Oil prices, climate change, etc.

On the energy and global warming front:

Globalization may have met its match in the form of high energy prices, according to this NY Times story.

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages ...

Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers.

The Jet Propulsion Laborary at the California Institute of Technology has put up a catchy, informative site on climate change. The lab is a NASA center staffed and managed by Caltech, as it is known.

Gristmill, the environmental blog, describes the site like this:

It offers a nice summary of the relevant science in a variety of areas: key indicators, evidence, causes, effects, uncertainties, and solutions. The website is a good place to send people who are uninformed on global warming, but looking for basic information. 

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman on the politics behind the debate over what to do about global warming.

In themselves, limits on offshore drilling are only a modest-sized issue. But the skirmish over drilling is the opening stage of a much bigger fight over environmental policy. What’s at stake in that fight, above all, is the question of whether we’ll take action against climate change before it’s utterly too late.

Read and react.

Comments

[Todd]

Does the JPL site have a section describing how AGW hypocrites like Al Gore has a mansion that uses 20x the national average in utility resources or how Sen. Kennedy tried to secretly torpedo a wind farm project in view of his family's Hyannis compound or maybe how "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David, who calls SUV drivers "terrorist enables" flies around the country in a private Gulfstream jet burning thousands of times the fuel any SUV uses per year?

[Paterno]

The fact that Mr. Heaney cites the former Enron adviser as an expert on global warming is a testimonial to the emptiness of the leftist arguement concerning climate change. The number of "maybe", "possiblies and "don't knows" reflect the sublime ignorance of the cited article. No facts are given but because it is written in the NY Times, Mr. Heaney considers it fact. I find it difficlt to believe that "Professor" Krugman as a noted economist, gives so little creedence to supply and demand and its role in oil prices.

[Don H]

Speaking of climate change, a national news magazine reported this week that DNA analysis of a plant and animal soup found 1 mile under an existing glacier in Greenland showed that Greenland was once covered in a lush forest "and helps refine climate models of global warming." (U.S. News and World Report, August 4-11, 2008 )

[Todd]

It’s funny how the media and science community can so assuredly assert their knowledge as to the state of global warming and the future. Perhaps the public would take more comfort in their predictions if they didn’t whip-saw their viewpoints every couple of decades. Let’s review some examples. Time Magazine’s Cover Story “Another Ice Age” from it’s June 24, 1974 issue - makes a number of alarming statements from notable scientific sources such as: “Climatological Cassandra’s are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.” And “Telltale signs are everywhere” or “Since the 1940's the mean average global temperature has dropped an average of 2.7F.” The article goes on to name a number of other indications as evidence for global cooling citing numerous scientific sources among them: Columbia University, University of Wisconsin, National Weather Service, the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP), University of Toronto, and the Royal Meteorological Society.

A year later, April 28, 1975, Newsweek Magazine weighed in with it’s version of climate Armageddon entitled “The Cooling World”. They start, with alarming tone by saying: “Evidence in support of these predictions (of cooling) has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard pressed to keep up with it.” Furthermore: “Meteorologists disagree about the cause or extent of the cooling trend.......But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” Really? Again they go on to cite a number of authoritative sources like NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, a number of universities, etc... In 2006 (31 years later), Newsweek was forced to admit that their original article was in error, although they go on to say: “Not in a journalistic sense.” But they sounded SOoo SURE at the time, didn’t they?

In 1980 during one of the acclaimed “Cosmos” series episodes, broadcast on PBS, series host and celebrity astrophysicist Carl Sagan Ph.D. professor of Planetary Science at Cornell University, warned of catastrophic global cooling as a result of burning and clear cutting of forests which would increase the earths albedo allowing more of the sun’s energy to reflect back to space, thus cooling the planet.

My point is more about how the media covers these issues than the science behind the two diametrically opposed hypothesis'. Now, of course, much of the media and global warming pundits state with equal certainty, that the debate is over - not very scientific. The media in particular should be a little less dogmatic and a bit more skeptical before reaching conclusions on issues of such complexity and weight, they may be standing in quicksand. I've seen a number of specials agreeing with the hypothesis of human caused global warming, not one questioning it - I guess it must be so then huh? Remember at one time the conventional wisdom was the earth was flat or that the earth was at the center of the universe, wasn’t it?

[Ghost Taco]

LOL!!!!! Good luck paying your heating bills this winter!!!!!!!

[Dave Marx]

A while ago I had a conversation with a science writer at another paper, who kept telling me info written by someone named "Mark Lynus". Being ignorant of who he was I looked up his website. He turned out to be a Journalist/Author/Environmental Activist! This is what this writer was using as his source! Yikes!

[Todd]

Here is another interesting contrarian article regarding climate change that didn't get much media play at the time it was issued (March, 2003), at least as I can recall. The title "20th Century Climate Not So Hot" tells the story pretty much. It was produced by a couple of Scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and can be found at: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/archive/pr0310.html

[Dave Marx]

It's difficult to know where to start! I can rail on about both subjects for hours. I'll pick one topic first and go from there.

The JPL website is slick, one-sided, and assumes most people visiting the site are complete morons, who will never question the faith. Most, if not all of the graphs presented have already been discredited, while others don't even match their own data. It's almost pure propoganda!

I can't for the life of me figure out why JPL would be involved in this nonsense. Just like I can't figure out why NASA does the same. I'm thinking some of these people forgot how to be scientists and instead have become bureaucrats and zealots. Time to clean house!

[Dave Marx]

The NYT says "Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon". They're right, as long as we don't use any of our own resources. If we do, it's a whole other ball game. If our wonderful poll's would pass the "All of the Above" act, prices would drop long before we drilled the first well. I'd be willing to bet oil futures would drop below $90 within the first month. Just the thought of the US using their own natural resources would send speculators into a panic.

[Dave Marx]

Here's my final take on the matter.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797838304214973.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

After looking at these numbers objectively, can anyone still wonder how it's going to get done?

[Todd]

Thanks Dave, very sober article about the realities of our energy/global warming situation. I only wish the rest of the media would reflect more realistically on the subject - may be something would actually get done.