Interview with Dr. Colin Campbell February 18, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, Podcast, climate change , 6commentsZone5 Podcast #3 with Dr. Colin Campbell on Peak Oil, the Financial Collapse, Adaptation and What the Future May Hold
Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of peak Oil and Gas, is officially retired from his career as oil geologist and Peak Oil pundit but kindly agreed to this interview for the zone5 podcast.
Colin is the author of several books on the impending peak in world oil production and the implications for modern civilisation including the influential Oil Crisis in 2005 and most recently An Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion
In this interview he discusses his career as an oil geologist and how this lead to an awareness of the limits to future production.
Some listeners may be surprised to hear Colin’s scepticism regarding anthropogenic climate change. When I asked him about it later he assured me that he makes no claim to know much about climate change per se, but pointed me to this important paper by Hook, Sivertsson and Aleklett, which examines the projected supply of fossil fuels in scenarios used in the IPCC Emission Scenarios.
These projections by the IPCC seem to take little if any account of the imminent peaking and decline of fossil fuels in the next few years, assuming higher production rates in some cases than even the industry expects to be feasible.
Perhaps concern about this failure by the IPCC to incorporate such essential information leads to questioning its other conclusions.
Peak Water December 18, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Food, Human Ecology, Overshoot, Population, book review, climate change, collapse, water , add a commentPeak Water Civilisation and the World’s Water Crisis
Alexander Bell
Luath Press 2009
Hardback 208 pp
If oil supply peaks and begins to decline times will be hard. Standard of living will decline and people may go hungry but they will be able to adapt by powering down and making do with less.
If water supply- for domestic use but also for irrigation- peaks and declines people have no option but to migrate.
UK journalist Alexander Bell spells out his thesis starkly in this fascinating and clearly written book: many of the world’s major regions are past or on the brink of peak water and face growing populations with declining supplies. (more…)
Ariane Sherine on The Pod Delusion #11 November 29, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Atheism, Podcast, Science and Rationaltiy, climate change , add a commentThis week’s Pod Delusion features a fascinating interview with the wonderful Ariane Sherine, creator of the Atheist Bus campaign and editor of the one essential Christmas gift this year, The Atheists’ Guide to Christmas.
The Atheists’ Guide is a brilliant anthology of atheist and science writing, comedy, fiction and even a section on silly party games, and the best thing about it is that half the profits go to the Terrence Higgins’ Trust
Pod Delusion #11 also includes some other great topical material on the Climate change email leaks (yes, these prove beyond doubt that climate change is a scam) and the new campaign against Boots for selling homeopathic remedies that they admit don’t work. Don’t miss!
Now is the Winter of our Discontent November 26, 2009
Posted by Graham in : climate change, collapse , add a commentThe flooding was so bad around the city and county of cork last week that I was wondering whether I would actually be able to travel to Kinsale on Tuesday to do my comradely duty and picket the college.
Kinsale College staff on picket duty
As it turned out, the road through Bandon, which had been closed by the floods, was open by last Tuesday. In fact although I had traveled to the Tipperary Institute on Wednesday night, returning Friday afternoon, I saw none of the floods at all.
I was in two minds about the national day of action by public service workers: there are a lot of issues around the split between the public and private sectors and I am not yet convinced any union or political group has a coherent enough plan of action given the country is bankrupt.
The Celtic Tiger began in earnest around the time I first moved to Ireland in 1992. I watched through those years aghast at the sheer rate of change and development, not able to believe that it could last long, amazed each year that it continued. As an awareness of impending peak oil dawned, it seemed the party’s end would not be long coming, yet even after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the two-car Dublin commuters were claiming we were just “talking ourselves into a recession”.
Ireland has amassed one of the highest per capita debts in the world through a regime of cheap finance for houses and cars; the collapse was always inevitable and has now left us with a broken economy barely able to keep it social services going. Further cuts in health and education and welfare seem inevitable; the government has barely begun to adress the public finance deficit with what is currently proposed.
Of course we should be calling for the heads of the bankers and political leaders who exacerbated the crisis but the real problem has been a complete disconnect with reality caused by the fantasy world that cheap oil and finance had created. The ultimate cargo cult, the wealth was wasted rather than being used to develop resilience of any kind.
