Peak oil 8: The climate change trojan
This is probably more obvious in UK and the world outside the USA since GW Bush has ordained that climate change isn't happening.
Anyone who keeps an eye on their weather, climate, local and global weather / climate statistics, will know the climate is changing. How many of the 10 warmest years since we started to properly record such data have occured since 1990? 10. Which April was the warmest in the USA ever? 2006. Coincidences? Nice dust bowl you got growing in the southern USA methinks.
Yes, the climate is almost certainly changing, and a good part of that change is almost certainly due to us humans burning fossil fuels etc. And it will almost certainly have a quite nasty and possibly unpredictable impact on climate, and on human, animal and plant life.
But the real tsunami of climate change will take decades to build, centuries to play out, millennia (or longer) to dissipate. The current UK 'dear leader', Tony Blair, bangs on about climate change at every opportunity, but about the only practical solution he proposes is nuclear power. Something smells.
The words 'peak oil' have never publically passed a serving UK government minister's lips as far as I know. But in addition to 'climate change' we are hearing more about 'energy security'. I say these are 'trojans', preparing the ground for what they know is going to come too soon to prepare against hence they dare not mention. After the fact this will be justified by: avoiding panic and premature collapse of financial systems / it happened too quickly to foresee / we relied on the IEA and they didn't tell us.
Am I completely deluded and peak oil is more than 10 years away? I hope so. But I am pretty sure maximum global oil (IEA all liquids definition) production will almost certainly (99%) never exceed 95 mbpd, probably (75%) never exceed 90 mbpd. Current production is about 85 mbpd and demand is growing about 2% annually. That looks like peak oil by 2010 to me.
The probable truth is: the realisation of imminent peak oil breaks the current financial and monetary systems since we are too late to effectively adjust to peak oil. In that situation governments and 'those that know' need to resort to trojans like climate change and energy security to get at least some positive change in place without letting the rabid cat out of the bag.
BTW, a good new PO intro is here:
http://www.omninerd.com/2006/05/17/articles/52
A bit too even handed to be realistic but is about as fair, unsensational and unscary as it is possible to be.
To redress the balance: PO will probably happen before 2010, there is no way short of a severe global depression to adjust demand to available supply by then, it will probably break our economic, fiscal, financial and monetary systems. It's not money that makes the world go round, that is delusion, it is energy. I don't know what happens then but it might involve billions of premature deaths.
Anyone who keeps an eye on their weather, climate, local and global weather / climate statistics, will know the climate is changing. How many of the 10 warmest years since we started to properly record such data have occured since 1990? 10. Which April was the warmest in the USA ever? 2006. Coincidences? Nice dust bowl you got growing in the southern USA methinks.
Yes, the climate is almost certainly changing, and a good part of that change is almost certainly due to us humans burning fossil fuels etc. And it will almost certainly have a quite nasty and possibly unpredictable impact on climate, and on human, animal and plant life.
But the real tsunami of climate change will take decades to build, centuries to play out, millennia (or longer) to dissipate. The current UK 'dear leader', Tony Blair, bangs on about climate change at every opportunity, but about the only practical solution he proposes is nuclear power. Something smells.
The words 'peak oil' have never publically passed a serving UK government minister's lips as far as I know. But in addition to 'climate change' we are hearing more about 'energy security'. I say these are 'trojans', preparing the ground for what they know is going to come too soon to prepare against hence they dare not mention. After the fact this will be justified by: avoiding panic and premature collapse of financial systems / it happened too quickly to foresee / we relied on the IEA and they didn't tell us.
Am I completely deluded and peak oil is more than 10 years away? I hope so. But I am pretty sure maximum global oil (IEA all liquids definition) production will almost certainly (99%) never exceed 95 mbpd, probably (75%) never exceed 90 mbpd. Current production is about 85 mbpd and demand is growing about 2% annually. That looks like peak oil by 2010 to me.
The probable truth is: the realisation of imminent peak oil breaks the current financial and monetary systems since we are too late to effectively adjust to peak oil. In that situation governments and 'those that know' need to resort to trojans like climate change and energy security to get at least some positive change in place without letting the rabid cat out of the bag.
BTW, a good new PO intro is here:
http://www.omninerd.com/2006/05/17/articles/52
A bit too even handed to be realistic but is about as fair, unsensational and unscary as it is possible to be.
To redress the balance: PO will probably happen before 2010, there is no way short of a severe global depression to adjust demand to available supply by then, it will probably break our economic, fiscal, financial and monetary systems. It's not money that makes the world go round, that is delusion, it is energy. I don't know what happens then but it might involve billions of premature deaths.
posted by Agric | 23:49
4 Comments:
Glad your back at last. Enjoy your posts.
Although, I think CC may be a more immediate issue than perhaps you do. In particular the Atlantic Conveyor. With salinity decreasing faster than many predicted and the current velocity dropping, we may be in for a shock sooner rather than later.
Which, combined with PO and Peak Gas, will be a pretty tough situation for the UK.
Hi and thanks, haven't had much time to think and post here in the last couple of months but done a burst tonight, lol.
The Atlantic Conveyor has slowed scarily fast lately (about 40% between 1994 and 2004 if I recollect right without checking). Even if it does turn off in the next 10 to 30 years the resulting cooling will be of the same order as otherwise warming from what I've heard said.
When the conveyor last failed the real chill seemed to develop once an ice sheet managed to establish itself over northern Scotland. Odds are that has minimal chance of happening if / when the conveyor switches off soon. It might even be beneficial for UK if the conveyor fails, lol. But watch out USA if it does - that warm water has to go somewhere and hurricane alley looks a likely destination.
All of us in the developed economies are going to be hit hard by PO and PG. I don't think any country has done anywhere near enough yet to avert serious disruption. UK and US are probably worse than most. Tough doesn't begin to describe what I expect :(
I think with PO and CC the general principle is that ppl and the govt always like to say it is still in the future but if we act now there is enough time to save....
Actually I go with PO being Dec 2005 and we are well into CC. Much damage has already been done and a huge amount of change is already happening.
The cheap energy has allowed us to create our large eco-footprints. As PO hits harder, I can see that the global reach required to keep us in ever extending overshoot will fail and the consequences of that will hit quite quick.
In relation to the UK. (You are UK based?), what do you think of the idea that the British will need to re-invade Ireland which is less populated than UK, to take advantage of the relatively abundant land for growing food on their doorstep and possibly to shunt people over there to decrease the population pressure in the mainland. See URL below for an article I wrote suggesting this.
Aplogies that URL didn't seem to show up. It is: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75517 for an article titled: How Long Before Britain Occupies All of Ireland Again due to Climate Chaos and Peak Oil?
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