An eerie winter

Last week's summerlike weather provided an exclamation point on the end of the fourth warmest winter in the lower 48 states. Back in late December and early January as the winter was unfolding, I thought to myself that somehow we needed eerie music piped into the sky to give people some clue about how they should feel. In the Great Lakes area where I live, we are used to having snow dumped on us in copious amounts--or at least we used to be.

I can remember as a child entire weeks given over to snow days with snow so deep we could build tunnels through it--much to my parents' dismay. But with each decade, winters in the Great Lakes Basin have become more and more mild. This winter was not just a one-off. And yet, it was the warmest since 2000, and so people have remarked about it.

It's the nature of those remarks, however, that begs for the corrective touch of a haunting soundtrack. So often did I hear what a pleasant winter we were having. How lucky we Michiganders were to have this balmy reprieve from snowy discontents. Naturally, the winter sports enthusiasts were disappointed. But they seemed to chalk it up to freakish weather patterns that are not likely to repeat next year.

We should take no comfort in the extremely cold European winter since climate scientists actually predicted this. They explained that the melting sea ice due to rising temperatures in the Arctic would favor "the formation of a high-pressure system near the Barents Sea which steers cold air into Europe."

Back on my side of the globe, a friend in Texas reports that the multiyear drought there has gotten so bad that he is thinking about putting a diesel generator on his property to provide electricity during the expected brownouts and blackouts. This is because the continuing drought may force a number of electric generating plants to shut down for lack of cooling water from shrinking rivers and reservoirs.

Environmental activist Vandana Shiva has rightly dubbed what we are experiencing as climate chaos. Predictable climate patterns are changing everywhere with unpredictable results.

It is not always easy to pin down the causes of any specific weather pattern. And yet, the unprecedented rate of change in temperature and weather patterns worldwide should give us concern that the winter just past is but a preview of coming attractions. What the geologic record shows has previously taken 5,000 to 20,000 years to occur--namely, a 100 ppm rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere--has taken only 120 years in our era. What that implies is that in the past no single human being could have witnessed the kind of changes in climate we are now seeing in the space of a single lifetime or even a single generation.

In a way we have become inured to rapid change. The ever increasing drumbeat of industrial civilization and technological change has made us think that rapid change is both inevitable and good. At least that's what we tell ourselves. So, when the rhythm of seasons is disrupted, it seems like just one more change.

Of course, climate change isn't just one more change. And, it is the rate of change which tells us something is awry. It is the very fact that I can detect the general trend of warming winters in the Great Lakes in the course of my lifetime that ought to set off loud, buzzing alarms.

Alas, there is no one in charge of providing suitable sound effects for me or anyone else that would convey the predicament into which we as a global society are now walking with our eyes wide shut. I say eyes wide shut because even though concern about global climate change is very high nearly everywhere except the United States, little is being done to address it.

Earlier this month I highlighted two recent films which I thought captured the deepseated unease in our collective unconscious, an unease that is only rarely linked to our ecological predicament. The soundtracks of both were suitably eerie in keeping with the winter just past. But, it seems we'll need a lot more eerie music before the great mass of people will be able to hear the frightening silence of a winter in the snowbelt...without snow.

Kurt Cobb is the author of the peak-oil-themed thriller, Prelude, and a columnist for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen. His work has also been featured on Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, EV World, and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights.

The narrowing window for a transition to a sustainable industrial society

The viability of modern civilization depends on two important dimensions: 1) the continuous availability and deployment of essential resources and 2) the long-term productivity and habitability of our environment. Acquiring and deploying the necessary resources tends to be a short-term goal. We may have stockpiles of ready food, fuel and other nondurable goods, but they are not typically meant to last for years.

Our long-term goal ought to be maintaining the productivity and habitability of our environment. It is, after all, the only environment we have. But, of course, in the interest of maintaining an ever increasing availability of resources (economic growth), we have injured the long-term productivity of our farm fields, fisheries and forests and put ourselves at the mercy of unforeseen declines in the rate of extraction of energy and other key finite resources from the Earth. And, we threaten the planet's habitability for humans and many other creatures by causing rapid climate change through the burning of fossil fuels, changes in land use and the release of other potent greenhouses gases such a nitrous oxide and methane into the atmosphere.

