of the GW hobgoblin were to cause Congress to impose the “wrenching transformation of society” that he has long yearned for.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Oil And Gas Exploration In The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: The Real Story
This was sent to me by friend. This is not the kind of information about drilling for oil in ANWR you will find in the mainstream media. He included the following pictures and text about ANWR.
This is my reply:
Jim,
The information and photos in this message about ANWR is all basically true. I studied and explored for oil and gas in all of Northern Alaska, from the Mackenzie Delta in Canada on the east to Pt. Barrow and the Chukchi Sea on the west. The area is bounded by the Brooks Range and the Sadlerochit Mountains on the south. Oil and gas is rarely found in mountains that have been uplifted, folded, faulted metamorphosed, and eroded. This general rule applies all over the world.
Traversing northward in Alaska from the mountain ranges, you would cross a geologic feature called the Colville River Basin, named after the dominant river in northern Alaska that flows northward and empties into the Beaufort Sea. This basin was first formed during the Jurassic Period, about 100 million (?) years ago and filled with sediments, primarily sand, silt, clay and mud rich in organic matter. In the deepest part of this huge basin, (think of the Gulf Of Mexico) these sediments may be as much as 30,000 feet thick. They contain a lot of oil, gas and coal. The western half of northern Alaska is owned by the Federal Government and was established as the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, (NPRA) in the 1920's. Geologists have known for a long time about the oil, gas and coal there. It is a forbidding environment and until fairly recently it has never been economically viable to do much exploration up there. But that is what I did for almost ten years. Of course the largest oil and gas field ever found in North America is there, and called the Prudhoe Bay Field. It was initially thought to contain 10 Billion barrels of oil, and I think it will eventually produce more than that.
So geologists pretty much know where the oil and gas is, or is likely to be. Only a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has oil and gas potential. Yes it is a fragile environment; yes it is easy to damage the delicate tundra, especially in the wet, soft, boggy summer. However, it has been demonstrated that oil exploration and production can be conducted in the Arctic with minimal environmental damage. The question is, is 5 to 10 Billion barrels of oil worth going after? I think it is, and of course nobody will know until someone actually drills some wells.
Good information, I'm saving it. Thanks,
Peter
And some perspective…
NOTE WHERE THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT AREA IS…
(it’s in the “ANWR Coastal Plain”)
THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRATS, LIBERALS AND “GREENS” SHOW YOU WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT ANWR
…and they are right… these ARE photographs of ANWR
ISN’T ANWR BEAUTIFUL? WHY SHOULD WE DRILL HERE (AND DESTROY) THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE?
WELL… THAT’S NOT EXACTLY THE TRUTH
Do you remember the map?
The map showed that the proposed drilling area is in the ANWR Coastal Plain
Do those photographs look like a coastal plain to you?
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE…
THAT IS NOT WHERE THEY ARE WANTING TO DRILL!
THIS IS WHAT THE PROPOSED EXPLORATION AREA ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE IN THE WINTER
AND THIS IS WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE IN THE SUMMER
HERE ARE A COUPLE SCREEN SHOTS FROM GOOGLE EARTH
AS YOU CAN SEE, THE AREA WHERE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT DRILLING IS A BARREN WASTELAND.
OH… AND THEY SAY THAT THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE EFFECT ON THE LOCAL WILDLIFE…
HERE IS A PHOTO (SHOT DURING THE SUMMER) OF THE“DEPLETED WILDLIFE” SITUATION CREATED BY DRILLING AROUND PRUDHOE BAY*…DON’T YOU THINK THAT THE CARIBOU REALLY HATE THAT DRILLING?
HERE’S THAT SAME SPOT DURING THE WINTER.
HEY, THIS BEAR SEEMS TO REALLY HATE THE PIPELINE NEAR PRUDHOE BAY*…
*The Prudhoe bay area accounts for 17% of U.S. domestic oil production
NOW, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE LYING ABOUT ANWR?
REMEMBER WHEN AL GORE SAID THAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD WORK TO ARTIFICIALLY RAISE GAS PRICES TO $5.00 A GALLON?
WELL…
AL GORE AND HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS HAVE ALMOST REACHED THEIR GOAL!
NOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN LYING,WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
YOU CAN START BY FORWARDING THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW…SO THAT THEY WILL KNOW THE TRUTH.
