Gas prices are about to fall through the floor. Here's what it will cost you

2/26/2013

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wilder weather.

It does not matter what people believe in this case. Science is true whether you believe it or not. What is up for debate is how much humans are contributing to global warming as a result of their love for fossil fuels.

Rather than decreasing our use of fossil fuels, which unquestionably belch tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, we are about to increase it in a big way. Is this moral? If humans are contributing to dangerous climate change, should we then engage in behavior that will exacerbate problems rather than alleviate them? Are we not charged with being stewards of the Earth?

Still, this is a difficult sell when most religious conservatives continue to doubt global warming and see liberal machinations behind the banner. The left's hijacking of the issue does us no favors when the topic is both real and serious and must be addressed with open eyes.

Unfortunately, the profits and jobs to be derived from an oil boom are almost too good to pass up. Weaning ourselves from foreign energy also means less likelihood for foreign involvement. That means less conflict, less war, and more peace. It's hard to leave such a morsel on the table. The economic benefits are also very desirable. The revenues and the jobs are enough to return our nation to prosperity, something we all yearn to see after five years of deep recession on Main Street.

Wall Street, which suffered a much shorter recession, is also keen on the development. Oil is a fantastic investment opportunity for the future.

Ultimately, we are presented with a significant moral question. Do we engage in behavior that could be harmful to the environment, in exchange for substantial economic benefits? History predicts that our answer will be yes. Yet, history is replete with cautionary tales about those who did not learn to live in harmony with their environment.

Mesopotamia was once fertile and green, but climate change which occurred thousands of years ago, turning the region into desert. Great civilizations failed to cope and collapsed. The Maya expanded rapidly, and filled the jungles of Central America, but persistent drought exacerbated by intensive agricultural practices brought about collapse of their city states. Easter Island, became so overpopulated that the people denuded the landscape, to the point of cutting down the last tree on the island for food. They failed to find a sustainable manner of living and were reduced to cannibalism.

What will we do?

I think we know the answer already. Tragically, its status as a moral question matters to few, but hey, mental gymnastics, record profits, and cheap gas will assuage our collective conscience for at least a generation or more -- so why worry?

� 2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Fracking, oil, gas, energy, independence, future, harms, danger, water, pollution, jobs, economy, fossil fuels

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1 - 6 of 6 Comments

robertburford
2 months ago
If it sounds too good to be true, then maybe it is too good to be true. Cheap gas is a pipe dream but the reality of further polluting our air and ground water is a nightmare. In North Dakota they are doing just that. The problem is that the West does not have the water resources to support such industries as well as crops and cattle. Something has got to give. The truth is that the oil companies want higher oil prices and the benefit packages of their executives depend on high oil prices. Markets rule but when you have oligopolies like the oil companies , markets can be manipulated and they are and will continue to be.
Jerry N
2 months ago
Jim: "We are clearly in a warming cycle which is contributing to droughts, crop failures and the resulting wildfires world wide in both hemispheres..."

This is total baloney, unsupported by any semblance of scientific data or measurement. Why should any thinking, fact-observing person believe or heed you or any other enviro-socialist, when you almost always start out with huge, unsupportable lies, stated as if they are well-established facts, which they most certainly are not? I do not trust or respect liars, no matter how well-meaning or noble the cause about which they are spinning their lies.

