Indeed. And not just the price of all the other kinds of gas.
Am I the only one who suspects that a lot of the climate change hubbub whipped up in recent years was really just a cover for getting young lefty-inclined scientists to find other kinds of energy, not actually to save the planet, but rather to enable the rulers of the West to tell those pesky Arabs to take a hike? I don’t read the right sort of blogs and websites to know for sure, but I doubt very much that I am.
Anyway, now, another kind of energy has come on stream, of the sort that conflicts with all the climate change hubbub, because it is disturbingly similar in its imaginary climatic effects to the stuff that our rulers want to be able to stop buying from the Arabs.
The BBC’s Roger Harrabin quotes the Chief Economist at the International Energy Association, Dr Fatih Birol:
“There’s suddenly much more gas available in the world than previously thought,” he told BBC News.
“It’s cheaper than it was and the supply is more assured. And it’s only half as polluting as coal. There will be strong debates between energy and climate and finance ministries round the world about whether investment should continue to support renewables when the situation on gas has so radically changed.”
That settled science is already turning out to be not so settled after all, and this just might be part of the reason, don’t you think? Governments, for their own reasons that have nothing to do with the actual argument, are now switching from being climate change fanatics to what the climate change fanatics call climate change deniers.
The moral is: if you want to spread some ideas, any ideas, don’t rely on governments to help you. They will help you, if and while it suits them. But if and when it stops suiting them, you’d better be ready to win your argument all by your little old self.
“Am I the only one who suspects that a lot of the climate change hubbub whipped up in recent years was really just a cover for getting young lefty-inclined scientists to find other kinds of energy, not actually to save the planet, but rather to enable the rulers of the West to tell those pesky Arabs to take a hike?”
“Really just a cover” seems to imply way more forethought and cunning on the part of our leaders than seems likely. As incentives go, it’s very vague and indirect, and quite unlikely to motivate the people most usefully motivated.
If you want a conspiracy, look for the diffuse almost subconscious conspiracy of millions that came from the correct idea that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was a great justification for socialism.
However I am totally in agreement that the change of equation from
“if global warming is true we’ll have to turn away from using Arab oil 30 years sooner than we would have had to anyway”
to
“if global warming is true we’ll have to give up this new cheap source of power that is found in our own country”
will suddenly make the question a lot more nuanced!
Shale gas has been produced for a hundred years or more, but as natural gas prices have risen and better ways of fracturing rock have been developed, (by the evil Big Oil scientists), it has become more economic to produce. My own conspiracy theory as to why, for instance, the US doesn’t drill offshore or in Alaska is that they are hanging on to their oil until they’ve sucked the Arab fields dry.
As for the politician’s love of global warming, I can’t look past the misanthropic advice that the likes of Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG, KCVO(Link) have given to generations of political leaders around the world.
Yes, I’m afraid I’m a “global warming is a plot by the old aristocrats and their hanger’s on to take us back to the seventeenth century where the nobs rule us peasants as they were meant to, and all those nasty foreigners stay in their own countries and die of natural diseases” conspiracy theorist.
And as the scientific pegs supporting the CAGW theory are knocked away one by one, (or ten by ten lately), and the catastrophists become more and more shrill in their denunciations of deniers and whatever replacement energy sources we might offer, (did you know that shale gas is even more nasty than so called natural gas), then I find ever more confirmation of my mad theory.
Ho Hum.
IMHO….ahem…
Faced with an unassailable advance of cheaply produced goods from China/India ‘the west’ needed to put the brakes on imports without appearing to be actually using an import tax.
Here is an idea…what if we put a big tax on anything produced by fossil fuels…after all, we do not really have any, but our competitors seems to be able to drive their economies on coal. If we insist on a ‘green’ power source, we can quite fairly tax imports from such ‘planet killing’ countries…so protecting our economy. And we can’t be accused of unfair tax on imports…after all, we are ‘saving the planet’.
Now all we need is a worldwide agreement on it, how about getting the UN involved, no-one can argue with thier independant view eh?
Job done.
Oh…what….we have got loads of our own fossil fuel now? Well in that case, it does not matter, lets throw those climate change guys ubnder a bus.
Something like that anyway. Should be fun to watch.
I just can’t remember where I got this from but I found it interesting…if it’s a boring old repost then apols…
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html
I just can’t remember where I got this from but I found it interesting…if it’s a boring old repost then apols…
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html
Hmm, so the climate change scam was a farsighted scheme to reduce hydrocarbon consumption by increasing price, whilst effectively capturing the ‘surplus value’ for western governments, rather than Arab tribal leaders?
Now there is no shortage, the scam can end. So who leaked the UEA emails? MI5?
