Peak Oil
In the mid-1950s Shell Oil petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert published a prediction that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970 and decline steadily after that date. His prediction was scorned until he was proven right..

His acolyte Ken Deffeyes, who worked under him and improved his methodology, forecast not long ago that world oil production would peak in November, 2005. Very few agreed. Deffeyes may have been correct.

Worldwide liquid fossil fuel production declined by 0.2% in 2006, according to the DOE. Deffeyes himself would advise against declaring peak oil at this point, on the grounds that it takes a while to establish the pattern. There have been previous production declines that were not related to peak oil But a notable number of people are beginning to think we’ve arrived.

As a general sort of prediction, one can say that as demand increases and supplies decline enormous pressures will be put on the price of oil. True enough in a general sense, but if the world enters a period of depressed economic activity price pressure may not be immediately felt. Alan Greenspan is predicting a recession in this country later this year. We live in interesting if perilous times.

Meanwhile, The Oil Drum announced that oil production in Saudi Arabia declined by eight percent in 2006. Verrrry interesting indeed. If Saudi production staggers it would indeed put a crimp in world oil supplies. But one should be aware that the Saudi’s can reduce production for their own purposes.

Climate Change
On the climate change front, it has been revealed that the American Enterprise Institute, a propaganda machine funded by ExxonMobile, mailed letters to scientists and economists offering $10,000 to those who were willing to attack the notion of global warming. We have a flapdoodle going on here in Oregon over an OSU professor who denies climate change – says it’s just a routine weather pattern. The guv wants him to stop calling himself the State Climatologist on the grounds that the state has no state climatologist. Predictably, the right is yowling suppression of dissent.

Meanwhile, Oregon has joined four other western states in a program to substantially reduce carbon emissions in those states. California was recently noted as being heroic already in their reduced emissions. That the not-so-long-ago depredations of Enron in that state motivated a lot of folks would be understandable. When Enron doubled the price of electricity it set a lot of people to wondering how much of the stuff they really had to have. In my own case, I had, just prior to the Enron eneterprise, replaced my 17 year old air conditioning system with a state of the art unit, which cut consumption of electricity and natural gas in half. My own power bills remained constant instead of doubling. I can’t claim hero status for the act – I was out to get the air filtering system offered. The air in the San Joaquin Valley is something that must be experienced to believe, particularly in the long heat of summer when air circulation completely stagnates. Didn’t really work. The system was fine, but then I daren’t leave the house. Gave it up and moved to Oregon.

Polar Year
And, finally, the Polar Year has arrived (it’s actually a two year event). A very substantial international research effort (60 countries) has begin to analyze the effect of global warming on arctic regions. Scientists have recently examined four large lakes under Antarctic ice that communicate freely with one another and are thought may be responsible for the sharply increased flow of glacial ice to the sea in Antarctica. This is a notable effect that is not examined in the 2007 Assessment report of IPCC, and is the foundation of most of the meaningful complaints about the assessment. At any rate, a lot of people and money are being thrown into the Arctic and Antarctic in an effort to better understand what’s happening in those regions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.