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The abstract of that research does have the part you quoted in it but then immediately proceeds to note that there is a lot of genetic diversity.Yeah, like almost everything else in science, the real work is in "how much?" since everything turns out to be partly true, for a sufficiently relaxed value of "true."
The magic line is probably this one: "We calculated the amount of European admixture in the AJ population to be 35 to 55%. Previous estimates of admixture levels have varied widely depending on the chromosome or specific locus being considered, with studies of Y-chromosome haplogroups estimating from 5 to 23% European admixture." That's still nowhere close to homogeneity between Europeans and AJ --- turning it around, that's roughly half (or more) of the genetic variation being strongly tied to Jewish identity.
Yeah, OK, I'll accept that.
Opponents of clean energy like to pick on one type of renewable energy and pretend that because of its flaws/drawbacks it undermines the entire clean energy argument.
The path to a clean, sustainable, and profitable future hinges on the need for these energies, combined with a re-evaluation of how we operate as a species.
The solution will be multi-facetted, complex, local, global, etc.
At this point we need to stop arguing about whether climate change is real or not, stop arguing over the drawbacks of clean energy and stop defaulting back to the doomed fossil-fuel systems. If you think that we can continue on the course we have been one for over a century, you are part of the problem.
The bottom line is and should be that it is in our best interest to pursue these other options, if you can't endorse these THEN PROPOSE SOMETHING ELSE AND FUND IT. Get out of the way if you can't lend a hand. I am so sick of ignorant people who just whine to preserve the status quo and contribute absolutely nothing to a better future and the advancement of humanity.
End rant.*
to Jeff, quote didn't work for some reason :D
Absolutely. We need to rethink almost everything we do. Perhaps I worded that poorly. We don't have to reduce our standard of living, but we need to rethink how we live at that level.
The problem with coal is the pollution (despite clean-up/reduction/collection efforts) and the fact that it is NON-RENEWABLE. In the long-run, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. all MIXED together and strategically placed based upon LOCAL needs and conditions will be best. Other sources of energy may come along. For now, it is time to move past fossil fuels and stop pretending that we can do it without consequence.Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.Forbes, a conservative news outlet, talking about the cost of energy.
Wind energy costs almost exactly the same as coal. Are you claiming that coal is economically unviable as energy source? Because if wind isn't profitable, neither is coal.
edit: wait, I'm sorry I forgot you just make stuff up and claim it's true.
My main point is that Wind and Solar are not, despite what any environmentalist believes, the replacement for the evil coal and vial gasoline. We need power plants, not storage facilities. The want is to jettison gas and coal now and try to use this infant battery storage that is older technology than what we already have.
For a car to go further than a couple of blocks, it needs a power source that has a fuel source that is portable. Batteries and electric cars are not it. They were not in the 1900's and they are not the magic solution now. Hybrids can extend the gasoline we use now if we want to pay more for a new car. Some have, and got burned when the batteries life span was shortened and the car blue book was less than the cost to replace those batteries. (This happened at my work)
One windmill costs over so much money. By the time you produce enough electricity to equal that initial payment, you either have a broke...
This is basically operating off 10-20 year old fear propaganda. Pretty much nothing of it is true to current technology.
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I'm just trying to figure out how Wind and Solar are storage facilities, not power plants.
I'd noticed that, too.
I guess when you make stuff up as you go along, why not make it all up?
Indeed.
The absolute lack of effect on his views of having factual errors pointed out to him is note worthy.
Perhaps ThaX reasons that 2 negatives make a positive, so as long as he can keep the number of factual errors even, all is well. It's a theory.
Notice how gasoline is "vial." Maybe his English is poor enough that he's mistakenly using "storage" in place of some other word?
ThaX, what's your native language? Maybe someone can help translate.
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Opponents of clean energy like to pick on one type of renewable energy and pretend that because of its flaws/drawbacks it undermines the entire clean energy argument.
The path to a clean, sustainable, and profitable future hinges on the need for these energies, combined with a re-evaluation of how we operate as a species.
The solution will be multi-facetted, complex, local, global, etc.
At this point we need to stop arguing about whether climate change is real or not, stop arguing over the drawbacks of clean energy and stop defaulting back to the doomed fossil-fuel systems. If you think that we can continue on the course we have been one for over a century, you are part of the problem.
