Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Over the past few years, I have heard various energy economists lambast this “erroneous” work done. Often the book has been portrayed as the literal “poster child” of misinformed “Malthusian” type thinking that misled so many people into believing the world faced a short mania 30 years ago.
The world probably cannot wait another 30 years to begin pondering whether we could begin to experience problems and sheer limits to non-renewal energy consumption.
The Guardian recently ran an article titled: “The oxygen crisis: Could the decline of oxygen in the atmosphere undermine our health and threaten human survival?)
Not to worry. The O2 released from photosynthesis comes from H2O. Thus there will never be a shortage of material for the production of O2 so long as there is water on this planet. There is no “peak oxygen.”
Predictions of imminent oil shortages have been made throughout the 20th century. Although all previous predictions have been false, in recent years a new generation of predictions based on the Hubbert model have become ascendant and attracted media attention.
Almost thirty years ago a book was published which challenged one of the then core assumptions of economic theory – that the Earth was infinite and would always provide the resources needed for human prosperity.
Presentation to a House of Commons All-Party Committee on July 7th 1999.
In 1973 and 1979 a pair of sudden price increases rudely awakened the industrial world to its dependence on cheap crude oil. Prices first tripled in response to an Arab embargo and then nearly doubled again when Iran dethroned its Shah, sending the major economies sputtering into recession. Many analysts warned that these crises proved that the world would soon run out of oil. Yet they were wrong.
Even the most productive sustainable systems imaginable would never sustain large-scale cities, a global economy, and Western material affluence even if all the conventional energy conservation strategies were to be adopted. This is a bitter pill to swallow for Westerners raised on the notion of material progress.
Duplicate entry/ See Coal – July 2.
A newly established group of NGOs to promote civic control over Kazakhstan’s burgeoning oil industry aimed at more transparency of the revenues the Kazakh government receives and how they are spent — information closed even to members of parliament.
World oil stocks, depending on country and using periodic data from the IEA, EIA and oil analysts, in fact remain well below average figures for the 2000-2003 period. Combined with recent – extreme – figures from the IEA for world oil production (well over 82 Mbd) the overall reading is that world oil markets will remain tightly supplied with generally uptrending prices, right through the period to 2010.
