World Oil Production to 2012: From The Oil Drum.
It's an ongoing discussion: When will global oil supplies peak? This continues as one of the most contentious questions in energy circles. (U.S. domestic supplies peaked in the early 1970's, and imported oil now makes up more than 60 percent of our supply.)
Optimists say we are far away from a global oil supply peak,
pessimists say we have already entered a time of declining supplies.
Which?
Some say decline in near-term demand masks underlying supply declines: Current global economic contraction hides concurrent supply reductions -- both are shrinking now, but demand reduction is faster at the moment than supply atrophy.
So the big question: what happens when the banks are no longer seen as gambling casinos, credit begins flowing again, and investment in economic development returns? When that happens the now hidden supply ceilings will become readily apparent, and the high oil prices seen a year ago in the U.S. will seem but a happy memory.
Continue reading "Peak Oil: When?" »
Apparently Thomas Friedman has come to the realization that the rapacious, energy-intensive living arrangements we created the past half century aren't working so well. It's about time.
Friedman's column in Sunday's New York Times makes me wonder if he has secretly been reading James Howard Kunstler and Wendell Berry. If he has, he doesn't admit it.
(March 2, 2009: What Next?)..."The collapse of complex systems is actually predicated on the idea that the systems would mutually reinforce each other's failures. This is now plain to see as the collapse of banking (that is, of both lending and debt service), has led to the collapse of commerce and manufacturing. The next systems to go will probably be farming, transportation, and the oil markets themselves (which constitute the system for allocating and distributing world energy resources). As these things seize up, the final system to go will be governance, at least at the highest levels.
"If we're really lucky, human affairs will eventually reorganize at a lower scale of activity, governance, civility, and economy. Every week, the failure to recognize the nature of our predicament thrusts us further into the uncharted territory of hardship. The task of government right now is not to prop up doomed systems at their current scales of failure, but to prepare the public to rebuild our systems at smaller scales..."
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"The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such “biofuels” as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that “science will find an answer.” The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves...."
"...What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
Continue reading "Friedman Channels Jim Kunstler, Wendell Berry" »
Increasing discussion of late about the climate bathtub idea, and the urgency of understanding it.
The main issue: Policymakers and the public do not realize how carbon dioxide works in the atmosphere. Thus discussions to "limit growth" or "stabilize" emissions miss the urgent point that we must radically reduce carbon emissions to limit future temperature increases. Any resulting climate policies that fail to avoid more carbon dioxide emissions than natural processes can remove from the atmosphere will not create much benefit.
John Sterman of MIT wrote about this last fall in Science. Bryan Walsh of TIME also discussed this in his recent piece: What The Public Doesn't Get About Climate Change. Andrew Revkin discussed this at Dot.Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect
In short, carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere just as water rises in a bathtub. If more water is flowing in than is draining out, the level of the water in the tub rises. If more water drains out than is flowing in, water levels decline.
Continue reading "We Argue While Climate Bathtub Fills" »
