Extreme Temperature Diary- December 9th, 2018/ Topic: Self Destruction…Bad Weekend News From Poland And Texas

guyonclimate_mi5tor

Sunday December 9th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊. 

Self Destruction…Bad Weekend News From Poland And Texas

Those who want the climate crisis to be significantly averted, including yours truly, have been dealt a big blow over the weekend with the news that the big climate conference among nations is unraveling, with those countries that have a vested interest in big oil not accepting sound science for future policy making. COP24 (24th Conference of the Parties) was supposed to strengthen the 2015 Paris Accords, but the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia balked at strong language for a joint resolution to be finalized tomorrow. This according to BBC News:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46496967

Quoting this article:

Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed.

The IPCC report on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C, had a significant impact when it was launched last October.

Scientists and many delegates in Poland were shocked as the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to this meeting “welcoming” the report.

It was the 2015 climate conference that had commissioned the landmark study..

The report said that the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century rather than 1.5C.

Keeping to the preferred target would need “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. If warming was to be kept to 1.5C this century, then emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.

It’s time for me yet again to get on my soapbox since I’m very disappointed with my fellow man with this news. Frequently I’ve noted on this blog how big conferences and agreements among nations convened to avert war and disaster nearly always fail either because diplomats can’t agree or because countries signing on renege, breaking promises. Although the Versailles Treaty was faulty to begin with, Germany broke their promises not to rearm after World War I, for example. Also, the League of Nations meant to avert war after WWI was a failure. To be fair the Montreal Treaty Protocol from 1988 meant to control chemicals in order to save Earth’s ozone layer was a success. The United Nations, which issues Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change reports, has not been able to police many member nations since its inception after WWII, though. Collectively, the human race, despite progress, obviously has a self destructive side being very tribal, and since Magellan’s trip around the globe in the 1500s, very slow to accept sound science. 

Now it’s the early 21st century and humanity doesn’t have any time for more “debate” on the climate issue. Leaders from the four nations trying to stymie policy being put forth by COP24 should silence those within their countries trying to profit from brown energy in the short term, but the opposite appears to be happening. Climate scientists shouting “leave it in the ground” are being ignored with pleas appearing to fall on deaf ears. We will see what happens with COP24 on Monday.

On top of this bad news I learned that there is a lot more temptation to not leave “it” in the ground in the U.S. right in the heart of oil country. I’m still wondering how this find wasn’t discovered in the last hundred years, but it is now uncovered for the taking. Big oil and Trump’s cronies are salivating over this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181206135643.htm

Quoting the Science Daily article: (In brown type)

Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. “American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy. Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.”

“In the 1980’s, during my time in the petroleum industry, the Permian and similar mature basins were not considered viable for producing large new recoverable resources. Today, thanks to advances in technology, the Permian Basin continues to impress in terms of resource potential. The results of this most recent assessment and that of the Wolfcamp Formation in the Midland Basin in 2016 are our largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released,” said Dr. Jim Reilly, USGS Director. “Knowing where these resources are located and how much exists is crucial to ensuring both our energy independence and energy dominance.”

Although the USGS has previously assessed conventional oil and gas resources in the Permian Basin province, this is the first assessment of continuous resources in the Wolfcamp shale and Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian. Oil and gas companies are currently producing oil here using both traditional vertical well technology and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of the Permian Basin province was assessed separately in 2016, and at that time it was the largest assessment of continuous oil conducted by the USGS. The Delaware Basin assessment of the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation is more than two times larger than that of the Midland Basin. The Permian Basin province includes a series of basins and other geologic formations in West Texas and southern New Mexico. It is one of the most productive areas for oil and gas in the entire United States.

“The results we’ve released today demonstrate the impact that improved technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have had on increasing the estimates of undiscovered, technically recoverable continuous (i.e., unconventional) resources,” said Walter Guidroz, Program Coordinator of the USGS Energy Resources Program.

Undiscovered resources are those that are estimated to exist based on geologic knowledge and already established production, while technically recoverable resources are those that can be produced using currently available technology and industry practices. Whether or not it is profitable to produce these resources has not been evaluated.

I’m hoping that the human race is not like a bunch of lemmings, proverbially rushing to drown themselves in the sea once overpopulation occurs, but after the news from this week I have to wonder. Is self-destruction built into our collective DNA? I’m probably going to live to find out during the 2020s. Many of my climate friends will too.

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Here is more weather and climate news from Sunday: 

(First- a couple of picks from Winter Storm Diego)

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)

(If you like these posts and my work please contribute via the PayPal widget, which has recently been added to this site. Thanks in advance for any support.) 

The Climate Guy

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