Why We Have To Kiss Off Big Carbon Now 441
mdsolar writes When the fossil-fuel divestment movement first stirred on college campuses three years ago, you could almost hear Big Oil and Wall Street laughing. Crude prices were flirting with $100 a barrel, and domestic oil production, from Texas to North Dakota, was in the midst of a historic boom. But the quixotic campus campaign suddenly has the smell of smart money.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
time to buy futures, now. (Score:2, Insightful)
only an idiot thinks prices will stay this low.
seriously, this happened in 2008 as well.
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only an idiot thinks prices will stay this low. seriously, this happened in 2008 as well.
Just until the Saudis decide they've screwed the Iranians enough and cut their production again. This dip is entirely political and nothing to do with long term trends in energy supply and demand.
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I was smart and got out of petro stocks... (Score:4, Funny)
boom & bust of the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's the problem with free market capitalism. Now we have abandoned wellsites that nobody wants to cleanup, unemployed oil workers & related fields, and bankrupt communities that were struggling to build infrastructure during the boom now have empty roads & schools. Give it 10-15 years and we'll start the cycle all over again. This carries across to other markets, we've seen it before with the steel belt turning into the rust belt.
Yes, the free market fixes it, but not until the damage is done. You end up with an economic system where capital is rushing from one end to other at the expense of labor. It's like some new era of hunter/gathering nomads; you have people following the buffalo around.
Re:boom & bust of the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the never ending problem of negative externalities: a business looks profitable only because it does not take into account costs that society bears. The solution is state regulation and taxation. In other words, free markets are a theory that does not fit the real world most of the time.
Re:boom & bust of the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
How quaint. (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed breeds myopia. Always has. Did people investing heavily in oil really think it would either keep going up, or sustain at the price peaks it was at for years? At those prices, it's all but strangling the economy. It started to actually effect just how much people drove!
And there's the problem. Oil is still king of the economy. From home energy, to the dinner table. Oil is still king. I think a good many investors forgot who just has the real power in the world. Guess the Saudis thought they should remind them.
The frustrating thing with this though, is that we still won't see the prices drop at the grocery or market, even though it's cheaper to ship goods and produce. Why pass savings onto the consumer, when you can pad the profit margin for the quarter, and stock-holders. I think a lot of people forget that, milk, bread, fruit, etc... should all be a little cheaper at the moment. It won't be.
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And how about that gasoline? $1.91 a gallon at this morning's fill up! That's going to help a lot of folks instantly.
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Shipping costs are typically about 1% of the cost of finished goods.
Granting they may be a bigger % of some of the inputs, the total isn't going to be huge.
Same discussion comes up whenever truckers claim they are running the economy. Even if everything went to higher cost modes it wouldn't amount to much.
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The frustrating thing with this though, is that we still won't see the prices drop at the grocery or market, even though it's cheaper to ship goods and produce.
Shipping is only a small percentage of the cost of a product. It costs more in gas for you to pick up a toothbrush at Safeway than to ship the toothbrush from China to Safeway.
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You put your finger right on it. And re TFS, no one's going to be "kissing off big carbon" until they get smart enough to "kiss on big nuclear" or a local energy storage technology comes along that doesn't present the critical downsides of batteries.
I wouldn't advise holding your breath. The number of people who have asserted informed positions about nuclear power is miniscule, big-picture-wise, and ultracaps, the one hope we seemed to have for a wh
Predictable (Score:3)
In the long run, it will fade away because most of the grouwth has already been consumed. That being said, trade is chaotic in nature, and short term prediction is difficult ("especially when it's about the future"), but in the long run, the trend is well known.
Sometimes, I like to think that the "Limits to growth" report will be regarded in some distant future as our epoch's Eratosthenes calculations.
Tight Oil Recovery Operations will slow (Score:5, Insightful)
The many thousands of wells that are/were planned for completion will simply be postponed until the market responds more favorably, but don't kid yourself, they will become feasible again at some point.
Lower energy costs will fuel the self same economic recovery that will drive World prices back into the realm of profitability.
Not Really --- And Rooting For This = Horrible (Score:3, Insightful)
2) And we use tons of it.
3) And for the good of humanity you want the price to be HIGH
Reasons you want the price to be high for fossil fuels:
1) Conversation of the resource. Airplanes must use fossil fuels the way they are designed now. Cars = no. You can have electric cars.
