EA - This isn't exactly new news. I've heard from expats for decades how unsafe PEMEX ops are. A number refuse to work for them for fear of their personal safety.

Anyone have any data on Chevron's production over the last few years? Has it been expanding production (not counting buying up competitors) to meet expanding global demand?

It must me reading this differently from you

"Price creates incentive, and energy will be developed if there's demand for it at the price you can develop it,"

a demand for it at what price he doesn't say.

Mr. Watson says. In that sense, "oil and gas are plentiful."

well yes in the sense that $500 per barrel means there's pleanty

- just you can't afford it

KSA - that bit about "theres no buyers for out oil" , " the market is well supplied"

so it will be if the price is $500 per barrel!

Isn't there a new , what do you call it , MEME going around now - oil is plentiful , loads of oil at this price mate...... no peak - just more "exclusive"

or is that a parrot's digem ? ;-)

just like the Gold , oil will become a rich mans game , pleanty of it for those who can pay . Eventually oil will be like a Rolls Royce used to be - if you have to ask the price - you can't afford it....

Forbin

Though I'm a bit curious as to when energy became the same thing as oil, gas and coal, energy dense though they may be, they aren't quite the same thing...

The inability to distinguish between different things (forms of energy) is a common fault of energy analysts. I have ranted against this for a long time. It is the reason the fallacious concept of EROEI never dies.

The other error is treating energy, which is an abstraction for its various forms, as though it were concrete and exists separately from its forms. This is called the reification fallacy. Energy like grain and metal is an abstraction that refers to its component concrete forms. Energy only exists in its concrete forms, just as with grain and metal.

The characteristics of each form are critical in determining solutions to the liquid transportation fuel dilemma. A form of energy that can not be used by the transportation infrastructure is not a solution, such as natural gas. Change to natural gas for transport requires retrofitting the vehicle infrastructure at great cost.

And vehicle manufacturers fight making new vehicles to run on natural gas because it would make them more expensive and thereby reduce sales and profits.

That is why ethanol is a partial solution to the problem. But big oil fights it because it takes some of oil's markets share and inhibits the desire of gasoline refiners to raise prices and profits.

They would rather have higher gas prices than collect the blenders credit since the higher prices would apply to all of their production. The blenders credit is peanuts compared to raising gasoline prices across the board.

I found this quote very irritating:

As for bio fuels, "we would need to consume land the size of states" to hit the country's current ethanol targets. Chevron is investigating bio fuels, but Mr. Watson says the "economics aren't there" yet. Unlike many CEOs, " Mr. Watson insists on products that can prosper without federal subsidies, which he believes are costly and lacking in transparency when "consumer pockets are tight, government pockets are tight."

First of all, as far as I know land is not consumed just because the crop is used for ethanol. The impairment of land is the same whether used for ethanol or for animal/human food.

Secondly, the hypocrisy of "Mr. Watson insists on products that can prosper without federal subsidies, which he believes are costly and lacking in transparency when "consumer pockets are tight, government pockets are tight." is absolutely appalling.

Oil is heavily subsidized. These subsidies are large both in the tax code and in other forms. Oil has the oil depletion allowance to shelter income. Corn producers do not have a soil depletion allowance. There is no strategic ethanol reserve to remove product from the market which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve does.

But the really big subsidy is the cost of wars for oil security and the lives lost and ruined by injuries. These subsidies for oil run into the trillions of dollars.

To ignore oil subsidies and to claim that ethanol subsidies are not transparent when oil subsidies are the most opaque in the energy field shows that Mr. Watson is either ignorant or a conman trying to mislead the American people.

In theory, the planet's resources are finite. In reality, don't let that bother you. We will continue to produce lots of oil until we can't. The road to hell is paved with the clarion calls of the "realists". Get real. In the interests of "realism" we just need to get used to the fact that that climate change is proceeding at a much more rapid rate than most scientists projected even a few years ago.

I do agree with one thing,though. Americans are whistling past the graveyard if they take affordable oil for granted. They also should not be taking affordable food or water for granted either. They also need to get used to "dry spells" like are currently being experienced in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and elsewhere.

Yes, money can fix everything. And if you get a big enough lever, you can move the world.

From the realist point of view the obvious counter argument to "plenty of oil" is:

• At what rate?
• At what cost?

That second question is not limited to economic considerations alone (although that certainly is important to those tasked with making a project pencil out and/or show a profit), but is actually three questions:

• At what cost to the economy?
• At what cost in energy?
• At what cost to the environment?

I've yet to see an oil executive or other cornucopian that will directly address any of those questions, never mind all of them. After all, to do so would call into question the very bedrock foundation of their world view, namely that BAU can continue on its current trajectory indefinitely, and that infinite growth on a finite planet is no problem at all.

