sustainability

1. Borrowed money from friends to pay the rent.

An analysis posted on The Oil Drum refutes the assumptions of both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that oil production will not decline, but will increase as the economy improves.  Both agencies assume that technology and future investments in drilling innovation will be able to keep up with increasing technological demands to retrieve the oil.

When the IEA released their World Energy Outlook 2010, a whistleblower from the inside said that the IEA forecasts were gaming the numbers under U.S. pressure.  Using both the IEA and EIA's own numbers, The Oil Drum created their own prediction based on current oil production trends:

What the chart shows is that production (including crude, condensate and sands) peaked in 2005 at 73.72mbd (million barrels/day).  That is based on EIA production data.  With production slightly lower, but relatively steady from 2005 to 2008, this makes the plateau in the chart.  All non-OPEC sources had peaked by 2004, according again to the EIA.

As declines in Russia, Norway, etc. decline next year and OPEC will not be able to compensate a year later as Saudi Arabia (world's largest oil producer) peaked in 2005.  The Oil Drum forecast says that in 2012, declines averaging 2.2mbd or so will increase suddenly, dropping quickly thereafter.

Not only has the International Energy Agency (IEA) shown that oil extraction peaked in 2007/08, but a whistle blower has now come forward to say that the number of existing and "future" reserves have been overstated to prevent panic.

According to a news report in the Guardian, this senior official at the IEA says that the United States played a big role in influencing the IEA to de-emphasize the rate of decline and overstate the number of new reserves likely to be found.  This comes as a refutation to the IEA's new World Energy Outlook publication that released on the 10th.

The official prediction is that oil production can be increased to 105 million barrels daily from the current 83 million.  Many critics question this, saying we passed peak production in 2007/08 at 87 million/day.  This huge 105m prediction is a lower number than that given a few years ago at an unbelievable 120m by 2030.  The optimistic numbers are despite the fact that the past two years have shown lower, not higher production rates.

Earlier in October, I told you I was working on a booklet/white paper about sustainability.  Although it took a few days longer than I'd expected, I've completed that booklet and now present it to you for reading.  The booklet is in e-book format (PDF) and formatted to be read on-screen with each page being about a screen-full on a 15″ monitor at 800dpi.

The booklet is titled The Sustainability Factor: What Sustainability Means and Why You Need to Know.

The booklet is pretty short and presents just enough evidence to get you thinking along new lines in terms of environmental endeavor.  Most of the environmental focus is on man-made global warming (aka climate change) and I think there's a serious mistake in that.  Climate change may or may not be a big deal, but even if it is, there are far worse things looming than that and if we take care of those things, global warming would be largely dealt with simultaneously.

The current work towards eliminating CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is going down the wrong track and if that's really a problem, fixing it (the way that's being proposed) will do nothing to fix these other problems that will hit us long before projected global warming disasters do.

Lately, I have done a lot of research.  That research is now culminating into a new white paper I'm penning titled The Sustainability Factor: What Sustainability Means and Why You Need to Know.  The following is the introductory chapter of that paper.  It lays out the gist of the piece and what it hopes to accomplish.

I'm including it here to show you this because this is the core issue behind this entire blog's existence.  When The Sustainability Factor is finished, I will be putting it up on the site for download, free of charge.  You'll note the addition of a "donate" button to the left.  Please go to my About Me page to find out what that's all about.

So, without further ado, here's the introduction to my new paper.  It should be complete and available here on the site in the next few days.  The paper itself will have sources and a bibliography, of course.

What Sustainability Really Is

The term “sustainability” or “sustainable” is used a lot these days, almost always in relation to something that's considered green (ecologically non-impacting, or at least more so than the alternative).  It's often used wrongly, especially when it's used to tout products or services.

The problem with the word “sustainable” is that while it's easily defined, it is hard to quantify with so many things in today's consumerist world.