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Tam Hunt: The Decade of Climate Change and Peak Oil
Wow. Another decade has passed. In the years ruled by the iPod, the death and rebirth of hope (you know who I’m talking about), Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer, reality TV, Coldplay and Britney, flat-screen TVs and ShamWow!, climate change and energy may seem a relatively small blip on the cultural big screen.
It is true that on a list of 20 issues presented to the American people in a 2009 Pew survey, climate change came in dead last. But this is a mistake of perception and judgment. These issues really should be at the top of the list; even above the ailing economy (No. 1 on the list) because the economy is a subset of the environment, not the other way around.
2009 was the year of the United Nations’ Copenhagen summit, in which the most heads of state in history convened at the same place, and the year of “climategate,” in which hundreds of e-mails between various climate scientists were hacked. A quick review of the alleged smoking-gun e-mails reveals, however, nothing of the sort. Yes, the scientists were guilty, in private conversations, of seeming a bit overzealous in desiring to keep the views of climate naysayers out of journals. But even if the worst claims about the e-mails were true it would do practically nothing to contradict the broad consensus regarding the human influence on past climate (what is less certain, as any good scientist will tell you, is the amount of future warming we can expect from existing and future greenhouse gas emissions).
Despite the broad consensus on global warming’s key points, however, most objective observers believe that December’s Copenhagen summit was an unmitigated disaster. What was expected before the negotiations was far more than what actually came out — somewhere along the way negotiations broke down. What was completed, the Copenhagen Accord, is a document signed by many of the largest emitters as a voluntary statement of intent to limit global emissions to avoid any more than a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperature and to provide about $30 billion in mitigation funds by 2012.
And that’s pretty much it in terms of substance. It’s not legally binding in any way and, even if it were, it doesn’t have individual nation numerical targets. The best we can say of the accord is that it is a small step in the right direction. Or perhaps a slight shuffle of the world’s feet is a more accurate description.
At the national level, we have a bit more cause for optimism: the $80 billion or so devoted by Congress and the White House to energy efficiency and renewable energy is working its way through the U.S. economy. Even with the recession, the energy efficiency, solar, wind and geothermal markets have remained fairly robust — just not as good as we would have predicted based on the growth trends from the previous eight years or so, which were remarkable. The federal cap-and-trade bill seems DOA, due to conservative and moderate resistance, but perhaps a national renewable electricity standard could be passed as a backup plan? This would go far. A federal carbon fee would go even further, but its political prospects are, unfortunately, probably even worse than for the cap-and-trade bill.
In California, where all good things begin (so we like to think), AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which passed in 2007 and put in place the first state-level greenhouse gas emissions cap, continued through to wend its way through the regulatory process. The Air Resources Board released its draft rule for implementing AB 32, with a cap-and-trade program that will come into force in 2012 — unless former EBay CEO Meg Whitman wins the gubernatorial race and, as she has pledged, suspends AB 32 as her first act in office. Pray Jerry Brown makes his way back to the governor’s mansion, although why he would actually want that job again is beyond me ...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also signed an executive order directing the Air Resources Board to implement rules for a 33 percent renewable electricity standard — after vetoing two bills that would have done the same thing with more oomph, and which couldn’t be simply overturned with the stroke of a pen by the next governor. To ARB’s credit, the proposed rules look quite good at this point and, if these rules are passed with real teeth, promise to be a powerful new impetus for more renewables in and around California. And as California goes, so goes the nation.
Despite my general optimism about the future, I still worry greatly about the threat of peak oil, over and above the threat of climate change (as I’ve written about in numerous columns). Peak oil and climate change are integrally related because both concern our unsustainable use of fossil fuels. Solving climate change will also solve peak oil, but solving peak oil will not necessarily solve climate change. This is the case because some remedies for peak oil, such as tar sands, oil shale, coal to liquids, etc., will make the climate change problem far worse because of even higher greenhouse gas emissions.
An important, but almost completely overlooked, story in 2009 concerned the International Energy Agency. The IEA is the West’s energy watchdog, formed after the oil shocks of the 1970s. Its mission is to ensure no similar events occur again. As such, it is considered the authority on international energy statistics and policy recommendations. Its annual World Energy Outlook is eagerly awaited each year.
IEA finally started listening to the peak-oil crowd and completed a supply-side analysis in 2008 of the world’s 800 biggest oil fields. In previous analyses, IEA had projected oil and other fossil fuel demand based on economic modeling and simply assumed (literally) that supplies would meet this projected demand. The 2008 WEO used a slightly different approach. Rather than simply assuming supplies would meet demand, IEA looked at the largest oil fields and calculated their rate of production and decline (this is what a “supply-side analysis” means). They found that these fields were declining far faster than previously assumed, about 7 percent per year rather than 3.5 percent per year.
Based on this decline rate, IEA calculated that the world would need eight new Saudi Arabias by 2030 to meet projected demand. In the medium-term, it projected a likely “oil supply crunch” by 2015 because we’d need three to four new Saudi Arabias by then to meet projected demand.
IEA also included a detailed analysis of climate change vis-à-vis projected fossil fuel consumption, describing what would be needed to meet the U.N. preferred scenarios for climate-change mitigation. The results were chilling, even though IEA still refused to say that we are now in the era of peak oil. The primary conclusion, which should have been a wake-up call to the entire world:
Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable ... The future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply.
Here’s the new news: in late 2009, two IEA whistleblowers went public, claiming that IEA was, first, practically controlled by the United States, and, second, that IEA had significantly downplayed the threat of peak oil. The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported in November: “A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organization was that it was ‘imperative not to anger the Americans’ but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as has been admitted. ‘We have (already) entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,’ he added.”
The peak-oil issue is currently on the back burner for most policymakers and observers because of the fragile global economy. So while this decade may well be described by future historians as the decade that global oil production peaked, the end of the decade passed with very little public focus on this issue, even though oil prices are strangely high for a severe global recession (almost $80 a barrel at the time of this writing, far higher than the $37 a barrel low reached early last year but much less than the peak of $147 a barrel reached in July 2008).
Here’s where the discussion gets even more interesting (at least for us policy wonks who take some occasional time off from reality TV). The 2009 WEO continued the IEA’s analysis of climate-change scenarios, supplying additional detail and recommendations for international climate-change mitigation efforts. The substantive change in the 2009 WEO was IEA’s first supply-side analysis of the world’s largest natural gas fields. Whereas the 2008 WEO had found a chillingly high decline rate for the world’s largest oil fields, the 2009 WEO found a surprisingly encouraging trend in natural gas production. IEA concluded that new extraction techniques for natural gas, pioneered here in the United States, are resulting in dramatic increases in natural gas reserves around the world. These new reserves make a transition to natural gas for electricity generation and transportation (in natural gas vehicles) a focus of IEA’s recommendations for climate-change mitigation. Natural gas, while still a polluting fossil fuel, is considerably cleaner than coal and oil, so there is some merit to IEA’s arguments — if there is indeed as much natural gas available as is now believed. Time will tell if the IEA is right on this new analysis, but my feeling is that it’s not because I think a lot of the new data on production and field reserves comes from self-serving private-sector analyses.