Cheers,
Jerry

"Oil Without Apologies"...What the hell does that mean?
Sounds vacuous, arrogant AND belligerent all in one hit; quite an achievement.

You'll have a hard time convincing anyone who doesn't already believe in peak oil with that graph, since all the scary curves are in the future. That figure is not supporting data, it's an opinion.

One I believe is true, or I wouldn't be here, but it doesn't make your case.

The illustration by Aangel won't come to pass, because of the reasons put forward by Westexas & others, but it is still useful as a projection. That is, if everything keeps on the present course, this is what is going to happen. Since it won't get to that point, it stands to reason that other factors will come into play before that time and the closer it is to the crossing point, the greater the pressure will be.

The single most disastrous policy in an oil exporting country would be to keep domestic prices low for petrol & other oil products, since these policies act to embed high consumption in the social fabric. It would be much better to let domestic prices reach parity with the world market and have the revenue thus generated split between improving the lifestyle of the population and developing the economy more generally. The biggest obstacle to a realistic policy like this would be the dominance of cornucopian thinking in the public arena.

Hopefully, the world will become more accepting of the theory of Peak Oil and cornucopianism will experience a crisis. I've been seeing Peak Oil being mentioned more frequently in the mainstream press here in Australia in the last couple of years. It's still very much a minority view, but it may be approaching critical mass. If it can break through here, it probably won't be long afterwards before it breaks through in the US. And if the Peak Oil becomes accepted wisdom in the US, the rules of the game will change completely.

I have a lot of respect for Gore's attempt to wake up people in the United States except that he might have been a bit more successful if he were a little bit better at walking his talk. However, unless he has changed his tune recently, the main problem I have with him is his apparent belief that we can have it all. We can continue to use just as much energy as ever by just substituting renewable fuels for fossil fuels. He still seems to be on the oxymoronic sustainable growth band wagon without any change in our level of consumption.

" but that there have been so many such events recently that all point toward warming"

or cooling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315–1317

"Famine in the Medieval European context meant that people died of starvation on a massive scale. As brutal as they were, famines were familiar occurrences in Medieval Europe. As an example, localized famines occurred in France during the fourteenth century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315–1317 (the Great Famine), 1330–1334, 1349–1351, 1358–1360, 1371, 1374–1375 and 1390. In England, the most prosperous kingdom affected by the Great Famine, years of famine included 1315–1317, 1321, 1351, and 1369. "

A century of climate instability has happened before industrialization began. It really doesn't matter if it's global warming, global cooling, or just one of the planet's normal cycles, not that interglacial periods have even been the normal for the last 2 million years. If this is more than a 3 to 5 year blip it's going to be unduly interesting.

That's a point I have raised myself a couple of times. There is yet another point, and that is a financial one. An exporting country would have a lot of cash flowing into the country that it could use for a variety of purposes. They could enrich the ruling class, use it to pay off the lower classes, subsidize gasoline prices and other such things. But as exports drop to zero, their ability to do such things also disappears, and that could lead to social unrest.

I've suggested that we will see Phase One and Phase two net export declines in specific countries.

In Phase One, generally rising oil prices will offset the declining volume of net oil exports, resulting in stable to increasing cash flows from export sales.

In Phase Two, generally rising oil prices will not be sufficient to offset the declining volume of net oil exports, resulting in declining cash flows from export sales.

But in any case, here is the key point: Given a production decline in an oil exporting country, unless consumption falls at the same rate as, or at a rate faster than, the rate of decline in production, the net export decline rate will exceed the production decline rate and the net export decline rate will accelerate with time. Interestingly enough, given a production increase, in most cases the rate of increase in net exports tends to exceed the rate of increase in production:

A look at global net oil exports from 2002 to 2009 (BP + Minor EIA Data):

A Nine mbpd Shortfall, Between "Expectations" & Reality

One of the interesting aspects of "Net Export Math" that I had been overlooking is that while production is increasing in oil exporting countries, the rate of increase in net exports, in most cases, tends to exceed the rate of increase in production. We just went back and looked at the 2002 to 2005 global data. Here are the 2002 to 2005 global net export data (2005 net exporters with 100,000 bpd or more of net exports, Total Petroleum Liquids):

2002: 39 mbpd
2003: 42
2004: 45
2005: 46

From 2002 to 2005, production by these countries increased at 4.6%/year, but net exports increased at 5.1%/year. At 5.1%/year, global net exports would have increased to about 54 mbpd in 2008, but let's look at what actually happened:

2006: 46 mbpd
2007: 45
2008: 45
2009: 43

Given that the market was "expecting" about a 5%/year rate of increase in net oil exports, I think that the shock of going to a zero rate of increase, and then actual net export declines was quite severe, probably more so than we initially thought. And then we have the so far relentless increase in Chindia's combined net oil imports, increasing from 11% of global net oil exports in 2005 to 17% in 2009.

