[Biofuel] Why Palast Is Wrong
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2297/Why_Palast_Is_Wrong Why Palast Is Wrong Tue, 23 May 2006 12:28:39 -0500 By Greg Palast And why the oil companies don't want you to know it Now that I've convinced you that the Peak Oil crowd is crackers, let me disagree with myself. We can't understand the new class war unless we understand why oil, a certain kind at least, has in fact peaked. We've long jumped over Hubbert's predicted peak and, in 2006, rolled our SUVs right through the culmination- that is, used the last drops of the one-and-a-quarter-trillion barrels of liquid crude the good Earth can provide according to the Hubbert jeremiad. Furthermore, The rise in the production of power from nuclear energy for the United States ran out long before uranium's five-thousand-year reign, despite Hubbert's hope and prediction. Except for a couple of unhappy decades' experimental folly with reactors for peace, nuclear power is pretty much an irradiated corpse. The Shell/Hubbert predictions were dead wrong. Those are the facts. But Hubbert was also deadly right. We are indeed running out of oil. There's no contradiction here. We have to distinguish between an economist's concept of running out and a scientist's. To an economist, every commodity is finite. We are running out of oil and we are running out of copper, aluminum foil, birdbaths, pickles, lumber, clean air, Frappucinos, chocolate, tongue rings, lollipops, silver, cow-shaped milk dispensers, Dylan retrospectives and sand. That is why economics is called the dismal science. Limits and scarcity are economists' bread and butter. There's a limited supply of every commodity. (And that is why love is not a commodity, as John Lennon noted, because the more you consume, the more you create.) On the other hand, unlike geologists and evangelical ministers, economists believe all commodities can be created as needed. There is an unlimited abundance of anything-oil, copper, hemorrhoid ointment, nose jobs or pornographic balloons. We can even manufacture real estate. (Think of the creation of Holland by landfill or the artificial habitation known as Los Angeles created by draining most of the Colorado River into the desert.) The number one theorem of economics is that we are running out of everything and yet we can have as much as we want of anything. Again, there's no contradiction. All commodities are scarce and abundant at the same time. The difference between scarcity and abundance is price. You can get anything, in any amount, if you are willing to pay any price. (See Los Angeles, above.) Back to Hubbert. His report was used in the cynical Shell Oil game to scare us into Middle Eastern conflicts, drilling tax subsidies and nuclear power. On its face, it was stone cold manipulative nonsense, measurably so. But we are running out of a certain kind of oil nevertheless: cheap oil. That is, we are coming to the end of the stuff we can pump at a low cost, the easy oil that practically jumps out of the ground. When we bring price into the equation, Hubbert was correct-technically. Oil production did peak in the 1970s-for a certain type of oil. Re-read Hubbert. When he wrote his analysis, oil was selling below $3 a barrel, just over $20 in today's dollars, and falling. Therefore, as prices declined further, we'd run out. We did. We've pretty much run out of new oil fields we can lift for $20 a barrel. Even the cheapest untapped fields in the world-not coincidentally in Iraq-will cost more than the Hubbert price to suck up and pipe out. At low prices, there's not much oil. As prices rise, so does supply. It's not magic. At $30 a barrel, Oklahoma stripper wells are worth reopening, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico becomes profitable in 3,000 feet of water, Kazakhstan's crude is worth piping out even with the high cost of transportation and bribes. To simplify: World oil reserves, officially measured at 1.189 trillion barrels, are probably, as one of Mr. Hubbert's protégés stated a few years back, grossly overstated-if you assume oil selling at $10 a barrel. But kick the price up to a post-invasion $50 a barrel, and the world reserves are wildly understated. Reserves are the measure of oil recoverable at a certain price. Raise the price, raise the reserve. Cut the price and the amount of oil in the ground drops. In other words, it's a fool's errand to measure the amount of oil we have left. It depends on the price. At $9 a barrel (the price in 1998), we've peaked. It's over. All gone. But at $70 a barrel (reached in the third year of the Iraq occupation), miracles happen. Oil gushes forth like manna. How much more? If you are willing to pay $70 a barrel-and apparently you are-it's worth it to melt sand and drain out the petroleum. Indeed, the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, hold 280 billion barrels of oil-for enough high octane to run our Humvees for a century. Canada's tar oil reserves are, notably, about 15%
[Biofuel] No Peaking: The Hubbert Humbug
