Paxo on Peak Oil

[ziggy12345]

Did anybody see newsnight? Paxo was discussing Peak Oil... We made the mainstream!

[Totally_Baffled]

Just finished watching it, who would of thought something poitive would come out of the oil spill in the GOM, at least it put peak oil on newsnight! They even explained it well! In other words they explained the importance of production and not reserves, and the looming gap betweem supply and demand. They even gave two scenarios on a graph of supply eg supply staing flat and supply declining from about 2015!

Its out there!

Wish it went on a bit longer rather more cack on the labour leadership - boring!

[Kieran]

Yep.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fr ... _2010.html

Who was that bloke Leggett was arguing with? Was out of the room when he was introduced.

[Totally_Baffled]

Yep.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fr ... _2010.html

Who was that bloke Leggett was arguing with? Was out of the room when he was introduced.

CEO of some Norwegian oil company I think

[Kieran]

Yep.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fr ... _2010.html

Who was that bloke Leggett was arguing with? Was out of the room when he was introduced.

CEO of some Norwegian oil company I think

Ahhh... not the head of BP or anything.

[mobbsey]

It says at the top:
"James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything."

Wow!! Good thing that he discovered this bombshell or I might have continued to live the rest of my life under the delusion that physical reality overrides economic theory!

(BTW: in case you're confused 'Cthulhu' is a character created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft in the 1920s, intended to instill extreme fear and horror -- it's also Delingpole's moniker for Jeremy Paxman).

The Newsnight programme is still available on iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... 9_06_2010/

P.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/james ... newsnight/

'Bow down to Peak Oil!' says BBC's Cthulu-worshipping Newsnight

The Tory+Lib-graph, June 10th, 2010


Yesterday on the BBC’s flagship news analysis programme Newsnight Britain’s gravest, most distinguished and hard-hitting political interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked the vital questions an eager world most wants to hear: Cthulu – Are we worshipping him enough? Will it be necessary to sacrifice our children to appease him? Or will he be content if we just all erect a shrine to him, perhaps involving candles and teddy bears and Jo Malone scented oils?

No, it wasn’t really Cthulu that Britain’s gravest, most distinguished and hard-hitting political interviewer was addressing but something just as warped and obsessive – and undoubtedly a lot more dangerous: the cult of Peak Oil.

Peak Oil is a scare story talked up by greenie catastrophists on every possible occasion to justify higher taxation, greater government intervention, global rule by people like the Hon Sir Jonathon Porritt and Al Gore and massive bonanzas for anyone involved in the wind farming or solar power industry.

Somehow, Newsnight had managed to twist the arm of Jeremy Leggett – who runs Britain’s largest solar power company – to come on the programme and crossly, passionately declare that Peak Oil represents a real threat. (Wot? Even bigger a threat than the one we’d suffer if we all relied for our energy on solar power in a country like Britain not known for its sun? Pull the other one, Jezza!)

The real problem with peak oil has been identified by Peter Foster in Canada’s National Post:

The problem with Peak Oil the theory isn’t that it’s wrong in noting that industry depletes resources, and that oil may, sooner or later, reach a production plateau, it’s that it sees those facts through a moralistically-charged and economically-challenged lens. It also embodies extraordinary faith in Big Government and grass roots activism.

PO Theorists fail — or more precisely refuse — to grasp that the best method of dealing with any form of commercial scarcity is market-based ingenuity, not some weird combination of Big Brother and Hippie co-ops.

Luckily, speaking opposite the would-be solar billionaire was a quite incredibly sensible, balanced, reasonable-sounding fellow from the oil industry. His name – and he is definitely this blog’s Hero of the Week – is Erik Haugane. He’s CEO of a Norwegian oil company called Det Norske, and if he’s anything like as unruffled and intelligent as he seemed on Newsnight, I’d suggest that BP should be headhunting him as their new boss.

Check out his performance on Newsnight here. (His discussion with Leggett is about 8 minutes in. Note how Haugane just won’t bother to engage with the needling and hysteria of the two Jezzas sitting with him. He just calmly tells it like it is).

Yes, oil will run out eventually, conceded Haugane, but added:

“I think we will stop using oil as an energy form long before we stop finding oil.”

“Like the stone age did not end because we ran out of stone, the oil age will not end because we ran out of oil.”

