Arctic Warming

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Interesting charts will be a regular feature of this blog. Today’s comes from a recent publication by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), specifically the SWIPA report presented at COP15 in Copenhagen (Dec 2009). There’s a wealth of information there which I will no doubt return to many times in the coming months.

The chart shows the current increase in average surface temperature from a 1951-1980 reference period with respect to latitude. Reading left to right is to travel from the South Pole to the North Pole. The broken blue line represents the 0.7 °C increase in global average temperature.

Arctic_Warming

The deviation in the Arctic is striking, the rate of warming has been more than twice that of the global average. The implications for the Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice and northern permafrost are likely to be equally striking. But why is the Arctic warming so fast?

This Arctic amplification is mainly driven by sea ice. There are three main contributors; ice-albedo feedback, latent heat required to melt ice and the insulating effect of sea ice.

The most well recognised is the ice-albedo feedback. A little warming melts a little polar ice over the Arctic Ocean and land surfaces. Ice has a high albedo, it reflects 60-90% (depending on roughness and snow cover) of incoming solar radiation. As the ice melts, the uncovered land or water has a much lower albedo, reflecting as little as 10% of the incoming energy and absorbing the rest. This increase in absorption amplifies the initial warming effect.

During the Arctic summer the process of melting ice takes approximately half of the absorbed energy without raising temperatures. This energy is the latent heat that must be added to the ice to weaken the molecular bonds but does not raise the temperature. The temperature remains at the melting point. With less ice available to melt, more of the absorbed energy is expressed as temperature increase.

During the winter sea ice acts as an insulator, preventing the relatively warm Arctic Ocean waters releasing energy and warming the atmosphere. Less winter sea ice results in a warmer winter atmosphere.

Regarding the latent heat and ocean water insulation, it seems that surface atmospheric temperatures only tells part of the story. They don’t represent the complete energy picture of the Arctic, just how much energy is in the surface atmosphere.

There may also be other processes relating to ocean heat transport from lower latitudes. Finally the three sea ice processes all cause heating of the lower atmosphere, this is likely to modify prevailing weather systems.

Collapse and Climate

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This is a follow-up to the post on a 2008 CO2 emission peak. We are told that to have a 50/50 chance of limiting the temperature rise to 2 °C, emissions need to peak within 10 years. However it seems they already have, as a result of the global recession.

Just to illustrate how significant the economy is for CO2 emissions consider the collapse of the Soviet Union. This can be thought of as a wholesale economic collapse, not war, famine, plague, natural disaster – economic collapse.

I generated the following chart from here, a rather neat little Google app that compares CO2 emission rates per capita from all the world’s countries. Have a play.

FSU_CO2

Over the space of around five years, the emission rates fell by at least a third and in many cases a half. In no case has recovery from the minima reached the 1990, pre-collapse peak.

If today’s global economy was to undergo a similar wholesale economic collapse, we could expect similar declines in global greenhouse gas emissions. Without doubt, such an economic collapse would be associated with enormous hardship, but it might just be able to deliver a relatively stable climate for coming generations.

Climate change is a long term problem, the ramifications of dangerous climate change are likely to persist for millennia (impacts won’t stop at 2100 like many of the charts do!). Is the catastrophic collapse of today’s civilisation worth the long term protection of the climate?

It’s easy to answer no to that question, catastrophic collapse would be a catastrophe. However consider what has happened in the past. The loss of Egyptian civilisation, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Mayan collapse in 900 AD. All reached great heights but collapsed. Looking back now, we don’t even consider these collapses to be tragedies, we don’t remember the deaths, the human suffering, the loss etc. It’s ‘just history’.

If our current civilisation were to undergo complete economic collapse with all the tragedy, suffering and lost that would entail, what would our distant ancestors 2000 years from now remember? Would it just be another chapter in the history text? If the alternative is a climate change triggered sixth mass extinction event, maybe just making sure there is a history text 2000 years from now is worth the loss of today’s civilisation?

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have Already Peaked

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“If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, then global temperatures could rise by more than 6 °C over this century.”

This familiar projection opened a short article from the Met Office this week, which went on to say that in order to have a 50/50 chance of keeping global temperature rise below 2 °C, emissions should peak within the next 10 years.

