Cool! Another Prognostication Validated -- September 27, 2014

Since at least May 11, 2013 (and probably much earlier, but I'm not going to spend time looking), I have been "preaching" that the US has pretty much decided to cede oil exploration in the Arctic to the "rest of the world" -- i.e., that part of the world that has legitimate interests in the Arctic.

Now Bloomberg is reporting that the Russians (Rosneft) has discovered a huge oil reservoir in the Arctic, a reservoir that may be larger than the "US part of the Gulf of Mexico":

Russia, viewed by the Obama administration as hostile to U.S. interests, has discovered what may prove to be a vast pool of oil in one of the world’s most remote places with the help of America’s largest energy company.

Russia’s state-run OAO Rosneft said a well drilled in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean with Exxon Mobil Corp. struck oil, showing the region has the potential to become one of the world’s most important crude-producing areas.

The well found about 1 billion barrels of oil and similar geology nearby means the surrounding area may hold more than the U.S. part of the Gulf or Mexico.

“It exceeded our expectations,” Sechin said in an interview. This discovery is of “exceptional significance in showing the presence of hydrocarbons in the Arctic.”

It is very possible that the actions (or inaction) that have dominated the Obama presidency will set the US back decades in "what could have been."

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It Wouldn't Be A Day Without Sunshine Without A Note On Global Warming

The NOAA is reporting that there were 1,695 low max records broken or tied from September 11, 2014, to September 20, 2014 (that's like ten days):

Wow. One record was broken by 25F!!!!

1695 Low Max Records Broken or  Tied From Sept 11 to Sept 20 according to the NOAA.

A “Low Max” means that the maximum temperatures for the day was the lowest it has ever been. This indicates daytime cooling.

There seems to be a trend here.

By the way, the Brits always say it best. Whether you agree with the writer or not, it really is good writing. I have spent a lot of time in England, Yorkshire, and Scotland, and if anyone knows "dreary," it's the Brits. The (London) Telegraph is reporting:

Apart from the Middle East, there can have been few more depressing places to be in the world last Tuesday than the UN General Assembly in New York, where an endless queue of world leaders, including Barack Obama and David Cameron, treated an increasingly soporific audience to leaden little appeals for humanity to take urgent action to halt global warming. The purpose of this special meeting, summoned by that dim little nonentity Ban Ki-moon, was to issue a desperate last-minute call for a legally binding treaty in Paris next year, whereby they would all agree to save the planet through an 80 per cent cut in those CO2 emissions, which are inseparable from almost all the activities of modern civilisation.

For days the usual cheerleaders, such as the BBC and Channel 4 News, had been beating the drum for this “historic” and “important” gathering. Hundreds of thousands of activists from all over the world, joined by Mr Ban in a baseball cap, on Sunday brought the streets of New York to a halt.

When the great day came, The Guardian published a 43-page running blog, reporting all the speeches from the likes of some Bosnian telling us that his country has had more rain this year than in any for more than a century (did global warming really start that long ago?). The President of Kiribati said, “I’ve been talking about climate change so long I’ve lost my voice”, although he was still somehow able to explain that his tiny island nation in the middle of the Pacific is sinking beneath the waves, despite satellite studies showing that sea levels in the area have actually been falling.

As one speaker after another overran their allotted four minutes, even The Guardian could not hide the fact that no one had anything new or interesting to say. “The most powerful speech” apparently came from Leonardo DiCaprio, which recalled a claim made more than 20 years ago by that other Hollywood star, Robert Redford, when he said, on global warming, that it was “time to stop researching and to start acting”. This prompted Richard Lindzen, the physicist and climate-change sceptic, to observe wryly that it seemed “a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make.”

Much more at the link.