Al Gore has always gotten climate change, global warming, and CO2 levels. He "got it" before I did. The carbon dating of the ice-core samples was enough scientific data to prove to me, engineer that I am, that the CO2 levels are exponentially increasing due to man's activity on Earth: specifically burning fossil fuels. The ice caps shrinking, glaciers receding, ocean levels rising, the threat it all poses - I buy it. He was spot-on. Gore deserves the Nobel Prize and the Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth". He has led the way.
However, in some ways, Al Gore has done a disservice to his own cause by warning about the consequences of global warming instead of the realities of worldwide oil production versus demand. As I have said for years now, the biggest, most imminent threat to the US economy and indeed to worldwide civilization as a whole, will be the inability of worldwide oil production to meet worldwide oil demand while our economies is still oil based.
Global warming or climate change, however one chooses to refer to the "phenomenon", IS real and IS happening. However, it will not pose a serious threat to our economy or our lives for another couple of decades. Oil, on the other hand, has the potential to wreck havoc on our economy, our way of life, and our entire civilization by 2015 if we continue to do nothing. That is only 7 years away.
Don't believe me? Listen to T. Boone Pickens or read the speeches of the CEO's of ConocoPhillips (COP), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) or AmaradaHess at last year's economic forum in Davos, Switzerland. Any one hear Dow (DOW) CEO Andrew Liveris discuss why his company is having to raise prices? These are all oil experts and they are pointing at 2015 (give or take) as oil supply/demand "D-day" and strongly suggesting we begin to do something to prepare us for this reality.
We're seeing the very real effects already today - but people want to erroneously blame it on speculators, "big oil", politicians, etc. Very few, for whatever reason, want to believe in peak oil (even though it has happened in reservoir after reservoir all over the world), or the fact that just maybe the US isn't entitled to cheap and convenient oil for the next 200 years. Being 4% of the world's population and using 25% of the world's oil production (importing 65% of that) leaves the US the most exposed and the most threatened by the realities of worldwide oil production and demand. This as billions of Chinese and Indians are trading in bicycles for gasoline (oil) powered automobiles. Still, we ignore the facts and continue merrily on our way.
By focusing on the "environment" instead of the "economics", Gore has allowed the ideologues and industrialists to pooh-pooh him. End result: we don't have a comprehensive energy policy like the one I have been pounding on the table for years to adopt.
Meanwhile, oil is at $130/barrel, gasoline at $4/gallon, the S&P is on the skids (returning nearly 0% over the last 10 years), the US trade deficit balloons as we send $750 billion dollars (and rising...) every year to foreign oil producers, inflation is raging (but the Fed can't raise rates), and of course as a result, the US dollar is down 50% since Bush took office. Still, our "leaders" cannot or will not see the wisdom of enacting a comprehensive energy policy to regain control of our economy, our financial future, and our national security.
For the first time that I can recall, Al Gore emphasized the oil based economic realities in a speech given in Washington this past week as evidence to back his environmentally based proposals. For years I have been trying to get his "global warming" group to focus on the economic and national security aspects of our oil based economy as a way to solve the climate change issues they are so rightly concerned about. As Gore himself admitted in his recent speech, the solutions to both are the same.
I wonder, if the global warming crowd spent half their resources educating the government, media, and public about the realities of worldwide oil supply and demand, would we be farther ahead in our switch to alternative and clean energy? I suspect the answer is "yes", but we'll never know.
Regardless, I think it is becoming too clear to the environmental crowd that the most imminent threat to the US, its economy, its way of life, and indeed its future is its reliance on oil, 65% of which is imported and which will be harder and harder to obtain in the future as worldwide oil supply fails to keep up with worldwide oil demand. Even the environmentalists in California are ready to support off-shore drilling now that their gasoline is over $4.50/gallon. Amazing how economic realities tend to focus ones perspectives.
Meanwhile, investors should take advantage of the recent energy market "correction" and simply load up on energy related investments. Oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, you name it. We are in the very early stages of the final fossil fuel driven energy crisis which will play out over the next 10 years or so.