All of this has implications for the amount of time we have to transition to a sustainable industrial society. Nearly everyone, even wild-eyed resource optimists, believes we must make this transition at some point because of our reliance on finite fossil fuels and metals. The current talk of vast new supplies of oil and natural gas and vast remaining supplies of coal has people thinking that we have plenty of time for such a transition. The fact that the data do not support these claims is one strike against this line of thinking. But even if it were true, we would have to consider the consequences, namely, enormous additional greenhouse emissions that are likely to heat up the planet so much that food supplies will fall off sharply and water supplies will decline as rainfall patterns are disrupted. So, while one development--increased availability of energy resources--would tend to lengthen the window for a transition to a sustainable society, the climate effects would narrow it all the more.

Even if we discounted climate change (which we shouldn't), increased cultivation using industrial farm methods will tend to degrade the soil and eventually bring down agricultural productivity. Increased harvesting of food from the world's oceans would tend to undermine and even permanently prevent the recovery of their fish and seafood populations. Pollution of fresh water resulting from increased industrialization would require the use of more and more resources to purify that water. And, the harvesting of ever greater amounts of fiber from the world's forests will undermine future forest productivity by impoverishing the land upon which they grow. Each of these has the effect of destroying the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth and thus its productivity for human needs.

So, it turns out that we have several additional causes for the shrinking of the transition window. And, when we come back to reality on actual likely future energy supplies, we reintroduce one more reason for an urgent transition. Perhaps we could simply speed up our adaptation. Certainly, an all-out effort to transition to renewable energy and to a cradle-to-cradle recycling scheme would help (however politically unlikely such an effort might seem). But it has essentially taken us 50 years to build out an energy infrastructure of pipelines, refineries and service stations for oil and a second one for natural gas. We probably do not have the luxury of that kind of time to build out a renewable energy society either because we don't have the necessary fossil fuels (which must be used to build that society) or because climate change is moving too fast to make such a leisurely time line prudent (or both).

So when government officials or industry spokespersons or media commentators speak only of new energy supplies extending the time before we must make a transition to a sustainable society, they are thinking one-dimensionally. This is seductive and dangerous thinking. It is seductive because it seeks to make simple what is really a very complex and multi-layered transition. It is dangerous because that one dimension ignores all the other factors that are making a transition so urgent.

It is also dangerous to judge the resilience and success of our current living arrangements solely by our level of wealth or health. We are using up the natural capital upon which our very survival depends more rapidly than it can be regenerated. It's true that one can experience the illusion of great wealth by spending all one's savings in a week. But life after that would become quite precarious as a single large expense, say, a large medical bill, could send one to bankruptcy court.

That is how we are living with respect to the natural systems we depend on. Right now we are in the last day of a week of a natural capital spending spree. When those natural systems become incapable of sustaining our accustomed consumption and pollution levels, we could find ourselves caught in a kind of natural bankruptcy, living in straitened circumstances but without much preparation.

Some will say that the window for a transition to a sustainable industrial society has long since passed and that we are destined for an eventual return to an agrarian and craft society. There are two problems with this kind of thinking that have nothing to do with whether it is correct or not. First, almost no one will be able to accept such a message upon the first hearing and perhaps not ever. If you argue something which your audience will likely never accept, you will miss the chance to move them incrementally toward your view.

Second, it is unlikely that there will be a clear line in any future society between what we call industrial and what might be called craft. No matter how difficult our circumstances become, we will not suddenly forget how to generate electricity. Nor will we forget how to do many other things which form the basis of industrial society. Of course, we may not be able to do these things on the same scale as now. But, I think it is permissible to talk about doing many of the same things we do today on a much smaller scale to meet our needs.

Using a comprehensible and palatable message at least makes it more likely that people will think that a transition is possible and want to participate in it. Without that, the length of time available for a transition won't even matter.

Kurt Cobb is the author of the peak-oil-themed thriller, Prelude, and a columnist for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen. His work has also been featured on Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, EV World, and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights.

Cinema imagines the worst: A psychological journey

It's one thing to create a literal portrayal of civilization-destroying natural disasters on film. It's quite another to depict a character's inner psychological journey as the world moves closer and closer to cataclysm. In the literal portrayal category we find the likes of Armageddon and Deep Impact, both about asteroids impacting the Earth. There is as well The Day After Tomorrow which depicts a rapid cooling in the Northern Hemisphere brought on, ironically, by global warming which shuts down the thermohaline ocean currents, the mechanism by which the Earth distributes heat from the equator to the poles.

Such film depictions are usually heavy on special effects that dazzle the viewer with explosions (often lots of them) and in the case of Armageddon and Deep Impact, elaborately staged space missions. I'm normally allergic to such stuff, but found the special effects in The Day After Tomorrow quite compelling because they depicted mostly natural processes--speeded up immensely, of course, for dramatic purposes.

