August 28th, 2007 by John
Part of the ‘Global Ocean Conveyor Belt’, a series of giant ocean currents that flow around the earth, the Gulf stream carries vast quantities of warm Atlantic water northward giving Europe and parts of North America a temperate climate. The amount of heat involved is phenomenal, estimated by Stephen Rahmstorf, an oceanographer at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, as equivalent to one million powerplants.
Without the Gulf stream, Northern Europe would be hardly habitable, certainly not by the present dense population.
The Gulf stream is powered by the weight of the dense, salty water of the northern part of the current which sinks, pulling the current behind it. Scientists are extremely worried that fresh water pouring into the northern ocean from melting glaciers will mix with the salt water of the current making it lighter and unable to sink. It is disturbing that from measurements taken in the last few years there is already a decline in the vigour of the circulation and studies indicate that unlike other climate changes, ocean currents can shift or stop in just a few years.
The effects of such a shut-down would push Northern Europe into semi-Arctic weather conditions, a change so profound that most people don’t even want to think about it.
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Peak Oil is sometimes called ‘Hubbert’s Peak.’ Marrion King Hubbert, a Shell geologist predicted in 1956 that US oil production would peak around 1971. His prediction was not believed by the U.S government or even by most other prominent geologists and oil companies, but he turned out to be correct. He said that production in the U.S would follow a bell shaped curve, rising steeply, reaching a peak in 1971 and then falling.
Hubbert also predicted that world production would follow a similar pattern. Many geologists and oil experts have in the last few years concluded that he was correct in that too, and indeed in many other countries, especially high consumption countries, production is already declining, leaving us more dependent on the Middle East.
When North Sea production went in to decline in 1999, the oil companies and the UK government seemed to have been taken by surprise. They had not predicted such an early peak and were reluctant to admit it had actually happened.
There are gigantic amounts of oil left, but when world oil production reaches its highest level ever, a level never to be repeated and to be followed by a decline, a mad scramble will begin and panic will prevail simply because we cannot manage with less in the face of rapidly increasing demand from Asia, especially China and India.
There are many different estimates of when Peak Oil will happen, mainly because it is impossible to get accurate reserve figures from producing countries, especially OPEC members who are thought to have lied for years about their reserves in order to have a high production quota.
Some experts think we are at or near to peak already and point to the fact that very high prices during the last few years have not led to big production increases as would be expected. Other experts think that around 2010 is the most likely time while others think it could be more then 20 years away.
What is not in dispute is that oil and gas are finite resources and will peak at some time. We need to be urgently working on ways to allow food production to continue when the peak arrives.
The solutions section of the book, Famine in the West, describes my thoughts on how this can be done. What are your thoughts?