Good environmental stewardship starts with knowing the true facts,a nd knowing what does and does not affect the environment. Humans having "wasteful lifestyles" do not affect the environment in any measureable way. Condemnation of "wasteful lifestyles" is mere political propaganda aimed at promoting socialism and demoting individual liberty.
Jim
2 months ago
Regardless of the correctness of his scientific facts, I think the author made some good points about environmental responsibility. I found the article written reasonably, more or less balanced in perspective and not overly condemning of any particular position. We are clearly in a warming cycle which is contributing to droughts, crop failures and the resulting wildfires world wide in both hemispheres. not to mention the increased tropical depression activity and severity. Maybe it is just a natural cycle that will last as long as it will, years, decades, centuries, who knows, with or without the activities of industrial age humans. Heating and cooling cycles have occurred before and they will occur again. Still should we not always try and be good stewards of our planet. Not tree huggers or so-called vile polluters but rather wise consumers and custodians of both non-renewable and renewable resources. Should we not strive to work towards alternative energy sources with an eye on the day that we will run out of many non-renewable fossil fuels. Until that day shouldn't we use those resources in the most efficient and productive ways possible. Petroleum is not just important as an energy source, shouldn't we also consider conserving it as well as we can to prolong other uses like medicines, polymer plastics and other valuable and needed products. Perhaps the portion used for energy does not impact what remains for other critical uses but if it does, let's be intelligent consumers, not glutinous ones. Shouldn't we work intelligently and in a practical sustainable manner to reduce emissions that contribute, at least in part, to problems like acid rain, respiratory disease and overwhelming increase in environmentally caused cancers? Let's be intelligent and take a long term view as custodians and smart consumers as opposed to focusing our view on immediate gratification of wants, convenience and perhaps wasteful lifestyles far beyond our needs as humans and children of God. Value can and should be measured by more metrics than just profit and stock yields alone.
Jerry N
2 months ago
This article is mostly nonsense and full of psuedo-scientific global warming religion gobbly-gook.

The available scientific data over the last decade indicates the globe has begun a tiny cooling trend, but both the warming trend prior to this, and the current cooling trend are so small, and so speculative as to the level of measurement accuracy, that both can be dismissed as interesting observations that have virtually no significance whatsoever in terms of global climate.

The author of this bunk blatantly claims to know with absolute certainty that global warming is a scientifically establish fact. That claim, in itself, is enough to tell me that his conclusions are mere enviro-socialist propaganda. Here is the most revealing sentence of this author's somewhat obvious socialist agenda:

"Rather than decreasing our use of fossil fuels, which unquestionably belch tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, we are about to increase it in a big way. Is this moral? "

Why does our use of fossil fuel "belch" CO2 instead of merely release it?

Has anyone asked the plant life on earth if it is immoral for them to have more breathable air available to them?

What evidence is there that we will drastically increase our use of fossil fuel? Is it not just as likely that fossil fuel use will decrease due to the ever-improving efficiencies being developed in energy consuming devices?

Is it moral to lie to someone about a non-existent threat in order to scare them into voluntarily reducing their own standard of living?
rob lobato
2 months ago
it sounds too good to be true.hopefully it isn't.
Jim Carter
2 months ago
While the mental gymnastics the author contemplates are valuable, he needs to do some of these gymnastics around the global warming debate. While the earth has had some warmer years in the past two decades, the extreme warming that some scientists predicted never occurred and the temperature trend observed is not dissimilar to the one observed in the 1930's world wide. The models that predicted the rapid increase in average worldwide temperatures have been proven wrong and scientists are admitting that they did not take into account many variables (for example, a recent article that pointed to the models insufficiently including the effects of water vapor (clouds) in the atmosphere).

If you look at the worldwide climate over the past 10,000 years, we have had several periods where the weather was warmer by several degrees than it is now without the disastrous effects that some scientists predict. The vikings sailed in ice-free seas north of Canada and, as glaciers recede, we are finding new stone-age settlements in mountainous regions that are only now becoming habitable. Many scientists believe we may be at the beginnings of a new ice age that will effect us much more than any warming period.

To believe that man could significantly effect the weather due to our increased usage of greenhouse gasses flies in the face of the laws of thermodynamics as well as ignores the tens of thousands of acres of recovered coast land and dessert that are now planted in vegetation that uses the CO2 in the atmosphere. Readers should become more informed (e.g. use some mental gymnastics) to get all the facts from multiple sources and make an informed ethical and moral decision on this issue.

J K Carter, CPA
BS Petroleum Engineering
MS Accountancy

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