Wed, Sep 3, 2014 from Guardian: Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the "dustbin of history".
It doesn't belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book's forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book's scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon....
The book's central point, much criticised since, is that "the earth is finite" and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash....
It's essentially resource constraints that bring about global collapse in the book. However, Limits to Growth does factor in the fallout from increasing pollution, including climate change. The book warned carbon dioxide emissions would have a "climatological effect" via "warming the atmosphere".
As the graphs show, the University of Melbourne research has not found proof of collapse as of 2010 (although growth has already stalled in some areas). But in Limits to Growth those effects only start to bite around 2015-2030.
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We can safely ignore such absurdities. Once discredited by deniers, a work is forever tainted as wrong. Right?
Sun, Jun 30, 2013 from The National: Renewable power to eclipse natural gas within 3 years, says IEA Clean power is set to eclipse gas-generated electricity by 2016, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast in a report that challenges conventional knowledge about economic hurdles to renewables....
The number of gigawatts generated by hydro, solar, wind and other renewables is set to increase by 40 per cent in the coming five years, making them the fastest-growing segment in the global energy mix.
"As their costs continue to fall, renewable power sources are increasingly standing on their own merits versus new fossil-fuel generation," Maria van der Hoeven, the executive director of the IEA, said at a presentation in New York....
“And worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels remain six times higher than economic incentives for renewables.”
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That's why I say "let's frack this afternoon whatever we can sell to investors this morning." Time's a-wastin'!
Sun, Jun 23, 2013 from Guardian: Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis One internal EIA document said oil companies had exaggerated "the appearance of shale gas well profitability" by highlighting performance only from the best wells, and using overly optimistic models for productivity projections over decades. The NYT reported that the EIA often "relies on research from outside consultants with ties to the industry."...
Independent studies published over the last few months cast even more serious doubt over the viability of the shale gas boom....
"Shale gas can continue to grow but only at higher prices and that growth will require an ever escalating drilling treadmill with associated collateral financial and environmental costs - and its long term sustainability is highly questionable." ...
Wed, May 1, 2013 from Slate: Natural Resource Scarcity Is a Real Thing Long story short, we're in nothing like the peak oil nightmare that a naive forward projection of the 2003-08 hockey stick would have led you to expect. But we've hardly conquered oil scarcity either. New discoveries are having trouble keeping pace with rising car ownership in Asia and declining production from many established oil sources. Meanwhile, unconventional oil is coming onto the market in part because oil is scarce and expensive, which makes it profitable to extract hard-to-extract oil. That's better for the economy than if we didn't find any, but it also means we haven't returned to the 1990s oil bounty and most likely never will. ...
And I was so looking forward to a remake of Titanic.
Tue, Feb 19, 2013 from Inside Climate News: Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces The average "energy returned on investment," or EROI, for conventional oil is roughly 25:1. In other words, 25 units of oil-based energy are obtained for every one unit of other energy that is invested to extract it.
But tar sands oil is in a category all its own.
Tar sands retrieved by surface mining has an EROI of only about 5:1, according to research scheduled to be released Tuesday. Tar sands retrieved from deeper beneath the earth, through steam injection, fares even worse, with a maximum average ratio of just 2.9 to 1. That means one unit of natural gas is needed to create less than three units of oil-based energy.
"They have to use a lot of natural gas to upgrade this heavy, sticky, gooky almost tar-like stuff to make it fluid enough to use," said Charles Hall, a professor at the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry. ...
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 from BusinessInsider: Jeremy Grantham: We're Headed For An Economic Disaster Of Biblical Proportions What Malthus did not foresee was the discovery of oil and other natural resources, which have (temporarily) supported this population explosion. Those resources are now getting used up...
The story for metals, by the way, is the same as for oil: The low-hanging fruit has been picked. Despite the use of new technologies, the yield per ton of metal ores continues to drop....
The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash. We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.
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Perhaps cataclysmic, or globally catastrophic. But not Biblical. Let's not exaggerate!
Tue, Jul 3, 2012 from George Monbiot: We were wrong about peak oil, but disaster looms anyway Maugeri's analysis of projects in 23 countries suggests that global oil supplies are likely to rise by a net 17-million barrels per day (to 110-million) by 2020. This, he says, is "the largest potential addition to the world's oil supply capacity since the 1980s".
The investments required to make this boom happen depend on a long-term price of $70 a barrel - the current cost of Brent crude is $95. Money is now flooding into new oil: a trillion dollars has been spent in the past two years; a record $600-billion is lined up for 2012....
So this is where we are. The automatic correction - resource depletion destroying the machine that was driving it - that many environmentalists foresaw is not going to happen. The problem we face is not that there is too little oil, but that there is too much....
Twenty years of efforts to prevent climate breakdown through moral persuasion have failed, with the collapse of the multilateral process at Rio de Janeiro last month. The world's most powerful nation is again becoming an oil state and if the political transformation of its northern neighbour is anything to go by, the results will not be pretty.
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The natural world had its chance. It's our turn now.
Wed, Mar 21, 2012 from USA Today: Column: High gas prices? Bring 'em on! Me, I'm not running for office. I blame feckless politicians from both parties for the lack of a sane energy policy over the past 40 years. And unlike Obama or his Republican challengers, I want higher gas prices. At least for a while. Long enough for us to get the market signals right and to continue to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel addiction. The way I see it, every time we've been confronted by an energy crisis, Americans have done the right thing. Faced with the cold hard economic facts of life when it comes to oil availability and price, we've figured out for ourselves how to be innovative, resilient and sensible. Having plentiful cheap resources can make us wasteful; scarcity and high prices can make us smart....
Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change. Right now, rising oil prices are driving up the cost of the status quo. That means it's time for all of us to embrace the risk of change. Once again. Because that's what we've done every time in the past when we've been challenged with higher prices and lower availability. It turns out, we're at our best, our most innovative and our most pragmatic when times get a little bit tougher. ...
Mon, Feb 20, 2012 from PostCarbon Institute: Animation: There's No Tomorrow (2012) Animated documentary about resource depletion & the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.
