Laster winter’s USA weather pattern repeats a pattern 100 years ago:
The eastern half of the US completely missed the winter of 1889-1890, while the Pacific Northwest had one of their coldest winters on record.Romm and McKibben would have explained this familiar pattern as being due to chicken farts. The pattern is almost identical to this past winter. Hansen of course would say that this type of weather was impossible prior to 1988.
Back in 1951 an MIT scientist studying sunspots made a weather prediction- global cooling. His prediction, unlike the climate models predicting further warming, turned out to be true. So what happened?
Same thing that happened to Peak Oil. How are Peak Oil doomsayers like Jehovah’s Witnesses?
How many failed apocalypse predictions do we need to see before we stop believing them? The gullibility is what drives situations like this one- to the tune of 45,000 for dog poo studies.
$257 Billion invested in renewables; $302 billion invested in fossil fuel power. One of those investments repays that investment for just 3% of power supplied. Care to guess which one is the Money Pit?
“I take a fairly nuanced view. I’ve been a severe critic of the IPCC: they’re letting society down, and have an obligation to do much better reports than they do. Their failure to do so is an abnegation of their duty.” His view, he said, was tempered by a view of risk based on his business experience. “You’d be negligent not to take the IPCC as the basis of policy, even if you thought the quality of the work required tremendous improvement. I hope people do a better job.”
Guess who said this? If you are one of those who imagines I don’t know what I’m talking about when I post about climate change issues, I think you’ll be surprised. You’re being used and lied to. Don’t you wonder why?
Sprites- a rare, and rarely seen lightening phenomenon, captured on film for the first time. Very cool.
3 Comments
The problem I see with Oil is less “Peak Oil” as “Peak Cheap Oil”. Oil sands, oil tars, etc. are plentiful, but they’re not cheap in energy costs. The Saudis used to spend less than a barrel of oil to collect 100 barrels of oil or more. Now they’re spending the equivalent of one barrel to get 10 or less.
Oil Sands et al. require a lot of energy to dig up, and even more to dig up in such a way that we don’t create a toxic waste zone. Some Oil Sands only produce two or three barrels of oil for every one consumed. Until/unless technology can drive that up above 10 net barrels, we will be out of cheap oil soon.
I believe that we need to invest in micro-nuke plants, especially the zero-maintenance, 100% secure designs like SSTAR or Gen4/Hyperion (which could be dropped into a metropolitan power & steam system with little work). Large ships, big rigs, and trains should be converted to LNG when it makes sense. Use coal conversion to produce diesel and kerosene/jet fuel. We also need to create plastics and fertilizers from renewable hydrocarbon sources (I’m a fan of hemp oil, myself; it compliments grain production rather than replaces it).
All of the above will reduce demand for liquid oil products, and limit the effects that expensive oil would have on our lifestyles. In addition, none of the above changes are all that expensive to accomplish either, even if you don’t consider the non-oil needs (the micronukes would stabilize the Northeast power grid, etc.).
BP has shown that oil demand has been exceeding production since 2005, which is the year given by Hubbert in 1976 (i.e., 1995 + 10 years). Recently, the IEA has admitted to the same, together with many other groups, from the U.S. military to Lloyd’s of London. And if you look at oil production per capita (which is more logical), that peaked…in 1979.
The same has taken place for global warming. What should be happening decades from now has been taking place the last few years. In which case, scientists did fail in their predictions, as they thought that problems would take place much later.
The amount invested in renewables, etc., is much smaller than what is at stake concerning the global economy, with the largest component consisting of over $1 quadrillion dollars in unregulated derivatives. In order to keep that money pit propped up, the global economy has to keep growing, which means increased production and consumption of goods. That is why the world’s elite and their government counterparts are unmindful of peak oil and global warming, as much more money can be made through “business as usual.”
Not that the global population won’t support them, as most human beings don’t have a middle class lifestyle but want to avail of such. That is why oil consumption in BRIC and emerging markets is offsetting demand destruction in OECD countries, and even with the global slump (caused by financial speculation) per capita resource demand continues to rise. The problem is that global economic growth has to be maintained to ensure that. According to the IEA, we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years to do so. But the best estimates reveal that with all global oil and resources put online, we will be able to increase production by only 9 pct during the next two decades while demand has to go up by around 2 pct a year.
Global warming scientists have had their predictions come true, just sooner? You’ve got to be kidding. They are scrambling trying to figure out why we have cooling instead of warming, trying to distract people from discussing why they predicted rising hurricanes when we have the longest period of no hurricane touching American shores ever.
Wow. Talk about spin.