The first point could be regarded as a straw man. The phrase “If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates” contains a very large “if” and implies tremendous future fossil fuel extraction rates of approximately three times what they are today. The reserves needed to support such rates simply do not seem to exist. The second point is more interesting though. The concept of peaking emissions is relatively new, I’ve only heard the Met Office and DECC using this expression recently.

The climate change author Mark Lynas recently wrote about the 1.5 °C target more than 100 poorer countries are calling for at Copenhagen this week. Referring to the same Met Office study he reports that in order to have a 50/50 chance of 1.5 °C emissions have to peak around about now.

What everyone seems to be missing, at least I’ve seen no reference to it in the media, is that there is a good chance global CO2 emissions have already peaked. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 in 2009 are likely lower than they were in 2008.

The USA is the 2nd largest emitter of CO2. The US EIA has just announced that 2009 emission are down by 6.1% on last year (EIA link). This driven mainly by a 12% fall in electricity use. Europe has experienced a similar economic downturn, it’s likely our emissions have also decreased proportionately.

Globally 36% of fossil fuel CO2 emissions are from the combustion of oil. According to this week’s publication of the IEA Oil Market Report, 2008 oil extraction was 86.2 million barrels per day but in 2009 this has fallen 1.6% to 84.9 million barrels per day. China, the world’s number one CO2 emitter does buck this trend. Whilst their electricity production was a few percent down during the first half of the year, it has since rebounded and the latest data states a 5.2% increase over the last 11 months from 2008. This isn’t enough to offset the US decline let alone global oil.

Whilst this quick analysis isn’t comprehensive I think it is enough to conclude that 2008 represents at least a local maxima in CO2 emissions. A peak. The peak in emissions we need to have a chance of 1.5 °C and good odds of limiting warming to 2 °C.

Of course this is not the result of pro-action but rather the result of the global recession. It is virtually unanimously assumed that 2010 will bring recovery and with it a pick up in emissions. The nature of this recovery seems critical to me. We’ve already taken the pain, why not take this opportunity to mark 2008 as the peak and ‘recover’ on a new trajectory?

The Wave ~ London

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I was in London on Saturday for The Wave, the annual rally organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition. The message is simple, a demand for action by the UK to prevent global warming exceeding +2C from pre-industrial, a threshold (somewhat arbitrarily) agreed to represent dangerous climate change.

On the one hand the seriousness of the threat can not be exaggerated – life and death for millions if not billions of people, however there still persists a resolute degree of optimism. I am left wondering how far along the current trajectory we are able to travel before any rational thinker abandons optimism? Doctors after all tend not to remain optimistic in the face of terminal diagnosis. There comes a point as a ship starts taking on water when people do run for the lifeboats.

This year’s rally was especially important as it comes just days ahead of the climate change conference in Copenhagen. This was described by the rally organisers as nothing less than the last chance to save the world. Ed Miliband said on the radio today that global emissions have to peak by 2020 before declining. Copenhagen has to deliver a pathway to this or it has failed. Perhaps optimism can be checked against achievements over the next few weeks.

My photos from the event can be seen on Flickr here.

The

Lights Out For Incandescents

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Peak oil may be upon us, but I fear the primary challenge for the UK isn’t oil but rather electricity. With rapid decommission of the aging nuclear fleet and falling extraction rates of indigenous natural gas and coal, our three main sources of electricity (accounting for some 95% of our electricity supply) are all in decline.

For this reason, the country is planning an incredible increase in natural gas and coal imports – with apparently little concern for the effect on the balance of payments or the security of supply. Political debate is also approaching the need for a new nuclear build programme. However I am left thinking that although this shortage is arising from declining supply, the solution lies on the demand side.

This earlier article on Dynamic Demand shows a simple method which adjusts the profile of demand with respect to supply, allowing a far greater degree of intermittency to be tolerated without sacrificing utility. This in turn eases the deployment of renewables, usually criticised for their intermittency compared to traditional energy generation.

Light Bulbs
I have recently moved house and was amazed by the lighting arrangements in the new property. Incandescent bulbs throughout, with multiple spot lights in the kitchen and one other room, and not only that but each bulb had a lampshade hanging below it shadowing the room so that even with 100W bulbs the rooms were dim.