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Tue, Feb 7, 2012 from Bloomberg News: Peak Everything By 2030, the global middle class is expected to grow by two-thirds. That's 3 billion more shoppers. They'll all want access to goods, including water, wheat, coffee and oil. Is there enough for everybody? Can business satisfy demand and avoid hitting "peak everything?" ...
Fri, Jan 27, 2012 from Scientific American: Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil? Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau -- roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day -- since at least 2005... That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel for oil consuming nations... "We are not running out of oil, but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply," King and Murray wrote. ...
Wed, Jan 4, 2012 from Canadian Press: Keystone 'whistleblower' alleges shoddy materials along original pipeline A former inspector for a company that did work on TransCanada's original Keystone pipeline is accusing the Calgary-based company of a cavalier disregard for the environment.
Mike Klink was an engineer for construction company Bechtel Corp., a contractor that worked on the first portion of the Keystone pipeline that carries Alberta oilsands crude to refineries in the American Midwest. It was completed in 2010; the controversial Keystone XL would extend that pipeline to Gulf Coast refineries... Klink says he raised a series of concerns about alleged sub-standard materials and poor craftsmanship along the Keystone pipeline.... TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha disputed Klink's assertions, saying he "appears to have made a number of allegations against his previous employer and others, none of which have been proven."
The Indiana man says he was fired by Bechtel as a result... ...
In opposition to Klink, TransCanada is tantamount to Sergeant Schultz crying "I know nothing... NOTHING!"
Wed, Jan 4, 2012 from Website: The Institute for Collapsonomics collapsonomics, n.
1. The study of economic and state systems at the edge of their normal social and economic function, including preventative measures to avoid destructive feedback loops and vicious cycles.
2. A consulting practice based on the scientific and historical understanding of collapse conditions, and responses to them.
It seems we need a term for big, obvious threats that are sure to emerge - think asteroid impacts - but which few want to face. Handily, students of "collapsonomics" have already coined one: "black elephants." (New Scientist)
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I'm doubting that 'Collapsonomics' is coming out of the Chicago School.
Thu, Dec 8, 2011 from Indiana Public Media: Senator Lugar Introduces Bill To Approve Keystone Pipeline Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is leading a charge to push the construction of an oil pipeline through Congress. The North American Energy Security Act would force the Obama administration to issue a construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days of the bill's passage.
Lugar says the pipeline, which would bring Canadian crude oil directly to gulf coast refineries, is a "shovel ready" jobs project that would also reduce America's dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and Venezuela. ...
Mon, Nov 7, 2011 from Scitizen: Time to Worry: World Oil Production Finishes Six Years of No Growth We are entering what may be the longest stretch of no growth in world oil production since the early 1980s. But the reasons for that lack of growth differ in ways that ought to make us all uncomfortable.
Starting in 1980, production slumped because for the first time in history people needed less oil. After the huge oil price increases in the 1970s, cars suddenly got smaller. People became more careful about combining trips to save gas....
Six years from the ostensible topping out of conventional petroleum production, prices remain considerably higher. Oil prices finished 2005 around $50 a barrel. As of this writing, they are around $90 for Nymex crude and around $110 for Brent crude. This, of course, is exactly the opposite of the trend which occurred in the six years following the 1980 peak....
When I ask audiences how long a billion barrels of oil will last the world at current rates of consumption, I often get replies that range anywhere from three months to 5 years. The correct answer is 12 days. Just multiply these multi-billion-barrel discoveries by 12, and you'll realize right away that they are not going to overcome the constraints we are experiencing in oil supplies. ...
Thu, Sep 22, 2011 from Mongabay: Indigenous Peruvians blockade river against 'murderous' oil company Over the weekend more than 100 Shuar indigenous people, also known as Wampis, blockaded the Morona River in Peru in an effort to stop exploratory oil drilling by Canadian-owned Talisman Energy. The blockade in meant to prevent oil drilling in an area of the Peruvian Amazon known as Block 64, home to four indigenous tribes in total and the Pastaza River Wetland Complex, a Ramsar wetland site.
"We do not consider the oil company as a creator of jobs but instead as murderous, criminal and abusive. We do not want Talisman in the Wampis territory," a statement from the Shuar reads pointing to Talisman Energy's track record in Peru as well as alleged human rights abuses in Sudan during the nation's civil war. The company sold off its Sudan holdings in 2003 after international criticism, while a lawsuit in the US against Talisman was thrown out due to sufficient admissible evidence. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
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Just build 'em condos, feed 'em HoHos, and they'll shut up.
Sat, Sep 10, 2011 from Charles Eisenstein, via The Oil Drum: Weekend Read: Peak Oil, Peak Debt, and the Concentration of Power Both the energy system and the money system are based on accumulation and the concentration of power. Not only our energy infrastructure, but our dominant yet invisible way of thinking about energy, presupposes a centralized system of distribution based on a highly concentrated energy source. Many alternative energy technologies have made little headway, not because they are technologically unfeasible, but because they don't fit into our present physical, financial, and psychological infrastructure.
There is a causal as well as a metaphorical parallel between the concentration of power in oil and in money. A concentrated power source that can be stored allows social and political power to concentrate in the hands of those who control it. It generates very different social dynamics from an energy source that is universally distributed and constantly renewed. For one thing, the profit potential of the latter is intrinsically less. Once you have sold the geothermal pump or the PV array, the buyer is self-sufficient, unlike the electrical power consumer who has to pay the metered rate in perpetuity. Energy dependency and economic dependency are closely linked. ...
My corporate masters want me to listen, but that elephant over there keeps distracting me.
Thu, Jul 21, 2011 from Post Carbon Institute: The Peak Oil Crisis: Reality On Hold As much of America bakes in some of the highest temperatures ever recorded and while Washington argues interminably over taxes, budget cuts and debt caps, one is struck by the unreality of it all. When the House of Representatives votes to preserve the incandescent light bulb for a while as a symbol of personal freedom, it is as if we have entered a wonderland where black is white, up is down and as a nation we have lost touch with reality....
