Common graphical tricks and the Medieval Warm Period

The Hockey Stick is a climate celebrity and skeptics have their own graphs that ‘show’ it is wrong. One of the most common is from the 1990 IPCC report, showing the Medieval Warm Period or MWP.


Figure 1 – IPCC First Assessment Report estimate of temperature changes in Europe from 900AD onwards.

This is how it appeared in Durkin’s The Great Global Warming Swindle:

Figure 2 – Shot of the same IPCC graph slightly modified to be shown in The Great Global Warming Swindle

The conclusions of most recent studies are that the MWP was on average cooler than today, but The Great Global Warming Swindle, blogs and industry think tanks say otherwise, often based on graphs like this. It appears to be modified from Lamb 1965:

The data is for central England and from 1680 it uses the 50 year average of the HadCET thermometer record. Thankfully, the HadCET record has carried on since that graph finishes (around 1920), so we can find where ‘NOW’ really is. In Figure 4 we have HadCET with 10 year averages (dotted line) and 50 year averages (solid line). We continue the 50yr line and find that it’s now about 0.35C warmer than Lamb’s last point. However, global warming only really kicked off around 1980, so we’ve still got 20 years of no global warming in the 50yr average and it seems pretty fair to take a look at something that would catch suspected global warming – like the 10 year average. This has risen by just over 1 °C since Lamb’s last measurement.

Figure 4 – HadCET data since 1680 reported as a 10 year running mean (dotted line) and as a 50 year running mean (solid line)

So when you see that graph with ‘NOW’ marked on the right hand side, they are telling you that the temperature now is the 50 year average centred on the 1920s. As someone living in the 2000s, you probably think that’s a bit silly. The temperatures of the 2000s would be the upper ‘NOW?’ on figure. The lower ‘NOW?’ is the latest 50yr average.

Figure 5 – Where are we now? The lower box and line is the latest 50 year average in HadCET to be consistent with the rest of the graph. This, however, misses much of the period thought to be associated with global warming. The the latest 10 year average captures this and is just off the chart.

The Great Global Warming Swindle and every other skeptical source that shows you this graph and claims it shows that the MWP was warmer than today is not giving you the full picture. They are showing you evidence that central England was warmer around 1200AD than it was around 1920. They are showing you that the last decade was warmer than any 50 year period on the graph including the MWP.

Many similar graphs are loved by skeptical sites, but this is a useful demonstration because it contains all 3 of the common ‘tricks to hide the incline’ of global warming. Firstly they change the temperature scale and/or hide the values. Next they pick a single region, and finally they either cut off or ignore instrumental evidence showing recent warming.

There appears to be plenty of evidence for some places being warmer than today in the MWP, and whilst most studies say that globally it wasn’t warmer it seems that scientists still want more data to be sure (and if it was warmer, that might suggest higher climate sensitivity). The important thing is being able to properly interpret the evidence that arrives – which involves spotting the misleading half-truths by the likes of Martin Durkin.

SIIT

Scientists call for research on climate link to geological hazards

Experts say suggestions that climate change could trigger more volcanoes and earthquakes are speculative, but there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously.

GUARDIAN

Scientists today called for wide-ranging research into whether more volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis could be triggered by rising global temperatures under global warming.

Significant warming of the atmosphere in the distant past can be linked to changes in geological activity, they say. Suggestions that climate change predicted for coming decades could bring similar changes remain speculative, but the scientists say there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously. Some experts have already linked current levels of global warming to rockfalls and landslides in mountain regions.

Richard Betts, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, said: "This is a new area of academic research with potentially interesting implications. It was previously assumed there was no link at all between climate change and these events, but it is possible to speculate that climate change might make some more likely. If we do get large amounts of climate change in the long term then we might see some impacts."

He said there was no evidence that current levels of global warming were influencing events such as last week's earthquake in China that killed hundreds of people and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded flights across Europe.

Experts say global warming could affect geological hazards such as earthquakes because of the way it can move large amounts of mass around on the Earth's surface. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels shift the distribution of huge amounts of water, which release and increase pressures through the ground.

These pressure changes could make ruptures and seismic shifts more likely. Research from Germany suggests that the Earth's crust can sometimes be so close to failure that tiny changes in surface pressure brought on my heavy rain can trigger quakes. Tropical storms, snowfall and shifting tides have all been linked to shifts in seismic activity.