Now we have two films which attempt to portray the inner life of the main characters as these characters sense and then come to grips with impending civilization-scale catastrophe. Melancholia follows a new bride, Justine, into her wedding reception only to find her distraught and withdrawn. Through her conversations with her sister, we sense that Justine has had a history of depression. So, what could be troubling the poor bride on her wedding night at an elaborately planned party where she is surrounded by friends? We are given several possibilities. But the real problem is only hinted at vaguely here and there.

(Perhaps I need to insert a spoiler alert here since I will henceforth reveal a considerable amount of the storyline of the two films I discuss below. But I believe the analysis will actually enhance the enjoyment of first-time viewers.)

As it turns out, the sudden appearance of a blue planet from behind the Sun is what's unsettling Justine; only she doesn't know it at first. The film's opening leaves us in no doubt about its conclusion. So, we are freed to contemplate how each character deals with the coming of this planet and the dangers it poses. There is the denial of Justine's brother-in-law, John, an amateur astronomer who assures everyone that the planet will simply pass the Earth by. That's what all the scientists say, he explains. Justine's young nephew has a healthy, but naive curiosity about the phenomenon. Justine's sister, Claire, feels something is wrong. We witness Claire doing a little research on the internet, research which reveals the reason for Justine's abject depression and Claire's uneasiness. But as the moment of truth approaches, it is Justine, who, snapping out of her deep depression, is able to face the enormity of what is about to happen with remarkable equanimity.

And, that is the director's point. Lars von Trier means for the film to be an expression of his experience with deep depression. The depressed person, it turns out, is the one who can, paradoxically, accept very bad news without falling apart, who can actually function and act with decisiveness in the face of certain catastrophe--not so much to solve the problem as to accept it.

In Take Shelter a working class family man, Curtis, begins to have dreams of devastating storms that threaten his home and community. At first, he tries to ignore these dreams. But soon they become so insistent that he is driven to spruce up and then stock supplies in the underground storm shelter just outside his house in the back yard. And yet, the dreams continue.

Curtis wonders whether what he sees in his dreams will come to pass or whether the dreams might simply be delusions. His mother, after all, is a paranoid schizophrenic. He reads some books on mental illness trying to determine if he is following his mother's path. He's not sure. More dreams prompt him to expand the shelter at considerable expense, requiring him to take out a home improvement loan to do so.

Curtis's wife is angry about the expense. His neighbors and relatives think he is crazy. His boss is upset because Curtis borrows equipment from work without permission which he uses to help expand the shelter.

Take Shelter provides an excellent description of a man, susceptible to the messages that nature is sending him, but unable to articulate those messages to others. He senses danger and formulates a plan to protect his family. He does not, however, have the slightest idea how to explain or justify the danger he senses to people in his town. And, even if he knew what to say, his fellow citizens think he is crazy; so why would they listen?

The fears, the difficulty in articulating them, the attempts at preparation, the ridicule by family members, friends and neighbors, all this should be familiar to those involved in the peak oil movement and even still to a certain extent those working to arrest climate change. And, then there is the depression. I believe that if you haven't experienced depression to some degree or another related to these issues, then you haven't grasp the seriousness of our predicament.

These films tell me that filmmakers are beginning to give voice to the emerging emotional turbulence in the collective unconscious arising out of our ecological predicament. Whether Lars von Trier, who also wrote the screenplay for Melancholia, understands the implications of peak energy or climate change or the myriad other ecological challenges we face, I do not know. But clearly he has passed through the emotions associated with a very similar journey of awakening. The director and writer of Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols, obviously understands climate change. The severe weather depicted in the film can have no other physical referent.

Strange as it may seem to some, watching both films has enlivened me. Here are two movies that give substance to my depression and my nightmares--reaffirming that these flow not from mental disease but from an acute awareness of the human predicament on a planet that is sending us messages about how to heal both our damaged biosphere and our damaged souls.

Crude Crisis: My appearance on RT television's Crosstalk

This week I appeared on the cable news television show Crosstalk. The topic was the cause of high oil prices. I managed to provide a succinct explanation near the beginning. I didn't use the words "peak oil" because the panel discussion format of the show would have prevented me from providing sufficient explanation and context. The show which lasts a little over 25 minutes can be found here.