At last count there were at least a dozen mega dangers looming on the horizon all of which have the potential to change the nature of global civilization in profound ways. Yet the body politic seems to take little or no notice and concerns itself largely with issues that will soon be swept away by change. These dangers range from the depletion of our fossil fuel and mineral resources, to shrinking food and water supplies, to rising oceans, to political upheavals....
so long as a lot of us believe that we can reestablish economic growth, and wait for the return of the climate to "normal" our politicians will try to satisfy or at least say they will try to satisfy these aspirations. Change will only come when enough people realize that a return to life-as-we-knew-it a few years back is no longer possible or is at least unlikely. Unfortunately most of our media starts with the assumption that our current woes are only temporary and if we only wait long enough economic growth will resume has it always has in living memory and climate change will not turn out to be so bad as alarmists fears.
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As long as we stay drunk, we won't have a hangover, right?
Mon, Jul 18, 2011 from Paul Gilding: Like a Grenade in a Glasshouse: The Great Disruption It's going to hit hard and it's going to hurt - made worse because most aren't expecting it. They think the world is slowly returning to our modern "normal" - steadily increasing growth, with occasional annoying but manageable interruptions. After all, the global recession wasn't so bad was it? Sure there was pain and things got shaky but Governments responded, bailed out companies, stimulated economies, got things back on track....
But if the limits are solid, as is the case with our economic system hitting the limits of the planet - defined by unchangeable physical capacity and the laws of physics, chemistry and biology - then it can't find its way through. So eventually, when the pain of hitting the wall gets too much, it stops....
Then it will hit. Like a grenade in a glasshouse, shattering denial and delusion and leaving it like a pile of broken glass on the floor of the old economic model. Then we'll be ready for change. ...
We're busy making money here. You expect us to pay attention to the future?
Tue, Jun 28, 2011 from TomDispatch: Michael Klare, The Energy Landscape of 2041 Let's see: today, it's a story about rising sea levels. Now, close your eyes, take a few seconds, and try to imagine what word or words could possibly go with such a story.
Time's up, and if "faster," "far faster," "fastest," or "unprecedented" didn't come to mind, then the odds are that you're not actually living on planet Earth in the year 2011. Yes, a new study came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures sea-level rise over the last 2,000 years and -- don't be shocked -- it's never risen faster than now.
Earlier in the week, there was that report on the state of the oceans produced by a panel of leading marine scientists. Now, close your eyes and try again. Really, this should be easy. Just look at the previous paragraph and choose "unprecedented," and this time pair it with "loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory," or pick "far faster" (as in "the seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted"), or for a change of pace, how about "more quickly" as in "more quickly than had been predicted" as the "world's oceans move into 'extinction' phase."...
This will be a war because the future profitability, or even survival, of many of the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations will be at risk, and because every nation has a potentially life-or-death stake in the contest. For giant oil companies like BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell, an eventual shift away from petroleum will have massive economic consequences....
In the meantime, the struggle for energy resources is guaranteed to grow ever more intense for a simple reason: there is no way the existing energy system can satisfy the world's future requirements. It must be replaced or supplemented in a major way by a renewable alternative system or, forget Westphalia, the planet will be subject to environmental disaster of a sort hard to imagine today. ...
Surely we would have woken up to what we were doing by then and changed our entire way of doing things... wouldn't we?
Wed, Jun 15, 2011 from Guardian: UK ministers ignored 'peak oil' warnings, report shows The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be "significant negative economic consequences" to the UK posed by near-term "peak oil" energy shortages.
Ministers were told it was impossible to know exactly when production might fail to meet supply but when it did there could be global consequences, including "civil unrest."
Yet ministers consistently played down the threat with the contemporaneous Wicks Review into energy security effectively dismissing peak oil as alarmist and irrelevant....
Civil servants from the department of energy and climate change argued that while global oil reserves were still plentiful, it is "clear" that existing fields are maturing and new production is being slowed by bottlenecks.
Yet it concludes that "alternative technologies to oil will take a long time to develop and deploy at scale."...
Meanwhile the US Military Joint Forces Command issued its own review in 2010 predicting surplus oil production could disappear as early as next year.
And the University of Uppsala in Sweden argued in The Peak of the Oil Age report that oil production may already have passed its maximum.
Energy academics there have repeatedly claimed that many governments and their watchdog, the International Energy Agency, have been playing down their fears for many years. ...
The real question: Are we at the Peak of peak-oil stories?
Fri, May 6, 2011 from Guardian: Monbiot: Let's face it: none of our environmental fixes break the planet-wrecking project But even if we can accept an expansion of infrastructure, the technocentric, carbon-counting vision I've favoured runs into trouble. The problem is that it seeks to accommodate a system that cannot be accommodated: a system that demands perpetual economic growth....
Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can....
The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world's surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us. ...
Mon, Apr 4, 2011 from Guardian: What Japan's disaster tells us about peak oil While the thermal power stations may restart operations soon, the overall shortfall will become even more difficult to manage over the summer period when air conditioning is utilized. The reality is that these power cuts could continue for years, especially since the one of the two Fukushima nuclear plants has effectively become a pile of radioactive scrap....
It has been difficult for Japan's notoriously efficient industries to maintain production, given that they rely on just-in-time systems and which have supply plants (for needed parts) that are located in the zone impacted by these combined disasters. One example is in car production, where major firms have had to suspend work at their factories when key parts are no longer available from the affected region. The fragility of this system of industrial production is glaringly obvious and it is something that peak oil commentators have warned of multiple times....
Under a peak oil scenario, the entire world (not just one country) would be affected by a continuous decline in global oil production....
For a country like Japan that relies heavily on the import of food, having only 40 percent self-sufficiency, the real peak oil scenario would have dire impacts. ...
Wed, Mar 23, 2011 from Telegraph.co.uk: A global energy war looms HSBC has calculated what would happen to energy consumption by 2050 given plausible forecasts for economic growth and assuming no constraint on resources, or that humans carry on using energy in the "taken for granted" way they do at the moment.
