Web & media Aug 13

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Murdoch signals end of free news
BBC News
News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

The media giant is looking for additional revenue streams after announcing big losses.

The company lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which chief executive Rupert Murdoch said had been “the most difficult in recent history”.

News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.
“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting,” he said.

…In order to stop readers from moving to the huge number of free news websites, Mr Murdoch said News Corp would simply make its content “better and differentiate it from other people”.

Alfonso Marone, analyst and partner at Value Partners Group, told the BBC that the model could work “for well-known publications – for must-read, must-know content. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are already charging for content, for example,” he said.

He believes that a micro-charging structure, where readers pay just 5p or 10p to access an article, might work. “This is less than the price of an SMS [text message],” he argued.
(6 August 2009)

Art in a changing climate
Grist special series
Series Intro
Four years ago, Bill McKibben wrote an essay for Grist in which he suggested we were in serious need of art about climate change. “Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?” he asked.

Since then, much has happened. Books and films have emerged, photographs and performances, ballads and raps, even art exhibits devoted to the topic. And then, of course, there’s An Inconvenient Truth, which, in addition to reaching audiences through a book, a movie and yes, even an opera, essentially made “climate change” part of our everyday lexicon.

Some attempts at climate art are more effective than others. (We’re talking to you, Miley.) But it all adds up to an increasing cultural awareness of the crisis at hand.

Art reminds us of what’s at stake, helps us fully comprehend the issues, and teaches us how to adapt. But perhaps most important of all, art can inspire us to act.

It is in this spirit that we present this special series on art in a changing climate.

In it, we feature a follow-up essay from McKibben and introduce some of the artists answering his call for climate art. We highlight specific projects via multimedia — including an audio interview with artist Chris Jordan, an audio slideshow from the “Facing Climate Change” project, and a photo series on performance art. We explore some of the best (and worst) music to come out of the movement and look at the ways the music industry is working toward a smaller footprint. And finally, we suggest a tour of green art museums, online exhibits, and other resources.
(August 2009)
From Brendon Smyth of Grist
Bill McKibben – four years after my pleading essay, climate art is hot
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-05-essay-climate-art-update-bill-mc…

· songs about climate change not so hot
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-05-songs-climate-change-cringeworth…

Richard Heinberg’s “Blackout – Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis”(book review)
heading out, The Oil Drum
When Richard Heinberg’s new book was about to be published, the editors at The Oil Drum were offered a review copy, and I was offered the chance to provide that review. Yet in a way providing that review gives me a bit of a puzzle, because the underlying premise on which the book is based is that, as David Rutledge has propounded, the world will run out of realistic coal reserves much faster than most folk anticipate. It is a point of view that I don’t completely accept, and I have posted on my disagreements with Dr. Rutledge over some of his assumptions and conclusions in the past. So I could fill this review with another regurgitation of my points of disagreement, but were I to do so I don’t think it would be a fair review.

The book sets out to collect together in sequential order a compilation of those views that state that the world will run out of coal faster than expected (including one source that disagrees); then looks at the coal remaining in the major consumers the United States; China; Russia and India; and then looks at potential exporters Australia, South Africa, Europe, South America, Indonesia and Canada, as it rounds out the major global patterns of coal trade of the world.

The interplay with coal and climate is then reviewed and three different paths forward are then offered, with some closing remarks. It thus provides a relatively concise, yet comprehensive review of the coal supply future from one perspective. That is a very useful thing to have, and (perhaps I shouldn’t admit this) had I not been given a copy for review I would have bought one. Would I have got my money’s worth? Well it depends on what you are looking for. And to explain that remark let me discuss, very briefly what is in the Chapters and what I would argue about.

The fundamental questions come down to the difference between reserves and resources, and the rate at which reserves are used up. However because use changes as production declines and product cost rises, there needs to be some model of declining production. The references that the book cites rely on Hubbert Linearization, and this forms the basis then for the estimates. The text explains how it works and notes that it has often, historically, been applied to estimating how long oilfields will last. This model is then used to predict how long the current reserves of the different countries will last, based on current reserves.

…I am tempted to quote the shortest sentence in the Bible. Of course, if you pick your sources, you can get a consensus on anything. For the record I objected to David Rutledge’s point of view, not only at ASPO, but later in The Oil Drum. (I wrote both about the National Academy report on coal, and the known coal reserves in the UK (determined by measurement and observation) not theoretically, and as defined in Trueman’s Coalfields of Great Britain. I listed the tonnages available from that text (though putting Scotland inexplicably in England for the table). That coal has not gone away, and some of it was being mined up to the time that North Sea Oil and Gas came ashore and turned it all (and this is key) temporarily from a reserve into only a resource.

This is not the place to get into more debate on the causes and status of climate change – or of the arguments that Richard Heinberg makes – if you believe they will reinforce that belief, if you don’t you can nit-pick over those he got wrong. But that isn’t the purpose of the chapter, rather it is to look at how the impact of an early peak in coal production will affect carbon dioxide levels. Recognizing that there is going to be a peak in the production (and use) of all three of the major fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) that may be very imminent means, as the author points out, that most of the IPCC models overstate the levels of carbon dioxide that we face in the next century. And thus, initially, the news is good in that the limits of concern will not be reached.

…But that is the fun of future projection – this book gives you some insight into the debate about the future of coal – I disagree with many of the assumptions and projections, but it does define the arguments of a given viewpoint that is receiving increasing levels of attention. So, yeah, I’m glad I read it.
(13 August 2009)