Peak oil: relevant to CRAGs?

robinsmith3

website team CRAGger Islington Leeds Wokingham WSP

I knew you’d ask. (: So I wrote down the rationale a priori and then went and lost it!!!

I’ll try again. Several reasons:

1) Its a big and difficult theory that will confuse the CRAG, already a difficult topic for busy (grrr) people

2) Not sure peak oil is a practical measure but lets assume it is

3) Based on your rationale for including it I propose we include a Nuclear Renaissance in the profile. Low carbon right? But I see a strong avoidance of engaging openly on this criticaly important topic. Almost another denial suppression response!

4) There’s plenty of other things based on your rationale we should include in CRAG too. Goto point 1) Else continue

5) I dont believe anyone here really understands peak oil, I’m sure you do, so would love to hear you describe it clearly in 3 bullets

I have some more detailed reasons that are not appropriate to show here, but important to CRAG’s integrity IMO. I’ll send them to you privately and if you think thye’re OK I’ll post them later

Best
R

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

I don’t follow many of your points. I just think it’s entirely relevant to what CRAGs are doing: energy reduction and transfer to low-carbon alternatives. As Jessica says, it’s one and the same.

I think “peak oil” is a good deal less complicated than climate change:

• Fossil fuel reserves are a finite resource
• Globally, extraction rates will peak and decline as reserves are used up
• Our economy, housing and agriculture is entirely dependent on fossil fuel energy supply, so we need to find alternatives

I don’t use “peak oil” because, you are right, it doesn’t communicate very well. The only concern I have is the reliance on estimated reserves to calculate peak dates. If it suddenly emerges that reserves are much larger than previously thought, it may undermine the case for change.

robinsmith3

website team CRAGger Islington Leeds Wokingham WSP

I like your style (: We all agree transition to low carbon, CRAG is doing the right thing. But I read Jessica saying that oil is integral to CRAG. Its not. Thanks for the clear bullets but I think you will find many smart people disagreeing with you. (I’m not claiming smartness here BTW)

There are a couple of scenarios I can think of, not to mention the politics behind it. This is additive complication for CRAG not a battle of who is the most complicated:

• Your scenario, the common understanding

• There is too much fossil fuel already known about, and this will continue to be mined, through better technology economies of scale and the climate really will be in trouble 1000ppm? If the cost goes up a bit… so what

• There is not enough fossil fuel to take climate beyond 450ppm if totaly burnt, so makes the link you are making moot

There are alternatives such as nuclear power being refused, which I am at a loss to understand, making the oil argument self fulfiling and a crime against humanity IMO

But yeah, lets seek alternatives. Hang on though, they are there already. Why not use them and get over the peak oil disinformation.

A rationing tool is a rationing tool, it could be used from an emissions or resource depletion perspective.

Wether it is wise right now to begin to incorporate in any marketing or communications is debateable. I would rather it not presently as peak oil awareness is very low right now and still is regarded by most of the media as an unproven theory and would tend to confuse things. But I think it is paramount that we have an understanding of it for when the media do take hold which is really only likely when it is proven (rocketing oil prices, high inflation in food commodities and general push in overal inflation, oil stocks regularly going down in countries like the US and the inability for Saudi Arabia or OPEC to increase production). Oh, and likely recession in many oil consuming nations. There will be a very likely increase in fuel poverty, general poverty and unemployment. The motivation for joining or using the CRAG/tool could just as easily be for financial survival rather than saving the planet.

I think CRAG groups who are already taking care of the emissions they can count, planning for even less, and thinking and acting in a way to reduce the presently uncountable emissions, will have an awareness and the skills/knowledge of living without that will be essential to newcomers and if they come a result of peak oil – then so be it.

The Wall Street Journal covered the topic this week, here is a rebuttal of the article which is very informative for those to whom peak oil is new and on the page is a link to the original article Response to WSJ article on peak oil.