We’ve been using compact fluorescents for about 5 years now, but now I’m thinking enough is enough. Tesco et al need to stop selling 100W incandescent light bulbs for 18 pence each. In fact, the Tesco price isn’t the issue; I believe government should legislate against the manufacture, import and sale of incandescent bulbs. There is just no justification for incandescent bulbs and every reason for us to reduce our electricity consumption. The incandescent light bulb is as old as domestic electricity itself, its invention credited to Thomas Alva Edison in 1879, and remains little changed to this day. I think it’s time to bid farewell to this invention, celebrating the profound impact it has had on civilisation whilst at the same time recognising its inefficiency and therefore unsuitability for an energy scarce future.

At a personal level each 100W bulb used for an average of four hours a day will use 146kWh a year, costing £10.22 (at a typical 7 pence per kWh). Compare this to the 20W equivalent compact florescent which only uses 29.2kWh costing just £2.04 over the year, a saving of £8.18 per bulb. Say the average household has five bulbs with that kind of duty cycle and we’re looking at an annual saving of £40.88 on the electricity bill.

Some common misconceptions about modem compact fluorescents are covered here:

Do they flicker when you turn them on?
Yes, they do, but unlike early energy saver lamps a few years ago, the latest designs generally include electronic rapid start circuitry to make the lamp light in less than 1 second with virtually no flickering.
Don’t they give a rather harsh light?
Some older designs had quite a high “colour temperature” (see glossary) which may be perceived as “colder” but many energy saving lamps now use a “warm white” coating to make the light very similar to a normal incandescent bulb.
Do they take time to “warm up”?
The latest compact fluorescent lamps “warm up” very much faster than older designs, typically reaching 95% of their full light output in under a minute.
They are always too long and stick out above my lampshade!
Again, with the latest designs, this need not happen. Many compact fluorescents are now so small that they are virtually the same size, or even smaller, than ordinary bulbs. If the bulb is visible, you can choose from one of the designs that uses a decorative outer bulb to cover the fluorescent tubes.
Lightbulbs Direct

Compact fluorescents do cost more, typically a minimum of £3-5 compared with incandescents at 40 pence (I can only assume the 18 pence Tesco bulbs are a loss leader, similar to the £1.49 Ikea compact fluorescents, so won’t use those figures), however since compact fluorescents last 5 to 10 times longer than incandescent this unit cost differential is negligible.

At the national level, each of the 22 million homes saving 585kWh a year would save 12.9 Terawatt hours. For reference, a large nuclear power station generates approximately 8.8 Terawatt hours a year. So just the single, simple, modest action of replacing the incandescent light bulbs in domestic homes (which could be phased in over several years as incandescent bulbs need to be replaced) would reduce our electricity demand by one and a half nuclear power stations worth.

If government were to ban incandescents in a similar way as lead pipes and asbestos are already banned, then the average household would save around £40 a year and the nation would save the construction, operation and decommission of one and a half nuclear power stations (or equivalent gas/coal imports). Other benefits might include reduced number of household fires started by hot lamps or faulty wiring (less current being drawn through the lighting circuit), fewer people falling off chairs or electrocuting themselves changing bulbs (since the number of changes would be reduced by 80-90%), and less raw materials and landfill needed for construction and disposal of incandescents.

Any absolute ban like this would also remove incandescents from business and industry providing further energy and financial saving on top of those discussed for domestic users.

Intermittency of Renewable Energy

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One of the common complaints levelled against the deployment of renewable energy like wind and solar on the national grid is that of intermittency. What good is a source of energy if you can’t rely on it to be there when you need it? Intermittency is managed today by ensuring that intermittent sources only provide a tiny fraction of the total supply or by keeping reserve generation capacity ticking over in the background ready to step in on short notice as the wind drops.

This situation isn’t ideal and isn’t necessary. Today you and I sitting at home in front of our grid-connected computers expect the moon on a stick, we expect to be able to use any and all of our electrical appliances for as long as and whenever we want. This grade of service is difficult to maintain and will become impossible as we decommission our ageing nuclear fleet and burn through the last of our indigenous North Sea gas. In the future we will be left reliant on more intermittent sources of energy leaving us with the challenge of maintaining our comfort and utility from this new source of energy.