The bottom line is and should be that it is in our best interest to pursue these other options, if you can't endorse these THEN PROPOSE SOMETHING ELSE AND FUND IT. Get out of the way if you can't lend a hand. I am so sick of ignorant people who just whine to preserve the status quo and contribute absolutely nothing to a better future and the advancement of humanity.
End rant.*
The problem, as far as it goes, is that the technology that is being supported (to an insane amount) by the government is what isn't actually going to help and HAS BEEN TRIED BEFORE. Yes, as another poster pointed out, Ford did have some plans and actually put out an electric car in the 1900's. It didn't compare to what the gasoline engine automobile could do, from distance to refueling. This is nothing new.
The newer batteries can hold a charge for an extended amount of time. It still ebbs, losing stored energy as it sits.
There should be other means to use and produce energy, but in today's Political Correct movements, anything that isn't from nature and needs to be produced is evil incarnate and lacks the Stamp of Approval.
For some of the other posters, I misspelled a word. Sorry.
The different between power plants and storage is how the energy is used and how much it strains to make the appliance provide the service. Gas is fuel that is used as a catylist for the engine to crank it's gears and make it go while Electric simply drains from a source to provide power to a drivetrain.
Storing power for use in a power grid is, at best, like a bird pecking at the mountain to make a parking lot.
I don't know, it just seems like there is a lot of hand wringing and worried expressions over a huge worry that seems petty compared to other issues that needs our attention. It also serves to make us, as Americans, to have to pay more for basic services just because the product isn't "green."
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I look at it this way: oil is a finite resource. As we tap out the easily-pumped reserves, we end up having to spend and risk more in order to extract less and less. That can't go on indefinitely. Coal has a similar future.
I look at other countries, who have read the writing on the wall and are investing in the future. I notice that Norway put most of its North Sea oil profits into renewables research, for example.
I look at the collapse of Detroit, and the rest of the Rust Belt, and I worry about American jobs, long-term.
I want to see the U.S. get a leg up on the future. I want our know-how to put us on the front lines of future energy production methods, and our people to be building the materials and infrastructure for it. I look at Tesla cars and see something that's 100% made in America and is also, quite probably, the future of automotives -- and the same company has also improved battery storage technology by generations. That's the kind of stuff that made the U.S. great, and will keep it that way in the future. I want us to be designing and building turbines, and solar cells, and nuclear plants, and stuff we haven't even thought of yet.
Digging for more meagre scraps in the dirt and whining about how we wish the world hadn't passed us by isn't going to do that.
Forget about the climate; I believe in renewable energy because I believe in America.
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I look at it this way: oil is a finite resource. As we tap out the easily-pumped reserves, we end up having to spend and risk more in order to extract less and less. That can't go on indefinitely. Coal has a similar future.
I look at other countries, who have read the writing on the wall and are investing in the future. I notice that Norway put most of its North Sea oil profits into renewables research, for example.
I look at the collapse of Detroit, and the rest of the Rust Belt, and I worry about American jobs, long-term.
I want to see the U.S. get a leg up on the future. I want our know-how to put us on the front lines of future energy production methods, and our people to be building the materials and infrastructure for it. I look at Tesla cars and see something that's 100% made in America and is also, quite probably, the future of automotives -- and the same company has also improved battery storage technology by generations. That's the kind of stuff that made the U.S. great, and will keep it that way in the future. I want us to be designing and building turbines, and solar cells, and nuclear plants, and stuff we haven't even thought of yet.
Digging for more meagre scraps in the dirt and whining about how we wish the world hadn't passed us by isn't going to do that.
Forget about the climate; I believe in renewable energy because I believe in America.
I agree with you, to a point, but "renewable" energy is a catchphrase. Electric cars still use energy from the grid that still uses coal to produce it. It will take a something more than a battery, be it one that is from the 50's or one that is a bigger version of a Cell Phone battery, to power a car past the confines of the city limits.
Solar doesn't contribute to the "grid" as far as it is structured now, and can't support a structure until all of us, resident, business or corporation, buy the panels for our own use. Wind would supplant farms and take up a lot of room for little benefit.
We need other means to produce energy that does not involve storage that ebbs away. In three hundred years, we may not have the structure we have now, but be using microwaves or crystals. What we are doing now, with the old being "new," is running is circles.