"Pete, You know all about the oil business. What's your scope on
all of this? When will Saudi Arabia run out of oil?" Jim
This is my reply:
Jim,
The information and photos in this message about ANWR is all basically true. I studied and explored for oil and gas in all of Northern Alaska, from the Mackenzie Delta in Canada on the east to Pt. Barrow and the Chukchi Sea on the west. The area is bounded by the Brooks Range and the Sadlerochit Mountains on the south. Oil and gas is rarely found in mountains that have been uplifted, folded, faulted metamorphosed, and eroded. This general rule applies all over the world.
Traversing northward in Alaska from the mountain ranges, you would cross a geologic feature called the Colville River Basin, named after the dominant river in northern Alaska that flows northward and empties into the Beaufort Sea. This basin was first formed during the Jurassic Period, about 100 million (?) years ago and filled with sediments, primarily sand, silt, clay and mud rich in organic matter. In the deepest part of this huge basin, (think of the Gulf Of Mexico) these sediments may be as much as 30,000 feet thick. They contain a lot of oil, gas and coal. The western half of northern Alaska is owned by the Federal Government and was established as the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, (NPRA) in the 1920's. Geologists have known for a long time about the oil, gas and coal there. It is a forbidding environment and until fairly recently it has never been economically viable to do much exploration up there. But that is what I did for almost ten years. Of course the largest oil and gas field ever found in North America is there, and called the Prudhoe Bay Field. It was initially thought to contain 10 Billion barrels of oil, and I think it will eventually produce more than that.
So geologists pretty much know where the oil and gas is, or is likely to be. Only a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has oil and gas potential. Yes it is a fragile environment; yes it is easy to damage the delicate tundra, especially in the wet, soft, boggy summer. However, it has been demonstrated that oil exploration and production can be conducted in the Arctic with minimal environmental damage. The question is, is 5 to 10 Billion barrels of oil worth going after? I think it is, and of course nobody will know until someone actually drills some wells.
Good information, I'm saving it. Thanks,
Peter
FIRST… do you know what ANWR is?
ANWR = Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Now… A comparison
ANWR = Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Now… A comparison
And some perspective…
NOTE WHERE THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT AREA IS…
(it’s in the “ANWR Coastal Plain”)
THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRATS, LIBERALS AND “GREENS” SHOW YOU WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT ANWR
…and they are right… these ARE photographs of ANWR
ISN’T ANWR BEAUTIFUL? WHY SHOULD WE DRILL HERE (AND DESTROY) THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE?
WELL… THAT’S NOT EXACTLY THE TRUTH
Do you remember the map?
The map showed that the proposed drilling area is in the ANWR Coastal Plain
Do those photographs look like a coastal plain to you?
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE…
THAT IS NOT WHERE THEY ARE WANTING TO DRILL!
THIS IS WHAT THE PROPOSED EXPLORATION AREA ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE IN THE WINTER
AND THIS IS WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE IN THE SUMMER
HERE ARE A COUPLE SCREEN SHOTS FROM GOOGLE EARTH AS YOU CAN SEE, THE AREA WHERE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT DRILLING IS A BARREN WASTELAND.
OH… AND THEY SAY THAT THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE EFFECT ON THE LOCAL WILDLIFE…
HERE IS A PHOTO (SHOT DURING THE SUMMER) OF THE“DEPLETED WILDLIFE” SITUATION CREATED BY DRILLING AROUND PRUDHOE BAY*…DON’T YOU THINK THAT THE CARIBOU REALLY HATE THAT DRILLING?
HERE’S THAT SAME SPOT DURING THE WINTER.
HEY, THIS BEAR SEEMS TO REALLY HATE THE PIPELINE NEAR PRUDHOE BAY*…
*The Prudhoe bay area accounts for 17% of U.S. domestic oil production
NOW, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE LYING ABOUT ANWR?
REMEMBER WHEN AL GORE SAID THAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD WORK TO ARTIFICIALLY RAISE GAS PRICES TO $5.00 A GALLON?
WELL…
AL GORE AND HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS HAVE ALMOST REACHED THEIR GOAL!
NOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN LYING,WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
YOU CAN START BY FORWARDING THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW…SO THAT THEY WILL KNOW THE TRUTH.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Good News For American Oil Independence
This is one excellent example of how innovative thinking and new technology can help solve America's energy problems. Let's have more of it! I'll bet the people in North Dakota aren't too worried about carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming. Anyone wanting to know more, do a search of this blog on the Bakken Formation and the Barnett Shale of North Texas.
Peter
source
Oil Is Making Millionaires in North Dakota
By James MacPherson, Associated Press CNSNews.com June 30, 2008 Beulah, N.D. (AP) -
Oscar Stohler was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay below the grass that fattened his cattle.When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Stohler, 83, doubted oil would be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it."I told them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat," Stohler recalled.He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap -- but it's by choice.In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Lorene, 82, have become millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun producing on their property and another is being drilled -- all aimed at the Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments."It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.
State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells. The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River."I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising. The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.
Bruce Gjovig, director of the University of North Dakota's Center for Innovation, said his informal survey estimates the number of new millionaires in Mountrail County, one of the biggest drilling areas of the Bakken, may be as many as 2,000 -- or nearly a third of the county's population -- in the next three to five years. North Dakota's per capita income in 2007 was $36,846, ranking the state 30th in the nation and up from 42nd in 1997, said Richard Rathge, the state Data Center director and North Dakota demographer. "The two main drivers are energy and agriculture income," Rathge said. The increasing wealth in the state from oil should push the average annual wage in North Dakota, he said.
The oil boom has spurred several "Jed Clampett-like" tales of ordinary folks getting rich, said Tom Rolfstad, the economic development director for the city of Williston. Rolfstad said he hasn't spotted any Ferraris or Rolls Royces in town, though several people can afford them now."I'm seeing a lot more big, shiny gas-guzzling pickups," he said. Several homes that cost more than a million dollars also are being built in Williston, he said. The community of about 12,500 people is perhaps best known as the hometown of NBA coach Phil Jackson. Most people "don't want people to know how much money they got and they don't want to be tagged with being wealthy -- they want to be themselves," Rolfstad said.
Oscar and Lorene Stohler said their newly found wealth hasn't changed them."We still know what tough times are," Oscar said. "We grew up in the Dirty '30s.""We put our kids through college without that oil money," Lorene said. The couple moved a few miles east to Beulah and paid cash for their new home, the first one they have owned. They have established trust accounts for their four children. Lorene said the only thriftless purchase was an automatic sprinkler system for her flowers that surround the couple's new home. And Oscar bought a $1,000 ring for his wife to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary."We got enough now to buy new stuff," Lorene said, "but we like our old stuff."
Peter
source
Oil Is Making Millionaires in North Dakota
By James MacPherson, Associated Press CNSNews.com June 30, 2008 Beulah, N.D. (AP) -
Oscar Stohler was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay below the grass that fattened his cattle.When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Stohler, 83, doubted oil would be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it."I told them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat," Stohler recalled.He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap -- but it's by choice.In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Lorene, 82, have become millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun producing on their property and another is being drilled -- all aimed at the Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments."It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.
State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells. The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River."I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising. The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.
Bruce Gjovig, director of the University of North Dakota's Center for Innovation, said his informal survey estimates the number of new millionaires in Mountrail County, one of the biggest drilling areas of the Bakken, may be as many as 2,000 -- or nearly a third of the county's population -- in the next three to five years. North Dakota's per capita income in 2007 was $36,846, ranking the state 30th in the nation and up from 42nd in 1997, said Richard Rathge, the state Data Center director and North Dakota demographer. "The two main drivers are energy and agriculture income," Rathge said. The increasing wealth in the state from oil should push the average annual wage in North Dakota, he said.
The oil boom has spurred several "Jed Clampett-like" tales of ordinary folks getting rich, said Tom Rolfstad, the economic development director for the city of Williston. Rolfstad said he hasn't spotted any Ferraris or Rolls Royces in town, though several people can afford them now."I'm seeing a lot more big, shiny gas-guzzling pickups," he said. Several homes that cost more than a million dollars also are being built in Williston, he said. The community of about 12,500 people is perhaps best known as the hometown of NBA coach Phil Jackson. Most people "don't want people to know how much money they got and they don't want to be tagged with being wealthy -- they want to be themselves," Rolfstad said.
