Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
George Will had quite a few figures in his commentary “There is still no alternative to oil” that suggested there are no supply problems concerning oil. I think there are a few more figures that should be added to assess the oil supply situation.
In the last few months, the vigorous debate over the future of world oil supplies has hit the mainstream radar screen. The optimists closed ranks—they have to because their numbers are shrinking—and launched a barrage of misleading reports and opinion pieces, suggesting that supplies will grow from today’s 85 million barrels a day to as much as 115 mb/day by 2030.
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed. World oil production peaked in July 2008 at 74.74 million barrels/day (mbd) and now has fallen to about 72 mbd. It is expected that oil production will decline at about 2.2 mbd per year as shown below in the chart. The forecasts from the IEA WEO … Read more
The Government and Opposition today voted against a Greens motion in the Senate calling on the Government to plan for peak oil.
Part 1 of KrisCan’s Peak Oil conversation with Richard Heinberg about the limits to growth, the GDP measuring claims on our resources and the importance of communicating with our policy makers. He talks about the need to move away from the idea of continuous growth and begin to measure quality of life as a marker of success.
Oil prices fluctuated in the high $70’s this week reflecting the ups and downs of the dollar. Higher oil prices are loosening the discipline around the implementation of OPEC oil quotas as producers cash in…
In my view, the Uppsala study is unduly pessimistic, implying an immediate crisis (in 2010 and thereafter) which is not in accord with reasonable expectations about future production levels both within OPEC and outside the cartel. In alerting the public to the peak oil issue, the Guardian is doing good work. But not knowing any bettter, they picked the wrong study in my view. The false choice the Guardian offers us, the IEA or Uppsala, amounts to a kind of all or nothing proposition.
-Go forth and multiply a lot less
-The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)
-Urban farms a fertile idea
-Summary Presentation for Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
-The next Industrial Revolution will be people-powered
-Sustainability and Social Justice: Do the Math
-Greening Portland – Your City How To
One of the features of many models that are used to predict future events is that they focus on target years. Decadal years are the most common target years, so that whether talking of climate or the amount of oil or natural gas available, models focus on, for example, the amount that will be available in 2030. The problem with this approach is that it leaves the public to think that a problem is not yet serious.
These are merely my notes from the conference. I hope they will be useful to others as an index to the volumes of material that were covered.
-Obama and Hu aim to agree greenhouse gas targets
-China’s empty city
-China’s Blunt Talk for Obama
-Market cornered for rare minerals
-Chinese credit card debt mounts
Not many years from now, there will be a huge uproar over who missed the coming of peak oil. There will be Congressional hearings and much finger pointing and protestations that the peaking of world oil production was impossible to predict.
