Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
NASA research scientist on peak oil and climate change
David Room, Global Public Media
“In terms of resolving these two problems of peak fossil fuels and climate change… mitigation policies for peak oil, peak coal and peak gas should be done in tandem with mitigation policies for climate change. And I think there’s no reason that that shouldn’t happen. In fact it makes the most sense to me.”
NASA research scientist Dr. Pushker Kharecha speaks with David Room about “Implications of ‘peak oil’ for atmospheric CO2 and climate,” a paper Kharecha co-wrote with one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen. The paper, which has been submitted for peer-reviewed publication in a scientific journal, is one of few that consider both climate instability and oil depletion.
Dr. Pushker Kharecha is a research scientist with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the Columbia University Earth Institute. Dr. Kharecha joined GISS after earning a dual PhD in Earth science and astrobiology from Pennsylvania State University in 2005. In the interest of conducting research that has direct relevance to environmental policy, Dr. Kharecha shifted his focus to the field of climate science.
His paper, “Implications of ‘peak oil’ for atmospheric CO2 and climate,” co-written with GISS Director Dr. James Hansen, is available at pubs.giss.nasa.gov. Examining the impact of a range of peak oil scenarios on CO2 emissions, Kharecha and Hansen conclude that peaking of global oil production could have a major effect on 21st-century climate change, depending on the timing and magnitude of the peak, and subsequent energy choices.
They argue that a fair yet effective price on carbon emissions should be implemented in order to move energy choices in a direction that averts dangerous climate change. They also outline several key policy recommendations regarding global use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels — specifically, that coal CO2 emissions (not necessarily coal use) should be phased out globally within the next few decades, and that unconventional fossil fuels such as methane hydrates, tar sands, and shale oil should not be widely used unless their emissions are also captured and sequestered.
(24 December 2007)
Direct link to Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate by Kharecha and Hansen.
Life after peak oil
Gregory Clark, Sacramento Bee
Following an initial period of painful adaptation, we can live happily and healthily in a world with high energy costs
—
Oil prices have receded from their recent flirtation with $100 a barrel, but demand soars from China and India, rapidly industrializing countries with a massive energy thirst. The combination of increased demand, high prices and the prospect of an eventual peak in oil production, has caught Americans paralyzed between twin terrors: the fear that rampant consumption of oil and coal is irreversibly warming the Earth and the dread that without cheap oil our affluent lifestyles will evaporate.
Can’t live with oil, can’t live without it.
Study of the long economic history of the world suggests two things, however. Cheap fossil fuels actually explain little of how we got rich since the Industrial Revolution. And after an initial period of painful adaptation, we can live happily, opulently and indeed more healthily, in a world of permanent $100-a-barrel oil or even $500-a-barrel oil.
The first lesson of history is that cheap energy explains only a modest portion of our current wealth. We are now, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, 12 times richer than the average person in the pre-industrial world. Modern economic growth has been accompanied by huge declines in energy costs from exploiting coal and oil. A worker today can buy a gallon of gas with his wages from 20 minutes of work. Before the Industrial Revolution to buy the energy in a gallon of gas the English worker of the 1760s needed to work four hours.
As energy prices declined consumption rose. Currently in the United States we consume the equivalent in energy of six gallons of gas per person per day. In England in 1770 energy consumption (mainly coal) was equivalent to only 0.5 gallons of gas per day.
Many people think mistakenly that modern prosperity was founded on this fossil energy revolution, and that when the oil and coal is gone, it is back to the Stone Age. If we had no fossil energy, then we would be forced to rely on an essentially unlimited amount of solar power, available at five times current energy costs. With energy five times as expensive as at present we would take a substantial hit to incomes. Our living standard would decline by about 11 percent. But we would still be fantastically rich compared to the pre-industrial world.
That may seem like a lot of economic hurt, but put it in context. Our income would still be above the current living standards in Canada, Sweden or England. Oh, the suffering humanity! At current rates of economic growth we would gain back the income losses from having to convert to solar power in less than six years. And then onward on our march to ever greater prosperity.
The ability to sustain such high energy prices at little economic cost depends on the assumption that we can cut back from using the equivalent of six gallons of gas per person per day to 1.5 gallons. Is that really possible? The answer is that we know already it is.
The economy would withstand enormous increases in energy costs with modest damage because energy is even now so extravagantly cheap that most of it is squandered in uses of little value.
…Such a lifestyle is not only possible it will be much healthier. We are not biologically adapted to the suburban lifestyle of Central California – lots of cheap calories delivered right to your seat in the SUV that shuttles you from your sofa at home, to your chair at work, to the gym where you try and work on your weight problem. It will also make aging more graceful. We now live as much in fear of losing our gas-fueled mobility as we age as we are of the Grim Reaper himself.
So life after peak oil should hold no terror for us – unless, of course, you have invested in a lot of suburban real estate.
Gregory Clark is professor and chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Princeton University Press.
(23 December 2007)
Official: Saudi-Japanese energy relationship is enormously important
Saudi Press Agency via Menafn
A senior official of Saudi Aramco has said the Saudi-Japanese energy relationship is enormously important – not only for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Japan, but also for the entire world.
“Japan is the world’s second largest economy, a technological powerhouse, home to some of the planet’s leading companies in a wide variety of industries, and a primary driver of what many international observers are calling the ‘Asian century,” said Saudi Aramco vice president of Marketing and Supply Planning, Adil A. Al-Tubayyeb, who recently ended an important visit to Japan, where he met with Saudi Aramco customers and partners in addition to key figures in the Japanese energy sector.