I hope that America can be the leader in new technologies, not floundering with the old tech used for Calculators and milling corn. Algae used for fuel, fusion small enough to power a car, nuclear plants that are safe and recycles it's waste, and so on.
The reason for the Detroit Downfall is the overall mess with the automotive buyouts and how it effected the industry as a whole. Ford avoided a good amount of the fallout as they already were taking steps to avoid the inevitable five years before the crud hit the fan. GM already axed Oldsmobile, and had to pair down their brands, taking out Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer (later bought out) and another I can't remember. Chrysler had to axe Plymouth and bring in the really bad Fiats to foist onto the American public. All had to use batteries and produce electric cars because of the massive government regulations because of this mess. It wasn't the Climate that killed the Rust Belt, as it was called, but the shody workmanship of a lot of American cars in the 70's and the over-extension of funds that the big three had over pensions promised to retirees. The "forign" car companies began to get a big share of the market, and they have factories here now. Toyota was just reported to have a modal that has all the parts and is assembled here in America. (Near me in Indiana, in fact)
Yes, we have plenty of gas and such now, but it is a finite resource. What we don't need is to completely abandon it for pipe dreams and good intentions. We need real progress, not the overall sluggish gains of what is newer batteries.
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I hope that America can be the leader in new technologies, not floundering with the old tech used for Calculators and milling corn. Algae used for fuel, fusion small enough to power a car, nuclear plants that are safe and recycles it's waste, and so on.
Uh, you Americans succeeded in building a fusion bomb in the 1950's. Everyone then thought fusion was the wonder power of the future. But since then nobody has been able to build a fusion reactor. At all, safe, unsafe, commercially viable, way too expensive, none. Not even close. And you want fusion reactors that power cars...
Fission reactors innately create substances that are extremely hazardous for extremely long periods. And if anything goes wrong it can get very, very serious, think Chernobyl, Fukushima.
Both with waste disposal and running power plants, you can reduced the risks greatly by doing things very thoroughly with the best technology. Not only does this push the cost way up, something you endlessly speak of with green technology, but commercial reality is always to cut costs. Which means more danger. You got any proper figures on the relative costs of fission power and green technologies?
There is kind of nuclear power plant that recycles its waste, it is called a breeder reactor. Sounds great when you talk about it. But what comes out of a breeder reactor is even more dangerous than what comes out of a normal fission reactor.
In Australia we had a wave of Southern European immigration after world war 2 and they were not universally accepted when they arrived. We have things like Greek and Italian clubs. I am near certain such clubs are most important to the immigrants themselves, less so to their children, still less so to their grandchildren and so on. I suspect they will be mostly gone 200 years after the wave of immigration.
Actually, there's been research done among immigrant families that led to the idea of the third generation principle. Essentially that the children of immigrants (the second generation) often focus more on assimilation and are less interested in their parents culture partially as a result of being caught directly between the two cultures, and also because they often are required to help their parents navigate the culture they live among. Meanwhile, the grandchildren of immigrants (the third generation) are often raised without much cultural influence by their parents and can often develop a stronger interest in the culture of their ancestry than their parents.
You are overestimating the life cycle of ethnic clubs though. A city near where I live was once touted as the international city due to the number of immigrants that came. It was full of ethnic organizations, few of which lasted even 100 years.
His point about batteries is also ignoring the fact that there are companies gearing up to produce commercially available organic batteries by 2017. The organic batteries on the horizon have multiple advantages:
1. The amount of excess heat they produce is minimal. This has additional benefits, but the first is that they don't have to be cooled. Typically the absorption of other nearby solid objects is actually enough cooling. They can be confined without air flow.
2. They scale up extremely well. The big problems lithium ion batteries have is heat (see above). The bigger they are, the more heat they produce. If you're removing the heat problem, now you can scale the size up to whatever scale you're capable of manufacturing.
3. They last longer. Organic batteries can run about 5,000 cycles. A lithium ion battery can do 1,000 cycles.
4. They're cheaper. Organic batters use water and carbon. Lithium ion batteries use multiple rare-earth metals. The electroactive substances in organic batteries are the product of organic processes involving hydrocarbons. The current theory is that eventually they will be able to produce them industrially from carbon dioxide, but that's further off.
The neat thing is that Harvard and USC have each developed their own type of organic battery. I'm sure there are a couple other universities that have been working on these as well.
