Heartland, Peak Oil

Last year, the Heartland Institute (a US climate-change denial thinktank) published a list of 500 scientists they say disagree with the central theses of anthropogenic global warming (that the climate is changing and that it's our fault)... The five New Zealand scientists listed today took the extraordinary step of issuing a joint press release demanding to be removed:

\Associate Professor Chris Hendy (University of Waikato), Dr Matt McGlone (Science Team Leader, Landcare Research), Dr Neville Moar (retired DSIR,), Dr Jim Salinger (Principal Scientist, NIWA) and Dr Peter Wardle (retired DSIR, FRSNZ). Other eminent scientists around the world, also included in the list of 500, have publically distanced themselves from the Heartland statement

niwa
scoop
Good to see my old high-school buddy Matt McGlone getting himself off that list
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Exon funded 'think-tanks' anti-AGCC - quite a scary chart
exxonsecrets
How many lying pseudo-science 'institutes' can $40B profit fund?
With Oil companies making record profits, we might expect a 'plateau' rather than a 'peak' in oil. Plateaus have a steeper eventual fall.
But Exxon's greed (Oil is $122 today) and the fundamental inability to support decency in eg Nigeria and Iraq, mean that the ride down is on.
Some things (North Sea Unions? Saud family?) may be to some extent beyond Exxon's control?

Its not clear why so much effort is put into obfuscating carbon-climatechange, whereas much less propaganda seems around against Peak Oil which is a more immanent danger.
Somehow Peak Oil hasn't caught in the public imagination, so less counter-propaganda required?
There must have been a successful campaign, which we just cant discern, to marginalise PO.
Oddly with Texas crude at $122 the popular reaction, such as it is, seems to be
1) the Oil Companies could lower the prices
2) the Govt should lower taxes on petrol
3) we oughta delay carbon-capping-trading mechanisms on petrol

now, 3) has just been announced (NZ)
1) and 2) are true, to the extent that profits and taxes, rising at fixed proportions, are much higher now. But all 3 claims amount to abandoning 'Market' signals.
If we are going to abandon the Market, we oughta just promulgate oil saving decrees. eg 30kW power limit on cars......


For those who have just joined: PO is not about the end of oil, its about the end of Cheap oil.
All the nifty replacements; algae, solarcells, battery cars, are fine, its just that they are not Cheap, so they involve a different sort of civilization.



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cenospheres. The microscopic spheres can form only when fossil hydrocarbons such as coal and crude oil burn. The team reports in the May issue of Geology that it found cenospheres at eight of 13 sites it examined around the world, and the objects were present only at the K-T boundary, not above or below it. [Dinosaurs drove SUVs???]
sciencemag
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nasa
"We have more planes"
over USA
Heartland,Oil