As you can see, demand in China, India and other emerging markets soars, but there is also quite considerable growth from advanced economies too. The big picture is that with an additional one billion cars on the road, demand for oil would grow 110pc to more than 190 million barrels per day. Total demand for energy would rise by a similar order of magnitude, doubling the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to more than three and a half times the amount climate change scientists think would keep temperatures at safe levels.
It scarcely needs saying that regardless of the environmental consequences, energy industries would struggle to cope, and more likely would find it impossible. We may or may not already be perilously close to peak oil - or maximum productive capacity - but nobody believes the industry could produce double what it does at the moment, however clever it becomes in tapping previously uncommercial or inaccessible reserves.
If something can't happen, then it won't, so is all that forecast growth in the developing world just a question of wishful thinking that will soon be dashed by the constraints of finite energy? Not necessarily, says HSBC's economics team. The world can still accommodate high growth, but only if there is a collective change in behaviour, including much greater energy efficiency, a big change in the energy mix, and urgent development of carbon capture technologies so as to limit the damage of fossil fuel usage. ...
Fri, Dec 31, 2010 from The Oil Drum: Charts of the Year from The Oil Drum, 2010 A picture says a thousand words. In this post you will find only charts and graphs conveying important points from the world of energy 2010.
Readers are invited to post their favorite charts from 2010 in the comments. Instructions are given at the end of this post. This is a charts only thread, no text at all (though posting links is OK), noncompliant posts will be deleted. An energy theme is preferred though other related themes such as economy, population, sustainability are acceptable. Climate charts that do not link directly to energy will be deleted. ...
I cut my energy use by 25 percent this year -- and it doesn't even show up!
Mon, Nov 22, 2010 from PhysOrg: End to cheap coal closer than we thought? A report entitled "The End of Cheap Coal," published in the journal Nature by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley, suggests we may reach peak coal in the next two decades. The report assumes oil prices will remain high in the next two decades, that the rate of oil consumption will level for a few years before dropping, and that governments will make progress towards reaching carbon emissions goals. Even without these assumptions the authors suggest we may soon hit peak coal because inexpensive sources of coal are rapidly being used up. Their conclusion is that "energy policies relying on cheap coal have no future."... The authors point to the history of getting forecasts wrong, saying that official estimates of oil prices for 2010 issued in the late 1990s were less a third of the current oil price. With both oil and coal the problem is not that we are running out of supplies, but that prices rise and become volatile as we approach peak levels. ...
The "problem" with coal and oil is that they will kill us.
You're still reading! Good for you!
You really should read our short, funny, frightening book FREE online (or buy a print copy): Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
We've been quipping this stuff for more than 30 months! Every day!
Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Wed, Oct 27, 2010 from USGS: USGS Oil and Gas Resource Estimates for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA): Decreased 90 percent The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil and 53 trillion cubic feet of conventional, undiscovered non-associated gas within NPRA and adjacent state waters. The estimated volume of undiscovered oil is significantly lower than in 2002, when the USGS estimated there was 10.6 billion barrels of oil. The new result, roughly 10 percent of the 2002 estimate, is due primarily to recent exploration drilling indicating gas occurrence rather than oil in much of NPRA.
Recent activity in NPRA, including 3-D seismic surveys, Federal lease sales administered by the Bureau of Land Management, and drilling of more than 30 exploration wells in the area, provides geologic indicators that are more indicative of gas than oil. Many of the newly drilled wells show an abrupt transition from oil to gas just 15 to 20 miles west of the giant Alpine field, located just outside the northeastern boundary of NPRA.
"These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas and the importance of analyzing the geologic characteristics and history of an area in order to understand the oil and gas resources," explains USGS Director, Dr. Marcia McNutt. "As new data become available, it is important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area in light of the new information." ...
What's 10 percent of "Drill, baby, drill!"? Roughly, "Dr!"
Fri, Oct 15, 2010 from Jerry Mander, in the Guardian: Climate change v capitalism: the feast is almost over So, while Obama talked climate change in Copenhagen, he pushed for accelerated growth and consumption, emphasising such climate-deadly industries as private automobile production, new road construction, nuclear power generation, and continued coal extraction (including horrendous "mountain top removal") while extolling an entirely theoretical "clean coal".... Whether it's the political left or right, Obama, or Cameron, or Sarkozy, or Putin, or Wen, or Harper or Miliband or Gingrich or Palin, or any political candidate for any office, they're all talking about the necessity to stimulate growth. The media does, too, whether it's the Guardian or the Murdoch press, the Financial Times or the New York Times. They all agree on the one thing: growth, growth, growth. That's the lifeblood of the system. Everyone is hunting the magic elixir to revive rapid growth. How to build and sell more cars? How to increase industrial production, from computers to heavy equipment to industrial agriculture? How to increase exports?
But there's a missing link in the discussion, ignored by nearly everyone in the mainstream debate: nature. They speak about our economy as if it were a separate entity, its own ever-expanding universe, unconnected to any realities outside itself, not embodied within a larger system from which, actually, it emerged and can't escape. Nature cannot be left out of the discussion. It may be the most important detail of the entire conversation. Leaving it out of consideration is, well, suicidal. Here's the point: never-ending growth on a small planet with finite resources is a profound impossibility. It's an absurdity. A fantasy. It's time to wake up. ...
Just so's you know, that fantasy has been makin' me rich.
Sat, Sep 25, 2010 from Mail and Guardian: South Africa is nearing peak coal, say scientists In the case of South African coal, the studies show production has already reached its peak, or soon will.
"It is commonly believed that South Africa has abundant coal reserves which will last 200 years or more,'' says Jeremy Wakeford, chair of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (Aspo) in South Africa, in the organisation's latest newsletter.
"But recent research [from] three scientific journals suggests that usable reserves are much smaller than previously thought, and that annual production could reach a peak and begin to decline within a decade -- or might even have peaked already.''
Wakeford says that "given the country's overwhelming dependence on coal, this issue has huge ramifications for our future development path''.
