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The NY Times does peak oil

Peak oil made what might be described as its MSM debut today, and in dramatic fashion, as the cover story in the New York Times Magazine. Weighing in at just about 9,000 words, the article by Peter Maass qualifies as a quick read just about as much as it qualifies as uplifting.

After describing some of the effects of peak oil on life as we know it, Maass then asks: "But will such a situation really come to pass?" (Collective sigh.)

Like it or not, Maass says, Saudi Arabia is the key to the if and when of peak oil. It's difficult to read the article and not be, among other things, a little miffed about the practices of Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC, between the vague numbers about output and reserves and the outright refusal to be audited. Matt Simmons, the peak oil "Cassandra" of the article, is frustrated as well -- if the Saudis issued the necessary data, he says:

It would then take anybody less than a week to say, "Gosh, Matt is totally wrong," or "Matt actually might be too optimistic."

For better or worse, Maass presents both sides of the story throughout the article, leading off the final section with, "So whom to believe?" After citing a US DOE report [PDF] that claims peak oil will be "abrupt and revolutionary," the article states (in the very next sentence) that "most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of peak oil." Maass does, however, conclude by saying:

When a crisis comes -- whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.

For more on "PO," check out Dave's post handicapping the Hamilton v. Kaufmann, free-market v. intervention discussion.

Mooney and Pielke

The internet has been described as a conversation. I have never seen a better example.

Featuring Chris Mooney and Robert Pielke Jr., with cameo appearances from Jamais Cascio and Jonathan H. Adler.

Gentlemen, start your laptops. The prompt is: "Science = Liberalism?" ... go!

Makower on Marketplace

Joel Makower, author of the blog Two Steps Forward, makes an appearance (so to speak) on tonight's edition of NPR's Marketplace. The topic? Green energy as the next big thing for investors -- and not because it helps out the photogenic megafauna. Check it out.

[editor's note, by Dave Roberts] Special blog-only breaking news/sneak preview! Makower fans -- and who among us doesn't fit that description? -- will be excited to hear that the man himself will soon take up residence as a regular Grist columnist. Ssssshhhh ... don't tell the non-blog-readers.

Replacing fossil fuels with biodiesel may do more harm than good

I remember when real environmentalists drove smoking VW vans with bumper stickers that said stuff like, "You can't call yourself an environmentalist if you eat meat." They didn't get the best gas mileage, but hey, you could do worse. They were replaced by the forest-green Subaru Outback (Eddy Bower edition if you were really cool), seen by the dozens in any REI parking lot. These are presently being eclipsed by the ubiquitous Prius. But, there is stiff competition from the diesel Jetta replete with biodiesel stickers all over the butt end.

As we all know by now, biodiesel can be made out of a lot of things:

Soybeans: 50 gallons per acre
Rapeseed: 150 gallons per acre
Jatropha: 175 gallons per acre
Palm oil: 650 gallons per acre

To limit the impact on the planet, maybe we should start pressuring our biodiesel distributors to sell fuel made only from palm oil? According to the World Wildlife Fund, we would also need to demand that it be made out of palm oil grown only on degraded, non-forested land:

Creeping medievalism

Oh good grief.

Sigh

Here's the only sentence you need to read from Jonah Goldberg's NRO column on the Cape Cod wind farm controversy:

But why get distracted by the merits of the issue when the real fun is to take a Nestea Plunge into the swirling waters of limousine liberalism.

Dispatches from a student-run clean-car campaign

The Road to Detroit campaign is run by 11 student organizers from around the U.S., one big, beautiful biodiesel and veggie-oil bus, and many friends and allies. Road to Detroit is a campaign of Energy Action, a student and youth clean-energy and global-warming coalition. Friday, 19 Aug 2005 DETROIT, Mich. We know you know about […]

Putin cracks down on environmental orgs

Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking an increasingly dim view of environmental NGO activity, whether from within Russia or from neighboring Baltic or Nordic neighbors. In rhetoric eerily similar to what we hear in this country, Putin rails against ecological objections holding up development projects. Going a step further, Putin's government is criminalizing more and more environmental data-gathering and harassing Russian NGO activists. Putin's latest warning "against the financing of political activity by any channel" is cited in an August 2 Agence France Presse story. AFP says "the warning came amid a hardening official stance in Moscow toward non-governmental organisations -- a policy, analysts say, that reflects Kremlin worry about the influence of foreign-funded organisations in the peaceful revolutions that shook Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine last year."

If you are interested in a good news-clipping listserv on Russian environmental issues, subscribe to the Russian Environmental Digest Files through the Transboundary Environmental Information Agency, which focuses on the Baltics and Russia.

The 0.7 Percent Absolution

Portland retracts claim that its CO2 emissions dropped below 1990 levels Breaking the hearts of factoid-citers everywhere, the city of Portland, Ore., has issued a correction to its widely hailed announcement that last year its carbon-dioxide emissions dipped below 1990 levels. Thanks to a subtle data-entry mistake, the figures were miscalculated, and 2004 levels were […]

Tender Is the Nitrogen

Lower summer ozone levels give Eastern lungs a break Summer air quality has improved in 19 Eastern states, thanks to a federally mandated cap-and-trade system for nitrogen oxides*. According to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA, nitrogen-oxide emissions from power plants and other sources in the region were about 50 percent lower in […]