Writing in a special series of scientific papers on the topic published today by the Royal Society, Bill McGuire, head of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, says: "In relation to anthropogenic climate change, modelling studies and projection of current trends point towards increased risk in relation to a spectrum of geological and geomorphological hazards in a warmer world, while observations suggest that the ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere."

He adds: "In order to improve knowledge and reduce uncertainty, a programme of focused research is advocated ... The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is also strongly exhorted to address more explicitly in future assessments the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the geosphere, together with its manifold potentially hazardous consequences."

The papers follow a special meeting on the subject last year and are published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. They include studies of the likely impact of rising temperatures on events such as earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as whether the release of gas from undersea deposits called gas hydrates could trigger landslides and tsunamis.

McGuire says: "No increase in the global incidence of either volcanic activity or seismicity has been identified to date ... It may be the case that modulation of potentially hazardous geological processes due to anthropogenic climate change proves too small a signal to extract from the background noise of normal geophysical activity, at least in the short to medium term."

MIT Trains Viruses to Split Water, Make Stored Solar Power

Jason Mick (Blog) - April 14, 2010 9:09 AM

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In nature zinc paraffins act as an antenna, capturing solar energy and transfering it to other complexes to split water. The viruses in the new MIT work grab zinc paraffins, like the one seen here, and use them to split water.  (Source: Molbank)

Research raises new hope for a hydrogen economy

One critical question facing proponents of a hydrogen economy, the term tossed around for a nation that's switched from fossil fuels to hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen combustion engines, is how to produce the hydrogen.  Current schemes require either expensive catalysts or require a secondary power source such as solar power.  However, solar power doesn't come cheaply itself.

Researchers are racing to find a cheaper way to produce solar energy.  One of the top ideas is to borrow from nature's highly refined solar energy capture system found in plants.  Scientists at MIT are building on past work, which used naturally occurring chemicals from photosynthetic organisms to directly convert solar power to split water and create stored hydrogen gas.  The MIT researchers have upped the ante by creating a virus to automate the difficult assembly of the necessary chemicals.  This could eventually make biochemical solar cells a viable and less expensive alternative to traditional panel designs.

Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, led a team which modified a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 to attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins).

The bound compounds turned the virus into a mini-antenna, similar to the molecules found in plants that are responsible for absorbing water.  Energy absorbed by the virus was able to very efficiently split water in to oxygen and hydrogen gases.

Left free, the viruses would clump together and stop efficiently processing water.  However, the researchers took the extra step of embedding them in a hydrogel to prevent clumping.

The key to this work is that the researchers used a virus to assemble them.  States Professor Belcher, "We use components people have used before, but we use biology to organize them for us, so you get better efficiency."

Thomas Mallouk, the DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics at Pennsylvania State University comments on the study, "This is an extremely clever piece of work that addresses one of the most difficult problems in artificial photosynthesis, namely, the nanoscale organization of the components in order to control electron transfer rates."

The work from Belcher's team was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The next goal is to create a self-sustaining and durable prototype within the next two years.

With such a prototype, some day it might be possible to produce pigments in bacteria via viral infection, use the viruses in this study to assemble the pigments and finally add the catalyst, to form a quick, biologically produced, and efficient solar hydrogen production unit.

Allikas: http://www.dailytech.com/MIT+Trains+Viruses+to+Split+Water+Make+Stored+Solar+Power/article18119.htm

Global oil demand will hit a record high this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, revising up consumption estimates as the wo

The Paris-based adviser to industrialized economies raised its forecast for world oil demand growth this year to 1.67 million barrels per day (bpd), up 100,000 bpd.

The agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report that world oil demand would reach an average of 86.60 million bpd this year, up from 84.93 million in 2009.

The previous record high for world oil demand was 86.5 million bpd in 2007 before the onset of the global financial crisis and economic slowdown.

"There are signs of oil demand picking up in North America and the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East although consumption in Europe still looks weak," David Fyfe, head of the IEA's Oil Industry and Markets Division, told Reuters.

But the extra demand will largely be met by production from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The IEA raised its forecast for non-OPEC output in 2010 by 220,000 bpd to around 52.0 million bpd due to higher output by OECD countries. Overall, non-OPEC supply is expected to rise by around 500,000 bpd this year.

