Two Doctors: Energy: June 2008 Archives

Tomorrow's activism today.

By

on June 28, 2008 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Astroturf is what it's called. Fake grass roots. Corporate shills, masquerading as locals. This tactic evolved into misleading pseudo-research bodies, funded the same way; by the tobacco lobby, the oil industry, the nuclear lot, anyone utterly unpalatable.

So why not turn the tables on them? Greenpeace did. (via the secretly optimistic Suitably Despairing)

It's like watching a junkie picking a new drug.

By

James

on June 22, 2008 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we're on the cusp of the post-oil age, as you know.

There are questions to be answered, like "will we prepare for it properly, or persist with business as usual as long as possible instead". But sooner or later, that's what's happening.

Which would mean we'll no longer be dependent on the Saudi despots for our energy. Unless Gordon Brown has his way, sadly.

In what might be the most incompetent decision of his brief premiership, he's trying to get us to invest in their dead-end dinosaur wine, while giving them a share of our endlessly productive renewables.

The current failure to prepare for post-oil economics (the opposite of masterly inactivity) means we may have to go cold turkey on fossil fuels. While having made ourselves economically dependent even for our own wind power.

Update: a similar assessment has been made elsewhere of the Bush policies.

The stall precedes the tailspin.

By

James

on June 9, 2008 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When you understand the way the oil industry works, and the fact that the cheap oil era is over, it changes the way you read the news.

Oil output is more or less at peak, the point at which about half of it has been used up, and that means production's levelled off ahead of a more or less steep decline.

For instance, this weekend's SoS noted that "World oil production has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day since 2005", while at the same time not poking fun at Ministers from oil consuming nations who called for extraction to increase.

Fellers, it can't, because you're at the peak. There's nothing you can do, even with a blowtorch. Even if you could get more out in the short term, through secondary recovery or similar techniques, it'd just make the decline sharper and more painful.

Actually, what they should be doing is listening to the Libyans, whose oil chief said yesterday "The easy, cheap oil is over, peak oil is looming".

So the question for leaders, including Salmond, is this. Pretend we can get by on business as usual for generations to come, or prepare for a post-oil economy?

Kez gets it.

By

James

on June 5, 2008 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of the various Holyrood bloggers, three stand out for me.

Calum The Nat along the corridor, lover of motorways above all.
Scottish Tory Boy, whose site curiously shows him to be closest ideologically to Obama.
Kez Dugdale, who is far too consistent and principled to be in Labour much longer.

I don't know of any Liberals here who blog, but any tips on that front would be appreciated.

Anyway, this is about Kez. She came along to the Scotsman debate previously discussed here. In a post on oil earlier this week she not only compared Alex Salmond to JR Ewing, which I love, especially with the pic chosen, but also praised one of Patrick's contributions to that Scotsman debate - the idea that we should be independent from oil, not try to build independence on oil.

Indeed.

She also listed some sensible things the Nats could be doing, including investing properly in public transport. And then notes that instead Salmond's "actively opposing the Edinburgh trams whilst building roads, bypasses, motorways and blocking rail expansion."

So when you get back from your holidays, Kez, let's talk about which roads, bypasses and motorways we think Salmond should scrap. And you've been flagged as "future Green".