Moreover, there is almost no sense of urgency in the 2009 WEO regarding peak oil — this phrase is never even used in the document, as far as I can tell, despite the remarkable sense of urgency in the 2008 WEO. The rapid decline in global oil fields highlighted in the 2008 WEO is not even discussed in the summary. And despite the fact that the underlying analysis of global oil production and demand did not change substantially from 2008 to 2009 (despite some adjustments to account for the current recession), there was no warning of an oil supply crunch, which was highlighted by IEA officials in public comments throughout 2009, long after the recession was under way. Indeed, Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief economist, stated in early December that conventional oil production was likely to peak by 2020 unless major new discoveries are made (and these are highly unlikely). This is a huge turnaround in sentiment and lends strong support to the whistleblowers’ assertions that the United States has hijacked the IEA WEO process (yes, even the Obama administration is capable of such bullying).
To wrap up this admittedly esoteric discussion, here’s my conclusion: IEA and many other high-level policy types, including, apparently, the Obama administration, have decided to put all their eggs in the climate-change basket. In other words, even though IEA and policymakers from every nation must surely be aware of the threat of peak oil (the IEA and many other agencies and nonprofit organizations have supplied ample data in this area over the last decade), they have decided that the vehicle for mitigating both peak oil and climate change is the international climate-change mitigation process. Because mitigating climate change will also mitigate peak oil, and not vice versa, this would seem to be a smart choice. But this decision is, as we’ve recently seen from the current collapse of the U.N. process in Copenhagen, a major mistake. We need a new approach.
The overarching international climate change mitigation target has been, for some time now, to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius or less, which is the nonbinding target in the Copenhagen Accord. A recent push by Bill McKibben’s 350.org, the Association of Small Island States and other groups, has been a 1.5-degree Celsius target.
It is my view that even if this 1.5-degree target had been enshrined in a legally binding document, to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, it would still be generally ineffective by itself. This is the case because there is no viable enforcement mechanism for this kind of international agreement.
What really matters in the climate change and peak oil debates are national actions, based on a mixture of carrots and sticks. The Obama administration made serious progress on climate-change mitigation when it dedicated about $80 billion to renewable energy and energy efficiency in the recovery package passed early in 2009. This is the carrot. If Obama and Congress follow up in 2010 with a national renewable electricity standard (25 percent by 2025, for example) and a modest carbon fee (tax), this will be the stick. If Obama can do this, he will have lived up to his promises on climate change and renewable energy, as far as he is able to, given current political realities.
As far as peak oil is concerned, however, we will have to do our best at the local and state levels to implement far more ambitious efforts to increase energy independence through a mix of energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable transportation. Market forces will be our friends in this process because we can expect much higher fossil fuel prices (again) as the global economy recovers — probably exceeding the record prices reached in 2008 by 2011-2012.
In making your New Year’s resolutions, my recommendation is to remember the lessons of the 2008 and 1970s oil shocks and work toward a long-term and sustained low-energy lifestyle. The decade of peak oil and climate change requires it.
— Tam Hunt is president of Community Renewable Solutions LLC, a company focused on community-scale wind and solar energy. He is also a lecturer on climate change law and policy at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 10:05 AM
There is no conclusive proof that the CO2 we emit from fossil fuel burning is responsible for climate change, global warming or freaking warts on your hand. To continue with this unscientific blather is just sickening. Everything you sir, Mr. Hunt, your new career, your conscience, world view all of it is based on a bold faced lie about human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere. You perpetuate the lie by committing another one which is that the climate change we will see is bad. Where’s the proof buster that we will see your pope’s (Al Gore) catastrophic weather as the climate warms? There is none. You then, like the rest of your religion, go on to proclaim that the new god of your religion, human intelligence, is capable of stopping the climate change that will happen. Wrong again! You have swallowed the lie that by sending the industrial world back to the Stone Age and redistributing their wealth to the undeveloped world all will be right with the biosphere. That is utterly irresponsible!
Take a deep breath Tam. Back away from this religious hypocrisy you have joined in and open your mind to a little scientific skepticism. It is the only way we can save science from become yet another radicalized religion like Islam. And yes it has become that bad.
You will not lose out on your “renewable” energy business ventures, so there is no need to stick with Al as a means of salvaging your business. We still need new sources of energy. We will need way more than your renewable sources can supply (unless you take my advice and get into geothermal) so your investment will be good. However, argue from a point of energy needs verses costs rather than this climate change phony baloney gobbledygook. You don’t sound scientific at all and just show a bad case of follow the lemmings.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 11:31 AM
AN50, take a deep breath. The FACTS and DATA regarding CO2 and Global Climate Change are not on your side. The question is when will people like you wake-up??? Do we have to wait decades for more and more proof? How many millions of data points do you need? How many thousand more scientists?? The problem with enviromental destruction is that it takes decades if not a century to recover once you start to work on a solution. Unfortunately, we cannot wait for everyone, including AN50, we must start now. Humans have influenced the climate towards the negative and can influence it towards recovery. AN50, there are dead zones throughout the world’s ocean that are directly attributable to human influence, wake-up. I have studied them first hand. I have also been on studies where we have directly measured human influenced climate change. I do not sit at a desk like you and decide whether there is human influenced climate change based on creating your own facts.
The ocean is a giantic buffer and it has done an outstanding job of absorbing some excess CO2 but the acidification has started. It is like a large tanker at sea and will take a global response and a diverse effort to slowly turn it around. While helping to solve the global climate change we can also move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 12:24 PM
Please share your scientific expertise on how CO2 creates “dead zones” in the ocean (whatever that is) , and how CO2 causes acidification. Please support with your vast knowledge of chemistry. Chemical formulas are welcome.
Explain what caused the last three ice ages (climate change) before the industrial age. Explain what causes climate change on the other planets? Please explain how CO2 is a poisonous gas when it is necessary to sustain plant life. Explain why me breathing your bad breath (CO2) will not harm my health.
Then maybe you can elaborate on how the infrastructure will run on practical “alternate energy” anytime in near future, before we destroy ourselves politically and economically by depending on foreign oil.
Lets see - wind powered 18 wheelers? Electric solar charged airplanes? Solar steel furnaces? Ummm… Trains with windmills on top?
Tam, perhaps you would like to chip on on this. If you can’t answer these questions, shutup.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 12:32 PM
“the economy is a subset of the environment, not the other way around.”
Not true. A prosperous economy is the environment’s best friend. Because only in a thriving economy can we AFFORD or care to take care of the environment.
Developing countries could give a rat’s posterior about the environment. Consider China, India. They care only about becoming prosperous and surviving, putting food on the table for today. They care little about tomorrow. Is there any environmental concern in Mexico? Doubt it, they have real issues to deal with, like getting safely through the day and eating a meal.
Our environmental movement was the birthchild of spoiled middle and upper class hippies who had everything, and little else to be concerned about.
If you put the environment above the economy, and cripple the economy by taxing us to death to pay for it, you end up with an unsustainable economy. When the govt runs out of money, because there are no jobs, then where does the revenue come from to help clean up the environment? Oops we are already there, and cap and tax (trade) is coming to make it worse.