I’d like to think that you were correct, Kevin B, and that our political masters were intelligent enough, far-sighted enough and (to put it bluntly) Machiavellian enough to conceive and implement such a scheme. Unfortunately, I don’t have that high an opinion of them. This may, in fact, be the ultimate outcome of their policies, but if so it will be purely serendipity, an example of a blind pig finding an acorn. More’s the pity.
Kevin B-
I’m on that bus as well.
Talking of Mr Tickell, it’s nice to see my sneaky edit to his Wikipedia page is still there all these years later-
“His worldwide status as an authority on climate change is all the more surprising because he has no formal academic training in this area and has formed his opinion by self-teaching.”
🙂
Ian B, you’re just evil! 🙂
The key to wikijamming is subtlety.
>:-)
Am I the only one who suspects that a lot of the climate change hubbub whipped up in recent years was really just a cover for getting young lefty-inclined scientists to find other kinds of energy, not actually to save the planet, but rather to enable the rulers of the West to tell those pesky Arabs to take a hike?
Naw.
1) They’re not that clever or united.
2) We already knew you could liquefy coal, for one. And I don’t think shale oil was new either.
3) If we don’t limit ourselves to hydrocarbons, we already knew how to make nearly limitless electric power as well – nuclear fission.
An amusing conspiracy conceit, but utterly implausible.
Gas from shale (like oil from shale) only helps if people are allowed to extract it.
For example, Canada is hardly a free market place – but companies manage to take the burden of regulations and get oil from shale in Alberta.
The geology is much the same in much of the United States – but the burden of regulations is much greater (so much for the “land of the free” these days) so it does not matter how much oil (or gas) is in the shale.
With the demands for an international community which considers “distributional justice” (i.e. it is O.K. for Brazil and George Soros to make money from off shore oil drilling, indeed the American taxpayer must be forced to subsidize it – but NO to American drilling, because America is not yet a “Third World” place), and “environmental justice” (i.e. no one is allowed to make money from oil and gas) things may become difficult even for companies based in Canada.
After all the full time government of Canada (the civil service and the universities) loves the international community and treaties and such – just as the full time government of every other Western nation does.
I doesn’t require a conspiracy, and I didn’t say that all the climate hubbub was down to this. I simply speculate that lots of influential people went along with climate change talk because they didn’t want to say very loudly that they would rather not be dependent upon Arab oil. “Alternative energy” sounded attractive for the same reason. Hence them acquiescing to all the wind farm crap. This is typical politics. It dramatises the overall direction of policy. Can’t make omelettes without wasting a few billion eggs, blah blah.
But, now that money is tighter, and now that this shale stuff looks more promising …
I repeat, no conspiracy needed. Just a quiet move in one direction, and now in a different direction. Someone sets the ball rolling. Others follow, maybe with a shrug, but they follow. Then, they have second thoughts.
I bet if it was dug into, it would become clear that quite a few people actually did say this, out loud, and that some still do. Links to such would be welcome though, just to settle it. Like I say, I don’t read the right blogs to be sure.
Brian, I can’t speak for the UK but in the USA lots of people of all persuasions have been loudly talking about weaning ourselves off of foreign oil for the last 40 years. Such statements aren’t considered “inappropriate” in any way, and I hear them coming out of the mouths of those on the left and on the right. I’ll agree with your point that a lot of practical-minded Americans have jumped onto the AGW bandwagon not out of belief in the cause but because it’s easier than fighting it.
Ian, I truly admire your subtlety. If I were to attempt to edit dear Crispin’s wikipage I’m afraid it would be full of words like fascist, totalitarian, racist, elitist, misanthropic… and the nouns would get me smitten here, let alon at wiki.
A few points.
One problem is that shale gas wells run dry (if that’s the right word) much faster than conventional gas wells. So while there seems to be an excellent economical and political case for drilling them, no one should fool themselves that Shale Gas represents a optimum solution.
The biggest problem is one that Paul Marks touches on, the green left is against ANY form of energy. If Solar and wind were real solutions they’d be against them too. There exists in the US and elsewhere am interlocking set of interests between OPEC, the Greens and a groups of lawyers who specialize in blocking any new energy development project. These guys are doing their best to block Shale Gas production just as they blocked nuclear power and will block fusion power or any other new form of energy production.
Taylor, FWIW the Marcellus Shale formation which stretches across western Pennsylvania and New York is reputed to contain several hundred trillion cubic feet of gas. It’s the largest (or maybe second largest) such field in North America, and supposedly could satisfy several centuries of our natural gas needs (if the environmental luddites in New York would get out of the way of its development). So I’m not particularly concerned about the “problem” in your first paragraph. It’s the second paragraph which is the real issue.
Gene, what will the Ayrab countrees do if they can’t sell their oil to us? Aren’t you thinking about other people at all? In the interests of a balanced world economy, we should give all our shale oil deposits to middle Eastern countries, who can then sell it to us! Only selfish egotistical capitalists could object!
