More verbal diarrhea from a famously irrational denier.

Here is spectacularly good talk by an expert, that actually knows what he is talking about:

Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets, speaks at The Business of Climate Change conference. Mr. Rubin predicts increasing oil prices and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.

Powerful explanation of the realities of Peak Oil and the absolute necessity of imposing cost on Carbon – essential viewing !

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/51306

" We are never going to run of oil … but we will, in fact we have already run out of affordable oil …

Triple digit oil is just the type of oil you can't afford to run the economy"

"Every year we loose some 4 billion barrels of oil per year through exhaustion of existing oil well …

If we have an economic recovery we have a huge problem – because we will not be able to replace the oil that recovery demands"

"In the market price rations demand – not so in the oil business. Witness the dramatic increase in demand as the price of oil went from $20 to $100 plus"

Stop considering middle east production, start concentrating on total exports from middle east – these are falling dramatically.

"Triple digit oil prices are coming in the next 10-12 months"

"Current crisis is not 'sub-prime mortgage' issue, it is energy shock issue. You can bail out banks, you cannot create more oil"

I have been saying this for the past few years: the oil price will rocket as soon that is as the world economy shows signs of reasonable recovery, which probably means this year. That will cause another recession and so it will go on. Or maybe we will just extend this current recession into decades lasting depression – and all because of energy costs.

But then who am I to offer opinions. After all I only got the last four years right in the face of general disagreement. We shall see …

Wrong thread Shiner, this is about energy.
Your argument was demolished in the Global Warming thread.

"The UK currently gets around 5.5% of electricity from renewable sources and that will need to increase to around 30% to meet the 15% 2020 target for all energy.". Full text here http://www.transitionnc.org/no…..mment-1202

Wind farms produce about have of that, which is 2.75%. My own wind turbine has been producing very close to its average output, so it is unlikely that commercial farms would have been producing less than that.

T2, did you know that all of Southern and Eastern Europe has had much warmer winter than usual? We will see when the stats are published, but it is almost certain that yet again last year was warmer than average overall for the whole planet.

We must not confuse a bit of snow outside our front door with reversal of Global Warming, must we? That would be seriously uninformed.

"We will see when the stats are published.."

Who was it that said, 'All statistics are flawed.'?

Sad as it is, I have to laugh when I hear yet another politician or expert, journalist or a forum member telling us that

- Nobody could have foretold the steep rise in oil and energy prices
- Nobody could have predicted the world recession
- Nobody could have foreseen the financial crisis
- Nobody could have prepared for the steep rise in food prices
- Nobody could have prevented the mammoth pension deficits

Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

I have predicted all these and much more back in 2004, which is why since then we started a food business, switched all our energy and fuel to renewables, saved and increased our pension pot, etc. It is uncanny how each and every one of our predictions are slowly but surely coming true.

Of course it is no magic. Actually, anyone can do it. All you need is just one tool: a good understanding of the underlying reason for the increasing prosperity of humankind over the past 150+ years. Once you realise that, you just need to research, absorb and understand how this underlying principle is evolving and changing. Everything else follows from that.

So, what was the underlying reason for our ever increasing prosperity?

In a word it was Energy, specifically cheap (almost free) energy.

It was coal at the start, then oil and later natural gas, that is providing humanity with well over 90% of all the energy we use to power our lives, from heating, electricity, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, fertilisers, chemicals and plastics, medicines and much more.

These sources, particularly oil and gas, are extremely energy dense. That is they provide unbelievable amounts of energy from very small volumes. Further more, the material just streams out of the ground (at least it used to), where it was stored under high pressure for some millions of years, so the extraction costs are absolutely minimal.

Consider that one litre of oil provides you, dear reader, with the energy equivalent to about 70 man hours of manual labour (for example it pushes your car with four occupants some 8 miles at 60 mph or it would take 70 men paddling like mad to generate as much electricity on a pedal generator as does one generator running on one litre of fuel). At minimum wage level this human labour energy would cost in excess of £350, but even at $120/barrel it actually costs just 36 pence! (plus tax and profits) That’s what I mean by almost free energy! That barrel of oil typically costs about $1 to pump out of the ground in the Gulf, that is less than 1 cent per litre. So you invest 1 cent and get back $500 (£350) worth of labour!

No previous civilisations had such almost free energy available to them. Even the slavery based energy system of Roman times was far, far more expensive than our current good fortune. And this is exactly why our civilisation has prospered so much.

Just about everything we do is ultimately based on this almost free energy. We have got so used to it that we think little of flying in our millions to some far away destinations couple of times a year, just to have a bit of fun. We buy stuff on the whim and throw it away again, sometimes without even using it. We have come to think that we have a right to just about anything, regardless of the cost, and we compete with each other in our conspicuous consumption.

But this bonanza is coming to an end …