These batteries aren't going to replace your smartphone battery. They could replace the batteries in electric cars though. They could also provide energy storage in homes, as well as large scale storage on electrical grids.
In Australia we had a wave of Southern European immigration after world war 2 and they were not universally accepted when they arrived. We have things like Greek and Italian clubs. I am near certain such clubs are most important to the immigrants themselves, less so to their children, still less so to their grandchildren and so on. I suspect they will be mostly gone 200 years after the wave of immigration.
Actually, there's been research done among immigrant families that led to the idea of the third generation principle. Essentially that the children of immigrants (the second generation) often focus more on assimilation and are less interested in their parents culture partially as a result of being caught directly between the two cultures, and also because they often are required to help their parents navigate the culture they live among. Meanwhile, the grandchildren of immigrants (the third generation) are often raised without much cultural influence by their parents and can often develop a stronger interest in the culture of their ancestry than their parents.
You are overestimating the life cycle of ethnic clubs though. A city near where I live was once touted as the international city due to the number of immigrants that came. It was full of ethnic organizations, few of which lasted even 100 years.
Thanks for the input Scythia. I have heard of the third generation principle.
I was guessing about the life span of ethnic clubs. I am not surprised they don't last as long as I had thought.
I was mostly talking about Jews and the way they preserved an ethnic or cultural identity for nearly 2,000 years. Its an interesting phenomenon that is at least very unusual if not unique.
In Australia we had a wave of Southern European immigration after world war 2 and they were not universally accepted when they arrived. We have things like Greek and Italian clubs. I am near certain such clubs are most important to the immigrants themselves, less so to their children, still less so to their grandchildren and so on. I suspect they will be mostly gone 200 years after the wave of immigration.
Actually, there's been research done among immigrant families that led to the idea of the third generation principle. Essentially that the children of immigrants (the second generation) often focus more on assimilation and are less interested in their parents culture partially as a result of being caught directly between the two cultures, and also because they often are required to help their parents navigate the culture they live among. Meanwhile, the grandchildren of immigrants (the third generation) are often raised without much cultural influence by their parents and can often develop a stronger interest in the culture of their ancestry than their parents.
You are overestimating the life cycle of ethnic clubs though. A city near where I live was once touted as the international city due to the number of immigrants that came. It was full of ethnic organizations, few of which lasted even 100 years.
Thanks for the input Scythia. I have heard of the third generation principle.
I was guessing about the life span of ethnic clubs. I am not surprised they don't last as long as I had thought.
I was mostly talking about Jews and the way they preserved an ethnic or cultural identity for nearly 2,000 years. Its an interesting phenomenon that is at least very unusual if not unique.
It is unusual, but not unique; there are two groups I can think of that have long lived among other cultures, but have successfully maintained a separate culture of their own, and in both cases it was due not only to a inward cultural focus, but also external persecution or exclusion. Of course the Jewish people, but also the Rom.
You are right of course about the Rom. And again that is a long standing phenomenon, they left India somewhere between the 6th and 11th centuries according to Wikipedia. Not so long as Jews, but an awfully long time.
And on the climate change court case- interesting and welcome news.
Its a pity it won't work under Australian law. Our government is a waste of space, on climate change and otherwise.
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Like I said, out of City Limits. If you are going to spend 4 to 10 hours to recharge a car, you would need at least 1k miles(or more) before the next charge. Cycles should also be kept track of so that the owner would not short charge the batteries and shorten their lifespan. How much cleaner a coal plant is compared to 70's cars is really not that much of an issue. The point is both are "evil" sources according to those that believe in this fairy tale.I agree with you, to a point, but "renewable" energy is a catchphrase. Electric cars still use energy from the grid that still uses coal to produce it. It will take a something more than a battery, be it one that is from the 50's or one that is a bigger version of a Cell Phone battery, to power a car past the confines of the city limits.You really don't know anything about EVs, do you? 80-100 miles is the norm, with the Tesla being an extreme outlier at 270 miles. Oh, and fot all it's dirtiness, a kw from a coal plant is cleaner than one from your car's engine and can more easily be changed to other sources.
