Tags
Alex Smith, Charles Hall, Climate Change, Climate Chaos, Colin Campbell, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Dr. Kevin Anderson, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Growth, EcoShock Radio, Environmental Collapse, EROEI, Extinction of Man, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Peak Oil, The Elite 1%, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
This will be my last post until after Thanksgiving break.
I featured Professor Charles Hall in EROEI and the Collapse of Empires and here he is again with another interesting talk on energy and EROEI to clear away all the bullshit headlines about America becoming the “New Saudi Arabia”. Our economy simply cannot grow anymore without energy inputs that have a high EROEI. Of course you also have to take into account the environmental externalities of fossil fuels which are writing the epitaph on our tombstones – “Homo Sapiens had more fossil fuels than brains. Mother Nature tried to warn them, but their addiction was too strong and their propaganda too pervasive.”
…Many experts now believe that, absent the discoveries of numerous new giant oilfields or breakthroughs in development of alternative fuels, oil demand will persistently push global prices to unaffordable levels, shackling economic growth indefinitely.
Even if discoveries somehow keep pace with demand, extracting oil from increasingly harsh conditions, such as beneath the Arctic Ocean or other deep ocean waters, will put upward pressure on prices.
Despite the potentially huge economic consequences, no full-scale, multinational energy conservation effort has been launched to buy time for development of alternatives, such as electric cars, that would ease pressure on oil supplies and prices.
When oil prices eclipsed $100 a barrel in 2011 and early this year, they were edging toward the “breaking point” – the threshold where economies can no longer expand, said Charles Hall, a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences and Forestry of the State University of New York. Hall, a co-author of the book “Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy,” said that the economy has stalled in the past when U.S. energy costs have approached 13 percent of the gross domestic product.
Annual global expenditures on raw energy have climbed to an estimated $8 trillion to $9 trillion, exceeding 10 percent of the $70 trillion world gross domestic product. Those figures, however, omit the succession of price up-charges along the manufacturing, marketing and delivery chain for energy-related components of goods and services.
“I don’t think the economy is ever going to grow again . . . not on a sustained basis,” Hall said in an interview…
…“The first half of the age of oil saw this rampant expansion of industry, transportation, trade, agriculture,” said Colin Campbell, an 81-year-old retired Irish petroleum geologist who founded the peak oil movement. “The population went up six times in parallel over 100 to 150 years . . . triggered by the cheap, easy energy that made everything possible.
“Now we face the second half, which is about to dawn, which just undermines this whole world system under which we’re now living,” he said. “Naturally, no one wants to admit that.”... – link
…Also, the elite don’t want to admit that the game they control is over. Capitalism is finished. We won’t have to fret about what will replace this economic system which people believe is irreplaceable because the system is self-destructing and taking all of us with it.
In a devastating speech at Bristol University Tuesday November 6th, 2012, Dr. Kevin Anderson accused too many climate scientists of keeping quiet about the unrealistic assessments put out by governments, and our awful odds of reaching global warming far above the proposed 2 degree safe point.
In fact, says Anderson, we are almost guaranteed to reach 4 degrees of warming, as early as 2050, and may soar far beyond that – beyond the point which agriculture, the ecosystem, and industrial civilization can survive.
All this comes from one of the world’s top climate scientists, plugged in to the latest research and numbers. Kevin Anderson is from the UK’s premier climate modeling institution, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and the University of Manchester. He delivered the speech “Real Clothes for the Emperor, Facing the Challenges of Climate Change” at the Cabot Institute of the University of Bristol in Britain.
His estimates are backed up by recent reports from the International Energy Agency, and now the global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. I also quote from Joe Romm’s blog at thinkprogress.org, and a comment by Lewis Cleverdon from Wales, in the Transition blog at transitionculture.org. – link
Did anyone really think there would be no consequences for this?:
Great stuff as usual, thanks xRay. I’ve listened to Anderson’s full presentation twice now, which should provide interesting and I fear unique context for Bill McKibben’s at the Hammerstein tonight. Was reading recently on Guy’s blog that he got blocked from commenting on Romm’s about overly optimistic assessment, apparently to keep him from ’embarrassing’ himself. Without knowing the details I can only hope that censorship does not play a part in the latter’s well-researched and often plugged communication skills…
LikeLike
Mike,
I’ve just found and watched through the lecture –
‘Real clothes for the Emperor: Facing the challenges of climate change’
– over at You Tube that Kevin Anderson made at Bristol University on the 6th of November:
Kevin Anderson gave me the same chilling effect that the first page of George Monbiots 2007 book –
‘Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning’
– gave me.
Here’s a link to George’s book at Amazon, and a reprint of that very first page for equal effect:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heat-How-Stop-Planet-Burning/dp/0141026626
Chapter One
The Failure of Good Intentions
Two things prompted me to write this book. The first was something that happened in May, 2005, in a lecture hall in London. I had given a talk about climate change, during which I argued that there was little chance of preventing runaway global warming unless greenhouse gases were cut by 80 per cent. The third question stumped me.
“When you get your 80 per cent cut, what will this country look like?”
I hadn’t thought about it. Nor could I think of a good reason why I hadn’t thought about it. But a few rows from the front sat one of the environmentalists I admire and fear the most, a man called Mayer Hillman. I admire him because he says what he believes to be true and doesn’t care about the consequences. I fear him because his life is a mirror in which the rest of us see our hypocrisy.
“That’s such an easy question, I’ll ask Mayer to answer it.”
He stood up. He is 75 but he looks about 50, perhaps because he goes everywhere by bicycle. He is small and thin and fit-looking, and he throws his chest out and holds his arms to his sides when he speaks, as if standing to attention. He was smiling. I could see he was going to say something outrageous.
“A very poor third-world country.”
LikeLike
or a collapsed post-lithic civilisation, returning to its proper level of maintenance?Many are homing up their Primitive Living Skills, because they are about all that can be relied upon in almost any scenario..
LikeLike
Pingback: Hynes Speech--Science for PeaceA Prosperous Way Down