Sixty-five percent of the respondents say that while they believe global warming is occurring, it is a natural weather cycle, and 11 percent say that they do not believe it is occurring. Just under a quarter believe CO-2- induced global warming is occurring.
The worse news is that 60 percent believe the current trend of declining oil reserves is irreversible:
"These executives are deeply concerned about declining oil reserves, a situation they see as irreversible and worsening," said Bill Kimble,National Line of Business Leader, Industrial Markets for KPMG LLP.
In other words, we're over the Hubble Peak of Peal Oil fame, and its downhill from here. Ah but that's good news, you might think, because we will be forced to transition into a alternative fuel/ low GHG emissions future. Well, not necessarily:
Although oil is the biggest single source of energy-related greenhouse gases, coal and gas combined are bigger still, and the expected growth in their emissions [after the hubble peak] would overwhelm any reduction from oil.
[...]
Soaring crude prices could tip the world into a depression deeper than that of the 1930s, and collapsing stock markets cripple our ability to finance the expensive clean energy infrastructure we need.
As the unemployment lines grow, the political will to tackle climate change may be sapped by the need to keep the lights burning as cheaply as possible.
If there is encouragement to be taken from the survey, it is that our oil execs support research into alternative energy sources as a means of combating the effects of a decline in oil reserves rather than climate change. Get your good news where you can, I suppose.
Hubble Peak: We're Over
The Hump
and there I was about to buy a Prius . . I'm gonna go back, cancel the deal and get me a big-honkin V8 Hemi Chrysler.
ReplyDeleteWoooooo Hoooooooo
Check out the charts here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theoildrum.com/node/2325
Looks like the Saudis are already in deep decline.
Invest deep into oil sands and share in Canadian prosperity is what I say!
meanwhile the Warmongers get pounded with the truth. The only thing bigger than the Big Lie is the Big Ass backside on the Goreacle.
ReplyDeleteMany in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.
In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear nearby).
Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.
Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.
Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.
"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.
Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.
Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "[I]f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."
In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
meanwhile the Warmongers get pounded with the truth. The only thing bigger than the Big Lie is the Big Ass backside on the Goreacle.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone who speaks Esperanto translate this?
This has to be one of Kate's retards, no doubt about. Which retard is it, though?
Invest deep into oil sands and share in Canadian prosperity is what I say!
...and make lame comments on blogs to prove that wingnut economics are embraced by sophisticated people!
Awesome.
By wingnut economics, I meant exhortations to CLAP LOUDER! and keep clapping, which is what you did. There's a stink of desperation in all that that makes you sound gushy and simple-minded.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an ideological anti-capitalist Dante and I know exactly how wealth creation to generate extra income to feed into investment works in our economy..in principle, anyway (I support zero-growth economics, though). I just don't understand why every topic addressing a potential short or long-term crisis has to be countered by one of you fools and your over-exuberant calls to support your retirement plans of soiling your Depends in a gated community in Boca Raton.
We'll see how the extra wealth being sucked out of the ground in Alberta translates into greater prosperity for the rest of Canada (and not just more meth and hookers in Fort MacMurray). Judging from last few decades, I'm not particularly stoked about it.
...and I won't be moving to Alberta anytime soon. Outside of the two cities and the Rockies, the province sucks.
Dante,
ReplyDeleteThe basic response to the Wegman committee is that any methodological errors in Manns work have been corrected for and the result is still the same, a hockey stick. Read your buddy McIntyre at Climate Audit. After playing around Mann's data all he gets are hockey sticks.
You might want to stop "ding-dong..." bfore he posts all 21 or so of Larry Solomon's dishonest crap series about so-called deniers (some of them having been mischaracterised by Solomon). Maybe "ding-dong..." should be warned about copyright infringement; "ding-dong..." probably from FD where they violate copyright all the time.
ReplyDeleteBCL.
ReplyDeleteI'm not disputing climate change. I just have a problem with the issue being turned into propaganda piece to transfer wealth. I'll read more on the hockey stick affirmation to get a better understanding.
I think the environment has been punted around by all for political purposes.
I'm still trying to find evidence of a provincial green belt in Ontario because I have seen nothing but overheated development in the last number of years.
Peak Oil is a different issue. We will eventually wean ourselves off oil but not in my lifetime. It will become a more valuable commodity and Canada has lots of it. If you chose to deny this gift to Canada, then you chose not to share in our prosperity.
Tiguy. I understand people being suspicious of industry. I believe in a free market that is regulated (prudently). I'm under no libertarian illusions that industry will always act in the best interests of society. Meth and Hookers are not however created by oil or wealth.
I will clap loud when I see the shifting of geopolitics in favour of Canada. I will clap when wealth is created in Canada. You want a part of that wealth...take your savings out of those GIC's and buy a piece of ownership. It's quite simple.
Every issue cannot be judged through a idiological lens. Prosperity
In other words, we're over the Hubble Peak of Peal Oil fame, and its downhill from here. Ah but that's good news, you might think, because we will be forced to transition into a alternative fuel/ low GHG emissions future.