Here is the YouTube version:

Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables: The Key Argument that Environmentalists are Missing

In lieu of my regular weekly post, I am posting this piece which has appeared elsewhere previously. I encourage you to disseminate it through any listserv, website, newsletter or other publication with which you are involved.  And, I’m hoping you’ll forward it widely to friends and colleagues who share your concerns and suggest that they get the piece reprinted and reposted wherever possible. If you'd like a PDF version of this piece, you can download it here.

I am targeting especially environmentalists focused on fracking, coal, and climate change and who may be unfamiliar with the peak fossil fuel thesis. I want to persuade them that including the peak argument will strengthen their case for a fast transition to renewable energy. I'll be greatly appreciative if, when you disseminate this piece, you include my brief bio at the end and the information about Sierra Atlantic and permissions. Thank you.

Which of the following can we count on to act as a “bridge fuel” to a renewable energy economy?

1. Oil
2. Natural Gas
3. Coal
4. None of the above

The correct answer is: D. None of the above.

Mark Twain is reported to have said: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." What most environmentalists think they know for sure is that oil, coal and natural gas are all abundant—so abundant, in fact, that many environmentalists believe they are forced to make a Hobson's choice of natural gas as a so-called "bridge fuel" to a renewable energy future.

Though natural gas produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy than coal or oil when it is burned, it still contributes mightily to climate change. In fact, according to research by a Cornell University team, natural gas from shale, which will make up an increasing share of U.S. gas supplies, is worse than conventionally produced gas which is now declining. Because shale gas wells are drilled in a way that releases considerable volumes of unburned methane into the atmosphere, shale gas is probably also worse than coal.

Methane is about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it leaks into the environment over the lifecycle of natural gas from drilling through delivery. In addition, hydraulic fracturing or fracking in the country's vast shale formations pollutes the air and surface waters surrounding drill sites and threatens the groundwater because the process uses toxic chemicals.

It turns out, however, that what most environmentalists know about the future supply of natural gas and other fossil fuels is based more on industry hype than on actual data. And, that means that they are missing a key argument in their discussions about renewable energy, one that could be used to persuade those less concerned about pollution and climate change and more concerned about energy security: There is increasing evidence that no fossil fuel will continue to see its rate of production climb significantly in the decades ahead and so none of them is a viable "bridge fuel," not natural gas, not oil, not coal. This means that global society must leap over fossil fuels and move directly to renewables as quickly as possible. In advanced economies this leap must be combined with a program of radical reductions in energy use, reductions which are achievable using known technologies and practices.

Okay, perhaps you are wondering about the data. Let's discuss each fossil fuel separately:

Oil

The first thing you should know about oil is that worldwide production has been on a plateau since 2005. This is despite record high prices and furious exploration and drilling efforts. There have been well-publicized finds here and there that may seem large. However, at the current worldwide rate of consumption, one billion barrels of oil lasts only 12 days. Thus, the multi-billion barrel finds announced in the last decade or so will have little impact on the longevity of world supplies.

Another key issue is one that oil companies do not want to emphasize: depletion. The worldwide average for production declines in existing oilfields has been estimated to be about 4 percent per year. That means that each year just to stay even, the industry must develop new oil production capacity equivalent to the current capacity of the North Sea, one of the world's largest fields. To grow production, it must, of course, exceed this amount, and that hasn't been happening.

When you mention these hard facts in polite company, you will undoubtedly be met with skepticism. But the data are available to the public from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) website. The agency is the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy and is widely considered the gold standard of energy information in the world.

Now, don't be deceived by shifting definitions of oil. When the petroleum glut long predicted by the optimists failed to appear, they started lumping in ethanol, biodiesel and natural gas liquids with petroleum and calling them all "oil." These other products are useful, but they are not as energy-rich, versatile or easily transported as oil. Our current infrastructure is heavily dependent on oil inputs with no real substitutes available in the quantities required.

You will also likely be met with protestations that we still have lots of oil: tar sands in Canada, heavy oil in Venezuela and even oil shale in the American West, primarily Colorado. Well, this represents the difficult-to-get oil. We extracted the easy stuff in the first 150 years of the oil age. And, while it is true that these resources and others like them represent an immense store of hydrocarbons, what matters is the rate at which we can produce them.


Because of the high-cost, capital-intensive nature of such production, the rate of production will be slow to ramp up and difficult to maintain. The hydrocarbons locked in the tar sands and the Orinoco oil belt in Venezuela aren't what we call oil and must be heavily processed at high cost using enormous amounts of energy. As for the oil shale in the America West, the amount of commercially produced oil we are currently getting from that oil shale is zero. No one has figured out how to extract it profitably. Partly this is because oil shale contains no oil. Instead, it contains a hydrocarbon-rich waxy substance called kerogen which must be heavily processed to turn it into oil.

