Oil

- My Decade of Being "Peak Oil Aware"
- Peak oil educator Richard Heinberg challenges “binary thinking”
- U.S. Oil Fields Stage “Great Revival,” But No Easing Gas Prices
- Robert Rapier: Peak Oil & Carbon Emissions (video)

It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate change, the end of cheap oil, and policies to mitigate these two challenges.

... In addition to the corporate response, there is a second, more local, noncorporate response. This response is found in the Relocalization and Transition Towns movements now springing up in many developed countries. It is a bottom-up response that includes individuals and municipalities planning for a post-peak-oil future and altering their way of life.

‘Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude’ was the title of one of the lead articles in Bloomberg’s newly launched ‘Sustainability’ section this week. The report echoes a growing number of press reports announcing the end of the “myth” of peak oil. So what gives?

That conventional oil has peaked and will be in decline over the next decades is no longer controversial – so in that sense peak oil has been and gone, and the economic consequences are evident.

A flurry of new mainstream media articles telling people not to worry about Peak Oil and hydrocarbon depletion have begun appearing on financial sites like Bloomberg, Forbes or The Wall Street Journal. I though it would be worthwhile to analyze some of their arguments. At least some media outlets are willing to even discuss peak oil at all—most remain completely silent.

The Obama administration's renewable energy stool, with its three legs of biofuels, solar, and wind, has now tipped over, as all three legs start to crumble. The final push came from the recent closing of Range Fuel Corp.'s cellulosic ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga.

A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

The word "carpooling" usually conjures images from the 1970s: service stations warning "No Gas", lines at the pump, and bell-bottom pants. For many people, carpooling brings to mind quaint notions of penny-pinching habits that went out of style along with turning the thermostat down.

But the history of carpooling goes back almost as far as the invention of the automobile itself, and has endured well-beyond its heyday in the late 70s, according to a publication by MIT's Rideshare Research.

So familiar has the social economy of energy become in modern societies, so routine its extraordinardinary wastefulness, so toxic its effects, that the capacity for a better way can be missed. By questioning the how, why and what of energy use, new possibilities - of living, travelling, eating, working and buying - can open.

The basic theme of Fleeing Vesuvius, which is aimed at the growing sustainability movement, is TEOTWAWI (The End of the World as We Know It). The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent. For more than a decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that the planet is on the verge of economic and ecological collapse. Yet the vast majority of us do absolutely nothing to prepare for the stark conditions ahead.

In a detailed analysis submitted to the National Energy Board, Robyn Allan, the former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, concludes that "Northern Gateway is neither needed nor is in the public interest." Moreover the project, if built, would raise the price of every oil barrel by $2 to $3 dollars in Canada over the next 30 years, and thereby create an inflationary price shock that would have "a negative and prolonged impact... by reducing output, employment, labour income and government revenues."

- Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude
- Oil, Food, Water: Is Everything Past Its Peak?
- Fulsome Fossil Fuels And The 'Peak Oil' Myth
- Peak Oil--No Longer the Right Question
(Note: several of these articles actually concede most of the points made by peak oilers.)

If an alien species were to visit our school cafeterias at lunchtime, it might conclude that we don’t value the health and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our society—our developing children. Not only are our youth daily served low-quality processed products, they are inculcated, at a young age, to the factory-farm model at the heart of our worst environmental problems, namely water pollution, soil erosion, global climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

- Oil prices will rise as supplies tighten? Hardly. (NEW)
- Energy policy and the Madness of Crowds (NEW)
- Debate rages on when oil will peak
- Too Much Energy Used to Mine, Move Bitumen Says BC Firm
- Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming “Humanity’s Most Pressing Concern”

On January 26, Bloomberg Businessweek printed an editorial by Charles Kenny titled, "Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong". This editorial reflects several common misunderstandings.

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Iranian confrontation
-Gasoline
-In the Congress
-Quote of the week
-Briefs