Renewed energy in a climate of change  

The SMH has a look at Howard's backflip on emission targets (strictly a cosmetic one as he thinks nuclear power and "clean" coal count as clean sources of energy) in "renewed energy in a climate of change".

JOHN HOWARD has reversed his refusal to promote renewable energy as a key source of electricity, announcing a "clean energy target" of about 15 per cent. The scheme was welcomed by energy suppliers but drew criticism from Labor and environmental groups because it promised no new renewable output on top of that already announced by the states - and could even reduce compulsory renewable emissions.

The Clean Energy Target, announced yesterday at the BP Solar factory in Homebush by the Prime Minister, reverses his previous reluctance to increase the country's 2 per cent mandatory renewable energy target. Instead, it consolidates the state schemes and mandates the production of 30,000 gigawatt-hours a year of low-emissions electricity by 2020, which the Government estimates will amount to at least 15 per cent. ...

Mr Howard has previously said the extraction of energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind and water was too expensive and would not be a significant source of the nation's base load energy supplies.

The announcement came as the environmental credentials of the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, were endorsed by the former US vice-president and climate change campaigner, Al Gore. Two weeks after the US President, George Bush, gave tacit endorsement to Mr Howard, Mr Gore appeared with Mr Rudd at a press conference in Melbourne and praised Labor's commitment to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. "There is a clear and stark contrast difference in the positions of the two candidates: one supports ratification of the world treaty to solve the climate crisis and one opposes it," Mr Gore said.

Mr Rudd said a Labor government would ratify the Kyoto Protocol before a United Nations summit on climate change in December to ensure Australia gained voting rights. Labor is expected to unveil its renewable energy plan this week and is likely to call for a 20 per cent target of renewable energy. Labor and green groups yesterday criticised the Coalition target because it included non-renewable energy supplies such as clean coal which, if developed by 2020, could allow energy suppliers to reduce their renewable output.

Labor's climate change spokesman, Peter Garrett, said the target was a step backwards and accused the Coalition of "piggybacking" on the proposals by the states. "The so-called clean energy target is simply a rationalisation of existing schemes and opens the renewable energy target to nuclear power," he said. ...

Erwin Jackson, from the Climate Institute, said a national scheme was welcome but he called for a higher targeted clean energy output. "This target will provide maybe half of what is required to make sure all new electricity load is from clean energy," Mr Jackson said. "Australia will be standing still while the rest of the world moves into the clean energy economy."

Tom Konrad at EE/RE Investing has a look at a beaten-down battery company.

I believe that we have only seen the beginning of the current market decline. You should take that with a grain of salt, since I've been unremittingly bearish since 1999 and for more than half that time, the market has been going up.

Even if the market has much further to fall, some stocks may have already taken most of the damage they are likely to take. Knowing that I might be wrong, I've started to do a little bottom fishing among companies that people have been starting to dump as the realize stock prices can also go down. One of those stocks is Electro-Energy Inc. (EEEI). Even casual readers of Alternative Energy Stocks know that I'm a big fan of batteries of all sizes, because I view storage of electricity as essential to both improving the way we produce electricity, and using it to run our vehicles.

Over the next five to ten years, I expect that rising fuel prices will mean most new cars will come with hybrid drivetrains, and that some of those will be Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs - now being tested in Japan and Europe.) The demand for secondary (rechargeable) batteries is projected to grow 50% between 2007 and 2012 solely on the basis of greater use of secondary batteries in electronic devices. The total demand for secondary batteries in the US in 2007 was about $8 billion, or about 35 million kWh of capacity, but a single PHEV-25 (a Plug-in Hybrid with an all-electric range of 25 miles) would need about 8 kWh of battery capacity, while the current Prius has about 1.3 kWh of batteries. Annual production of 4.5 million PHEVs (60% of the current number of cars sold in the United States) would double US demand for secondary batteries.

