What The Oil Drum meant
By Stuart Staniford, The Oil Drum
Over the last eight years, the predictions of the "moderates" in the peak oil debate came closest. We certainly don't live in the pre-2004 world any more. Oil prices are high, and there seems little prospect that they will ever fall below $100/barrel for any sustained period. Furthermore, the situation remains very vulnerable to disruption.
Should the last few years have updated your idea of peak oil?
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
Nate Hagens draws my attention to this recent interview with Dennis Meadows, lead author of the famous Limits to Growth series of books. Meadows is very pessimistic. I was particularly interested in his views on oil production and peak oil, in which he states positively that peak oil is in the past (which is very arguable at best, given that oil production is still making new monthly highs), and also that "Oil production will be reduced approximately by half in the next 20 years, even with the exploitation of oil sands or shale oil."
CO2 Concentration in “Panic and Repent” scenarios
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
In Friday's post, I argued that the likely pattern of human response to climate change would be characterized by very limited action until manifestly serious consequences were clear by looking out the window; then, and only then would serious action ensue. In other words, the pattern would be one of panic and repentance.
Avoiding defeatism on climate change
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
So to say "we must adapt to some climate change" is not at all to imply "so we might as well give up the struggle".
Number of farms in the United States
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
So, we are a long way from Sharon Astyk's Nation of Farmers, but it certainly looks like the giant loss of US farm count in the mid twentieth century has stabilized and perhaps now begun some kind of bounce back.
Sea level pressure changes since 2007
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
I wanted to cross-check for myself some of the work Chris Reynolds has done looking at changes in weather patterns since 2007 (the beginning of the recent sea ice collapse)...So, it does rather look like an abrupt shift in the early summer northern hemisphere circulation has occurred since 2007 and is having multiple effects - poor summers in the UK, melting sea ice - and presumably accelerated warming of the Greenland ice sheet also. The obvious questions are: why? and will it continue?
Latest drought science alarming for US
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
On this blog in the past, I have extensively discussed the drought research of Aiguo Dai and others. Today I'd like to add coverage of a new paper in Nature that Dai has published.
Climate change action is not helpless
By Stuart Staniford, Early Warning
Maybe it takes us to mid-century to get to a near carbon-neutral society. The point is that it's not hopeless. As the weather gets worse - the droughts, the storms, the melting ice - the denialists will look sillier and sillier and the pressure for action will rise. And as it does, the solutions will increasingly be in place. So don't be discouraged if electric car sales are tiny right now, or solar power is a very small fraction of total energy use. This is a long game.