We must adjust our energy consumption is such a way that we don’t all, up and down the country, make demands on the grid at the same time or when the wind isn’t blowing.

My first (and totally impractical but I mention it here to illustrate the point) idea of how this could be accomplished involves having two circuits in the home, a red circuit and a green circuit. The electricity to each circuit would be metered separately and charged at different rates, for example the ‘red electricity’ might be 10 pence per kWh and ‘green electricity’ might be only 2 pence per kWh. The difference between the two would be reliability. The red circuit would be virtually 100% reliable, into this circuit you would plug the freezer, fridge, some lighting, central heating pumps etc. The important appliances. The green circuit would be less reliable, it might regularly cut out at times of peak load, advert breaks in Coronation Street, unusually cold weather or when the wind wasn’t blowing. The important point here is that really important appliances wouldn’t be lost when there wasn’t enough power. A power cut on the green circuit wouldn’t really matter that much, we would be more tolerant of the intermittent supply than we are now where a power cut means lights out, game over.

Of course no one actually wants two circuits in the house and just having two circuits doesn’t provide a very smooth response. What we really need is for demand to automatically shape itself to match instantaneous supply and we want this to happen without us even noticing. Not possible? Well maybe it is. This is where Dynamic Demand and appliances that can continuously monitor the condition of the grid and adjust their usage accordingly come in.

To quote straight from their site:

Dynamic Demand aims to promote the introduction of “dynamic demand control” technologies on the UK power grid by advocating institutional change and stimulating research and discussion.
Demand control technologies could provide significant stability and peak demand management for the electricity network. This could lead to significant carbon dioxide savings and may help facilitate the connection of greater amounts of intermittent renewable energy generation, such as solar and wind power.

This is a snapshot of a meter monitoring the power balance of the UK electricity grid (click the meter to see the live status of the grid).

The meter shows the grid’s “frequency”, which is related to the speed of rotation of generators all over the country. When there is too little power available, the whole grid “slows down” and the needle moves to the left.

This can be measured from any power socket by any electrical appliance; the appliance would know the instantaneous imbalance on the grid. These dynamic demand appliances would react to this information, switching on and off or just adjusting their consumption with respect to how much power was available.

Millions of such devices acting together would act like a huge, fast-reacting back-up system mitigating the problem of intermittency.

What is happening?
There is Early Day Motion 388 tabled by Colin Challen MP and the “Management of Energy in Buildings” Bill which introduces dynamic demand is being introduced by Alan Whitehead MP.

There is information on how you can ask your MP to support Dynamic Demand here.

Dynamic Demand looks to me to as a fantastic way to address the inevitable problems facing our electricity supply and the enabling technology for greater use of renewable intermittent energy sources whilst avoiding the threat of complete blackouts at peak load. Maybe at peak load your Dynamic Demand electrical shower, oven or hair dryer wouldn’t work but losing the utility of a few devices like that for a short while is far better than the alternative of widespread blackouts.

Peak Oil Day 2005: Peak Speak

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PowerSwitch held a peak oil conference on the 16th of July at the BedZed zero emission urban development in Hackbridge, London. PowerSwitch was established in Autumn 2004 with the intention of raising awareness and discussion in the UK of the consequences of global oil depletion following the imminent peak in global oil production, and how to deal with it -especially within a context of global warming and sustainability. The conference, titled Peak Speak, provided a platform to discuss the causes, consequences, and mitigation of the peak and decline in global oil production, and action that can be taken. Attended by approximately 50 people with seven speakers the event was well received with vibrant discussion after every speaker. The event opened with James Howard of Powerswitch introducing Powerswitch and the conference, setting the tone for day.

The new documentary Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature had it’s first public screening, inevitably compared to the familiar End of Suburbia the new film is shorter at just 30 minutes but covers the material well featuring Colin Campbell, Matthew Simmons and Chris Skrebowski amongst others. The DVD can be purchased from PowerSwitch here: http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/order.htm

Areas covered by the main speakers were:

Norman Church – Systems and Interdependencies
Norman highlighted how all the major systems of society are interdependent of one another highlighting the three core systems of power, banking/ finance, and telecommunications. The 2000 fuel protests and their effects were described in detail offering a glimpse of how fragile the system is today. Norman ended with a fantastic analogy comparing a big ship and lifeboats with our current civilisation and off-grid self sufficiency. Even a big ship in trouble is far better than a lifeboat on the high seas, taking to the lifeboats should be the last resort, though when trouble looms it would be wise to be prepared. Man the life boats, learn how to row, prepare to leave the big ship but don’t leave prematurely only to see the big ship sail over the horizon without you.

