Boy, that's depressing talk isn't it!? What happened to the positive-thinking "the glass is half full" approach?Colin Campbell, the head of the depletion centre, said: "It's quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it's gone." - Independent
Well, it's just this - he's not talking about something with a future. He's not talking about the potential for your child to do better in school. He's not talking about your New Year's resolutions, or your hope for a better job or pay rise. The object of his pessimism is something that no matter how hard we try, no matter how enthusiastically we may approach the topic, there's a reality that's undeniable - he's talking about peak oil.
Time will tell who is right in this controversy, of course, but the fact remains that oil is not produced, it is extracted. It's a non-renewable resource. Considering its impact on the environment, perhaps we should be thankful it'll run out, but if the increasing cacophony of voices warning us we've almost reached the crest of the mighty Peak Oil edifice are even slightly close to correct, then time is not on our side. Your plans for your child's future, your career, your New Year's resolutions - it'll all be academic. No matter how skilled and supportive your particular self-help guru is, he can't prepare you for a world without oil. This is something we need to work on together, and yet, also take responsibility for ourselves.Scientists challenge major review of global reserves and warn that supplies will start to run out in four years' time
Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.
BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.
However, scientists led by the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, say that global production of oil is set to peak in the next four years before entering a steepening decline which will have massive consequences for the world economy and the way that we live our lives. - Independent
In recent years the once-considerable gap between demand and supply has narrowed. Last year that gap all but disappeared. The consequences of a shortfall would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even the smallest amount, the price of oil could soar above $100 a barrel. A global recession would follow.Some people say that Peak Oil predictions/premonitions/prophesies are nothing more than an oil-company induced fever of fear - elicited to provide an excuse to raise prices. But, at the same time, a lot of people are starting to 'react' to Peak Oil concerns by working to wean themselves off their addiction to oil. In other words, the more people become convinced of a Peak Oil certainty, and the more they work to prepare for a post-oil world, the less customers the oil industry retain. That doesn't sound like a sensible strategy for scaremongery-marketing....Jeremy Leggett, like Dr Campbell, is a geologist-turned conservationist whose book Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis brought "peak oil" theory to a wider audience. He compares industry and government reluctance to face up to the impending end of oil, to climate change denial.
"It reminds me of the way no one would listen for years to scientists warning about global warming," he says. "We were predicting things pretty much exactly as they have played out. Then as now we were wondering what it would take to get people to listen." - Independent
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