The floods bring a double whammy as all the chickens come home to roost for this small island nation. Rapid economic growth has meant Ireland has contributed more than its per capita fair share of carbon emissions during the boom years and the warmer than average sea surface temperatures are likely connected to the record breaking rainfall this month. In addition, unrestricted development on flood plains and lack of investment in flood prevention has hugely exacerbated the problems, with a larger population just meaning more people are effected.
As I write parts of Athlone and parts of Galway are still closed off and under water, and hundreds of people already struggling with their repayments have lost their homes or their businesses. Many already beleagured farmers have been decimated, and land and plant damaged or destroyed.
We have a way to go in this country before a Katrina-like disaster strikes but the confluence of debt, climate change and peak oil bring the possibility closer each year. In an environment of increasing industrial discontent and financial misery how long before we are simply unable to recover from repeated climate change events. Already there is serious discussion parts of Limerick and other towns becoming permenantly uninhabitable.
The need to plan for a general curtailment of our activities and retreat into more sustainable modes of existence is now an immediate necessity.
Pat Kenny joins the climate change deniers November 24, 2009
Posted by Graham in : climate change , 3commentsFrom the Irish Times by John Gibbons: Pat Kenny, the premier Irish broadcaster famed for his grasp of current affairs has recently stated:
“The climate change debate has been raging for decades, and there are still so many fundamental questions left unanswered.”
WTF?! There is no debate Pat other than how much time we might have left before TSHTF and whether this will result in total annihalation or just the collapse of industrial civilisation.
See also John’s excellent blog ThinkOrSwim the ClimateChange.ie Blog.
The Mockery of Evidence-based Science July 23, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Health, Science and Rationaltiy, climate change , 12commentsBrilliant article here by John Gibbons in The Times making the same point that I have been making, linking climate change denial with Quackery and other types of pseudoscience.
When science is reduced to a game, anyone can play. Scientists say the arctic ice sheet is disappearing; I say they are stuffy old sausages; and besides, the world is actually getting colder. Maybe it is all about sunspots, or whatever other discredited theory can be shoehorned to match my intellectual whims. We trusted science to deliver dramatic improvements in health and life expectancy, as well as genuine technological advances . Now, at the time of our greatest peril, we have turned to the quacks, blow-hards and snake-oil salesmen. As Samual Beckett observed: “We are all born mad; some remain so”.
Fair to play to John for bringing this issue out into the mainstream press- and he gets extra marks for endorsing the brilliant Ben Goldacre.
The Transition Timeline June 29, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Health, Peak Oil, Population, Powerdown, Science and Rationaltiy, Transition Towns, book review, climate change, community , 6comments
Book Review:
The Transition Timeline
for a local, resilient future
Shaun Chamberlin
Forward by Rob Hopkins
190 pp pbk
Chelsea Green 2009
The follow-up to Rob Hopkins’ seminal The Transition Handbook uses the method of “backcasting” from an envisioned future from which we create a timeline of how the transition to a more local, resilient world unfolded.
The first part goes through four different scenarios presented as “cultural stories” roughly along the same lines as the scenarios we are familiar with from Holmgren’s Future Scenarios, this time under the headings:
-Denial
-Hitting the Wall
-The Impossible Dream
-The Transition Vision
The transition approach is to look at these possible futures in terms of the cultural stories that we tell ourselves, the idea being that we have the power to make our own cultural stories and thereby empower ouselves to guide the future to a more desirable outcome:
Human Nature is the ability to choose our own path
The second part of the book takes a deeper look at the Transition Vision in the five areas of population and demographics; Food and Water; Electricity and Energy; travel and transport; Health and Medicine.
Each of these sections presents a thorough and well-researched overview of the current situation, ending with a Timeline of how we reached a more desirable situation by 2027.
At the back of the book Chamberlin states that “This book has not attempted to quantify the energy/emissions footprint of each aspect of the Transition Vision, but this represents a critical avenue for further work.”
