Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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…
– “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
– N. American oil output could top 40-year-old peak
– The End of Cheap Uranium
– Peak Phosphorus (video from ABC Australia’s “Catalyst”)
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Significant technological advances rarely make eye-catching headlines as they come from many small advances involving numerous scientific disciplines. However, every now and again it becomes clear that progress is being made.
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.]
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The International Energy Outlook 2011
-A Chinese Slowdown?
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Daniel Yergin is at it again — telling policymakers not to worry their pretty little heads about peak oil because technology will give us plenty more cheap crude. Predictably, the peak oil community responded with a raft of yard-long blog posts filled with charts, graphs and statistics. But this won’t beat Yergin at his own game, reaching the people who matter. For that, we should take a page from Yergin’s own interview with Steven Colbert.
Bill McKibben’s latest book is a well-chosen and arranged collection of climate-related writings by the likes of James Hansen, Al Gore and George Monbiot, which McKibben edits and introduces. Significantly, the book contains writings by Inhofe and his ilk as well, the better to understand “the lines of attack climate deniers have used over and over,” in McKibben’s words,
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?
Jean Laherrère is co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a retired expert from the French oil company Total. He picks apart the latest analysis from the champion of optimists, the American Daniel Yergin. (Translation of an interview from the French.)
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.