As a result, the IEA estimated demand this year for OPEC crude and stocks would fall by 200,000 bpd to 29.1 million bpd.

OPEC COMPLIANCE FALLS

Oil prices were largely steady after the IEA report, with benchmark U.S. crude oil futures for May trading around $83.63 per barrel, down 71 cents, by 6:06 a.m. ET.

The IEA noted that oil prices, which hit an 18-month high above $87 last week, had risen above the range of $60 to $80 per barrel that OPEC and many industrialized countries see as ideal for producers and consumers.

It said oil prices could stifle world economic growth if they were allowed to rise too far.

"Ultimately, things might turn messy for producers if $80-$100 per barrel is merely seen as the new $60-$80, stunting economic recovery while prompting resurgent non-oil and non-OPEC supply investment," the IEA report said.

Total OPEC production declined in March, the IEA said, but this was largely due to a fall in production by Iraq, which is not bound by OPEC output targets.

It said production by the 11 OPEC countries bound by OPEC output targets rose by 30,000 bpd, taking their compliance as a group with promised output cuts to around 55 percent at the end of March, down from its previous estimate of 56 percent at the end of February.

Oil stocks in industrialized countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rose to around 60 days of forward demand at the end of February from about 59.5 days at the end of January, the IEA said.

The IEA said refineries around the world would process nearly 1 million bpd more oil in the second quarter than in the same period last year with China and Asian countries raising output most. This is up 300,000 bpd over the last estimate.

"The return of economic growth and hence oil demand growth is fuelling the increase," the report said.

China's refinery output will jump by 900,000 bpd from a year ago, helping to offset a fall of 440,000 bpd in OECD countries.

IEA: OPEC had first big drop in output in a year

PARIS (AP) -- Recovery in the world's biggest economies could be jeopardized if crude oil prices stay over $80 per barrel, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The IEA also reported that OPEC posted the first "significant decline" in output in March in more than a year -- falling 190,000 barrels per day to 29 million barrels a day -- largely due to a near 10-percent drop in Iraqi output.

The agency, the energy arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of the world's richest nations, said concerns remain that global oil markets are "overheated," with crude around $85 per barrel.

"Ultimately, things might turn messy for producers if $80-100 (per barrel) is merely seen as the new $60-80 (per barrel), stunting economic recovery while prompting resurgent non-oil and non-OPEC supply investment" the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly oil market report.

Price subsidies that benefit consumers in non-OECD countries like China and India, and tighter credit than two years ago "could stall OECD economic recovery or render it more oil-less than we currently envisage," it said.

The IEA said that operational problems and weather-related export disruptions at its southern terminals drove down Iraqi output by 220,000 barrels per day last month. But the agency noted that Iraq's exports hit a two-decade high of 2.07 million barrels a day in February, and total exports in March were tallied at 1.79 million.

The IEA estimated global demand in 2010 would rise by 30,000 barrels a day in 2010 to 86.6 million barrels a day compared to last month's report. Demand for 2009 was revised down by 70,000 barrels to 84.9 million.

The agency said OPEC kept its output targets unchanged last month largely on expectations that global oil demand will pick up later this year to absorb above-target production.

Oil prices have been hovering around 18-month highs of $80-85 per barrel. The international oil cartel is not expected to meet again until Oct. 14 in Vienna.

Qatar's oil minister said last week that crude's recent rally is driven mainly by speculation, not a shortage of supply, and dismissed the likelihood that OPEC would hold a special meeting to re-evaluate current production.

Temperatuur tõuseb - Bye-bye, global cooling myth: Hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record”

It was the hottest March in both satellite records (UAH and RSS), and tied for the hottest March on record in the NASA dataset. It was the hottest (or tied for hottest) January through March in all three records.

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

NASA’s prediction from last month is standing up: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.″ Actually, NASA made that prediction back in January 2009:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the warming went right where scientists had predicted — into the oceans (see “How we know global warming is happening”):

Figure: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008.”

NASA’s draft paper reported: “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

NOAA points out that both satellite data sets show about the same amount of warming as the land-based record, “which increased at a rate near 0.16°C/decade (0.29°F/decade) during the same 30-year period” — once you remove the expected stratospheric cooling from the satellite records (see NOAA discussion here).