There was a blogpost by cornucopian Steven LeVine not long ago claiming this very thing, see here:
Link

It might be worth pointing out that he also endorsed a guy by giving him a platform on his blog, where the guy was essentially saying that the Federal Reserve was responsible for a $50 dollar premium on the oil price.

I wouldn't take Mr. LeVine or his blogguests very seriously, but of course, who am I to disagree with a non-petrolium engineer and a financial conspiracy theorist?

P.S.
As for 'aangel', the total supply on his graph is below 85 mb/d for 2011, but in reality we're at 88-89 mb/d, which shows that graph is hopefully off, but it also shows that aangel probably does not have an elementary grasp of the factual supply reality, even if you take the benevolent view of him 'just proving a point'. Proving a point is quite undermined if you get even the most basic facts wrong by printing a graph so out of date it's beyond alarmist.
D.S

I think he may be right, but it's probably going to come in a way he is not foreseeing.

On the other hand, I am very curious to see what happens after June when QE II is done with.

We're seeing nascent signs of demand destruction in the U.S. but this time we have a massive stimulus in the U.S. economy which is preventing further contraction, we didn't have that in 2008.

But the stimulus is not going to save America, it is merely prolonging the inevitable. I wonder if there will be a QE III from June onwards, considering the heated debate on the debt right now in America, and if there is a QE III what will happen to the political stability.

And if there is not new QE, coupled with much higher gas prices(we're likely to see the old gas records to be broken this summer), will the American economy actually be able to handle the enormous pressures without the stimulus?

Oil Prices Will Ease in 2012 on Stimulus Withdrawal,

Wow, he really thinks a lot of the magnitude to which stimulus is holding up the economy. 60 dollars as representive of a percentage of economic activity in relation to current price is about 1/2 if compared to Brent oil. So he thinks the stimulus is maintaining 1/2 of the world economy?

To get back down to 60 dollars would take another massive recession, and it might happen if oil price keeps rising, but I doubt it will occur due to a reduction or even elimination of stimulus.

S - Interesting but good to bear in mind they shoot themselves in the foot with respect to those long chain hydrocabons reaching the surface. To reach the surface, where they would be usefull for usins, the pressure encountered would be below the point of stability. Thus the long chain would break back down to methane or perhaps be completely destroyed. Proving that trillions of bbls of complex hydrocarbons may exist in the mantle to which we have no access doesn't do much to change the outlook of PO.

Surprise, surprise.

A good way to keep tabs of who is in who's pocket is at http://www.opensecrets.org/

see http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2010&ind=E01
and http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01

Again this allows me to beat that dead horse again: we have a one party system composed of politicians whose primary goal is re-election. That may be denying AGW one year and embracing it several years later. Doesn't matter what they really believe IMHO. A R will support the EPA if that's gets him re-elected just a quickly as a D will condemn it if that's what it takes to get the votes. What frustrates me even worse is how so many folks buy into this sham and really believe it's "us against them".

"If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would take 59 minutes to define the problem and 1 minute to solve it." - Albert Einstein

Nice quote. :)

Sadly, in reality we would argue 59 minutes who's fault it is that the world is going to end (Dems? Reps? Gays?), some of us would even argue that everything is fine, no need for panic.
In the final minute we would just watch it burn, and some guys would try to make the last quick bucks out of it... :P

Most interesting. Even as I was just starting to read the thing, I could see exactly where it was going, and the relevance to peak oil and climate change was stunningly obvious..

Seraph. All we ever do is 'define' the problem and recommend solutions. Meeting after meeting. Treaty after treaty.

Peter de Noronha (1897-1970)
The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent! Further it is mentioned that if you want to kill an idea in the world today, get a Committee working on it. Adds J.B. Hughes, "If Moses had been a Committee, the Israelites would still be in Egypt."

That Einstein quote looks to be something one might wish he said, rather than anything he did say...

To put this document in context, one should have available the earlier documents which are referenced and which this document largely replaces. Those would be HSPD-8 (2003) and HSDP-8 Annex 1 (2007). There's the possibility that this directive represents an improvement compared to the ones signed by Gee Dubyah...

E. Swanson

Note that the "wicked problem" formulation dates back to the early 1970s among urban planning theorists; it is not something that the folks at the military school came up with.

http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_Theory_of_Pla...