I would like to see those solar turbine plants. I would think that magnetics would have a lot to do with their workings. The point is a typical solar panel is not going to keep a direct current. Something would have to be used to keep that current going.Solar doesn't contribute to the "grid" as far as it is structured now, and can't support a structure until all of us, resident, business or corporation, buy the panels for our own use. Wind would supplant farms and take up a lot of room for little benefit.Completely wrong. Do you make this stuff up or are you coping it from a cheat sheet? Solar installations feed excess power back into the grid and there are numerous municipal and large scale panel installations and a number of solar turbine plants.
We need other means to produce energy that does not involve storage that ebbs away. In three hundred years, we may not have the structure we have now, but be using microwaves or crystals. What we are doing now, with the old being "new," is running is circles.All energy storage is temporary. Seriously, your level of ignorance regarding electrical infrastructure, energy technology, etc is appalling.
So are you saying that all energy is stored? That my understanding of a direct current to our current structure is somehow flawed?
Gas evaporates at a very slow rate while batteries ebb their charge much faster and gets harder to store a charge the older the battery gets. I have seen one particular hybrid car that was junked after only two years because the batteries went bad. (just under 5k to replace them!)
The reason for the Detroit Downfall is the overall mess with the automotive buyouts and how it effected the industry as a whole. Ford avoided a good amount of the fallout as they already were taking steps to avoid the inevitable five years before the crud hit the fan. GM already axed Oldsmobile, and had to pair down their brands, taking out Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer (later bought out) and another I can't...
I know that the new fiats were brought back after the Crystler merger. They are just as bad as they were before, but with a newer look. If others out there like them, they can buy them, but I will stick to the bigger cars that I actually fit in.
Actually we need to stop burning oil in any form as fast as we possibly can because it's far more valuable as feedstock for plastics and various volatile hydrocarbons than as mundane fuel.
Yes, we have plenty of gas and such now, but it is a finite resource. What we don't need is to completely abandon it for pipe dreams and good intentions. We need real progress, not the overall sluggish gains of what is newer batteries.
My point is that this rush to stop "burning oil" is not the solution to this perceived emergency. We will get better fuels, better energy solutions and updated electrical (or other energy that we end up using) grids. The point I make is that we first need to stop subsidizing old solutions from the early 1900's.
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Wow. You must be a giant. I mean, I'm 6'2" and 235 lbs and I fit quite comfortably in my friend's. My head doesn't even touch the ceiling. Hell, Jeremy Clarkson is 6'5" and fits in it and loves the current generations of the 500. I think it's far more likely you're making it up. The old 500 was an excellent car for the price and the new 500 is an even better car for the price and safer than most larger cars.
Twig. :)
A lot of newer cars have a meaningless hard panel in between the driver and passanger seats. if you have a wide build and a tall one it severely limits your ability to sit in the chair and press on the gass.
Crammed into the back of a Prius once. Once. Shifting about made the car move.
Minivans have decent mileage and lots of room. But a eurocar? No. Last time i had to drive one of those for a friend i had to open the sun roof for the extra 4 inches of height. Gas is expensive but a spine is irreplaceable.
Again, Jeremy Clarkson fits in a Fiat 500 without issue and he's 6'5" and not skinny.
The man has legs like pipe cleaners. Looking at the video of him in the thing and he has the seat far enough back to pancake a passanger back there, and still doesn't look like he'd want to be in there for more than a joyride.
I'm pretty tall (6'2", 6'3" with a 33" inseam) and fairly broad and I fit in the front and back of my Prius fine and shifting around in pretty much any car will make it move.
Wriggle yes. Make the passenger scream "oh my god what did we just hit?" no.
I have no idea how you could fit in the back of a prius. I'm only 6'3 and I had to hunch over so far that my head was in the front seat to avoid putting a sun roof in the car. Wound up lying down in the back and that barely fit.
As much as I agree we need to conserve gas, you need to make a car people can fit into without an escape artist check. Make a hybrid or electric mini van or something.
Wow. You must be a giant. I mean, I'm 6'2" and 235 lbs and I fit quite comfortably in my friend's. My head doesn't even touch the ceiling. Hell, Jeremy Clarkson is 6'5" and fits in it and loves the current generations of the 500. I think it's far more likely you're making it up. The old 500 was an excellent car for the price and the new 500 is an even better car for the price and safer than most larger cars.Twig. :)
A lot of newer cars have a meaningless hard panel in between the driver and passanger seats. if you have a wide build and a tall one it severely limits your ability to sit in the chair and press on the gass.