Economy FIRST! Save yourself Tam, get a new career because nobody is buying this BS anymore, as you yourself noted..
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» on 01.04.10 @ 12:34 PM
For the tip on Meg Whitman. Now I know exactly who to vote for to save this state from the crazies. Go Meg!
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» on 01.04.10 @ 01:14 PM
Local Insanity, it is VERY basic chemistry that absorption of CO2 by the ocean lowers the PH.(more acidic) This in turn raises respiratory rates and reduces calcification of coral reefs and bone structures. In turn this puts the ecosystem more at stress and lowers the total productivity. Look at the Great Barrier Reefs for example.
It is also true we have had ice ages in the past that are part of a larger cycle. That is not the debate here. What we are talking about is influence and acceleration of something. When CO2 is at high levels in the atmosphere it changes the climate. A large portion of the CO2 is from human activity.
As far as ocean dead zones go these are large sections of the ocean that no longer support a marine ecosystems. Human activities such as overfishing, sewage, pesticides etc are directly related to their destruction. There is one off the coast of Oregon.
No one is saying that we can immediately leap away from fossil fuels. What is being suggested is to pick up a larger and larger percentage of the global energy demand over time through alternative energy sources and conservation. Look at Brazil. We can even shift to cleaner fuels such as natural gas which is plentyful in the U.S. The electric car is not far off and can be powered at your house through solar or natural gas. There are methods to create ethanol with non crop plants or waste. In Spain over 30% of their total power comes from solar energy. Clearly it will take a diverse effort with no silver bullet.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 01:33 PM
Well, thanks AN50 and Local insanity for those insightful comments. I note with glee that at least Local knocked back AN50 before the other one chipped in.
I work from this premise: I hope for the best but fear the worst.
Let me ask you AN50 and Local insanity - do you have children or grandchildren? Do you not pause to consider, as you drive your 9mpg SUV to the Mall “What if?”. What if they are right? What are you leaving to your children/grandchildren? Your comments have all the ring of Business As Usual at any cost.
Let me tell you. In twenty years there will be no Business As Usual. There will be NO eighteen wheelers, for quite simply nobody will be able to afford to run them. Peak Oil IS coming, guys, whether you like it or not. We’ve had the easy stuff. The low hanging fruit is almost gone. Tell me AN50 and Local insanity, have you actually read about where they are drilling for oil now? In many thousands of feet of water and through many thousands of feet of rock. Why do you think they are doing that? AND they are discovering mere puddles.
You just carry on your Business As Usual. I don’t know what you’ll do when TSHTF!
I would like to complement Mr. Tam Hunt on a fine, thought provoking essay. As you may gather I am in the Peak Oil camp, but that does not stop me worrying about AGW. Tam writes a fine balance between the interactions of the one with the other.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 01:48 PM
Wrong! WRONG!!!
The economy is in freefall. You talk of taxes. What about the taxes yet to come as a result of bailing out corrupt banks and printing money to do so? What will happen when the commercial loans come due?
When the American Indians were in change of America there was no environmental problem, you know. They lived in harmony and peace with the environment for centuries. Did they have to AFFORD to take care of the environment? No! Because they knew how to live in a sustainable way, which now unfortunately much of humanity has forgotten.
The rot set in when the Europeans arrived. It has been rotting ever since, and we begin to see the fall of Empire! McMansions, suburbs, exurbs ... all made possible by ‘the economy’ and all starting to fall apart!
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» on 01.04.10 @ 03:08 PM
Stevie and Local, get a grip. The atmosphere has had 5 to 10 times the CO2 present now (depending on whose data you crunch). The oceans have undergone much greater levels of acidification from all sorts of sources from forest fires to volcanic eruptions and recovered just fine without our help. In fact some volcanism has been responsible for ejecting more CO2, SO2 and other nasty polluting aerosols into the atmosphere in such vast quantities that it swamps all the pollutants ever dumped by humans since the industrial revolution began in ONE event. Hmmmmmm!
Stevie, yes I have children and grandchildren who I do not wish to see live in a freaking teepee, while trying to avoid starvation scratching food out of a small plot of land with the rest of the industrialized world because some religious radicals stole our science and decided to kill us all with it. I mean really who is worse, an islamo-fascist stealing a plane and running it into a building killing 3000 people or the idiots who want us to die slowly and painfully by economic fiat because they thought we were to blame for a natural cycle?
Now specifically, Brazil is in the process of removing the largest land based carbon sequestering rainforest on earth to support their ethanol industry. This is perhaps the biggest freaking environmental screw up the globe has ever known and you flatulent thinkers don’t give it a nod. How come? You don’t see it because your religion does not allow for it. Yes we can run on clean NG but it has only 85% of the energy density of gasoline so you need 15% more (at the same mass) to do the same work. Nice but who wants to tow a freaking NG tanker around? Electric cars are worse. The very best battery today produces 10% the energy density of gasoline, get the picture? Why do you think that all living creatures use hydrocarbons as a fuel source? Yes that’s right, we humans are not alone in contributing to co2 production because all air breathing life on earth does the same. We haven’t done anything but borrow a great model for how to power mobility, burning carbon based high density fuels, and you have a better idea? And what was that Tam? Oh, yes live like a cave man. Brilliant! 4 billion human beings are alive today and well fed because we found oil. We found a cheap and easy way to allow for more people to live here beyond mere sustenance and your collective idea is starve and go back to spending every waking minute of your life just trying to stay alive. Do any of you part time geniuses realize what you owe to petroleum? That keyboard you tap on? The shoes you put on your feet? Good God I everything you have and most importantly the time cheap energy affords you to spend AWAY from the life Tam wants you to live? No I didn’t think so. But your children, Stevie, will find out what a hell you sold them out to because some European snobs figured away to use science to FINALLY kill America and you and Local bought it lock stock and barrel without a smidgeon of thought.
Here’s what I propose. Tam, go after geothermal. Crimony man, make a fortune on it! Local and Steve, save your children by helping Tam unleash the new next energy paradigm of geothermal based baseload and solar/wind based conservation energy sources. We’ll need both to make enough energy to replace fossil fuels (we’ll have to make our own) for transportation, keep the grid hot and make it cheap enough to flood the world with it. All that CHEAP energy will allow ALL humanity to enjoy what we have here in the US. Then steer your vast intellectual energy toward ADAPTING to the climate change that is going to happen no matter what Al Gore says.
Adapt or die.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 04:51 PM
So then Local,
Which is it? Ten years ago Al Gore the prophet was screaming about accelerated “Gore-Bull Warming”. We were supposed to be under water from melting ice caps by now. When it was shown that the climate is actually cooling since then, and the “hockey stick” graph was proved to be a scam, it became “climate change”. So, if the climate is reversing, how is it “accelerating”? Which is it, is the warming accelerating, or is the cooling accelerating? The data shows that it seems to be leveling off. Please explain.