2) When the price of fossil fuels is low, they get wasted. Your neighbor who drives alone and isn't a farmer buying a huge truck is NOT how non-renewable energy should be used.
3) Complacency about alternative energy because the price of gas is low isn't a positive.
I am sure there are a lot of "lefty partisans" who are enjoying this because they dislike Big Oil -- and to that extent, it more proves that it isn't about results with partisans, it is about their "team". If the price of oil drops like a rock, there is a bit of financial relief but what really happens is consumption sky-rockets.
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I am sure there are a lot of "lefty partisans" who are enjoying this because they dislike Big Oil -- and to that extent, it more proves that it isn't about results with partisans, it is about their "team".
Schadenfreude is a hell of a drug. Many men will cut off their own nose to spite their face.
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It doesn't fucking matter, one way or another. We will burn it all, whether it takes 25, 50 or 100 years. Who cares exactly when in the bigger scope of things?
Second, the China Axiom renders saving-energy arguments, like yours, useless:
Every unit of energy you save, will be bought by the Chinese for a better price due to the lower demand (thank you).
The real "good of humanity" is progress (Score:5, Insightful)
3) And for the good of humanity you want the price to be HIGH Z
Well someone sure is ignoring history!!
Because the cheaper energy of any form has been cheap, the better lives people led. That includes environmentally...
With more power you have more education, more industry, more jobs, more success period. With all that comes more leisure time which means more free time to devote to a healthy Earth.
If you want the best for "humanity" you want cheap energy - from any source.
Renewables will come along, but you can increase viability only so quickly. Until then don't screw people over my artificially limiting their access to energy.
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Well... unless you're talking about getting coal or oil from space, eventually, we'll run out.
It may not be for a thousand years, but it will happen eventually. Even fissile materials for nuclear reactors will eventually run out. In that sense, his assertion doesn't require any special proof, it's just logical based on our knowledge of how these sources are formed.
Our major problem is that Chicken Little has been warning us of imminent disaster for too long, but eventually, Chicken Little will be right if
Re:Not Really --- And Rooting For This = Horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, you don't get to invoke Chicken Little on this one.
Climate scientists have been warning of an *impending* (not imminent) disaster for a long time - one that is in fact occurring ahead of schedule because actual fossil fuel consumption rates have accelerated even faster than the worst-case "alarmist" predictions from a half-century ago. Our grandparents were warned that their great-grandchildren would perhaps be faced with some serious environmental problems if they didn't star reducing fossil-fuel consumption. Then our parents were warned that if they didn't start seriously shifting to alternate energy sources their grandchildren would almost certainly be faced with serious problems. Now we're being warned that we're seeing the first "unaided eye" evidence of a slow-motion catastrophe already guaranteed to get considerably worse, and that unless we cut fossil fuel consumption quickly and drastically our children will have a major global disaster on their hands.
The sky *is* falling, and those who actually cared to look have been watching the cracks form and were able to predict the fall with impressive accuracy. They've been trying to warn us for generations, but we're all so damned concerned with today's bottom line that we'd rather sell out our children than pay higher energy prices, even as the first pieces of sky start hitting the ground around us.
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The best reason to stop burning oil (Score:2)
The best reason to stop burning oil is because it's so useful for other things. Very little oil is needed to make the dashboard in your car, or the case for your phone, or lubricants, etc.
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well, in truth about 10% of crude is used for chemical feedstocks (more things than just plastics), half of that is for plastic
Re:The best reason to stop burning oil (Score:4, Insightful)
The best reason I can imagine for conserving our not infinite petroleum reserve is the future... we don't know what it holds in store for us, and we do not have a viable alternative for petroleum products worked out as yet for every variable.
Imagine our grandchildren with the tech to go universe-hopping, lacking only the fuel.
My suspicion (Score:3)
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I doubt that is true. I think the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia are colluding to inflict economic harm on Russia and Iran. That it hurts the US domestic oil industry is simply a nice side effect for Saudi Arabia and a political win for some of Obama's constituency. While it may seriously slow or eliminate fracking in the short term it will also increase consumption so I also doubt there were any environmental considerations here.
