But as I read through it, I found many holes in his arguments, use of questionable data, and errors in describing what others have said — most of this centered around his discussion of ideas of peak oil. And then he repeated these problems in the Wall Street Journal, kicking off promotion of his book with an article titled “There Will Be Oil,” in which he tries to deflate fears about peak oil.

So I’ve written a series of posts — five so far — detailing the problems with Yergin’s arguments.

Below I sum up my series of posts, and they’re available in full on my site. But first I’ll give a brief background on the idea of peak oil.

The idea of peak oil is that oil production can’t keep going up and up forever. The most basic reason is that our planet is finite. Even if it were a giant oil-filled bon-bon, if consumption kept growing and growing at the kinds of rates we’ve seen in the 20th century, then we’d use up all that oil in less than a millennium. If we drilled as many wells and pumped as much oil as we could, still the production would tend to reach a maximum output, and then would gradually decline from there.

It’s kind of like Usain Bolt‘s ability to run over the course of his life. At first, he couldn’t even crawl. Then he learned to run across a room. Now, at age 25, he’s the fastest man alive — but he won’t be able to keep running that fast forever. He’ll get old, have some injuries, and gradually slow down. Right now, though, he’s still at his peak, and is amazing.

Most conceptions of peak oil describe it as something that is forced on us, that happens despite our wishes. It is possible that we would choose to not burn a lot of oil and leave it in the ground — and that could also result in a peak and decline of oil as well. But there seems to be little sign that we’re going to do that.

So for those who argue against peak oil — and there are many — it seems they only have two other options: that we’ll choose to give up on oil before it gives up on us, or that we’ll colonize other planets and use their oil. But as long as we’re stuck on Earth and addicted to oil, then it seems that we’ll have to deal with peak oil. (Energy Bulletin has a more detailed but still understandable primer on peak oil.)

So if peak oil is basically unescapable, the big question is: When will we reach this turning point?

The most famous peak oil forecaster was M. King Hubbert, a geologist who worked for Shell Oil and the U.S. Geological Survey, and who predicted that U.S. oil production would reach its peak around 1965 or 1970. When production did peak in 1970, and start a long decline, then, as Yergin writes in The Quest, “Hubbert appeared more than vindicated.”

Why only “appeared”? Because, Yergin argues, Hubbert’s forecast for U.S. oil production over the longer term was off, and the country now produces about four times as much as Hubbert had forecast for 2010.

But Yergin is splitting hairs, as a graph from Yergin’s own company, IHS CERA, makes clear. It shows Hubbert’s forecast compared with actual production. Although neither Yergin’s book nor CERA’s report want to give Hubbert much credit, it seems to me Hubbert got the overall shape of things remarkably right. I cover this in more detail in my first part of the series, “Peak Oil Projection Was Far Off?“

To try to explain why Hubbert’s forecast — and those of his successors — was (supposedly) far off the mark, Yergin attacks their forecasting methods. The problem is, he completely misrepresents what they were doing.

In The Quest, Yergin writes: “Hubbert used a statistical approach to project the decline curve that one might encounter in some — but not all — oil fields, and then assume that the United States is one giant oil field.”

If this is what he actually did, it would be worthy of ridicule — but it’s not the approach Hubbert actually took. Yergin’s explanation is so far off the mark it suggests he never read the paper he cites — or if he did, perhaps it was a long time ago and he only remembers a caricature of it.

In his 1956 talk, Hubbert never discussed the peak and decline of individual oil fields. His idea, instead, was that the production from a large area — such as the U.S. — was the sum of a whole bunch of oil fields, and their ups and downs would tend to average out, giving you a smooth curve. The simplest kind of curve for trying to represent this, he thought, was a bell-shaped curve.

More on all this at my second post, “One Giant Oil Field?“

Then Yergin marshals evidence to argue that there is plenty of oil, saying that we are finding oil faster than we’ve been using it in recent years.

It appears that Yergin is drawing data from the widely used Statistical Review of World Energy, assembled every year by oil giant BP. But the figures they have for “proved reserves” — the oil fields that are already producing or are “on deck,” ready to come online soon — are questionable for many of the world’s biggest producers.