Power Surge: Are we finally on the brink of a clean energy revolution?

Based on recent evidence, I am leaning toward the "epic fail" scenario, too.

Hunker down and get ready. Stock up on candles. Don't buy a car with more than four cylinders, and only buy that if you can't buy one with fewer. A bicycle and a good set of walking shoes might be useful as well.

Oh, right, I forgot about their major corporate sponsors.

Yes, I can't expect them to go against the interests of the Koch brothers. I don't plan to watch it, I hate the BS.

The way they are going it seems like the earth will someday soon have had its entire crust blasted to smithereens in the search for puffs of gas.

Search for info on Collingwood/Utica Shale.

http://oilshalegas.com/collingwoodshale.html

RBM - Ohio and Mich have been a significan't part of the oil patch for over 80 years. Maybe you're hearing about some "new" shale gas play heading their way. In particular the Antrim Shale. Although the Antrim Shale has produced gas for more than 70 years, the play was not very active until 25 years ago. During the 1990s, the Antrim became the most actively drilled shale gas play in the US, with thousands of wells drilled. To date, the shale has produced more than 2.5 TCF from more than 9 thousand wells. Go here if you would like more details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrim_Shale.

And almost all those wells were frac'd. Bet no one remembers much stories about that 20 years ago.

The members here just like to pick on Nascar to flaunt thier eco creds.

Nascar is to the best of my knowledge the ONLY self supporting major spectator sport in the US-I have not heard about any city or state building any race tracks for them.

Stories about mega millionaire baseball and football team owners taking thier ball club and leaving town unless they get a free new facility on the taxpayers dime are as common as crabgrass.

I've been to big time races, such as the ones at Charlotte , NC, and big time football games-the crowds are roughly comparable, although the Nascar folks are more likely to show up in motor homes and stay for the weekend , as there are typically competitions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The really big difference is that while there is only one Sprint Cup event(the top level and the bigggest draw by far) on any given weekend, there are NUMEROUS professional football, basketball, and baseball games drawing combined audiences many times as large.Needless to say, a goodly percentage of the fans of these other sports obviously drive to the games.

The fuel consumed at a race is obviously only a small fraction of the fuel comsumed by the spectators in getting there and back home.
The last time I was at Charlotte, I estimate that there must have been AT LEAST ten thousand cars in the various parking lots, probably a lot more, maybe twice or even three times as many.

Most of the spectators live at least a forty to forty five minute drive away.Lots of them live several hours away.

All this having been said, I do grok peak oil-as the regulars here know.

I fully expect to see the American's infatuation with the personal automobile come to an end if I and lucky enough to live another decade or two.

My personal guess is that a college football game played by a top ten team with a big fan base results in about as much fuel being used as a typical automobile race, all things considered.

I was searching around to find any current readings on global rad levels, and went to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty site, and found this Multimedia Film that shows a representation of all the Nuclear Explosion tests from 1945-1998 (2053 total)
http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/

It was interesting to see the tests by France, coincident with their great buildout of Civilian Nuclear power.. a relationship?

In any case, the US Southwest has sure had a lot of action.. (much of it underground, but still)

"First we got the bomb, and that was good,
cuz we love peace and brotherhood;

Then Russia got the bomb, but that's OK
cuz the balance of power's maintained that way .. Who's Next?..

France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,
cuz they're on our side, (we believe) ... " - Tom Lehrer "Who's Next?"

http://www.ctbto.org/press-centre/press-releases/2011/international-orga...

Apr 25, International organizations to re-assess nuclear emergency response framework

VIENNA - “The CTBTO stands ready to further cooperate with and provide expert advice to the IAEA and other relevant organizations and for its global monitoring system to continue contributing to disaster prevention and mitigation,” the Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Tibor Tóth said today

Fukushima - that sounds familiar. Yeah, I think I remember something about that - something in Japan, right? Isn't that a volcano or something?

You gotta move on dude, that is old news. Nobody talks about that anymore, there are much fresher, more exciting things to think about. And besides, that was far away and they said everything was OK over here, so what's the big deal?

Thanks for the link. Obviously this is still a situation that bears watching.

"Especially because of youth unemployment... there is now a risk that this will be turned into a life sentence, and that there is a possibility of a lost generation," he said.

Well it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that that is precisely what you might expect if you keep stealing the resources of future generations. However, what I think they are still missing in terms of insight into the big picture and what can already be pretty clearly read on the walls, is that a large part of that generation they're giving up on as lost may be somewhat reluctant to just roll over and play dead. Witness what is happening even now with political unrest in the ME and elsewhere.

http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2010/08/uk-royal-society-call-for-su...