HOW MUCH OIL IS LEFT?

American journalist and writer Richard Heinberg is one of the world's foremost Peak Oil educators. He has taught at New College of California’s Campus for Sustainable living a program on "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community" until March 2008 and is a Senior Fellow in Residence of the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California. He is the award-winning author of nine books including:

• The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003),
• Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004),
• The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006),
• Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines in Earth’s Resources (2007).

His monthly MuseLetter has been published since 1992 and his essays and articles have appeared widely in such journals as The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, Z Magazine, Yes!, Resurgence, The Futurist and European Business Review. Moreover, he was featured prominently in documentary films such as “The End of Suburbia” (2004) by Gregory Greene and Barrie Silverthorne (see for more information: www.endofsuburbia.com). With a wry, unflinching approach based on facts and realism, Mr. Heinberg exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life and offers a vision for a truly sustainable future. Since 2002, he has given over three hundred lectures on the subject matter of Peak Oil to a wide variety of audiences. He and his wife Janet Barocco live in Santa Rosa, California.

Mr. Heinberg, your most successful book-title to this date is ”The Party’s Over.“ For those of our readers who have never heard of you and that book: What kind of party is it that you were writing about and why do you assume that this festivity and its special features are about to come to an end?

The “party” was humanity’s one-time-only opportunity to fuel economic growth and technological innovation with a bounty of cheap, abundant energy from fossil fuels. The harvesting of oil, coal, and natural gas has inevitably proceeded on a best-first or low-hanging fruit basis. While the Earth still possesses a wealth of unexploited energy resources, the cheapest and easiest-accessed of those resources have by now already been used. All of these fuels are in the process of becoming more expensive, and the various energy alternatives are limited in one way or another in their ability to replace hydrocarbons. That means we are currently seeing the end of economic growth as we have known it. The impacts for transportation, globalization, and world food supplies will be serious indeed.

As a rather critical observer of that party: Do you see significant hints that a growing number of participants realize that “The Last Waltz” is near? Or are you afraid that large parts will continue to dance no matter what?

After over a decade spent in trying to alert policy makers and the general public about this issue, I have concluded that only a small minority have any idea what is in store. The “dance” you speak of is indeed coming to an end, but it appears to most that the problem is purely a financial one, and that once the global economic crisis is sorted out, we will all be able to get back to business as usual. I do not believe that is an option. We have reached a fundamental turning point, foreseen in the “Limits to Growth” study of 1972. For a while, world leaders may be able to redistribute wealth in various ways—most likely from the poor to the rich—in order to make it appear that the global economy is continuing to grow. But I suspect that this will work only for a very few years at most. At some point soon, it will become clear that economies are contracting. And then most people will look for someone to blame. No doubt politicians will oblige by trotting out various scapegoats.

What about the hosts of the party, who pay the band – the so-called elites? They’re aware of the coming situation for a long time, right? What kind of plans do they have in store for themselves and the rest of us in your opinion? As part of the elites, the Central Intelligence Agency for example, which has always entertained close ties to the financial district in New York City,[1] had the Peak Oil problem on its radar screen at least since the late 1970’s.[2] Hence, we can be sure that some influential interests not only knew that this historical watershed event was coming, but also that they had enough time to prepare for it.

Strangely enough, I think most of the “elites” are victims of their own public relations efforts. They have promoted the careers of economists who told them what they wanted to hear—that economic growth is the normal and inevitable state of affairs, and that there are no real limits to growth. Yes, certainly there are analysts in the CIA and the military who understand where this is all heading, but—if the ex-analysts I’ve talked to are typical of their colleagues—they have learned that reports about resource constraints are not welcome, unless they are framed in terms of the contest for geopolitical leverage

At the end of last year, the World Energy Outlook 2009 received a very cautious reception – for example from your side.[3] Why was that and how was it linked to the ongoing discussion about oil reserves? May I also ask you to explain to our readers why the picture related to the latter seems very blur and since when?

Oil “reserves” consist of estimates of the amount of oil that geologists believe can be economically extracted from oilfields that have been discovered, drilled, and mapped. Unfortunately, reserves reporting is not a transparent affair in many countries that have state-controlled oil industries. There is strong evidence to suggest that OPEC nations have systematically and substantially over-estimated their reserves for over two decades.