Unfortunatley, this lack of analysis seriously compromises the usefulness of the book, as the projected scenarios may be widely implausible or purely aspirational. (more…)
Future Scenarios June 11, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General, Human Ecology, Peak Oil, Permaculture, Powerdown, book review, climate change, collapse , 7commentsBook Review- 
Future Scenarios How Communities Can adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change
David Holmgren
Chelsea Green 2009
When I first saw David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios talk and slide at a permaculture design course in Slovenia in 2005 I was still quite new to the concept of peak oil and listened transfixed at what seemed to be a detailed vision of the future: not precise predictions but an outline of four possible scenarios that may unfold over the next generation and beyond as human societies adapt to the consequences of the peaking and decline of our primary energy sources, peak oil and natural gas.
A couple of years ago David continued his explorations of these issues first examined in detail in his earlier book, Permaculture- Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) with a new website Future Scenarios.
Now in book form, Future Scenarios provides one of the most succinct and lucid accounts of the possible paths that await us as we start the new era of energy descent.
Holmgren is in agreement with John Michael Greer that while much mainstream discussion about energy futures centres on the first two of his scenarios- “Techno-explosion” and “Techno Stability”, and the doomer/survivalist meme amongst the peak oil community tends to focus on the fourth scenario of “lifeboats” or versions of collapse, the more likely would be the third possibility of “Energy Descent”- a more gradual adaptation to diminishing energy supplies resulting in a contracting economy and reversion to technological simplicity that may play out over many generations.
This pathway of earth Stewardship is assumed by the permaculture agenda- an adaptive approach in which human scale design and general sustainability practices are progressively implemented and are informed by the energy flows through human society and ecology, and the energy base of our economies is clearly understood.
The real problem is that this more likely future is currently still marginalised as the mainstream culture refuses to abandon its faith in the myth of progress- a belief that rests on the mistaken assumption that gains in human welfare over the past few hundred years have been as a result of some teleological process propelling us forwards, or of a general increasing application of our genious for technological improvements and innovation, while ignoring the underlying reosurce base that has made all this possible: technology is merely different ways of using energy that is usually dug out of holes in the ground.
The likelihood that this transition will be to one of less energy is such an anathema to the psychological foundations and power elites of modern societies that it is constantly misinterpreted, ignored, covered up, or derided. Instead we see geopolitical maneuvering around energy resources, including proxy and real wars to control dwindling reserves and policy gymnastics to somehow make reducing carbon emissions the new engine of economic growth.
Holmgren categorises the scenarios according to the varying potential severity of peak oil and climate change and how these tow factors interplay:
- Brown Tech- slow oil decline, fast climate change;
- Green Tech- slow oil decline, slow climate change;
- Earth Steward- fast oil decline, slow climate change;
- Lifeboats- fast oil decline, fast climate change
These typologies may necessarily be too simplistic- so many other factors may also come into play, such as financial collapse which, while no doubt linked to both peak oil and climate change, may impact in ways as yet unforeseen. However, Holmgren provides a deeper analyses by showing how the scenarios may be “nested” one within the other- each acting on the different scales of the household, local, national and international economies; or may take a stepped form over time- attempts by governments to keep the system going a little longer by following a Brown Tech path may hasten an eventual collapse; equally, an attempt to switch to green tech may result in the adoption of Earth Stewardship further down the line as renewables fail to fill the gap left by oil. The scenarios may also play out differently in different parts of the world.
Throughout Holmgren’s analysis is informed by ecological systems, the foundation for his permaculture principles, as he sees how energy dynamics in nature may be mirrored in human socieites:
Natural ecosytems tend to maintain homeostasis under stress through the allocation of stored resources. if the conditions continue to deteriorate, then further stress can fracture the homeostasis. If the stress involves a reduction in energy availability, the system may collapse. But total collapse and system disintegration are rare, at least in the short term. More typically a restabalization occurs at a lower level of energy processing and organisational complexity. The new homeostasis will typically be stable for some time before declining energy availability precipitates another crisis. This may also be a model for how human societies respond to the crisis of resource and energy decline.
Holmgren is keen to paint a more positive vision of the future in the earth Stewardship scenario- “conditions for ordinary people may actually improve when resources devoted to maintaining societal complexity are freed for meeting more basic needs”- a reference to the diminishing returns provided by endless growth.