Coal provides 70 percent of the country's energy supply, supports 90 percent of electricity generation, is used to make a quarter of the country's liquid fuels using the Sasol process and is a big earner of foreign exchange through exports to foreign users.... Wakeford said that leaving aside social and environmental concerns around carbon dioxide emissions, water scarcity, pollution and health impacts, entrenching dependence on a depleting fossil fuel is taking the country down a cul-de-sac.
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"Leaving aside the fatal consequences, shooting oneself in the head is bad economic policy."
Tue, Sep 14, 2010 from Forbes: Bracing For Peak Oil Production By Decade's End The use of petroleum in the world is now up to about 30 billion barrels per year. The rate at which we have found new supplies of petroleum over the last 10 years has fallen to an average, of only about 10 billion barrels per year. We're obviously in an unsustainable situation. We are now using up a greater number of barrels than we have found in the recent past and that we have reserved in the ground. We are now beginning to use it up relatively quickly--with scary consequences for the future.... A bind is clearly coming. We think that the peak in production will actually occur in the period 2015 to 2020. And if I had to pick a particular year, I might use 2017 or 2018. That would suggest that around 2015, we will hit a near-plateau of production around the world, and we will hold it for maybe four or five years. On the other side of that plateau, production will begin slowly moving down. By 2020, we should be headed in a downward direction for oil output in the world each year instead of an upward direction, as we are today. ...
We plan to peak that oil where the sun don't shine.
Sat, Sep 11, 2010 from Yale360: Are We Nearing Peak Coal? A controversial new study suggests that the world is nearing the peak of readily exploitable reserves of high-quality coal, contradicting prevailing estimates that the globe has enough coal to help meet energy needs for at least a century. Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said the world could be approaching the peak of coal mining and he predicts that by 2050 the global coal supply will be half what it is today. "We are near or at the peak right now," said Patzek, whose research was published in the journal, Energy. In the coming decades, Patzek said, the world will exploit sources that are easy to reach and lower in sulfur, leaving far less desirable stores underground. Even though numerous studies have forecast that the U.S. and the world have ample coal reserves for the foreseeable future, Patzek said he "completely" disregarded these reserve estimates, saying they are unreliable. Coal plants supply 40 percent of the world's electricity, and Patzek said of his estimates, "If we are right, major restructuring and shrinking of the global economy will follow." ...
Not to worry -- West Virginia has many a mountain to crop.
Fri, Sep 10, 2010 from Der Spiegel: Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis -- and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.
The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes even further.
The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises. ...
Imagine... a think tank that's actually thoughtful!
Thu, Sep 2, 2010 from Der Spiegel: German Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.
The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis -- and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.
The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes even further.... It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.... According to the German report, there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later." The Bundeswehr prediction is consistent with those of well-known scientists who assume global oil production has either already passed its peak or will do so this year. ...
Sun, Aug 22, 2010 from Guardian: Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is also refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" - the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines - under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".... a letter in response to the FoI request written by DECC officials and dated 31 July 2010 says it can only release some information on what is currently under policy discussion because they are "ongoing" and "high profile" in nature.
The letter adds: "We recognise the public interest arguments in favour of disclosing this information. In particular we recognise that greater transparency makes government more open and accountable and could help provide an insight into peak oil."However any public interest in the disclosure of such information must be balanced with the need to ensure that ministers and advisers can discuss policy in a manner which allows for frank exchanges of views and opinions about important and sensitive issues." ...
Wed, Aug 11, 2010 from Guardian: Peak oil is the villain governments need Could peak oil lever politicians out from between the rock of the electorate and the hard place that is climate change mitigation?... Climate change is a stealthy foe, hard to feel, see or identify. Unlike peak oil. So here's another question: did western administrations know that the International Energy Agency (IEA) had been consistently concealing the imminence of peak oil? One might hope our leaders would know about something as serious as this. But if they did, why is it that renewable energy replacements haven't been far higher on the agenda, for much longer and addressed with rather more conviction?... One statement by professor Paul Stevens in particular caught my eye: "A supply crunch appears likely around 2013 ... given recent price experience, a spike in excess of $200 per barrel is not infeasible".
What effect would a barrel price of $200 have on industrial economies, should that spike be sustained for any length of time? We would witness endemic global market disruption, reductions in agricultural yield, increased transport costs for both finished goods and raw materials (true pessimists would add an oil war or two for good measure). The shockwaves would be felt everywhere, although as ever, the poor will take the brunt of it.
And yet when the price of oil shoots up, we use less - meaning we output less CO2. So let me rephrase my question: what effect would a barrel price of $200 have on the CO2 output of nations? ...
Thu, Jun 10, 2010 from BBC: Oil extraction increasingly risky Future oil extraction could create new environmental, social and technological challenges, says the UK's former chief scientist.
Sir David King said that, as global oil demand started to outstrip supply, oil companies would be forced to drill in unconventional places.... The scientist has called on governments to "de-fossilise" their economies and accelerate the development of alternative energy sources, such as biofuels, to reduce the world's dependence on oil.
He added that global oil resorces might in fact be drying up faster that many - including governments - have been led to believe.... "As early as 2015, oil production capacity is going to begin to be challenged in terms of meeting rising demand, particularly from continuing growth of the economies of China and India," Sir David commented at the press conference.... He concluded that, together with an effect on climate change, these two "highly pressing" reasons should be enough to persuade world leaders to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, something that will become "a very significant issue as we move into the next decade". ...
Bravo, Sir David. Could you, perchance, depict the depth of human misery those "significant issues" will produce?
Tue, May 25, 2010 from Ars Technica: Not just oil: US hit peak water in 1970 and nobody noticed ...A new analysis suggests that it may be valuable to consider applying it to a renewable resource as well: the planet's water supply.
The analysis, performed by staff at the Pacific Institute, recognizes that there are some significant differences between petroleum and water. For oil, using it involves a chemical transformation that won't be reversed except on geological time scales. Using water often leaves it in its native state, with a cycle that returns it to the environment in a geologic blink of an eye. Still, the authors make a compelling argument that, not only can there be a peak water, but the US passed this point around 1970, apparently without anyone noticing. ...
You'd think the cotton mouth would have been a dead giveaway.