Crammed into the back of a Prius once. Once. Shifting about made the car move.
Minivans have decent mileage and lots of room. But a eurocar? No. Last time i had to drive one of those for a friend i had to open the sun roof for the extra 4 inches of height. Gas is expensive but a spine is irreplaceable.
Again, Jeremy Clarkson fits in a Fiat 500 without issue and he's 6'5" and not skinny. I'm pretty tall (6'2", 6'3" with a 33" inseam) and fairly broad and I fit in the front and back of my Prius fine and shifting around in pretty much any car will make it move. Another one of my friends is an inch shorter than me but significantly broader and drives a Smart Fortwo without problem.
I'm sorry if you're that far outside the norm.
Im 6'8" with a 30' inseam. That means I need 8" more head room than you. For me, it's a pickup truck or motorcycle.
Im 6'8" with a 30' inseam. That means I need 8" more head room than you. For me, it's a pickup truck or motorcycle.Don't take this as a insult, but that's so outside the norms in both height and proportions I'm not sure it's really relevant.
Perhaps, but I think everyone should chip in $1 and buy me a truck anyway ;)
Also, I do not envy your clothes shopping.
Hey, dating a seamstress has its advantages!
Hahaha, I am vindicated!
I said that BigDTBone gets a size penalty to stealth...and I was right!
Dude?! Did you just remember that out of the blue?
EDIT: Wow, I suppressed the memories of that thread. Hopefully I can do it again.
Oil: Haven't run out yet, or for a while to come, but the stuff isn't limitless.
We haven't run out, but it's getting harder and more expensive to get.
And not just more expensive in cash, but more expensive in energy. It takes more of a barrel of oil (or equivalent) to get a barrel of oil out of the ground and processed than it used to.Not just harder and more expensive, we actually are now seeking oil that we can only get by trashing the environment on a massive scale. i.e. fracking.
There isn't any more easy cheaply accessible oil to discover. We HAVE passed that threshold.
The southwest is draining aquifers of water that are tens of thousands of years old.
Resource limits are a real thing.
Resources are indeed limited...
But at least get your facts straight you sound silly.Fracking has NOTHING to do with oil. Fracking is a way to squeeze more natural gas out of the ground. Last time I checked natural gas is abundant in the US. So why the need for fracking? Because the push by green legislation for cleaner power production has placed a fairly large demand on cleaner burning natural gas to fuel energy production. So to optimize profits gas companies frack to squeeze every last drop of natural gas out of an area before moving on. I find it ironic that the very people who WANT a clean environment altered the market in such a way as to make fracking happen.
Also just in the US there are VAST reserves of easily accessible oil that are off limits due to federal regulation. Not a limitless supply, but I remember people saying something like over 100 years worth or some large number. Now many of these areas are off limits for a reason (like southern California not wanting oil spills on it's beaches), but when oil actually does start to become scarce then popular pressure will probably remove many of those regulations. In the mean time rising oil prices will make alternatively fueled cars far far more popular and then you will see a huge drop in oil consumption as the world begins switching to electric cars, trucks, and trains in large numbers.
The aquifer issue is a far more pressing one. Farming drinks down a massive amount of water and with rising populations you end up with a double increase on water demands both from more people drinking it and from more water going to the need for greater food production. Unless we want a drought that makes the California one look tiny we NEED to start looking into ways to make water desalination plants cost effective.
Also just in the US there are VAST reserves of easily accessible oil that are off limits due to federal regulation. Not a limitless supply, but I remember people saying something like over 100 years worth or some large number. Now many of these areas are off limits for a reason (like southern California not wanting oil spills on it's beaches), but when oil actually does start to become scarce then popular pressure will probably remove many of those regulations. In the mean time rising oil prices will make alternatively fueled cars far far more...
Oil numbers are goofy.
The Bakken oil fields contains roughly 900 billion barrels of oil. With today's technology, roughly 30 billion of that is recoverable. As of a year ago they were producing about 1.1 million barrels per day, or about 450 million barrels per year.