—–Original Message—–

Sir John Sulston, Chair
People and the Planet Working Group
UK Royal Society
March 31, 2011

Dear Sir John Sulston:

Your recent comments regarding the review of research on the human population and its impact on the planet we inhabit by a high level panel of experts give rise to hope for the future of children everywhere. Thanks for all you, the Planet and the People Working Group and the UK Royal Society are doing to protect biodiversity from massive extirpation, the environment from irreversible degradation and the Earth from wanton dissipation of its finite resources by the human species. I am especially appreciative for two quotes from you,

…… “we’ve got to make sure that population is recognized…. as a multiplier of many others. We’ve got to make sure that population really does peak out when we hope it will.”

…….”what we want to do is to see the issue of population in the open, dispassionately discussed…. and then we’ll see where it goes.”

Inasmuch as you and an esteemed group of professionals with appropriate expertise are examining scientific evidence regarding the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers, please note there is research that has been summarily dismissed by many too many of our colleagues regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation which I would like to bring to your attention. For the past ten years I have been unsuccessfully attempting to draw attention to certain evidence that to date remains both unchallenged and ignored by virtually every top-rank professional. They appear unable to refute the evidence and simultaneously unwilling to believe it. Their unexpected conspiracy of silence has served to conceal certain research by David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg. How else can it be that so many established professionals with adequate expertise act as if they are willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute in the face of scientific evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation? The conscious denial of what could somehow be real about the growth of the human population in our time is not doing anything that can be construed as somehow right and good for future human wellbeing and environmental health, I suppose. It appears as if we could be witnesses to the most colossal failure of intellectual honesty, moral courage and nerve in human history.

Peer-reviewed professional publications, letters to the editor, slideshow presentations et cetera can be found at the following link, http://www.panearth.org/

Thank you for attending to this request for careful, skillful and rigorous scrutiny of research from two outstanding scientists. Please know I am holding onto a ray of hope that the research of Hopfenberg and Pimentel is fundamentally flawed; that human population dynamics is different from, not essentially similar to, the population dynamics of other species; and that human population numbers are not primarily a function of an available supply of food necessary for human existence. That would be the best news.

Sometime soon, I trust, many scientists will speak up with regard to apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation the way people in huge numbers in the Mid-East are calling out for democracy now.

Respectfully yours,

Steve Salmony

Human beings with feet of clay are in possession of all that is needed to change the world. All that is required is for us to speak out now here loudly, clearly and often with one voice. All that the self-proclaimed masters of the universe... among us control now will change. After all, the masters of the universe are a few million in number; whereas, human beings with feet of clay number in the billions.

Speaking out about what could somehow be true is the requirement for change. Otherwise the endless production of ideological idiocy and self-serving logical contrivances by the overly educated sychophants and absurdly enriched minions of the masters of the universe will continue to be streamed into the mass media... as if such specious thinking represented what is real and true.

As things stand now here and in many other time-spaces, the silence of human beings with knowledge of what is somehow real could not be more deafening, nor the dark clouds gathering before all of us more forbidding. Elective mutism by the knowledgeable has vanquished 'the light' and the hope for a sustainable future that only science can provide to the human family.

Rachel Carson was correct years ago, I suppose, when noting,

“We stand now where two roads diverge…… The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one “less traveled by”-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

I fear we will not choose to take 'the other fork of the road' until it is too late to make a difference that makes a difference for the future...

The United Nations' Rio+20 Conference occurs next year, 455 days from now. If circumstances are favorable, I will find a way to attend the conference just as I found a way to attend the Earth Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. I do not know why I went to South Africa then and do not know why I will go to Brazil next year. Perhaps there will be a chance to speak out.

The human community has enormous human-induced global challenges looming before us, ones that could likely descend with a vengeance upon our unaware children, if not before, and we refuse even to talk about the “mother” of these global challenges. Ecological threats to human well being and environmental health are already visible in the offing, but we choose silence over science; ideological idiocy over evidence-based research.

To leave the children unaware and unprepared to address and overcome global challenges because their soft, sanctimonious, silly, selfish and stupid elders refused to so much as acknowledge the best available science regarding human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth seems somehow not quite right.

A single generation has shown itself to be quite ready, willing and able to ravage the Earth and leave the mess made in the process for the children to clean up. What are we to say, finally, about a generation that mortgages the future of its children, threatens their very existence and chooses in every present moment to willfully deny their adult responsibilities so they can keep greedily doing just as they like, come what may?