Clearly, a 60% penetration rate for PHEV passenger cars will take a long time. Yet we are likely to see a continued rise in the percentage of hybrid vehicles, an increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs), and continued penetration of hybrid drivetrains into public transport, commercial and industrial vehicles. One factor which is likely to drive adoption is the new move towards leasing batteries currently being pursued by Th!nk and considered by GM, allowing customers to purchase EVs and PHEVs without an additional upfront cost.

Battery Technology: Harder than it Looks

Batteries have been around almost as long as humans have known about electricity. The word was coined by Benjamin Franklin, although what he was working with was a type of capacitor. The first electro-chemical battery, which produced electricity through an electro-chemical reaction like batteries used today, was invented in 1800.

Over 200 years later, we're still struggling to concoct affordable batteries that can store energy at sufficient density and be recharged enough times to be used in practical Plug-in Hybrid vehicles without exploding. Despite the recent burst of interest in advanced lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries, history shows that battery technology is tricky. This isn't rocket science... it's more difficult. Even if you're convinced that one particular battery chemistry is far superior to all the others, this report on the limits of available Lithium makes a convincing case that we'll have to use a mix of battery chemistries just on the basis of resource availability.

Given all that, makes sense to hedge our bets by looking at companies whose fates do not rest on perfecting new technology to succeed.

Electro-Energy (EEEI) is one such company. Their core technology is a method of manufacturing bipolar cells, an innovation that's been around for years but has resisted commercialization due to electrolyte leakage. Bipolar cells are a different battery geometry which lessens a battery's resistance to current flow, and allows a smaller battery to produce comparable power to a conventional cell. They currently use this technology with several battery chemistries: including the familiar Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd), Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Li-Ion battery chemistries. This implies to me that if other companies succeed in improving batteries with better chemistries, separators, or electrodes, EEEI will likely be able to further boost the power of the new battery with their bipolar geometry. ...

Technology Review has an article considering the possibility Magnets can boost ethanol production.

Brazil gets a third of its fuel from sugarcane-based ethanol, and ethanol producers want to increase that figure by refining the fermentation process. Brazilian labs are exploring everything from the genetic engineering of yeast to new approaches to producing ethanol from agricultural waste. In research to be published next month in the American Chemical Society journal Biotechnology Progress, Brazilian researchers claim to have demonstrated a seemingly unlikely means to higher yields: magnetic fields.

The researchers at the University of Campinas, in Brazil, say that they boosted ethanol yield 17 percent and shaved two hours off of a 15-hour fermentation process simply by circulating the fermentation brew past six magnets, each about the size of an overstuffed wallet. "The fermentation time can be reduced, and consequently, the production cost can also be reduced," says Victor Haber Perez, the University of Campinas food engineer who led the research team.

A slew of recent reports highlight the importance of cutting the cost of biofuel production and boosting yields. Earlier this month, for example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that biofuels--as currently produced--will inflate food prices and are a relatively costly way to reduce petroleum imports and carbon-dioxide emissions. (See "The High Costs of Biofuels.")

Looking to magnets for help isn't as crazy as it sounds. In fact, magnetic-field effects on microbial and mammalian cells are well documented. Biologists now view magnetic-field "pollution" from mobile-phone towers as a likely cause of a decline in the population of some migratory birds that rely on magnetic fields for navigation. And genetic engineers are experimenting with magnetic fields as a tool to control the growth and differentiation of stem cells. However, magnetically enhanced fermentation is a more controversial idea. There have been relatively few studies of magnetic effects on yeast cells--particularly the yeast cells employed in fermentation--and the results have been contradictory.

In 2003, Brazilian researchers at the Federal University of Pernambuco, in Recife, created a stir with a report that a static magnetic field caused marked increases in the growth of yeast and the ethanol concentration in laboratory-scale fermentations that used Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (S. cerevisiae is the yeast most commonly used in the Brazilian biofuels industry to produce ethanol from sugarcane.) A year later, however, Spanish radiobiologists at the University of Malaga threw that work into doubt, reporting that they had observed no stimulation of S. cerevisiae when it was subjected to a (much weaker, admittedly) magnetic field. They also failed to observe any impact from the alternating magnetic fields used in some earlier studies.