Oscar and Lorene Stohler said their newly found wealth hasn't changed them."We still know what tough times are," Oscar said. "We grew up in the Dirty '30s.""We put our kids through college without that oil money," Lorene said. The couple moved a few miles east to Beulah and paid cash for their new home, the first one they have owned. They have established trust accounts for their four children. Lorene said the only thriftless purchase was an automatic sprinkler system for her flowers that surround the couple's new home. And Oscar bought a $1,000 ring for his wife to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary."We got enough now to buy new stuff," Lorene said, "but we like our old stuff."
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
A Majority Of Meteorologists Do Not Believe The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming?
How can this be? When people say the "debate is over", "we must act now", the United Nation's IPCC says they are sure, and others claim their is a "consensus" among "climatologists". What utter and total nonsense. See the following article; is this a lie, does this person work for "Big Oil", is it just "propaganda", is this meteorologist evil? Or are there just educated and informed people out there who want the public to know the truth. There are many honest people who believe the myth of man-caused global warming is harming the economy of America and the world. What do you think?
Peter (source)
Meteorologist Says Money Behind Warming Alarmism 'Can Corrupt Anybody'
Cullen adversary argues he knows only one broadcast meteorologist who is 'on the global warming bandwagon.'
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 6/17/2008 11:27:10 AM
A year and a half ago, James Spann questioned the money and the so-called scientific consensus pushing the idea that mankind is causing global warming. Today, he says it’s losing steam. Two imminent surveys of meteorologists may further complicate the climate debate.
Spann, a broadcast meteorologist for ABC 33/40, an affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., downplayed the future of the global warming movement in a June 13 appearance. He was interviewed by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council for its Washington Watch Weekly broadcast. Spann told Perkins:
“[Y]ou know, there was some great power in that movement back in January of 2007,” Spann said. “It’s pretty rapidly running out of gas and it just seems like every day more and more people are coming out with the fact that that’s pretty much a hoax. And these are Ph.D climatologists that are pretty much saying what I said all along.”
In January 2007, Spann received national attention when he wrote a post on his blog challenging a post by The Weather Channel climate expert Dr. Heidi Cullen. Cullen had argued that meteorologists should have the American Meteorological Society (AMS) credentials taken away if they doubt the validity of manmade climate change.
“If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval,” Cullen wrote for Weather.com on Dec. 21, 2006.
Spann fired back on Jan. 18, 2007: “Well, well,” Spann wrote. “Some ‘climate expert’ on ‘The Weather Channel’ wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for ‘tolerance’, huh?”
Spann claimed at the time he didn’t know any broadcast meteorologists who were sold on the theory touted by global warming alarmists. Since then, he has managed to find one.
“Again, one of my statements in that original article – I did not at the time know of a single broadcast meteorologist that was on the global warming bandwagon,” Spann said in his interview. “Now since then – and it’s been a year and a half, I found one, one guy and I know hundreds. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I know meteorologists on television in some of the most liberal markets in this country that agree with me and I did find one – and that’s fine. And I certainly respect his opinion.”
Spann’s comments about broadcast meteorologists come two weeks prior to the AMS 36th Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, set for June 25-29 in Denver. At the conference, two separate surveys of broadcast meteorologists’ opinions on climate change are set to be unveiled – one by the National Environmental Education Foundation and one by Sean Sublette, a meteorologist for WSET, the ABC affiliate in Lynchburg, Va.
Spann explained it wasn’t his belief that carbon dioxide was a pollutant, but he told Perkins to understand the motivation of those who say it is – they should follow the grant money.
“Of course, the root of this whole thing is money,” Spann said. “And, there is a vast amount of wealth being generated by this whole issue. And I always recommend to folks – if anyone speaks on the subject, get a disclosure and find out their financial interests in it.”
The same claims are often made by climate change alarmists – global warming skeptics are in it for the money from big energy corporations. Spann told Perkins he has never accepted any money for speaking out about global warming alarmism, but he had reservations about money’s effects on government policy pertaining to climate change.
“When I speak on this topic, I’ve never accepted one dime,” Spann said. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other – if warming that we’ve seen in recent years is natural or not. But, there’s a vast amount of grant money going to very, very powerful people and I think that maybe that flows into some of the lobbying efforts and it goes and winds up in Washington.”
