Powerdown Toolkit #1-The Challenge of Peak Oil and Climate Change January 27, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 1 comment so farThis is the introduction to the first week of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Centre in Dublin.It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV.
The general introduction was posted last week.
Powerdown Toolkit
1 THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND PEAK OIL
Subject
The development of the modern world since the beginnings of the industrial revolution has been characterised by one over-riding issue: the ever-increasing use of non-renewable fossil fuels. Since the 1850s, oil- especially liquid petroleum- has come to dominate modern economies, allowing the rise of the private motor car for the majority of the rich industrialised inhabitants.
Like all minerals that are extracted from holes in the ground, oil is subject to depletion: the easy-to-get cheap oil has already been extracted and what remains will be progressively harder to get and likely to get more expensive, relative to spending power.
It is widely believed that we may have recently passed the all-time peak in global oil production {1} and are entering a new era of energy descent: from now on, year on year, generation on generation, we will have to adapt to having progressively less energy.
One way to understand this is to see that in the case of oil, for example, world discovery rates peaked in 1964 and have been declining ever since despite increases in technology and investment, even as the demand continues to increase. Many countries individually have already peaked: the United States domestic oil production has been declining since the early 1970s; Britain obtained peak production from its North Sea fields in 1997.{Campbell 2005} Climate change will bring another set of challenges perhaps of an even more devastating kind. CO2 levels are about 30% higher than at any other time in history, and the rates of increase truly exceptional: 200 times faster than at any other time in the past 650,000 years.{3}
As a result, the temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees C {4 } with a further increase of 0.5 degrees expected in the next 2 decades; some analysts believe this will set off a series of positive feedbacks in the earth’s climate meaning that the warming atmosphere will lead to yet more warming- the scenario of “runaway climate change”. (more…)
Powerdown Toolkit January 22, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, Powerdown, Transition Towns, climate change, community , add a comment
Over the past year or so I have been working with Davie Philip of Cultivate on the Skilling Up for Powerdown program, a learning resource in support of Transition Initiatives in Ireland.
The course has been run in Dublin and Kinsale a few times already and will be available as a community learning course throughout Ireland. In conjunction with this course, a series of 10 TV shows have been made for Dublin Community TV which are due to be aired starting next month.
Over the next few weeks I will post up the 10 Introductions for the course which I have co-written with David Fleming and edited.
Below is the general introduction.
Cultivate Community Powerdown Energy Use, Carbon Reduction and Resilience
The Cultivate Community Powerdown Toolkit is designed to support communities in their responses to the converging crises of the 21st Century: Climate change and Peak Oil; global social justice and equity; resource wars and development; loss of biodiversity and pollution. As we shall see, many if not all of these issues stem from our use and abuse of non-renewable fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas. While Peak Oil concerns the availability of energy and how we will adjust to a decline in supply after a century and a half of growth, climate change is being caused by pollution from this energy-intensive lifestyle in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)
Mayo Energy Audit January 12, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 3comments
The Mayo Energy Audit- A preliminary assessment of a rural county’s chances of surviving Peak Oil
by Andy Wilson and Paul Lynch
This fascinating and well-researched document builds on the concept of the Energy Descent Action Plan and presents a detailed and professional report on the energy resources of County Mayo in the West of Ireland.
Ever since I read the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan I realised that the next step would be a detailed accounting of energy consumption for a town or region, and an analysis of potential local renewable supplies. The Mayo Energy Audit does all this and more and represents an important next step in the energy descent process. (more…)
Bad Science- and Good January 9, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Health, Science and Rationaltiy, book review , 18commentsUpdate: Jan 9th 2009 “Unprecedented” rise in Measles cases in England and Wales due to poor uptake of MMR: “
“We shouldn’t forget that the children who weren’t vaccinated many years ago are at real risk.”
” ‘Big pharma is evil’, goes the line of reasoning, ‘therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism’. This is probably not helpful”.
So says Guardian columnist and evidence-based medical blogger Ben Goldacre in his highly recommended and also hilarious book Bad Science.
Some of the comments in response to my review of Greer’s The Long Descent before Christmas lead me to think I should follow up with more explanation on acupuncture and alternative therapies, and I can do no better than give a brief review of Goldacre’s superb explanation of the scientific method in this book.
He begins with a chapter on homeopathy, not as he says because it is particularly important but because it provides such a good example of how to test therapies and see if they work:
Homeopathy is perhaps the paradigmatic example of an alternative therapy: it claims the authority of a rich historical heritage, but its history is routinely rewritten for the PR needs of a contemporary market; it has an elaborate and sciencey-sounding framework for how it works, without scientific evidence to demonstrate its veracity; and its proponents are quite clear that the pills will make you better, when in fact they have been thoroughly researched, with innumerable trials, and have been found to perform no better than placebo. Homeopathic remedies- in liquid drops or pill form- in fact contain nothing at all- perhaps explaining why they are often promoted for their qualities of “being natural alternatives to mainstream medicine without the side-effects”. (more…)
New Year Predictions January 6, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentIn the absence of any original predictions of my own I wish all zone5 readers a Happy new Year and refer you to John Pilger’s menu of good news to celebrate in 2009.
John Pilger, investigative reporter and film maker and author of “Heroes” and “The New Rulers of the World” has been one of my heroes for a long time, and I was delighted to hear a fascinating interview with him on RTE last week.
Pilger spoke about many things including his experiences as a young journalist of seeing Cambodian children suffering from the effects of Napalm and realising that the war was also a “laboratory” for napalm and other weapns such as cluster bombs and daisy cutters; and how Pol Pot could nevr have come to power in Cambodia had it not been for the prior devastating American bombardment of the country, reducing it to a desperate nation willing to follow extremeists who were the only group able to offer people anything at all.
His comments about the “Murdochisation” of the media and the shrinking space afforded independent journalists such as himself was also sobering, and lamented the effective blackout of news coverage in the West of the most exciting developments politically in Venezuela and much of South America, where the most progressive moves towards democracy are actually taking place.
However, like Naomi Klein he feels that “people are unstoppable”, that Murdoch’s media is not really popular, just the only alternative offered, but that there is a genuine widespread desire for change and authenticity, and people are generally much better informed than the media gives them credit for.