In 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) took a first cautious step in the direction of realism when it published, in its annual World Energy Outlook, an assessment of rates of production decline from the world’s old, giant oilfields, which yield the bulk of the world’s crude oil. On average, there is a net production decline of 4.5 percent per year from existing fields, which means that the world has to develop a Saudi Arabia’s worth of new production capacity every five years or so just to maintain existing total production volumes. That is an enormous feat, especially given the fact that oil discovery rates have been falling since the early 1960s. New oilfields are sill being found, of course, but typically they are very expensive to locate and exploit, when compared to the oilfields that were being discovered only a decade or two ago.

This debate, that we’ve just mentioned, is continuing right now again on a large scale.[4] Maybe there is, if one wants to, an end to it. During an interview with investigative journalist and book author Mike Ruppert, I’ve asked him a few things about the National Energy Policy Development Group, NEPDG, that was run by then-Vice President Richard Cheney in Spring of 2001. Mr. Ruppert stated:

“Essentially the NEPDG appears to have been set up, almost from the first day of the Bush administration, to find out how much oil was left, who had it, and how it could be obtained (bought or stolen) to support U.S. hegemony, U.S. consumption, and the monetary paradigm. … The fact that the NEPDG records have been kept secret from the American people who paid for it is one of the greatest crimes of all time. Seeing those records now would save a lot of duplicated effort in trying to inventory how much oil there is left. The figures on oil reserves quoted by producing nations and companies are as fraudulent and cooked as the books on mortgages, banking, and even Bernie Madoff. … It was Peak Oil that was driving Dick Cheney's Task Force and nothing else.”[5]

Do you agree with Mr. Ruppert in general and in particular on the notion that the secret NEPDG-records could help us to find out “how much oil there is left”?

Since we don’t know what those records contain, we also don’t know if they would help us to know much more about future energy supply options. Certainly if an agency like the IEA were empowered to perform on-the-ground audits of oilfields in all oil exporting countries, we would know much more than we do now.

In another interview, I’ve asked economist James K. Galbraith, who thinks that the Peak Oil scenario “needs to be taken seriously,” if he agrees that it would be time to make those secret files of the NEPDG public. He answered by saying:

“Yes. I do agree that files of this type should be made public. If there is an argument, which undoubtedly some people will make, for a national security reason not to make them public, then an appropriate procedure, which we have followed in this country in the past, is to appoint a panel of independent outsiders, not previously connected to the government, to review the documents and to make them public unless there is a compelling reason not to, with arguments about what is compelling and not-compelling ultimately resolved by the president himself. That’s a model that has been applied successfully in the past in the United States on a matter of this kind. I think it would be very useful to do it in this and other instances on the conduct of the Bush administration.”[6]

My question for you is: Wouldn’t it be a good goal for the Peak Oil movement in the U.S. and around the globe to come together for a concerted effort to make happen what Mr. Galbraith was talking about? Even if there was only a slim chance to accomplish this goal?

Yes, this would be a worthy goal from a certain standpoint. However, the peak oil “movement” is a highly non-political collection of individuals with little sense of group identity or any history of concerted political action. Even if the effort succeeded, I doubt if much truly new information would be revealed. Many “peak oil” analysts are already extremely well informed on world energy supply issues—much better informed than all but a very few officials at even the highest levels of government, and better informed than most of the members of the National Energy Policy Development Group. So the advantage would not be in finding out some information that is currently being kept secret, it would simply be in seeing public confirmation of certain key bits of information that are seldom discussed in the mainstream media.

Mr. Heinberg, you have stated publicly in 2004 that you have your doubts related to the official narration of the attacks of 9/11.[7] May I ask you if those attacks are in your opinion connected to Peak Oil?

I have no idea. My assertion then and now is simply that the events of 9/11 were not properly investigated. It is certainly tantalizing to imagine what a proper investigation would uncover, but imagine we must—because at this point the likelihood of a re-opening of that case is extremely remote. It is a dead issue.

One facet of the “Global War on Terror” that resulted from those attacks, is the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What has this invasion to do with oil, or more specifically: with the competitive relationship between the US-dollar vs the Euro? Was there a threat looming for the so-called “Petrodollar System” that was established during the early 1970’s?

