The Oil Drum: Europe

- for Peak Oil, until now, the world oil supply has risen every year.  Since supply + change in inventories = demand,
that is trivially true.

There hasn't been any big change on the delta of inventories (where publicly available). If anything the evidence is that they have been rising (US and China).

So oil supply has risen to the challenge of meeting oil demand.

Granted the price has gone up a lot.  But then, oil is a price inelastic commodity (both supply and demand), characterised by long lags to bring on new supply or to structurally reduce demand.  The evidence so far is that there have been few supply production restrictions on oil, the price has risen because of Chinese and Indian demand, and the strength of the US economic recovery.

So the jury is out on Peak Oil.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The date of Hubbert's Peak remains uncertain.

Indeed oil prices have fallen sharply and OPEC is cutting quotas, suggesting there is still enough supply out there.

(I should add to that I am sure Peak Oil is inevitable: this is an exhaustible resource, and exhaustible resources deplete.  The question of when is what is at issue).

- Global Warming there is no reasonable doubt.  There is no serious glaciologist or geographer who doubts that the world is warming.  There is no serious climatologist who doubts that the cause of this warming is human action.

(2 exceptions AFAIK: Lindzen at MIT and Gray at Colorado.  But Lindzen doesn't deny global warming, he simply says it isn't a problem because increased cloud cover will offset it-- and admits he may be wrong.  Gray says we are too reliant on computer models, we don't have enough empirical data.  I don't know what he says about rising CO2 levels and rising average temperatures).

What is at issue with Global Warming is how fast, how far, how much?

The prudent man would look at the extreme cases of Global Warming and the geologic evidence we do have.  In particular, CO2 levels were at 1,000 PPM during the time of the great Permian Extinction, when 90% of all animal species died.  CO2 levels now are at 380ppm (from 280ppm in 1750) and rising at 2ppm pa.

At current rates of acceleration of CO2 emission, we will cross 1,000ppm early in the 22nd century.

The particular tipping point is the mass release of permafrost methane-- there is 100GT of methane under the permafrost.  It appears that over a relatively short period at the end of the Permian era, this is what happened.

More seriously, a number of biologists and climatologists believe the world is stretching its capacity to absorb excess atmospheric CO2.  At some point, the process becomes a positive rather than negative feedback cycle-- human action becomes irrelevant.

When I first started looking at this, consensus was 550ppm was a level we could live with avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.  Scientists are now talking 450ppm, a level we will have reached in the 2040s on current trends.  The truth is we don't know.

There are other, less alarming, scenarios than the mass methane release, such as a 10 degree centigrade rise in average surface temperature, which would make much of the planet uninhabitable, and potentially kill billions.

As The Economist argued a few months ago, any prudent man (or woman) looking at that, would suggest that we do something, and a lot, to try to forestall that moment when we cross the 450ppm line.

Global Warming has become the challenge of our generation, the legacy we will leave to all future generations.  What we do in the next few years as a society will be absolutely critical.

Peak Oil will come, some day.  Global Warming is here, and now.