Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

22.

You may find this hard to credit, but I'm as much in favor of reducing our dependence on foreign oil as anyone on this topic, but they've been drilling in the Bakken for more than twenty years now, which provides a pretty good timeline to judge results, and here's a petroleum engineer's not-overly-technical take on it. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

Total production is rising because so many new wells have been going in, but yield per well is down. Overall it seems to yield good oil, but in comparatively small quantities compared with what is thought of in the oil community as a good oil field. And he thinks that the USGS figures on recoverability are pretty unlikely, and if I remember correctly it would yield only about 0.4% of the oil we get from abroad. Which ain't a whole lot.

Parenthetically, I suspect that one thing our descendants are going to be very, very pissed at us about is our wasting petroleum on one-time uses, like gasoline--you burn it up and it's gone. It's the base material for literally thousands of other, more durable uses (remember the line from "The Graduate": "One word: Plastics"), (I exclude thin plastic grocery bags from meritorious uses), and we're literally throwing it to the four winds, and they're gonna be really mad.

Parenthetically, I suspect that one thing our descendants are going to be very, very pissed at us about is our wasting petroleum on one-time uses, like gasoline--you burn it up and it's gone.

A 1975 American consumes as much fossil fuel (CO2 per capita basis) as a 2008 American, yet produced half the current wealth (in constant $ GDP per capita).

Do you have a link to those data?

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

23.
Atmospheric scientist Dr. James P. Koermer, a Professor of Meteorology and the director of the Meteorological Institute at Plymouth State University dismissed man-made global warming fears. "Global warming hysteria is based to a large extent on the unproven predictions of climate models. These numerical models are based on many simplified approximations of very complicated physical processes and phenomena," Koermer wrote to EPW on December 3, 2007. "My biggest concern is their [computer models'] lack of ability to adequately handle water vapor and clouds, which are much more important as climate factors than anthropogenic contributors. Until we can realistically simulate types of clouds, their optical thicknesses, and their altitudes, which we have a difficult time doing for short-term weather forecasts, I can't have much faith in climate models," Koermer wrote. "Another major reason that I remain skeptical is based on what I know about past climate changes that occurred before man walked on earth. I am more amazed with how relatively stable climate has been over the past 15,000 or so years, versus the large changes that frequently appeared to take place prior to that time. I also can't ignore some of the recent evidence presented by some very well respected astrophysicists on solar variability. Most meteorologists including me have always been taught to treat the sun's output as a constant--now I am not so sure and I am intrigued by their preliminary findings relating to climate," he concluded.

Anf, fox, just about all of the glaciers on earth are melting at record rates, not just Kili.

So, peanut gallery: Does the melting have the potential to affect the jet stream?

Held, the NOAA scientist, said temperature records on Earth go back more than 100 years, and tree rings and ocean cores can help researchers estimate climate even further back in time. But satellite measurements didn't start until the late 1970s. That makes it harder to differentiate natural fluctuations in the jet streams from human-induced changes.

The ancient Greeks and Romans built aqueducts in parts of North Africa that today are nothing but desert, Wallace said. So it's possible jet streams were shifting long before people started pumping out massive quantities of greenhouse gases.

"At this point, it's possible what we're seeing is a fluke. It's possible it's a real, long-term trend unrelated to global warming," he said. "It's also certainly possible it is connected to global warming."