Unfortunately, if policy makers wait for economics to dictate enacting an energy policy like the one I mentioned above (click the link, read it, bookmark it, send it to your friends and politicians), it may well be too late to make the change. We need to be making the change now. If Gore, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and his advocates would focus on the economic impact of declining oil supply/demand fundamentals as much as they do the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels, perhaps they just might get the changes they so desire.
At this point, I bet a lot of investors who have gotten burned by the S&P 500, a shrinking US dollar, and rising inflation would probably be willing to listen. I hate to say I told you so, but to quote an old Cajun friend of mine, "I tole ya I tole ya I tole ya".
Disclosure: Long COP
Related Articles
|
This article has 72 comments:
- mangolfer
- 154 Comments
Jul 20 09:27 AM- Jakester
- 34 Comments
Jul 20 09:55 AM- PrudentMan, CFA
- 108 Comments
Jul 20 09:59 AMWith this and him getting us out of the Kennedy/Johnson War in Vietnam, the one world government had to get him out of office for supporting his friends regarding a petty, silly breakin which only resulted in getting a list of Washington hookers.
- freefall51
- 66 Comments
Jul 20 10:33 AMBut take away the energy and we find ourselves back in the stone age or worse. Pretty quickly. Some will adjust to that condition too. But before we get there there will be hell and high water. Too many lives are supported by usage of energy of scale.
As far as I am concerned I will take a few foot of high water anytime over a war about energy resources. We better get energy independent in all aspects including getting our hands on all carbon sources available in this country. (Long offshore drillers).
- freefall51
- 66 Comments
Jul 20 10:54 AMNot sure if you are right with the idea that pressure sqeezes the CO2 out of ice. High pressure typically favors CO2 absorption in (liquid) water. But if you freeze carbonated water, you will find that most of the CO has gone.
Make an experiment with a beer in your freezer. Taste it before and after and you will notice the difference.
- Mr Jay
- 1 Comment
Jul 20 11:11 AMSince you've 'got it', let me pose a question for you to ruminate on:
As far as scientists can tell, since the Earth came into existance, the climate has been much warmer, much colder, glaciers and ice caps have been much bigger and much smaller, it's been wetter and dryer, so at our current incredibily small snapshot of global climate conditions, why is our current climate (or what it was 200 years ago), the way it is 'supposed' to be?
If the answer is, "this is the way 'we' want it to be.", then if you and I disagree, why is your rational and scientific evidence any more valid then my rational and scientific evidence?
Interesting questions for the thinking man, don't you think?
- mthomas
- 3 Comments
My Website
Jul 20 11:25 AMFree Power Forever
nlspropulsion.net/Docu...
- Ames Tiedeman
- 702 Comments
My Website
Jul 20 11:28 AM- DEKE
- 1 Comment
My Website
Jul 20 12:22 PMFreefall51 - What have you got against energy independence and nuclear power?
- mikel
- 14 Comments
Jul 20 12:35 PM- Travelingman
- 1 Comment
Jul 20 12:53 PM- cjwirth
- 42 Comments
My Website
Jul 20 01:06 PMAccording to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, global oil production is now declining, from 85 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is like a 45% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: www.peakoilassociates....
I used to live in NH, but moved to a safer place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area, good climate with much rain and good soil?
- Brian Pursley
- 280 Comments
My Website
Jul 20 01:18 PM- freefall51
- 66 Comments
Jul 20 02:08 PMI got absolutely nothing against energy independence. I am all for it.
I have my own experience with nukes though. I was living in Munich when Tschernobyl happened. Mr. Zimmermann, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior at that time and the epitome of an idiot, signaled immediately, no problem, this is 2000 km away. Guess what, the wind turned from West to East and brought rain and thunderstorms. The outfall spoiled pretty much everything growing in the open. For weeks and months you would listen horrified to the radio announcing the doses of Becquerel on your salad, in your milk, mushrooms or venison. You would ask yourself, do I get terminally ill if I eat this or that. Well, I am still there;
I am not even against nukes, as long as the efforts to run that technology safely match the risks. It is a challenge but if we put the best brains together and treat the technology with the utmost respect it can be done. But if something goes wrong expect a lot of Zimmermanns coming out of their holes.
