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CafePress: The ‘End of Suburbia’ of radio?
AF, Energy Bulletin
Kellia Ramares is the force behind the independent radio productions by Radio Internet Story Exchange (RISE). Her documentary Peak Oil provides a succinct one hour briefing on Peak Oil, well suited for replaying on college and community radio. Dr Colin Campbell has called it “An admirable, lucid documentary.”
He, along with other Peak Oil luminaries such as Richard Heinberg, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Jean Laherrere, Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Matthew Simmons and Chris Skrebowski all make appearances. Sheila Newman from Australia provides a rare female voice on this issue. Peak Oil has a good technical underpinning, with descriptions of basic units and industry definitions, so anyone new to the issue of Peak Oil might come away feeling thoroughly educated, both from this technical perspective, and from the broad overview the documentary provides of the interconnected issues such as food production and economics.
Peak Oil is available at:
www.cafepress.com/rise9.19106147
Kellia also has a full CD based on her conversations with Sheila Newman available, Oil, Immigration & Population Growth. See here for this and many other other available documentaries by RISE:
www.cafepress.com/rise9/533155
(25 November 2005)
L.A. transportation conference seeks to cut oil use (Dec. 1)
CALSTART (press release)
Soaring gas prices, geopolitical instability, energy security risks, economic threats, and global warming: the costs of petroleum dependence have never been higher, but the potential for change has never been greater.
Set for December 1st in downtown Los Angeles, CALSTART’s 2nd annual 2005 California’s Transportation Energy Future Conference, also known as the “2020” conference, will explore these emerging challenges and the potential changes they will foster, and will highlight the policies, actions, methods, and products that can provide solutions. The conference will chart a course towards the year 2020 and a path to a better, more secure transportation energy future in California.
The 2020 conference is organized around the idea that California can become a model state for transportation energy over the next 15 years, stretching and reducing conventional fuel use through increased vehicle efficiency and an expansion of fuel diversity through the increased use of alternative fuels. As a result, California can become more secure, create more business opportunities, and become more prosperous, improving the welfare of its citizens.
The conference features a dynamic roster of high-level speakers and discussions of pertinent strategies to achieve California’s “2020” goals. Highlighting the list is former CIA director James Woolsey. Woolsey will discuss the economic and political dangers of relying on the Middle East for oil as well as the policies and strategies that California should pursue regarding transportation energy and energy security.
(31 October 2005)
The conference seems to have strong participation from industry and California politicians. The agenda is online.
Milk and Oil
Roland Watson, New Era Investor
What has Peak Oil got to do with the humble cow and the milk she produces?
In a foretaste of what is to come, Robert Wiseman dairies, who have 20% of the British milk market, declared that half yearly profits were down 22% “as a result of higher fuel and raw material costs”. The group’s company outlook had this to say about petroleum based plastics:
“There have been further steep price increases in HDPE resin, which is used for the manufacture of our milk containers, with last month alone seeing a record increase of over £200 per tonne to £860 per tonne.”
…that is a 30% increase in the price of resin in the space of one month. Undoubtedly, a lot of this can be put down to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf of Mexico production and refinement. The old saying goes that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold, and this is evident on the international market for oil-based products such as plastics.
…So, Katrina rolls over the Gulf of Mexico and the price of milk goes up in Great Britain. When Peak Oil rolls over the world, the price of everything goes up everywhere – at least until people stop buying them. It will be a bull market for dairy products in the years ahead. After all, you can dispense with foreign holidays, but people still need milk for a variety of tasty products.
Or perhaps we should call that a cow market?
(22 November 2005)
Tar sands, Suncor and peak oil
Roland Watson, New Era Investor
At the time of writing, oil and its related equities are undergoing something of a correction with crude oil nearly 20% off its $70 high. In such a climate, alternate oil sources and their companies well and Suncor with their operations in the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta are no exception.
…What does the current correction in oil prices mean for Peak Oil? That entirely depends when you think Peak Oil is due to arrive. If you take the view that it is now, then the two month correction is merely a respite before prices advance with possibly even greater bullishness.
Otherwise, the current price behaviour is a reaction to the tightening of excess capacity we have been witnessing in the last year or two. As stated in a previous blog entry, increasing lack of excess capacity is a neessary prerequisite to Peak Oil. However, it is a different matter to state unequivocally that this window of low excess capacity is the final one before Peak Oil.
If the ASPO prediction of 2010 for Peak Oil is near the mark, then it is entirely feasible to anticipate one more surge of new capacity coming online before the final tightening begins.
(24 November 2005)
Prepare today for future Thanksgivings
Bob Bowden, Sun-Herald (Florida)
Half-full or half-empty? How do you view Thanksgiving 2005? …
But I’m a half-full person. When I look at the Big Picture, as we all should each Thanksgiving, I cannot imagine another time in history when life was better, when the future was brighter. Make no mistake, however. Our choices now seem especially challenging, but we are uniquely prepared to resolve them. Resolve them we must.
Consider the major threats:
* A looming flu epidemic. …
* Global warming. …
* Peak oil. This defines the time when the Earth’s fossil fuels are half-depleted. Today has been pegged by computer programs as that day. And the second half of our fuel supply will not be nearly as available and easily extracted as the first. A collapse of infrastructure around the globe — including ours — is possible. Again, we know what to do to wean ourselves from oil addiction. It won’t be easy. The alternative is worse. Be thankful we know what to do. Pray we do it.
* Terrorism. …
These are big concerns, needing big resolutions. But to me, the necessity for action is brought home by three young faces I confront regularly. My grandkids need a world they can be thankful they inherited. For all the kids and grandkids, our actions today need to prepare that world for their tomorrow.
(24 November 2005)
Deffeyes at CalTech Dec. 1
Oil expert to address theory that peak oil has arrived
physorg.com
Princeton University emeritus professor and renowned oil analyst Ken Deffeyes thinks that the all-time production peak for petroleum, or “peak oil,” will occur on or around this Thanksgiving.
…Deffeyes is one of the more pessimistic of the prognosticators. If he is correct, the global oil peak will just have occurred when he presents his Caltech lecture on December 1. Afterward, the commodity will become more and more scarce–and therefore more and more expensive and hard to obtain. The end result will be massive economic and social disruptions in a 21st-century world that has fueled itself for decades with cheap and plentiful energy.
…Ken Deffeyes will discuss the evidence supporting his theory at the Lauritsen Memorial Lecture, to take place at 8 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, in Beckman Auditorium on the California Institute of Technology campus
(23 November 2005)