Tully Wakeman – Oil & World Agriculture
Tully Wakeman of East Anglia Food Link spoke on the impact of peak oil on the world’s food system. Our food system is currently highly energy-intensive, using around 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce, process, distribute and prepare each 1 calorie of food. Clearly in a post-fossil world food needs to provide more energy than it consumes. Energy is used approximately 1/4 in production, 1/2 in distribution and processing, and 1/4 in the home. The good news is that it will be fairly easy radically to reduce the energy consumed by moving to local, low-input, seasonal, unprocessed food. The more difficult questions concern the world’s ability to feed its current population without oil, and at a time when a number of other ecological constraints are beginning to make themselves known (climate change, depleted freshwater supplies, depleted soils etc). On balance Tully was optimistic that much of the world could adapt through a combination of market pressures and government intervention (eg rationing), although there would inevitably be ructions and there would also be particular parts of the world which would really suffer. But the changes will be major, and in particular imply a shift of the population towards rural areas (to reduce food transport but also to facilitate nutrient recycling) and also into farming (achieving high productivity without chemicals is labour-intensive).

David Fleming – Nuclear Power / DTQs
David covered two topics, nuclear power was considered from a waste management and uranium supply point of view. Clear arguments were presented that our current application of nuclear power is unsustainable since the waste is currently filed in the ‘too difficult pile’, not dealt with at all and that there isn’t enough uranium in sufficient quantities to be mined anyway. There are many reasons why a world facing peak oil shouldn’t turn to nuclear but the key point was lack of uranium trumps them all.

David also presented Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs), a scheme for rationing, and rapidly reducing, the use of fossil fuels, by sharing out access to fuel among every individual and organisation in the economy. They are intended as an effective, efficient and equitable means of reducing carbon emissions in the context of climate change and fuel rationing in the likely event of deepening scarcities in the supply of oil and gas (the oil peak).

The scheme is designed to be equally suited to both these purposes, providing ways of regulating demand for fuel both for climate reasons, and fuel supply reasons, as required. It includes all participants – consumers, industry, Government departments – within a single market, to which they all have access and on which they can buy and sell carbon units within a single Carbon Budget. The Budget is a guarantee that targets requiring the political economy as a whole to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels will actually be achieved. Further information is available on David’s DTQ website: www.dtqs.org.

Chris Vernon – Britain’s Energy Future
PDF of slides
I presented the UK energy mix, concentrating on electricity supply. The UK’s ageing nuclear fleet currently providing 23% of electricity is soon to be decommissioned and the 38% provided by North Sea gas is in jeopardy due to rapid indigenous depletion. The balance currently made up from coal faces CO2, SO2 and NOx emission limits requiring very large capital expense to clean the current infrastructure or a switch to expensive, scarce, foreign very low sulphur coal. One point of note is that the existing nuclear plants are built on the coast, many only just above sea level. Decommission is projected to take 200 years before 100% clean, pessimistic sea level rise could see many of these old reactors under water before fully decommissioned!

Rosamund McDougall – Optimum Population
Rosamund McDougall of Optimum Population Trust (OPT) spoke of the need to reduce human population size suggesting it will be unable to sustain current population levels to the end of the century let alone support the projected increase in light of fossil fuel, fresh water, top soil and other resources become scarce. It seems obvious that populations can not continue to increase indefinitely yet still the government hasn’t defined it’s position on population rise. OPT aims to research and raise awareness of over population whilst opposing the views that perpetual population growth is a good thing and that an ageing population does not call for mass immigration or increased birth rate.

Julian Jackson – Local Currency
Complete transcript
Julian suggested that peak oil could be accompanied by a collapse or at least personal unavailability of government backed currency systems. However in this event the requirement to exchange products and services with your local neighbourhood will still exist. A local currency allows local trading in a far more flexible way than bartering. Julian recommended Short Circuit by Richard Douthwaite (free).