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It's a little of everything, but I really don't think there's that much subterfuge in it. The US and Canada (and some others) have massively increased oil supply through harnessing shale oil deposits. Saudi Arabia isn't just going to pump less oil out of the ground because we are pumping more. They have bills and lifestyles to maintain so they're going to keep their production levels up. If everyone has combined to increase supply, prices will go down. The prices will equalize at a level that shuts dow
We all speak from a place of middle class comfort (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't kid yourself. We may not all be pool-in-backyard-trip-to-Europe-every-year rich, but most readers of Slashdot are very firmly rooted in the middle class. This has little effect on us at all, we're neither investors, nor are we so destitute that the fuel bills are threatening to throw us to the curb. The smug, conceited "welp, I drive a Tesla S and think everyone should" is completely uncalled for, the poor drive shitwagons, all of which *gasp* run on petroleum. This will very much work in their favour
What are the Saudi's up to here? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wondered when Saudi Arabia decided not to cut production, dooming OPEC to low prices and ticking off the likes of Russia and other producers with marginal economies, if they where not actually working a long term strategy here. Why are they not cutting production?
First, they repress many of the world's trouble makers by dropping prices to 1/3rd their original. Yes, they hurt some emerging producers who are good guys, but these are pretty small. Russia's economy is in free fall due to this and this will greatly diminish their military and economic ability world wide. Other "bad guys" are getting hurt too.
Second, The will succeed in jumpstarting their largest consumer's economy. The USA has suffered under the burden of higher taxes and higher fuel prices (which amounts to a tax on just about everything.) Yea, there will be segments that suffer, energy production companies and those who own the production facilities will be hurt, but over all your average consumer will have more to spend and moving goods will be cheaper as fuel prices drop.
Third, energy production companies who where looking at $100+ oil for as far as the eye could see just 6 months ago, are now looking at $45 or less. Much of their production is now netting below production costs so NOBODY will be drilling new wells and a whole bunch of companies will be hurting. For the most speculative of them they will go bankrupt in fairly short time. This will greatly depress the USA's ability to develop these resources and reduce future supplies and take years to rebuild the industry.
I'm not saying this is what the Saudi's are up to, but the theory does fit the pieces I'm seeing fall together..
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Way back in the 80s, the Saudis knew that Iraq was going to invade Kuwait long before it ever happened. As a result, they spent a lot of money on arms. Over the past couple of years, they have been spending a lot of money on military training. So has the UAE and Jordan. Now the Saudis are building a 600-mile long border "fence" on the Iraqi border and buying even more arms. These guys know FAR more about what's going on with their neighbors than we in the West do or more likely care to admit. By tanki
Wrong reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
We understand way less about economics than about climate change. Predicting what the price of anything will do in the future is really, really hard. A few years ago it seemed like oil prices would keep going up forever. Now they're going down and someone immediately says, "They'll keep going down forever!". But really we have no idea.
But we have a very good idea about what burning oil will do to the climate. If you want to argue for phasing out fossil fuels, do it based on the good arguments: they're destroying the planet. Don't bring in bad arguments based on wild guesses about what might or might not happen to oil prices over the next few years. That just weakens your position.
And now that hard drives have gotten cheaper... (Score:2)
...damn, we all better stop using computers!
Seriously, though, cheap energy (in absolute terms, not massaged by the heavy hand of regulation), is a good thing. Great, so we don't invest in more oil drilling...until consumption goes up, prices go up, and it becomes profitable. This is a *feature* not a bug.
Prices are momentary signals, not eternal mandates.
summary... (Score:4, Funny)
I guess the summary is "nobody can afford oil anymore, it's getting too cheap and there is too much of it around"!
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Yeah. Oil prices go up for a while because of new demand, people figure out new techniques and start putting into production more wells, so oil prices go down and keep going down until some of the wells aren't profitable at the new prices, so they stop producing and the prices start going up, then the well and oil rights owners start producing more again and the prices goes back down again, and so on and so forth.
It's all just basic supply and demand curves, tied into a little technology and some lag times
Recommended reading on oil prices and current fall (Score:3)
http://www.project-syndicate.o... [project-syndicate.org]
A very interesting long term analysis on relationship of oil prices and costs of production. Essentially the argument is that we're now off the monopolist market which oil was for last decade and a half due to growth of China and back to the competitive market where the ceiling of the costs is the costs of shale extraction operations + reasonable profit margins while floor is the extraction costs in conventional oil fields in more expensive points of extraction like Siberia and Arctic Sea.
Title correct.Fossil fuels must stay in the ground (Score:4, Informative)
The summary, most of the article and most of the posts here are completely missing the point.
The oil, coal and natural gas need to stay in the ground, regardless of what we are paying for it, $50, $150 per barrel, people still pay for it.