There was some speculation at the time of the invasion that part of the motive was to protect the U.S. dollar, which is the currency used in nearly all international oil sales. Saddam Hussein had been threatening to abandon the use of the dollar, and some saw this as a mortal threat to global dollar hegemony. In retrospect, I’m not sure that analysis holds up, though I agreed with it at the time. While the level of U.S. debt is such that one might expect other nations to be looking for some alternative to the dollar for international transactions, the reality is that there is no good candidate at the moment.

I suspect that there were complex motives for the invasion of Iraq. It is strange that even today, seven years later, we must speculate on this question. The public still has not been told the real reasons for one of the longest and most expensive wars in recent history.

What would happen to the US economy if the “Petrodollar System” would collapse? Do you see signs that this arrangement to the advantage of US-American consumerism could come to an end rather sooner than later?

At some point the dollar will indeed fail as a currency. Whether this failure comes about as a result of oil exporters dumping the dollar, or simply because of problems inherent to the U.S. economy remains to be seen. And it is impossible to know whether that moment is a few months or many years ahead of us. I suspect that we will see some serious problems with the dollar well before 2020. Certainly every effort will be made to keep the current world monetary system working as long as possible, but the problems just keep accumulating. The result may be a rather sudden re-adjustment in which enormous amounts of apparent wealth simply disappear, and global trade comes to a nearly complete halt, at least temporarily.

In the past, you have said that the worst thing that could happen is a financial / economic crisis at the exact same time when we’re about to enter the Peak Oil phase. Well, obviously this seems to be the case now. Why has this been a nightmarish outlook for you? And do you think that this financial / economic crisis, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most people, will usher in on a global scale what Robert Kennedy once called “the mindless menace of violence”? If you agree on that, isn’t that the result not of this crisis alone, but also because people are not told the truth about its long-lasting character in an honest way?

The reason it’s bad for both an energy crisis and a financial crisis to occur together is that each makes the other harder to address. Without adequate credit and investment capital, how will we build renewable energy infrastructure to replace our current fossil-fuel-dependent transport and electricity systems? And without cheap energy, how can we dig ourselves out of a financial crisis?

As you point out, both are indeed happening now, and this should be no surprise given the inherent linkages between energy prices and the health of the economy. Will we see global violence as a result? Of course I hope the answer is “no,” but the likelihood of war would be substantially reduced if the general public had a better idea of why their standard of living is eroding. Since politicians don’t really understand what is happening, I suppose they can be somewhat excused for not telling their constituents. But that means, once again, that the most likely response will be a hunt for scapegoats.

Now that we’ve already touched the subject “money”: What has the financial crisis and the ongoing recession to do with the monetary system and debt-based growth? Is there a tricky part involved - just as Mike Ruppert characterized it this way during the above mentioned interview:

a) The current global economic paradigm -- governed by fractional reserve banking, fiat currency, and compound interest (debt-based growth) -- is inherently and by definition a pyramid scheme. Money is useless without energy. One cannot eat a dollar bill or crumble it up and throw it in his gas tank. Each of the trillions of dollars created out of thin air since the fall of 2008 is a commitment to expend energy that cannot and will not ever be there.

b) There can be no "recovery", no return to growth (which is what the economic paradigm demands), without energy.[8]

Yes, I agree with Mike Ruppert on this. If the world is to return to stability, an entirely new economic system, based on a new and different form of money, will be required. The world still has willing workers and consumers, and enormous productive capacity in the forms of factories, soils, and recyclable materials. But without a functioning monetary system, there will be no means of connecting production with consumption. Our current money system requires constant growth so as to enable repayment of the interest on the debts that created the money to begin with, so it cannot function well in the context of general resource scarcity and economic contraction.

How does a new monetary system need to look like vis-à-vis Peak Oil?

There are many possibilities for alternatives, including tradable energy vouchers.

Is it this monetary change that has to take place that constitutes the “Heart of Darkness” so to speak when it comes to the problem that the elites and the mainstream media are “too fearful to publicise peak oil reality”?[9]

I don’t think reality is that conspiratorial. Certainly there are some deep, dark conspiracies out there, but with regard to peak oil my belief is that, for the most part, the elites genuinely do not understand the situation or its implications.