He pointed to former Vice President Al Gore as an example of how money behind climate change and global warming alarmism can perpetuate a theory that shouldn’t warrant as much merit otherwise.
“I’m not a politician, don’t understand it – I honestly don’t know,” Spann said. “But, I will tell you that there’s a lot of people who have gotten very, very wealthy – filthy rich off this subject. I think former Vice President [Al Gore] collects a minimum of $200,000 per speech on this and all of this money – it can corrupt anybody, and I just think it’s all about money.”
Related Links:
A Special Report from BMI: Global Warming Censored
BMI's Special Report "Fire & Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide weather we face an ice or warming"
Climate of Bias: BMI's page devoted entirely to global warming and climate change in the media
Peter (source)
Meteorologist Says Money Behind Warming Alarmism 'Can Corrupt Anybody'
Cullen adversary argues he knows only one broadcast meteorologist who is 'on the global warming bandwagon.'
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 6/17/2008 11:27:10 AM
A year and a half ago, James Spann questioned the money and the so-called scientific consensus pushing the idea that mankind is causing global warming. Today, he says it’s losing steam. Two imminent surveys of meteorologists may further complicate the climate debate.
Spann, a broadcast meteorologist for ABC 33/40, an affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., downplayed the future of the global warming movement in a June 13 appearance. He was interviewed by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council for its Washington Watch Weekly broadcast. Spann told Perkins:
“[Y]ou know, there was some great power in that movement back in January of 2007,” Spann said. “It’s pretty rapidly running out of gas and it just seems like every day more and more people are coming out with the fact that that’s pretty much a hoax. And these are Ph.D climatologists that are pretty much saying what I said all along.”
In January 2007, Spann received national attention when he wrote a post on his blog challenging a post by The Weather Channel climate expert Dr. Heidi Cullen. Cullen had argued that meteorologists should have the American Meteorological Society (AMS) credentials taken away if they doubt the validity of manmade climate change.
“If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval,” Cullen wrote for Weather.com on Dec. 21, 2006.
Spann fired back on Jan. 18, 2007: “Well, well,” Spann wrote. “Some ‘climate expert’ on ‘The Weather Channel’ wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for ‘tolerance’, huh?”
Spann claimed at the time he didn’t know any broadcast meteorologists who were sold on the theory touted by global warming alarmists. Since then, he has managed to find one.
“Again, one of my statements in that original article – I did not at the time know of a single broadcast meteorologist that was on the global warming bandwagon,” Spann said in his interview. “Now since then – and it’s been a year and a half, I found one, one guy and I know hundreds. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I know meteorologists on television in some of the most liberal markets in this country that agree with me and I did find one – and that’s fine. And I certainly respect his opinion.”
Spann’s comments about broadcast meteorologists come two weeks prior to the AMS 36th Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, set for June 25-29 in Denver. At the conference, two separate surveys of broadcast meteorologists’ opinions on climate change are set to be unveiled – one by the National Environmental Education Foundation and one by Sean Sublette, a meteorologist for WSET, the ABC affiliate in Lynchburg, Va.
Spann explained it wasn’t his belief that carbon dioxide was a pollutant, but he told Perkins to understand the motivation of those who say it is – they should follow the grant money.
“Of course, the root of this whole thing is money,” Spann said. “And, there is a vast amount of wealth being generated by this whole issue. And I always recommend to folks – if anyone speaks on the subject, get a disclosure and find out their financial interests in it.”
The same claims are often made by climate change alarmists – global warming skeptics are in it for the money from big energy corporations. Spann told Perkins he has never accepted any money for speaking out about global warming alarmism, but he had reservations about money’s effects on government policy pertaining to climate change.
“When I speak on this topic, I’ve never accepted one dime,” Spann said. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other – if warming that we’ve seen in recent years is natural or not. But, there’s a vast amount of grant money going to very, very powerful people and I think that maybe that flows into some of the lobbying efforts and it goes and winds up in Washington.”
He pointed to former Vice President Al Gore as an example of how money behind climate change and global warming alarmism can perpetuate a theory that shouldn’t warrant as much merit otherwise.
