Michael T. Klare's case has so many flaws and assumptions in it that
I've inserted comments for those who are interested.
Keith
At 20:14 27/11/2012, you wrote:
Below, I've omitted the first page about just how extensive US oil
and gas production has become.
Natalia
Full story at:
<http://www.alternet.org/3-terrifying-things-about-earth-were-denial-about?page=0%2C0>http://www.alternet.org/3-terrifying-things-about-earth-were-denial-about?page=0%2C0
3 Terrifying Things About the Earth We're in Denial About
This year's edition of the World Energy Outlook was greeted with
jubilation when it revealed that the US might become top oil
producer. But this comes at a catastrophic cost.
November 27, 2012 |
By: Michael T. Klare
(snip)
1) Shrinking World Oil Supply
(KH) Under this heading, Klare chose to ignore shale gas (though he
admits its existence under the second heading!) Shale gas is the
product of approaching 4 billion years of microbial composting on
ocean bottoms, one third of which have been subducted underneath the
world's continents by now. Oil, 'natural' (superficial) gas and coal
are the product of plant composting of only the last 600 million
years or so, and even then under geological conditions which sealed a
only a fraction of its original fields. From world wide prospecting,
it is already confirmed that there is immensely more potential energy
available from shale gas than conventional fossil fuels. Given a lead
time of 15 to 20 years (in order to build a generation of gas-burning
power stations) then all of the world's energy could be amply
supplied by shale gas at very cheap prices.
(MTC) Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the
U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news
about the world's future oil supply. No such luck. In fact, on a
close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world
oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline
and uncertainty.
Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia's and
Russia's. Sounds great, doesn't it? Here's the catch: previous
editions of the IEA report and the International Energy Outlook, its
equivalent from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), rested their
claims about a growing future global oil supply on the assumption
that those two countries would far surpass U.S. output. Yet the
U.S. will pull ahead of them in the 2020s only because, the IEA now
asserts, their output is going to fall, not rise as previously assumed.
This is one hidden surprise in the report that's gone
unnoticed. According to the
DoE's <http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo>2011 projections , Saudi
production was expected to rise to 13.9 million barrels per day in
2025, and Russian output to 12.2 million barrels, jointly providing
much of the world's added petroleum supply; the United States, in
this calculation, would reach the 11.7 million barrel mark.
The
IEA's
<http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,33339,en.html>latest
revision of those figures suggests that U.S. production will indeed
rise, as expected, to about 11 million barrels per day in 2025, but
that Saudi output will unexpectedly fall to about 10.6 million
barrels and Russian to 9.7 million barrels. The U.S., that is, will
essentially become number one by default. At best, then, the global
oil supply is not going to grow appreciably -- despite the IEA's
projection of a significant upswing in international demand.
But wait, suggests the IEA, there's still one wild card hope out
there: Iraq. Yes, Iraq. In the belief that the Iraqis will somehow
overcome their sectarian differences, attain a high level of
internal stability, establish a legal framework for oil production,
and secure the necessary investment and technical support, the
IEA
<https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/october/name,32060,en.html>predicts
that its output will jump from 3.4 million barrels per day this year
to 8 million barrels in 2035, adding an extra 4.6 million barrels to
the global supply. In fact, claims the IEA, this gain would
represent half the total increase in world oil production over the
next 25 years. Certainly, stranger things have happened, but for
the obvious reasons, it remains an implausible scenario.
Add all this together -- declining output from Russia and Saudi
Arabia, continuing strife in Iraq, uncertain results elsewhere --
and you get insufficient oil in the 2020s and 2030s to meet
anticipated world demand. From a global warming perspective that
may be good news, but economically, without a massive increase in
investment in alternate energy sources, the outlook is grim. You
don't know what bad times are until you don't have enough energy to
run the machinery of civilization. As
<http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,33339,en.html>suggested
by the IEA, "Much is riding on Iraq's success... Without this supply
growth from Iraq, oil markets would be set for difficult times."
2. Continuing Reliance on Fossil Fuels
(KH) Under this heading MTK now uses the existence of shale gas to
bolster his argument! His argument doesn't hold water because he
makes two invalid assumptions. One is that world population (and
thus likely energy needs) will grow in the future, or at least remain
similar to now; the other is that a renewable biological alternative
to renewable energy will never be developed. On the first point we
are already observing a dramatic decline in family size (and thus
population in due course) in advanced urban-living countries, with
the strong hint of sa similar decline in the rest of the world as the
rural poor lose their previous religious/cultural pressures when they
migrate into supermetropolises. On the second point, huge strides in
biology have begun to be made in only the last few years since DNA
has been more easily and cheaply sequenced. Hundreds of thousands of
new energy-trapping bacteria, hitherto totally unsuspected, have been
discovered in only the last few years.