Of interest with regard to the recession is of course the oil price spike of 2008. Global Portfolio Strategist Marshall Auerback stated in an interview with me that even though “recessionary pressures were already ‘baked in the cake’ well before the oil price spike”, that this was “the straw that broke the camel's back, or the ‘icing on the cake.’”[10] That given, I would like to get your reading of that oil price spike. Do you agree with James Hamilton’s analysis given in “Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08”?[11]

Yes, I discussed Hamilton’s analysis at some length in my essay “Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?” http://heinberg.wordpress.com/ There’s no point trying to paraphrase that article here; if readers are interested, they can read it. I think it’s a pretty good summary of the situation.

Critique on the Peak Oil scenario comes from all kinds of sides. Among them are the advocates of the abiogenic petroleum origins. What is your response to those critiques – for example related to the doubts that the common theory of fossil fuels was never scientifically proven?

I have also published an essay on this subject, titled “The Abiotic Oil Controversy” http://energybulletin.net/node/2423. To summarize: there may indeed be some interesting points for further research regarding the origins of some of Earth’s hydrocarbons. But that research is unlikely to have immediate practical implications for the supply of oil or natural gas. These fuels are found only in sedimentary basins, and those basins have already been identified by geologists using every tool from pick and compass to seismic surveys to satellite imaging. Moreover, oil and gas wells are observed to deplete, and are not observed to replenish themselves in an economically significant way over humanly observable time scales. The very few exceptions to these general statements have been studied by geologists and explained in terms of local anomalies.

Another thing one can hear quite often is that Peak Oil authors / educators like you are spokesmen for big oil interests. Does this make sense to you? Why should the oil and automobile industry be interested in propagating a “Peak Oil myth”?

If I’m secretly on the payroll of an oil company, then somebody forgot to let me in on the secret. A few of the oil companies are delicately admitting some of the main elements of the peak oil thesis. Other oil companies heatedly deny any possibility of supply problems and call people like me very nasty names. Some of the auto companies, such as Toyota, understand peak oil and speak of it openly. But I don’t see any public relations advantage whatsoever in some supposed cynical plot to promulgate a “peak oil myth.” I’ve been studying this subject for over a decade and have interviewed dozens of people inside and outside of these industries, including scientists, managers, economists, and public relations officers, and have seen no evidence whatsoever of such a plot. Instead I see general ignorance and denial. Those within the industry who do understand peak oil tend to be scientists, though there are exceptions. Scientists often do rather poorly at following instructions with regard to fabricating myths. They have an annoying habit of seeking out data, analyzing it, and thinking for themselves.

Mr. Heinberg, we seem to face huge problems with Climate Change, Overpopulation and the depletion of natural resources in general, not only hydro carbons. Climate Change is discussed worldwide – so let the both of us concentrate on the other two points. Where the whole problem of Peak Oil is getting real ugly is the whole issue of Overpopulation. Without oil there would never have been the possibility to let the world population rise to 6.5 billion human beings. Therefore, the outlook of Peak Oil is that now that we have all those humans on Planet Earth, the oil that supports them declines. Two questions: how do you cope with the knowledge you have about that day in, day out? And don’t you fear that mankind is about to lose the last rest of dignity that was leftover after the barbaric events of the 20^th Century?

How do I cope with the knowledge? Well, it’s distressing, but one learns to cope. As we age, we are forced to cope with the knowledge of our own mortality. Our relatives and friends start dying. It’s depressing, but we go on. What would be really depressing would be to have knowledge about imminent global crises but to have no way of influencing the situation. In fact, there is a great deal that still can be done to lessen impacts on humanity and the natural world, and as we engage in that kind of activity it tends to help us psychologically.

Another major problem that we face is the depletion of natural resources in general – you sum it up best by giving your book on this subject the title: “Peak Everything.”[12] In that book you mention that

“in the course of the present century we will see an end to growth and a commencement of decline in all of these parameters:

- Population,

- Grain production (total and per capita),

- Uranium production,

- Climate stability,

- Fresh water availability per capita,

- Arable land in agricultural production,

- Wild fish harvests,

- Yearly extraction of some metals and minerals (including copper, platinum, silver, gold and zinc).”[13]

Can you tell us how we humans can survive this especially seen under the focus of Liebig’s Law (or the Law of the Minimum)?