An analogy might be useful: If you inherit a million dollars with the stipulation that you can only take out $500 a month, you may be a millionaire, but you will never live like one. Increasingly, this is the situation we will find ourselves in when it comes to oil. The key issue is the rate of production, not the size of the resource. The hard-to-get oil resources are large, but they take a long time to develop and require strenuous, expensive and energy-intensive methods to extract. All this, when combined with the relentless depletion of existing fields, spells little or no growth in the worldwide rate of oil production in the coming years.

Natural Gas

By now you've been told so many times in television ads and news articles that we have a 100-year supply of natural gas in the United States that you assume it must be true. While the claim itself is suspect, even if we accept it, there is a very serious omission. The claim in its entirety reads: a 100-year supply of natural gas at current rates of consumption. If natural gas is to be used as a so-called "bridge fuel"—a fuel that will power society with the least environmental cost while we deploy nonpolluting, renewable energy—then its rate of production will have to grow considerably if we expect it to displace coal and oil.

Simple spreadsheet calculations will tell you what happens to such long-term supply claims under the pressure of a little exponential growth. At just 2 percent per year growth, the 100-year U.S. domestic natural gas supply is exhausted in 56 years. If we assume that production peaks when about 50 percent of the resource is exhausted, this puts the peak within 35 years. Think about it. Even if the optimists are correct, with a production growth rate of just 2 percent per year, the country reaches a peak within 35 years! What will we do after that?

The picture gets acutely worse as the rate of production growth rises. A 3 percent growth rate implies exhaustion in 47 years and peak in 31 years. A 5 percent growth rate means exhaustion in 37 years and a peak in just 26 years.

As it turns out, the EIA projects a growth rate of just 0.4 percent per year in U.S. natural gas supplies through 2035 with production jumping from about 24 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 2010 to about 26.5 tcf in 2035, hardly a bonanza.

Beyond this consider that the vast resources of natural gas from deep shale layers, commonly called shale gas, may not be so vast. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment pared the EIA's original estimate of "technically recoverable" natural gas in the largest of the shale deposits, the Marcellus Shale, from 410 tcf to just 84 tcf, an 80 percent reduction. And, this says nothing about whether the gas will be economically recoverable.

The 100-year figure was based on inflated estimates of recoverable natural gas and on ignoring the fact that the rate of natural gas consumption would have to rise exponentially to displace other fossil fuels. These two facts suggest that natural gas will not be the bridge fuel environmentalists are looking for.

Coal

Among the environmental community, the big fear is that coal will displace clean natural gas and even become a source for liquid fuels as oil supplies wane. That fear is founded on industry claims of vast coal supplies in the United States and elsewhere. But four studies suggest that coal may not be nearly as abundant as once believed.

A 2007 National Academy of Sciences report concluded that claims of 250 years of coal reserves in the United States at current rates of consumption could not be supported. The number was more likely to be 100 years. However, it said that a comprehensive survey was necessary to determine a more accurate figure.

But if coal consumption were to grow beyond the current rate, then the 100 years of supply would quickly shrink as in the case of natural gas. And, data from EIA shows that the total heat content of coal mined in the United States has been declining since 1998 despite roughly level production. This means that coal grades are dropping and that the actual energy the United States gets from domestic coal peaked in that year.

A second study by David Rutledge at the California Institute of Technology concluded that worldwide reserves are probably half of those currently stated. Rutledge noted that unlike oil reserves, coal reserve estimates have been steadily dropping over time as unwarranted assumptions were stripped away and the focus was put on what is actually minable.

A third study in 2007 by an independent group of analysts in Germany, the Energy Watch Group, suggests a worldwide peak in the rate of coal production as early as 2025. The authors noted that poor quality data hampered their efforts. One of the troubling gaps was China, a country thought to have some of the largest coal resources in the world. Chinese coal data, however, have not been updated since 1992, and 20 percent of China's reserves have supposedly been mined since that date.

A fourth study published in the international journal Energy last year came to the shocking conclusion that the rate of worldwide coal production from existing fields would peak in 2011. The authors did acknowledge that vast coal fields in Alaska and Siberia remained to be developed, but doubted that these difficult-to-extract and therefore expensive reserves would be developed in time to forestall a decline. They also wrote that production from existing mines is expected to fall by 50 percent over the next 40 years.

