Check out the latest Al Gore talk on the climate crisis, taking into account the latest Ice cap melts and the Climate Code Red warnings:
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Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008The Planet Shivers as Oil Supplies Tighten
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008Well, the news keeps pouring on. Yesterday’s reports of the Saudi King wanting to keep future finds for posterity got a rise out of the market.
And it’s not hard to see why:
Mexico’s state-run oil company said Monday that oil production fell 7.8 percent to 2.91 million barrels a day in the first quarter as current reserves dwindle.
[…]
Pemex also said Monday that oil exports had dropped 12.5 percent in the first quarter, mostly due to falling production and port closures caused by bad weather in February.
BusinessWeek.com
Mexico is one of the top 3 suppliers to the USA, if you’re not keeping track. I’m assuming this is a yearly averaged drop, not an actual 12.5% drop.
Meanwhile, crude futures today rose to $119.90
US crude oil hit an all-time peak of $119.90, boosted by supply worries from key producers Russia and Nigeria and a jump in demand last month from China, the second-largest energy consumer after the US.
Gulf Daily News
Are you getting worried yet? You should be. Take a look at what the Wall Street Journal put on their front page today:
But the [massive new oil Khurais field revitalization] project also illustrates a darker point: Even in Saudi Arabia, home to more than a quarter of the world’s known recoverable reserves, the age of cheap and easily pumped oil is over.
Got it? Is that clear enough? This is the core premise of all peak oil discussions: the age of cheap and easily pumped oil is OVER.
Saudi King Says Save Oil For Future Generations
Monday, April 21st, 2008Not satisfied with the peak oil sources? Then how about the current king of Saudi Arabia?
From the April 21 (pdf) ASPO newletter (Newsletter Archives).
Well worth a read, see an HTML version on evworld.com if you prefer that format.
Saudi King Abdullah drops quiet bombshell; U.S. media sleep through it
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said he had ordered some new oil discoveries left untapped to preserve oil wealth in the world’s top exporter for future generations…
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said he had ordered some new oil discoveries left untapped to preserve oil wealth in the world’s top exporter for future generations…
The King’s remarks seem to confirm a statement made last year by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi who, when asked “How high can your production go?” replied, “We’ll get to 12.5 million barrels a day and then we’ll see.”
If the Saudi announcement was a bombshell, American nearly newspapers ignored it. We decided to canvass experts we respect to see what they thought. Excerpts follow:
Limits to Rice
Monday, April 21st, 2008The title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek… but the stories are getting increasingly surreal, and I didn’t want to leave these rice stories alone.
As the chart makes clear, the ascent of the cost of rice to $24 from $10 per hundredweight over the past year tracks the declining value of the American dollar. The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable. China has bid aggressively for rice all year, and last week banned rice exports, along with Vietnam and several other producers.
[..]
Never before in history has hunger become a global threat in a period of plentiful harvests. Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world’s rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price.
[…]
The George W Bush administration might as well have used the State Department as a set for the Jackass reality show. American arrogance has eroded the ground under many of the governments on which its foreign policy depends. It is hard to characterize what will come next, except, like the stunts on Jackass, that it is going to hurt.
Asia Times
The Limits to Growth, 30 Years Later
Monday, April 21st, 2008I was talking to some friends, the kind who are reasonably smart, well educated, but, sadly all too prone to repeat as fact what is in fact a myth. In this case, the myth that Peak commodity production was predicted in the 1970s (in books like The Limits to Growth [LTG]), and never happened. The Oil Drum had a nice article that analyzes how this myth came to be:
The success of the smear campaign against the LTG ideas shows the power of propaganda and of urban legends in shaping the public perception of the world, exploiting our innate tendency of rejecting bad news. Because of these tendencies, the world has chosen to ignore the warning of impending collapse that came from the LTG study. In so doing, we have lost more than 30 years. Now, there are signs that we may be starting to heed the warning, but it may be too late and we may still be doing too little. Cassandra’s curse may still be upon us.