The Peakist

Calculated Earth is a collaborative effort by Malcolm Burke and Jonathan Burke and arises out of a piece of background research work that lead  them to the many freely available topographical data sources on the net.

The maps and animations are plotted using the June 2006 ETOPO2v2 data set from the US National Geophysical Data Centre.

The maps simply show graphically the selected height across the ETOPO2v2 dataset without interpretation or adjustment. So landlocked areas of the world that are below the selected level will show as being flooded regardless of being without a connection to the sea. No adjustments are made for tides.

Considering the flooding currently plaguing England, plotting the first few metres of sea level rise on this site should make you think about the scale of disaster we are facing if the polar caps continue melting.
http://calculatedearth.com

· Analyst argues wind farms and biofuels are not green
· Report’s look at negative aspects aims to end ‘taboo’

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Wednesday July 25, 2007
The Guardian (more…)

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets.

“The process is simple,” said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.” (more…)

This is the second of a series of papers by the Energy Watch Group which are addressed to investigate future energy supply and demand patterns. The Energy Watch Group consists of independent scientists and experts who investigate sustainable concepts for global energy supply. The group has been initiated by the German member of parliament Hans-Josef Fell.

Executive Summary

When discussing the future availability of fossil energy resources, the conventional wisdom has it that globally there is an abundance of coal which allows for an increasing coal consumption far into the future. This is either regarded as being a good thing enabling the eventual substitution of declining crude oil and natural gas supplies. Or it is seen as a horror scenario leading to catastrophic consequences for the world�s climate. But the discussion rarely focuses on the premise: how much coal is there really? (more…)

Howard Kunstler wrote ‘The Long Emergency’ on the premise that in the near future our lives will change dramatically due to a confluence point of simultaineous global problems. The primary issue here being peak oil. A secondary issue he touched on was climate change, to which many are attributing this summer’s uncharacteristic weather patterns.

I believe this is the first micro effects of a confluence of problems that will directly effect the standards of living in the western world.
” In the 40 years between 1950 and 1992, the area of planted arable land increased by 14.5 per cent from 611 million hectares to 700 million hectares; in the same period, grain output rose from 692 million tons to a staggering 1,920 million tons, an increase of 177.5 per cent…….. The ability of agriculture to produce far greater quantities food this century than in previous centuries can be attributed to four factors: advanced plant breeding techniques, the use of intensive irrigation, the availability of fertilizers on a commercial scale, and the development of plant protection products. Applied together, these four technologies have produced a remarkable outcome: although there has been an enormous increase in world population during the twentieth century, and although there are still parts of the world where people are suffering from malnutrition, nowadays, starvation is no longer a common cause of death, as it was in the last century. Nevertheless, because the population of the world continues to rise, 680 million people - or 12 per cent of the world’s population - could be chronically undernourished by 2010, according to FAO projections. This means that the demands on agriculture to be both productive and sustainable are increasing. ” source EFMA

(more…)

A recent article in New Scientist explored the emergence of biomass-based replacements for petro-chemicals. Their economic viability and the economic motivation to produce them is another effect of consistently high oil prices. The article is perhaps over-optimistic that the petro-chemical industry could be replaced any time soon by biomass-based chemicals, and does not examine the knock-on effects of using corn, sugar-beet and other foodstuffs as feedstock for chemical production, which of course we’re already seeing in world food prices due to biofuels. (more…)

By David Strahan, The Independent on Sunday, 15 July 2007.

