Peak oil – Aug 23

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Oil output set to peak, but no fuel shortage-UBS
Reuters
Oil production looks set to peak in the mid-to-late 2020s, but the decline will be offset as high fuel costs accelerate the quest for other energy sources, notably natural gas, UBS said in a study published on Wednesday.

Advocates of the peak oil theory that supplies are close to their maximum levels say it is gaining credence in the investment community.

“The cry of peak oil production has been made several times and on each of these occasions the prediction was incorrect,” the UBS report said.

“Exactly when it will occur is very difficult to estimate … However, the fact that consumption is outstripping new discoveries by more than 400 percent suggests that further increases in global reserves may be nearing an end.”
(23 Aug 2006)
UPDATE (Aug 25): Jeffrey Brown writes:
This is basically a variation on the Peter Huber argument, to-wit, that individual sources of energy will peak and decline, but the aggregate energy production rate–which is the sum of individual sources of energy–will never peak and decline.

We advise everyone, especially Americans, to continue buying and financing large vehicles to drive to and from large suburban mortgages.

Interview with Richard Heinberg (Audio)
Phillip Adams, Late Night Live, ABC (Australa)
er the last few years we’ve all been hearing about Peak Oil – the time when the international production of this much needed fossil fuel reaches its highest point, and reserves begin declining.

There’s debate about when this will happen – some say it will be up to 30 years, while others say we could see it this decade.

But in an industrialised world reliant on oil for so much production and international trade – what can be done to prepare for the inevitable depletion of oil whenever it does arrive?

Petroleum geologist and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Dr Colin Campbell has a proposed a plan that would see countries vountarily sign up to reduce their oil production and oil imports over time.

Richard Heinberg is a journalist, lecturer and author of several books looking at responses to future oil shortages, including The Party’s Over and Power Down.

In his latest book The Oil Depletion Protocol: a plan to avert oil wars, terrorism and economic collapse Heinberg argues the case for the Oil Depletion Protocol as the answer for Peak Oil
(22 Aug 2006)
The interview with Heinberg starts about 25% into the broadcast.

Peak oil odyssey: the revolution will not be televised, nor will television be revolutionized
John Siman, Culture Change
I’ve always loved to teach and have, over the years, internalized much of the good old Socratic methodology — teaching not by indoctrination, not by forcing the student’s agreement, but by helping her to discover a clarity of thought which she already had inside of her. Socrates himself referred to this gentle way as intellectual midwifery. So whenever I consider a difficult question, I automatically think to myself, Could a bright and motivated teenager figure this out — conceive of its implications clearly — with only a little external guidance from me?

Right now I’m thinking that there is probably not a single bright and motivated teenager in the entire U.S.A. who could figure out the implications of Global Peak Oil without being indoctrinated in some forceful and demanding manner.

For imagine what would happen if we, in the gentle Socratic tradition, tried to guide her, for example, by assigning her an introduction to Global Peak Oil as a term paper project. She would find out fairly quickly that essentially all of the mainstream sources — the official sources, that is — from the United States Geological Survey to the International Energy Agency to Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates — speak as with one voice about the abounding abundance of oil.

She would also, of course, quickly come across the name of Matthew Simmons and his book about the sudden sodden twilight of cheap oil and the imminent end of all modern economic growth. This is true. Simmons has not yet been excluded from our NationalMediaChatroom. But our bright and motivated student would most likely encounter Simmons in the content of, say, a National Public Radio interview, on which his voice would be expertly edited to sound rather shrill and panicked, as if emanating from the wilderness.

And justifiably so, at least from the point of view of those who run our NationalMediaChatroom. For Simmons’s voice does, even for all of his insider and establishment and big-money credentials, evoke a certain ascetic, southwestern-desert prophetic tradition (and, moreover, one suspects that his breath might be faintly redolent of locusts and honey – indeed at a conference sponsored by the Pentagon back in June, he did say, and rather out of the blue as I’ve been told, that it was time for us Americans to go back to the soil).

So then. Our bright and motivated teenager could only infer that Simmons, this Houston-based clear-thinking super-successful Harvard-educated Republican C.E.O. represents a minority viewpoint. And she would be right.

And she would therefore say to herself, Mention Simmons in a footnote or something like that to let Teacher know that I’ve been thorough in my research. But leave it at that.

And since she actually is thorough in her research, she would also quickly come across the names of James Howard Kunstler and Richard Heinberg, who, unlike Simmons, are decidedly not interviewed on National Public Radio (to say nothing of FoxNews, though I personally am willing to argue that there are no longer any salient differences between the two).

So she’d link to Kunstler’s ClusterfuckNation, and she’d say to herself, Clusterfuck, no way am I even putting this in a footnote. And she’d link to Heinberg’s MuseLetter, and she’d see that he’s contributing to a book by Project Censored titled The Case for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and she’d say to herself, All I need now is to be added to HomeLand Security’s database just as I am filling out my college applications.

John Siman is an editor for CultureChange.org and can be reached at jsiman “at” ntelos.net. The title of the book he is writing is: Disconnectivities: Witnessing America at Petrocollapse.
(22 Aug 2006)

The Economic Challenge of Sustainability
Richard Douthwaite and Emer Ó Siochrú, FEASTA
A new paper written by Richard Douthwaite and Emer Ó Siochrú for CORI, “The Economic Challenge of Sustainability”, gives an overview of Feasta’s ideas about economic growth, money systems, peak oil, and the need for a land value tax and for citizen carbon quotas.

Outline:
The Problem with Sustainable Development
The Growth Imperative
The Economy as an Emergent System
Peak Oil and Energy Scarcity
Energy Price Inflation
Land Value Tax
Poverty and Famine
Citizen Carbon Quota
Predistribution Versus Redistribution
A Grown-Up Economy

[Conclustion]

This paper has outlined three economic tools to help society make the adjustment to a renewable energy future – energy price inflation, a site value tax and a citizen’s carbon quota. Other tools are required, too, including the replacement of the debt-based money system with one in which provides a stable money stock. This would be achieved(7) by having a money which, rather than being lent into circulation by the banks, would be spent into circulation by the state and would remain in circulation until it was taxed out again. If such a money system was in place, the state would have no problem in picking up the slack if the economy was sliding into a recession by, for example, making grants to people wishing to get their houses up to a high energy standard – and thus, incidentally, keeping employment high in the building trade.

The adoption of just these four tools would set in train many of the necessary changes required for a more sustainable ‘grown up’ economy. We offer them to policymakers in the hope that they will use them to avoid a major economic collapse because we want our collective journey to sustainability to start from where we stand now, rather from a situation in which most people would feel desperate and helpless.

Peak oil leaves us with no option but to move to a more sustainable, renewable-energy-fuelled economy. Getting there requires taking a running jump over a yawning chasm. There are no stepping stones. The world on the other side will be very different. It has to be. Radical changes, such as the four we have suggested, are therefore required. In the present circumstances, timid incrementalism, the making of small improvements to a failing system rather than revamping it entirely, just will not work.
(18 Aug 2006)
Also available as PDF.