The researchers explained that this has serious policy implications. One such implication was that money currently being spent on carbon capture and sequestration technology—a technology that assumes vast additional supplies of coal—would be better spent on outfitting existing coal-fired power stations with supercritical steam turbines, lifting efficiency from 35 percent to 50 percent. This would reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions while stretching out the available coal supplies so as to aid an energy transition.

Conclusions

No one knows the future. But making public policy based on industry hype could turn out to be disastrous. Keep in mind that it is the job of fossil fuel industry executives to make sure they can sell their in-ground inventories. And, of course, it's not their job to make good public policy. Our current energy policy, which I refer to as the Good-To-The-Last-Drop Policy, has already meant a huge windfall for oil producers and to a certain extent coal producers. And yet, both regale us with tales of plenty even as constrained supplies send prices skyward.

It is certainly possible that yet-to-be-invented technologies will extend the life of fossil fuel supplies. The question is whether such technologies can be deployed before overall rates of production for oil, natural gas and coal begin to decline. Modern industrial society depends for its proper functioning on the continuous input of high-grade energy resources. If those inputs start to decline or even fail to grow, the system will falter. Some believe we are already seeing the effects of constrained oil supplies on the economy as record high prices suppress economic activity and pressure an already fragile financial system.

It seems doubtful at this time that future technologies for exploiting fossil fuels will be able to do much beyond softening the inevitable declines. And, given the known trends and data, it seems foolish to wait for these yet-to-be-invented technologies to appear. That means that leapfrogging now past fossil fuels to renewable energy is not just desirable but probably inescapable. The only question is whether we as a society will do it with a focused plan for a rapid transition or whether the transition will be chaotic and marked by violent swings in the economy as the world lurches from one energy-induced crisis to another.

Kurt Cobb is a columnist for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen and author of the peak-oil-themed thriller Prelude. His work has also been featured on Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, EV World, and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights.

From Sierra Atlantic, a publication of the Atlantic chapter of the Sierra Club serving New York state. Permission is hereby granted to reprint this piece with attribution. A PDF version of this piece is available here.

How you can tell that the peak oil debate is (almost) over

Protestations in the mainstream media that we need not worry about a peak in the rate of world oil production anytime soon are suddenly coming fast and furious. As a result, I was reminded both of Shakespeare and Gandhi.

"The media doth protest too much," I thought (with apologies to Queen Gertrude in Hamlet). As for Gandhi, a quote commonly attributed to him may shed light on where we are in the peak oil debate: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win."

So, it appears that we are now in stage three of a four-stage process. This may not be so farfetched as it seems. I can remember when I first began writing regularly about peak oil in 2004. The main problem was that the media was simply ignoring the issue. It just didn't fit any category which the vast majority of reporters recognized.

That was followed by a period of ridicule from oil industry representatives, economists, and a few writers in the trade press, but almost no one in the mainstream media. "Pshaw, pshaw," they seemed to say in chorus, "no sensible person would take the idea of a near-term peak in world oil production seriously." (Never mind that these people mostly misunderstood the problem of peak oil as being one related to the size of the remaining resource rather than the rate of extraction.)

Now we have come to the point where there are open attacks in the mainstream media. Yes, there have been attacks before, mostly in the trade press and on specialized sites and blogs on the Internet. It was more internecine conflict within the industry, narrow professional circles, and the activist community. But that doesn't really count as a public brawl when your true audience is the mass of nonspecialists. Now, we have the equivalent of that with the publication of a major piece in Nature, a respected scientific journal, but one that mere mortals are able to read. The piece in question has the reactionary forces in full attack mode.

An op-ed in The National, an English-language publication in Abu Dhabi, set the bar very low when it comes to facts and logic. Bloomberg Businessweek emitted a piece entitled "Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong" on the same day the Nature piece appeared--almost as if the writer knew it was coming. The Bloomberg piece trots out mostly tired, irrelevant arguments and a few that are relevant but factually wrong. Gail Tverberg does a good job of critiquing this very sloppy piece. Chris Nelder at Smartplanet takes on the Bloomberg piece as well as a number of poorly argued responses to the Nature article.

But the latest counterattack actually began last fall with Daniel Yergin, the smooth-talking and smooth-writing oil optimist that peak oil activists love to hate. Yergin felt compelled to push back in The Wall Street Journal at peak oil ideas in the course of promoting his new book. Thanks, Mr. Yergin, for bringing up the subject.

Many readers will no doubt be acquainted with the saying: "There is no such thing as bad publicity." This corresponds perfectly with Gandhi's phase three of a struggle. The opposition is now forced by obvious circumstances--i.e., no increase in oil supplies despite years of record prices--to explain away something that peak oil theory explains perfectly.