In particular, the numbers for OPEC countries in the Middle East — like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, and others — appear, to put it nicely, magical. Despite collectively producing a couple dozen billion barrels of oil each year, Middle East countries’ reserves, as listed in the BP report, barely budge most years. And when they do change, they always go up, never down. It’s as if a huge corporation got audited and claimed that their bank account was always exactly $572 million dollars, and never changed. It’s not realistic.

What’s more, during the time period Yergin chooses to emphasize — 2007 to 2009 — Canada and Venezuela put huge tar sands and heavy oil deposits on their books. By adding these low-quality sources, they more than doubled their proved reserves in a very short time. But it seems they won’t be able to keep adding more oil to their books at this kind of rate in the future, continuing to double and double their reserves. From 2009 to 2010, their reserves stayed exactly the same.

Why doesn’t Yergin include 2010? Or the decades before 2007? For a historian, his outlook is surprisingly short-term.

To see what more realistic figures would be — from IHS, the company Yergin works for — see my full post, “We’re Finding Oil Faster Than We’re Using It?” Spoiler: We’re using oil faster than we’re finding it, and it’s been that way for a while.

One of Yergin’s favorite arguments, it seems, is that experts have predicted peak oil many times before, and they’ve always been wrong. As Yergin writes, “This is actually the fifth time in modern history that we’ve seen widespread fear that the wor
ld was running out of oil.”

Of course, it’s a logical fallacy to say that because something didn’t happen before, it won’t happen in the future. But Yergin has repeated this argument so many times that it seems he thinks he has a real winner.

The problem is, because oil production unfolds over decades, the biggest pessimists have to be proved wrong first. It’s just simple logic. The biggest optimists, on the other hand, get to enjoy not being proved wrong for a long time — until after we pass peak oil. But just because the optimists haven’t been proved wrong yet, it doesn’t follow that they’re correct.

Also, Yergin mentions only the pessimists who turned out to be wrong, and neglects to point out there were others who were wrong because they were too optimistic. For U.S. oil, there were plenty of those optimists in the 1960s and ’70s, and I’m sure Yergin is aware of them. In the 1970s, one of the biggest sources of oil optimism was the National Petroleum Council — which Yergin is a member of today.

More on all this at my fourth post, “Only the Pessimists Have Been Wrong?“

Finally, Yergin repeatedly equates “peak oil” with “running out of oil” — as if the idea is that the wells will run dry in the next decade or something equally apocalyptic.

But the idea is actually that production will gradually peter out over many decades. In the simplest picture of peak oil, the decline phase lasts as long as the growth phase — so, the forecast says, the decline of world oil would be stretched out over more than a century.

I cover that in more detail in the fifth post, “Peak Oil = Running Out of Oil?“

What’s funny about this — or sad, depending on your mood — is that Yergin actually foresees a peak and decline in oil production, too. It’s just that he sees the peak coming decades away, around mid-century, and thinks that there will be a long plateau before the decline begins. But he gives little data to back up his peak oil forecast, or to argue that it is better than the others. It seems he just wants us to take his word for it. And, so far, it seems the world has been.

As Japan’s nuclear disaster stretched into its second week, traces of radiation from the stricken power plants showed up in several U.S. states, and as far away as Iceland.

With the reactors and uranium fuel rods still proving difficult to bring under control, the disaster could be the ”death knell” for nuclear power, some analysts said. Countries around the world — from China to Germany — are taking a closer look at their nuclear plants and plans, while the U.S. intends to complete an initial review of its reactors within three months. Some are still arguing publicly for more nuclear, such as European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and veteran environmental journalist George Monbiot, who wrote the disaster changed his mind and made him pro-nuclear.

Despite the radiation now spread across Japan, New Scientist points out fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power — mainly because of air pollution.