Perez and his colleagues set out to settle the matter, using controlled experiments in a state-of-the-art industrial bioreactor. They diverted the fermentation mixture of sugarcane molasses and yeast out of the reactor via stainless-steel pipes that passed between six magnets with a combined field strength of 20 milliteslas--roughly halfway between the strengths of the magnets employed in previous tests. The results confirmed the 2003 report from the group in Recife: a static magnetic field increased the yeast's rate of sugar metabolism and boosted ethanol production by 9 percent. The higher 17 percent increase was observed when Perez employed a solenoid--basically, a wire coil around the magnets--to alternate the 20-millitesla field. ...

The Washington Post has an article on cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass - "Cultivating Hope".

When it grows high and thick in midsummer, the crop that might fill Virginia's gas tanks, revitalize its farm belt and keep its mud and manure out of the Chesapeake Bay looks like . . . weeds. Like the world's most overgrown lawn.

At a Virginia Tech agricultural research center here, in this small town west of Fredericksburg, the switchgrass plot is an unruly, waving thicket of seven-foot-tall green stalks. But it only looks neglected: This is one of the center's most prized plants, a formerly obscure prairie grass now projected to be a major source of farm-grown fuel. "That'd be some energy, right there," said Dave Starner, the center's superintendent, holding a freshly cut bundle of it.

Researchers across the country think that switchgrass could help supplant corn as a source for the fast-growing ethanol industry. In Virginia, some officials are trying to make the state the Iowa of the new cash crop. They're urging farmers to grow it and envision dozens of refineries that will turn the stalks into fuel. "It's the future of the rural community and the world as you know it," said Ken Moss, an entrepreneur in south-central Virginia who is using some state funds for a factory that turns switchgrass into a substitute for heating oil.

But such efforts have hit a snag: Scientists haven't perfected the process that turns switchgrass into ethanol. So for today, the Crop That Could Change Virginia is just hay with better publicity.

The plant behind all the hoopla, Panicum virgatum, looks a bit like a corn plant without the cob. It has a thin, rigid stalk with a feathery tassel of seeds. Scientists say switchgrass probably grew wild across the eastern two-thirds of the United States for centuries before Europeans arrived. But, except for plant biologists and some biofuel researchers, few Americans had heard of the plant before last year's State of the Union address. President Bush listed switchgrass among potential sources for ethanol, a gasoline substitute sought as a replacement for imported oil.

Researchers say switchgrass has much to recommend it over corn, the source of almost all U.S. ethanol. For one thing, it isn't also food -- the ethanol-driven demand for corn has pushed up prices on a range of items, from tortillas to steak. For another, switchgrass requires little of the irrigation and fertilizer necessary to grow corn, a prima donna among crops.

Environmentalists have also praised the plant for the ability of its roots to filter out pollutants that often wash off farm fields. "It's better for the land. It's better for the water," said Josh Dorner, a Sierra Club spokesman. Compared to corn, he said, "it's far and away the way to go."

In the Washington area, the University of Maryland is growing switchgrass and using it as fuel. The stalks, stuffed into a boiler, are used to heat a maintenance building and a greenhouse on the Eastern Shore. But that project is dwarfed by the switchgrass efforts underway in Virginia. The state has relatively little switchgrass planted -- fewer than 20 farmers are thought to be growing it on less than 1,000 acres. But Virginia Tech scientists say the grass could play a major role in creating a massive biofuel economy.

In a recent white paper, they suggested that switchgrass, along with woodchips, could provide a quarter of Virginia's gas, diesel fuel and heating oil needs and support 68 small fuel refineries in the state. Researchers estimated that the new fuel sources could create 10,500 jobs, including for farmers, truck drivers and refinery workers.

One reason for the optimism is obvious at the Virginia Tech research center in Orange. Months of dry weather had stunted the corn, but the switchgrass was still green and tall. "It's been a drought year; [we] haven't put any water on it," said John Fike, a Virginia Tech professor who is looking into potential biofuels. "I mean, that's one of the reasons people are interested in switchgrass." ...