BP and Shell are finally about to merge. That’s if you believe the tittle-tattle in the Square Mile. Of course rumours that the two giant companies might wed are hardly new and have been the stuff of bankers’ fevered imagination for years. But there is now an increasingly compelling case why the two energy groups should be integrated. At 4.5 million barrels per day, the oil output of a combined Shell-BP would dwarf that of American behemoth Exxon-Mobil and even major oil-producing countries such as Iran. Some analysts make a positive case for such a merger on the basis of massive economies of scale, claiming it it could save $5bn. But when it happens the real motivation will be far darker: desperation. (more…)

June saw the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas (APPGOPO).
All Party Parliamentary Groups are composed of politicians from all political parties and have members from the House of Commons and the House of Lords.  APPGOPO will enable interested MPs and Lords to discuss Peak Oil and all its surrounding issues. The APPGOPO has the support of over twenty MPs and Lords.  This actually makes it the largest political grouping looking at Peak Oil in the world. (more…)

David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock writing for Prospect magazine.
The Stern review on the economics of climate change was published to almost universal acclaim, and six months on, only a handful of economists have found anything to criticise. In one sense, Stern’s conclusions were entirely predictable. Now that climate change so clearly has a pistol at the head of our species, there could only be one response, irrespective of cost. But there was also a surprise: paying off the highwayman of climate change would not be extortionate. In fact, it would be an absolute steal. Stern concluded that if we do nothing, the effects of climate change could shrivel the global economy by as much as 20 per cent over the next two centuries. Avoiding that risk would cost only about 1 per cent of world GDP to 2050.

Some economists charged Stern with minimising the costs of mitigating climate change and exaggerating the threats. Since climate change is already stirring positive feedback loops that could spark runaway global warming of the kind that caused the Permian mass extinction 250m years ago—the one that wiped out 95 per cent of species on the planet—these critics are as wrong as only economists can be. But that doesn’t make Stern right. His review is indeed based upon a mistaken assumption—but one which means our situation is even more dangerous than his analysis allows. (more…)

That’s a pretty stark warning from the IEA. And begs the question whether OPEC can increase production by 4.9 million barrels over the next five years. There’s supposedly
3.5-4 mbd spare capacity in Gawar, but as posted in February, a Saudi Aramco spokesman admitted last year that its mature fields are now declining at a rate of 8 percent
per year,a decline 50% of production in about 9 years time. This all puts enormous significance on the un-exploited Iraqi reserves. This again makes me ponder the question upon which, without exageration, the future of mankind depends - will the oil supply crunch have a positive effect of constraining global carbon emissions? Potentially, high oil costs put a brake on economic growth and encourage energy efficiency gains while high energy costs more generally make renewables economic. Two key factors working against this are of course that the high cost of conventional oil makes economic the production of carbon intensive unconvential oil (whether tar sands or coal liquefaction) and bio-deisel (which, unless there is substantial control on the use of palm oil and soya as feedstocks will lead to a huge increase in rain forest destruction in S.E Asia and South America Respectively). Would the reduced emissions resulting from decreased consumption be out weighed by the consequence of economic stagnation - namely, a failure to invest in low carbon technologies? I’m reminded that the only Kyoto signatories that “achieved” substantail cuts in carbon emissions was Russia during the collapse of its industiral base.

These issue make two campaigns all the more important : (more…)

By Javier Blas, Financial Times, Published: July 9 2007

The world is facing an oil supply “crunch” within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog has warned. (more…)

Jun 7th 2007 | LONDON AND WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition

Where do the Gulf states invest their immense wealth?

THERE is no crime involved, but the mystery of the petrodollar billions is worthy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (more…)

The Pentagon vs Peak Oil By Michael T. Klare

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. (more…)

Venezuela’s decision to sell petrol to Iran to alleviate its ally’s crippling fuel shortage reminds us that future supplies of fuel may not follow market economics but geopolitical fault lines. President Hugo Chávez made the promise during a visit to Tehran where he pledged an “axis of unity” with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The two countries will, united, defeat the imperialism of North America,” he told reporters. With a smile he added: “When I come to Iran, Washington gets upset.”

Closer to home the 2007 Economic Report of industry organisation Oil & Gas UK published yesterday warned that government targets of keeping Britain’s oil and gas production at 3m barrels a day by 2010 look like being missed.