There is a desperate need to recast energy descent as a positive process that can free people from the strictures and dysfunctions of growth economics and consumer culture. This is now apparent to many people around the world and is far more fundamental than a public relations campaign to paint a black sky blue. It is a necessary [process to provide a sense of hope and connection to fundamental human values expressed by every traditional culture throughout human history, among them, that the prusuit of materialism is a false god.
No doubt materialism without bounds, as expressed in modern society in unending growth and the development of consumer culture, is a false god; however, I am not sure that an awareness of this has always been present in every traditional culture. Holmgren here seems to betray a romantic view of the past, at odds with the ecological basis for his work, which is itself of course fundamentally materialistic. What seems more likely is the insights of anthropology and evolutionary psychology: that we have as a species a fundamental propensity towards getting more stuff, as is evidenced by the ready emergence in traditional societies of cargo cults after contact with the west.
This weakness is apparent in his assessment of the corresponding ideologies and belief systems that accompany the scenarios: he seems to equate secular humanism with the materialistic ideology of “Brown Tech” and suggests that these beliefs systems are inherently negative, giving rise to dysfunctional behaviours;
While the elites continue to be driven by a commitment to superrationalist beliefs, a sense of hollowness and lack of purpose characterizes the shrinking middle class, while fundamentalist religions and cults play a stronger role in the lives of the working and unemployed classes, partly through genuine reaction to the failures of modern humanism and partly manipulated by the elites to deflect anger and disenchantment.
While this may be very true, he compares this to a shift in values in “Green Tech”:
Civic culture strengthens where further transition toward nonmaterialistic society combines with the maturation of feminism and environmentalism, and a resurgence in indigenous and traditional cultural values.
It seems to me that there is a contradiction between “traditional values” -many of which may be parochial and overly conservative or reactionary – with post-modern feminist and environmental values; it is far from clear that they would be the same or even compatible.
Similarly, under “Earth Steward” Holmgren suggests that a “simplification in the material domain is seen as the opportunity for growth in the spiritual domain. There is a resurgence in leadership by women and a celebration of the feminine in nature and people”.
But what is the “spiritual” domain? This needs to be defined here becasue there is a vast range of possible interpretations. For the same reasons I have always had some difficulty with Holmgren’s domain of “Health and Spritual well-being” in the Permaculture Flower. I interpret it to mean “Health and Psychological/emotional well-being”. However, it is abundantly apparent that permaculture has become almost synonymous with New Age religion in many quarters, a reactionary and delusional trend that all permaculturalists should challenge strongly. Holmgren’s loose use of the word “spiritual” in this context, and his “celebration of the feminine” will inevitably be seen by many to sanctify pseudo-science and the worship of spirits and nebulous “energies”.
(Again “the feminine” and “feminine values” really needs to be defined: we are presumably not talking about the feminine values of Sex in the City; too often “the feminine” is associated with “the spiritual” in a quite meaningless way which I feel is rather patronizing to women.)
Here, Holmgren looses an opportunity to call for a celebration of secular humanism and rationalism- the most important legacy of the modern world, which will need to be protected less we fall back into a new dark age of superstition and delusion with energy descent.
Nor is it necessary to embody any kind of “earth spirituality” in order to foster more sustainable lifestyles- these should come of their own accord, naturally emerging from a scientific understanding of ecology and our place within it, combined with a simple sense of beauty and wonder at the natural world, unfettered by ideological presumptions.
There is a great danger within the environmental movement as a whole to replace the delusion of unending growth with the delusion of narcissistic spirituality, part of a wider failure to acknowledge the real gains of modernity through science.
For all this, Holmgren remains one of the most significant of contemporary thinkers, and Future Scenarios is an important contribution to peak oil literature, and one of the clearest assessments of the kind of world that awaits us.
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…)
Book Review: Plan C November 21, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, book review, climate change, community , 3commentsPlan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak oil and Climate Change
Pat Murphy
New Society 2008
Pat Murphy is the Executive Director of Community Solutions who produced the seminal film “The Power Of Community” which charts Cuba’s transition to a low-energy society after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That film still rates as the most essential of the Peak Oil genre, combining as it does a succinct analyses of peak oil with the real world example of how Cuba coped with a massive and abrupt decline in oil supplies, showing how the people adapted as a community and used permaculture and low-tech solutions rather than attempting to maintain a high-energy lifestyle by other means.