There's just one thing missing from the plans to make Virginia an epicenter of ethanol production. That, unfortunately, is ethanol.

The process of turning plants into fuel is a lot like turning them into liquor, scientists say: Sugars are extracted and fermented, producing alcohol. The problem with switchgrass is that its sugars are locked up chemically and are much harder to extract than those in corn. Scientists have not found a way to produce solutions with the right concentrations of alcohol from switchgrass, said George Douglas, a spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

"We can get to a beer, about a 5 percent alcohol solution," Douglas said. "We'd like to be able to get to a wine. We'd like to be able to get to about a 15 percent solution." Another obstacle, Douglas said, is that the first commercial factory for switchgrass-based ethanol might not arrive for at least five years.

Grist has a post on the melting permafrost in Siberia.

Some large sections of permafrost in Siberia have been thawing out in the last few years due to climate change. If the thaw continues apace (or speeds up) researchers worry that much more organic matter -- leftover plant and animal leavings from thousands of years ago, like mammoth dung, that never fully decayed due to sustained below-freezing temperatures -- will thaw out and start decomposing, which could significantly speed up climate change with massive doses of methane and carbon dioxide.

"The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves," says climate scientist Sergei Zimov. "This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop."

The United Nations agreed in a recent report that large-scale permafrost thaw could be quite nasty, climate-wise, but since the bulk of permafrost is still frosty, it's regarded as mostly a potential threat for now. But even the current thaw isn't all bad, at least for some cash-strapped locals who comb Siberia's no-longer-perma frost for mammoth tusks and skeletons which can net thousands of dollars apiece from museums and private collectors.

After Gutenberg has a look at the rise of the stratellite - homeland security blimps prowling the skies of America.

The deployment of High Altitude Airships, a.k.a., Stratellites, could be much less expensive than satellites and still provide line-of-sight of approximately 300,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Texas.

Lindsay Beyerstein reminds us that last month the Wall Street Journal broke the news: the Homeboyz get a satellite dish. Translation: Homeland Security has vastly expanded access to classified satellite reconnaissance and other remote sensing data.

Initially, the National Applications Office (NAO), a newly created office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will confine itself to homeland security and traditional civil applications. Officials will be able to request satellite data to enhance border security, defend critical infrastructure and coordinate disaster response. Next year, the department plans to give satellite data to state and local law enforcement agencies.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is a major force behind the creation of the NAO. According to the Journal, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell officially authorized the project in a May 25 memo to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.

When DHS first announced the creation of the NAO for disseminating classified information from America’s spy satellites on August 15, it had not bothered to notify the House Committee on Homeland Security beforehand

Whoops, aw gee, we really were meaning to tell you guys. Shucks, it just sort of slipped our minds.

To steal some words from the Jonathan Chait, author of “The Big Con”: “I have this problem. Whenever I try to explain what’s happening in American politics — I mean, what’s really happening — I wind up sounding a bit like an unhinged conspiracy theorist.”

When I read Jonathan Chait's article in the New York Times, I found myself thinking that the sentence quoted above summed it up pretty well - I too often sound like a conspiracy theorist (hopefully a relatively well-hinged one though) and yet my political views haven't changed much in 30 years, and once upon a time I would have sounded like someone well to the right of centre. At some point there has to be a backlash coming.

As a bit of tinfoil provides an entertaining counterpoint to the grim parade of oil and global warming news, I'm going to continue to wallow in various conspiracy theories from time time (remembering that Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair would have sounded like crazy conspiracy theories at one point in time too).

The Evansville Courier & Press reports that environmental awareness is beginning to reach even some of the more apocalyptically minded evangelical churches, with some church leaders starting to understand that the environment isn't really a partisan political issue.

Environmentalist are often envisioned as tree-hugging, granola-munching types whose politics lean far to the left. But environmental awareness is also spreading into the pews and pulpits of conservative Christian churches.

In Evansville and beyond, environmental awareness is starting to attract more attention among folks who fall far outside the stereotypical "green" profile. "I think it's still catching on, especially with the more conservative Christians," said Lisa Sideris, assistant professor of religious studies at Indiana University.