Is civilisation going to end when we stop using fossil fuels? Of course not.
Far better article about global warming:Global Warming's Terrifying New Math [rollingstone.com]
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I can't tell if this is sarcasm or if you really are an actual retard.
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read the sig. he's either retarded or it's a real honest-to-god shtick.
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Well then, the US should 'go first' to show China the way, right?
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of us are doing quite a lot ourselves, actually. Starting a couple years ago I actually started refusing to commute to do work that can be done just as well over the internet. Sure, it meant turning down some jobs, but it also cut my total miles driven per year (at low speed in stop-and-go traffic no less) by thousands, and my total gasoline consumption by a factor of over 90%, and though I didn't plant a tree (I don't own any land to plant it on), I did plant an herb garden on my balcony.
I am not a greenie and I don't tell others what they should or should not do but...
I don't consider myself a "greenie" either honestly, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you totally just did tell us all what we should and should not do. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying we should and should not do either, I'm just saying you did tell us exactly that, and you're not the only one doing it. There are lots of us, and the numbers are quietly growing. The telecommuting revolution is long overdue.
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Some of us are doing quite a lot ourselves, actually. Starting a couple years ago I actually started refusing to commute to do work that can be done just as well over the internet. Sure, it meant turning down some jobs, but it also cut my total miles driven per year (at low speed in stop-and-go traffic no less) by thousands, and my total gasoline consumption by a factor of over 90%, and though I didn't plant a tree (I don't own any land to plant it on), I did plant an herb garden on my balcony.
Awesome! Only 6,999,999,999 humans to go!
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My family did pretty much the same stuff. And since we're really not exceptional in any way, I have to assume that there are more people doing the same thing.
And, there are infinitely more Teslas on the street than there were just 10 short years ago.
in the worst case it will fix itself - however (Score:3)
Worry about the people who won't have enough to eat as part of the correction. If you don't live on a farm in a very fertile area that could be you.
Re: Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years ago there were no Tesla on the road, now there are a few 1000. N*1000/0 = infinitely more Tesla
I'm amazed that nobody here has picked you up on this (indeterminately more Teslas, not infinite) - or maybe the Slashdot crowd are insensate to mathematical trolling.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Funny)
Plant a tree, move closer to your work, sell your car and instead use car sharing services and transit. Stop telling "us" what to do and make definitive changes yourselves. I am not a greenie and I don't tell others what they should or should not do
</fail>
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Funny)
lol.
i work from home. i haven't 'commuted' for years and years. i don't drive. my kid gets jogged into school. i garden and buy food from the farmers' market which is about 200 feet from my house, and the rest comes from a store at the end of the block. i don't go on vacation places.
so i guess in spite of not considering myself to be a "greenie", i have earned the right to call you a fucking retard.
congratulations! you're a fucking retard.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Insightful)
eh, cows eat grass. that's green as it gets
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up, and learn how the world really works.
Nobody is going to come back with a half way narrative, a compromised view of global warming for you to sign up to. Nobody is going to say: "Oh I see you won't agree that 5 degrees of warming is too much - let's say 7.5 degrees is the acceptable limit, deal?" Neither is the issue just going to quietly go away if you ignore it for long enough. It's a simple, brutal fact - the warming just keeps getting more and more obvious.
Grow up, get over it, and get on with it.
Otherwise, you can wait for us to get angry enough to sue you for the damage you've caused, take your stuff, and use the funds to make the necessary changes.
How bout them apples?
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Yes, like the 97% of scientists who think that.
You know, that tiny slice of the scientific community, 97%, that are being paid off by Al Gore to pretend they believe in climate change.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Informative)
The Koch brothers don't need to buy scientists - they bought climate denying politicians. The Republicans then put climate deniers in every environment and science role (and if you don't believe me, look it up yourself - just recently they added anti-science/climate denier Ted Cruz to head NASA and have had a climate denier running the EPA since late last year). I'm not saying jump two feet into cutting all emissions like some nuts on the left, but just give science an effing chance and see if it affects anything. These guys just outright deny it is and can happen.
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I'm not saying jump two feet into cutting all emissions like some nuts on the left,
If you had been listening to those "nuts" back in the 1970s when they were saying the same things they're saying today, except less emphatically because the situation was not yet quite so dire, then you wouldn't have do any "jumping" now. But you decided you were smarter than they were back then, and now a jump is what it's going to take.
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Did you read anything beyond the headline in the article you linked us to? Do you understand that the article actually confirms the 97% figure?
Plus, it's not a Forbes article, it's just a blog by a twenty-something who writes "about the environmental benefits of industrial progress." In other words, a shill. And if you read the article, you'll learn that he can't even formulate a simple argument.
For example, this is what he writes in his article about how the 97% number is a fraud:
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You play the greenies? Heh.
I believe the blame is people like you: "Who are the ones that we kept in charge, Killers, thieves and Lawyers" as professed by the great Tow Waits.
God's away, God's away, God's away on bidness....bidness...!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5X4N2exOsU
PS: This post makes more sense than yours....
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I don't tell others what they should or should not do
Literally 6 words earlier
Stop telling "us" what to do and make definitive changes yourselves.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Funny)
gravity is just another form of control! it's the liberals trying to keep us close to 'mother earth'. it's bullshit Gaia-ism if you ask me.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Informative)
Gravity is made up. What holds everything down on planet earth is suction. The earth sucks.
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One is about the IR absorption properties of carbon dioxide. What you choose to *do* about certain undesirable consequences of that piece of physics, that can be about all kinds of things. But global warming itself is just about radiation transport.
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Incorect.. global warming is a generic term that encompasses the scientific phenomonom as well as the political solutions and probably a few more things.
The GP was correct and the no true scottsman arguments in order to slander his opinion just fails.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Insightful)
So arguing that there is no global warming, that the global warming has stopped, that it is not man-made or that it is a non-issue, because it will actually benefit us, is seen as some way of defending Freedom[tm], and many libertarian leaning people and a lot of conservative ones feel a mission to cast doubt on solid science, because defending Freedom is always good work, right? And because the science itself is quite solid (we can actually measure the heat trapping properties of different levels of the components in the atmosphere, and we have a good way to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide and methane we release in the atmosphere), the doubt is cast either on the researchers (they are accused to have an agenda, they are called liars, they are suspected to conspire against us all...), or on the immediate conclusions. Models are called misleading, every new discovery how to more correctly assess an effect gets hailed as proof that the evil climate scientists are wrong again etc.pp..
Try to separate the science and the politics! And yes, denying the science on whatever level is at first an attempt to politice the science.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I've been pushing to argue in favor of reducing fossil fuel use not from an environmental point of view, but from an economic one. People can bury their heads in the sand when it comes to science, but people always listen when money is involved.
Even though the US imports about a third of our petroleum, that's still equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars per year leaving our economy. If we transition to renewable energies, that money stays around a bit longer.
Renewable energies might have a larger up-front capital cost (but not by much, and it's getting better every day), but the long term costs are overwhelmingly favorable.
With the current crash in oil prices it should be clear that our economy is in the hands of foreign interests. We are hostages to international petroleum markets. Let's develop domestic sources to free ourselves from foreign influence. Remember: There's no reason why oil couldn't have been this cheap all along, and the price only went down right when we were posed to start reducing imports in favor of domestic natural gas production. We're being played!
(Oh, and if we happen to mitigate the environmental damage we're doing in the process and avoid global catastrophe, I guess that'll be a bonus...)
=Smidge=
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is the NVAP program hasnt shown an increase in water vapour.
The slight warming we are experiencing seems to be only from climate sensitivity to CO2 and that sensitivity is on the low side of the models, very very low.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Informative)
It's a complex system and we don't know everything but we continue to study and learn. As opposed to your ilk who just say 'nope, no problems' with no evidence to explain the workings of the system.
Much like claiming a snow storm means the climate isn't warming. It IS warming and has been for decades but because of a single blip in the trend you're ready to throw out decades of factual solid data on temps.
Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score:4, Funny)
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As fracking destroys water supplies and replaces them with barium-laced debt fluids.
I hope this is an attempt at a joke...
There is zero proof that fracking does anything bad to water supplies beyond using some of it (about 40,000 Gal/well). Fracking takes place well below domestic water supplies and is no more of a hazard than the drilling was in the first place. People who think otherwise are mis-informed or lying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/pennsylvania-fracking-study_n_3622512.html
Re:Ironically, bottled mineral water is exploding. (Score:4, Informative)
"This is good news," said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a "useful and important approach" to monitoring fracking, but he cautioned that the single study doesn't prove that fracking can't pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
Here's a tip: if you post a URL to a story, read it first.
