Twenty years ago, the volatile Persian Gulf supplied 35 percent of U.S. oil consumption and the left’s so-called experts were screaming that the world had hit the “peak oil” extraction point, after which supply would soon dwindle rapidly.
The left demanded a radical reduction in capitalist economic activity to save what precious energy resources remained to continue to heat humans in winter.
But as Breitbart reported in ‘OPEC Concedes Defeat In Anti-Shale Oil War With U.S.,’ the American shale fracking boom has grown oil production from fracked wells by over 800 percent in just six years.
America now has the world’s largest potential oil reserves, with 900 billion barrels and production life expectancy of hundreds of years.
Rather than admit their “peak oil” theories was incorrect, top leftist writer for the ‘Down With Tyranny’ blog, Gaius Publius, is now demanding we ‘Outlaw Fossil Fuel Production‘ and begin focusing on the ‘Peak Water’ Tipping Point in California‘ as the new end-of-life-as we-know-it crisis.
Publius states that because of climate change, the “earth keeps warming — both in the atmosphere and in the ocean — [and therefore] at some point a full and permanent melt of Arctic and Antarctic ice is inevitable.”
That must come as a shock to scientists at NASA, who recorded Antarctic ice reaching a new record maximum in 2014; as well as the European Space Agency, which found that Arctic ice grew 33 percent in 2013 and another 25 percent in 2014, according to the Express.
Based on Publius’ interesting interpretation of scientific forces that he says will end the polar ice, he hypothesizes that California and the American Southwest have gone beyond a tipping point of “peak water.” Publius admits that some man-made actions can be implemented to mitigate the drought. However, he argues, “we can no longer go back to plentiful fresh water from the Colorado River watershed. That day is gone, and in fact, I suspect most in the region know it, even though it’s not yet reflected in real estate prices.”
The basis for Publius’ end-of-life-as we-know-it prediction for California is a referral to the quote, “For the first time in 120 years, winter average minimum temperature in the Sierra Nevada was above freezing.” But that scary quote is taken out of context from the September 29, 2015 California Department of Water Resources publication, ‘Water Year 2015 Ends as California’s Warmest Ever; Many Hope for Drought-Busting El Niño in 2016.’
Publius conveniently left out the final sentence of the paragraph: “The few winter storms of the past two years were warmer than average and tended to produce rain, not snow.” Furthermore, the DWR states that the average Sierra Nevada temperature was 32.1 degrees, only a tenth of a degree above freezing.
The DWR publication actually warns that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center says there is a 95 percent chance of a strong El Niño during the coming winter, which tends to mean huge rains and snowfall.