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2295/No_Peaking_The_Hubbert_Humbug No Peaking: The Hubbert Humbug Tue, 23 May 2006 07:23:33 -0500 By Greg Palast What if everything you thought you knew about Peak Oil was wrong? Editor's note: This article is the first part in a two part series and should be read in conjunction with this article: Why Palast is Wrong. Saddam had to go, we really should take a look at the theory that we went into Iraq to get its oil. A ride up Hubbert's Peak will allow a clearer view of the real topic of this chapter: the geo-politics of petroleum. On March 7, 1956, geologist M. King Hubbert presented a research paper that would, a half century later, become the New Gospel of Internet Economics, the Missing Link that would Explain It All from the September 11 attack to the invasion of Iraq. In his 1956 paper, Hubbert wrote: On the basis of the present estimates of the ultimate reserves of world petroleum and natural gas, it appears that the culmination of world production of these products should occur within a half a century [i.e., by 2006]. So get in your Hummer and take your last drive, Clive. Sometime during 2006, we will have used up every last drop of crude oil on the planet. We're not talking decline in oil from a production peak, we're talking culmination, completely gone, kaput, dead out of crude-and not enough natural gas left to roast a weenie. In his 1956 treatise, Hubbert wrote that Planet Earth could produce not a drop more than one and a quarter trillion barrels of crude. We obtain a figure of about 1,250 billion barrels for the ultimate potential reserves of crude oil of the whole world. That's the entire supply of crude that stingy Mother Nature bequeathed for human use from Adam to the end of civilization. Indeed, our oil-lusting world will have consumed, by the end of 2006, about 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. Therefore, by Hubbert's calculation, we're finished; maybe in the very week you read this book we'll suck the planet dry. Then, as Porky Pig says, That's all, folks! But the pig ain't sung yet. Planes still fly, lovers still cry and smog-o-saurus SUVs still choke the LA freeway. Why aren't our gas tanks dry? Hubbert insisted Arabia could produce no more than 375 billion barrels of oil. Yet, Middle Eastern oil reserves remaining today total 734 billion barrels. And those are proven reserves-known and measured, not including the possibility of a single new oil strike or field extension. Worldwide, ready-to-go reserves total 1.189 trillion barrels-and that excludes the world's two biggest untapped fields, which could easily double the world reserve. (One is in Iraq, the other we get to in Chapter 4 of our new book Armed Madhouse: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Class War) In all fairness to the Hubbert Heads, there's a more sophisticated, updated version of Hubbert's theory. This is where the peak concept comes in. In this version of the Hubbert scripture, we ignore his dead wrong prediction of total crude available and look only at the up and down shape of his curve, the peak. The amount of oil discovered each year, Hubbert posited, will stop rising by 2000, then will crash rapidly toward zero when we will have used up our allotted 1.25 trillion barrels. We haven't crashed or even peaked. Oil production has risen year after year after year and discoveries have more than kept pace. Nevertheless, like believers undaunted by the failure of alien spaceships to take them to Mars on the date predicted, Peak enthusiasts keep moving the date of the oil apocalypse further into the future. In the new, revisionist models of Hubbert's prediction, the high point in the curve of discoverable oil on our planet will come in a decade or so. Though we have a reprieve, goes the new theory, still, we're running out of crude, dude! There's only another twenty years left in proven reserves! Oh, my! It's true that there's only twenty years' supply left-and that's been true for the last hundred years, Lewis Lapham told me over a decent sauterne at Five Points. (He more often sups at Elaine's, but I don't rate that.) Lapham of Harper's magazine is the only editor in the hemisphere with hard knowledge of the petroleum market, insight he inherited legitimately: His family helped found Mobil Oil, the back half of what is now Exxon Mobil. He asked, Why in the world would oil companies, or any company, announce that there's lots of its product out there? You'd bust your own market. It's better to say the cupboard's bare. As Lapham noted, we have been running out of oil since the days we drained it from whales. OPEC's big headache before the war shut down Iraq's fields was that there was way too much oil. We were swimming in it and oil prices stayed low. The last thing oil companies want is more oil from Iraq, any more than soybean farmers want more soybeans from Iraq. Increasing supply means decreasing price. This war
Re: [Biofuel] Confessions of an 'ex' Peak Oil believer
Hello David Keith, I'm confused as to the relevance of abiotic over biotic sources of oil. Given that Hubbert predicted the decline of US fields, I think his approach may be relevant for any given field, whether abiotic or biotic. Even if the source were to be abiotic, I think the problem is resource depletion. Did Hubbert predict that? There seems to be some confusion over quite what he predicted. Given our timescales, I would say that arguing over the where oil comes from is a moot point as fields tend to show similar output curves. Reserve growth or replenishment doesn't appear to have any solid foundation in history (although I'd be glad to be proven wrong). If oil is abiotic, it has still had many millions of years to form. At our current rate of usage, I don't think easily accessible fields will just renew themselves. Did you read the material by Kenney that I linked, or are you referring to Gold's work? In dismissing abiotic oil the Peak Oil crowd devote much attention to replenishment, Heinberg talks of it a lot for instance, but Kenney doesn't say much about replenishment. One of his papers says this: The potential that certain of the petroleum fields presently producing may be drawing pressured hydrocarbons from an open and active fault or conduit from the mantle, and therefore, may never be depleted,§ has been entirely neglected, as has the potential to develop non-depleting fields by deep drilling.