Yes, but what about Deepwater-Horizon-style disasters, Paxman wanted to know, as oil becomes harder to extract?

Ah but as technology develops, so the methods will become available to make it less hard to extract, said Haugane. By far the worst oil disasters in history – such as the spills at Baku in the early 20th century – occurred when the oil industry was in its infancy.

[PS_RalphW]

I was going to post a comment on that blog, but then I read the comments already posted, and decided that it really wasn't worth the effort.

His readers are clearly completely uninterested in oil or energy, and about as incisive in their observations as the blogger.

[julianj]

As an HP Lovecraft pedant, I note that Mobbsey can spell the name "Cthulhu" correctly and Delingpole cannot. In my view it shows how concerned he is about accuracy in every detail

Oops! Just realised that I have read one of Delingpole's Coward WW2 romps and enjoyed it, although they are obviously an imitator of the Flashman novels.

[Kieran]

How dare he call us a bunch of Cthulhu worshippers. I worship Azathoth, the blind idiot god at the centre of Chaos. Fecking Cthulhu, that poseur with his sunken city and tentacles...

[mobbsey]

As an HP Lovecraft pedant, I note that Mobbsey can spell the name "Cthulhu" correctly and Delingpole cannot. In my view it shows how concerned he is about accuracy in every detail

Hmmn, most people just consider me extremely boring for worrying about the detail However, for those of you who would like to be bored into silence I'm appearing at the Adderbury Quaker Gathering (near Banbury) on Sunday afternoon.

I wish Jeremy Leggett could be more combatively "with it" because he missed some wonderful opportunities in the programme. E.g., there are various population estimates for the Mesolithic (middle stone age) of a million to five million humans globally. Even consuming ten kilos of stone per day (extremely unlikely -- that's a lot of hand axes!) that's still only a few billion tonnes per year. America alone (5% global population) uses almost two billion tonnes of building aggregate per year; taking a barrel of oil at around 140kg each, the 30 billion-odd barrels use each year will weight in excess of 4 billion tonnes; and the fifteen million tonnes of primary copper consumed annually around the world would, at an ore quality of 0.5% (good ore!), on its own require three billion tonnes of rock to be extracted.

The Stone Age never ended -- it's still going strong!

Then again, at what point does peak oil theory descend into Vogon poetry?

[kenneal - lagger]

Then again, at what point does peak oil theory descend into Vogon poetry?

Vogon? Cthulhu? I must have had a very sheltered upbringing! I only read Lord of the Rings and the Dune trilogy.

[featherstick]

Go and read Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy at once before you post here again.

It won't help with PO theory, but it'll give you a chuckle.

[PS_RalphW]

And of course as all serious archaeologists know, by the end of the stone age in Europe, good quality flint, etc., for hand axes was in short supply. It was mined at Grimes Graves and other sites from strata 40 feet down, using antler picks, then widely traded across Europe. It must have gone for a premium price.

[dudley]

Isn't it wrong to compare stones to oil anyway? Stones are not a source of energy, unless you are burning oil shale.

The energy sources in the "stone age" were animals like wooly mammoths and rhinoceroses, and plants, which were all digested by stone age man and mostly left no trace.

In the future people won't call our time the oil age, but the plastic age, and believe we worshipped Ronald McDonald .

As for Cthulhu, it seems to be a common right wing ploy to say that someone with whom they disagree with is "worshipping" something. The implication is that the thing the others is worshipping is unworthy and that they should go back to worshipping some "God", presumably of the Judeo-Christian variety. (They don't understand that Cthulhu is to be feared, not worshipped, the fools (that was a joke). ) Melanie Phillips of the Mail does this kind of thing when she talks about environmentalism and scientism - equating understanding of empirical evidence with an ideology.

[PS_RalphW]

The stone in the stone age was the technology, flint knapping et al., which translated human (and some animal) power into useful work at a higher EROEI. A really sharp, pointy flint arrow head, a nice straight wooden spear, a spear launcher and a bit of practice could fell a mammoth at 50 metres. A huge EROEI. Ditto a sharp scraper could cut and skin a mammoth hide with far more speed and less effort. Very useful when there are
sabre tooth tigers looking for lunch...

Hunter gatherers had a very high EROEI lifestyle. However, it was prone to feast or famine.

Farmers a far lower one, but grain could be stored for years.