On thin ice: As the planet has continued heating up, the Arctic ice cap has been shrinking — but not in any straightforward, linear fashion. Scientists have been keeping a close eye on two key features: how big the Arctic sea ice cover is at its minimum in the summer and at its maximum in the winter. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has released its latest numbers on the Arctic sea ice, finding it’s tied with 2005 for the lowest on record. As the Arctic thaws, the U.S. Navy should prepare for a military struggle near the North Pole, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warned.

CO2 court: In the absence of national regulations for greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., states are taking regulation matters into their own hands. Louisiana recently became the first to issue greenhouse-gas permits. Six states, and the city of New York, have banded together to sue power companies over their carbon dioxide emissions on the grounds they’re a public nuisance. The governments have filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, and will present their arguments to the court in April.

California’s long-standing attempt to create a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases suffered a setback when a judge ruled the state must do more studies on alternatives. The decision was triggered by a suit from environmental justice advocates, who said the system would ignore the needs of people who live near polluters.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said, while campaigning last year, he wanted to build the “greenest government ever.” To move toward that goal, the government has just tripled the funding for its new Green Investment Bank — which is aimed at funding renewable energy and clean technologies — to 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion). Getting the bank up and running is, The Guardian reported, the government’s “biggest environmental test.”

The U.K.’s Carbon Trust, a government-backed company that advises businesses on cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions, had its funding slashed earlier this year — but now it is aiming for a big expansion in its business in the U.S.

Pain at the pump continues: With ongoing conflict in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East, oil prices have remained above $100 a barrel. Republicans have blamed Democrats for high prices at the pump. But gasoline prices in the U.S. are closely tied to global oil prices, as Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) pointed out in a hearing, so Grist’s David Roberts praised him as the only politician speaking truth about gas prices.

Another reason to hate spam: The world’s biggest botnet — or network of hijacked computers — was taken down recently, cutting the global amount of spam emails by 39 percent. Not only may this have gotten rid of a lot of annoying emails for Viagra and even bogus climate change conference invites, but according to McAfee, this measure also took a big chunk out of spam’s sizeable carbon footprint.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Japan’s been through a lot in just one week.Photo: Matthew Bradley

Two of the six reactors in the complex appear to have suffered partial meltdowns, releasing large amounts of radioactivity. This makes the disaster far worse than the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, but not as bad as Chernobyl in 1986.

As radiation climbs to “extremely high“ levels just 50 workers remain. The release of radiation could worsen again, as the uranium fuel rods may restart their nuclear chain reactions, spreading more radiation.

Nearly 200,000 people were evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear plant, and the humanitarian crisis continued; many parts of Japan still lack power and access to food has been difficult. As winds shifted to blow some of the radiation south, toward the capital of Tokyo, Japan’s prime minister warned those living within 20 miles of the plant to stay indoors. But the U.S. government warned Americans in Japan to stay much farther away from the nuclear site, as did other foreign nationals, with Austria moving its embassy from Tokyo to the southern city of Osaka.

Early warnings: According to a diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the International Atomic Energy Agency had warned Japan more than two years ago its safety measures were out of date, and that strong earthquakes would pose “serious problems” for their nuclear reactors. But Japan has had “an unfortunate track record of downplaying or concealing mishaps,” according to the think tank Chatham House. As early as 1972, regulators were warned about apparent flaws in the design of the reactors in Japan — the Mark 1 model.

Global warming link?: Although nuclear power has been touted as a source of electricity that contributes little to global warming, now any kind of nuclear renaissance will face much higher hurdles, according to several analysts. Already, the disaster has given a boost to renewable energy, The Guardian reports.

Within a few hours of the earthquake, a few people were posting on Twitter that the temblor seemed linked to global warming, but The Gazette says such an effect is unlikely to be connected to Japan’s quake. To try to counter misconceptions and rumors, many news sites are providing backgrounders, including a map of all the world’s nuclear power plants, explanations of what happens in a meltdown, answers to common questions about the quake and its aftermath, and a rebuttal of five myths about nuclear power. The New York Times also has pages giving the latest status of all six reactors in the complex, and a forecast of a plume of radioactivity, predicted to waft across to America’s Pacific coast by Friday.