(Mahfoud and Beck 1995) But it's not the main plank of abiotic oil science. Reserve growth continues to happen nonetheless, replenishment or not, while Peak Oil proponents keep rolling back the dread date. I guess the only difference would be that there may be sources elsewhere where the western geologists haven't looked, due to their assumptions over where the deposits may lie. This doesn't seem to change the theory of peak oil (for a given field) for me. Maybe you should have another look at Kenney's papers? This is probably the one to start with, lots more elsewhere at the site: http://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm Refutation of predictions of petroleum exhaustion. Considerations about recent predictions of impending shortages of petroleum evaluated from the perspective of modern petroleum science. J. F. Kenney http://www.gasresources.net/ It's true that there are some elements in the peak oil crowd who have a dieoff agenda. But these are not in the majority, even if they are vociferous. I don't think that believing that oil will follow a traditional hubbert curve is necessarily either a scam from the oil companies or a reason to dribble over forced population reduction. It can also help individuals to decide for themselves that a more local and appropriate use of resources is the only way forward. Believe me, there are many who frequent the peak oil forums who have come to this conclusion. But for the right reasons? Or doesn't it matter if the reasons turn out to be wrong? I think it does matter. Anyway, the many urgent reasons for cutting consumption stand on their own without the need for the crutch of Peak Oil scarcity scares that we're going to run out anyway. The genuine scares about what will happen if we don't cut consumption are clear enough and real enough on their own, it doesn't need a crutch, especially not such a flimsy crutch as Peak Oil and its supporters appear to be. I think you understate the dieoff factor among the peak oil groups. Just the Google figures I posted demonstrate that, some reading quickly confirms it. It's endemic to them. Google finds 4,460 results from www.theoildrum.com for population, 541 results for overpopulation, 189 for population control, 166 for population reduction. It found 26,000 results from www.peakoil.com for population, 1,100 for population control, 76 for population reduction. You get similar results with any Peak Oil site. Most of their leading lights seem to be would-be depopulators. If it's true that the majority don't agree, as you claim, then it's a very quiet disagreement, they seldom seem to say so, seldom challenge it, you don't see many arguments there about it, if any. For fear of being shouted down? That wouldn't say much for it, would it? That's the polarised true-believer response that's so evident there. Not to be trusted, IMHO. Best Keith I'll leave it at that for now. Best Regards, David ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Confessions of an 'ex' Peak Oil believer
Hi Robert Thanks, nice read as usual. Only got time for this right now, more later I hope... Why do these discussions so often boil down to money? Because it's jolly nice stuff and the root of all evil? :-) There was a pop singer in Hong Kong named Money Cheng. She said in an interview that her father wanted to name her after something everybody loved, so... (But that's just Hong Kong, or part of it.) Anyway, good question: why does oil cost four times as much as it did five years ago? (Answer in no more than 35 words, who, what, where, when, why and how, thankyou.) Who: the big oil companies. What: using crisis and the fear of scarcity to drive up prices. Where: all over the planet. When: nearly as long as I can remember. Why: to make a LOT of money! How: by virtue of integration, monopoly and manipulation. Ok, that's 39, but I could cut a word or two out, somewhere . . . Where and when don't really count, when is already in the question and it's global. So you made it, well done! 5-1/2 out of 6 - you lose half a point on the why, on the grounds that nobody's perfect. :-) (And they like lots of control just as much as they like lots of money.) Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Hi Robert (abiotic oil) Very good point. I agree, it should be both/and rather than either/or, and probably is. But I think you put your scepticism in the wrong place. I think the arguments over Thomas Gold's views of abiotic oil are a distraction, abiotic oil science (and practice) is something you find in Russia and the Ukraine. If you focus on that, then it seems clear that the either/or position comes from the other side, the Peak Oil crowd, and it seems to include a lot of denial. I suppose we should know what to expect from people who polarise issues and go into denial. Maybe you should put it to Richard Heinberg or Michael Ruppert. Well, if you're prepared to risk being polarised at and denied, that is. Hardly worth it, IMHO. Like this, eg: http://energybulletin.net/17914.html Published on 6 Jul 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 6 Jul 2006. An Open Letter