Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Left unaddressed during the past 3 years in most of the debates between economists has been the problem of energy. The reason is simple: post-war economists don’t do energy, except as an ever-expanding resource that the credit system and technology makes available. For the post-war economist, the supply curve of energy–save for brief lags–is always coming back into rough equilibrium with the economy.
A weekdly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Macondo well
-In the Congress
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
If rhetoric could move mountains I’d like to see the Rocky Mountains moved to northern Michigan so I could view the magnificence of Lake Superior from the top of Long’s Peak. Unfortunately I’m not expecting to see that day.
I find myself these days especially attentive to people talking about their preparations for a post-peak oil world. I am partly learning and partly measuring myself against their level of preparation. If they are, in my evaluation, further along than I am, my focus is even more intense. That has turned out to be an important clue for me about what it will take to convince the public about the dangers of peak oil.
Linda Flood from Veckans Affärer [“The Week’s Business”, a Swedish newspaper] has contacted Kjell Aleklett, president of ASPO International, during the summer to discuss BP and the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. They also discussed how the oil companies handle the technology for drilling in deep water and, most importantly, if they have developed technology to cope with “blowouts”.
Exxon Mobil today issued an impressive second-quarter earnings report, with much of the good news again involving a surge in liquid natural gas production from Qatar. It’s further proof that Exxon — along with the rest of Big Oil — has made a big bet that natural gas will be a growth engine for the company in the absence of opportunities in oil. Fast-growing Asia is the big market, with China leading the way.
Another week on and there has been no further leak from the BP Macondo well. Officials are now “optimistic” about preparations for a new attempt at a, with the initial step of pumping mud into the top of the well likely to begin as soon as Sunday. With the leak apparently under control, BP chose this week to announce the inevitable departure of its CEO Tony Hayward, whose replacement by the American Bob Dudley was vital for the company’s damage limitation efforts in the US…
-2050 Pathways Analysis
-UK energy scenarios: working with a flawed model
-DECC publishes plans for achieving 2050 targets
-DECC lays out six possible futures for low-carbon energy
What kind of life do you want, and what are you willing to do to get it? Keith Farnish, author of Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis, sees industrial civilization as the most destructive way of living yet devised by humans. And it’s over: environmental degradation and depletion tell us it can’t continue. The system has myriad ways to make us believe we can’t live without it. But Keith believes we can – there are countless ways to move forward into contented, happy, and full lives. We can “disengage” and reconnect with the natural world, ourselves, and others.
In 1972, the now-classic book Limits to Growth explored the consequences for Earth’s ecosystems of exponential growth in population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion. That book, which still stands as the best-selling environmental title ever published, reported on the first attempts to use computers to model the likely interactions between trends in resources, consumption, and population. It summarized the first major scientific study to question the assumption that economic growth can and will continue more or less uninterrupted into the foreseeable future.
Matt Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, has long been one of the most famous and influential voices on the subject of peak oil. After the release of his book, Simmons rose to fame as Saudi Arabian oil production declined and global oil prices skyrocketed. However, Simmons has lately been making hyperbolic claims related to the deepwater spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on the scenarios Simmons has outlined, he argues for responses such as using a nuclear explosion to seal the well and evacuating 20 million people from the Gulf Coast. Extraordinary responses such as these would impact a great many people, so The Oil Drum staff felt that a critical look at some of Simmons’ claims was in order.
A strategically timed item in the New York Times presents an overview of the geology that makes the Gulf of Mexico so rich in oil, how new technology has enabled us to track these deposits – and the risks we run to extract them. It was published Wednesday [July 28], one day before a special judicial panel in Boise, Idaho began to consider “how to bring order to the hundreds of civil lawsuits” stemming from BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. The seven judges will “consider which U.S. court, or courts, should oversee hundreds of spill-related suits by injured rig workers, fishermen, investors and property owners,”