Which is it? Are the “dead zones” created by CO2 or are they caused by “Human activities such as overfishing, sewage, pesticides”. Tell us more about the scientific theory, since you are a self proclaimed expert, surely you can do better than “it is VERY basic chemistry” because we all want to see if you actually know what you’re talking about, or if you’re just parroting something you heard somewhere. Perhaps you could use a real name so we can look up your credentials, otherwise I think you’re full of it and you’re making a fool of yourself, but keep going.
As with any good liberal, the story changes when pressed for an answer, or the disproven theory is renamed. It is not Global Warming anymore, it is Climate Change. Quit while you’re not ahead. Stop lying. You’re simply an anti-capitalist who wants to pull the rest of the country down to your level, rather than work to pull yourself up to the level of those who work hard for what they have..
Steve in Hungary it looks like the rot brought by the Europeans has reversed itself and gone back to Europe. Both of you were obviously too impressed by two movies: “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Dancing with Wolves.”
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» on 01.04.10 @ 04:51 PM
Hey AN50, I know of some good anger management classes you might want to consider. Your communication would improve immensely if you were to calm down and make a succinct and valid point in a logical format. The rambling only proves my point that you are not willing to focus and consider other information. But worst of all you are not open to any new information and continue to ramble about the same thing, day after day after day.
A good percentage of global climate change is due to human influence. We can do something about it and maintain an even higher standard of living. I know you do not want to hear it but it is not fair to others that want to move on in the 21st century.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 04:53 PM
Nothing like further crippling the job providers in a bad economy. Cap and Trade is not exactly what we need right now. Do ya think it could at least wait until we recover or are the socialists that anxious to destroy the country and sent us into a third world dictatorship? Ask the ten percent unemployed how they feel about it.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 05:38 PM
Lordy this topic bring out the wild emotions and vicious exchanges of non data.
Like it or not, globalwarmingfans, the concensus is no longer as strong as it was and more scientists like Richard A. Muller of Berkeley (that rabid hotbed of right-wing reactionary thinking) has and continues to state repeatedly that Al Gore (self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet - that bit of shameless self-promotion should have killed his credibility for all time) is exaggerating the problem (what? a politician exaggerate? tell me it isn’t so!).
So here’s some relevant DATA that Tam won’t tell you about. Data from NOAA (that would be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for those who never search source data, but depend on those with various axes to grind for interpretation - you know, like those folks in the UK who were discovered doctoring weather data to prove their point about warming - that alone should scare the crap out of everyone). But I digress - here’s the DATA from NOAA:
Average earth temperature shows a general increase from about 1910 to 1998 of TWO degrees. The period from 1998 through 2008 showed NO increase. And 2008 was the coolest year of the decade. Conclusive? Of course not. The data on neither side is conclusive, despite the self-assured and self-righteous posturing of the various participants.
Governments are not scientists. When they start to mess around in scientific issues then be very afraid, because, as we just saw in Copenhagen, they will make political, not scientific, decisions. Politicians love to make laws that please vocal special interests - ignoring long term consequence. You can see that right here in the failed state of California.
Wanna solve the CO2 problem real fast? QUIT CUTTING DOWN THE RAIN FORESTS. Problem solved. Oh, but according to the oil haters we need to cut down the forest to grow cane for ethanol for auto fuel, in one of the most thermodynamically stupid moves in human history. It takes more energy to produce and transport ethanol than it produces, so that’s a LOSER and has been so from its first conception in someone’s malfunctioning mind. Plus the wonderful rainforest that would absorb so much CO2 if it were still there, is gone. So sad. So incredibly stupid.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 06:26 PM
“In California, where all good things begin’??? Some is either lost in a major dope cloud or has ignored the last 20 year of history. Not only does Tam think he knows better than the American people what our priorities should be, he still thinks that California is the Golden State!
Let’s look at what good things have begun here in the last decade or so: Looked at our economy lately? Flight of companies and jobs to other states? Net migration of non-immigrants (it’s OUT of California)? Birth rate of those groups that are not migrating out (as high as 3.8 children per couple)? Percentage of adult residents who actually pay taxes instead of living off them (57%)? Number of employees that even the successful Valley companies (Silicon, not Goleta), hire and maintain OUTSIDE the state? Do you realize that we have not had an honestly balanced budget since before the millenium? And that all that smoke-and-mirror deficit spending in California went right into the pockets of public employees? And that all that money came from the stock market profits of a few hundred thousand of the 38 million people who live here? How many of those big taxpayers do you think are still here? Do you know that there are 3 people living off of every 4 taxpayers in this state. Austin TX is a booming technological “Silicon Prairie” precisely because California, where “all good thing begin” has systematically driven the smart entrepreneurs out. And Texas, even though it is the home of the hated Bush, does understand how to balance business and social issues (see recent article in The Economist comparing CA and TX).
Get a grip, Tam, and quit listening to your oneworld, selfstyledsmarterthaneveryone Berkeley friends. If you want things to improve, then first kill, not all the lawyers, as Shakespeare said, but the very idea of political correctness. And then fix education, teach real science, not the junk kind, and address the only real solution to all environmental issues (one of the original proposals of the environmental movment, now thoroughly redacted from all records due to political correctness) - population growth: where it’s coming from, and how to control it.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 07:35 PM
Local - just exactly what is that percentage of man made vs. naturally created CO2? How about using some actually statistics with stated sources instead of generalities like “a good percentage” or “VERY basic chemistry”. Surely a highly credentialed scientist such as yourself would have been better trained. How about proving you actually know what you’re talking about instead of just spouting? We are all waiting with baited CO2 (breath).
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» on 01.04.10 @ 07:41 PM
whole lotta spoutin’ goin’ on (with apologies to the most revered Jerry Lee Lewis)
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» on 01.04.10 @ 07:42 PM
Stop picking on Tam - his livelihood depends on propagating this BS - as does that of the many scientists in that “consensus” depending on grants to study “climate change”. Follow the money. I suggest finding another career Tam, before you are run out of town on a rail with pitchforks. People are catching on to this socialist scam of the International Destroy America First crowd. The only Americans who believe in this anymore are the ones who are brainwashed by the communists in the Universities (Tam himself) or the ones who benefit financially from it (Tam himself). I don’t think Tam even believes himself anymore but he kind of painted himself into a corner. Poor Tam.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 08:07 PM
Hey Local Insanity does an MS in Atmospheric Chemistry and a MS in Oceanography qualify me? Sorry about the CO2 discussion but I thought you might have learned in high school science that CO2 is acidic and lowers the pH of water. As the ocean becomes more acidic it creates massive problems. The acidification of the ocean in the past few decades is well documented by Scripps, WoodsHole and NOAA to name a few.
The problem with this platform of discussion is that many here do not understand science enough to analyze reports and have their own opinion. It takes years to be able to analyze good well-researched science with quality sampling techniques and statistics. It is another thing to simply site examples where in short periods of time something or a temperature did not fit a longer overall trend. Or better yet to find a paid scientist that is willing to be a mercenary spokesman in the form of a global climate change denier for the oil industry. If you understand the details behind what happened with the emails in England and actually read them ,like I have, you would know that the issue has been blown way out of proportion.