Traditionally, Sideris said, conservative Christianity has been associated with certain beliefs that tend to be incompatible with environmentalism. In Genesis 1, God says that he intends for humans to have dominion over the earth. Some Christians, Sideris said, have interpreted that to mean that nature is something for people to use, not necessarily protect. Another factor, Sideris said, is that Christianity has traditionally valued spiritual things over material things. And among certain denominations with an apocalyptic world view, Sideris said, the idea of protecting nature is not important because of the belief that the world will soon end.

Beliefs started to shift in academic circles in the late 1960s, Sideris said, after an article published in Science identified Christian attitudes about nature as a cause of the earth's environmental problems. In years to follow, religious leaders started becoming interested in the issue, including Calvin DeWitt, who is the cofounder of the International Evangelical Environmental Network.

In 2006, a number of high-profile evangelical leaders signed a statement calling for a solution to global warming on the grounds that climate change will cause human death through increases in droughts, flooding and hurricanes. Those signing the statement included the Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of California megachurch Saddleback Church; leaders of groups including World Vision and the Salvation Army; and others. Among conservative Christians, the concept has become stewardship — the responsibility to care for nature because God made it.

"If it's God's, I'm going to think twice about messing it up. If it's mine, then I'm going to use it as I see fit," said the Rev. Tom Wenig, pastor of Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer on Evansville's East Side. As part of studies for a doctoral degree in ministry, Wenig is presenting a five-week program on environmental stewardship to his congregation. During the first session Sunday, Wenig focused on theology, raising issues designed to provoke thought on the topic. For instance, what did God mean when he gave humans dominion over nature? When God commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth, did this command also imply that at some point the earth would be full?

Before the first session, Wenig had members fill out surveys to determine their attitudes toward environmental stewardship. He will administer another survey after the last session to see if their attitudes have changed. Wenig said his goal is to raise environmental consciousness among his members, and to develop a program that other pastors could use in their own congregations. "It's really trying to develop a mind-set. ... It isn't trying to take on a big political agenda."

For his part, Wenig said he believes the earth does face a looming energy crisis and that human activity is exacerbating if not causing global warming. He acknowledges that these views aren't widely held among conservative Christians. "A lot of people feel the global warming issue is a propaganda campaign put out by the radical left."

In response, Wenig cites numerous scriptural references that he believes point toward environmental stewardship. He cites the story of Noah, in which God instructs Noah to bring animals into the ark to spare them from the flood. This, Wenig said, means that people should care about animals and avoid knowingly contributing to their extinction. "Even if they have no particular human economic value, they have value," Wenig said. And in John 6:12, Jesus, after he has fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes, tells his disciples to "gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost." This passage, Wenig believes, means God doesn't want humans to waste what's been given to them. "I think a lot of responsibility's been laid on us and now's the time ... when it becomes critical for us to exercise that."

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer's staff has met to discuss ways to reduce paper waste and conserve energy, Wenig said, and during renovations last year, the church installed efficient computer-controlled heating and air-conditioning to save energy and money.

Elsewhere in the U.S., a megachurch in Central Florida is also taking a role in promoting environmental stewardship. Northland, A Church Distributed in Longwood, Fla. started a Creation Care Task Force last year after the congregation saw a film about climate change. The group has about a dozen members. In July, Grist magazine included Northland's pastor, the Rev. Joel Hunter, in its list of 15 Green Religious Leaders.

Raymond Randall, a member who heads Northland's Creation Care Task Force, said at first he, too, used to see environmentalism as something for left-wing liberals. But over time he changed his views. "After studying and praying about it, I realized it's not a political issue. I can be more responsible with his (God's) creation and not have it be a political issue."

Merging the topics of environmentalism, religion and conspiracy theory, Free Energy News had an item in today's email promoting the video "Environmentalism: A New Religion for a New Age", trotting out the usual theories about the Club Of Rome being a dangerous cabal out to depopulate the world (an idea I've investigated previously and been unable to find any real evidence for, notwithstanding a few COR members who have complained there "are too many people" from time to time).

