By-Two Kaapi in an oilfield

The weblog of Abhilash Ravishankar, India.


Here I blog about my personal experiences [posting rarely]


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What do people at Schlumberger smoke?

Nothing! Lest they blow up the oil.

Chinmay picked something out of my last post on Sinclair's principle, Global Warming and the likes, and thanks to his tests and recent doodling, seems to have overlooked quite a few things. Quite frankly, I had overlooked most of it when I made the post. But digging a little deeper, I had to debunk most of what Chinmay writes about here.

First off, to set things in the right place,
Schlumberger does NOT deny global warming in any page on their site (AFAIK).

In fact, the misquoted paragraph -

OK. But what’s the problem? Will a little extra warm weather hurt anyone? In fact, for people living in cold climates a global warming might be a good thing. In some parts of the world the growing season could become longer and agricultural land more productive.
in this page, is more of a Devil's advocate POV, a method of teaching. It's more like a teacher who's educating her students about pollution telling them - "So what if we throw plastics in the dumpyard? Somebody will pick it up, or it will get buried!", and then going on to explain "But, plastics are non-recyclable and ....."

Chinmay also makes a point about this being on their education page. What he misses out, is this page on Global Climate Change and Energy which starts off with:
We invite you to actively investigate for yourself the facts, concepts, and theories. Take the time to explore the graphs, simulations and animations, in order to better understand what global warming is all about and what can be done.

We hope you can join us in this important mission of learning, understanding and acting!
The page also accepts the role of humans and industries and yes, fossil fuels too!
Since the Industrial Revolution people have been affecting the carbon cycle.
Human intervention has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to its highest level in hundreds of thousands of years. Look closely at the right-hand edge of the graph below.
They do accept that global warming is bad!
Global warming will have a major impact on the way we live. Sea levels will rise causing flooding of densely populated coastal areas. The intensity of tropical storms will increase. Many agricultural areas that are already suffering from drought will become drier.
To top it all, they exhort students to act!
  1. Reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by using energy more efficiently
  2. Use alternative energy sources that do not produce carbon dioxide emissions - solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric.
  3. When we do burn fossil fuels capture and store the resulting carbon dioxide rather than letting it go into the atmosphere.
The last link is true oil-industry style - walking the thin line between telling people not to start hating oil but coaxing them towards a harmony of non-renewable energy and fossil fuels.

At the end of the day, I just hope Uncle Sam ratifies the Kyoto protocol and we head towards living in a safer planet.

3 Comments:

  1. Rachit Chandra said...
    SEED looks a lot like the Academy of Tobacco Studies.True, the paragraph quoted by Chinmay is hardly relevant. But then, you guys are giving undue importance to what a random site has to say.Moreover,the said Random Company has a very selfish motive.Nothing per se wrong in it but would you look for number of cirrhosis cases on the Johnnie Walker site? Ridiculous is all I can say. Never expected this on By-Two Kaapi.
    Abhilash Ravishankar said...
    @rachit:
    SEED may look like the Academy of Tobacco Studies, maybe, just because I drew comparisons to it in my last post.

    #1: I don't understand how SEED is a random site, when it is a non-profit education program for Schlumberger employees to involve themselves with the community.

    #2: Random company? What's with randomness here?! We're talking oil. We're talking Global warming.

    #3: If you read the post again, you would find that it is just fisking Chinmay's post and not a post which says Schlumberger is NOT evil.
    Rachit Chandra said...
    Phew!
    Someone recently stopped me midway during an interview and asked are you a CBSE student? Reason being the tendency to use points #1 #2 ..... Guess its more to do with CEL :)

    A: It is a random site for someone who is looking for info on Global Warming. (FYI, typing SEED Global Warming doesnt even return the link on first page and Global Warming. Type Global Warming and hit Search, you do not find SEED till 20 pages. When was the last time you googled and went for the 49th Page? ) So, SLB might be the world's largest oil SERVICES company and SEED their do-good initiative but if I am looking for CREDIBLE info on it,it shall be the last site I shall visit.

    SLB is definitely a random company if you are talking about Global Warming.They are not unbiased experts on that. I am not even sure if they are experts on that.

    I do not blame SLB. They have every right to run as many CSR initiative as they want. But then, you guys are giving undue importance to a issue which isn't even worth talking about!

    I can setup a site in 10 minutes which says that Global warming is caused by people who waste water in bathing! Does that make sense? No. And no one will bother to read it. But, if I edit the same thing on Wikipedia, it will be corrected within minutes. Thats what I mean why raise so much hue n cry over a site with hardly any reach.

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