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» on 01.04.10 @ 09:51 PM
Hold on there, local. Only your own self-righteousness would prevent you from seeing that there is no real difference in a “paid scientist that is willing to be a mercenary spokesman in the form of a global climate change denier for the oil industry” and a paid scientist that is willing to be a religious spokesman for the global climate change industry. C’mon, fella, I respect your scientific degrees, but I have a couple myself and this subject is just not decided, much as many would like it to be (gotta keep those research dollars flowing). And while you may have read the ‘details’ behind the emails in England you seem to have missed the point that ANY such activity taints the whole, esp in the organization that expects the world to believe it is the ONE TRUE WAY for climate change information. Good science is truthful and apolitical. Can’t say that about climate change, or whatever the current sales terminology is. When politics gets hold of science, science loses, and we all lose. BTW, I assume you have no car and buy no petroleum-based products?
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» on 01.04.10 @ 10:21 PM
Uh huh and I have a Phd. in Rocket Science (on line anonymously). How convenient, not one, but two MS’s in BOTH the associated sciences. You crack me up. You’ve carefully avoided several direct questions (that you apparently can’t answer) which leads me to believe you’re full of it.
“to find a paid scientist that is willing to be a mercenary spokesman in the form of a global climate change denier for the oil industry.”
Sure, maybe, but most are academics paid by grants to support the global warming industry.
“If you understand the details behind what happened with the emails in England and actually read them ,like I have, you would know that the issue has been blown way out of proportion.”
But Global Warming (or climate change as it is now called) has NOT been blown way out of proportion? Y2K and zillions of other doomsday scenarios over the centuries were blown way out of proportion as well. And as Al Gore would scream “THEY PLAYED ON OUR FEARS”
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» on 01.04.10 @ 11:46 PM
Hey Local insanity, most likely those two MS degrees come from one of the left coast enviro schools where the lefty professors teach all the students to think with only the appropriate (i.e. Left) political spin and keep those research dollars flowing. Much higher moral character than a scientist working for a big oil company, obviously. NOT
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» on 01.05.10 @ 02:38 AM
Tam Hunt, congratulations. You sure know your stuff.
Fo the rest, I feel like a well-behaved kid during the recess…
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» on 01.05.10 @ 07:57 AM
Biased article and bitter conflictive comments between “Global Warming” and “Everything Oil - Free Market Knows Better” believers… 2 religions at war…
Climate fluctuations have and will always take place but we should neither polluting the planet with a destructive petrochemical industry neither in scams like “Caps & Trade” or destroying the rain forest to grow “green energy” OGMs.
Its time for people to get rid of their old faiths and open up to the new possibilities offered by all the liberating technologies blocked by the oligarchy because as JP Morgan said to Nicolas Tesla “There was no profit to be made from unlimited free energy.”
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» on 01.05.10 @ 08:21 AM
Biased article and bitter conflictive comments between “Global Warming” and “Everything Oil - Free Market Knows Better” believers… 2 religions at war…
Climate fluctuations have and will always take place but we should neither pollute the planet with a destructive petrochemical industry neither fall in scams like “Caps & Trade” or destroying the rain forest to grow “green energy” OGMs.
Its time for people to leave their old churches and open up to the new possibilities offered by all the liberating technologies blocked by the oligarchy because as JP Morgan said to Nicolas Tesla “There was no profit to be made from unlimited free energy.”
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» on 01.05.10 @ 08:36 AM
Always good points John Locke. I deem you sane.
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» on 01.05.10 @ 10:34 AM
Thanks John for pointing out the perverse hypocrisy of the AGW religion. The most credible piece of information that came out of the whore fest at Copenhagen was the “redistribution of wealth” from industrial countries to developing ones. Hmmmmm, a bit of a Freudian slip from the jet fuel consuming religious fanatics. Yes John Local drives a car. Everything Local does he does because we still have relatively cheap energy to fuel it. This is the part of the equation that Tam has acknowledged in his article. You, Local, all of us will be forced into as life of drudgery and subsistence living under the AGW religion. Oh, not Al Gore or the pointy headed elitists running everything. No they will continue to live the same cheap energy derived life they have always enjoyed, but the great unwashed masses of the industrial world will be cut off. What Tam and Local fail to realize is how much of everything they are able to do is tied directly to cheap abundant energy. The hypocrites at Copenhagen know by God and they understand that once oil is gone they will suffer unless they cut the masses off now and preserve that precious fuel for themselves. This whole phony baloney AGW crap is nothing more than the elite realizing that they are in danger. They don’t know how to do anything about the problem of diminishing oil except save most of it for themselves at our expense. Just look at Tams alternatives to oil, wind mills and solar panels. These are great CONSERVATION tools to save energy but they cannot compete with our current energy supply from fossil fuels and Tam knows it. This is why so many are looking at this issue with such incredulity. Climate changes very slowly and we have time to adapt. This is not about saving the planet from foul polluting humans, but rather saving what’s left of our petroleum for the elites. Pure and simple.
Also Johnny thanks for bringing up forest destruction. As Brazil converts the largest lungs on the planet to sugar production not one environmentalist has stepped up and taken issue. Hmmmmm, ok Local lets here your rationalization for that, but make it quick, before Tam has you out there 16 hours a day plowing the field by hand for your food.
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» on 01.05.10 @ 12:19 PM
For all the critics of my piece, I’d suggest you go back and read the second half, which is about peak oil, not climate change. Even if everything critics say about climate change is true - that’s it all a bunch of hooey - the threat of peak oil REQUIRES that we work quickly toward a low energy lifestyle. I’d highly recommend reading the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 executive summary. It’s eye-opening.
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» on 01.05.10 @ 02:18 PM
this ones for local insanity;
CO2 + 2H2O <—>>> HCO3 + H3O+
That H3O+ (thats what makes things acidic) is whats going to kill us all not global warming
actually peak oil is what is going to kill us all but lucky for planet earth she wont have to put up with humans or at least industrial humans
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» on 01.05.10 @ 02:44 PM
Peak oil and global warming are so last decade. We will have stable temperatures and plenty of oil for centuries.
Stop worrying.
Buy a big SUV.
Enjoy life.
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» on 01.05.10 @ 03:45 PM
Tam, low energy life style is what we did BEFORE industrialization. The planet cannot sustain its current human population under a “low energy lifestyle”. There are simply too many people now born and bred under the petroleum energy paradigm to go back without massive starvation. Think again man! My God there is no reason on this beautiful God given planet why we need to capitulate and chuck the last century of human progress out the window because you like back yard farming and teepees. Put your efforts into long lasting cheap and plentiful energy sources. We are human beings, not trees, plants, dogs or bacteria. We have a brain that is capable of understanding the physics of the universe and the enormously complex mechanics of DNA. To simply say “oil is going to run out so we better choose a more subsistence life style” is nothing but the same suicidal mental disorder that infects the entire left wing population of the globe. If you and sideshowbob want to die go live in east LA. But for God’s sake quit trying your best to force the rest of us to accompany you.
For the rest of you who don’t get it consider this, the most heavily armed civilian population of the most heavily armed nation on earth is not going to sit back and die of starvation nor are any other populations. So if you think the current war on terror is something to fret about, you just wait until the food starts running out and people know it was done for political reasons. Hell on earth boys, hell on earth.
