Folks,

Robert
Newman’s History of Oil

URL: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7374585792978336967&pr=goog-sl

Description:
Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics
of the last hundred years – but rather than adhering to the history we were fed
at school, the places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This
innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman’s stand-up act and
supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical
impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand.
Quirky details such as a bicycle powered street lamp on the stage brings home
the pertinent question of just how we are going to survive when the world’s oil
supplies are finally exhausted.

Here’s another rare, good piece of journalism about peak oil, global warming, and redesigning communities. This is an excellent primer for those who are still getting up to speed on those topics. Highly recommended.
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Folks,

The ASPO is gearing up for a proper and complete rebuttal to the aforementioned CERA report. Here is a precursor commentary by Randy Udall and Matthew Simmons, “CERA’s Rosy Oil Forecast – Pabulum to the People”. Smart, concise and on-the-money. The bottom line? “Taking such Pollyannish scenarios at face value threatens economic prosperity and national security.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

–C
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Folks,

Here’s a fresh perspective, tales from an insider on British Petroleum’s “beyond petroleum” ad campaign. It’s a fun read.

–C
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Folks,

Whenever the corporate media want to present a “balanced” view of our oil and natural gas problem, there’s one guy they always call upon: Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, or CERA. He’s that benign face on the TV assuring you that we’ll have ample supplies for the foreseeable future, who projects that we’ll add another 40 million barrels per day (mbpd) of production capacity by 2015, magically matching our projected demand. He’s the one who’s opinion is supposed to be as valid as the host of petroleum geologists who make up the ASPO, who say that we’ll hit the peak around 90 mbpd in 2010, or 4 mbpd more than today, in four years.
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When I blasted the generally poor reportage about energy in my last blog, I was unaware of this outstanding piece published by the Chicago Tribune a week earlier. But it’s burning up the blog charts now. It’s long, so download the complete PDF and read it at your leisure, but do check it.

The author, Paul Salopek, has done what no one had ever done before–indeed what most said couldn’t be done–and that’s to trace a tankful of gas back to its oil fields of origin. But aside from that feat, he’s done his homework about the various perspectives on the future of oil, and has come up with a sensible, balanced, and mostly correct conclusion.

It also has some well-done and very pithy appendixes (listed as “Sidebars” in the Web version) that do a decent job of covering the peak oil debate, the nature of oil, and the debate over the Saudi peak.

A Tank Of Gas, A World Of Trouble

By Paul Salopek

Chicago Tribune

Published July 29, 2006

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-oil-1-story,0,7163057.htmlstory

Seriously, read it. It’s great, and a compelling bit of journalism, not your usual dry stuff. I give it an A+. I hope he wins his third Pulitzer for this one.

–C

Update Saturday August 26, 2006:

Paul Salopek imprisoned in Darfur and charged with spying

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ — Paul Salopek, who was traveling in Africa to report on the culture and history of the Sahel for National Geographic magazine, was detained by Sudanese authorities and on Aug. 26 charged with espionage in a North Darfur court in El Fashir, Sudan. National Geographic magazine vigorously protests this accusation and appeals to Sudan for his immediate release and the release of two Chadians assisting him.

Update September 9, 2006:


Salopek, his driver and his interpreter were released after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir pardoned them on September 9.

The world certainly has changed a lot in the last two years. Peak oil has been covered by many of the mainstream media,
documentaries about global warming and energy and alternative vehicles are out, books about energy are being published at a breakneck pace, and there’s even a peak oil caucus in the House (thanks to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and Rep. Mark Udall). Many regular folks are starting to wake up and pay attention to where their energy is coming from, and what that means for geopolitics and American foreign policy. The drumbeat has begun!

On the other hand, most of the reportage I’ve seen is either wrong or politically twisted or just badly done (did anybody see that horrible abortion of a production called “We Were Warned: The Coming Oil Crisis” that CNN did back in March?), and full of misinformation and unreasonable projections. Meanwhile, the White House and Congress are still without any plan to wean us off of oil and natural gas and start making serious tracks to a renewable energy future. In fact, right now their biggest objective is to do more offshore drilling on the continental shelf and in ANWR, with renewable energy investment still a pittance. Apparently they still haven’t gotten the message that we can’t drill our way out of this mess.

Stay tuned, much more to come!

It’s been a long time since my last, pre-election blog. I made several false starts at resuming it since then, but the words just weren’t coming. But my reading and learning has continued unabated, and now it’s time to share some thoughts.

But before I get into that, I have to let you know that the time has also come to say goodbye to betterworld.com. It’s a sad development for me personally, but the offer and the timing was right. (It will be sold to a fine and altruistic organization called Better World Books.) I will be moving Better World to a new domain. This blog will be located at http://www.getreallist.com. So they will be offline for a while as I make the transition, and this will probably be my last blog at the current site.

GetRealList will also be taking a few turns. First, it will focus almost exclusively on energy, because my conviction has been steeled that energy is all that matters going forward. Politics, at least in the US, is all but a lost endeavor at this point. The corruption of our leadership and media, and the revolving door between politics and big business, has effectively nullified any real hope for working within the system for change and for the welfare of the common man. This era belongs to the captains of industry, and there’s really no time left to turn the ship around, even if populists did manage to gain some control over it again.

Second, it will be less oriented to disseminating information, and more focused on my opinions. I have learned that those who are willing to do their own research can find the information themselves, and those who aren’t, didn’t read the articles I was sending around anyway.

And finally, it will be a lot less concerned with building consensus, and a lot more about cutting straight to the truth, as I see it.
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