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Oil: The final warning
Ian Sample, New Scientist
Explore the interactive graphic associated with this feature.
HOWLS of protest have been echoing round the globe as the price of oil punches through record highs with every passing week. In the UK, last month, hundreds of truckers descended on London to demand that planned fuel tax rises be scrapped. In continental Europe, where police clashed violently with truckers, two people died during the protests. Fishermen and farmers blockaded ports and depots in protest against the rocketing cost of diesel. Similar scenes played out across South America and Asia.
In the US, the world’s thirstiest oil consumer, gasoline reached an all-time high of $4 per gallon, forcing the administration to lean on domestic producers and consider suing foreign oil exporters for allegedly rigging the market. When President Bush implored Saudi Arabia, which controls the lion’s share of the world’s proven reserves, to pump more from its wells, the …
(25 June 2008 issue)
Contributor MB writes:
I just saw that the 25 June issue of New Scientist features an essay by Matthew Simmons on peak oil and the feature article on oil is entitled, “Final Warning,” which details the current situation while dancing around the term “peak oil.” All but the introduction is behind a paywall, unfortunately.
BA: Ian Sample’s article is also at the Environmental Research Foundation site.
As Oil Hits Another Record High, A Look at the New Geopolitics of Energy
Amy Goodman and Juan Cole, Democracy Now
Oil prices have jumped to yet another record high, nearing $142 a barrel in Asian trading today. The latest price surge comes a day after OPEC’s president said crude prices could reach $170 this summer. Meanwhile, Libya has threatened to cut oil production in response to US threats against oil producers. We speak with Michael Klare, author of “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet” and Arun Gupta of The Indypendent.
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Michael Klare, author of 13 books, including “Blood and Oil” and “Resource Wars.” His latest is “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.” He is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst.
Arun Gupta, an editor of The Indypendent who has written extensively on the political economy of the global oil order.
(27 June 2008)
Audio, video and transcript at original.
What can history teach us about forecasts of energy use?
Allan Chen, Science Beat (Berkeley Lab)
Energy forecasters underestimate the importance of “surprises” in their forecasts, and this has led many of the major energy forecast studies of the last 50 years to overestimate the amount of energy they predicted the U.S. would be using by the year 2000.
A new article by Ashok Gadgil and Jon Koomey, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Paul Craig, Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of California at Davis, published in the 2002 Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, assesses the success of many of the major long-term energy forecasts published in the United States dating back to the 1960s.
“Our basic conclusion,” says Koomey, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division and leader of Berkeley Lab’s End-Use Energy Forecasting Group, “is that forecasters in the 1950 to 1980 period underestimated the importance of unmodeled surprises. One of the most important examples is that they failed to foresee the ability of the United States economy to respond to the oil embargoes of the 1970s by increasing its energy efficiency. Not only were most forecasts of that period systematically high, but forecasters systematically underestimated uncertainties.”
… Learning lessons for better energy forecasts
The authors draw a number of lessons from their analysis about how to make better long-range forecasts. A significant one is “Do not assume fixed laws of human behavior.” Modelers often assume that key inputs will be similar to historical values, even when they are modeling a future that is unlike anything that has ever happened before. “This error is particularly egregious for forecasts that look many decades ahead, and can lead to colossal errors,” says Craig.
Statistically derived relationships between variables are the ones most likely to be altered by major events and policy choices.
… The authors warn against becoming obsessed with technical sophistication. “Beware of big complicated models and the results they produce,” says Gadgil. “Generally they involve so much work that not enough time is spent on data compilation and scenario analysis.”
“Expect the unexpected and design for uncertainty” is advice that pertains to making the forecast as robust as possible in the face of imperfect forecasts that fail to anticipate the unexpected. “If the key variables are impossible to foresee,” the authors write, “then adopt strategies that are less dependent on forecasts.”
Most of all “be modest,” the authors advise. “We need to be humble in the face of our modest abilities to foresee the future. . . . Fundamental limitations on our ability to foresee consequences have important implications for the ways we use forecasts in our planning.
(17 December 2002)
Peak oil profits ARM
or could Intel processors be made illegal?
Peter Clarke, EE Times
It’s a straightforward argument. The higher the oil price goes the better things are for processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) and the worse they get for the world’s largest chip company Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
That is until the price of oil hits $200 a barrel at which point the global economy is likely to implode like a black hole, according to some experts.
The straightforward argument is that the more expensive oil becomes the more expensive is power in all its forms. And that is as true for notebook computers as it is for mobile phones and basestations.
So power, green and recycling conscious have we become, there is even the prospect that Intel processors could become first unfashionable and then within an Orwellian European Union, illegal.
Although it is hard to directly compare ARM and Intel processor efficiency, because the two processor architectures traditionally run different software, the generally accepted wisdom is that the leading ARM processor is quite a bit more efficient that a leading Intel processor on the same process technology node.
(26 June 2008)
