Recently, George Monbiot has been getting more vocal about Anthropogenic Climate Change. However, recently he seems to have picked up on the Peak Oil agenda, when he interviewed Fatih Birol of the IEA.

Now, when I was reading this, I thought it was interesting for him to ‘come onboard the Peak Oil Wagon’, as it were. However, something was nagging me and some of the comments to this Guardian posted reminded me what it was.

A poster in comments, with the handle of ‘Upstanding’ wrote:

It’s good to see you on board at last George. Many in the oil industry (never reaching as far as the board, of course) have been warning about this for many, many years.

Then somebody claiming to be Monbiot in his handle then wrote:

Upstanding:
at last?:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/12/02/the-bottom-of-the-barrel/

OK, so Monbiot has talked about Peak Oil before, fair enough.

But then ‘Upstanding’ then pointed out:

10 Apr 2007, George Monbiot on Peak Oil and Transition Towns.
There’s some supplementary stuff which Id just like to run through quickly. Over the past two or three years or so, Ive become pretty sure that peak oil isnt as imminent as I first thought. There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, there are some very large unexplored areas, north-west Saudi Arabia, most of Siberia, we can go into that in greater depth if you like during the discussion.

Secondly, quite recently there have been various innovations for enhancing the amount of oil removed from existing oil fields, particularly something called Enhanced Oil Recovery, which uses carbon dioxide that becomes super-critical at 800 metres down and is used to drive the dregs of the oil fields out. Also there is horizontal drilling, there is deep drilling, it is not going to happen as soon as Kenneth Deffeyes and Colin Campbell and one or two others say, Im pretty much convinced of that.
http://transitionculture.org/2007/04/10/george-monbiot-on-peak-oil-and-transition-towns/

Dohhh!!!!

As ‘Tommacg’ said in his comment:

‘Upstanding’.
If the IEA can make such a huge leap in opinion in the course of a year, then Monbiot can too. He doesn’t have the resources to survey 800 oil fields, so therefore is more likely to flipflop like this….

And talking of flipflop-ing

Just how much do we trust the IEA. A lot of ‘PeakNiks’ think our governments shouldn’t be.
There was another interesting article in the Guardian yesterday, Oil today, gone tomorrow.

Overall, the steep fall in petroleum prices since July has discouraged oil companies from investing in exploration and production in inhospitable parts of the globe, such as the arctic zone or deep seas, which are now the only unexplored areas left with potential hydrocarbon riches. The output of the existing oilfields is falling at an accelerating rate, according to the annual World Energy Outlook reports by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Its 2007 report put the rate of decline at 3.7%. Its 2008 document showed the rate at 6.7%. If deterioration continues at this rate, uninterrupted, the present oilfields will be exhausted in 15 years. When asked to explain the rapid deterioration in the yield of oilfields, the IAE’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, said: “It [the 2007 figure] was mainly an assumption, a global assumption about the world’s oilfields. This year, we looked at it country by country, field by field, and we looked at it also onshore and offshore.”

Right, lets get this straight. Up until now, the IEA has basically been metaphorically shoving it’s finger in the air and taking a stab at what it thinks the depletion rate is. Only this year, it’s decided it should actually measure something to come up with a figure. Jesus Christ!!! Our governments have been using the IEA as their guidance on energy strategy. Lord help us. (and now, I have not gone all religious on you, just needed to find the right words to express myself :) )

Meanwhile, the Saudis….

…have decided that they are now interested in Renewables. Hmmm, wonder why.