Here's an article from Sunday's Times on Canada's famed oil sands--often cited as the source of a burst of new supply that will pierce what the WSJ editorial page calls the oil bubble. That can only happen if the costs described in the article can be successfully externalized--that is, shuffled off of the balance sheets of the extracting companies.
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Oil sands development was once considered a crazy dream, too expensive and polluting to be profitable.
In a neighboring and politically stable country, the oil sands are destined to become an increasingly important source of energy for the United States market for decades. The industry and government say the northern Alberta sands hold proven reserves of 175 billion barrels, a claim some experts dispute. But if it is true, only Saudi Arabia may have more oil...
15 comments:
The hypothesis that Saudi Arabia, Texas, shallow waters, and then deep waters contained oil, that the oil there could be extracted profitably, and that the oil could be extracted without ruining the enviornment were all at one time considered just as assuredly impossible as we now find the prospect of oil in various hitherto unexplored areas such as Canada and the USA's protected lands. I have learned to bank on Free people / Free Markets over university eggheads. The eggheads were dead wrong many times before, and now we have them on one side insisting that these lands have no significant amount of reserves that can be profitably extracted, and on the other side we have capitalists prepared to risk huge sums of money to find out.
My prediction: high fuel costs today will override the previously successful political efforts to restrict domestic and Canadian drilling and refining, and that this will lead to so much new fuel that prices will again collapse. Onward capitalistic soldiers.
Not neccessarily Tom, but as your brother states, the university eggheads have been wrong many times before, so I'm reluctant to believe them completely when they say the sky is falling. Hell, thirty years ago they said the earth was cooling;
http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
Is the earth warming at this point in its history? Yes. Am I convinced that it is due mostly to the existence of human civilzation, technology and industrialization? No.
The global warming theory is just that, a theory and a theory is in itself not a fact.
Just as an idictment is not proof of guilt.
And in case you're a fan of the Kyoto Protocol, read this report:
http://www.globalclimate.org/KyotoImpacts.pdf
It's a cluster-f**k. Think energy prices are bad now? Just imagine what they'd be like and what a negative effect it would have had on our economy had President Bush signed it. And of course then you would have surely blamed him for that as well.
Six: Sorry but I have to refrute your impression of the word, "theory." Scientists use that word to describe an idea that has proven itself as well as they can prove it. This is my simplest explanation. Scientists have no higher compliment for an idea than to call it a "theory," which is as close as they can come to calling an idea a "fact."
I do, though, support your view that the man-made global warming hypothesis has not been tested enough for us to have confidence in it. Brace yourself for this: "hypothesis" is the term scientists use for a well-developed idea that has not yet been tested thoroughly. Guess what they call a hypothesis that has survived rigorous testing? "Theory". I do not think that the man-made global warming hypothesis desearves the high honor of being labled a "theory."
Tom: Do I reject the global warming hypothesis? Please define which of these hypotheses you are refering to. One holds that we are in a normal natural cycle that is warming, but that it will come down later. Another asserts that we are drifting upward irreversably. The null hypothesis is that no change is occuring.
There is then the hypothesis that human activity explains any global warming that is occuring. I am even further from accepting that. I am rather certain that florocarbins cannot contribute to global warming, because they are not stable compounds. Carbon dioxide is stable, so for me represents at least a viable candidate.
Main Entry: the•o•ry
Pronunciation: 'thE-&-rE, 'thi(-&)r-E
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ries
Etymology: Late Latin theoria, from Greek theOria, from theOrein
1 : the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2 : abstract thought : SPECULATION
3 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art (music theory)
4 a : a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action (her method is based on the theory that all children want to learn) b : an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances -- often used in the phrase in theory (in theory, we have always advocated freedom for all)
5 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena (wave theory of light)
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption : CONJECTURE c : a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject
Six: My definition of "theory" stands within the realm of science. The definition you have provided is a layperson's defition; notice that it equates "theory" and "hypothesis", which is an absolute no-no among scientists. "Unproved assumption", it most certainly is not! Thus if a scientist proclaims a "Global Warming Theory," he is not presenting what he believes to be an explanation for observed facts that is as rock-solid as:
E = m(c**2)
F = ma
Scientists snicker at people who demean one of their tennents as "merely a thoery." I assure you, in science, there is no higher achievement for an idea than the label of "theory"!
And by the way, the term "law" in refers to a theory that can be express simply, especially in the form of a math expression. The most famous scientific law is:
E = m(c**2), but scientists consider it to be no more rock-solid than they do the "Theory of Evolution", which does not lend itself to a simple math expression. Even the scientists who reject the Theory of Evolution do not use among their arguments its label of "theory"; instead they refute the data that most scientists regard as establishing that hypothesis as a theory.
Yes, but just as in Darwin's theory has not been proven and may never be completely prove-able, the theory of global warming, at least as far as human impact being the main cause is concerned, has not been proven.
Layperson huh? Nothing like being talked down to. Jeez.
Six: If you are using "theory" to mean "unproven" idea, you are not using the term with its scientific meaning. Also, scientists cannot "prove" their hypotheses; they can only fail to disprove them. A hypothesis graduates to the title of "theory" when it survives what scientists considered to be grueling attempts to disprove it.
The scientists who consider accept the Theory of Evolution consider it to be as "proven" as any scientific theory ever has been. This is true also for the Global Warming scientists, even if you and I feel that either hyptothesis has not been scrutinized enough to qualify as a "theory".
A hypothisis is useful only if it makes predictions. Scientific experiments test to see if the predicted outcomes occur. If they do *NOT* the hypothesis is discarded as "disproved"; if they *DO*, the hypothesis survives, though it is not technically considered to be "proven". The term "prove" is actually a layman term, though scientists use this in order to communicate.
Sounds like semantics to me.
For the purposes of our discussion, I suppose that the details are irrellevent. But I can't refrain from wincing when somebody says, "It's just a theory."
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