This video highlights the connection between the environmental movement and those who are striving to bring about a new system of control to the world.

"While the need for environmentalism is certainly not groundless, this video documents the existence of a faction of power-brokers who are using the environmentalism fervor to further their agenda to depopulate the earth and install a world socialist dictatorship. Considering such a lethal and statist agenda, I can see why some individuals (e.g. many conservatives) are less than enthusiastic about environmentalism." -- Sterling D. Allan (Sept. 23, 2007)

Selected Quotes from Video

"We are moving toward a New World Order, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road." -- Mikhail Gorbachev (1987)

"The threat of environmental crisis will be the 'international disaster key' that will unlock the New World Order." -- Mikhail Gorbachev (Monetary & Economic Review, 1996, p. 5)

"My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments." -- Mikhail Gorbachev (Regarding 1992 Earth Summit in Rio)

"The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments." -- Maurice Strong

"The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history." -- David Rockefeller (NY Times, Aug. 10, 1973)

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." -- Ted Turner (1996)

Other Relevant Quotes

"There is no greater advocate of perestroika than the president of the United States." -- President George Bush [Sr.] (November 22, 1989) [1] (http://www.tarpley.net/bush24.htm)

"The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice." -- Mikhail Gorbachev (Perestroika; 1988) [2] (http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Perestroika/)

Club of Rome

In 1968 the Club of Rome was formed at the Rockefeller's private estate in Bellagio, Italy. The club had significant influence in the birth of the modern environmental movement. Headed by Anglo-American elites and European nobility, the Club of Rome is an elite 'think tank' specializing in crisis creation via the Hegelian dialectic: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. The main purpose of the club is to formulate crisis, through which the world can be "united" under a world socialist government.

A few notable past and present members of the club include:

* Al Gore - Former U.S. Vice President
* Mikhail Gorbachev - Former President of the Soviet Union; co-author of the Earth Charter
* Ted Turner - media mogul, founder of CNN
* Maurice Strong - head of the U.N. Environment Programme; co-author of the Earth Charter
* David Rockefeller - Donated the land where the UN stands in NY
* Henry Kissinger - Former U.S. Secretary of State
* Javier Solana - Secretary-General of the EU
* Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

In 1991, the Club of Rome published The First Global Revolution, authored by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. On pp. 104-105 are found the following statement:

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

If you go to the Club Of Rome web site you won't find any of the people listed above mentioned other than Mikhail Gorbachev and Queen Beatrix (though a recent ABC report claims Bill Gates, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter are members, again, not shown in the online membership listing). Once more - if anyone can provide me with a half believable reference that lists the historical membership of the Club I'd be interested to see it. The last quote above is troubling taken out of context, but I've seen similar sentiments expressed about the threat of alien invasion (by Ronald Reagan I think) - the idea being we'd be better off uniting against some common perceived external enemy than each other - in this case, the damage we do to the environment. Having read through some of the writings of local COR member Keith Suter, I'd tag him (and most of the Club) as greenish social democrats (not that the social democrats have been entirely innocent of unpleasant social engineering urges in the past, but they seem mostly harmless nowadays).

Kurt Cobb at Resource Insights has an interesting look at "peak oil conspiracies" - seemingly prompted by some of the tinfoil theories I've noted around here from time to time to debunk some of the theories emanating from places like Prison Planet, William Engdahl and the departed Joe Vialls (as well as the less toxic Raymond Learsy).

While I tend to remain slightly on the fence regarding a lot of these (some anti-peak oil theories I disbelieve entirely, others I'm willing to give possible credence to some aspects without buying the overall thrust of the argument), I figure the best thing to do is analyse all the possibilities and only recommend plans of action that are safe under as many scenarios as possible - hence my tendency to advocate a quick switch to entirely renewable energy sources and sustainable agriculture and industrial processes. There is plenty of available energy and plenty of scope for population levels to plateau out well in excess of the current number and thus void the ideas promoted by all of the doom mongers, both anti and pro peak oil.