Clive Smith – Personal Preparations
Clive presented some very sound advice on personal preparations. One of the key points being that many items that are readily available now may be scarce or very expensive in the future. It makes sense to stock up on such items now and it’s important to try and convince friends, family and neighbours to do like wise unless you are able to stock up enough to share for when they come knocking on your door.

Material from all presentations will be available at www.powerswitch.org.uk shortly.

Peak Oil: Two Approaches, One Answer

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There are two distinct ways to think about and present the phenomenon of peak oil. It’s easy to describe what peak oil actually is, it’s the global peak in extraction rate of petroleum. It could be specified as the peak rate in million barrels per day or the date on which this peak extraction rate will occur. The difficulty of course is determining the date and associated extraction rate of peak oil. This is where I see the two camps.

Firstly we have the school of Hubbert, including Colin Campbell of ASPO – the geologists. Their methodology dates back to Hubbert’s 1956 paper titled Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels in which he famously and correctly I might add, calculated peak oil for the lower 48 states of the United States as 1970. Even in 1970 he was still ridiculed with people pointing out with glee that the US oil industry had never been more productive. The irony is that whilst they were correct, what the critics didn’t realise is that the US would never again be as productive as in 1970.

Today US extraction rates are less than half what they were in 1970. The way Hubbert (and others after him) calculated peak oil is based on two key points, an estimate of ultimate recoverable reserves (URR) and that the profile of the extraction rate curve is the derivative of the logistic curve and follows the well known bell-shaped curve, the area under the curve representing the URR. These two points and historic extraction data allows the complete curve to be calculated complete with date and extraction rate at peak.

This theory is sound and has been proven in many provinces which are now most definitely past their peak and in decline, including America, Norway, Venezuela, UK, Indonesia etc. All that remains is to calculate the peak for the world. The only point of contention regarding the Hubbert analysis is what the global URR will turn out to be, make an assessment of global URR and the date of global peak oil is just a quick calculation away. This is the methodology behind Colin Campbell’s work from which he is today predicting global peak oil in 2007.

Secondly we have Chris Skrebowski editor of Petroleum Review and his work on oil mega projects – the analyst. Skrebowski also predicts peak oil but doesn’t look at global URR, doesn’t worry about the vagaries of OPEC reserve reporting or make predictions about likely future discoveries, all points on which Campbell’s approach can be challenged. Skrebowski looks at the production profiles of fields today, those in decline, those in ascension and those holding steady. This data is clear. We know the depletion rate of the already peaked provinces mentioned above so we know that if we don’t build any new supply capacity global extraction rates will decline, they would have been declining for decades. Fortunately, in the past natural declining production in existing fields has been more than compensated for by new projects, net production has increased. Where Skrebowski sees a problem is looking forward over the next five years.

Looking out to the end of the decade we know how much of today’s production we are going to lose each year to natural, already occurring depletion. We also know how much new capacity is coming on line, the new oil projects. These new projects are no secret, the oil companies boast about them, letting the world know how much they are investing, when and how much oil the project will extract. Since it takes more than five years between discovery of an oil field or even the decision to develop an already discovered field and the field going into production we can be sure of all new production coming to market until the end of the decade, the die is cast. If it hasn’t started yet it won’t deliver this decade.

Here’s the problem, adding planned new production to depletion rates of existing fields doesn’t add up for long. According to Skrebowski new production isn’t adequate to offset the depletion we already know about and projected increases in demand past 2007/08. This prediction is also on the optimistic side, it assumes everything goes to plan, the uncertainty in this calculation is all on the negative side. Projects can slip but never deliver before schedule, project output can disappoint but never exceed expectation, existing provinces can unexpectedly enter decline but already declining provinces never unexpectedly halt their decline, wars and civil unrest could occur.

2007/08 is a familiar year. These two completely different approaches of Campbell and Skrebowski produce the same prediction for global peak oil. I think they’re on to something.

BBC Reporting Irresponsibly Negligent

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Whilst in Dublin at the Feasta Conference I was able to keep up with news over the Internet. The BBC News front page had a three interesting stories on Friday 24th June 2005.

