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50. GLOBAL WARMING IS HOPELESS 5: THE MOST INSANE ESSAY TIME MAGAZINE EVER PRINTED - NEW APRIL 2008
A breathless article of another sort appeared in TIME in the October
31st, 2005 issue, page 66: "Oil Is Here to Stay" by Peter Huber.
Co-author, with Mark Mills, of The Bottomless Well.
The title of the book tells all. Do I even have to write the rest of the essay?
The article's basic thesis: No sweat. "Extraction technologies continue to
improve much faster than supply horizons recede. We've got the right know-how
and the right planet. What we lack is the political will."
I.e., Don't you believe those gloom-and-doom tree-hugging party pooper prairie
fairies when they all start talking limits!
"....stoking...booming....glittering...glazed...."
But what tips the article into sheer insanity is this:
"Then there are methane hydrates. The U.S. contains some 30 trillion bbl.
[barrels] worth of those frozen hydrocarbons off the shores of Alaska, the
continental coasts and under the Rockies. There's little doubt they too can be
extracted economically."
Now while I don't expect most of the people who work at TIME to know much
if anything about science, I know informed people work there too-- I've read
their excellent reporting, even in special global warming issues. So why was
TIME giving space over to an essay which at least a few people at TIME
could have explained to the editors was insane? Why this schizophrenia, this
self-subversion of what you know and believe?
Let me explain what 30 trillion additional barrels of hydrocarbons extracted
means.
We know-- those who accept the human-induced (partly or wholly) global warming
thesis-- including over 99% of the world's climate scientists-- what coal, oil
and natural gas have done, and what they promise, hell-wise, for the future,
should current trends stumble on.
Though we've been pumping oil out of the ground since the 19th Century, it only
amounts to roughly 1 trillion barrels extracted so far, with an estimated 1
trillion barrels or so to go. In terms of carbon-emitting potential, the
remaining natural gas is equivalent to about another 1 trillion barrels of oil,
and the remaining coal to about 8 trillion barrels, for a total of 10 trillion
barrels to go. All those trillions of barrels/barrel-equivalents, if burned to
the last molecule, will be more than enough to hugely overheat the world. But to
add an additional 30 trillion barrels to those means waving the
Devil's wand over Earth. Now we'll be spewing so much additional carbon into the
atmosphere that we could duplicate the horrors of the Permian Extinction period
of some 251 million years ago, when some scientists think much of the Earth was
literally set on fire. Fires are even seen on ocean waters in such a maelstrom--
literally. It is not a crisis. It is an apocalypse. It is estimated as many as
95% of Earth's species were wiped out in the Permian Extinction, and it took 50
million years for the planet's biodiversity to be restored.
Nature has held those 30 trillion barrels of methane in a benevolent lockup for
us, mostly under the ocean floor. They must never be touched. Unless the
ultimate end of the human story is suicide-- and murder for all the rest. Is
that what TIME advocates? Then why publish such an insane essay? Would
TIME give its space to a writer advocating dropping an atomic bomb on each
of the world's 50 most populous cities? That would actually be less painful,
less damaging in the long run, than waving the Devil's wand, as TIME's
boy Peter Huber says do.
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