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well. --Richard Hofstadter

Ancient peoples often imagined that any calamity natural or otherwise was the work of displeased gods. Today, we are more enlightened. When we suffer misfortunes such as rising energy prices, some of us immediately imagine small secretive groups in high places engaged in elaborate conspiracies.

In fact, it is a good thing to take a skeptical view of those in power. And, one does not have to invent motives of greed or a desire for domination in such people, but only read the headlines. However, it is a particular turn of mind that endows a tiny cabal with fantastical powers to control every major facet of world society. Historian Richard Hofstadter described this mind in his famous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. It is a style, he admits, which is found elsewhere and which stretches back far in time. It is not limited to those with disturbed minds, but rather expresses itself broadly, especially in societies under stress. And, it is not confined to those who lack intelligence for many very bright people succumb to it. It continually finds new venues for manifesting itself. And so, with oil prices rising in recent years and now reaching all-time highs, one of those new venues is peak oil. (It's worth noting that few were puzzling over such grand oil-related conspiracies when oil hit $10 a barrel in 1999.)

Peak oil conspiracies as outlined on the Internet range from the collaboration of greedy oil companies seeking to maximize their profits to a grand conspiracy of the secret illuminati to impoverish the common people and possibly solve the overpopulation problem by starving much of the world of food and fuel. It is not my purpose here to refute such theories point by point, but rather to show how they fit into the historical pattern outlined by Hofstadter.

One of the characteristics of the modern-day paranoid style is that it believes society has been seized from average folk who must now mount a campaign to take it back "to prevent the final destructive act of subversion" as Hofstadter puts it. (Hofstadter was thinking of the contemporary right of 1964 when the essay appeared, but believed the formula could be applied to any such group.) To quote from The Myth of Peak Oil already cited above:

Publicly available CFR [presumably the Council on Foreign Relations] and Club of Rome strategy manuals from 30 years ago say that a global government needs to control the world population through neo-feudalism by creating artificial scarcity. Now that the social architects have de-industrialized the United States, they are going to blame our economic disintegration on lack of energy supplies.

So we are counseled that unnamed "social architects" have first deindustrialized the United States and now intend to starve the excess population using peak oil as a cover. (It is a puzzle why "global government" would feel it necessary to starve people if the world is awash in resources since this would crash the very economy that gives them and their supporters wealth and power; it's also a puzzle why they would wait 30 years to start doing it if it were really that necessary to their plan--but I promised not to try to parse the logic of such screeds, didn't I?)

Here is a more mild version from Peak Oil is Snake Oil!:

The oil and gas market as currently construed and managed is a manipulated and propagandized marketplace that has enriched the oil companies beyond the wildest dreams of Croesus while the rest of the nation absorbs the ancillary costs and is left to deal with their impact on our society.

I do not here intend to defend the world's oil companies. They are guilty of many misdeeds, and there is credible evidence that they have on occasion tried to use their market power to manipulate prices, especially in the refining market. The point I want to make is that the paranoid style in this case seems to have reverted to an older style described by Hofstadter in which vague, shadowy villains lurk in the background. Here all oil companies are lumped together leaving out the important distinctions between the gargantuan government-owned enterprises that are mostly part of OPEC and therefore explicitly seek to manipulate prices, the publicly traded international oil companies, and the small independents. The authors of The Myth of Peak Oil also refer to "the elite" (who seem to be associated with the CFR or the Club of Rome) as well as "the oil industry," but never go further than this in detailing who is included in the peak oil conspiracy business.

A third characteristic made clear from the examples above is that the danger does not come from without so much as within. It is the product not of an attack, but of a betrayal. The villains are not invading our country; they are already in place.

A fourth element of the supposed conspiracy is that many agents for the conspirators are hard at work. In this case these agents are planting stories about peak oil to keep the public supine while their money or even their lives are taken. The agents include nonprofit organizations such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas and other peak oil groups; the International Monetary Fund; vague "establishment-run fake left activist groups;" and even Rolling Stone Magazine for an article it published by James Howard Kunstler adapted from his book, The Long Emergency.

