Stories tagged with "richard heinberg"

Is the Global Oil Tank Half-Full, Is It Half-Empty …or Are We Running on Fumes?

This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. Heinberg is Senior Fellow with Post Carbon Institute and author of several books on resource depletion, including The Oil Depletion Protocol and Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. He will be speaking at the ASPO-USA conference in Denver, October 12.

In his article in the New York Times September 24, "Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries”, staff reporter Jad Mouawad cites oil discoveries totaling ten billion barrels for the first half of 2009. The Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for four to six billion barrels of crude that may eventually find its way into the world oil system. Indeed, this year has seen discovery results that could end up being the best since 2000. But, the article notes, the new oil was expensive to find, it will be expensive to extract, and both exploration and production are only possible because of high levels of investment and sophisticated, expensive new technologies.

Richard Heinberg’s "Blackout - Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis"


When Richard Heinberg's new book was about to be published, the editors at The Oil Drum were offered a review copy, and I was offered the chance to provide that review. Yet in a way providing that review gives me a bit of a puzzle, because the underlying premise on which the book is based is that, as David Rutledge has propounded, the world will run out of realistic coal reserves much faster than most folk anticipate. It is a point of view that I don’t completely accept, and I have posted on my disagreements with Dr. Rutledge over some of his assumptions and conclusions in the past. So I could fill this review with another regurgitation of my points of disagreement, but were I to do so I don’t think it would be a fair review.

(Sorry, word count wrong--the review can be found under the fold by clicking "there's more".) Word count fixed.

Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?

This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of five books on resource depletion and societal responses to the energy problem. He can be found on the web at www.richardheinberg.com and www.postcarbon.org.

Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed.

But why are both the U.S. economy and the larger global economy ailing? Among the mainstream media, world leaders, and America’s economists-in-chief (Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke) there is near-unanimity of opinion: these recent troubles are primarily due to a combination of bad real estate loans and poor regulation of financial derivatives.

This is the Conventional Diagnosis. If it is correct, then the treatment for our economic malady might logically include heavy doses of bailout money for beleaguered financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and car companies; better regulation of derivatives and futures markets; and stimulus programs to jumpstart consumer spending.

But what if this diagnosis is fundamentally flawed? The metaphor needs no belaboring: we all know that tragedy can result from a doctor’s misreading of symptoms, mistaking one disease for another.

Temporary Recession or the End of Growth? by Richard Heinberg (Thread 2)

Peak Oil Day - July 11

This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute. The original post can be found here. A petition to make July 11 Peak Oil Day can be found here. Please sign it.

On July 11, 2008, the price of a barrel of oil hit a record $147.27 in daily trading. That same month, world crude oil production achieved a record 74.8 million barrels per day.

Energy Descent and Agricultural Population

I wrote this article over a year ago and was reminded of it by the recent BBC documentary A Farm for the Future. Since it was posted big changes have occurred politically and financially. Credit and commodity markets are disrupting the agricultural sector, and so are droughts and heat waves. Fuel prices are relatively cheap again, but overall input costs for industrial agriculture are generally higher than commodity prices. My radio interview with Ben Gisin covers much of this ground. Meanwhile, home gardening in the U.S. is picking up quickly in what appears to be a broad public response to these forces.

BBC Covers Peak Oil: A Farm for the Future

Most would agree the subject of peak oil has not received the mainstream media coverage its importance warrants. On Friday the BBC will be broadcasting an excellent peak oil documentary; it focuses on farming. Presenter and co-producer Rebecca Hosking explores the importance of oil in farming and the potential impact of peak oil. The film has a passionate narrative centred on Rebecca’s small family farm in South West England; can she make her farm fit for the future?

A Farm for the Future
Fri 20 Feb 2009, 20:00 on BBC Two, repeated Sun 22 Feb, 17:00 on BBC Two (and also available on iPlayer).

Peak Oil Media: Matt Simmons gets more pessimistic on CNBC, Heinberg, and others...

A Matt Simmons phone interview on CNBC, in which Matt sounds a very loud and certain clarion call about our direction--calling it (potentially) "The Great American Disaster." I think it is safe to say that Matt has gotten pretty pessimistic, even doomerish lately.

Under the fold, more from Richard Heinberg with a great review of accelerating events, Phil Hart talks peak oil on Aussie TV, KrisCan interviews Andre Angelantoni about post-peak life, and David Bell of ASPO-Oz appears on Bloomberg.

Richard Heinberg (via the ABC): "Nothing governments can do about rising oil prices"

For those who didn't see it last night, Tony Jones interviewed Richard Heinberg about peak oil on the ABC's "Lateline" program.

Video - RealPlayer and Windows Media.

TONY JONES: Now to tonight's interview with Richard Heinberg. He's one of the world's leading experts on the phenomenon of peak oil. That's the point at which the world's oil reserves go into decline. The idea is that having reached its peak it's all downhill from there and there's evidence that global rates of oil discovery have been declining since the 1960s, and that new oilfields are becoming more and more inaccessible.

So as demand increases and supply decreases the price of oil goes up and up and up, as we've painfully experienced in recent years. No one really knows when we'll reach peak oil. It may have already happened, it may take another three decades. Why has the price of oil gone up so fast and so high in recent years? How much higher could it go and can anything be done to reverse this relentless process?

Richard Heinberg has written a series of books on the oil crisis including 'The Party's over', 'Power Down' and his latest 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. I spoke to him a short time ago in Santa Rosa, California.

Richard Heinberg, thanks for joining us.

Peak Oil Media 8-10-07

First up, if you have not listened to it yet, you really must listen to this interview by George Kenney of Electric Politics interviewing David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock (70 mins). (Mr Strahan kindly mentions The Oil Drum.) (link to interview), (link to David Strahan's book site)

Next up, Jim Jubak is senior markets editor for MSN Money. He's talking about peak oil in a surprisingly lucid way...(good catch Khebab!) [Editor's note from Super G] YouTube link moved below the fold to speed page load times.

Under the fold, a CNBC ethanol discussion and a link to Richard Heinberg's latest.