Blogcritics: Comments on Environmental news, expensive oil, dismissive Greenspan, and no Global warning?

Comment by omni

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 11:53:19 EST

I've read many articles on the internet and in trade publications indicating the price cycle of crude oil may extend over several years, responding to consumer demand along with OPEC and non OPEC supply issues. This is important information that residential oil consumers must take into account when choosing a fuel oil dealer. Omni Marketing Services is a contract telemarketing company that works with residential oil companies on a business to consumer level. We have noticed a trend within the last six months of an increased number of C.O.D. oil consumers migrating to full service, looking for price protection in the form of a capped or fixed price on their oil. As we approach mid-winter we can expect oil prices to spike as oil supply falls short. Consumers that have locked into a price protection plan will save a substantial amount of money over the course of the heating season. There are many advantages in doing business with a Full Service Oil Dealer : (1) With a Full Service Dealer you are guaranteed oil, no matter how bad the winter gets. With a Discount Dealer, if the dealer runs out of oil... you're out of luck ! (2) With a Full Service Dealer you receive automatic oil deliveries. With a Discount Dealer you need to be diligent and watch your oil tank gauge, calling when you think you might need oil . Many consumers have run out of oil because of this. (3) With a Full Service Dealer you will be on a convenient payment plan that will allow you to pay by check or credit. With a Discount Dealer you either wait for the oil delivery and pay the driver or you tape your cash or check to the fill pipe or front door. (4) With a Full Service Dealer you have a team of trained burner technicians that are on call 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. With a Discount Dealer you will have subcontracted technicians that may or may not respond to your call. Given the extreme volatility of oil prices, along with the advantages listed, it only makes sense that consumers are choosing Full Service Oil Dealers

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:54:54 EDT

Thanks, Bob - I mistrust just about anything that has even a whiff of "American Enterprise Insititute" attached to it.

Comment by Bob A. Booey

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:01:53 EDT

Good research, Hal.

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:24:33 EDT

Here's a newer discusssion with links to a number of interesting articles:

According to McKitrick and McIntyre, the work of Mann et al was riddled with errors, The paper was loudly publicised by the American Enterprise Institute (home of John Lott) and, as you would expect, Flack Central Station. Mann et al produced an immediate rebuttal, and despite many promises of a rejoinder, McKitrick and McIntyre have never responded on the substantive issues. This would be par for the course, except that McKitrick somehow managed to attract the attention of Tim Lambert, famous for his demolition of Lott's shonky research, which purported to show that guns reduce crime. The result: McKitrick's work is even shoddier than Lott's. In previous rounds of the debate, Lambert has shown that McKitrick messed up an analysis of the number of weather stations, showed he knew almost nothing about climate, flunked basic thermodynamics, couldn't handle missing values correctly and invented his own temperature scale. Bear in mind that McKitrick's main claim to fame is his assertion to have done a painstakingly careful check of the work of others and to have found numerous errors. And Michaels was a reputable climate scientist before he sold out to the fossil fuel lobby.

The links are worth following up if you're really into this.

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:55:48 EDT

Just to pick up from where you left off, Jeremy, here's an update:

In a paper published last month in Energy & Environment, a social science journal known for reports critical of climate-change research, Canadian businessman Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick of Canada's University of Guelph charge that the Nature report contains numerous errors regarding temperatures from the past six centuries. When corrected, the data suggest the 15th century was actually warmer than today, they say. [Global warming debate heats up Capitol Hill 11/23/2003] (opens in new window)

Many others disagree with the disagreement (which is probably not surpising, with McIntyre being a businessmand and McKitrick an economist):

The authors of the Nature paper, led by climatologist Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, respond that the critics botched their analysis, selectively dropping records to invent a warm 15th century and making numerous other statistical mistakes. Climate researcher Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. in Boulder, Colo., calls the critics' complaints "seriously flawed" and "silly." In addition to the Nature paper, about a dozen independent studies suggest the 20th century was warmer than normal, Wigley points out. From a statistical viewpoint, "I lean in favor of Mann," says statistician George Shambaugh. of Georgetown University. "There is an increase in the 20th century that is greater than the cyclical patterns found by either group since 1550. And since the early 1900s, we have been hotter than any time since then." Princeton geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer. compares climate skeptics to tobacco industry scientists who sought for decades to obscure the link between smoking and lung cancer. Arguing over whether man-made global warming exists obscures a more important debate over what steps are possible to moderate its effects, he says. [Global warming debate heats up Capitol Hill 11/23/2003] (opens in new window)

It looks like the businessman and the economist may have cooked the books, and made more errors of their own.