For all the talk of the need to increase reliance on renewable
sources of energy, fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas --
will continue to provide most of the additional energy supplies
needed to satisfy soaring world demand. "Taking all new
developments and policies into account," the IEA reported, "the
world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more
sustainable path." In fact, recent developments seem to favor
greater fossil-fuel reliance.
n the United States, for instance, the increased extraction of oil
and gas from shale formations has largely silenced calls for
government investment in renewable technology. In its editorial on
the IEA report, for example, theWall Street Journal ridiculed such
investment. It had, the Journal's writers
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578114591174453074.html>suggested,
now become unnecessary due to the Saudi Arabian-style oil and gas
boom to come. "Historians will one day marvel that so much
political and financial capital was invested in a [failed]
green-energy revolution at the very moment a fossil fuel revolution
was aborning," they declared.
One aspect of this energy "revolution" deserves special attention.
The growing availability of cheap natural gas, thanks to
hydro-fracking, has already reduced the use of coal as a fuel for
electrical power plants in the United States. This would seem to be
an obvious environmental plus, since gas produces less
climate-altering carbon dioxide than does coal. Unfortunately, coal
output and its use haven't diminished: American producers have
simply increased their coal exports to Asia and Europe. In fact,
U.S. coal exports
are <http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8490>expected
to reach as high as 133 million tons in 2012, overtaking an export
record set in 1981.
Despite its deleterious effects on the environment, coal
remains
<http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8070>popular in
countries seeking to increase their electricity output and promote
economic development. Shockingly, according to the IEA, it supplied
nearly half of the increase in global energy consumption over the
last decade, growing faster than renewables. And the agency
predicts that coal will continue its rise in the decades ahead. The
world's top coal consumer, China, will burn ever more of it until
2020, when demand is finally expected to level off. India's usage
will rise without cessation, with that country overtaking the U.S.
as the number two consumer around 2025.
In many regions, notes the IEA report, the continued dominance of
fossil fuels is sustained by government policies. In the developing
world, countries commonly subsidize energy consumption, selling
transportation, cooking, and heating fuels at below-market
rates. In this way, they hope to
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-775-billion-in-fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-hardto-scrap/2012/06/18/gJQABaQUlV_blog.html>buffer
their populations from rising commodity costs, and so protect their
regimes from popular unrest. Cutting back on such subsidies can
prove dangerous, as in Jordan where a recent government decision to
raise fuel prices led
to
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/world/middleeast/jordan-faces-protests-after-gas-price-proposal.html>widespread
riots and calls for the monarchy's abolition. In 2011, such
subsidies amounted to $523 billion globally, says the IEA, up almost
30% from 2010 and six times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.
3. No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change
It is still the case that those who believe in anthropogenic climate
change have not yet provided an adequate theory. The IPCC model of
climate change still doesn't show up the Medieval Warm Age (or the
Roman or the Bronze Ages). It is still not clear whether an increase
in atmospheric CO2 produces significant heat or whether a warm age
blip (such as those mentioned above) produces more CO2. So far there
have been no catastrophes which can be proved to be the fault of CO2.
Past evidence is strongly suggestive that we face a new Ice Age
rather than any period of prolonged warming.
Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook,
the one that merits the greatest international attention is the one
that received the least. Even if governments take vigorous steps to
curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing
increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in "a long-term
average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C."
This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe
that an increase
of
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719>2
degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without
unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that
will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will
destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for
their survival, the collapse of vital ecosystems, and far more. An
increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially suggests the end of human
civilization as we know it.
To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet
by about 0.8 degrees C -- enough to produce severe droughts around
the world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy,
and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap. "Given those
impacts,"
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719>writes
noted environmental author
and
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175435/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben,_jailed_over_big_oil%27s_attempt_to_wreck_the_planet/>activist
Bill McKibben, "many scientists have come to think that two degrees
is far too lenient a target." Among those cited by McKibben
is <http://eaps4.mit.edu/faculty/Emanuel>Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a
leading authority on hurricanes. "Any number much above one degree
involves a gamble," Emanuel writes, "and the odds become less and
less favorable as the temperature goes
up." <http://esp.gmu.edu/people/facultybios/lovejoy.html>Thomas
Lovejoy , once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it
this way: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees
Celsius, two degrees is simply too much."
t this point, it's hard even to imagine what a planet that's 3.6
degrees C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars
and prophets -- like former Vice President Al Gore
in
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594865671/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>An
Inconvenient Truth -- have tried. In all likelihood,
the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/greenland-glacier-loses-large-mass-of-ice/2012/07/17/gJQAf5CQsW_story.html>Greenland
and Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by
several dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New
York and Shanghai. Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle
East, and the American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable
thanks
to
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/science/earth/global-warming-makes-heat-waves-more-likely-study-finds.html>lack
of water and desertification,
while
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175573/william_debuys_the_west_in_flames>wildfires
of a sort that we can't imagine today would consume the parched
forests of the temperate latitudes.
In a report that leads with the "good news" of impending U.S. oil
supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6
degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a
gaudily-wrapped Christmas present. In fact, the "good news" is
really the bad news: the energy industry's ability to boost
production of oil, coal, and natural gas in North America is feeding
a global surge in demand for these commodities, ensuring ever higher
levels of carbon emissions. As long as these trends persist -- and
the IEA report provides no evidence that they will be reversed in
the coming years -- we are all in a race to see who gets to the
Apocalypse first.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies
at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author of
<http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/0805073132>Blood and Oil: The
Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency.
Keith
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