The International Energy Agency reports that unconventional gas resources will provide for 250 years plus of supply. Natural Gas for Europe is a source of information on developments in shale gas, including environmental issues. http://www.naturalgasforeurope.com
The attraction of shale gas is evident in its pursuit in Europe. Companies ranging from supermajors to small independents are pursuing drilling on prospective sites in Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Germany, etc. Shale Gas Europe provides updated information for those interested in the emerging plays http://www.shalegaseurope.com
“Am I the only one who suspects that a lot of the climate change hubbub whipped up in recent years was really just a cover for getting young lefty-inclined scientists to find other kinds of energy..”
Yes.
It was whipped up to extend the power of the State and its reach into our pockets.
From the link on Tickell:
“on his return Tickell was made Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission and afterwards advisor to the Thatcher government, where he was instrumental in persuading leading politicians to put global warming on the political agenda (11).”
Which reminds me: i had heard that Thatcher jumped on the global warming bandwagon because it helped to demonise coal and anything that undermined (sorry) coal was useful for undermining the NUM – her primary aim.
She has since recanted from her love of GW (whether A or not), but then the NUM has been dealt with so there’s no further need for the coal demonisation.
I’m quite prepared to believe that Mrs. T took the opportunity to use climate change as a stick to beat the miners with. But adopting a tactical (if not fastidiously moral) position to beat your opposition sounds eminently wise, especially if you could reverse position. This was why her public policy advisors were as public as they were, so she’d have plausible deniability when she needed to throw them under a bus.
Mrs. T was a chemist, and if I remember correctly she graduated with high honors, so I’d be surprised (especially back in the 80’s) if she actually believed that crap. With a copy of Popper on the bedside table next to the Hayek, I’d go as far as to say that I’m utterly confident that she hadn’t been taken in by news items in New Scientist from 1978 warning we were entering a new ice age.
It would have been very easy in the 80’s to taken the position that the UK should diversify its energy supply technologies, and that we should rule nothing out. Everyone remembered the winter of discontent, the Carter Oil Years etc. Send out your panjandrams, evaluate technologies, pick some prime areas to promote (as Thatcher tried to do with 2nd generation PWR reactors – she originally proposed that 10 new reactors should be built, which ended up being bidded down to 5, then finally, 1 was built, at Sizewell) – put the wind up Arthur Scargill and undermine the unions in general, crush the opposition and force compromise because they expect coal to provide 10% of the nation’s energy and not 40%, re-staff where possible with scab (oops,’Non-Union’) labour, and then find that maybe, 30% of the nation should be coal-fired electricity generation. You’re back to the status quo, except all those noisy boorish unions have been slapped silly. And remember, it wasn’t just the NUM that was handed its head. For a number of reasons (particularly secondary picketing), by smashing the NUM, she also emasculated just about every other union that ever attended the Trades Union Congress.
Huge, huge win.
Thatcher’s embrace of nuclear technology was a matter of very public comment at the time (insert shameless plug for the original of Edge of Darkness starring the late Bob Peck, Joanne Whalley and the incomparable Joe Don Baker, not the Mel Gibson crap – Amazon has it)
So no, I’m not a gambling man, but I’d put a couple of Archers on Maggie never having embraced anthropogenic climate change.
Taylor – what the international left have done to nuclear power. Yes it would be hard to believe in a work of fiction – but they have done it in real life.
Even in France things are not ideal – only the state builds and runs nuclear power stations, and it does so in a typical “grand project” way (which is often not the best way).
But the fact that the state is in charge does NOT protect the nuclear power stations from the left.
I remember the last French Presidential election, I watched the debate (yes I am a nerd) and the “moderate” candidate of the left said the following….
“We must be independent from oil for both security and environmental reasons – that is why we must close down the nuclear power stations….”
Yes that is why we must CLOSE DOWN the nuclear power stations. And, no, it is not a mistranslation.
The left are often nonrational – the things they say litterally make no sense (at least unless one fully explores the context of their thought – and that is often a horrific thing to try and do).
Back in the 1960’s it was said that the American “hippie” left could be ignored because they were “on drugs”.
The followers may have been — but the leaders were not drugged up “hippies” and they were the ones who came up with the ideas that the others charted as mindless cult slogans.
They have been astonishing effective.
For example, on nuclear power they dominate the debate – not just on the news shows, but on the entertainment area (endless films about nuclear power being the end of the world) and in the SCHOOLS and UNIVERSITIES.
It is the same with the oil business (endless films and TV shows and….) – and it will be (is) the same with oil and gas shale.
Unless the CULTURAL strength of the left is countered there can be no victory (for they will prevent it).