to Greg Palast by Richard Heinberg Ho-hum. What a tiresome niggle. (True-believers will like it though.) The article on Russian research you posted was very interesting! Thank you. The abiotic folk ALSO insist that there is no validity to the biological origin of oil. It doesn't really matter, though, because the problem is profligate energy use, rather than the condition of the resource. A.k.a. EROEI, energy returned on energy invested. Does it necessarily become a losing proposition? Quite a few studies show a negative EROEI for petroleum, which doesn't seem to stop anything much (yet): 1.2007 MJ of primary energy is used to make 1 MJ of petroleum diesel fuel. This corresponds to a life cycle energy efficiency of 83.28%. An Overview of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel Life Cycles, Sheehan, Camobreco, Duffield, Graboski, Shapouri, National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, Midwest Research Institute, May 1998. 655kb Acrobat file: http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/reportsdatabase/reports/gen/19980501-gen-203.pdf Units of energy produced for 1 unit of energy consumed: Petroleum 0.88 units produced -- USDA The Minnesota Department of Agriculture says it's 0.805 for gasoline and 0.843 for diesel. Oh great! Another cherished idea heads into the garbage heap . . . I'm left with the idea that the entire system we have exists ONLY for the purpose of generating staggering wealth from the world's resources. It's all short-term thinking without a human soul. Last night we had some guests over for dinner. This couple is in their 70's, and we talked at length about their lives as children. Both of them grew up on farms in Saskatchewan during the Great Depression, with no electricity, no running water, in an era where hard labor and diligence didn't NECESSARILY guarantee survival. The old man scoffed at the economic model of current society, saying something to the effect of: We don't need all this stuff! We got by on a LOT less than this, and we were happy! What saddens me, however, is that people with an active memory of this different era and lifestyle are now dying off--leaving people like me who have NO CLUE how to survive without all this stuff behind. Interestingly, though . . . My eldest son has noticed that our garden is taking a lot LESS work than it used to in order to stay productive. Maybe the whole concept of living lightly on the land isn't as difficult as we often believe is the case. Regarding BC's carbon tax, I'm sure what you say is true, and probably to be expected at this stage. But I wasn't really talking about carbon taxes so much as carbon costs, and used BC's carbon tax story as a happening-now example. I said it was the thin end of the wedge, so look towards the thick end, not at the shortcomings of
Re: [Biofuel] Confessions of an 'ex' Peak Oil believer
Hi Chandan Very nice, some real cost accounting. It seems the argument went from We're running out of oil to We're running out of cheap oil, but if cheap has anything to do with real costs then there's no such thing as cheap oil, and there probably never was. So are the real costs coming home to roost? Hm. I don't think ExxonMobil's recent all-time record profits quite reflect that. system on the planet unsustainable. Therefore, consumption needs to come down at once. This requires awareness and conscious change of personal habits and behavior. Only humans (not all, alas, but some) are capable of awareness of this degree, the rest will need social/govt policy interventions to comply. I don't think that's how social change happens, by intervention. Society as a whole appears to be capable of making that kind of change of personal habits and behaviour without most people having thought it out first or even made a commitment, it just happens. Toynbee has much to say about this in his discussion of what he calls the creative minority - who aren't necessarily the people who'd been championing the cause before the change took place, and might not even know they had anything to do with it. It's very difficult to see such changes happening or to find the direct cause, usually all you ever see is the results rippling outwards. A general environmental awareness somehow arose in 1987, previously confined mainly to left-wing nutters with long hair and sandals, or so the mainstream said, but by the end of the year everybody was thinking in those terms - whether they agreed or not, it was on the agenda, to stay. The PR industry found themselves with a major new growth sector, industrial greenwashing. If you try to find a cause, you don't get much further than a speech to the Royal Society that year by Maggie Thatcher, of all people (which she later regretted making). Similarly, the very rapidly growing locavore movement was just part of the lunatic fringe at the beginning of 2005, but by the end of the year it was a movement, and I'm sure it's here to stay too. Patient people had been laying the foundations for that to happen for decades. And so on. Currently there are a lot of apparently unrelated little signs lying about all over the place that people might not be as addicted to the modern consumer lifestyle as they appear to be, but it's very hard to say if it will suddenly coagulate into a forceful movement capable of making the crucial changes required, and do it before it's too late. There's hope. Capital (or a capital driven business machine) is fundamentally incapable of this degree of awareness, therefore it is a waste of time to