World’s nuclear course shifting: “U.S. nuclear facilities remain safe,” said Gregory Jaczko, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair, in his congressional testimony — although 23 reactors in the country use the Mark 1 design that failed in Japan.

Other countries have vowed to swiftly change their nuclear course. Following protests by more than 100,000 anti-nuclear activists across Germany, the country plans to shut down seven of its oldest nuclear plants. Since nuclear supplies about a quarter of Germany’s electricity, the sudden change in direction may cause Germany to miss targets for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Several other European countries have called for nuclear power reviews, shut-downs, or delays. However, the world’s moprst nuclear-reliant country, France, stood by its nuclear industry, while ordering safety reviews of all 58 of their reactors.

Some other countries have remained firm in their commitment to expanding nuclear power, such as Russia. Meanwhile, mixed signals have come from Chinese sources, with The New York Times reporting China is slowing its planned nuclear expansion. Chile’s president insisted on signing a nuclear accord with President Obama during a meeting planned for next week.

Food fight in congressional cafeteria: Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., the new Congress has been beating back some of the changes put in place recently — including in the cafeteria. Four years ago, Nancy Pelosi, then House speaker, had put in place many changes to cut Congress’s carbon footprint, including biodegradable utensils and trays made from corn. Now Republicans have reversed these measures, bringing back styrofoam cups and, as the new speaker’s press secretary put it in a tweet, “The new majority – plasticware is back.”

Back in the halls of Congress, a committee passed a bill to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. Before it passed the committee, two Democrats tried to add an amendment to recognize global warming is real, and people are causing it — but Republicans rejected the addition. So another, more conservative Democrat added another amendment that said climate change is real – but avoided blaming people – and that did win enough votes to get added.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

This picture is out of date. The race begun long ago, but the guy on the right is still pacing around trying to decide whether he should start.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Congress, hearings continued about a bill to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment — specifically, “from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes.” As Science showed in its live blogging of the bill’s most recent hearing, it centered not on policies, but on the science of climate change.

In China, though, the leaders appear to be taking climate change increasingly seriously. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development,” wrote China’s environment minister late last month. This week, China unveiled its latest five-year plan, with ambitious goals for boosting energy efficiency and the share of energy from sources other than fossil fuels — while also aiming for slower economic growth than in years past. But fossil fuels still loom large: “Oil security is the most important part of achieving energy security,” said China’s longtime former energy czar, Zhang Guobao.

Energy crunch seen on European highways: In a move reminiscent of the 1970s energy crises that limited drivers to speeds of 55 miles per hour to conserve energy, Spain has lowered its speed limit from 120 to 110-kilometers an hour. (That’s 75 to 68 mph for us Americans.) Environmental writer George Monbiot indicates the U.K. should follow suit, since “the era of cheap and easy oil is long gone.”

In the past week, oil prices climbed still higher, as fierce fights continued in Libya, with Muammar Gaddafi’s forces making air raids on the eastern city of Ras Lanuf, setting ablaze its oil facility. To comply with U.S. sanctions, Exxon stopped its trade with Libya.

At a major oil meeting in Houston, several industry leaders tried to dispel fears of a global drop in oil production. However, at the meeting, the CEO of Kuwait Energy Co., Sara Akbar, said the protests and fighting are unlikely to end soon. “This bug that is growing in the air is very contagious, and everyone is getting it,” Akbar said.

Soaring gas prices: here to stay?: Get used to gas station owners putting up signs replacing the usual prices for various grades of gas with: “ARM, LEG, BOTH.” The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) said high oil prices are here to stay — at least for this year. They revised upward the predicted prices for the year, saying oil would average $3.70 a gallon at the pump, and $102 a barrel on the world market. If true, that would be an all-time high for the average annual price, breaking the record set in 2008.

These high prices spurred several Democrats to call for the White House to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant for big emergencies. The reserves are stored largely in underground salt caverns, a LiveScience primer explains. According to EIA statistics, the reserve’s roughly 727 million barrels of oil are the equivalent of only two months of U.S. oil imports.

