Hot Hot Hot  

Australia is on track to have its hottest year ever, as is the world as a whole. The global warming denier camp is going to melt away as quickly as the glaciers and the polar ice caps at this rate.

This year may not have seemed like a scorcher, but it is firming as the hottest year since records began.

The past decade had unusually hot years, but 2005 is the one climatologists are watching closely. The record year, 1998, had the "El Nino of the century", significantly raising temperatures. This year could exceed that benchmark without an El Nino, a warming of the Pacific Ocean that affects Australia's climate.

In a statement to be released today, the Bureau of Meteorology says the first 10 months of 2005 were the warmest equivalent period since monthly records began in 1950, and it probably would be the hottest year since annual records began in 1910. Climate scientists are picking up a similar trend globally.

The record-breaking temperatures were, the bureau said, an indicator of climate change.

"This really emphasises how pervasive global warming actually is," said David Jones, head of climate analysis at the bureau's National Climate Centre.

The BBC has a report on yet another global warming feedback effect, this time in the form of increased humidity.

Water vapour rather than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main reason why Europe's climate is warming, according to a new study. The scientists say that rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gases are increasing humidity, which in turn amplifies the temperature rise. This is potentially a positive feedback mechanism which could increase the impact of greenhouse gases such as CO2.

Global warming is also starting to severely affect fish stocks in the Pacific (and it has also been noted that we are literally devouring the remaining ocean life anyway, as we test all the limits to growth at once).

One of the culprits of global warming (and likely victims of peak oil) is the airline industry. Airbus did a spot of marketing with Qantas yesterday flying the world's largest passenger jet over Sydney harbour. One of the selling points of this behemoth is the improved fuel consumption - which Deutsche Welle notes is "12 percent lower than all other large aircraft according to Airbus -- is an important selling point given that fuel usage now accounts for around 16 to 20 percent of the overall costs of an airline".

Big enough to carry 853 passengers, the aircraft has 50 per cent more floor space than a Boeing 747-400. Qantas plans to have "just under" 500 seats in its 12 A380s. Airbus has been keen to point out that the aircraft is half as noisy as a 747. The French-based aircraft maker says the A380's size and fuel efficiency will also mean it will be up to 20 per cent cheaper to operate per seat than a 747.

ASPO Australia has been launched (pretty quietly if you ask me, as I had no idea this was happening) by the WA Sustainable Transport Coalition. The site also includes a blog by Bruce Robinson, with the first post pondering the future of toll road companies like Transurban and asking if these are a good place to have our super money invested in a post peak world.

ASPO Australia is an association of researchers, professionals and others with an interest in the study of peak oil and gas. ASPO Australia is part of a network of organisations around the world affiliated with the original Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) founded by Colin Campbell and Kjell Aleklett. The formation of ASPO-Australia is an initiative of the Sustainable Transport Coalition of WA.

On the ASPO-Oz website you will find a wide range of information and documents on peak oil and its implications. In the future this site will also include ASPO-Oz news, articles, press-releases and a calendar of peak-oil related events.

Energy Bulletin notes that Kuwait's largest field (Burgan) is starting to run out of oil (as predicted by the ASPO a few months ago). More commentary can be found at The Oil Drum.

The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told Bloomberg.

He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields.

However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming.

Last week the International Energy Agency's report said output from the Greater Burgan area will be 1.64 million barrels a day in 2020 and 1.53 million barrels per day in 2030. Is this now a realistic scenario?

The news about the Burgan oil field also lends credence to the controversial opinions of investment banker and geologist Matthew Simmons. His book 'Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy' claims that the ageing Saudi oil filed also face serious production falls.

The implications for the global economy are indeed serious. If the world oil supply begins to run dry then the upward pressure on oil prices will be inexorable. For the oil producers this will come as a compensation for declining output, and cushion them against an economic collapse.

However, the oil consumers then face a major energy crisis. Industrialized economies are still far too dependent on oil. And the pricing mechanism of declining oil reserves will press them into further diversification of energy supplies, particularly nuclear, wind and solar power.

Peak Oil is starting to be openly recognised by some sections of the political right (though I'm sure they've been aware of it for a long time) - George Shultz and James Woolsey have an article in Mechanical Engineering Magazine called "The Petroleum Bomb".

Our nation's dependence on imported oil leaves it dangerously vulnerable to attack.

Four years ago, on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, the need to reduce radically our reliance on oil was not clear to many and, in any case, the path of doing so seemed a long and difficult one. Today, both assumptions are being undermined by the risks of the post-9/11 world and by technological progress in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels.

A single well-designed attack on the petroleum infrastructure in the Middle East could send oil to well over $100 per barrel and devastate the world's economy. That reality, among other risks, and the fact that our current transportation infrastructure is locked in to oil, should be sufficient to convince any objective observer that oil dependence today creates serious and pressing dangers for the United States and other oil-importing nations.

Dependence on petroleum and its products for the lion's share of the world's transportation fuel creates special dangers in our time.

Energy Bulletin notes some background for this one. I've always found the whole "Committee On The Present Danger" concept outrageously Orwellian - the first time I heard of it I thought it was satire. But as usual truth is stranger than fiction.

George P. Shultz is a former Secretary of State and is currently Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. R. James Woolsey is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is currently vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a management consulting firm based in McLean, Va. This article is adapted from a position paper the authors wrote in their capacity as co-chairmen of the Committee on the Present Danger.
(October 2005 issue)

Peak oil is mentioned in the article. The complete article from which this text version is drawn is: Oil and Security. More is available on the website for Committee on the Present Danger. Jerome a Paris at the liberal Daily Kos comments on this paper in the following entry.

Jerome a Paris also has a detailed look at the potential for non-conventional oil out, summarised by Jonathan at Past Peak.

One for the gold bugs - this article over at Daily Kos examines the elimination of measurement of the M3 money supply by the US Federal Reserve starting March next year (which some people have noted coincides with the opening of euro denominated oil trading at the Iranian Oil Bourse). There are no shortage of bearish commentators forecasting accelerating inflation.

The Federal Reserved released a statement yesterday that went almost completely unreported by the news media.

On March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate. The Board will also cease publishing the following components: large-denomination time deposits, repurchase agreements (RPs), and Eurodollars.

For those of you who aren't econo-geeks this probably doesn't mean much to you...but it should. Because the implications of this rather banal statement is enormous and will effect everyone.

...

At this point it is worth emphasizing that our new Fed Reserve chief to-be has mentioned the idea of buying unlimited amounts of securities from the nation's GSE's. By coincidence the Federal Reserve will no longer report the amount of repurchase agreements just as Fannie Mae is sinking into financial trouble and the housing market is topping.

The coincidences here are far too numorous to ignore. What we are looking at is a calculated plan to print helicopter money to bail out our flawed financial institutions and the mess that Greenspan got us into.