Climate And Oil

This is a two-fer tonight.

First, it appears it was quite cool in the month of May, one of the cooler ones on record. As Instapundit reminds us “ [T]hat's just weather, not climate.” Indeed. But there's also a growing consensus among solar scientists the Sun is entering a quiet period, with longer sunspot cycles, lower maximum sunspot numbers, and the cooler temperatures on Earth that go along with it.

The last time we saw something like this was during the Little Ice Ages, which occurred during the Maunder and Dalton Minimums (circa 1300 AD to 1750 AD), periods when the 11-year sunspot cycles were longer and the maximum number of sunspots were at their lowest point.

It could be the increased CO2 levels might help mitigate the colder temps, preventing us from reliving the disruptions suffered by our ancestors during the last round of solar minimums.

Second, speaking of higher CO2 levels, there's more activity coming to the Bakken oil field in Montana and North Dakota.

While in the past the recoverable reserves were estimated at 3.6 billion barrels, but that was based upon the drilling and oil recovery technologies in existence in 1995. Since then, newer technologies could make almost all the oil recoverable, estimated at 413 billion barrels. That's almost twice that of Saudi Arabia.

Should it come to pass we would then be able to tell oil exporting nations in the Middle East, as well as Venezuela, to keep their oil.

All of this is assuming the Democrats and their friends, the Watermelon Environmentalists, don't find some way of making it illegal to drill for oil anywhere on the continental US. I figure they'll try, keeping us in thrall to unfriendly foreign governments while telling us it's for our own good.