Warnings came from many corners that high oil prices could stall the global economic recovery. But The Hill reports some U.S. senators hope the high oil prices will revive a bipartisan energy bill “gang,” which in 2008 aimed to boost U.S. oil production and spur development of clean energy.

Meanwhile, Europe and Australia forged ahead with plans to battle climate change and dependence on fossil fuels. The European Union’s climate change commissioner published a long-awaited roadmap for how the member countries could cut emissions cost-effectively, calling for a 25 percent cut (that’s below 1990 levels) by 2020. But the European Union looks likely to miss targets for improving energy efficiency — one of the main ways of cutting emissions. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard has vowed to push ahead with plans to put a price on carbon emissions.

Climate-sensing satellite takes dive for NASA … again: A NASA satellite named Glory failed in its launch and fell into the Pacific Ocean, which spelled the end of the $424-million project. One of its main tasks would have been monitoring aerosols — tiny droplets in the atmosphere — to determine their effect on the Earth’s climate. In 2009, another climate-sensing satellite riding on the same type of rocket, called a Taurus XL, met the same fate, due to the identical problem: a door on the side of the rocket failed to open and release the satellite.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

“Maybe climate change is a hoax, but my company is going to reduce its footprint anyway.”Photo: World Economic Forum

It’s no small feat for the huge company, which also owns the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. On the site for the company’s Global Energy Initiative, Murdoch never utters the words “climate change” or “global warming,” but he says: “we have become carbon neutral across all of our global operations and we are the first company of our kind to do so.” Their next goal: cutting their absolute emissions by 15 percent by 2015.

One of News Corp’s energy-saving measures was lighting retrofits — but one Republican representative thinks this is a bad move. Michele Bachmann, representing Minnesota in the U.S. House, introduced (again) her “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” meant to block the mandated phase-out of incandescent bulbs. Bachmann argues the mercury in the bulbs is harmful to the environment, and that it’s unproven whether low-energy bulbs actually cut power use.

Terminator urges revolution: Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered some memorable lines at the meeting of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy. The former on-screen action hero called for an end to debates over climate science, and a focus on the benefits of clean energy technologies. Like Tunisia’s revolutionaries, he called for Americans to “overturn the old energy order.”

Also at the meeting, the secretary of the Navy announced his branch of the armed forces plans to partner with ARPA-E on energy storage and electrical systems for ships, part of the “Great Green Fleet” effort to get half the Navy’s energy, by 2020, from sources other than fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, debates over climate science grind on — especially in Tennessee. The state’s House of Representatives debated a bill that would push teachers to “teach the controversy” on global warming, as well as on “biological evolution” and “human cloning.” Mother Jones reports that over the past few years, creationists and global warming deniers have been joining forces.

Groundbreaking with fracking: Meanwhile, efforts to produce more fossil fuels have been earth-shattering, literally. In the past few years, it’s become far more common to use an old method known as hydrofracturing, or “fracking,” in which fluid is forced into wells, which then opens up cracks underground to release more oil or natural gas. But this is causing a lot of side effects, with apparent links to a swarm of earthquakes in Arkansas, including their strongest in 35 years. The wastewater from fracking can also pick up carcinogens and radioactivity naturally occurring down deep, yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has failed to crack down on the dumping of wastes into rivers, The New York Times reports. Even when the waste water is being recycled, health and environmental risks remain.

Protests in Texas and Detroit against a proposed pipeline could stymie another fossil fuel project. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry “dilbit” — diluted bitumen, a thick, sticky form of oil mined from Canada’s tar sands – south to the Gulf coast near Houston, crossing a dozen states. A report earlier this month, sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, warned pipelines carrying dilbit are far more likely to leak, which has worried residents in the pipeline’s proposed path.

One key project aimed at cleaning up fossil fuels has avoided cries of “not in my backyard,” at least for now. The FutureGen project — aimed at capturing carbon dioxide from a coal power plant’s exhaust and storing it underground, and which has had its federal funding flicker on and off — has now found a home for its CO2 underneath Morgan County, Ill.