So Tam put that mind of your to work like the some of us are and cook up some replacements for oil that ENHANCE our condition here. Let the negative suicidal progressives (wow! what an oxymoron that is) wallow in self loathing driven defeat. You are better than that and we can solve this problem without having to always go backward (the new progress).
BTW – thank you so much for actually reading and responding to your commenters, it shows a lot of character and high lights the fact you are a local just like the rest of us (yah, you to Local). Cheers!
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» on 01.05.10 @ 03:56 PM
To Jay:
I guess you should maybe watch the following lecture.
This might unfortunately moderate your ingenuous optimism.
The retired Professor of Physics from the University of Colorado in Boulder examines the arithmetic of steady growth, continued over modest periods of time, in a finite environment. These concepts are applied to populations and to fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal:
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000053112
Tam is right on one part of his article: “the threat of peak oil REQUIRES that we work quickly toward a low energy lifestyle.”
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» on 01.05.10 @ 05:08 PM
In fact we could probably quickly find alternatives to oil based energy production if we really developed all the new forms of energy that have been blocked since Nicola Tesla made the first discoveries of “Unlimited Free Energy”, but the real “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world:
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438
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» on 01.05.10 @ 05:32 PM
An21, right about peak oil, dead wrong about lifestyles. Go live in a teepee, grow your own food, make your own clothes and then come back and tell us why that is so great.
We can waste a lot less energy in everything we do. But in the end what we save should go to those who do not share our life style, bring them up to our standard instead of reducing ours to theirs. That, with our drive for better not worse and a growing population, means finding greater and cheaper sources of energy. This imbecilic notion that we have to go backward to survive is insane. No living organism ever progressed on this planet following that logic. Those that learn, do better and knock out the competition survive and evolve. Those that don’t die off.
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» on 01.05.10 @ 06:53 PM
Thank you sideshow Bob! That is exactly what I was looking for from Local. Now why couldn’t he come up with that? It was a test to see if he knows what he is talking about, actually has an education, or if he is full of global warming… err hot air. (global warming = hot air).
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» on 01.05.10 @ 07:46 PM
Chicken Little says:
The sky is falling… no that’s not it, a meteor is going to hit the Earth! No that’s not it, a supervolcano! Yeah! No that’s not it, Y2K! will end the industrial world! Oops that didn’t happen. Bird Flu! No that’s not it! ok Swine Flu! Ummm….Armegedon! Nuclear Holocaust! Global Cooling! A hole in the Ozone Layer caused by Freon ! We must outlaw spray cans! (remember that one?) Space Aliens from Mars! Super Duper Earthquake causing continent swallowing Tsunami! The Earth wobbles out of it’s orbit and spins into space!
Fast Forward present day:
Global warming caused by greenhouse gases!
Oh It’s cooling? Ok peak Oil! Oh, we really have no idea how much oil is in the ground or how many centuries it will last?
Ok ocean dead zones caused by overfishing! Oh that has nothing to do with CO2 emissions? Umm Ok Ocean acidification caused by CO2! Yeah that’s it!
Massive immigration ! Islamic extemism! Noo That’s just plain silly.
Here’s the REAL problem - you doomsdayers simply are enveloped in fear, because you have no faith in God. If you did, you would realize that God is in control and it is amazing that he holds it all together and we still exist with the statistics stacked up against us. He created all of this. He keeps the planets from colliding, times their orbits perfectly and somehow gives us a sustainable earth and climate despite the odds. Think about it, scientifically if you wish. What are the odds?
Pick up a Bible, and you will find “the peace that passes all understanding”, along with a clear cut prophecy of how the world really will end, but for the faithful, it isn’t important. With faith there is no fear.
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» on 01.06.10 @ 08:07 AM
We need to adapt. Take a look at this article The Great Transition: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21656220/The-Great-Transition-Navigating-Social-Economic-Ecological-Change-in-Turbulent-Times
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» on 01.06.10 @ 09:23 AM
For those interested in proving or disproving Peak Oil I would recommend reviewing the actual data on oil production and consumption trends in each nation. The highly respected dataset “BP Statistical Review of World Energy” is presented as a series of charts at the Energy Export Databrowser:
http://mazamascience.com/OilExport
Regardless of how many barrels of oil are still in the ground, our society depends upon crude oil being made available to global markets at an affordable price. Looking at the trends in oil producing and exporting nations like the UK, Norway, Indonesia and Mexico should give one pause.
Instead of tossing opinions around why not take a look at the actual data. That’s where the real story is found.
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» on 01.06.10 @ 10:36 AM
Thank you Local Insanity for the Christian point of view. Nice to see a Christian willing to put their faith out there for all to see (and righteously so!). Too bad you will get skewered for it, but like you said we have no fear.
Jonathan, looked at your site and yes it is apparent that oil production has peaked. However, coal, gas and nuclear have not. There is a lot of potential in these sources to replace dwindling oil supplies and at reasonable costs. Then there is the almost unlimited supply of energy from geothermal sources. We have the ability in this country to use our vast gas and coal supplies to generate enough surplus income to fund more nukes and a burgeoning geothermal industry (that can parlay off our incredible American drilling technology).
If we can get off this insane anti-carbon malaise and get more energetic folks like Tam on the geo-thermal bandwagon we will all benefit in the end. And no Tam I am not against renewables, just that they do not have a chance or a prayer in supplanting carbon supplies only aiding in their conservation. These are two fundamentally different problems and both need attention and much more than given. It is NOT a this or that problem, but both and right now.
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» on 01.06.10 @ 02:43 PM
“Tam, low energy life style is what we did BEFORE industrialization. The planet cannot sustain its current human population under a “low energy lifestyle”. There are simply too many people now born and bred under the petroleum energy paradigm to go back without massive starvation.”
Absolutely right AN50, but that is exactly what the world is facing. Not this year, not next. Maybe not for ten or twenty years, but Peak Oil and therefore peak energy WILL happen, and unless some miracle cure (cold fusion?? - whatever) comes along that is exactly where we are going.
That’s why I am right here where I am. There are no hungry people here. Yes, I’m in Hungary, but I’m not saying where ;)
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» on 01.06.10 @ 06:34 PM
AN50, two things: 1) I’ve said repeatedly in this forum that I acknowledge the benefit of geothermal, which is RENEWABLE. This is a basic point. 2) The point of my recommendation regarding a low energy lifestyle, which should be revealed if you check out the 2008 IEA WEO is that alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply. Check out peak oil online, read the reputable reports, and think again about the potential for replacing oil with alternatives in a way that avoids massive disruption.
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» on 01.06.10 @ 08:41 PM
Quite welcome AN50. To everyone else, how will we ever reach peak oil when environmentalists will not even let us take it out of the ground? Of course no problem if all of the other countries do it. We must sacrifice ourselves on the altar of Global Warming while the countries that don’t give a rip benefit from the last remaining oil!! (I will never call it climate change because you guys started all of this insanity - no fair changing the rules)!
Face it - this is all just another ploy for developing countries to take from the wealthy nations rather than produce for themselves. Global socialism. The Global Tax soon is to come. And all of you guilt ridden liberals will be happy to pay it (with our money of course).
