Peak oil – July 24

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Want floor time? First, get past Bartlett
Ryan Grim, Politico
… By his own count, Bartlett has given 48 hourlong floor addresses since March 14, 2005 — far more than anyone else, and almost all of them on peak oil, the notion that when oil production begins to decline, prices will skyrocket and bring the world economy to its knees.

With oil prices in the stratosphere, is it time to start listening to the House of Representatives’ Chicken Little?

“I don’t tune in, sorry,” Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) says, echoing the sentiments of a number of his colleagues. Last Thursday, not a single member of the House entered the chamber while Bartlett was speaking.

… Bartlett has heard it before.

“They don’t particularly like what I say, and so they ignore me,” he concedes – but he continues to say it anyway. “This ‘drill here, drill more, pay less’ is a great mantra, and it’s hurting the Democrats. But you need to finish that: ‘And screw your kids and your grandkids,’ because that’s what we’re doing.”

Bartlett is not one to hold back.

… The speech that Bartlett has honed is remarkably persuasive, if a little academic, which is unsurprising given his background. A Ph.D. in physiology, he taught medical school for more than two decades.

… In March 2007, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) came down to the floor to thank Bartlett.

“I would like to say that the gentleman from Maryland is like Socrates up here lecturing to the members and to the country on this incredibly important issue,” he said, according to the congressional record. “And I would just like to take note that you do it day after day, and you are relentless.”
(24 July 2008)
Posted with permission.

Congressman Bartlett explains that his position on drilling hasn’t changed – but there is now growing support among his colleagues on both sides of the aisle for his position. As embodied in H.R. 6107, Rep. Bartlett’s position is that new federal revenues obtained by removing federal prohibitions against drilling, which would expand U.S. domestic oil production, should be dedicated to supporting alternative and renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, nuclear, and clean coal. Among energy efficiency programs also supported would be development of a SMART grid, and hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles to shift from dependence upon foreign oil to cheaper and cleaner electricity for transportation.

Have We Reached Peak Oil?
Opposing Views
Over the past year, American drivers have found themselves longing for the days when two dollars per gallon seemed expensive. Oil prices are rising at an unprecedented rate, and as a result, many are questioning whether the Earth’s available oil supply has reached its peak. Are there still oceans of oil awaiting our discovery? How much pain you’ll be feeling at the pump in the future depends on the answer.

Dr. Marcel Schoppers – NASA Scientist

Diana Furchtgott-Roth – Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
(July 2008)

Heinberg: Calm Before the Storm (transcript, video, audio)
Richard Heinberg, Peak Moment via Global Public Media
Richard Heinberg, author of “Peak Everything”, reviews the accelerating events since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and fossil fuel price volatility, noting that we’ve missed most of the best opportunities to manage collapse. He asks, “how far down the staircase of complexity will our global civilization have to go until we’re sustainable?” His answer: when managed properly, with deliberate simplification, not as far as we might otherwise. In addition to long term efforts to relocalize our economies, he advocates developing community “resilience” to withstand short-term catastrophic events like food shortages or extreme weather. Noting that healthy fear can move us into action, he encourages an attitude of clarity, concern and informed action in this “calm before the storm” that he feels is soon coming to an end. [www.richardheinberg.com]

For a DVD of Richard’s presentation that evening for “Kiss Your Gas Goodbye”, go to the Specials on Peak Moment’s homepage. Read Janaia’s blog entry about this conversation.
(19 July 2008)
Transcript was just posted.

Controversial environmental author Paul Ehrlich talks biofuels, offshore drilling, peak oil (video and transcript)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint, E&E TV
Forty years ago, author Paul Ehrlich stirred up controversy by predicting that the world’s steady population growth would cause hundreds of millions of people to starve within a decade of publication of “The Population Bomb.”

Though his predictions were wrong, he is often credited with having had a major influence on the environmental movement in the ’60s and ’70s. During today’s OnPoint, Paul Ehrlich, author of the new book “The Dominant Animal” and Bing professor of population studies and professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, gives his take on today’s top energy and environment issues. He also responds to critics who have accused him of using scare tactics.
—
Monica Trauzzi: What are we supposed to be using?

Paul Ehrlich: Well, first of all, we should be redesigning, we should have started 20 or 30 years ago redesigning our cities around people, not automobiles. In Washington there’s a huge plan to add more freeway lanes on the Beltway. That’s crazy. We know from history that the more roads you build the more traffic jams you get. We can’t afford to continue on the fossil fuel basis, but of course we have to continue for a while.