With oil prices surging another $5 a barrel higher — in the ”danger zone” for the global economy, according to Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s chief economist — renewables are becoming more competitive. However, this isn’t always in the way treehuggers would hope, as a new project in California illustrates. There, the sun’s energy will be put to use to boil water, and the steam will pumped underground to loosen up thick, heavy oil that otherwise would remain stuck underground.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Will Gaddafi sabotage Libya’s oil pipelines to spite protesters?Photo: Crethi Plethi

Libya is a significant oil exporter, and the first member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to experience significant protests in recent months. The developments have roiled the oil markets, driving the price above $110 a barrel — the highest since the bubble-inflated peak burst in July 2008, after spiking to nearly $150 a barrel. It could spike as high as $220 a barrel, a Japanese bank warned.

Some of the major oil companies exporting from Libya stopped operation, and an Italian company shut down its gas pipeline out of Libya. An ex-CIA field officer and Times’ intelligence columnist reports Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may soon sabotage his country’s oil pipelines. Although Libya’s production is only about 2 percent of the world total, it’s high quality, making it difficult to quickly replace.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), set up by the world’s industrialized countries in the wake of the 1970s energy crises, is keeping an eye on the disruption in Libya. The agency said OPEC can boost production to offset losses from Libya — but the IEA may still recommend member countries tap their strategic reserves. Nonetheless, if the unrest spreads further, prices at U.S. pumps could reach $5 a gallon.

Magic 8 ball says climate outlook not so good: Quitting oil would be an enormous task, taking decades — but the world could make big strides toward this goal by mid-century, according to a new United Nations report, “Towards a Green Economy.” The plan involves investing about 2 percent of global GDP per year, but over the long run would achieve higher growth than business-as-usual, the study estimates.

Europe, too, could gain jobs and boost its GDP by adopting tougher climate regulations. Such local and regional efforts may have to bear the burden in fighting climate change, since a global deal on climate change is “not on the cards” for this year, said Todd Stern, America’s lead climate negotiator.

Stern added that in the meantime, countries that emit the most should adopt their own climate goals.

In the U.S., state-level measures have so far led the way — but with a change in the political climate after the latest elections, some of these efforts are under fire. In New Hampshire, the state House voted overwhelmingly to pull out of a 10-state agreement to regulate power plants.

The U.S. House passed a bill with an amendment to block federal funding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which (as you know) won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for its efforts to build a worldwide consensus that global warming is happening, and people are the main cause of it. Direct federal funding for the IPCC is $13 million a year, the amendment’s author claimed — but even that paltry amount may have been dramatically overstated.

Coming soon to a charging station near you: Many local efforts are supporting the rise of electric cars, with roll-outs of charging stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Even Russia is planning to start selling a locally made hybrid electric car next year.

The Obama administration’s proposed 2012 budget, now before Congress, would nearly double the funding for electric cars, boosting the outlay for roll-out of electric vehicles to $229 million. To put numbers like this in perspective, a NASA analyst, in his spare time, put together a tool charting how federal budgets have been spent, going all the way back to 1962.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy is making a case for its cutting-edge research sector, ARPA-E, which would get big boost under Obama’s proposed budget. Arnold Schwarzenegger will bring his swagger to the cause as well, with a keynote speech at ARPA-E’s annual conference.

Khazzoom!: With oil prices on the rise, alternative energy sources and efficiency are becoming increasingly attractive. In addition to the electric cars already mentioned, UPS is adding a fleet of trucks fueled by liquefied natural gas. (Full disclosure: When I lived in Pakistan recently, my car ran on compressed natural gas, cutting my carbon footprint, mile-for-mile, by half compared with gasoline).

Shipping giant Maersk ordered 10 new “mega containers” — the largest ships ever made — which will make shipping more efficient, thus cutting emissions. But this efficiency gain may be canceled out: Science says a warming world could make shipping less efficient, as barnacles and other creatures that cling to ships grow faster in warmer seas.

