Rolling your eyes at climate change education
I recently had an eye-opening experience at work at the National Museum of Natural History. A couple of colleagues and I went into the exhibit halls to ask groups of teens about what they would find interesting to learn more about in a museum. We had a number of preselected topics and we selected a few for each group or individual we spoke with. When asked about climate change, one group responded “Climate change? That again?” with a roll of the eyes. “We’ve been learning about climate change as long as I can remember.”Climate Change Dispatch - Keystone XL oil pipe circus set to drag into 2016
This is not to say they did not care about climate change — in fact, they did care a great deal. This group simply seemed to have experienced too much climate change education, and it got me wondering how many other students out there have lost interest in climate change, and why.
The glacial pace of the U.S. government's review of the Keystone XL pipeline has advanced making the pipeline more likely but the slow pace of the process means a startup before 2016 looks impossible.Global Warming causing biblical plagues – like locusts | Watts Up With That?
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WRT Slowdown of Keystone startup:
North Dakota Bakken is about 820,000 bopd, and 450,000 bopd is currently moved by train. Plans call for an expansion of the Bakken by 200,000 to 400,000 bopd in the 2015 to 2020 period. At present all of this new production must be moved by rail. The Keystone XL portion would take the Bakken as well as the Canadian crude.
If the Keystone pipeline were finished up to the Bakken take-point, it could serve American economic interests without involving Canadian crude. It is galling that the American enviro-activists are not calling for the Bakken to be scaled back to protect the planet. Because saving the planet is not the point.
Once the Bakken begins to decline, the "need" for additional crude - from Canada - will be clear and present. It would not surprise me that waiting for this to happen is the plan in the White House.
Taking money out of North Dakota pockets is not part of any plan. If the Bakken can keep both pipelines and railways full, then those pockets will be happy. When the Bakken fails to keep the pockets happy, there will be the Canadian crude.
There are real concerns that the Bakken will peak at 1 million bopd. The field is maxed out on drilling rates now, and the average production per producing well is barely holding its own. Constant drilling is necessary to avoid a field-level decline, but that each year more wells than the year before need to be drilled. Not good.
2016 may not be a bad time to have Canadian oil cross the border.
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