If greed-mongering rules the world, the world we are blessed to inhabit, the one we are borrowing from our children, does not “ruffle some feathers” and arouse us to speak out, then what is the point of speech? We have evidently chosen to forget the words of an ancestor who reminds all of us, even now, "Speak out as if you are a million voices because your silence kills the world."

Regardless of the merit of the article, I find it worth noting that this class of "peer reviewed" article is starting to proliferate on the internet. MDPI.com is an open access publishing house that has very minimal requirements for entry. You just know the reviewers don't spend much time with the contents of the submitted papers. It's really becoming either (1) a big sham or (2) a mechanism for breaking out ideas from people that normally don't have access to the prestigious print channels.

My preferred approach is just to get the information out there and if it is good work, it will rise to the top. Scientists should know good work when they see it and need to start pushing insightful ideas regardless of where they appear. Saying something is peer reviewed doesn't hold the same water it once did.

Fun reading!

There is little doubt that proposals to mitigate the threat of climate change, sometimes referred to as catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CAGW) or global warming ...

CAGW is bs terminology invented on the internet without scientific definition used for political propaganda purposes. When I see "CAGW", its an automatic signal that the science content is likely poor.

And as a humorous aside, note that his acronym doesn't even match his labeling phrase.

This article was initially motivated by personal discussions with two of the principal economic analysts on this subject concerning the validity of the physical science inputs that they had used. One said that he had never examined the physical science inputs he used from the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) efforts since he assumed that they were valid. The other said that he believed there should be a division of effort and that since his expertise was not in the physical sciences this should be left to experts in this field, which he felt included the UN IPCC.

An anecdotal paragraph without citations. Any facts here?

According to my definition of valid science in Section 1.2...

A personal definition of valid science ... okay ....

The various UN IPCC reports broadly argue that the authors cannot think of any reasonable source of global warming other than the increasing level of some GHGs, so that must be the cause.

Really? The IPCC authors argue that they cannot think of any reasonable source of global warming other than increasing levels of GHGs? How is this shown?

One is that climate researchers have long been mystified by the fact that the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements can only account for about half of the anthropogenic emissions (as shown in Figure 1), so they have long sought a ―missing sink for CO2.

Again, broad claims without any citation. Scientists are not mystified and CO2 sinks are not "long sought" or "missing."

I think that's enough.

Bruce, have you read this article with a skeptical eye? Are you able to? If so, why in the name of God are you trying to push this schlock? And if not, why in the name of God are you trying to push this schlock? :lol:

This is the same Alan Carlin who's insightful report and its subsequent "Suppression" by the EPA made him a darling of the climate zombies and Fox News. Some analysis of his so called research (which evidently is drawn primarily form climate denialist websites) can be found at both Real Climate and Deep Climate
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels...

Peer review indeed!

Look at the order of Nouns in the Title..

Evaluating Environmental Disruption through the Specialized Porthole of Economics is like evaluating Public Schools by asking the Classifieds Editor.

You might as well ask a Marriage Counselor to come to work with a JackHammer.

'CO2 emissions reductions are economically unattractive since the very modest benefits remaining after the corrections for the above effects are quite unlikely to economically justify the much higher costs unless much lower cost geoengineering is used.'

Or.. you could keep lookout for Icebergs by watching CNN from the Lido Deck's Bar TV..

No, the "pull quote" comes from the abstract (emphasis added):

The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting.

If this statement is incorrect, then the rest of the report is wrong as well. Carlin's paper is quite long (47 page PDF), and from the very start, it appears he is attempting to demolish the science, as an economist without the usual scientific background. Carlin draws this conclusion from work found in work by Lindzen and Choi and also work by Spencer and Braswell, both of which have been debunked. Spencer's work was especially bad, as shown HERE. The most obvious rebuttal to the claim that the feedback is negative is that it's obvious that there were Ice Ages in the past, for which there is no explanation without a positive feedback to amplify the slight variations in solar energy which result from the changes in orbital cycles found by Milankovitch.

Carlin begins by demanding experimental proof and rejecting modeling efforts out of hand. Trouble is, we don't have another Earth upon which to conduct such a "valid" experiment. So far, the lab work appears to support the claim that increasing CO2 will warm the Earth. What more does he need? One would assume that Carlin thinks his economic models are reasonable, even though it's even less likely that these models can be "verified" the way which Carlin demands for the physics based models used in both weather and climate forecasts.

Also, Carlin does not claim to be presently employed by the EPA. He was apparently so employed until he wrote a similar report, apparently causing considerable controversy in 2009. Carlin has since worked for the Competitive Enterprise Institute and runs hid own blog. Note the acknowledgments at the end of this report:

The author would like to acknowledge the many helpful comments of the anonymous peer reviewers and the original encouragement of Fred Singer to undertake an article on this topic.