“I’m not a politician, don’t understand it – I honestly don’t know,” Spann said. “But, I will tell you that there’s a lot of people who have gotten very, very wealthy – filthy rich off this subject. I think former Vice President [Al Gore] collects a minimum of $200,000 per speech on this and all of this money – it can corrupt anybody, and I just think it’s all about money.”
Related Links:
A Special Report from BMI: Global Warming Censored
BMI's Special Report "Fire & Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide weather we face an ice or warming"
Climate of Bias: BMI's page devoted entirely to global warming and climate change in the media
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Bakken Formation of Montana and North Dakota: Is It The Answer To Our Energy Needs?
It sounds to me as if the amount of oil recoverable from the Bakken has been greatly exagerated. Based on some knowledge of technology, geology, the oil industry, the USGS, and the kind of hype by people selling investment "advice", especially on the internet, I tend to believe the basic premise of this report. There is a lot of oil in the Bakken Formation, and some of it is economically recoverable with relatively new horizontal drilling and rock fracturing technology. Any oil, anywhere, is very attractive at today's $130 per barrel price. Even if the USGS "estimates" are correct, and you can be sure that is what they are, a best guess, 4 Billion barrels of recoverable oil is very significant. It is 40% of what was initially thought to be recoverable from the Prudhoe Bay Field on Alaska's North Slope, which is the largest oil field ever found in North America. Of course the Bakken Formation is not one simple oil field. It is primarily a layer of shale rock spread over a huge area, with many, many wells needed to produce that much oil. The Bakken Formation is not going to be a panacea for our energy crisis. There is one other article on this blog dealing with the Bakken Formation, see here Peak Oil? An Example Of How Technology "Discovers" More Oil
Peter
U.S. Says 400-Billion Barrel Bakken Oil Field a 'Myth'
By Keriann Hopkins CNSNews.com Correspondent June 18, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - source
Reports circulating on the Internet tell of an oil field spanning parts of western North Dakota and eastern Montana where 400 billion barrels of oil supposedly are just waiting to be tapped. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tells Cybercast News Service that those huge estimates are "a myth."A USGS report issued in April estimates that there are between 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in what is referred to as "the Bakken Formation" -- well below the 400 billion barrels discussed on the Web, but up from the previous estimate of 151 million barrels made in 1995.
Richard Pollastro, Bakken Formation task leader at the USGS, said the myth stems from a 1999 draft report -- never published -- by a now-deceased USGS employee, Leigh Price. Price estimated that the Bakken Formation holds up to 400 billion barrels of oil. To put that in perspective, Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has about 260 billion barrels of known oil reserves. Price, however, died in 2000, before his study could be peer-reviewed and published, and the Bakken Formation became the fool's gold of the oil industry. "Unfortunately, in many instances, we are still trying to explain and defend our assessment versus the inappropriate and irresponsible posting of Dr. Price's 'draft report,'" Pollastro told Cybercast News Service.
According to Jonathon Kolak, a USGS scientist and information specialist, the discrepancy between Price's 1999 estimates and the agency's 2008 findings arises from the fact that Price was trying to assess the "oil generation potential" of the oil found in the pores of rocks and shale in the Bakken field, as well as the total content of how much oil might be pooling up - or "oil in place.""What Dr. Price was looking at was 'oil generation potential,' and then, from that, trying to make an estimate of 'oil in place,'" said Kolak. "Those terms are very distinct from 'undiscovered technically recoverable resources.'" The latest study, which was commissioned by U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), is an estimate of how much "technically recoverable" oil and gas is available -- i.e, how much oil can actually be recovered using today's technology.
Kolas also explained that the 25-fold increase between the 1995 estimates and the 2008 assessment is due to two factors: an improved understanding of the geology and advances in drilling technology. "Our understanding of the geology improved significantly because of the time difference between the studies," he said. "There has been some drilling since then, there has been a lot more information that has come out, other people have conducted studies, and also USGS researchers have conducted studies. "Moreover, drillers are utilizing directional drilling in the Bakken fields, a way of drilling at an angle to tap previously unrecoverable reservoirs.
"If you've been out to western North Dakota, you don't need a USGS report to know that there's oil there because you can see from all the drilling activity that there's a lot of energy development going on in western North Dakota," Dorgan spokesman Justin Kitch told Cybercast News Service . Kitch admits that comparing Price's 1999 study to the April USGS study is like comparing "apples and oranges. "But certainly it's nice to have an up-to-date assessment of the amount of oil that's technically recoverable in the Bakken," he said.