But they will all be doomed by one of the global catastrophes you all fear because Thou shalt not steal! And just like the days of Noah the waters shall rise and the world shall be destroyed. But those who believe will be on the ark. I wonder if Noah produced too much CO2 to cause THAT global flood?
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» on 01.06.10 @ 10:23 PM
“alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply.”
Yes , Tam, and we can probably thank you for that because people like you are opposed to DRILLING FOR MORE!
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» on 01.07.10 @ 02:29 AM
@ Local Insanity
<<Yes , Tam, and we can probably thank you for that because people like you are opposed to DRILLING FOR MORE!>>
“David Brower called this the policy of “strength through exhaustion.” Here’s an example of strength through exhaustion: here is William Simon, energy advisor to the president of the United States. Simon says, “We should be trying to get as many holes drilled as possible to get the proven oil reserves.” The more rapidly we can get the last of that oil up out of the ground and finish using it, the better off we’ll be.”
-Extract of the excellent lecture of Dr. Albert Bartlett: “Arithmetic, Population and Energy”, I advised you above but I enclose again below in case;
*Public lecture: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1382251841067168618#
*Video Presentation: http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid=4364780292633368976#
*Transcript: http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645
@ Tam Hunt
“alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply.”
That’s yet an other unverified assumption you hold true because you listen to the same disinformation leading you to support the Global Warming scam.
Lots of renewable energies investigations or releases are barred from access to the market from the first discoveries of Nikola Tesla, by the oligarchy in power that wants limited supply of resources that can be under control and does not want free energy without a counter somewhere in the system.
The FREE ENERGY issue is censored by the oligarchy & corporatocracy (owning and running the Media Industry, Energy industry and Banking industry) and will not emerge easily against these forces unless people start waking up about the real issues investigate instead of repeating what they’ve been told by the authority.
“They must find it difficult those who take authority as the truth instead of truth as the authority” - E. Massey (Egyptologist)
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» on 01.07.10 @ 07:42 AM
AN50, two things: 1) I’ve said repeatedly in this forum that I acknowledge the benefit of geothermal, which is RENEWABLE. This is a basic point. 2) The point of my recommendation regarding a low energy lifestyle, which should be revealed if you check out the 2008 IEA WEO is that alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply. Check out peak oil online, read the reputable reports, and think again about the potential for replacing oil with alternatives in a way that avoids massive disruption.
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» on 01.07.10 @ 03:54 PM
Tam, thanks as always for the response. I have no heart burn at all with your pursuit of alternatives, just your priority over which ones. That is another discussion. My concern is with this attitude of retreat. Low energy lifestyle is something we in the lower socioeconomic classes practice daily. We take offense when pointy headed liberal elites tell us to back off on consumption. If Al Gore were to park his jet, ride a bike and live in an apartment he might make a better example for his low carbon/low energy lifestyle argument and free up energy for the masses. Tam, the working class folks are getting very tired of always sacrificing for the elite. Don’t preach to us about low energy, practice it and show us how you think it works. Do it for a while and see how that works for you first. We, who make the things you use, fix the things you break and clean up the messes you make already have a low energy consumption lifestyle by economic necessity. I am all for better efficiency, getting more done using less energy. But to ask people to step backward is not acceptable.
As I said earlier, we need to look at making MORE energy available to MORE people and cheaper not the other way around. I want to see all the people on this planet enjoy the comfort and convenience that AL Gore enjoys. That is part and parcel of my religious faith, looking out for the other guy. It also means “economic redistribution” is unnecessary, so you can kiss that loser socialism goodbye. If we can land a man on the moon, no small feat indeed, we can solve the peak oil problem, but mark my words here, Tam, retreat is NOT an option. Building windmills may be a great conservation tool or stop gap measure but our efforts should be on annihilating the points an21 made about elitist control of resources. Our country enjoyed the most prosperous growth and the most escalation of living standards for all when we allowed the market, open and free, to distribute cheap abundant energy to everyone. Yes regulation is necessary to ensure safety and competition as well as keep the liars, cheats and thieves at bay, but should never be used to control output like the liberal elites want. To that end let’s stop this harkening back to the dark ages where those of us at the bottom spent most of our time in survival mode and instead look at what we can do to make things better than they are.
That will take a lot more energy than we consume now and the best way to ensure that we find that energy and make sure distribution is abundant and cheap is a capitalist free enterprise system. It worked for your parents and ancestors here and will work for you too if you drop the liberal global socialism crap and this awful capitulation to a lesser standard of living. You can submerse yourself in defeat and fear, but I know we can do it. We just have to shake you doomsayers off our legs so we can march FORWARD. Be confident in our resolve to make it better not just survive.
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» on 01.07.10 @ 04:31 PM
Folks, you are missing the point. You are ALL being manipulated. It’s like Three Card Monty. You are all standing there betting on where the ace is going to be. You are watching the cards when you should be watching the dealer. In this case, simply follow the money.
My god!!! Why do we have to discuss this ad nauseam. Follow the money. Who stands to, or is currently making money, from a further erosion of our freedoms? Huh? Think about it.
Stop arguing about this CO2 level and that CO2 level. Step back and see who stands to benefit. And believe me when I say this…. it is not going to be you.
Who has set up carbon trading markets? Who has written software that bills for carbon usage? Who wants to tax farmers for cows that fart? Heck…who wants to tax your body for the CO2 you are giving off? Where are the taxes coming from, and where does that money really go? It’s a shell game. And the only bottom line is this - if you believe that man has caused global warming then you side with tyranny…if you don’t, then you love freedom. You are NOT going to change your minds. Boring, pedantic, lemmings.
Get over it. So let’s just fight it out at the ballot box. Believe me guys…I’m betting against the Goreistas. Daniel Petry
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» on 01.10.10 @ 04:08 AM
There was a typo in what I wrote earlier that destroyed the meaning of a whold paragraph so I amend it below:
The FREE ENERGY issue is censored by the oligarchy & corporatocracy (owning and running the Media Industry, Energy industry and Banking industry) and will not emerge easily against these paralyzing forces unless people start waking up about the real issues investigate instead of repeating what they’ve been told by the authority.
Tam,
Does the 2008 IEA WEO encloses alternative energy sources that do not seem to get any attention despite their huge potential such as (Just a few of them I am aware of):
* The Minato engine: http://www.rexresearch.com/minato/minato.htm
* The Steorm Orbo engine: http://www.steorn.com/
(Ad on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNwc-GhzIs)
* The Pantone engine: http://www.geetfriends.net/netdocs/onnouscachetout_eng.pdf
(News on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdSv3WAfBr8)
There is an endless list of these “ignored” technologies that would free the users from any controlled and captive distribution system…
I guess that is one of the major reason why sponsored “Think Tanks” state that “the alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply.”
They probably also omit that lots of the oil we use is devoted to intensive farming justified by a meat based diet. To AN50, it would be a way to “work quickly toward a low energy lifestyle” without heading towards Stone ages. “Permaculture” would be a way to get out of “Oil/Petrochemicals GMO’s Agriculture” and seems more an improvement than a “return to the Stone Ages”.