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 from Science Daily: World Oil Reserves at 'Tipping Point' The world's capacity to meet projected future oil demand is at a tipping point, according to research by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. The age of cheap oil has now ended as demand starts to outstrip supply as we head towards the middle of the decade, says the report. It goes on to suggest that the current oil reserve estimates should be downgraded from between 1150-1350 billion barrels to between 850-900 billion barrels, based on recent research. ... The report also raises the worrying issue that additional demand for oil could be met by non-conventional methods, such as the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands. However, these methods have a far higher carbon output than conventional drilling, and have been described as having a double impact on emissions owing to the emissions produced during extraction as well as during usage. ...
Reserves downgraded? But I thought growth could continue forever!
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 from American Chemical Society: World crude oil production may peak a decade earlier than some predict In a finding that may speed efforts to conserve oil and intensify the search for alternative fuel sources, scientists in Kuwait predict that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014 -- almost a decade earlier than some other predictions. Their study is in ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.... The new study describe development of a new version of the Hubbert model that accounts for these individual production trends to provide a more realistic and accurate oil production forecast. Using the new model, the scientists evaluated the oil production trends of 47 major oil-producing countries, which supply most of the world's conventional crude oil. They estimated that worldwide conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014, years earlier than anticipated. The scientists also showed that the world's oil reserves are being depleted at a rate of 2.1 percent a year. The new model could help inform energy-related decisions and public policy debate, they suggest. ...
Tue, Nov 10, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: World energy body 'exaggerated oil stocks under pressure from US' The International Energy Agency (IEA) has been underplaying the rate of decline at existing oil fields and overestimating the potential of new reserves to avoid panic buying, a senior official alleged.
The agency last year claimed that oil production could be raised from its current rate of 83 million barrels a day to 105 million.... "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further," the newspaper quoted the whistle-blower as saying. ...
Thu, Oct 8, 2009 from BusinessGreen: Is the sun setting on oil supplies? There is a "significant risk" that global oil supplies could peak within the next decade, according to a major new report which warns that increased oil price volatility and dwindling supplies will impact businesses far sooner than officially suggested.... It also warns that the UK government is not alone in being unprepared for this scenario, which would result in rising oil prices and increased price volatility.
"In our view, forecasts which delay a peak in conventional oil production until after 2030 are at best optimistic and at worst implausible," said the report's chief author Steve Sorrell. "And given the world's overwhelming dependence upon oil and the time required to develop alternatives, 2030 isn't far away."
The report downplays the implications of recent big oil discoveries, such as those announced in the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that with oil demand currently running at 80 million barrels a day even big finds would only delay a peak in supplies by a few days or weeks. ...
Hmmm... that commute is a little daunting, by bicycle.
Sun, Sep 6, 2009 from Foreign Policy: Oil Spin Last week, four of the world's most outspoken oil aficionados waded into the controversy of peak oil, publishing articles packed with myth and distortion. This "Gang of Four" all claimed the issue was silly, moot, or simply a myth.... Thus, these four global oil authorities mused that oil, celebrating its 150th birthday last week, has never been in better shape. How terrific the world's outlook would be if these four myths had even a touch of reality! Sadly, if one ignores opinion and simply adheres to a body of well-documented -- if ugly -- facts, it quickly becomes clear that these four assertions are utterly without substance.... The facts speak for themselves: Oil flows have peaked, technology is now mature, the people running the industry are far too old, and few top-notch graduates are interested in embarking on a career in such a volatile field. ...
And the writer has been an oil-service investment banker for decades. Gulp.
Thu, Aug 27, 2009 from SeekingAlpha, via DesdemonaDespair: Mexico's Super-giant Cantarell Oilfield Production Falling Off a Cliff The eighth largest oil field in the world will be dead by the end of next year. Shall I repeat that, or did you get it the first time?... The result is that Cantarell was pumped out effectively and hard, especially after the technique to re-pressurize the field was adopted. This allowed for a spike high of daily production to be captured for several years, late in its life when a field would otherwise go into gentle decline. The result? Quicker monetization of the oil for the benefit of the Mexican state. But then the price: a catastrophic, fast crash. ...
Fri, Jun 26, 2009 from University of Wisconsin, via EurekAlert: Projected food, energy demands seen to outpace production With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25).... "We are at a crossroads in terms of our investments in agriculture and what we will need to do to feed the world population by 2050," says David Zaks, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Nelson Institute's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.
By 2050, world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, up from 6.5 billion today. Already, according to the report, a gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and the disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water. ...
Thu, May 21, 2009 from Wall Street Journal: Peak Oil: Global Oil Production Has Peaked, Analyst Says Global production of petroleum peaked in the first quarter of last year, says analysts Raymond James, which "represents a paradigm shift of historic proportions. Unfortunately, mankind better get ready to live in a peak oil world because we believe the 'peak' is now behind us."... The contention rests on a simple argument: OPEC oil production actually fell even as oil prices were above $100 a barrel, a sign of the "tyranny of geology" that limits the easy production of ever-more crude.
"Those declines had to have come for involuntary reasons such as the inherent geological limits of oil fields ... We believe that the oil market has already crossed over to the downward sloping side of Hubbert's Peak," the analysts write. ...
Mon, Dec 15, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Global oil supply will peak in 2020, says energy agency Global oil production will peak much earlier than expected amid a collapse in petroleum investment due to the credit crunch, one of the world's foremost experts has revealed.
Fatih Birol, chief economist to the International Energy Agency, told the Guardian that conventional crude output could plateau in 2020, a development that was "not good news" for a world still heavily dependent on petroleum.
The prediction came as oil companies from Saudi Arabia to Canada cut their capital expenditure on new projects in response to a fall in oil prices, moves that will further reduce supply in future. ...
