Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
When ExxonMobil places an ad insisting oil production has not reached its topping point, there are reasons to disbelieve it.
ExxonMobil has placed an advert in the New York Times professing that "peak (oil) production is nowhere in sight". I and a growing chorus of whistleblowers say, on the contrary, that the day the world pumps as much oil as it ever can will happen in this de...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Global warming is a confusing business, but understand one thing: it's scary.
How confusing global warming must be for those who don't follow it closely. Take Tuesday's newspapers (March 14). On the one hand, in the freezing conditions of late, the UK has been burning so much gas it is in danger of running out. On the other hand, it has been so warm in the Arctic, somewhat further north,...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
At the end of each quarter of the year, I plan to post a headline-style summary of the main developments in peak oil and global warming on the blog, and then comment on its significance. To this first posting I have added the entire diary for 2005.
I see two clear themes in this diary. First, the imminence of a global energy crisis has evolved over the last 12-15 months from what the detrac...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Economists tend to argue for a later oil production peak and tend to be blind to the geological facts.
Budget day in the UK: a good day to think about economics and some of the more strident criticisms in the comments on my blog to date.
One reader calls on economics to explain why the peak oil argument is wrong. He is not alone among economists in believing that there are huge amounts o...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Analysis in a flagship industry journal suggests the day demand for petroleum exceeds demand is not far off.
Every six months or so, a flagship oil industry trade journal, Petroleum Review, publishes an analysis of the oil industry’s success rate in bringing new oil production to the market. The latest study appears in April’s issue. Although you have to read between the lines to hear it,...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Oil companies have no choice but to look below the melting Arctic ice for more oil and gas. City investors expect it of them.
The Guardian reports that British scientists are in conflict with their American counterparts over the emerging scramble to access oil below the fast-melting Arctic ice sheet. International Polar Year is looming, with a common expectation among the 60 countries tak...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Beware Exxon-Mobil efforts to discredit the science of climate change. They’ve been at it for years.
This week the Royal Society took the unusual step of leaking an internal memo from the Royal Society which showed that its elite brotherhood of British scientists are worried about a campaign by fossil-fuel interests to try and discredit the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Two top environmentalists changed their tunes on nuclear and gas this week. Worrying.
On Sunday, in the Independent, Zac Goldsmith concluded that it isn’t possible responsibly to condemn nuclear power out of hand. On Tuesday, in the Guardian, George Monbiot confessed that he had become a fossil-fuel supporter. What is going on? Read the rest of this blog
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
George Monbiot accuses me of wanting to solve the problem of climate change with “resources that do not exist.” They not only exist, they are rather easy to use.
The generally accepted view among scientists is that cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions of more than 60% are needed if we are to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of the gases that cause global warming. Lets start with that assu...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
It could have been renewable energy, but the PM has decided nuclear waste will provide him with a more enduring monument.
When the prime minister visited my company in September 2004, he faced an interesting challenge: in the afternoon he was to give a major speech on global warming announcing his intention to make climate change one of the two main themes of his G8 presidency; in the mor...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
Cars are killing the planet. The carbon arithmetic allows no other conclusion. But there is an alternative.
The Economist debate at the Hay festival this year asked the question "are cars killing the planet". Yes, I argued, they are, to the extent that people as they are currently designing and using cars are playing a major role in killing the planet.
Why be so melodramatic? Be...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
For a bearer of bad news, an oil industry conference is less of a lion’s than it was. But some of the speakers still have strong ostrich tendencies.
An unseasonably steamy Vienna. A vast petroleum engineering conference in Opec's home city. These days, the oil and gas industry cannot gather without at least some effort to talk about climate change, and I had long ago accepted an invitatio...
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Posted on Wednesday 26 July 2006 at 02:33 am by Jeremy Leggett
The spirit of the Somme in the age of global warming
On the first day of July ninety days ago, one of the first units of British troops to go over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme did so chasing footballs they had kicked towards the German trenches. Within minutes most of the men in that unit, and thousands of others, were killed by withering machine gun fire. By the e...
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