Fossil Fuels

ODAC Newsletter – Sep 30

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The debt crisis and the war in Libya continued their push and pull on the oil price this week with the outlook currently weakening over fears of a Eurozone recession. Despite this Brent continues to trade at over $100/barrel – around double the price at which any previous economic recovery has occurred. The rising cost of energy is playing out in a number of ways…

The overburden: Review of “The Last Mountain”

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The film The Last Mountain has it all: a human story of ordinary citizens fighting a soulless and unaccountable coal corporation; an urgency as the last mountain in the Coal River Valley is eyed by Big Coal for surface mining; a history and context for the people’s claim to the rights of the commons; activism in the form of petitioning the government as well as civil disobedience; the role of business, profit, labor and economy as labor power is eroded and corporate profits soar; the eco-system, heritage, and culture of the region; and a new way forward proposed by the people themselves. It’s the best documentary I’ve seen on mountain top removal. But really, it’s about so much more and has come together perfectly as a gestalt, a meme for our times.

The Last Mountain, June 2011, 95 minutes, Dada Films, Directed by Bill Haney.

Peak oil – Sept 30

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– “Rome didn’t collapse in a day” – adult comic about one man’s awakening to peak oil
– Is Yergin Correct about Oil Supply? by Gail Tverberg (an Opinion the WSJ did not run)
– Forget about peak oil (Yergin interviewed by “Salon”)
– The UK’s North Sea production declines below 1 million barrel per day

Medieval smokestacks: fossil fuels in pre-industrial times

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The history of energy use in human civilisation is generally summarised as follows: from Antiquity until the start of the Industrial Revolution, people made use of the manual labour of both animals and humans, as well as biomass, sun, water and wind. Next, all these renewable energy sources were replaced by fossil fuels: first coal, and later oil and gas. Uranium completed the picture in the second half of the twentieth century. While this historical summary is basically correct, there were some – rather important – exceptions. Almost all of the Western European economies during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.

Peak Oil keynote by Randy Udall and sustainability conference call for participants

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Randy Udall’s humorous and poignant presentation on peak oil was published today, recorded at the Local Future conference. Local Future invites visionaries, activists, and leaders to apply to the 2011 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership. Confirmed speakers include Nicole Foss, Dr. Steve Keen, T.S. Bennett, Sally Erickson, Guy McPherson, Jan Lundberg, Gregory Greene, Kurt Cobb, Stephanie Mills and Aaron Wissner. [The Udall video is posted here.]

“The Quest” questioned – the series

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Journalist Mason Inman does what the mainstream media won’t: he gives a balanced, critical look at the claims of energy historian Daniel Yergin about peak oil. (Latest in a series. )

#3 – We’re finding oil faster than we’re using it?
#4 – Only the pessimists have been wrong?
#5 – Peak oil = running out of oil?

A brief economic explanation of Peak Oil

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Unless and until adaptive responses are large and fast enough to constrain the upward trend of oil prices, the primary adaptive response will be periodic economic crashes of a magnitude that depresses oil consumption and oil prices. These have the effect of shifting consumption from incumbent consumers—the advanced economies—to the new consumers in the developing economies.