… Monica Trauzzi: Peak oil? True or false?

Paul Ehrlich: Nobody knows exactly where the peak is, but nobody should care. We have got to stop burning so much fossil fuel and we’ve got to do it fast. Again, the problem is not that we have too little energy, it’s we have too much of the wrong kind. And we got to change that or our kids and our grandchildren are really going to suffer. Because, remember this, we are changing the patterns of the climate for the entire planet, probably for the next thousand years, which means rainfall is going to be in different places. All of our infrastructure for handling water, our irrigation systems, water for our cities and so on, is going to have to be now continually changed over the next thousand years. Do you know how expensive that’s going to be and how difficult? You know, cities like Lima, Peru, depend on glaciers that are now melting. California, our biggest agricultural state, has one of the smallest snow packs ever and the snow pack is where the water for agriculture is stored. And so we’re facing these incredible problems and George Bush is still meandering on about how we will use more technology and get out of it. He’s got no solid suggestions. All of his administration is working to get us more oil by killing people. It’s ridiculous!

Monica Trauzzi: Well, I don’t know that they would agree with you going that far.

Paul Ehrlich: Oh, of course, they wouldn’t agree with me, but they’re wrong.

Monica Trauzzi: OK, but listen, how does population play into this? Do you think we need fewer people? We should stop our current growth rate?

Paul Ehrlich: Standard calculation is that a sustainable number, with anything like today’s technology, is about 2 billion. We’re going to go to nine or 10. Every person you add puts more pressure on our life-support systems than the last person, because people are smart. We didn’t start farming the marginal soils and then move gradually towards the rich soils of the river bottoms, we’re going the other direction. So, every person has to be fed from lousier soils, get water from deeper wells, get their energy from more difficult, distant sources, their metals from finer, you know, originally we started with copper that was lying pure on the surface of the earth. Now, we’re smelting ore sometimes less than 1 percent copper, all that requires huge amounts of energy, huge amounts of environmental destruction. And you’ve always got to remember that our economic system is a wholly owned subsidiary of our ecological system. If our ecological systems don’t function right, we won’t eat, we won’t do anything. We’ll all be dead very soon. So, we are wrecking our life-support systems.
(24 July 2008)

Visionaries or cranks? How can you tell?
Rod Dreher, Crunchy Con via Belief Net
I had an e-mail exchange this morning with Jim Kunstler, as part of an interview for a project the editorial page is doing on the peak oil controversy. Jim told me that his college audiences across the South are very hostile to his Long Emergency ideas — a hostility Jim chalks up to their not being happy being told that their car-based way of life is going to change radically. I suspect Jim’s right, but then again, I agree with Jim’s basic take on the energy situation. We all know that Jim’s got a colorful, hyperbolic way of expressing himself, so it’s possible that some of the harsh reaction comes from his Old Testament prophetic style.

How can you tell the difference between a visionary and a crank? Here’s a list of five benefits to being an outsider with an idea that pisses people off and draws ridicule. Excerpt:

1. A strong reaction means you’ve hit a nerve. Whether your creativity is expressed in your writing or in the products you create with your business, when people look at you weird :-), like they’re afraid that the thing you’ve created might change people’s behavior, that can actually be a good sign. Definitely, the more powerful and unique an idea, the greater chance that it will be opposed by the mainstream public (at first, anyway).

2. A violent opposition means that your idea has the potential to change people’s lives. Let’s face it–ideas are banned because they’re considered “dangerous” to the status quo. Any idea that does not have the potential to elicit change in our world in some way will just be ignored, rather than opposed. The more potential an idea has of instigating change, the greater likelihood that it will be challenged.
(23 July 2008)
Rod Dreher is one conservative who understands peak oil. -BA

Peak oil a myth, claims geoscientist
ABC Rural (Australia)
Predictions that oil production will peak in a few years’ time and then taper off have been dismissed by a leading geoscientist.

Dr Peter McCabe, from the CSIRO, says predictions of a peak oil phenomenon date back to the 1920s but are no more relevant today than they were then.

He claims it’s geopolitical problems in oil-producing countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela that’s pushing up oil prices, rather than dwindling supply.

Dr McCabe was a member of the US Geological Survey Assessment of global oil supplies, and says the figures show oil will last for many decades to come.

“We have produced about 35 per cent of the world’s conventional oil, and we are producing about one per cent of that oil per year, so we have about 65 years left of producing at the current level of world production.”
(23 July 2008)