Firstly Oil price hits $60 for second day which reported on the second consecutive day of >$60 oil. The reasons were given as: demand not slackening off despite an almost 40% increase in the price of crude oil since the start of 2005, OPEC already saying it’s doing all it can to meet demand and cool price growth, China importing 8.2% more oil than last year, threats of disruption in Nigeria, and the spectre of a looming strike by oil workers in Norway. Whilst all these points are probably true and the article probably had a world limit, the lack of asking why supply was having difficulty meeting demand or mentioning the rapid decline in some provinces is disappointing.

The second front page story of the day was BA ups fuel surcharge on tickets reporting that from 27 June, BA will increase the fuel surcharge on each long-haul return ticket to £48 ($87) from £32. The short haul surcharge will go up to £16 from £10. The increase was explained by continuing rise in global oil prices… but no mention or questioning as to why global oil prices were rising.

The third story and the one that made me write this article was titled British Gas mulls 15% price rise. It is the news that British Gas are warning of a 15% increase in gas prices this year (on top of the 5.9% in January and 12.4% in September rises last year). I’m sure you’ll agree these are significant rises so one would expect a crack team of BBC investigative journalists would find out what’s behind these incredible rises. It turns out that our gas bills are rising since “wholesale gas prices were now expected to be 51% higher than a year ago.” That’s it. Case closed. I say the BBC are being negligent in not finding out and reporting why wholesale prices are rising 51%. I think it has something to do with UK North Sea gas extraction rates falling 13.5% in a year but what do I know?

One other point I’d like to make is that the BBC carried Adam Porter’s excellent report ‘Peak oil’ enters mainstream debate a couple of weeks ago. None of the three BBC articles on Friday even had a sidebar link to the report, they all deserved one.

I believe the BBC are making positive editorial decisions not to mention peak oil in regular news stories. Why, I do not know. Until we have a media that is at least willing to ask why what we are seeing is actually happening we can not hope for any proactive action to be taken.

Mainstream Peak Oil Film: The Deal

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Today I heard about a new film that was released in the States on the 17th June 2005. It sounded like a run of the mill corporate, political, espionage affair but it was about oil and there aren’t very many mainstream films about oil so I thought I’d investigate a little further.

The film is called The Deal with the strap line To The Victor Goes The Oil.

One point of note is that the film was written by a former vice president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. in collaboration with the former head of the Goldman Sachs Oil and Gas department. Again we are hearing from the old timers, okay I don’t know how old they are but it sounds like they are no longer in those high profile roles. Maybe through this film they are able to offer a glimpse into what really goes on behind the scenes of these major organisations.

The official blurb goes like this:

In the near future, as war rages in the Middle East and U.S. gas prices top six dollars a gallon, ambitious investment banker Tom Hanson (Christian Slater) finds himself at the center of a $20 billion takeover bid for a Russian oil company. It’s a deal some people would kill for – literally, as it turns out. As Tom and an idealistic young associate (Selma Blair) each separately uncover the truth about the transaction, they soon realize that there’s far more at stake than money and fossil fuel.

Things got interesting however when I clicked the After The Show link. Here they suggest that watching the film is only the start, things get interesting after the lights go up. The websites lists around a dozen questions to ask one another such these:

Who do you think is closer to telling the truth about our energy situation-the government or a film like this?
Do you believe that we are on the brink of an oil crisis?
How should we balance environmental concerns with economic ones?

There are also a list of facts presented such as:

Oil production is already falling in 33 of the world’s 48 largest oil producing countries, including 6 of the 11 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
World demand for oil will likely exceed world supply of oil by 2010 (The Futurist, World Oil)
Drilling in Alaska would produce no oil for 10 years and will ultimately produce only 6 months worth of US oil consumption in total (US Geological Survey). It represents only 0.3% of the world’s oil supply, and will ultimately reduce our dependence on foreign oil by only 1-5%.

Their true colours really shine through with their book (how many film websites have book lists!) and website lists including:

Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy – Matthew R. Simmons
High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis – Julian Darley
The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World – Paul Roberts

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
www.energybulletin.net
and even www.peakoil.com!

I haven’t seen the film yet, I don’t know if it’s any good. But it looks like we have a mainstream film, playing in hundreds if not thousands of theatres, based on peak oil. It scares me sometimes just how fast peak oil awareness is growing.