work that part out with them. Yes, absolute waste of time. Engdahl says in the article that started this thread: The 2003 arrest of Russian Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, took place just before he could sell a dominant stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil after Khodorkovsky had a private meeting with Dick Cheney. Had Exxon got the stake they would have got control of the world's largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the a-biotic techniques of deep drilling. Other sources also talk of Khodorkovsky meeting with Dick Cheney, but I can't track the ExxonMobil connection any further than Engdahl (that's what's so annoying about him!). Engdahl discusses it in several other articles too. It's generally acknowledged that Khodorkovsky was after closer ties with American Big Oil, and Engdahl could well be right. Obviously ExxonMobil would be interested, but interested in what, exactly? Would control of the world's largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the a-biotic techniques of deep drilling have been part of the prize, or just a by-product of the deal to leave on a back shelf somewhere? Engdahl also says Russian offers in the early 1990s to share their knowledge with US and other oil geophysicists were met with cold rejection. US-Russian oil geopolitics is a major scene, especially if you include Central Asia and China (and Iran). Some people see it as the major scene, including Cheney, since his Halliburton days. Analysts talk of a new Cold War, they keep using the word conflict, and all the big oil companies are involved. It's hard to believe that the big oil companies just took no notice of Russian oil science and didn't check it out. Kenney says thousands of articles, monographs, and books have been published in the mainstream Russian scientific press on modern Russian petroleum science. If Kenney and Thomas Gold could access it, so could Big Oil. Maybe they did check it out and concluded it was all nonsense, as the Peak Oil crowd says it is. But of all the murky pictures we've been dealing with I find what Kenney says about abiotic oil hard to dismiss, much harder to dismiss than Peak Oil, for instance. On the other hand, if Big Oil does know all about abiotic oil and takes it
[Biofuel] The reason for Spitzer's outing.
Hi All, Do we need a reason for Spitzer’s “outing”? If so, here t’is. Regards, Bob. HYPERLINK http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR200802130 2783.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR 2008021302783.html _ No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.21.7/1333 - Release Date: 18/03/2008 8:10 a.m. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20080319/03b1fdb5/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Confessions of an 'ex' Peak Oil believer
Hi Keith, and everyone else, Sorry Chandan, I'm baffled by the EROEI arithmetic. I just wanted to point out one thing about the arithmetic. No, I don't really understand it either, but I didn't really try. One thing that doesn't seem to have been said is that it might not matter as much, depending on where they're getting their energy to extract the oil. Well, that didn't come out quite right - of course it does matter, and the less energy they can use to get the oil the better. What I mean is more that the liquid fuel that you end up with is a VERY convenient and portable energy source. Until we figure out higher power density batteries or super capacitors or some other form of power storage that is better. But for now liquid fuel is hard to beat. Of course it could be biofuel rather than petroleum products, but the end result for the driver is about the same. A high energy source that is easy to take along with you and very convenient. So if you can use electrical power to extract the oil and crack it down to usable fuel then, even if you've used more power than you can then get out of the fuel, you could be ahead. Not all energy is equal as far as usability. Sacrificing some energy for the convenience of diesel and gas could be a good trade off. Again, the less sacrificed the better, down to none or positive energy gain, but even if it's not possible it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it. All that said, of course our lifestyles and use of the liquid fuel need to change, drastically. But just because some energy is lost doesn't mean that the whole process is unusable and needs to be shut down. Erik ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Chris Skrebowski on Oil
from htttp://business.iafrica.com/ Doomsday scenario for oil Michael Hamlyn Tue, 18 Mar 2008 A gloomy forecast about the future of the oil industry — looking forward to a possible Doomsday within a very few years — was given to the Sub-Saharan oil, gas and petrochemical conference in Cape Town on Tuesday. Chris Skrebowski, a researcher for the Energy Institute in Britain, told delegates that the oil supply will peak in 2011 or 2012 at around 93 million barrels a day, that oil supply in international trade will peak earlier than the oil production peak, and he forecast: There will be supply shortfalls in winter before peak. Skrebowski said that latest BP statistics showed that peak is already happening in some regions. OECD production peaked in 1997 and has now declined by 2.2 million barrels a day (10.4 percent), he said. Non-Opec, non-former Soviet Union production peaked in 2002, and has now declined by 771 000 barrels a day (2.15 percent). North America/ Mexico peaked in 