It may be disheartening to see so much disinformation in the media spewed by people who ought to know better. But it is ever so delicious to contemplate the desperation hiding behind their fretful posturing and incantation. I can almost hear them say, "It can't be so, it can't be so...it simply mustn't!" They seem to believe that if they say "Bakken, Brazil, offshore, tar sands, technology" enough times in a row, it will make $100-a-barrel oil go away. But that incantation will not make the data go away, and so we must keep pointing out that the trend remains flat despite all of those things.

Perhaps the surest sign that the peak oil message is now in fighting form is that the former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, agreed to a debate last week with one of the foremost scientific voices in the peak oil camp. It may be that Hofmeister is just a good, fair-minded citizen who thinks the issue should be aired. But the fact that he chose to give his imprimatur to the notion that peak oil needs to be debated speaks volumes.

Rock-star investors such as T. Boone Pickens and Richard Rainwater have long since put their imprimatur on peak oil. Major banks such as Australia's Macquarie Bank and Germany's Deutsche Bank (PDF) are also embracing the near-term peak thesis. And, embarrassing government leaks like this recent one in Australia and this one from the British government last year demonstrate that behind the scenes government planners and politicians are gravely concerned.

Does that mean that peak oil activists have reached their goal of informing the public and policymakers about the risks and opportunities posed by peak oil? Of course not. This is where the hard work begins because the debate has now been elevated to the national and international stage. And, that means we can look forward to a continuous clash that is increasingly in the public eye.

Now is also the opportune time for a well-financed, coordinated communications strategy (which I proposed here in 2008) that can take advantage of a new media environment more open to the idea of resource constraints.

Far from being discouraged by the rash of peak oil denunciations in the media lately, I am invigorated by it. Remember: we're now on offense; they're on defense. The opposition has to explain why oil production has been flat since 2005 despite high prices. And, the twisted logic and demonstrably false assertions they offer will provide ever better opportunities to trump them again and again.

I have always maintained that when you are in a public dogfight in the media, if you are explaining, you are losing. The peak oil movement now needs to focus on planting doubt about the official cornucopian story. And, the best way to do that is continuously to poke holes in the arguments of the optimists, arguments that can be shown to be ridiculous by combining simple logic with the data that is publicly available.

Let George Clooney explain American foreign policy to you

In the film "Three Kings" George Clooney stars as Major Archie Gates, a special forces officer. We join him in Iraq right after the cease-fire in the first Gulf War in 1991. You'll recall that the United States deliberately decided NOT to proceed to Baghdad and depose the government of Saddam Hussein.

Gates stumbles onto a meeting of other servicemen who've recovered a map to a bunker containing stolen Kuwaiti gold taken by the Iraqis during the occupation. (Where exactly the men found the map I leave to you to find out by watching the film.)

Gates and the others hatch a plan to take the gold for themselves, a plan that is based on the premise that Iraqi soldiers won't touch Americans inside Iraqi lines because of the cease-fire. This turns out to be the case. And, it looks like the crew will make a clean getaway with the gold even as Iraqi soldiers look on. But then these American warriors witness some sickening brutality carried out against Iraqis who have participated in the uprising in southern Iraq which followed the cease-fire. Unable to stand by, the American soldiers move to defend these dissident Iraqis, and that's when the Americans' plan for enriching themselves goes awry. Exactly how it goes awry is the subject of much drama as well as intense comedy for the duration of the film.

When I first saw the film years ago, it occurred to me that it was one of the clearest explanations of American foreign policy I had ever seen. I am certain, however, that this was not the intention of the filmmaker. But let's see how the story illuminates our foreign policy.

During the time the film depicts America and its allies had just liberated Kuwait, driven into Iraq and stopped. President George H. W. Bush encouraged the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Many Shi'ites, angry at decades of rule by Saddam and his minority Sunni supporters, did rise up expecting help from the Americans. None came. Instead, for a time the Iraqi army used helicopter gunships to massacre the dissidents until the so-called "No Fly Zone" was established by Coalition forces.

Not surprisingly, Americans had intervened in the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait with mixed motives. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was destabilizing and threatened to place even more oil under the rule of a volatile dictator who might not serve America's interests. Furthermore, it was not certain whether Iraq would stop its advance with Kuwait or continue into Saudi Arabia to capture even more oilfields.