Plan C is Pat Murphy’s book which provides a range of solutions through energy, food, housing and transport with a focus on how communities will adapt to lower energy supplies through lifestyle changes and reducing energy demand.
In Murphy’s typology, Plan A is “Business as Usual”- which will be prevented by absolute resource and environmental constraints; Plan B is the proposed switch to “Clean Green technology”- which will not be able to replace oil in time; while Plan D is “Die Off”. Thus we are leftwith Plan C which the plan of “curtailment and community”- the kind of responses being explored in the Transition movement, as well as our own Powerdown Community project, for which this book is a key resource.
This is, as Murphy tells us at the start, “a numbers book”, filled with graphs and statistics which, although heavily focussed on the US, set a standard for how we need to assess our current consumption, and how we could cut back if we learn to make differnet priorities and just do things differently.
After an opening chapter which outlines the basic realities of peak oil and climate change and how they will effect us, Murphy looks at “Peak Economy”, crunching the numbers for us between energy consumption, income and pollution: it is a pretty clear picture that the richer you are the more energy you are likely to consume and the more pollution you create- and yet few economists have appear to have addressed this fundamental issue.
In the next chapter, Peak Empire, Murphy looks at the relationship between war, colonialism and energy, concluding that “The United States of America has had its day in the sun, and its record is not a good one…There is still time to become a nation with new values and the world needs a new kind of US citizen- one no linger addicted to the consumption patterns made possible by cheap oil”.
A key contribution the book makes that is not always covered by other peak oil books is the role of the media in shaping our values and culture, and inhibiting appropriate responses:
How is it that media can change people’s values, creating a different world view than that of the education system, the culture at large or religions? For this to happen, people must recieve massive amounts of information with themes that can be repeated over and over again. Thus a population which immerses itself in media recieves an extremely high volume of manipulative data.
Part 2 attends to the responses to these issues. Crucially, Murphy emphasizes the need for numeracy skills- and the need to understand energy in terms of per capita consumption. A big part of our failure to respond is in a general lack of understanding of how much energy we actually use in different sectors, and this allows us to be manipulated by the media and get priorities wrong.
For example, recycling is often promoted as an important way to reduce our footprint, and Murphy provides us with a lot of relevant figures on how much Americans consume and throw away; but goes onto say
Big as the post-consumer solid waste problem is, it is insignificant compared to pollution, toxins and hazardous waste from manufacturing everyday products.
The following chapters cover community responses to housing, transport and food. The chapter on transport is of great interest, as Murphy again uses the facts to show that conventional responses such as switching to mass transit may not reduce energy consumption enough, and argues that we needd to use the existing fleet of private vehicles differently, proposing a “smart jitney” system of private taxis and approprite software to link them with passengers in a convivial manner. Something like this emerged in Cuba, and apparently some of the software which could be used has been developed by Mapflow in Kinsale!
The food chapter is also excellent, giving some interesting data on the most nutritious vegetables as opposed to those most consumed: the first table is almost the inverse to the second.
He also quotes the wonderful Michael Pollan who has said
if you are concerned about your health you should probably avoid food products that make health claims.
The final chapters consider how to achieve these changes. In “Changind Practices” he emphasises the difference between conserving- which means minor adjustments- and curtailment- which “implies amuch more severe reduction in consumption (80-90%)”
It is too late to merely conserve. Curtailment must become the main driving force of Western Civilisation for the next century, just as consuming drove the last century…. Those who desire to make the transition successfully with minimal risk must start now to toughen and strengthen themselves physically and psychologically for difficult times to come. Such people will be more prepared to live in a future that is poorer in material goods but richer in spiritual, psychological and community benefits. Those who delay may not have the physical and emotional stamina to survive in a more physically difficult environment.
“Plan C” is a powerful and authoritative analyses of our energy predicament that helps us think outside the box in looking for solutions and helps give us the confidence to change. Essential reading for all transition and powerdown groups.
