Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi Arabian investor, has warned that his country’s oil-dependent economy is increasingly vulnerable to competition from the US shale revolution, setting him at odds with his country’s oil ministry and Opec officials.
In an open letter addressed to Ali Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, the prince called on the government to accelerate plans to diversify the economy.
“Our country is facing continuous threat because of its almost total dependency on oil,” he wrote in the letter, copied to King Abdullah, Prince Alwaleed’s uncle, among others.
The large trucks that use the roads increase traffic problems. ( this does go away after the drilling and pipes are done )
The influx of workers cause full hotels, motels, rental property and restaurants. Lots of money gets splashed around and the local economy booms. ( but there is always a bust when the drilling is done )
Local towns get lots of money, new schools get built, taxes can go down, capital improvements made. ( but it ruins the tax and spend progressive subject control technique )
So it's not a simple and harmless matter.
Lucky for us the NY DEC ( Dept. of Environmental Conservation ) NOT an oil company buddy, after many years of study has concluded that IF the oil companies follow the rules and clean up the mess afterward there is NO danger to drinking water supplies. So, believe it or not, it's safe. ( although the Dictat of NY, Cuomo, won't approve fracking because he's running for Obama's job )
Yep, it's safe. Proven, studied, and verified.
Unless you live in that very famous town where the wells are drilled into a methane infused water pocket, so you can light your tap water. ( never mentioned is that was done before anyone drilled for fossil fuels anywhere near there.......)
Or you are Matt Damon, who did an anti Fracking movie paid for by the Oil sheiks........ ( I'm boycotting his work because of that.... he claims to not know who paid him..... I didn't think he was as dumb as the puppet in "Team America World Police"....... )
Not, mind you, one I want to take off from my back yard, but the only known system that can possibly have the Delta V to intercept and change the course of an incoming comet/asteroid.
Remember, we will be hit by another "dinosaur killer". It's happened multiple times before, and it will happen again. Not this week, but it has a probability of 1.
Lookout Mountain GA is one of the premier hang gliding sites in the US. I haven't checked the location of these proposed Cuisinarts of death, but I'm sure that there will be notes at the bunkhouse ( cheap shelter for pilots at the Flying Park ) pointing out the Doom that awaits the unwary.
In Hang Glider reality, that means pilots will have to watch out for the turbulence, swinging blades of carnage, and the certainty of a lawsuit if they are blown through the turbines and damage the precious eyesores. ( or at least the pilots heirs will have to worry )
In Greenie reality, there is the dire concern that a bird will be struck by these unnatural structures, and, as experience shows, none whatsoever for humans smashed to jelly and flung into the void. ( Hang Gliders are unnatural objects and thus unworthy of consideration. Having flown alongside Falcons & Vultures and merely amused them, I have a differing view. )
My fear is that the windmills will lead to the loss of flying in the Lookout Mt. area and a blow not only to local tourism, but a historic flying site.
Holding the USHGA Regional Championship meet in Stamford NY some years back brought in well over a Million$ according to the local Chamber. ( I know, they told me, I was helping run it ) Lookout Mt. has a much larger impact on the local economy than a once yearly event.
But, but, only days ago they published pics of melting ice in the form of a puddle on top of an ice mass "at the North Pole".
Well, actually hundreds of miles from the Pole, since Ice floats. And Moves.
And, yeah, puddles of melt happen all the time when the wind is calm and the sun shines. ( it re freezes pretty quick when the direct sun stops because of clouds )
and there was that cyclone last year that led to artificial panic.....
But, hey! we missed the end of technological civilization, again.
I have not done a systematic study, but I believe that northern lights were seen in Alexandria about every 300 years since classical times. That probably indicates a Carrington class solar event. In 1859 the only long insulated wires in the world were telegraph lines. So far as I can tell, during the 1859 event there were electrical events in every telegraph station, and many of them caught fire. We have a lot more long electrical lines now, and of course the effect on the electrical power grid cannot accurately be predicted. Some would make it the end of civilization. Something of this sort is the premise of Lloyd Tackitt’s A Distant Eden and its sequels, which presents a grim picture of post disaster life. Jerry Pournelle.
I had to explain to my boss back when we had a series of solar storms why the power was so funky. It's actually simple.
To make current, you move a magnet near a conductor ( usually a coil of wire). It makes no difference if you move the wire or the magnet, it is all about moving magnetic fields and conductors.
When a bunchaton of high energy particles expelled by the Sun at very high speed slams into the Earth's magnetic field, it pushes the field, compressing it and making the field move. ( it rebounds ) When the magnetic field moves, it induces a current in conductors.
