The Peakist

Last week the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), a federally funded think tank for the Department of the U.S. Navy, published a report called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change”. The CNA brought together eleven retired admirals and generals “to provide advice, expertise and perspective on the impact of climate change”. Most significantly the report explicitly calls on the US to engage in the international effort to stabilize climate change. (more…)

The Observer ran an excellent piece on the detriorating security situation in the Niger Delta, placing the conflict between the Ijaw MEND movement, the Nigerian state and the oil companies firmly in the context of world depletion. A fascinating element of the movement is how magic charm wearing rebel fighters are linked by the mobile phone network to internet activists - a rebel army in one of the poorest parts of the world fronted by a mysterious online entity. If the journalists contacts are to be believed the rebels are preparing a full scale shut down of Niger Delta’s oil exports. Once again the world economy is ransomed by a handfull of committed, armed men.

“For decades, the oil-rich delta of the Niger river has been plundered by western companies and rampant political corruption. But now a small group of ruthless Ijaw tribesmen are threatening to sabotage production unless their demands for compensation are met. Sebastian Junger heads into the secretive mangrove swamps to meet the waterborne warriors who are prepared to trigger a global meltdown
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I hadn’t realised quite how much shale oil there was (2.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil), how cheap it could be (economic at $40/barrel) and how well developed the extraction process is (Shell’s In-Situ Process).

See wikipedia

Yesterday I was more worried about peak oil, today I’m more worried about global warming.

From Economist.com

Power generation: If people object to wind farms cluttering up the countryside, one answer might be to put them in the air.
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Last week San Francisco announced that it was to outlaw plastic bags from large supermarket chains, the first such law of any city in the US. Ireland has recently seen the fourth anniversary of a 15c plastic bag tax which saw the number of bags being put into circulation falling dramatically. Since then the number has been on the up again, from less than 85 million in 2003 to at least 113 million in 2005, prompting calls for a doubling of the tax and tighter implementation. Yesterday’s Guardian examined the trade in plastic bags, produced, and recycled, in China at high environmental cost. The article contained the extraordinary estimate that the US requires 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture the billion plastic bags used by consumers annually, and noted the UK used 17 billion bags a year. What better example of the profilate waste of the hydrocarbon economy? To put that in perspective 12 million barrels would have driven the US industrial and military machine for three days during the Second World War (or every three years the US uses as much oil on plastic bags as 1% of the oil it used to fight and survive the Second World War). In a generation or less people will look back in disbelief at the idea that on eve of the catastrophic oil depletion crisis such waste could be justified rather than taking a bag to the shops! The North American petrochemical industry is already feeling the pinch with both increasing oil prices and, specific to the continent, the looming gas depletion crisis, chemical manufacturers are migrating to the Middle East.