…He visited the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, where he answered to questions raised by its students. He explained to them the mechanisms of the oil market and price drivers.
He said the abundant supply of conventional oil resources will provide sustainable energy for a long time. “The amount of conventional oil-in-place worldwide is estimated at between 6 and 8 trillion barrels,” he said. “The world does not have to worry about (peak oil) for many decades to come.”
But he also stressed the importance of balancing energy consumption with environmental concerns. “We must balance the need for energy with the imperative to protect our planet and preserve its delicate natural ecosystems,” he said.
Al-Tubayyeb told the students Saudi Aramco, its counterparts in the Japanese oil industry and the rest of the world are hard at work developing solutions to these and other challenges.
(26 December 2007)
Busting the Hubbert Myths Part I
Jason Brenno and David Room, Hubbert Tribute
Over the next several months, the M King Hubbert Tribute will publish a series of articles that discredit some popular myths surrounding the work of M King Hubbert – the father of peak oil theory – that are beginning to be accepted as fact and thereby confounding the peak oil debate.
The first myth is that Hubbert was stuck on one projection for world oil production.
Peter Jackson of Cambridge Energy Research Associates exclaims: “Despite his valuable contribution, M. King Hubbert’s methodology falls down because it does not consider likely resource growth, application of new technology, basic commercial factors, or the impact of geopolitics on production. His approach does not work in all cases – including on the United States itself – and cannot reliably model a global production outlook.” [1]
Jackson and other optimists contend that peak oil is several decades away.
In fact, Hubbert had a flexible conceptual model of world oil production as demonstrated by two differing models for world oil production that he published and discussed in the latter stage of his career. His traditional model had a peak of world production occurring before 2000.
Hubbert, however, recognized that there were multiple scenarios for world oil production and he documented at least two of them. The diagram below is from a paper by Hubbert from the American Journal of Physics in November 1981 [2].
(25 December 2007)
DVDs of the 2007 Houston World Oil Conference
Rick Block, ASPO-USA
DVDs of the ASPO-USA, (Association for the Study of Peak Oil -USA) 2007 Houston World Oil Conference can now be ordered on their website. The professionally recorded and edited set of 12 DVDs covers over 20 hours of the conference.All of the main sessions are included along with several of the auxiliary ones including Saturday mornings Smart Money and Peak Oil with Charles Maxwell and others.
The presentations have the power points integrated into the DVDs for easy viewing rather then just the camera view.
Cost is $85.00 US. including shipping and handling to most countries. Shipping will commence in late December or early January.
Order here: www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=278&Itemid=91
(18 December 2007)
Review of Crude Awakening by People’s Weekly World
Tim Pelzer, People’s Weekly World
A Crude Awakening:
The Oil Crash
Directed by Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack and Reto Caduff
Lava Productions, 2007
90 minutes
Are believers in “peak oil” a lunatic fringe? Not according to the compelling and disturbing documentary “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.” This newly released DVD provides further evidence that we are depleting the world’s oil supplies at an unsustainable rate.
According to energy experts and scientists interviewed, the world’s major oil fields are in decline. Matt Simmons, an energy adviser to George W. Bush, said supply is diminishing while world demand is skyrocketing. Many developing countries such as India and China, where car ownership is surging, want to emulate U.S. consumption patterns.
Collin Campbell, a geologist for Exxon Mobil, Shell and others, said there are no new large oil fields to be discovered to make up for declining supplies. Cutting edge technology has speeded up depletion, acting like “a giant straw sucking up the last sources of easy oil,” Simmons said.
Simmons cited the United States as a prime example of what is occurring throughout the world. “No one thought we would ever peak,” he observed. For a century the United States was the world’s major producer of oil. Production reached 10.2 million barrels in July 1970 and then dropped, despite a wave of exploration during which four-and-a-half times more wells were drilled. Now the U.S. imports two-thirds of its supplies.
These experts warn that the era of cheap oil is coming to an end, and there will be disastrous consequences if governments do not take action. As the “bloodstream of the world economy,” oil has fueled population and economic growth over the last 150 years. For instance, world population has grown to 6 billion because of large increases in food production using oil-based fertilizers. Campbell proposes that every country cut oil use by a small percentage every year to reflect the diminishing supply of oil, something we need to be doing anyway to halt global warming.
“A Crude Awakening” also explores what new sources of energy can replace oil. Wind-generated electricity can never be a major source because of wind’s intermittent nature. Scientists say solar power holds the most promise.
But problems in harnessing and harvesting solar power have yet to be solved. For instance, to generate the amount of energy the U.S. uses daily, a territory half the size of California would need to be covered with solar panels.
Check out this movie to learn about these issues and more.
(20 December 2007)
Significant review because it comes from the long-time voice (since 1924) of the Communist Party USA. Although mainstream America has a bogeyman image of the CP-USA, the party is actually one of the more moderate groupings in the Marxist Left. During the 1930s and 40s, the Communist Party was very influential in the US (it was pro-USSR), but since the 50s it has been on a downward slope. If the predictions of deep recession and economic turmoil come to pass, the CP-USA and other socialist groups may experience as resurgence. Some within these parties are aware of peak oil and resource depletion, but they have not really incorporated the issues into their programs. -BA