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Here's a tip....
Post an example of where Fracking has destroyed a water supply...
I recognize that it is impossible to prove a negative, but the scientific evidence is all pointing the other way here. Not to mention common sense if you understand how this process works..... Fracking takes place thousands of feet down, below impermeable rock, well below any water supply. What gets pumped down there is not coming back up except though the well head it went down. Anybody telling you otherwise has no proof,
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Fracking takes place thousands of feet down, below impermeable rock, well below any water supply. What gets pumped down there is not coming back up except though the well head it went down.
The devil is always in the details. Yes, the fluids go through the wellbore. Which is a steel pipe thousands of feet long sealed with a cement liner. Now, this liner is a complicated thing - it's deep in the ground and hard to see. The well bore / liner also has a number of seals and fail safes. If done correctly, there is very little chance of damage to the rocks from the fracture site to the surface. If done incorrectly, there is quite a bit of chance that liquids will push out and some chance that
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Fracking takes place below. Except that fracking BREAKS the rock. It's the entire purpose of it. So cracks form and allow escape routes.
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The story was factual.... I don't usually go with their opinion pieces...
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Did you read the link? Look, there is ZERO connection with Fracking and contamination of ground water.... They've looked for it, and haven't found it.
In one single well in Western Pennsylvania. The Duke University scientist quoted in that article- that *you* posted the link to and are yelling at people to read- specifically notes that "the single study doesn't prove that fracking can't pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation," which proves you haven't read your own link yourself! See how easy it is to prove a negative?
Amazing how that stuff doesn't get used (Score:3)
We're acting like Nigeria a few years ago, instead of Nigeria now where nearly all of their electricity is generated using the heat from flaring off the gas from wells instead of just having the flame do nothing like they used to.
It's a useful resource that's just thrown away.
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Every well (vertical, horizontal, fractured) is drilled through the water table. Every one.
Most of the time, done properly, well casing protects the ground water table from contamination during the recovery of carbon products.
But. If only 1-2% of the 500,000 U.S. wells were completed improperly (with the rather ubiquitous human erro
Re:Ironically, bottled mineral water is exploding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ironically, bottled mineral water is exploding. (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a good point however, consider the following:
- Tight oil fields (ie, the Baaken) need many more wells drilled than 'conventional' oil. Each well increases the risk of bore failure.
- The states where much of the frakking is currently happening (remember we've been frakking stuff for 50 years or so) have a history of poor regulatory supervision of the process. Texas and Louisiana have been bitten bad in the past and have tightened up drilling regulations such that they have very few bad wellbores. The other states, not so much. Why those states didn't just borrow the time tested regulations is an interesting question.
So, you're point that the actually hydraulic fracturing of a given well is unlikely to cause aquifer damage is a good one. It's a bit pedantic since most people consider the entire process as 'frakking'. It's pretty clear that frakking in tight oil plays does increase the risk for aquifer damage. Again, it's really annoying that the bad actors screw things up for everybody. In a way, there are parallels to nuclear power. If done correctly risks are low and manageable. However, doing things correctly yields an economic penalty. Some folks will try to take advantage of that, usually for minimal short term gain. So the entire industry gets pilloried.
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Again, it's really annoying that the bad actors screw things up for everybody.
Tragedy of the Commons, eh?
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Because, you lumbering imbecilic drivel-headed baboon faced cocksmoker, the fucking drilling is to enable the fucking fracking.
Without fracking, there is no need to drill. Any impacts from drilling are directly attributable to fracking.
Now go away.
Re:The pendulum swings too far... (Score:4, Informative)
The last time oil had a drastic drop in price due to new supply was in the 80s. Back then, it was nearly two decades before prices came back up, as increasing Chinese demand started to max out the supply.
Now is not the same as the 80s, either. Technologies are being developed that can drop demand by 40% or more. As electric cars become more and more common (and there's every reason to believe they will), oil usage will drop accordingly, and oil prices will drop as well. In some scenarios, it could be a century before oil prices return to what they were.
Or maybe not. But you should know what the risks are before you make any investment (and don't believe it just because some loudmouth like me said it on Slashdot, go investigate it yourself. Take responsibility for your investments).
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The reason is not as simple as "increased supply". The reason that there is that increase in supply is because the Saudis and OPEC want alternative methods of extraction, such as the U.S.'s hydraulic fracking, to be unprofitable.. and it is, with oil prices this low.
