Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Peak oil on BBC Newsnight
Newsnight, BBC2
Douglas Low of ODAC writes that the IEA report and oil supplies were covered extensively by Newsnight on the BBC, with Jeremy Leggett getting the Peak Oil message across very clearly:
says that you can get the broadcast here, but I had to go to the main BBC Newsnight site to find it.
The segment on oil lasted about 15 minutes, ending with a good discussion by Jeremy Leggett, Jonathon Porritt and an American from the Hudson Institute.
(7 November 2007)
Peak Oil in the Aberdeen Business Press
Euan Mearns, The Oil Drum: Europe
Aberdeen [Scotland], often promoted as the oil capital of Europe, has a local newspaper called the Press and Journal that serves the city and Northern Scotland. Once a month, they publish a business supplement called “Energy” that is edited by Jeremy Cresswell.
The impression I have had for a number of years (rightly or wrongly) is that “Energy” has favoured a fairly upbeat and optimistic editorial line on our energy future – though the editor assures me they have tried to carry a balanced perspective. In the November issue published yesterday, three prominent stories caught my eye:
All peaked out and no place else to go but do-o-o-wn
Will the wheels drop off the biofuels wagon?
Simmons spells it out – but when will the ostriches get their heads out of the sand?
Regular readers of The Oil Drum will be familiar with these stories. The point here is that these are published in the mainstream business press. There are excerpts below the fold plus links to the original articles on line. This is good Oil Drum fare, and the article on biofuels, in particular is worth reading.
(8 November 2007)
£1 per Litre Petrol Drives Peak Oil on Mainstream TV
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum: Europe
On Wednesday 7th November 2007 the mainstream 10:30pm ITV news in the UK discusses the “peak oil” documentary Crude Awakening, hears the IEA warning of much higher oil prices, shows how many countries have already peaked and speaks to David Strahan (lastoilshock.com).
In the UK, today’s coverage has been driven by the psychological £1 per litre being crossed for the first time (BBC News). Crossing the other threshold of $100 oil, will likely drive further peak oil discussions in the mainstream.
Just yesterday Euan highlighted recent coverage of Peak Oil in the Mainstream Business Press.
Also see: A Tuppence Extra? for more on the UK petrol pricing.
(8 November 2007)
Go to original for links and a YouTube of the ITV coverage of peak oil and the IEA report. Energy Bulletin contributor Davin Strahan appears in the clip.
“Energy Crossroads” wins first place at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival
Chris Fauchere, Tiroir A Films (press release)
“Energy Crossroads: A Burning Need to Change Course” won first place at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, which is organized by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE). The movie exposes the problems associated with our energy consumption. It also offers concrete solutions to alleviate fossil fuel depletion and global warming, the most pressing issues facing humanity today.
“I was very honored to receive this award,” said director, Christophe Fauchere, from Tiroir A Films Productions.
It’s especially meaningful since it came from the environmental community and such an educational organization as the CAEE. I believe that the key to overcoming this impending energy crisis and avoiding a global environmental disaster is to educate the general public. Getting this award makes me think that I may have achieved my goal, which was to produce a film that doesn’t scare people, but rather informs them and calls them to action.
Tiroir A Films Productions is based in Colorado, the state whose citizens voted for the nation’s first renewable energy initiative. Fauchere goes on to add:
“I feel very fortunate to live in a state like Colorado. It is one of just a handful of states attempting to shift the current paradigm in order to fight global warming; however, it’s just a start and we have to move much faster now. So far, what experts predicted in “Energy Crossroads” is happening today. But what is even more alarming is the fact that they are happening at an even faster rate than expected! Our planet seems to be warming more rapidly, triggering extreme and unusual weather patterns around the globe. A NASA study found that perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than previously thought. Between the 2005 winter and the 2007 winter, it shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined. In addition to this, peak oil, according to a growing number of analysts, has already occurred in 2005, and rising crude oil prices keep pulling down economies around the world. We don’t have any time to waste. Steve Andrews had a great quote that I, unfortunately, didn’t use in the film:
“Business as usual is going to take us around a blind curve that has black ice on it and there is a brick wall in the middle of the road….and we are not responding fast enough. I hope that we will only get a fender bender instead of a real crack up!”
Energy Crossroads features 4 board members from ASPO-USA among other top experts and scientists from such organizations as NASA, the Institute of Artic & Alpine Research, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Eco-Cycle. For more information about the film and to view a trailer, check the film’s website at : www.energyxroads.com
(7 November 2007)
BBC reviews A Crude Awakening
Jamie Russell, BBC
“Oil is the excrement of the devil,” warns a commentator in this downbeat documentary, a film that promises to give petrol-heads A Crude Awakening. Filmmakers Basil Glepke and Ray McCormack poll oil company consultants, OPEC officials and ex-White House advisors and discover another Inconvenient Truth: we’re running out of oil. Life as we know it is doomed; yes, doomed. That may be old news, but this post-Michael Moore shock-doc paints a chilling picture of coming global crisis fuelled by our lack of fuel.
There’s no doubting our addiction to the black stuff: it accounts for 98% of all our transportation; for every calorie we eat we spend ten calories of hydrocarbon energy. Worse still, everything from plastics to pharmaceuticals depends on it. Yet, supplies are finite. Back in the 1950s, Shell geologist Dr Marion King Hubbard was virtually laughed out of his profession for predicting that we’d reach the peak of global oil production in the 1970s. Fifty years on, he’s been proved right: oil fields are drying up, while global demand increases year on year.
Cutting back and forth between its apocalyptic futurology and grimly ironic archive footage (including some hilariously wide-eyed Esso ads from the 1950s), A Crude Awakening wants to shock you. It’s an unbalanced, one-sided argument that would have benefited from a more unbiased spin. The experts all come from the Eeyore school of pessimism, predicting mass disaster with no little relish: more Iraq-style adventures (“the militarization of oil”), more ecological damage and long-term social collapse. Don’t expect technology to save us, either. Researchers claim the wells will run dry long before an alternative is found. The message is clear: when black gold runs out, we’re all going to go bankrupt. Act accordingly.
(5 November 2007)
Despite his grousing, Jame Russell gives the film 3 stars out of 5. Users give it 4 stars.
Crisis? What crisis? (A Crude Awakening)
Ruth Campbell, The Northern Echo (Northern England)
Are we running out of oil? The simple answer is yes’. As a controversial new film about our fuel crisis predicts imminent global meltdown, Ruth Campbell discovers what will happen when the last drop of black gold is spent
PREPARE to be scared. Very scared. A controversial new film released tomorrow reveals why we should all be worried about the world’s oil supplies running out and it’s much more frightening than a horror movie.
Most of our transportation, most of the goods in our shops, most of the food we produce is reliant on oil. So what will happen when it’s all used up?
advertisement
According to the makers of Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, our cosy world could be about to come to an end. And there will be no going back.
Oil, say the film’s makers, is “the bloodstain of the earth’s economy”, and will soon trigger a global conflict that will cost millions of lives.
While North-East expert Andrew Aplin, professor of petroleum geoscience at Newcastle University, considers such language overly dramatic, the core point of the polemical documentary – that we are about to run out of oil – has, he confirms, the chilling ring of truth.
(8 November 2007)