- pachanguero
- 104 Comments
Jul 20 02:38 PM- quetzalcoatl
- 31 Comments
Jul 20 04:50 PM- waynei
- 5 Comments
Jul 20 05:00 PMMichael, go suck an egg
- Barb
- 6 Comments
Jul 20 05:11 PM- tiragi
- 2 Comments
Jul 20 05:12 PM- tiragi
- 2 Comments
Jul 20 05:14 PM- The Fitzman
- 264 Comments
My Website
Jul 21 02:37 AMI believe that global warming or climate change or whatever we want to refer to it is real. I believe the ice-core sample data, and I looked at two independent sets of data and understand that a third set exists which matches the other two. I also believe my own observations about what is happening in the world today. Everyone understands that climate change is cyclical. That is basic. What I believe is that burning of fossil fuels is releasing so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the cyclicality is now around a rising temperature trend line, and the slope of that trend line will exponentially increase as man increases fossil fuel usage. I'm an engineer, and I took thermodynamics and know a little bit about system analysis, so, consider this from just an objective viewpoint:
1) man burns 85 million barrels of oil a DAY (really think about that, we throw these numbers around, but imagine 85 million barrels of oil lined up on your local interstate highway....every day).
2) man burns who knows how much coal a day, most of it dirty
3) at the same time of 1) & 2) we have seen, and continue to see, deforestation of the Earth
how can the combination of 1,2, and 3 NOT have a materially impact on CO2 levels? and rising CO2 levels have been proven to affect global climate.
So, feel free to throw your arrows my way, I can take it. At the same time, I just keep watching the ice-caps melt away, the number of major storms worldwide increasing every year, temperatures increase, and drought and water problems multiply across the planet.
All that said, the real point of the piece is this, and alot of the comments prove it: the global warming argument is a polarizing one which prevents the REAL crisis (oil supply not keeping up with oil demand) from being addressed. We have oil at $130/barrel today and there are no real shortages yet. Wait until shortages begin to appear and panic sets in - then you'll see the price of oil really sky-rocket. At that point, I bet alot of people who doubted global warming and didnt want to do anything about it will wish they had supported it because of the economic and social disruption we are going to see due to our dependence on oil, and the subsequent lack sufficient quantities of it in the very near future.
- The Fitzman
- 264 Comments
My Website
Jul 21 02:41 AM- petersterling
- 36 Comments
My Website
Jul 21 08:08 AMThe Arctic has been ice free many times in the last 10,000 years alone. the ice cap on Mars is shrinking. Its a natural solar cycle.
we are being mislead by world-wide activist organizations and governments that global warming results from human activity.
That is false. "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules Climate Change". A report by this title that can be downloaded from sepp.org
But we are running out of oil bi time and you are so right. This is the big problem.
there's tons of oil in America but Congress has locked it away.
Here is my transport energy plan; www.strategicnine.com/...
- inscon@nls.net
- 6 Comments
Jul 21 08:14 AM- john s. gordon
- 577 Comments
Jul 21 08:42 AM> jack
- CLH
- 618 Comments
Jul 21 08:53 AM- fireball
- 272 Comments
Jul 21 09:26 AM- The Fitzman
- 264 Comments
My Website
Jul 21 10:04 AMinscon: the ice core samples are hundreds of *thousands* of years.
john: you're right, there's alot of heat...most of it caused from high (and growing quickly) CO2 levels trapped in the atmosphere.
CLH: unfortunately, at this point, your comment is incorrect because nuclear can't solve the oil based transportation problem because we don't have a sufficient electric or hydro or nat gas (or other) based solution and infrastructure to replace the gasoline powered automobile. nuclear electrical generation could free up some nat gas, and my energy policy is all for it:
thefitzman.blogspot.co...
fireball and every one else: of COURSE climate change is cyclical, no one argues that. what we are arguing about is that the cyclicality is now around a rising temperature trend line whose slope is increasing at a rate not seen in hundreds of thousands of years of data. it is pretty much a scientifically proven and accepted theory in the scientific community - even the US government's scientist. that said, cheney has been snuffing out the data and the comments of our own scientists' reports.