The U.S. response had both humanitarian and realpolitik aspects. We wanted the flow of cheap oil to be unimpeded. But, when Saddam threatened to extend his control over not just Kuwait, but possibly Saudi Arabia, we acted in our own interests to make sure the oil flowed freely. In the bargain we gave Kuwait back to the Kuwaitis when we were done.

Americans and our political leaders are torn between the ideals we cherish--self-determination, individual liberty, and humanitarian concern for others seeking to achieve these--and the practical requirements of running a rich and populous consumer society now dependent on other countries for many of its critical resources. I would contend that it is this tension which underpins America's increasing ineffectiveness at achieving its foreign policy goals.

If one's objective is simply to get the goods one needs from others by subterfuge or violence, then the method is clear. Either a straightforward heist is what is needed or an arrangement of plunder aided by local elites sometimes referred to as a trade agreement. But if you are conflicted about these methods, then in the long run you will succeed well neither at the heist and plunder nor at spreading individual liberty and self-determination.

Perhaps the best example of this is the American role in the recent Arab Spring. On the one hand, U.S. foreign policy consisted of support for authoritarian regimes in order to maintain stability in the Middle East and therefore keep oil supplies flowing. On the other hand, we funded pro-democracy groups which helped prepare Arab peoples for the Arab Spring to come. Many will be surprised to find out that these groups received added support under the second President Bush.

We want stability in the Middle East to protect oil supplies. At the same time we worry that the autocratic regimes there won't be able to deliver that stability and that their oppression of their own peoples runs counter to our values. We want to help, but like George Clooney in "Three Kings" we always have one eye on the gold (or, in this case, the oil). Divided attention makes us less effective than we could be.

It has always been thus. Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase "Empire of Liberty" in the midst of the American Revolution. His idea was that an American Empire would dedicate itself to advancing freedom both at home and abroad. What he meant was that a new American nation would block British expansion on the continent and in doing so invite others to participate in the American experiment with liberty.

Though Jefferson's words have been used to justify military intervention in the name of spreading democracy, nothing would have horrified him more. The brutal, centralized apparatus of an imperial power exemplified by the Great Britain of his day was exactly what Jefferson sought to avoid. And, Jefferson would shudder to gaze upon the centralized power of the current federal government and its vast military apparatus which now sprawls the Earth with hundreds of foreign bases.

In 1898 America struggled with its newfound strength when it defeated Spain and occupied Cuba. Americans debated whether Cuba should be annexed or allowed to become independent. American forces had intervened to aid the Cuban independence movement. America would lose its moral standing if it turned out that we were only seeking territorial expansion. Opposing factions fought in the U.S. Congress over annexation. Of course, Cuba was granted independence. But the two strains in American foreign policy were clear to see.

The American interventions in World War I and World War II generally demonstrate American ideals at work in foreign policy though it is important to point out that the United States had substantial commercial interests at stake before and after the war.

Our recent withdrawal from Iraq and our continuing difficulties in Afghanistan show that our confused foreign policy is making us largely ineffective at achieving our aims, and this impotence is on display for all the world to see which only compounds our weakness.

Currently, the only presidential candidate claiming the mantle of Jefferson in foreign policy is Ron Paul. Whatever you may think of him, Paul is avowedly non-interventionist and thinks the American military should be recalled to American soil. He's fine with propagating American ideals abroad. However, this should only be done by peaceful means, both commercial and cultural. America has a right to defend itself. But any intercourse between nations should be between consenting adults, not at the point of a gun.

The British knew how to run an empire. Take the natives by surprise using superior firepower. Enlist local elites to help you subdue and run the place. And, above all, send a significant crew of Brits to live and work in the conquered territory. Learn the local languages and customs and endeavor to understand thoroughly those whom you've conquered.

The British adventure in Asia and Africa is the stuff of novels and films, romantic and exotic. But, Americans never truly went in for living among the natives and staying for the long term. The American way has almost always been to look for quick money and then move on.

That's why the British were so very good at building and running an empire. And, that's why Americans will never be very good at it. We are a restless people, constantly agitating to find better surroundings; impatient with foreigners and their ways; and naively devoted to ideals that we practice only half-heartedly at home.

We could focus merely on commercial ties with other countries, leaving their internal politics alone. But our restlessness makes us want to intervene for conflicted reasons of gain and the propagation of our presumed ideals. It's why a Hollywood filmmaker could create a film like "Three Kings" with George Clooney wandering the Iraqi desert looking for gold while at the same time feeling he ought to do something for the wretched, frightened people he finds along the way. And, it is why so many of us watch to see what he does, measuring ourselves against the shifting standard his character Archie Gates represents.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Copyright 1999