In contrast, the US consumes about 19 million barrels per day on average (6.95 billion barrels per year). If oil production at Bakken were stable, it would produce 5% of what we used for the next 60-70 years, plus more and more of it's oil would become recoverable as time went on. It isn't stable though, it's gone up from 550,000 in 2012 to 1,100,000 in 2014. Right now the largest inhibitor of growth is actually transportation, right now it's primarily done by rail and is straining the rail system at capacity. A pipeline would increase the potential volume and increase profits significantly.
Something else that's interesting is that Bakken wells dry up very fast. The classic Texas wells produced at about 6-10% capacity per year, and so maintained production for quite a few years. Bakken wells produce at 70% in the first year. As lateral drilling has increased that % has declined, but right now we don't know how long these wells will last. We also don't know how good the wells are going to be in the secondary portions of the formation. Right now they're focusing on the best producing areas, but significant quantities of oil are in the areas where it won't be as easy or free flowing as right now. And of course the technology is going to continue to change.
Fracking became a thing due to demand for LNG for export, not for domestic use.
Just like the biggest US export is gasoline.
I stand partially corrected. Green legislation making natural gas power plants attractive exists in many areas outside the US as well making the export very lucrative. But I wouldn't completely dismiss the impact of US power production switching from coal to natural gas and it's effect on global demand.
Fracking is most commonly associated with natural gas, but it's also used for oil. Not silly at all.Resources are indeed limited...
But at least get your facts straight you sound silly.
Fracking has NOTHING to do with oil. Fracking is a way to squeeze more natural gas out of the ground. Last time I checked natural gas is abundant in the US. So why the need for fracking? Because the push by green legislation for cleaner power production has placed a fairly large demand on cleaner burning natural gas to fuel energy production. So to optimize profits gas companies frack to squeeze every last drop of natural gas out of an area before moving on. I find it ironic that the very people who WANT a clean environment altered the market in such a way as to make fracking happen.
Sorry I didn't realize it was used for oil... I should have researched that before assuming it was just for natural gas.
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Has anyone heard the latest news from the Solar science community? They predict that the sun is going to experience a cooling cycle in the next 15 to 20 years that will mean the ave temp in the northern hemisphere will drop 5 to 10 degrees during the cooling cycle. Somewhat like the little ice age that happened in the middle ages.
Iron Truth would you be in favor of building more pipelines from the Bakken oil fields to Texas? Would you support building the XL pipeline
to ship oil sands oil from Canada to Texas?
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Has anyone heard the latest news from the Solar science community?
I have,...
They predict that the sun is going to experience a cooling cycle in the next 15 to 20 years that will mean the ave temp in the northern hemisphere will drop 5 to 10 degrees during the cooling cycle.
And, no, "they" haven't. Assuming you're talking about Valentina Zharkova's Royal Astronomical Society presentation,.... no. First of all, Dr. Zharkova isn't a "they," but a "she." (One swallow does not a summer make.) Second, that's an interpretation that she specifically did NOT say, and in fact rejected outright in a USA TODAY interview, so it's more like "no swallows at all do not a summer make."
"In the press release, we didn't say anything at all about climate change. My guess is when they heard about the Maunder minimum, they used Wikipedia or something to find out about it."
Has anyone heard the latest news from the Solar science community? They predict that the sun is going to experience a cooling cycle in the next 15 to 20 years that will mean the ave temp in the northern hemisphere will drop 5 to 10 degrees during the cooling cycle. Somewhat like the little ice age that happened in the middle ages.
Iron Truth would you be in favor of building more pipelines from the Bakken oil fields to Texas? Would you support building the XL pipeline
to ship oil sands oil from Canada to Texas?
I have heard about it. The cycles of the Sun are something people study, and theories vary regarding what will happen. This is one possibility. The context may be new that the article presents, but the idea has actually been floated around for a few years now.
It is one of the few items that some have looked at in regards to some of the warming theories not going as some models seemed to indicate at a few points (that's SOME, not all or even a majority by any means). The idea is that in some ways, though the models were accurate, the effects of the sun (as well as the Oceans) are affecting the outcome.
Others of course have different theories and ideas.
I suppose, just like Al Gore's (NOT a scientist by the way) prediction of New York being underwater right now, and how we know whether he was right or not, we'll find out if the journalist (most likely also not a scientist, but I'm not positive) who reported this is correct in a few years also.
Even then, most of the articles I've seen stating this, leave themselves an out by mentioning it as a possibility and not a definite occurrence (aka, fortune telling).