Fred Singer is without doubt the leading denialist in the US...

E. Swanson

This is making me think twice about doing frivolous car trips...

Frugal,I guess then that you also wouldn't be in the market for the new V-10 Dodge Viper "Supercar", is that right?

Chrysler vows new Dodge Viper supercar due next year

A previous version of the Viper was EPA rated 12 mpg-US (20 L/100 km; 14 mpg-imp) city and 20 mpg-US (12 L/100 km; 24 mpg-imp) highway.

I think we'll probably set a new record this spring. The price by summer could be considerably higher. Where it stops depends on what point demand destruction sets in, because the global crude oil supply is certainly not keeping pace with demand.

And in London petrol price £1.36 x 1.63 (exchange rate) x 3.785 (litres to US gallons) = 8.39 US$/gallon.

There don't seem to be many fewer cars on the road:-( I'm looking forward to 20 US$/gallon and perhaps some empty roads to make that Ferrari something worth buying:-)

Anyway I put £20 in at a time so it doesn't affect me:-)

But seriously, I now have the smallest most economical car I've ever had even though i drive < 2,500 miles per year so the price doesn't really affect me directly.

The reason I gave you these numbers is to show you that the market is oversupplied

Saudi says market oversupplied? I am completely confused now. They purposely reduced output by 833K barrels a day in March? I wonder how much oil price will rise in response to that announcement tomorrow?

Correction: I stated above that OPEC's Secondary Sources said Saudi increased production by 57,000 barrels per month. That should have read 57,000 barrels per day.

Ron P.

So... hmm, well that's a tad confusing. I'd like to know what the Saudi oil minister's explanation would be to the following simple question:

"If demand for oil decreased during March, why did prices increase?"

That's all. Just give me a nice, concise answer to that please!

Unless.. well if they really did cut production then it would surely expose how prices are ludicrously dependant on speculation?

re: Saudi says they cut oil production by 833,000 barrels per day in March!

Consumers have urged the exporters' group to pump more crude to put a cap on oil, which surged to more than $127 a barrel this month, its highest level in 2 1/2 years amid unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.

They know that 1 million bpd of Libyan production is off the market due to civil war, they know that Chinese consumption is up 1 million bpd since last year (because they're selling much of their oil to China), they know the consequences of the uncontrolled price rise in 2008 (economic crash and demand destruction), and yet they are cutting production.

My interpretation is that their explanations are all smoke and mirrors. The myth of surplus Saudi production capacity is coming to an end, but the Saudis are trying to keep the smokescreen up as long as possible to discourage people from investing in new sources of energy for as long as possible.

My biggest concern is that their oil fields are in even worse shape than they admit to themselves, and the production crash that is coming for Ghawar (the biggest oil field in the world) will be very steep - something like Mexico's Cantarell field, which fell about 22% a year from its peak in 2004, and is now producing less than 1/4 of what it did back then.

Most likely it won't be that steep, but production could easily drop by 500,000 bpd per year if they have screwed the field up sufficiently badly. All in all, I would says the signs are not looking good.

" ...the price is not high because there is a lack of supply...

_{...it's that pesky excess demand that's the issue."}

This is really a stunning disclosure.

Technically there may be a small amount of truth said about demand, however it should be added that lack of demand appears to be a lack of demand for the type of oil KSA has made incrementally available, and also, the price for which it is made available.

Apparently if the al-Naimi is speaking the truth now, he managed to fool just about every one making a 'survey' of what they 'estimate' KSA output to be. How little we really know.

Keep in mind that output is not the same as exports, and as I have stated for more than two months now, KSA reduced exports from mid-January to mid-March, followed by a two week 'surge' that in retrospect came from storage and not an increase in output.

OPEC exports in late April will be at the lowest levels of 2011, per tracker 'Oil Movements'. Going forward, OPEC exports in early May will probably be even lower.

Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Sunday the global oil market was oversupplied and that the world’s top oil exporter had already reduced production due to weak demand.

I always wondered what the Saudi's would say after they had peaked. Now I now.

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason the concept of Peak Oil is not spreading as we hope is partly we do not have speakers who can appeal to a large variety of people

The main reason is that the message is not very popular. It basically tells people not only to live within their means, an unpopular message in of itself, but it tells people to actually live on less than within their means as time goes until we find a solution - which could take many years - nobody really knows how long except that it will take a long time - and with no clear deadline.

Has there ever been a worse message in political terms? People rail about politicians, but politicians as we know them exist because people keep voting them into power. And the craft of politics have been polished over the years to become what it is today based on what works with people.