David Strahan is a British journalist and commentator on Peak Oil and has an Oil Depletion Atlas showing which countries in the world already have past the peak of their oil production. They are the majority.

And lasty a recent world oil reserves map Who has the oil where oil reserves are given by the size of the country. The middle east looks massive on this.

angelaraffle

CRAGger Redland Bristol

The thing about crags is that its practical and positive, irrespective of whether you think oil prices are set to rocket or not. It’s a way for individuals to work out now how to cope whilst using up as little of the planet’s non-renewable resources as possible. Personally I can’t answer the question of whether carbon price, or oil price, or economic collapse, or natural disasters, or none of the above, will persuade humans to trash the planet less. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t change my personal impact, and its more fun doing it in a group. We need to use the remaining fossil fuels as valuably as possible – so for world leaders to fly to meetings where they are trying to bring about solutions is ok, for me to fly to New York to go shopping doesnt seem quite as valuable. This Sunday in Bristol we have a Transition event see http://transitionbristol.pbwiki.com/f/Big%20Event%20programme.pdf and the title of Richard Heinberg’s talk is ‘Big melt meets big empty, why carbon trading is bound to fail and what we must do instead’. We’re doing a workshop on crags at the event. We’ve had lots of meetings in Bristol that combine ‘the end of cheap oil’ conversations, with ‘how to cut carbon emissions’ conversations. Chris Vernon who is part of our Susred group is also editor of the website Oil Drum Europe, and he seems neither mad nor dishonest nor anti-capitalist. He entirely agrees with Monbiot that the switch to coal in response to rising oil prices will just accelerate emissions. Peak oil people arent saying ignore climate change. But they are very conscious of the scope for large sections of the economy to become non-viable and for oil wars unless we acknowledge the fact that oil is about half gone, yet world demand is rocketing.
Angela
Bristol
www.sustainableredland.org.uk

robinsmith3

website team CRAGger Islington Leeds Wokingham WSP

I read through this debate with interest after a few months not thinking about it directly with some amusement and shame at the poor way in which I had made my points. I stand by them still but have more language to explain them now. See here for an interesting prediction of what the likely outcomes of our society will be on the climate. Dont worry its not all bad, ... for everyone. And its nothing new to humanity

http://gco2e.blogspot.com/2007/12/hunter-gatherer-utopia-myth.html

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

The idea of successive crises is good way of characterising history, and I might add it extends right back to around 2 billion years ago, when microbial life poisoned itself and polluted the planet’s atmosphere by producing oxygen. Today the polluters are restricted to very small niches and the rest of life has used the opportunity and moved on (although oxygen is still responsible for aging and many cancers because it can be so reactive). Massive carbon releases have happened too (although whether they match the current rate is uncertain), and it seems the planet warmed by 7-10 degrees and then came back to normal over several hundred thousand years as the longer-term feedbacks kicked in.

Humanity has experienced the deglaciations, which were rapid and involved about 5 degrees of global temperature change and ~120m sea level rise. But this wasn’t under today’s high pressure on land and resources, and, as you say, there was plenty of space to move into. Life will go on in some form, but I remain skeptical of how well the global economy will hold up under some of the likely shocks. The morality of famine and mass extinction also disturbs me, to put it mildly.

Reading Jeremy Leggett’s book “Half Gone“ has changed my opinion on the oil peak somewhat. The madness of it is that the reserve data are so shrouded in secrecy that the science of the oil peak is far more uncertain than for climate change. Leggett, who was an oil geologist, presents a good case for an early peak (ie about now or in the next decade, which may supported by the current oil price). But he doesn’t see this as an inevitable force for a low-carbon economy. Instead, vast coal reserves could step into the breach as liquefication technologies become economic (eg those pioneered by Sasol when S Africa was isolated). He envisages a post-peak contest between solar and coal, pointing out that any significant use of the remainng coal would commit us to significant climate change. Against this background, climate change has to remain the primary driving force behind the move to a low-carbon economy.