Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Global Warming? What Global Warming! -- Plenty of Water for Fracking in the Bakken

The April 30 / May 1 blizzard in western North Dakota was one of the worst -- if not the worst -- blizzard in the history of the state for that time of year. No one recalls losing electricity for more than a couple hours in past storms in Williston; this time electricity was "down" for three to five days; it is still being brought back "up."

Global warming advocates said their models predicted more precipitation. I don't think their models predicted the precipitation would be in the form of snow that would remain in place through the summer months where it usually melts in the spring. Sounds like the beginning of another ice age to some folks.
Fifty-seven inches of snow blanketed Ryan Park in the Snowy Range [Wyoming] on April 28 when Pantle and Chad Pickett took core samples of snow drifts, measuring both the depth of the snow and the amount of water frozen within. According to their measurements that morning, the amount of water was three times higher than the 30-year average for Ryan Park, located 55 miles west of Laramie at an elevation of 8,050 feet. Five more inches of snow fell that night.

The engineer's office compares its findings to levels from past years. According to figures released Monday from the manual snow survey, the Upper North Platte Basin is 181 percent of the historical average. Automated measuring sites operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, meanwhile, put the number at 172 percent.
Yup, plenty of water available for fracking in the Bakken.

5 comments:

  1. You need to learn the difference between climate and weather.

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  2. I read Al Gore's 2006 "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday -- yesterday, May 2, 2011 -- I had the same thought. Al Gore needs/needed to learn the difference between climate and weather.

    Hey, thank you for taking time to comment.

    By the way, three things struck me when reading Al Gore's books:

    1) He did not label the y-axis when presenting temperature data. Had he labeled the y-axis, we would have seen he was talking about a 1.54 degree temperature change over one century: not statistically significant and not reproducible.

    2) His entire book confused climate and weather (thank you for pointing that out for newbies).

    3) The book was written for those with a minimum of an 8th grade education: lots of pictures; big type; and few polysyllabic words. Very, very easy read.

    What was most interesting was the one graph correlating CO2 and global temperatures. It broke down during the industrial age.

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  3. Oh, for regular readers. Don't worry: I did not buy the book. I read it in the basement of the Harvard Book Store at Harvard Square (no connection with Harvard University).

    The book is in the basement; not a remaindered copy, but a used copy. There was a stack of them. I didn't check the price. I assume $2.00/copy.

    And yes, I did read it. They have places to sit, and I had hours to spare (6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.). Following which, I walked down to The Upper Crust and had a slice of pepperoni pizza and a Harpoon on draft.

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  4. Remember how Charlie Brown's Snoopy laughed?
    That's me laughing now! I enjoy and appreciate this blog for many reasons!
    Thank you!

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  5. Thank you for your support, and thank you for taking time to comment.

    I wish I could stay on topic and limit my posts to the Bakken, but there are some issues that get me very, very perturbed. Global warming is one of those issues, especially when "they" admit they are talking about a 1.54 degree increase in temperature over 100 years.

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