ReplyDeleteThis transition isn't going to be nearly as smooth as you think, because with one exception none of the potential candidates for alternative fuel sources are remotely ready for prime time. The one exception is nuclear power, and there are obviously some serious PR obstacles in terms of winning wider public acceptance of it.
Also, hydrocarbons are used as the feedstock for a large number of products, from plastics to pesticides and fertilizers, for which there is no obvious alternative.
Kyoto wrote:
ReplyDeleteAt its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.
Why do you talk when you don't know what you are talking about?
Wegman's review did nothing of the sort. All it did was establish that the math in the MacIntyre and McKitrick study was valid, which is a long way from repudiating Mann's work, especially since critics never claimed that there was a problem with the math, only with their conclusions.
When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.
Bullsh*t.
Wegman didn't even evaluate Mann's original study, only MacIntyre and McKitrick's. More to the point however, as this post at Real Science points out, in the final analysis even altering the data series to bring it in line with MacIntyre and McKitrick's critique does not significantly alter the validity of Mann's conclusions!
And that's leaving aside for the moment that there is plently of evidence for global warming indepedent of Mann's study.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: stop reading the National Post, it rots the brain.
I will clap when wealth is created in Canada.
ReplyDeleteDante: I'm not all that convinced that increased wealth and prosperity is all that good for us anymore; from what I can see, it's only creating people obsessed with consuming and engaging in no activity the value of which can't easily be determined by the Holy Free Market; a market in which things of any quality, or excellence or authenticity are increasingly priced beyond the range of the average citizen. What I see is an econoomic elite for whom prosperity has real meaning, and an average citizen surviving increasingly on McJobs and cancer.
Free Market fundamentalism really is just a race to the bottom.
Dante wrote:
ReplyDeleteI'm not disputing climate change. I just have a problem with the issue being turned into propaganda piece to transfer wealth
---
Pay now or pay later. How much of your wealth do you think it will take to shoot a big mirror into space, or to prevent the 100,000,000s of climate refuges that are expected to flow Northwards seeking shelter from getting into the country?
Best pay now. Transfers to the third world are to get them through Industrailization without all the pollution catastrophes that befell the West.
it's only creating people obsessed with consuming and engaging in no activity the value of which can't easily be determined by the Holy Free Market; a market in which things of any quality, or excellence or authenticity are increasingly priced beyond the range of the average citizen.
ReplyDelete-------------
I can agree with that but it is a life lesson that each individual needs to learn. My idea of prosperity would certainly be far more moderate than Conrad Blacks. I do however hope to be able to provide my kids with the choice to be anything that they chose to be. I do want them to experience some travel. I do want them living in a crime free neighborhood. Prosperity buys that.
The market isn't evil...it is a sign of healthy social interaction. Some may take it to extremes just as the hardcore drug subculture does but that is life.
BCL...Do you really think that people won't just stuff their pockets with your cash? We can't even trust organizations to feed the third world poor without someone getting rich.
Dante,
ReplyDeleteDespite the horror stories around Carbon Markets, the Economist this week says the CDM (clean development mechanism) is basically working.
I do however hope to be able to provide my kids with the choice to be anything that they chose to be. I do want them to experience some travel.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't take much...a plane ticket to Europe, a train pass and a back-pack (which I paid for myself working at a summer job).
How many young people think that kind of travel is up to the standard to which they have become accustomed? How many young people think that kind of travel is beyond anything they could ever afford?
"Edward Wegman"
ReplyDeleteHe's the guy that proposed the "ice age - global cooling" crap in the 70's that was dismissed because the science didn't back it. You remember ding, they guy you guiys always bring up to try to riducule the consensus. Now he's your hero because he is still trying to flog "global cooling"
Jesus you people are stupid.
Excellent news. Time to invest in oil company shares.
ReplyDeleteRead the blatherings of this guy.
ReplyDelete"Dante: I'm not all that convinced that increased wealth and prosperity is all that good for us anymore; from what I can see, it's only creating people obsessed with consuming and engaging in no activity the value of which can't easily be determined by the Holy Free Market; a market in which things of any quality, or excellence or authenticity are increasingly priced beyond the range of the average citizen. What I see is an econoomic elite for whom prosperity has real meaning, and an average citizen surviving increasingly on McJobs and cancer.
Free Market fundamentalism really is just a race to the bottom. "
So, what are you doing to combat materialism? Do you practise what you preach? No HDTV or plasma in your home theatre? No ipod, no cell phone, no home computer, no labour-saving devices like lawnmowers, dishwashers, washing machine, microwave? Or is your prosperity sacred, but prosperity for people in the Third World should be halted?
Do you even read your own crap that others are forced to? What does "authenticity" in your world mean? Does the average citizen have items today which would have been considered luxuries 20, 30, or 40 years ago?
I know you think authentic prosperity is instant on-line access to all the Hentai on the web, but not others.