1997. North Sea — UK/Norway/Denmark peaked in 2000 and has now declined by 1.6 million barrels a day (25.4 percent). Producers are in decline The figures show, he said, that around 28 significant producers are in decline, and that about 35 percent of global production comes from the decliners. Once that figure reaches 51 percent we reach global peak oil, he said. Peak oil will be earlier than most expect, Skrebowski told delegates. And he explained that global production falls when loss of output from countries in decline exceeds gains in output from those that are expanding. And he cited eight key pieces of evidence that we are close to peak: a falling discovery rate; few large discoveries; ever more countries in sustained depletion; companies struggling to hold production; non- geologic threats to future oil supply; the current lack of incremental flows; few countries with real growth potential; the age of the largest fields; and sustained high oil prices The oil companies are already struggling to hold production, he said. In the third quarter of 2007, only Total recorded oil production gains. For the last 12 quarters oil production has drifted down for the five super-majors; has flat-lined for the 10 largest quoted companies and has flat-lined for the 24 largest quoted companies. Quoted companies' share of production is now declining, notably for the super-majors. Non-geologic threats to oil supply The non-geologic threats to future oil supply flows include resource nationalism in Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, with perhaps more to follow; civil insurrection in Nigeria and Sudan; and cost inflation, ageing infrastructure, lack of skilled people, refinery constraints. How likely is improvement in any of these? he asked. And he wondered: Who will cap or ration production first? The world's biggest oilfields are old, tired and fading, he said. Of the 120 largest fields, 50 are in decline, 44 not in decline, 12 unclear and seven are undeveloped. The average age of the giants is 42 years, but the 120 largest fields give 50 percent of total production and contain two-thirds of reserves. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20080318/f17ce543/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] David Suzuki on Disaster
, engineers and telecommunications, and for more than 40 years, leading scientists have been looking ahead and warning us that humanity is heading along a dangerous and unsustainable path, while there are benefits and opportunities in moving along a different direction. For example, in 1992, a remarkable document called World Scientists' Warning to Humanity was signed by more than 1,500 senior scientists, including more than half of all Nobel prizewinners alive at that time. Here is some of what the document said: Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society . . . and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. The document goes on to list the critical areas of the atmosphere, water resources, oceans, soil, forests, species extinction, and overpopulation. Then the words grow even more urgent: No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. . . A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated. This is a frightening document; eminent scientists do not often sign such a strongly worded missive. But if the Scientists' Warning is frightening, the response of the media in North America was terrifying - there was no response. None of the major television networks bothered to report it, and both the New York Times and Washington Post dismissed it as not newsworthy. And even today, when we have been told we could have as little as 10 years to avoid catastrophe, that is considered not worth reporting, while every antic of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears is reported in breathless detail, not for days or weeks but for months and years. Instead we hear excuses to ignore the warnings: it will ruin the economy; technology will solve the problem; it is not fair when other countries are not included; there are other priorities demanding immediate attention, etc. And so we turn our backs on the very strategy that got us to where we are. Business as usual For decades, scientists in the US had pointed out that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies in an area that is prone to annual hurricanes, half the city is below sea level, and a force 5 hurricane was bound to hit the city, so drastic measures had to be implemented immediately to avoid disaster. All the while, politicians and businesspeople countered that it would be economically ruinous to take precautionary action, and carried on with business as usual - no doubt crossing their fingers that nothing would happen during their tenure. We all know what did happen when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005 and confirmed all the predictions scientists had made. The need to look ahead and manoeuvre to exploit opportunities and avoid threats continues to be just as critical in modern society. The challenge is to find why we are rejecting foresight, why we can't see what the real threats are that confront us. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20080318/eba7d7b6/attachment.html -- next part -- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: flamingoes_276.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 42451 bytes Desc: not available Url : /pipermail/attachments/20080318/eba7d7b6/attachment.jpg ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