As I say in the book, we must reduce the scale of the human project—our population and our consumption rates (the latter especially in the industrialized nations). That means redesigning our economic and food systems, re-localizing and down-sizing them, until they can be maintained with renewable resources harvested at sustainable rates.

Do you fear that some people in powerful positions become increasingly “trigger happy” – that is to say, that they will try to get us involved in a major war as a Last Exit Strategy?

I don’t see major war as an “exit strategy”; if it happens, it will likely be simply a failure of politics—an expression of the inability of leaders to solve the worsening problems that are confronting them.

To sum our interview up, Mr. Heinberg: We’re about to enter extremely interesting, stormy times. They have a lot of danger in store for us. On the other hand, isn’t it true that the coming 20 – 30 years will be a great opportunity to totally re-evaluate who we are and what is really important to us?

Absolutely. Every crisis is an opportunity, and we will be presented with the greatest array of opportunities in history. Survival will require us to evolve quickly, and to change our thinking, our habits, and our expectations. If we do these things, it is just possible that the society that emerges in the process will be far more stable, interesting, and beautiful than the one we see around us today.

Thank you very much for taking your time, Mr. Heinberg!

My pleasure, thank you!

SOURCES:

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[1] compare Michael C. Ruppert: “Crossing the Rubicon. The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil”, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2004, page 53 – 57, and Peter Dale Scott: “The Road to 9/11. Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007, page 11 – 14.

[2] compare Richard Heinberg: “Smoking Gun: The CIA's Interest in Peak Oil“, published at From the Wilderness on August 15, 2003 under:

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081503_cia_russ_oil.html

[3] see Richard Heinberg: “Just Tell Us The Truth”, published November 10, 2009 under:

www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/44016-just-tell-us-the-truth

and Lars Schall: “Hat die Welt Peak Oil erreicht?”, published at MMNews on November 12, 2009 under:

http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/200911124199/MM-News/Hat-die-Welt-Peak-Oil-erreicht.html

[4] compare Rowena Mason: “Oil reserves 'exaggerated by one third'”, published at The Telegraph on March 22, 2010 under:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

and Vincent Fernando: “U.S. Government Exposes Its Own Oil Supply And Demand Data To Be Completely Flawed”, published at Business Insider on March 22, 2010 under:

http://www.businessinsider.com

[5] Lars Schall: “The Sinking Titanic”, Interview with Michael C. Ruppert, published at Energy Bulletin on May 22, 2009 under: www.energybulletin.net/node/48990

[6] Lars Schall: ”There Is No Return To Self-Sustaining Growth“, Interview with James K. Galbraith, published at New Deal 2.0 on February 2, 2010 under:

http://www.newdeal20.org

[7] compare Richard Heinberg: “Powerdown. Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World “, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2004, page 70 – 71.

[8] see footnote 5.

[9] see Madeleine Bunting: “Too fearful to publicise peak oil reality”, published at The Guardian on November 10, 2009 under: http://www.guardian.co.uk

[10] Lars Schall: “Many Years Of Economic Stagnation”, Interview with Marshall Auerback, published at Energy Bulletin on September 9, 2009 under: www.energybulletin.net/node/50067

[11] James D. Hamilton: “Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08.” ABSTRACT: “This paper explores similarities and differences between the run-up of oil prices in 2007- 08 and earlier oil price shocks, looking at what caused the price increase and what effects it had on the economy. Whereas historical oil price shocks were primarily caused by physical disruptions of supply, the price run-up of 2007-08 was caused by strong demand confronting stagnating world production. Although the causes were different, the consequences for the economy appear to have been very similar to those observed in earlier episodes, with significant effects on overall consumption spending and purchases of domestic automobiles in particular. In the absence of those declines, it is unlikely that we would have characterized the period 2007:Q4 to 2008:Q3 as one of economic recession for the U.S. The experience of 2007-08 should thus be added to the list of recessions to which oil prices appear to have made a material contribution.” James D. Hamilton : “Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08“, Department of Economics, UC San Diego, published February 3, 2009, Revised: April 27, 2009, at:

http://www.brooking.edu/

[12] Richard Heinberg: “Peak Everything. Waking Up to the Century of Decline in Earth’s Resources“, Clairview Books, Forest Row, 2007.

[13] Ibid., page 4.