Brazil's gamble on deep water oil

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/jun/25/brazils-gamble-on-deep-water-oil-guanabara-bay

by yitchelle • 11 years ago

29 23 11 years ago

the84722• 11 years ago

Suggestions by climate campaigners that this reservoir of fossil fuel is a “carbon bomb” that should be left in the ground, are dismissed as hypocrisy.

Just because complaints may be hypocritical does not make them wrong.

Also, that sites layout/scrolling is terrible on a large screen. What happened to simple paragraphs of text?

Roritharr• 11 years ago

Correct. I find the image, that there is a max amount of oil we can use up without making the earth uninhabitable for humans, much more tangible.

That separates the actual existance of oil fields from their extraction and offers a direct point of blame, something which we seem to need.

The person/organisation that draws the drop that kills earth will be the one we should focus and prosecute, and we should announce that beforehand, so that nobody wants to be that person.

ArkyBeagle3• 11 years ago

The carrying capacity for humans on Earth pre-fossil fuels was roughly 1 billion.

We're up to 7 billion now. And we're comfortable enough to actually notice the environment in a way people even 60 years ago were not.

I think this is causal - fossil fuels made 6/7ths of us possible.

autokad2• 11 years ago

the idea that once a fossil fuel is burned that carbon stays in the atmosphere forever is just plain wrong. the oceans absorb the carbon and put it right back where it was - how do you think the oil formed in the first place? then they add fear mongering about 'run away global warming' as if we'd become venus, which is not possible with fossil fuels. earth has had MUCH higher carbon %s in the atmosphere and ... here we are.

kaybe• 11 years ago

Yes well, it will just take forever from our perspective to put it back in the ground.

jofer2• 11 years ago

While this is technically true, it's important to recognize the difference in timescales.

By burning fossil fuels, we're moving carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere and hydrosphere. The biosphere can rapidly take in a finite amount of CO2, but it's not a very large amount.

The main way (on geologic timescales) that it's taken back out of the atmosphere/hydrosphere and put into the lithosphere is by carbonate deposition (i.e. limestones). On human timescales, that may as well be forever.

noselasd• 11 years ago

"right back" is rather misleading. When you burn up fossil fuel over a few centuries that it took many millions of years to produce, the ocean does not put it "right back" there.

gcmartinelli• 11 years ago

compounding on the other responses, the increased emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere are also changing the ocean's chemical properties (acidification).. and this has a huge impact on the environmental equilibrium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

thanatropism• 11 years ago

“Guanabara Bay is a sacred place for us."

No it isn't.

I mean, everyone would like to see the mythical dolphins in our flag back. But it's not like we're nature-worshipping Na'vi aliens. We've actually blown up mountains and used them to pave much of the bay in order to build the actual ground of the city from about... 1600-1980?

The "natural wonders" of Rio are largely works of engineering.

ramon• 11 years ago

I don't think it's a gamble, it's a reality already. A lot of oil is already from those reserves, the investment slowed down due to scandal and oil prices, but when the prices go up again the investment will grow once more.

marcosdumay• 11 years ago

You see, things are not that simple.

From the supply side, high extraction prices happen because the resource has a low energy return on energy invested. This means that when prices go up, it's economically interesting to buy products created with cheaper oil to sell more expensive oil. But once the price stay high for a while, extraction prices get up again. (It also means that it's double dumb to invest when prices are going down - one of the causes of Petrobras problems.)

I don't have all the numbers, but from the little that I've got about "pré-sal", it's EROEI is bigger than 1. That means that, yes, at some price level it does become economically viable. It's just much higher than what you'll get calculating extraction prices today.

At the demand side, lots and lots of people simply can not pay for expensive oil. That means that when oil get sustainably expensive, its consumption will be much smaller, and "pré-sal" will have to compete with much cheaper reserves for those consumers. Yes, eventually there'll come a time when cheaper oil is mostly gone, but we are not there yet.

dredmorbius2• 11 years ago

Interesting story.

Killed by presentation.

Autoplay video and audio have no goddamned place on the Web. They violate W3C recommendation.

Autoplay is bad for all users http://www.punkchip.com/autoplay-is-bad-for-all-users/

Autoplay is a bad idea not just for accessibility but for usability and general sanity while browsing. This article will explain what the problems are, where to find backup for arguments and what you can do if autoplay is a must have.

Autoplay of embedded audio and video clips is often requested from clients for a number of reasons, one is to increase view/listen stats when an advert is preceding it and fewer views can mean less revenue.

mangeletti• 11 years ago

Despite them being overbearing to some, I thought the music and sounds were amazing on this article.

I'm not against of a new kind of media like this. It's subtle and elegant, and very immersive.

yitchelle• 11 years ago

I also like the immersive nature of it too. I think that there will be some transition time from a lot of folks, transitioning from a "reading" stories the web to "watching" stories the web.

garblegarble• 11 years ago

I love that people are trying new ways to present journalism but I can't help but think this would be much more engaging as a pure video piece (I could have done without the tense background music while I'm reading paragraphs of text, too!)

Brazil's gamble on deep water oil

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