The bigger the conductor, the more current induced.
Back in 1859, the only notable long conductors were telegraph lines. Current was made and people were shocked, fires started, and crude, pre vacuum tube electronics were wrecked.
Today the planet is covered in a web of power, data, and telephone lines, every one (that's not glass fiber) being a conductor that WILL experience a current flow WHEN the next CME slams into the planet with the force of a full blown Nuclear War.
We honestly have no idea how much damage that will cause, but it's going to be far worse than most think and not quite as bad as what the fringe guys believe. But not much.
Since Big cities in the US are considered 3 days from starvation, ( not quite true ) consider what happens when the power goes out and all that frozen food thaws. It's not like we'll lose the memory of how to fix this stuff, ( unless the riots burn the Libraries and Schools ) it's that the number of trained workers and stocks of spare parts just are not in the same place, or adequate to the task at hand.
The factories that makes the switches & "fuses" to fix the "grid" can't operate until they get power, and repair their damage. It would be interesting to ask the Power Companies what their priorities are in the event of an EMP event.
The coal and natural gas to feed the power plants, is shipped by rail and pipe and both use a network to control traffic. That network will be fried.
The initial mass casualties for a Big EMP event will be in urban areas in highly developed nations, the later mass casualties will be when the "third world" countries collapse without constant food and money from the "first & new world".
( there is a notable lack of science knowledge with most "journalists", and I know that, yet I believed the Washington Examiner article without that consideration. Sorry. )
I like well set up data representations that are dense with meaning, but still understandable. This is rare, and almost unheard of from the Government and most news sources. Scientific American sometimes gets it right, but they also would do a beautiful graph on Ionized water and immortality, which is a lot like a perfectly rational argument for demonic possession. ( magic water is a scam. Seriously. So are magnets in bracelets. And Progressivism. And Lysenkoism. )
Probably wasted on a fellow who believes in Homeopathic Medicine, the God Given Right Of Kings, and that his very expensive car run on alcohol made from his own winery will save the planet.
Or in simple terms, this is a lecture sent to a guy who is the product of a selective breeding program apparently designed to make Princes stupid so they don't mess with the Barons as much. ( the House Of Lords )
The research team postulates that in the future, it will be Earth-warming greenhouse gases, much longer-lasting than aerosols, that will exert the most influence on tropical storm frequency.
Previous work published in Nature Climate Change had said that while the number of tropical storms was not projected to increase in future, their intensity was.
I agree that gas content will have a longer term effect than aerosols, which can be more transient. ( a few years of volcanic ash, a few decades of coal heated homes in England, etc. ) When the aerosols dropped as England went away from coal furnaces in every home, the temperatures dipped leading to Ice Age Panic in the 1970's. ( combined with Solar variability ) Aerosols are a much faster changing variable.
The intensity argument is based on the original, disproven AGW theory, and is incorrect. AGW is supposed to even the difference between equatorial and temperate zones by making the temperate zones warmer. This leads to LESS severe storms as storms are caused by Temperature differences. Atlantic Hurricanes in particular are the creation of ocean currents and seasonal air temp contrasts.
Keeping the Poor in the Dark They want to produce electricity from coal, and the developed world says no
Vietnam wants to build more power. Decades of Communism and mass murder have left it poor. Capitalists like Nike's have brought them industry, and if you want to not be poor, you need power.
But power is also freedom, how can you exploit rich people? But this isn't even a thought in the Greenies heads. They live lavish lifestyles, feel incredible guilt, but are never going to actually give up their wealth. Instead, they must make sure no one else is a blight on the planet.
Like they are.
The rich countries of the West developed their economies by producing electricity from coal. Now the rest of the world wants to do the same. And yet, the environmental elites are determined to prevent that from happening.
Many of those same elites are cloaking their rhetoric in moral terms. In late June, Ken Berlin, a lawyer and leader of the “Energy & Environment Team,” a group set up to promote Obama’s climate-change agenda, sent out a list of talking points to be used by Obama’s supporters. The first one: “We have a moral obligation to future generations to leave them a planet that’s not polluted and damaged by carbon pollution.”
And now, as evidenced by the recent moves by the Ex-Im and World Bank, we have adopted a policy that it’s better for the world’s poor to continue living in the darkness and destitution that always comes with energy poverty than for them to be damaged by “carbon pollution.”
If that’s a moral stand, then I’m Jack the Ripper.
So the Dept. of the Interior now has Religious Rules. Will the Inquisition put "deniers" to the Question?