So in short, people will generally elect individuals who:
1. Make them feel good about themselves
2. Only offer rosy, optimistic scenarios
3. All these optimistic scenarios will come with minimal sacrifice
4. The politican is omnipotent and will fix everything.

If people would have a strong preference towards candidates with a fact-based concept of reality, as opposed to being religiously influenced or just irrational, and place an emphasis on rational debate, and not on emotional one-liners and petty ideological divisions and tribalism, the leaders running the countries would be of a far higher quality.

But aside from the unpopular message, it's also an unsellable message for the big corporations. It's essentially the end of growth, or at least end of perpetual, growth by debt where the big corps can privatise their profits and socialise their losses. It would also mean that they would have to actually start doing something with their capital for the environment and the peoples living in the countries that they come from as well as countries that they work in(think of Shell in Nigera).

I've more or less given up on hoping that somehow people will 'wake up'.
Climate change had giant exposure but there's still a lot of denialists.
Even in Sweden there's a lot of them, the numbers are quite staggering so don't think stupidity is limited to the republican base in the U.S.

The only entity capable of doing something about this is a technocratic, mildly authoritarian government. For example: China.
And they are now leading the world in construction based on renewable energy sources., such as wind power or solar. (Although Germany should also deserve an honorary mention)

An interesting take:
Climate, Communication and the ‘Nerd Loop’

Mass communication is not a science. How many times do I have to say this? The more you think it is — or even let yourself talk about the science side of it without allocating EQUAL energy to the art side of it, the more you are doomed to take it deeper into the hole of boredom and irrelevance.

I only agree with this if you have a good foundation to start from.

Difficult watching. Very hard to watch. It takes it out of the "video game" long-distance helicopter-shot realm of the previous videos. The people are on a slope and on a street behind their hillside homes watching the sea rise and sweep in from the distant coast. The destruction, loss, and dread are visceral, immediate and obvious as this thing rampages below.

Such a contrast to the pall spreading from man's broken machine by the sea. Nothing for the eyes to see. Not a sound is made. The fearful thing is only revealed to the mind.

dude

Indeed.

I read this article about how the price of gasoline has passed four ducks a gallon in several states:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42635718/

I went and read a couple of pages of comments and had to stop.

The vast majority of folks blamed evil oil companies, Obama, Democrats, environmentalists, speculators, socialist plots to get folks to trade in their SUVs for compact fuel-efficient cars,etc.

Very few comments about oil being a finite resource, let alone any comments about flow vs. resources, EROEI/the cheap oil has been discovered and produced, etc.

If this represents the spectrum of thinking from John Q. Public, Darwinian is absolutely correct...we are doomed!

Examples:

Where is the outrage against Obama over this? When gas hit this mark during the Bush administration, people were calling for his impeachment, being he and Cheney were "oil men" and that they were the cause of the rising prices lining the pockets of their cronies.We sure don't see the outrage against Teflon Man II. Things like this just roll right off of King Obama. And his response is to tell a family of 4 to get rid of your SUV and buy a new more fuel efficient car. What an idiot. Yeah...hope and change.

and...

At $4 a gallon for gas, that is the end of the economy that was recovering without jobs, etc. The blame sits with Wallstreet and it's investors who have ran oil so far up, it will ruin the economy!

Earl, what we have to do, is get our collective heads around the concept of "No More Growth". No more growth for everyone. If there is spasmodic surges of growth it will only be at the expense of another country, corporation or individual, as they desperately try to be last to the bottom.
Richard Heinberg has a new book, available September http://www.amazon.com/End-Growth-Adapting-Economic-Reality/dp/0865716951...

Richard Heinberg’s latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes. Written in an engaging, highly readable style, it shows why growth is being blocked by three factors:
Resource depletion
Environmental impacts
Crushing levels of debt

Stockmarkets appear to rise and fall on the expectation of profit forecasts and/or declarations. How will they cope when those reports are mostly negative?

A block of Velveeta was nine bucks. Put it back.
White onions $1 each. Bell peppers $3 each.
Half-length loaf of bread $5.
Can't shop easy anymore.

Don't hold your breath. I've read about them for several years now. I doubt we ever see one in the US before Depression 2.0 hits. We'll be lucky to turn off the old clunkers we have running now.

Cute: They can be implemented as liquid-fuel reactors: One way to shut them off is to dump the core into long, thin vessels under the reactor.

Bad: They still suffer effects from gross human incompetence and loony raving madness.

Too late?: Is there the time and money to implement them and their infrastructure of international mines and reprocessing facilities before the carbon economy that is to spawn and underwrite them falls off its perch?