Permanently Colder -- All Due To Global Warming

Updates

February 17, 2014: the original post was done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but a reader sent me a very nice scientific analysis of what is going on. The article is based on research supported by NASA. Folks might want to keep it bookmarked for future reference.
 

Original Post

I can't make this stuff up.

Now they tell us that the colder weather we've experienced the past couple of years is going to be "permanent." AFP via Yahoo!News is reporting:

A warmer Arctic could permanently affect the pattern of the high-altitude polar jet stream, resulting in longer and colder winters over North America and northern Europe, US scientists say.

The jet stream, a ribbon of high altitude, high-speed wind in northern latitudes that blows from west to east, is formed when the cold Arctic air clashes with warmer air from further south.

The greater the difference in temperature, the faster the jet stream moves.

According to Jennifer Francis, a climate expert at Rutgers University, the Arctic air has warmed in recent years as a result of melting polar ice caps, meaning there is now less of a difference in temperatures when it hits air from lower latitudes.

So, if I'm reading this right, global warming is really only going to affect the Arctic; it's going to be "permanently" cooler in the northern hemisphere, outside of the Arctic. And, of course, the Antarctic has been getting colder, at least based on an increasing volume and expansion of ice.

I can't make this stuff up. Algore was right on the global warming part; he was just wrong on the "location." It will only be warmer in the Arctic; everywhere else .... colder. 

Photo Of Another Bakken Well In The Sweet Spot Of The Bakken: Northeast Mckenzie County

The contributor writes:

The photo is of #24220, HRC's Berg Trust Federal 1-26-35H. HRC is drilling additional wells in the spacing unit, but is doing them from the southern side of the unit, where the Berg Trust is in the north side of the unit. 

He writes that this little corner of McKenzie County is a microcosm of the Bakken as a whole. Lots of different fields (North Fork, Pembroke, Haystack Butte, Siverston, etc), lots of different operators (XTO, Continental, Burlington, Newfield, Kodiak, Slawson), and even different spacing (640, 1280, 2560). The flaring is even radically different from one operator to the next. 

• 24220, 2,078, HRC,  Berg Trust Federal 1-26-35H, Pembroke, middle Bakken, 30 stages; 3.3 million lbs sand; t3/13; cum 96K 12/13;

What Determines The Price Of Oil

On February 11, 2014, I wrote:

The most noteworthy data point this morning: the price of oil continues to melt up without a good explanation. I posted this two days ago, and the sentiment remains:

The major factors affecting the price of oil:

• Mideast politics and hostilities (Syria, Iran, Israel); sabre-rattling
• strength of the dollar
• US economy six months out
• Chinese manufacturing index
• global economy six months out

Of the five, I think the US economy six months out as telegraphed by the Fed's actions is the most important (on the day of posting). On a day-to-day basis, all things being equal (e.g., no report of a war breaking out in the Mideast, it is the strength of the dollar).

I received a note from a reader suggesting that Mideast politics will be the major factor affecting the price of oil going forward, and sent a link to this article: 

• Headline: Iran flexes muscles in Gulf 

• Story: 

The Iranians now feel confident enough to attack Sunnis openly - scary for the Saudis. For the first time, the Iranians are attacking not just the Saudi government, but also the Wahhabi extremist Sunni sect that is the ideological underpinning of the Saudi regime. Wahhabis have been declared to be "worse than Jews" and heretical.

"If they refuse to convert (to Shi'ism) killing them is not a sin." Of course, to Shi'as, all Sunnis are heretical, as they in turn are considered heretical by the Sunnis, but until recently the ayatollahs have been cooperating with Sunni governments and terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to confront the Israelis and the West.

This tactic is apparently now ending, as the Iranians feel themselves capable of confronting their Sunni rivals as well as secular regimes and Western governments, given what they see (and proclaim) as their "victories" in the negotiations with the six powers.

It was just the other day that I suggested that one of President Obama's lasting legacies will be a Mideast nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia will go nuclear before the decade is out. History will look back on this period as a lost opportunity: the Obama administration and Israel had a window of opportunity and did not take it.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

I finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo this afternoon in between activities with the granddaughters. An incredible book. Very good. For me, I would not have enjoyed the book half as much (I might not even have completed it) had I not seen the movie first. 

The director said the movie was five acts which made it a difficult movie to write and film. According to wiki, a five-act play: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement. The challenge with Dragon Tattoo there were two stories, but the bookends story -- the libel suit was overshadowed by the story in the middle: the serial murder mystery.

I've moved on to The Great Gatsy, the book, and the 2013 movie.

Another "Keystone" Pipeline Delayed -- Here We Go Again; The US State Department Wants A "Do-Over"; Bill McKibben's Fingerprints Are All Over This One

The Obama administration appears ready to kill another shovel-ready project. Enbridge is reporting that its Clipper pipeline project has been delayed due to US presidential inaction. Among other things, the president was golfing in Hawaii. GlobalNews.ca is reporting:

Enbridge is reporting that the U.S. State Department is taking longer than expected to review an expansion to an Alberta-to-Wisconsin pipeline.

But executives with the Calgary-based energy shipper said Friday they’re confident of getting a green light in time to expand the Alberta Clipper line to 800,000 barrels per day by the middle of next year.

Enbridge obtained a U.S. federal permit in 2009 before starting up the first 450,000-barrel-per-day phase of the line, but the State Department says it needs to amend its environmental review before allowing the expansions to go ahead.

So many story lines in this short article. But none of this worries me any more. The Australians have the solution:

World's Largest
The series on the I-98 is seeming less and less fictional every day. 

And, of course, there's always rail. LOL.

Seriously: the  Canadians and the Canadian government better get their act together; realize that the US is not the ally they can count on any more.

Electric Companies Using The Most Coal Since 2011 -- Government Data, Bloomberg

Back on December 9, 2013, this blog headline: "death of king coal is premature" which, of course, should have been, "talk of death of king coal" but one gets the point. That story dealt with Asia and coal. It turns out that Asia is not the only continent turning to coal. Of course, Europe is, too, but now Forbes is reporting:

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Cheap natural gas was supposed to be the answer to our dependence on dirty old coal. But now, it seems, coal is making a comeback. The bitter winter, the coldest in 30 years, has pushed natural gas prices to some of their highest levels in four years, and that has made coal attractive to utilities again.

Electric companies are generating more than 4.5 million megawatt hours a day using coal, the most since 2011, Bloomberg reported, citing government data. As a result, coal’s share of power production rose to more than 40 percent from 39 percent last year.

Cheap and abundant natural gas supplies from the hydraulic fracturing boom had made natural gas a cheaper and cleaner alternative to coal for the past several years. Economics, though, had to catch up at some point. With demand for gas rising this winter, pushing prices as high as $5.56 per million British thermal units at the end of January, coal is looking more attractive.