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Energy Investment, Energy Return (Jim Hansen and Charlie Hall)
Peak Moment via Global Public Media
Independent financial consultant Jim Hansen runs every investment through the “peak oil test”. In this presentation from the ASPO-USA 2008 conference, he explores traditional energy investments; opportunities in renewables, rail, and electrifying the transportation system; areas to avoid like airlines and trucking; and what to watch, like electric cars and the unwinding of globalization.
In this interview, ecologist and professor Charlie Hall looks at energy return on energy invested. Whether it’s a cheetah chasing antelope, or humans making ethanol — the energy we get back has to exceed the energy we put in, or the story is over. He compares oil’s energy return in the 1930’s (1 calorie invested returned 100 calories of energy) with the current situation (1:12) and still declining.
Presenters respond to the final question in the Q&A session at the close of ASPO-USA’s 2008 conference: how do we better harness the intellect, energy and commitment at this conference, and what one thing would you have people ask an elected official to do about peak oil?
(20 November 2008, but just posted)
The American Muslim: The end of the world as we know it?
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The American Muslim
The Hidden Holocaust: Our Civilizational Crisis – Part 3: The end of the world as we know it?
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In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we reviewed the origins and evolution of the modern world system through a long historical process of protracted military and economic violence, violence that continues today in the imperial atrocities being committed across diverse strategic peripheries in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northwest Africa.
This global system is hugely destructive of human life. Devoid of the capability to recognize and enact ethical values, it is driven purely by the imperatives of profit, efficiency, growth, and monopoly. Consequently, it is not only destructive of human life; it is destructive of all life, nature, and even itself.
It is now generating multiple crises across the world that over the next 20 years threaten to converge in an unprecedented and unimaginable way, unless we take drastic action now.
These crises can be categorized broadly into four key themes:
1. Climate catastrophe
2. Peak oil
3. Food scarcity
4. Economic instability
… 2. Peak oil
There is yet another crisis emerging, which is also linked to our addiction to burning fossil fuels. That is the energy crisis. Today, the most prominent energy source is, of course, conventional oil. Here in the UK, from where I’m now writing, 90 percent of our energy comes from conventional oil, gas and coal, but primarily oil. Without these energy supplies, civilized life in the UK would simply collapse. Transportation, agriculture, modern medicine, national defence, water distribution, and the production of even basic technologies would be impossible. This formula applies across the board, throughout western industrial civilization.
The basic rules for the discovery, estimation and production of petroleum reserves were first laid down by the world renowned geophysicist Dr. M. King Hubbert. Hubbert pointed out that as petroleum is a finite resource, its production must inevitably pass through three key stages …
(22 December 2008)
According to Wikipedia,
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a London-born author and political scientist specialising in interdisciplinary security studies.
He has a page at Media Monitors Network.
The Coming Oil Train Wreck
Tony Allison, Financial Sense
Only a true contrarian can worry about high oil prices, shortages and global economic shockwaves when the price of oil has fallen from $147 to under $40 per barrel in less than six months and gasoline is now less than $2 a gallon! I should be singing “Happy (driving) days are here again,” but I’m not. The facts speak otherwise, and the time for preparation and mitigation is growing short.
Aside from a few Paul Revere’s such as Matt Simmons, there is precious little media alarm or urgency over an issue that is historic in nature and monumental in scope. The stark IEA (International Energy Agency) report released this fall was mostly ignored in the media, other than to highlight that 2009 will feature “demand destruction.” Other headlines touted “Goodbye to the oil supercycle.” The message sent to the public; lower oil prices ahead, problem solved. Unfortunately, the critical message of 9.1% global oil depletion was ignored.
The first line of the IEA report set the tone. “The world’s energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable- environmentally, economically, socially.” The last line of the report set the agenda. “Time is running out and the time to act is now.”
(22 December 2008)