A new Breakthrough Institute report states, increased efficiency may actually boost energy use in many ways — known as the “rebound effect,” or by the flashier “Khazzoom-Brookes postulate.” Efficiency expert Joe Romm aims to debunk the Breakthrough Institute report, emphasizing that well-designed efforts to boost efficiency can make real cuts in energy use.

Other ways to fight global warming, rather than tackling CO2 head-on, also got a boost. A new study from the U.N. indicates cutting soot and ozone are the quickest ways to fight warming in the short term.

In the trenches: Libya is not the only place facing revolt. In Marin County, locals are blockading trucks and opposing mandatory installation of smart meters meant to help monitor and control the use of electricity.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

The president gives a preview of his budget in his weekly address.

(Meanwhile, a House bill called the Ending Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act would go much farther, targeting $40 billion in big oil tax breaks. It seems no one is sure, even roughly, how much fossil fuel tax breaks amount to.)

If the budget is approved, the extra revenue from ending these tax breaks would help pay for proposed boosts elsewhere. Overall, the U.S. Department of Energy budget would rise 12 percent to $29.5 billion. The budget for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, dedicated to funding cutting-edge technologies, would jump from $398 million to $550 million.

Another winner would be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with boosts in funding for more satellites to keep an eye on the planet and upgrade the fledgling National Climate Service so it’s on par with the National Weather Service.

Hydrogen comes in as the big loser. Its boosters may be stung by the proposed 40 percent cut in research on hydrogen; the administration argued the money is better spent on other technology that may reach scale much sooner.

In case all these “millions” and “billions” give your eyes an unhealthy glaze, this chart puts the proposals for various areas of research and development in perspective. Even with boosts for the energy sector, defense research still takes more than half the cake.

But even before the budget was released, Republicans in Congress vowed to fight it. House Republicans proposed chopping NOAA’s budget by nearly a quarter. Other party members have proposed shifting NASA’s focus back to a bygone era, with less earth science and more rockets.

It’s not just America where budget woes may stymie climate efforts. In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron is continuing his “bonfire of the quangos,” referring to quasi-governmental groups set up to advise government. Many of them may face the ax — including some set up to fight climate change. Meanwhile, the Carbon Trust, the government’s main agency dedicated to cutting carbon emissions, has had its own funding cut by 40 percent.

Foodpocalypse? Meanwhile, the mercury keeps rising. In January, America looked from space like a giant snow globe, with a snowpocalypse swamping the eastern United States. But, climate change deniers be damned, globally January was actually the 17th-warmest on record, according to new data from NOAA.

The ongoing warming may be hampering harvests, with dramatic knock-on effects. Fires raged across Russia last summer, and monsoon floods pummeled Pakistan and Australia — all of which may have been made more likely by climate change. Finding the fingerprint of climate change on such events has been difficult, however — but two new studies find climate change has intensified rainfall, making heavy downpours much more likely.

Coming “climate chaos” could cause falling crop yields, mass migrations and defense nightmares, the U.N.’s top climate official said in a speech at Spain’s national defense college. Food prices have reached a 20-year high, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization announced earlier this month. High food prices fall hardest on the poor, and helped trigger the protests in Tunisia that toppled the country’s repressive government, shares Paul Krugman.

With growing turmoil across the Middle East, including Yemen, Egypt, and Iran, other contributing factors have come up as well — such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mention of water shortages and dwindling oil production putting the squeeze on many countries.

PetroLeaks: Worries about dwindling oil supplies were stoked by WikiLeaks’ release of four cables from the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, in which a former senior Saudi oilman said his country had hugely exaggerated its reserves. If new oil is truly getting much harder to find, it would explain a number of developments. Exxon, the world’s biggest private oil company, has fallen behind, not finding enough oil to keep up with its production. Shell also came out with gloomy scenarios for future oil supplies.

It appears catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon spill are capable of opening all sorts of rifts: A conflict over proceeds from a technology that assisted in cleaning up the Gulf oil spill has pitted two actors against each other, with Stephen Baldwin suing Kevin Costner.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.