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Hirsch and Bartlett peak oil presentation (audio)
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and Dr. Robert Hirsch

To listen to the audio for this presentation: members.bellatlantic.net/~vze4gqr9/audio/audioindex.htm.

The 81 MB mpe3 file is 042406-hirsch-bartlett.mp3 .

Description of the April 24 presentation:

Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction
Averting a Liquid Fuels Crisis from "Peak Oil"

The DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics presents the second of a monthly series on "Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction."

Congressman Bartlett and Dr. Hirsch will present background and lead a discussion about peak oil and its ramifications for the liquid fuels that are vital for transportation worldwide and are the feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals and other essentials.

(24 April 2006)
Jan Lundberg reported on this presentation in his CultureChange newsletter.

BBC Newsnight mentions peak oil
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum/UK
Newsnight, the BBC's late night news programme mentioned peak oil last night (25/04/206). Almost a cross between news and current affairs the programme tends to tackle the issues of the day with more depth and analysis than a regular news broadcast. Asking questions rather than just presenting facts.

Last night covered the $75 oil story in some detail including an interview (reproduced below the fold) with Stephanie Flanders, their economics editor. This interview actually mentioned peak oil and displayed some graphs to illustrate the point.

Of course the economists conclusion was that current high prices would encourage us to conserve energy and also makes a lot of alternative and additional sources of energy more financially viable.

The full video of the programme is available for a short period from the Newsnight website: link.

This isn't the first time Newsnight has covered peak oil.
(26 April 2006)

Shock at oil prices: the more things change, the more they stay the same
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
...Well, we're back to being a five-day wonder. People are again shocked that prices have gone up. I wonder if this is now going to be an annual ritual, as we progress from winter to summer, and corporate profits are announced. Unfortunately, as the press release from my colleagues notes, the reason for the price increase is not amenable to the solutions that are now being thrown around. In which regard, it was interesting to hear the spokeslady from the API actually mention peak oil, in her remarks on the News Hour tonight.

It is difficult to educate the public at this time. They want something done in a circumstance where there is not that much, in the short term, that will make the situation much better and some things that are coming (such as the Hurricane season) which may likely make it worse. The tried and true formulae (the "give them cake" suggestions from both parties) only work when this is a short-term problem. When it becomes, as it increasingly is, an ongoing situation then the paradigm must change. (As was commented earlier, illustratively, we need to transition from paying the winter fuel bill of the disadvantaged to paying for insulation of their houses).

But to change the attitudes you must first have the public, and their servants, educated. We are blessed that a small fraction already are, but as yet the rest are still in what Prof G called it last year, the river phase, or Denial (took me a minute!). As I noted the words peak oil are starting to get more attention, but the true implications are yet to sink in.
(27 April 2006

Julian Darley & Michael Lynch debate peak oil on Democracy Now (video/audio/transcript)
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now
Has Global Oil Production Reached Maximum Capacity? A Debate on Peak Oil

With the price of oil soaring to record highs and oil companies reporting record profits, many are asking whether the world has reached peak oil production. Peak oil occurs when half of all existing oil has been pulled from the ground. Some experts believe we are at peak now while others disagree. We host a debate on the issue with Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute and Michael Lynch of the Strategic Energy & Economic Research.

...MICHAEL LYNCH: Well, I think what we'll find more likely, you know, oil will remain important in foreign policy, because it's a vital commodity. On the other hand, I think the big fear is that we'll have much lower oil prices in the next couple of years, and countries like Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, maybe even Saudi Arabia, will then be threatened with economic and political instability, and this could cause some problems for us.

JULIAN DARLEY: I think that there will be some problems. And I think there will be instabilities, both geopolitical and economic, and I think we are going to find that we haven't really faced anything like this before. We've not built nations so – and systems, industrial systems like the one we've got. We haven't had one like this before. It's so dependent on these flowing resources. They're not really minerals. Oil and gas, upon which are said to flow, and that's different from coal and other things we have to dig up. And of course, most of our transport depends on oil, well over 90% of it, all that we move around, which is so much of what the economy, the real economy actually is. So I think we can unfortunately look forward to instabilities of a very high sort, and the plea is, “Let's start planning for that.” The market system, which I think is implicated in a lot of this, is very bad at planning; indeed it doesn't say it's trying to plan. We must start planning for this. We can see it coming.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you plan? What are the solutions?

JULIAN DARLEY: Some of the responses we should be looking at are undoubtedly from government. Government must start trying to assess how much energy we use. We must assess what this decline looks like. That's one of the reasons why public awareness and political awareness is so important in this matter. What does this decline look like? How much energy are we using? How could we start reducing our demand? And in reducing our demand, we have to be – I think the grave danger is that unemployment will go up dramatically, unless we plan for it.
(28 April 2006)