They say a message intended to influence public policy has to be repeated at
least ten times before the public even begins to understand it.
Clearly, though I have been posting articles about peak oil on this list for
several months, that threshold has not yet been reached here. If it had, the
Iowa Topics list would be buzzing with discussion of the impending decline in
global oil and gas production, and the economic and social consequences of
those declines.
Meanwhile, discussion of these topics is picking up on other Sierra Club
lists, like the Global Warming Chairs list, to which the very interesting article,
below, was posted recently.
A quote:
"We could be on the verge of seeing a collapse of 30 or 40 per cent of their
[Saudi Arabia's major oil fields] production in the imminent future. And
imminent means some time in the next three to five years - but it could even be
tomorrow."
I hope to be able to keep this issue before the Iowa Topics audience. Other
than GMO agriculture, I can't think of a more important (and more "Iowa") topic
for you all to consider.
Tom
=============================================================
Subj: [CONS-SPST-GLOBALWARM-CHAIRS] Always a good title: What they don't
want you to know about the coming oil crisis --- the view from Britain
Date: 1/20/2006 12:39:49 PM Central Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask] (Frank Leslie)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Chp & Grp Global
Warming Energy Chairs)
Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A> (Chp & Grp Global
Warming Energy Chairs)
To: [log in to unmask]
Here's a lengthy UK article on oil and its problems.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article339928.ece
I'll just post a few clips to whet your interest:
"A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of an acute, civilisation-changing
energy crisis. The latest wobble over disruptions to gas supplies from Russia
is
merely the latest in a series of reminders of how dependent our economies are
on
growing supplies of oil and gas. On Wednesday, Gazprom's deputy chairman was
in
London reassuring Britain that there would be no risk of disruption to British
gas supplies in the fall-out from the ongoing spat between Russia and Ukraine
over pricing. The very next day, temperatures in Moscow broke a 50-year
record,
plunging to minus 30C. Gas normally exported was diverted to the home front.
Supplies to the West fell. "
"We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per
cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by
oil.
Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five
per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow
and
deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from
New
York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a
day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising
fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it
will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global
demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a
year,
by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil
industry's
ability to meet it.
"
"
They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120
million
barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any
prospect
of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the
foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our
society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history,
in
terms of its scale and implications.
Of the current global demand for oil, America consumes a quarter. Because
domestic oil production has been falling steadily for 35 years, with demand
rising equally steadily, America's relative share is set to grow, and with it
her imports of oil. Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million
barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds
of
the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived
conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow
Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The
US
government could wipe out the need for all their 5 million barrels, and
staunch
the flow of much blood in the process, by requiring its domestic automobile
industry to increase the fuel efficiency of autos and light trucks by a mere
2.7
miles per gallon. But instead it allows General Motors and the rest to build
ever more oil-profligate vehicles. Some sports utility vehicles (SUVs) average
just four miles per gallon. The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in
1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel
efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon.
This
at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles
per
gallon.
Most US presidents since the Second World War have ordered military action of
some sort in the Middle East. American leaders may prefer to dress their
military entanglements east of Suez in the rhetoric of democracy-building, but
the long-running strategic theme is obvious. It was stated most clearly,
paradoxically, by the most liberal of them. In 1980 Jimmy Carter declared
access
to the Persian Gulf a national interest to be protected "by any means
necessary,
including military force". This the US has been doing ever since, clocking up
a
bill measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and counting. With such
a
strategy comes a disquieting descent into moral ambiguity, at least in the
minds
of something approaching half the country. The nation that gave the world such
landmarks in the annals of democracy as the Marshall Plan is forced by
deepening
oil dependency into a foreign-policy maze that involves arming some despotic
regimes, bombing others, and scrabbling for reasons to make the whole
construct
hang together.
"
"Let us take some opinions that ought to be difficult to discount, one from
the
top of the oil tree in the US and two from the Middle East. The Houston-based
energy investment banker Matthew Simmons has been one of George W Bush's
energy
advisers. He has studied reports by Saudi engineers showing that pressure is
dropping in Saudi oilfields. The four biggest fields (Ghawar, Safaniyah,
Hanifa,
and Khafji) are all more than 50 years old, having produced almost all Saudi
oil
in the past half-century. These days, Simmons says, they have to be kept
flowing
largely by injection of water. This is of explosive significance, he argues.
"We
could be on the verge of seeing a collapse of 30 or 40 per cent of their
production in the imminent future. And imminent means some time in the next
three to five years - but it could even be tomorrow.""
Frank
|=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
| Frank R. Leslie, M.S. Space Tech | Adjunct Lecturer in Renewable
Energy
| Florida Tech, DMES, Rm. 104, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne FL 32901
| (321) 674-7377 | http://my.fit.edu/~fleslie (Renewable
Energy)
| Florida Tech email: [log in to unmask] |
http://my.fit.edu/wx_fit/roberts/RH.htm
| Adjunct Advisor to the Green Campus Group (Campus Sustainability)
| Home: 1017 Glenham Drive, NE, Palm Bay FL 32905-4855 | (321) 768-6629
| Home email: [log in to unmask] | 28-01.3130N /
80-35.6136W
| www.geocities.com/windy4us (Wind Energy Experimenters) | KD4EYQ 050912
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Subject: [CONS-SPST-GLOBALWARM-CHAIRS] Always a good title: What they don't
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