- spike the bloody
- 2 Comments
Jul 21 10:36 AMFollowing through on Mr. Gore's idea of generating ALL energy from renewable sources in 10 years would crater the oil bubble. Additional drilling wont have nearly the same impact on oil prices.
Besides, look at the daily oil chart. The trend line has been broken to the downside, it's going down in the short run at least.
- fireball
- 272 Comments
Jul 21 11:16 AM- David Lentz
- 353 Comments
Jul 21 12:00 PMPeople are simply too locked into their own POVs, unwilling to question them, and unwilling to work out and resolve conflicting data -- other than to ignore what doesn't fit into their own preconceived notions and trumpet the "truth" of their own "opinions" and the "lies" that others believe.
There are solid economic reasons to get off petroleum ASAP, by any and all means. No one method is likely to prove viable by itself. But instead people quibble about the finer details of a question that probably cannot be definitively answered for a thousand years, when it will be too late to do anything about it if they are wrong.
Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life on THIS world (or at least in short order the little that exists will expire).
- fireball
- 272 Comments
Jul 21 12:06 PM- David Lentz
- 353 Comments
Jul 21 12:14 PMPerhaps one could make the case that the additional sunlight is being converted to infrared when it hits the ground, and held in by clouds. There is data that shows a statistically significant correlation between cloud cover and temperature for the week that air travel was grounded following 9-11, the cloud cover being a direct result of contrails and water vapor from combustion directly contributing to cloud formation. But that argument leads back to our use of petroleum-based fuels, so I doubt that you want to go that route.
In any event, it is clear that the thing being modeled (the planet) is a WHOLE lot more complex than a ball with incident radiation impinging upon it. Possibly more complex than we are capable of understanding.
That means the "cause" of global warming could be any or all of a huge range of things, and not attributable to any one thing, but possibly interruptible by altering a few key things. News flash -- we cannot alter the output of the sun.
While a runaway greenhouse effect may or may not eventually occur, the consequences of it happening are significant enough to deal with it as if it were going to.
And in any event, LONG before we get to that stage, we will have seen widespread climate change, possibly the desertification of most of the places where we grow food, amid an exponential increase in the number of mouths demanding to be fed.
- David Lentz
- 353 Comments
Jul 21 12:27 PM1) get off the petroleum economy, ASAP. Jack up taxes to discourage consumption, offer incentives to use other energy sources.
2) start conserving energy via more efficient designs for appliance, homes, cars, etc.
3) begin rebuilding the deconstructed passenger rail system, as in short order we will not be able to fly except via nationalized airlines, paid for from our tax dollars
4) get serious about nuclear power -- overhaul the bureaucratic nightmare makes it take years to get anything approved. Create workable "standard" designs and USE them, instead of having each one be a custom design with its own learning curve.
5) follow T Boone's lead on windpower and natural gas -- not that it's the only solution, it just seems likely to produce results in short order
6) crank up tax incentives for people to install PV solar and convert our national centralized power generation network into a decentralized one, with the utilities acting as brokers instead of sources. Perhaps we need to separate those roles, with separately-owned power grids.
7) invest in long-shot R&D efforts, like the Bussard Polywell fusion reactor (google it). If we can spend billions year in and year out on Tokamak research, we can kick in the $200M to see if his prototype scales up.
8) throw out the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (with the Enron loophole), so that our national energy markets are not "gamed" by investment bankers and hedge funds.
(9 I was going to say to investigate Bush & Cheney for treason and war profiteering, but I'm starting to foam at the mouth, so I'd better stop here.
- jackooo
- 211 Comments
Jul 21 12:50 PM- fireball
- 272 Comments
Jul 21 01:05 PM