Thu, Dec 11, 2008 from Guardian (UK): At Poznan, no one is listening to Peak Oil The community of nations have been talking for more than 18 years now about how to stop humanity's remorseless effort to cook its own home. These gabfests have largely been action-free zones. I have attended too many of them, but this year it was time to risk my blood-pressure on another.... One of my missions was an effort to raise the peak oil issue. I suspect that most of the 9,000-plus attendees -- diplomats, lobbyists and journalists -- may have little idea how strong the evidence is that a global energy crisis lurks just a few years in the future, and that it will have massive implications for climate change policymaking.... This year, for the first time, the IEA has conducted an oilfield-by-oilfield study of the world's existing oil reserves. It shows that the fields currently in production are running out alarmingly fast. The average depletion rate of 580 of the world's largest fields, all past their peak of production, is fully 6.7 percen per annum. ...
Lalalala.Thank God there's only one crisis to be considered.
Sat, Nov 15, 2008 from Toronto Sun: Got a spare Earth anywhere? If the world continues to pillage and plunder Earth's natural resources at the rate we are now, by 2030 we will need two planets to support us.
If everyone on Earth consumed the equivalent resources of Canadians, it would take three Earths to meet the demand.
Since the late 1980s, we have been in overshoot -- meaning our ecological footprint has exceeded Earth's biocapacity to sustain our rate of consumption -- by about 30 percent.... Deforestation and land conversions in the tropics, dams, diversions, climate change, pollution and over-fishing are killing species off, the reverberations of which are felt along the food chain. ...
I don't think NASA is ready to terraform Mars just yet.
Sun, Oct 12, 2008 from McClatchy Newspapers: U.S. taps Canada's oil sands -- but at an environmental cost ...While oil supplies are dwindling in some places, or disrupted by hurricanes, threatened by terrorist attacks or controlled by hostile governments, Alberta's oil sands -- a patch of forest about the size of Florida with a sea of oil beneath it -- produce more crude than all the wells in Texas or Alaska...The sands contain a form of crude oil called bitumen that's as thick as peanut butter. To remove the sand and clay to turn the bitumen into heavy crude that can flow to refineries takes a lot of energy. ...
Crude oil from bitumen sounds a lot like blood from a turnip.
Fri, Sep 19, 2008 from National Science Foundation: From Sugar to Gasoline Following independent paths of investigation, two research teams are announcing this month that they have successfully converted sugar -- potentially derived from agricultural waste and non-food plants -- into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and a range of other valuable chemicals.... While several years of further development will be needed to refine the process and scale it for production, the promise of gasoline and other petrochemicals from renewable plants has led to broad industrial interest. ...
Well, this may slow down the Peak Oil crisis -- yet keeps those exhaust pipes belching.
Tue, Sep 16, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Waste: Oil price fuels expansion of plastic recycling Plastics recycling in the UK is booming. The number of bottles collected by local authorities has shot up nearly 70 percent in the past year giving processing businesses increased security of supply.
The industry has also been boosted by high oil prices, which have pushed up the value of plastic recyclate and virgin resin by about 10 percent in the past year. Virgin resin is now worth about £950 a tonne and recyclate only 5 percent less. ...
Wed, Sep 10, 2008 from NASA, via EurekAlert: NASA study illustrates how global peak oil could impact climate The burning of fossil fuels -- notably coal, oil and gas -- has accounted for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era. Now, NASA researchers have identified feasible emission scenarios that could keep carbon dioxide below levels that some scientists have called dangerous for climate.... To better understand the possible trajectory of future carbon dioxide, Kharecha and Hansen devised five carbon dioxide emissions scenarios that span the years 1850-2100. Each scenario reflects a different estimate for the global production peak of fossil fuels, the timing of which depends on reserve size, recoverability and technology.
"Even if we assume high-end estimates and unconstrained emissions from conventional oil and gas, we find that these fuels alone are not abundant enough to take carbon dioxide above 450 parts per million," Kharecha said. ...
As we've been asking, "which will win?": resource depletion, climate collapse, species collapse, economic collapse.... It's exciting to watch!
Tue, Jul 22, 2008 from Washington Post: An Oilman's Bet Against Oil "...perhaps the strangest role the 80-year-old, Oklahoma-born Pickens has fashioned for himself is his current one: the billionaire speculator as energy wise man, an oil-and-gas magnate as champion of wind power, and a lifetime Republican who has become a fellow traveler among environmentally minded Democrats -- even though he helped finance the "Swift boat" ads that savaged the campaign of the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.)." ...
Mon, Jul 21, 2008 from Pioneer Press (Minnesota): Asphalt shortage raises the price of roadwork Refinery asphalt prices nationally have risen more than 40 percent since March, government statistics show.... According to Simonson, refiners are trimming asphalt production in favor of more profitable products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and kerosene. Some refiners have invested heavily in cokers, he said, to further break up crude oil molecules and wring out still more fuel, leaving little or no asphalt.
"That shift, plus record-high crude prices, explains the huge surge in asphalt prices in the last few months," Simonson said. ...
Mon, Jul 21, 2008 from Times Online (UK): IEA warns non-Opec oil could peak in two years Dr Birol, who is leading an investigation into the condition of the world's largest oilfields, said that the world was entering a "new oil order".
"Demand growth is no longer coming from the US and Europe but from China, India and the Middle East," he said. "Because their disposable incomes are growing so fast and because of subsidies, high oil prices will not have a major impact on demand growth." This meant that prices would remain extremely high for the foreseeable future and that the fundamental dynamics of the global oil market increasingly were outside of the control of Western countries. ...
PostApocaiku Hegamonic rule roadkilled by oil dynamics: all could be flattened.
Wed, Jul 16, 2008 from Associated Press: There's an 'energy tsunami' coming "A bipartisan group of 27 elder statesmen is sending an open letter to both presidential candidates and every member of Congress saying the country faces "a long-term energy crisis" that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action isn't taken. The group includes Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and six other former secretaries of state or defense, former senators of both parties and a half dozen former senior White House advisers and other Cabinet officers for both Republican and Democratic presidents." ...
If even all these old farts think we need to change -- and change fast -- then what's holding us back?
Sat, Jun 7, 2008 from Baltimore Sun via Associated Press: In Congress, gas prices trump global warming "Congress retreated Friday from the world's biggest environmental concern -- global warming -- in a fresh demonstration of what happens when nature and business collide, especially in an election year... A bill the Senate was debating would put a price on carbon emissions, targeting "greenhouse gases" that contribute to the warming that many scientists say could dramatically change the Earth."