In 2006, Marathon Oil bought 200,000 acres in the Bakken to drill over 300 wells. This past May, after the report was released, Texas-based XTO Energy bought 352,000 net acres in the Bakken Shale for $1.9 billion. The federal government, meanwhile, said only a small proportion of the oil available with today's technology is economically viable for recovery. "If you're drilling the Bakken, it's pretty easy to drill somewhere in there and at least see some oil, but the question is: Is there enough there to get out and actually be economically recoverable?" Kolak asked. At the end of 2007, about 105 million barrels of oil had been produced from the Bakken Formation. The USGS, meanwhile, considers any release or dissemination of Price's unpublished report to be "inappropriate and irresponsible."
Peter
U.S. Says 400-Billion Barrel Bakken Oil Field a 'Myth'
By Keriann Hopkins CNSNews.com Correspondent June 18, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - source
Reports circulating on the Internet tell of an oil field spanning parts of western North Dakota and eastern Montana where 400 billion barrels of oil supposedly are just waiting to be tapped. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tells Cybercast News Service that those huge estimates are "a myth."A USGS report issued in April estimates that there are between 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in what is referred to as "the Bakken Formation" -- well below the 400 billion barrels discussed on the Web, but up from the previous estimate of 151 million barrels made in 1995.
Richard Pollastro, Bakken Formation task leader at the USGS, said the myth stems from a 1999 draft report -- never published -- by a now-deceased USGS employee, Leigh Price. Price estimated that the Bakken Formation holds up to 400 billion barrels of oil. To put that in perspective, Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has about 260 billion barrels of known oil reserves. Price, however, died in 2000, before his study could be peer-reviewed and published, and the Bakken Formation became the fool's gold of the oil industry. "Unfortunately, in many instances, we are still trying to explain and defend our assessment versus the inappropriate and irresponsible posting of Dr. Price's 'draft report,'" Pollastro told Cybercast News Service.
According to Jonathon Kolak, a USGS scientist and information specialist, the discrepancy between Price's 1999 estimates and the agency's 2008 findings arises from the fact that Price was trying to assess the "oil generation potential" of the oil found in the pores of rocks and shale in the Bakken field, as well as the total content of how much oil might be pooling up - or "oil in place.""What Dr. Price was looking at was 'oil generation potential,' and then, from that, trying to make an estimate of 'oil in place,'" said Kolak. "Those terms are very distinct from 'undiscovered technically recoverable resources.'" The latest study, which was commissioned by U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), is an estimate of how much "technically recoverable" oil and gas is available -- i.e, how much oil can actually be recovered using today's technology.
Kolas also explained that the 25-fold increase between the 1995 estimates and the 2008 assessment is due to two factors: an improved understanding of the geology and advances in drilling technology. "Our understanding of the geology improved significantly because of the time difference between the studies," he said. "There has been some drilling since then, there has been a lot more information that has come out, other people have conducted studies, and also USGS researchers have conducted studies. "Moreover, drillers are utilizing directional drilling in the Bakken fields, a way of drilling at an angle to tap previously unrecoverable reservoirs.
"If you've been out to western North Dakota, you don't need a USGS report to know that there's oil there because you can see from all the drilling activity that there's a lot of energy development going on in western North Dakota," Dorgan spokesman Justin Kitch told Cybercast News Service . Kitch admits that comparing Price's 1999 study to the April USGS study is like comparing "apples and oranges. "But certainly it's nice to have an up-to-date assessment of the amount of oil that's technically recoverable in the Bakken," he said.
In 2006, Marathon Oil bought 200,000 acres in the Bakken to drill over 300 wells. This past May, after the report was released, Texas-based XTO Energy bought 352,000 net acres in the Bakken Shale for $1.9 billion. The federal government, meanwhile, said only a small proportion of the oil available with today's technology is economically viable for recovery. "If you're drilling the Bakken, it's pretty easy to drill somewhere in there and at least see some oil, but the question is: Is there enough there to get out and actually be economically recoverable?" Kolak asked. At the end of 2007, about 105 million barrels of oil had been produced from the Bakken Formation. The USGS, meanwhile, considers any release or dissemination of Price's unpublished report to be "inappropriate and irresponsible."