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The reason that there is that increase in supply is because the Saudis and OPEC want alternative methods of extraction, such as the U.S.'s hydraulic fracking, to be unprofitable
How much has Saudi Arabia and OPEC increased production? If you can't answer that question, then you don't have a point.
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Saudi Arabia is not decreasing production to allow the price to settle at high prices and instead keeping their output strong to depress prices. Here's a reference for you:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63c7... [ft.com]
Saudi Arabia also has proven reserves to keep this up for a long time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
Unofficially (meaning I can't cite my source, and hence the reason I'm posting anonymously), they have over 200 years of known reserves, or enough to provide all the world's oil for about 50 years at curr
Re:The pendulum swings too far... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would tell people to enjoy the oil drop while it lasts. This may be long gone by Memorial Day. Why? A few reasons:
1: China is a very thirsty nation. They are also extremely rich and about to embark on infrastructure improvements that make the US's highway structure look like building a McDonalds. So, the demand for oil will be from them. Yes, US demand is in the 1990s levels... but with China guzzling the oil barrels, total demand is a lot higher.
2: Venezuela leaders and others are in Russia today. People forgot about 1972 and 1973 and the US oil embargo, which destroyed the economy until the 1980s. This can easily happen again. OPEC tends to get the prices it wants, and even though fracking might have increased supply, most of the wells done this way are depleted or near depletion, so the "golden" era of this is ending, especially with states like New York banning it wholesale. So, supply will go back down, and OPEC will ensure it stays down.
3: China is building their own canal across the Americas. This way, they can get their oil from Venezuela a lot more easily, completely bypassing any influence from the US.
4: Congress changed. Already, the solar subsidies are on the chopping block, and in January 2017, it won't be a surprise when the next President yanks the solar panels off the White House. Big Oil is now firmly in control of the US again.
5: The Keystone XL pipeline and a repealing of the ban on selling US oil overseas are pretty much guaranteed to happen. This means that any US oil will be trading at world prices.
6: As always, we are always one incident from price spikes. Should someone have a heart attack at a refinery, prices for crude will be back in the triple digits.
7: Alternative energy has grown, but most people's cars are still fueled by gasoline or diesel. If we had more electric cars, they effectively run on solar, wind, coal, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, or many sources. However, internal combustion engined vehicles require fossil fuel to run, and barring a major battery development, will continue to do so.
To, tl;dr... it is nice to have gas prices as low as they are, but they are going to be back to what they were in 2008, if not to $5-$6 a gallon by the summer. Oil prices are controlled by supply and demand, and demand is high due to a thirsty China, and supply is easily removed from the market.
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To, tl;dr... it is nice to have gas prices as low as they are, but they are going to be back to what they were in 2008, if not to $5-$6 a gallon by the summer.
If you were here sitting next to me, I would happily put money against you on that bet.
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I hope you are right and I have missed some factor, but I just don't see how a trillion dollar industry will let itself be "beaten" with prices out of its exact control, just because fracking was able to get more oil on the market than was expected. OPEC controls the vertical and horizontal when it comes to oil prices, and all they have to do is slow down production at their whim, and prices will be back up, if not more. Non-OPEC countries will end up just following, and even if they continue to produce,
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The fracking boom is in gas not oil. They were fracking oil 80+ years ago. Oil boom is coming from shale, sands and tar where the issue is extraction cost.
Venezuela and Russia can't afford an embargo, there might be supply disruptions related to revolutions though. The reds run truly is finished.
The new canal will never be completed and is not about oil in the first place. That is capital desperately looking for something productive to do. Two canals would both operate at break even. One can run at a p
Re:The pendulum swings too far... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The pendulum swings too far... (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2000, Sheikh Yamani, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia, gave an interview in which he said:
"Thirty years from now there will be a huge amount of oil - and no buyers. Oil will be left in the ground. The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil." - http://www.nasdaq.com/article/... [nasdaq.com]
Stone Age ended, not for lack of stones (Score:5, Interesting)
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The reason oil prices dropped is because of a massive new increase in supply.
The current oil glut is a deliberate move by OPEC, they are trying to put Iran out of business.
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Why cheap oil is good for me (in no particular order):
1. The fuel for my car is cheaper, saving me money.
2. Hopefully other items get cheaper because the fuel is cheaper to make and/or transport them.
3. It pisses off the treehuggers.
4. It creates economic problems for Russia.