In any case, the end of Factory farming should be proposed by the advocates of “Climate Change” since:
“It generates 65 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide, a gas that is 296 times more effective at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide (CO2), the biggest greenhouse-gas by volume. Most of this pollution comes from manure.
Livestock also accounts for 37 percent of all human-induced methane, which is 23 times as warming as CO2 and is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and for 64 percent of ammonia, a big contributor to acid rain.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Farm_Animals_More_Damaging_To_Climate_Than_Cars_999.html”
Why this issue was more emphasised in Copenhaguen since its one of the easiest way of having a significant impact on our greenhouse gas emissions?
Asking the question is nearly answering it…
Now, even if we doubt of the importance of AGW, Factory Farming is anyway one of the major cause of destruction of the planet and reduces quickly its ability to sustain life (in any case, much more than an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, or in the average temperature).
Documentary “Devour the Earth”:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=55930684
Our attention is diverted on a money maker unimportant AGW made the issue of the time by the oligarchy controlled media while the real critical issues are being ignored, like:
* The development of the FREE Energy sources (Not only those renewable ones that can be controlled by a grid, or a controlled distribution with a counter/payment somewhere in the system),
* The need of a change in our diet, from meat based and processed food, to more local fresh food,
* The need of a change our agricultural production system,
* The need of an intelligent way of managing the world population (intelligent meaning not killing people through profitable wars or pandemics but implementing enough incentives to have smaller families)...
Its time to wake up, pass the smokescreens raised a corrupt elite and start shifting away quickly from the present path leading us to an apocalyptic future.
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» on 01.10.10 @ 04:40 AM
(Same post with a nedded correction - Sorry - remove this part inside the bracket if you just publish this corrected post - Thank you)
The FREE ENERGY issue is censored by the oligarchy & corporatocracy (owning and running the Media Industry, Energy industry and Banking industry) and will not emerge easily against these paralyzing forces unless people start waking up about the real issues investigate instead of repeating what they’ve been told by the authority.
Tam,
Does the 2008 IEA WEO encloses alternative energy sources that do not seem to get any attention despite their huge potential such as (Just a few of them I am aware of):
* The Minato engine: http://www.rexresearch.com/minato/minato.htm
* The Steorm Orbo engine: http://www.steorn.com/
(Ad on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNwc-GhzIs)
* The Pantone engine: http://www.geetfriends.net/netdocs/onnouscachetout_eng.pdf
(News on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdSv3WAfBr8)
There is an endless list of these “ignored” technologies that would free the users from any controlled and captive distribution system…
I guess that is one of the major reason why sponsored “Think Tanks” state that “the alternative energy sources other than oil simply cannot replace oil in time to stave off disruptions in oil supply.”
They probably also omit that lots of the oil we use is devoted to intensive farming justified by a meat based diet. To AN50: The generalisation of a vegetarian diet would be a way to “work quickly toward a low energy lifestyle” without heading towards Stone ages. “Permaculture” would be a way to get out of “Oil/Petrochemicals GMO’s Agriculture” and seems more an improvement than a “return to the Stone Ages”.
In any case, the end of Factory farming should be proposed by the advocates of “Climate Change” since:
“It generates 65 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide, a gas that is 296 times more effective at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide (CO2), the biggest greenhouse-gas by volume. Most of this pollution comes from manure.
Livestock also accounts for 37 percent of all human-induced methane, which is 23 times as warming as CO2 and is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and for 64 percent of ammonia, a big contributor to acid rain.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Farm_Animals_More_Damaging_To_Climate_Than_Cars_999.html”
Why this issue was more emphasised in Copenhaguen since its one of the easiest way of having a significant impact on our greenhouse gas emissions?
Asking the question is nearly answering it…
Now, even if we doubt of the importance of AGW, Factory Farming is anyway one of the major cause of destruction of the planet and reduces quickly its ability to sustain life (in any case, much more than an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, or in the average temperature).
Documentary “Devour the Earth”:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=55930684
Our attention is diverted on a money maker unimportant AGW made the issue of the time by the oligarchy controlled media while the real critical issues are being ignored, like:
* The development of the FREE Energy sources (Not only those renewable ones that can be controlled by a grid, or a controlled distribution with a counter/payment somewhere in the system),
* The need of a change in our diet, from meat based and processed food, to more local fresh food,
* The need of a change our agricultural production system,
* The need of an intelligent way of managing the world population (intelligent meaning not killing people through profitable wars or pandemics but implementing enough incentives to have smaller families)...
Its time to wake up, pass the smokescreens raised a corrupt elite and start shifting away quickly from the present path leading us to an apocalyptic future.
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» on 01.10.10 @ 08:04 AM
It is now confirmed that Daniel Petry is a verified nut case. Freedom vs. Tyranney give me a break. I wonder if he has ever looked at any data first hand or even understands some basic science. For others in the end times religious world you are in the wrong century. The Dark Ages were several centuries ago. I am all for the enlightening and solving our problems instead of adapt and wait for the arch.
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» on 01.11.10 @ 04:51 PM
An21, though I agree with you on the meat/environmental destruction connection (responsible for 85% of the rainforest destruction going on now) I disagree with the notion that eliminating energy demanding industrial agriculture is the way to go either. It may be true that Chinese farmers use way less energy to produce the food for 1.3 billion people than we do here, BUT and it’s a big BUT, do we want to live like Chinese farmers? I have dogged Tam with this often enough and yet no one in the energy/AGW/environmental schools of thought ever looks at the impact of going away from mass manufactured food to lower energy consuming methods of food production. It ain’t that simple boys, you don’t get something for nothing and which one of you is willing to pay and pay big for the lifestyle you are proposing everyone live to? We are so far off the farm now in our comfy, convenient little internet industrial world that sometimes we forget what a wonderful, drudgery free life cheap oil has bought us. That blindness has made claims of sustainability, renewables and all other such off the wall proposals quite interesting if not loopy. When Al Gore sets the example of how we should live, if Tam illustrates the sacrifice of low energy life style then maybe they might have a better chance at selling it. But watching millionaire Hollywood types jetting around the world expending huge sums of money for their enormously consumptive lifestyles while simultaneously preaching sacrifice and lower standards for everyone else, why just makes me wonder how long the most heavily armed civilian population on earth will tolerate that level of brazen hypocrisy. Quit preaching one thing while doing the opposite. I know plenty of people who really believe that they must live a lower standard of life for the planets sake and they live that life. I don’t want to. I enjoy the free time our petroleum driven industrial world affords me. It means even a half wit unsuccessful loser like myself can enjoy the free time only the very wealthy once did (God I love capitalism). What I chose to do with that time whether swilling beer in front of the boob tube or inventing a new way to build homes from common materials that is cheaper and longer lasting than current methods is my business. And even if I am quite the green thumb and can grow just about anything anywhere, I still rather not have to depend on that skill to feed my family. That is freedom. It is freedom Tam, an21, Local and most progressives want to take away from me and no you won’t. Figure it out kids. We either engineer a better world or crawl back into the cave, sans a few billion of us. I can tell you which choice I would make.
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