Trend: Global warming and burning fossil fuels are highly correlated. The cause-and-effect may be the most important question of this century.
Here's a timeline from a presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) by Jeremy Leggett, who worked in the oil industry until 1996.
Link: Transition Culture » ASPO 5. Jeremy Leggett Intertwines Peak Oil and Climate Change.
1859. Man drills oil for the first time, in Pennsylvania.
1914. World by this stage is already running on oil.
1930. Peak year of discovery in US48, although no-one knew it at the time.
1956. Hubbert predicts that world oil production will peak in 1971.
1965. Peak of world oil discovery.
1973. The first oil crisis hit, a huge shock despite being only a 9% drop, by then we also knew that Hubbert was right.
1978. The second oil crisis, triggered by the Iranian Revolution. Led to a real fear of depression, but 3 things came to our rescue, fresh oil supplies coming in, new reserves and no long food supply chains, none of which we have to fall back on this time round.
1981. The crisis was over and it was a peak year for the construction of refineries, rigs and pipelines.
1985. Doubts begin. You mean we’re not sure? The OPEC upwards revisions.
1989. Jim Hansen, climate scientist of NASA tells a Congressional committee “it is time to say that global warming is here”. It was a year of droughts and fires, but he was vilified and got no support. Also in this year the IPCC released its first authoritative report. Margaret Thatcher said “this is a report that will change our lives, instead of crying out for oil it will one day be crying out for water”.
1990. World Climate Change conference, every daily paper carried headlines relating to the subject, such as “Race to Save our World”.
1992. The energy around climate change had largely dissipated by now. At the Rio Summit 160 world leaders discussed climate change but produced a climate convention with no teeth. They concluded “we must stabilise them at levels that pose no threat and be able to feed ourselves, our ecosystems, our economies”. The US was the only nation that didn’t want legally binding targets.
1995. The second IPCC report revealed horrific temperature curves. The majority of climate scientists agreed. All the major research centres and academics, hundreds of people agree a consensus.
1996. BP quit the Carbon Club (a cabal of oil companies who worked together to derail the climate negotiations). Lord Browne of BP gave a speech in which he recognised climate change and BPs role in sorting it out. Ironically, without BP there would be no Kyoto Protocol. Shell also quit the Carbon Club. The main one to still resist is Exxon Mobil, who are guilty of grotesque corporate irresponsibility. The Kyoto negotiations attract more journalists than the Gulf War.
1997. Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere publish their article “The End of the Age of Oil” in Scientific American.
2001. The suicide machine grinds on. Time cover “Exxon Unleashed” the same year as the third IPCC report.
2003. The hottest summer on record. The climate change negotiations fall apart. Kyoto is only just signed despite George Bush taking the US out of the agreement. The heatwave summer beganto turn around public opinion in relation to climate change. Many thousands of people die in the French heatwave.
2004. A notable turn around in the media. We can see it as the year that the media started to take climate change seriously. It was also the year that business started to take it seriously. It was also the year that Shell was caught telling lies and had to downgrade its reserves by a quarter. It did this because it was under tremendous pressure to replace reserves. The G8 met to discuss two key issues, climate change and Third World debt.
2005. Hurricane Katrina had a huge effect. It was fed by unusually warm waters in the Mexican Gulf. Time magazine cover read “Global Warming – be worried, be very worried”. If Time Magazine is telling you to be worried….
2006. Expections of future production are that oil will peak in 2008 plus or minus 2 years. Will the unconventional reserves come to our rescue, but really they won’t help. Oil has now reached a high of $78 a barrel. Climate change is increasing rapidly.
Comments