If you change the theory to fit the data, it's science. If you change the data to fit the theory, it's fraud. If Data doesn't matter, just the goal, it's religion.
What bothers me is that "they" are always saying that "we" are in a unique position to do something about climate change, without explicitly stating the obvious: that "they" want to control us and every aspect of our lives because "they" know better than we do.
As an example of this over-arching reach, Google "Maya Shankar"
I've already begun sketching out a cheapo version that uses aluminum tubing skeleton, ultralight AC construction and an open cockpit with just a seat and seatbelt. Foam & fiberglass floats using Rutan's moldless techniques. Have to figure out a budget.....
I'd be optimistic about stopping something that seems to have stopped already, too.
I'd also be optimistic about the goals of Climate Cons, what with the increasing power of the Executive to ignore and invent new laws. How can total power be far behind?
That is pretty impressive. I've just take a quick look at the pics and sketches. Innovative, no doubt. The one thing about it that I don't like is that it's asymmetrical. It's not the asymmetry that really bothers me, but the asymmetrical performance, i.e. it can't turn and do the same thing on the opposite tack.
I was heavily into windsurfing in it's hay day and speed equipment was pushing close to the 50 knot barrier. Windsurfers were the fastest sailing thing on the water back then. It was recognized that the limits of flexible sail technology was being pushed and they started building vertical wings like you see on this craft. Many, including myself didn't like the idea of these because of the same asymmetrical performance. I had a couple of opportunities to sail some of the speed specific rigs back then. Doing 40+ knots harnessed into about 35 pounds of equipment, inches above the water is quite a rush. The crashes get spectacular too. I managed to break a couple of ribs crashing on that stuff.
I don't expect this sort of thing to ever become common place though. They just get way to condition specific to be practical. Cool find though.
Some want to clone embryos for research and reproductive purposes. Others argue that there’s a slippery slope towards the commoditization of embryos and human life. Are embryos simply fertilized eggs or something more? Lt. Col. Allen West talks to Dr. William B. Hurlbut, bioethicist and author, about the future of science and humanity
I've been predicting this one. Anyone else recall the tale of Cassandra?
This is exactly the concern that prompted the fetal stem cell research restrictions that were all the rage last administration. Bush obviously hated you because he feared......... this.
Being an Environmental Fanatic is already a "protected" religion in England. A judge ruled that you can't fire an Enviro-nut just because he's really annoying and doesn't do his job because he's too busy protesting the plastic forks in the company cafeteria. ( just for example )
The little propaganda vid on pg 2 has the new mantra. Global Warming isn't a theory, it's already happened. ( true, it DID happen back last century. Twice. But they don't mention that ) So the thin ice in the Arctic is changing the jet stream and causing unusually persistent weather patterns. Like droughts. Or rain.
Never mind that the history of the planet is a series of "unusually persistent" weather patterns, interspersed with "unusually changeable" ones.
Like the Climate Change that destroyed the Pueblo Cliff Dwellers civilization.
Or destroyed the Viking Colonies on Greenland & Vinland.
Or destroyed the Sahara Forest.
To be fair, Man has done a lot of incredibly damaging things to our environment. Like turning the Imperial Valley into a desert. ( to save a smelt )
Or cutting down the forests around Kilaminjaro, raising the local temperatures and melting the snow cap on the volcano.
Or making the Mammoth extinct.
( why are Mammoth extinct? They're Delicious!!!!! )
"You must now upload the latest firmware to your vehicles computer to adjust for the new speed limit Imposed because f the energy crisis. Das ist ein Orderung!"
Thank goodness the Cyclone has no computer at all, and the VW can be used with a BullyDog.
I see these things and immediately start to try and figure out how to hack them. This one is easy. ( meaning they may make it highly illegal real fast. )
Unplug the speed limit sign sensing camera.
In the very good Space Naval Military "Honor Harrington" series by David Weber, POW's escape from a Battlecruiser and cover their escape by starting the drive of a shuttle while in the Battlecruiser's boat bay. There are elaborate safety protocols to prevent this from happening, hard wired into the navigation and flight control computers, and designed to be fool proof. So the heroes disconnected the sensors and the computer had no idea it wasn't in interstellar space, but inside the Ship.
Boom.
The professional drivers truckers or other will tell you that a governor on your speed is dangerous. There are cases where not being able to pass are deadly.
It's the difference between free will religion, and a slave religion.
With Free Will, you can do whatever you want to. But not all things are good or wise to do. With a Slave mentality religion, all that is not required is forbidden. I leave you to determine which faiths/government structures are which.