A fifth element is what Hofstadter refers to as the renegade. These are people who have once been part of the conspiracy in some way but have now seen the light. A recent example is a piece entitled Confessions of an "ex" Peak Oil Believer. The author explains his turnabout as follows:

Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist.

Such revelations give supposed "inside" confirmation of the conspiracy to a skeptical world. And, the conversions themselves provide examples of a path to redemption, an essential feature of conspiracy narratives.

The sixth element is the paranoid style's obsessive concern for evidence. Hofstadter describes it as follows:

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates "evidence." The difference between this "evidence" and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it.

Perhaps not all who engage in this style do so without expecting to change many minds. But these advocates do often marshal considerable selective evidence which on its face can sound quite convincing. What could be more convincing that peak oil is a fraud than the notion that the Earth is filled with endless amounts of oil deep down (so-called abiotic oil), that Russian scientists have proved this, and that this is the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't want Russian oil companies to fall into Western hands. The West would have acquired technology and know-how that, if kept secret, will make Russia the world's pre-eminent oil power for a century to come.

I will add a seventh element of my own. The peak oil conspiracy theorists can only think in terms of the social world, not the natural world. In this regard they are cornucopians. Therefore, agency must come from the social world. Someone is responsible for what is happening, not something. It is simply not possible that the world is really nearing a peak in oil production. Someone is only making it appear so.

Hofstadter goes on to tell us:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization.

Perhaps some in the peak oil movement believe we are faced with something similarly apocalyptic. But this apocalypticism is derived not from fears about a giant conspiracy, but rather from the evidence of geological constraints.

I have yet to see a plan of action spelled out by the peak oil conspiracy theorists. Hofstadter sheds some light on why. Those caught up in the paranoid style tend to live outside the give and take of the political process. They regard themselves as having been excluded from it and therefore powerless. I would add that from their position outside the political struggle they conjure up a politics that is merely a forum for conspiracy at the top and delusion among the masses. Since the process itself cannot be trusted, there is no real way to bring one's grievances into the political arena and seek some kind of resolution.

This, however, may be a saving grace. For all the irritation that the peak oil conspiracy theorists may cause those in the peak oil movement, I do not believe the vast majority of these conspiracy theorists will ever leave behind their passivity and actually do something. But unfortunately, they add to the dead weight of inertia that keeps many others from taking the peak oil threat seriously.

Links:

* Mankato Free Press - Nobel conference to focus on energy
* PhysOrg - Nanotech could make solar energy as easy and cheap as growing grass. Some biomimicry research at CalTech.
* New York Times - They’re Electric, but Can They Be Fantastic?
* Clean Break - Interesting ethanol factoid from the WSJ
* The Age - Paying dearly to hear Gore's climate story
* Karavans - Carnival of the Green #96
* The Australian - Chinese approaches for Oil Search
* The Australian - Gulf states take control of LSE. If we weren't dependent on middle east oil, the US wouldn't be going bankrupt trying to control it, and the Arab states wouldn't be buying up large chunks of important Western companies. Maybe the plan is for some of the neoconservative elite to decamp to Dubai (following the example of Halliburton) and leave the rest of us in the lurch...
* SMH - Iraqi sovereignty challenged: Iraq's PM
* Washington Post - For China's Censors, Electronic Offenders Are the New Frontier. "The Public Security Ministry, which monitors the Internet under guidance from the Central Propaganda Department, has recruited an estimated 30,000 people to snoop on electronic communications. The ministry recently introduced two cartoon characters -- a male and female in police uniforms -- that it said would pop up on computer screens occasionally to remind people that their activity is being tracked."
* Newsweek - Terror Watch: A Secret lobbying Campaign
* APEM - New York Mayor’s Worst Nightmare
* Alex Jones Show - Greg Palast on The Alex Jones Report. One from last year. While I'm very dubious about Jones, by and large I think Palast knows what he is talking about.
* Infinite Energy - Extra Dimensional Power ?. A wildly improbable theory about "cold fusion".
* Bay Insider - CDC Requests Bay Area Morgellons Study. One for fans of chemtrails theories.