Thursday, June 19, 2008
It's Official, (Supposedly) More Extreme Weather...
Someone needs to tell these researchers to read their own government reports showing that the climate has not been warming, and is in fact cooling during the past ten years. Also, asking these scientists to give a truly objective analysis is similar to expecting the fox to guard the hen house. This report comes from people who are dependent upon continued government funding, in times of doubt and economic stress, to keep their jobs. In light of the current Midwest flooding in the U.S., isn't the timing of the release of this "analysis" coincidental? Factor these realities into the validity of this "new" report of an old story line.
Peter
U.S. experts: Forecast is more extreme weather
Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says
source
Feeling the heatJune 19: A federal review of research on warming's effects forecasts more frequent and longer-lasting extreme weather events. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
Nightly News
WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.
Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.
"Heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity," the report stated. "Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing Thursday.
For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.
Such an increase "can lead to the type of events that we are seeing in the Midwest," said Karl, though he did not directly link the current flooding to climate change.
The report itself noted that "intense precipitation (the heaviest 1 percent of daily precipitation totals) in the continental U.S. increased by 20 percent over the past century while total precipitation increased by 7 percent."
Shifting dangers: But the report cautioned that preparing for weather that has been relatively common can leave people vulnerable as extreme events occur more and more.
"Moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now 'safe' floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs," the report said.
At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said. "When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer — there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained. The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there has been a trend toward increasing power in hurricanes since the 1970s in the Atlantic and western Pacific, a change that can be linked to rising sea surface temperatures.
There is a statistical connection between rising sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity, Meehl said, but linking changes in hurricanes to human actions will require more study.
Hotter days more often: More easily attributed to human impact, through release of greenhouse gases, is an overall increase in temperatures, he said. It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.
"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.
Researchers can use computer models of climate to separate out cause and effect of this warming, he explained — looking at the effect of things like changes in solar radiation or volcanic eruptions — and the result is to attribute climate warming to the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases," the report itself states.
Other future projections cited in the report include:
Sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in summer in coming decades; Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense; Droughts will likely be more frequent and severe in some areas;
Hurricanes will likely spawn increased precipitation and wind; The strongest cold-season Atlantic and Pacific storms are likely to create stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
Participating in the Climate Change Science Program are the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
The full report is online at http://www.usgcrp.gov/
Peter
U.S. experts: Forecast is more extreme weather
Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says
source
Feeling the heatJune 19: A federal review of research on warming's effects forecasts more frequent and longer-lasting extreme weather events. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
Nightly News
WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.
Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.
"Heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity," the report stated. "Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing Thursday.
For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.
Such an increase "can lead to the type of events that we are seeing in the Midwest," said Karl, though he did not directly link the current flooding to climate change.
The report itself noted that "intense precipitation (the heaviest 1 percent of daily precipitation totals) in the continental U.S. increased by 20 percent over the past century while total precipitation increased by 7 percent."
Shifting dangers: But the report cautioned that preparing for weather that has been relatively common can leave people vulnerable as extreme events occur more and more.
"Moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now 'safe' floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs," the report said.
At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said. "When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer — there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained. The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said there has been a trend toward increasing power in hurricanes since the 1970s in the Atlantic and western Pacific, a change that can be linked to rising sea surface temperatures.
There is a statistical connection between rising sea surface temperatures and hurricane activity, Meehl said, but linking changes in hurricanes to human actions will require more study.
Hotter days more often: More easily attributed to human impact, through release of greenhouse gases, is an overall increase in temperatures, he said. It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.
"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.
Researchers can use computer models of climate to separate out cause and effect of this warming, he explained — looking at the effect of things like changes in solar radiation or volcanic eruptions — and the result is to attribute climate warming to the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases," the report itself states.
Other future projections cited in the report include:
Sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in summer in coming decades; Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense; Droughts will likely be more frequent and severe in some areas;
Hurricanes will likely spawn increased precipitation and wind; The strongest cold-season Atlantic and Pacific storms are likely to create stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
Participating in the Climate Change Science Program are the Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of State, Department of Transportation, U.S. Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
The full report is online at http://www.usgcrp.gov/
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