...
Tue, Jun 3, 2008 from Tulsa World: High fertilizer prices a growing worry Urea, a key form of solid nitrogen fertilizer, doubled in price from 2000 to 2007 and then went another 40 percent higher over the past year, according to reports. Potash, another key ingredient in some fertilizers, now costs nearly $600 per ton, while phosphate is nearing $1,000 a ton.... Fuel cannot be blamed for everything that goes up, he added; fertilizer demand is also reaching all-time highs and may bear some responsibility for the costly chaos. Some chemical components are fetching record orders worldwide for everything from farming to mining.
"It's real global," Robinson said. "This is the first year in 30 years that (fertilizer) demand exceeds supply."
...
Tue, May 27, 2008 from London Daily Telegraph: Oil crisis triggers fevered scramble for the world's seabed "A fevered scramble for control of the world's seabed is going on - mostly in secret - at a little known office of the United Nations in New York. Bemused officials are watching with a mixture of awe and suspicion as Britain and France stake out legal claims to oil and mineral wealth as far as 350 nautical miles around each of their scattered islands across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans... Not to be left out, Australia and New Zealand are carving up the Antarctic seas." ...
Wed, May 21, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Oil hits record near $130 as supply fears grow Crude oil prices scaled a new peak near $130 a barrel on Tuesday amid deepening worries over tight global stockpiles and signals from OPEC that no additional supplies are forthcoming to ease the crunch. Billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday he expected oil to hit $150 a barrel this year. The prediction came on the same day two investment banks raised their 2008 crude price forecasts and two weeks after Goldman Sachs said a barrel could fetch $200 by 2010.
"There's a feeling that some of these forecasts of $150 oil might be right," said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover. "So why not buy it now, rather than later?" ...
There's a feeling that some of these forecasts are telling us something.
Sat, Apr 12, 2008 from Jamai Cascio (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies): The Big Picture: Resource Collapse We (the human we) have pushed the limits of many of the resources our civilization has come to depend upon. Oil is the most talked-about example, but from topsoil to fisheries, water to wheat, many of the resources underpinning life and society as we know it face significant threat. In many cases, this threat comes from simple over-consumption; in others, it comes from ecosystem damage (often, but not always, made worse by over-consumption). ...
What a challenge, "ethics" and "emerging technologies" -- since most any technologies that makes money get promoted.
Thu, Apr 3, 2008 from Houston Chronicle (US): Shell CEO: Easy-To-Produce Oil to Peak Van der Veer said while depletion of maturing conventional resources would certainly play a key role in peak production, lack of access to remaining large reserves, such as in Saudi Arabia, was also a central component in his forecast.
Remaining resources, such as gas trapped in difficult-to-tap reservoirs or oil sands and shales, will require increasingly costly investments per barrel to produce.
"It's becoming technologically expensive, capital intensive and lead times are growing longer," van der Veer said at an energy supply scenario seminar at the Center for Strategic International Studies. ...
Our "lead time" is measured in months, these days.
Fri, Mar 7, 2008 from Globe and Mail (Canada): Life after the oil crash The grab-your-gun-and-head-for-the-hills scenario goes something like this: In the next year or so, world oil production will peak and then promptly plummet, forced down by sinking reserves. While supply crashes, demand will grow. Virtually overnight, fuel will become so dear that farm tractors will go idle, people will go hungry and homes will go cold. Financial markets will collapse and social chaos will follow.... These "doomers," as they're called among the peaknik community, congregate online at DieOff.org, AnthroPik.com and dozens of other apocalyptic sites dedicated to discussing when the sky will fall and what to do afterward. ...
Hey -- they're talking about ApocaDoc themes and memes!
Sun, Feb 24, 2008 from Market Oracle (UK): A Very Alarming Picture in Energy Sector Peak Oil Trends "If you think that at the moment the world is consuming 30-plus billion barrels a year of oil and is finding seven or eight billion barrels a year, and this state of affairs has been going on now for 20 or more years... It's obviously unsustainable." ... Dr. Buckee says the cost of a barrel of oil could reach as high as $200 by the third or fourth quarters of this year, and that prices would have to get that high before it would have any particular impact on demand. ...
$200/barrel oil may be the last best hope for the atmosphere.
Sat, Jan 12, 2008 from The Economist (UK): Christophe de Margerie, the boss of Total, thinks that the world's oil production may be nearing its peak "Mr de Margerie is careful to point out that he is not predicting "peak oil" in a geological sense. His definition of peak oil is "when supply cannot meet demand". He believes that the fuel that the world needs to keep its cars and factories running may well be out there, somewhere. It is just getting harder and harder to extract, for technical as well as political reasons. For one thing, he points out, the output of existing fields is declining by 5m-6m b/d every year. That means that oil firms have to find lots of new fields just to keep production at today's levels. Moreover, the sorts of fields that Western oil firms are starting to develop, in very deep water, or of nearly solid, tar-like oil, are ever more technically challenging. There is not enough skilled labour and fancy equipment in the world, he believes, to ramp up production as quickly as people hope." ...
Ah -- not in the "geological sense," just in the "geopolitical, economic, pragmatic, operative" sense.
Thu, Jan 3, 2008 from AP Business News: Oil futures rise to $100 a barrel "Crude oil prices briefly soared to $100 a barrel Wednesday for the first time, reaching that milestone amid an unshakeable view that global demand for oil and petroleum products will outstrip supplies." ...
Breaking one hundred dollars a barrel serves the purpose of putting us over a barrel.
Sun, Dec 9, 2007 from TheDay (CT): Cheap Oil is So Yesterday. Time to Start Writing Expensive Oil into Our Plans? "Competition for scarce resources will drive up the future price of raw materials: The building blocks of progress -- fossil fuel energy, metals, land - are more abundant and cheaper now than they will be in the future. Resource nationalism means that certain strategic materials may not be available for import -- at any price -- in the not-too-distant future. We should reconsider the future value of energy, raw materials, farmland and water." ...
