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German Minister Sees ‘No Sensible Alternative’ to Russian Gas

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said there was "no sensible alternative" to Russian natural gas imports and it was unlikely Russia would stop deliveries because of the crisis over Ukraine, a German daily reported Friday. "Even in the darkest hours of the Cold War, Russia respected its contracts," the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung reported Gabriel, who is also energy minister and vice chancellor, as telling an energy forum. Europe’s biggest economy is heavily reliant on Russian gas, which accounted for about a third of its gas imports last year, BDEW figures show. Germany’s top utilities E.ON and RWE receive most of their gas from Russia’s state-controlled gas producer Gazprom. Russia’s seizure of the Crimea region and its threat to cut off gas to Ukraine, a transit route to the rest of Europe, has prompted European leaders to consider strategies to curb the bloc’s energy reliance on Russia. Gabriel also said that two current business deals with Russia by German companies BASF and RWE were "company decisions" and "essentially unproblematic," according to the newspaper. The newspaper said Gabriel also told the forum that Europe’s […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come

Greenland’­s immense ice sheet is melting as a result of climate change. YOKOHAMA, Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct. The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Scientists clash over UN climate report

Two of the world’s leading climate researchers have clashed over a report on the impact of global warming and rising sea levels. The chief author of the study by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change challenged the views of an economist drafting a key chapter. Chris Field, professor of environmental studies at Stanford University in California, made the comments about Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex in the UK, a senior author of the report’s chapter on climate change’s economic impacts. More video Professor Tol revealed last week that he had asked for his name to be removed from the study’s summary – the most widely read section of the IPCC report – because he believed it was too “alarmist” and included “silly” statements about the vulnerability of people in war zones to climate change. However, Professor Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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World Is Ill-Prepared for Global Warming Impacts, UN Says

Global warming is depleting fresh water and crops, destroying coral reefs and melting the Arctic, the said today in a report that concludes the world is ill-prepared to face many new threats. Climate change has brought “key risks” that endanger lives and health worldwide, including storm surges and coastal flooding worsened by rising sea levels; infrastructure destruction and the disruption of power networks, communications and health services by extreme weather, and the depletion of crop production due to droughts and floods, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. “If you look around the world today, people, cities, businesses and nations aren’t prepared for the climate-related risk we face now,” Chris Field , the U.S. professor who co-chaired the 309 scientists drafting today’s report, said in a phone interview from Yokohama, Japan . “The climate changes that have already occurred have been widespread and have really had consequences. It’s […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Global warming threat heightened in latest U.N. report

Global warming poses a mounting threat to the health, economic prospects, and food and water sources of billions of people, a report by top scientists said, in a call for urgent action to counter the effects of carbon emissions. The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), places an emphasis on the risks and may make the case for cutting greenhouse gas emissions clearer both to policymakers and the public by placing it in the category of an insurance policy for the planet. "Climate change is really a challenge of managing risks," Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC group preparing the report, told Reuters before its release on Monday. "One critical way is in decreasing the amount of climate change that occurs, and the other is finding a way to cope as effectively as we can with the climate changes that […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Here Comes $75 Oil

The long-term outlook for global oil prices is lower, perhaps much lower, giving a strong boost to the U.S. economy while potentially crippling the economy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Vast new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the U.S. and around the globe could drive the oil price to as low as $75 a barrel over the next five years from a current $100. The demand side, too, will put pressure on the supremacy of petroleum. For the first time in its 150-year history, the internal combustion engine can be run efficiently on alternative fuels from a number of sources, including natural gas. As these alternatives are increasingly introduced, global consumption of oil will slow its growth and flatten out. Barron’s Graphics Citigroup’s head of global commodity research, Edward Morse, believes the combination of flattening consumption and rising production should mean that "the $90-a-barrel floor on the world […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Peak Oil: No Easy Solutions

Alternative energy depends heavily on engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion. However, the full supply chain for alternative energy, from raw materials to manufacturing, is still very dependent on fossil fuel energy. [In the end, how can you get rid of fossil fuels when you need them to construct alternative energy resources?]…. The discussion is further complicated by political biases, ignorance of basic science, and a lack of appreciation of the magnitude of the problem facing societies accustomed to inexpensive fossil energy as the era of abundance concludes. [1] I’ve consistently and repeatedly urged a greater awareness of the challenges diminishing supplies of oil and gas will impose upon all is. Political affiliations and stamp-your-feet-and-hold-your-breath resistance to the realities of finite, ever-harder to find and extract fossil fuel resources won’t help anyone. Coupled with that awareness (dependent in no small part on a lot more honesty and […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Peak Oil: Great Question. The Answer Is _ ?

The real question for the United States is not about optimal trade policy or economic theory, but whether we want to extract the last drops of our oil endowment as quickly as possible by enabling the debt-fueled land rush that has brought us a gratifying, but temporary, bump in production, or whether we want to make it last as long as possible, knowing that two or three decades from now the world will be absolutely desperate for the stuff, with scarce exports and unimaginably high prices. [1] So what will it be? But before the question can be answered meaningfully, information about what’s at stake; where we stand now; what the future energy supplies prospects hold; together with an assortment of related but just as important considerations need to be fully disclosed. And there’s the rub. There are two strong camps with just as strong opinions about energy supplies […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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James Schlesinger on peak oil

In August 2012, I interviewed James Schlesinger over the phone as part of research for my upcoming book, The Oracle of Oil , the first biography of maverick geologist M. King Hubbert. Schlesinger and Hubbert shared a deep interest and concern in the issue of peak oil —specifically, the question of when world oil production might reach an all-time high, and then begin to decline, marking a turning point between an era of plenty to an era of scarcity. During Schlesinger’s time in office as the United States’ first Secretary of Energy—a post President Jimmy Carter created specifically for Schlesinger —he’d spoken about this issue of peak oil. He saw that such a peak of world oil production would have profound effects on the U.S. and the world. (Before becoming Secretary of Energy, Schlesinger had held various positions in the Nixon and Ford Administrations, including Director of Central Intelligence […]

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Two New Ideas in Wave and Tidal Power

IEEE Spectrum has an article on some new ocean energy technologies – Two New Ideas in Wave and Tidal Power . The wave power idea is closer than the tidal energy one to rollout, with a planned open-water test for this summer. M3 Wave dispenses with all the problems that come with buoys or other above-and-below-the-surface designs by mooring a simple device to the ocean floor. The device, pictured above, involves two air chambers: as a wave passes over the top of the first chamber, the pressure inside increases, forcing air through a passageway to the second chamber. Inside the passageway is a turbine, so the passing air is actually what generates the electricity. As the wave continues on, it raises the pressure inside the second chamber, pushing the air back through the turbine—importantly, it is a bidirectional turbine—and back into the first chamber. Another wave, another cycle. Repeat.The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple