You might be waking up, but not heard the environmentalists or even the geologists, but how can governments ignore the capitalists? Citibank in a report it published last week, so far ignored by the media, in it, create "genuine difficulties" in increasing the production of crude oil, especially after 2012. "
Although extraction initiated 175 projects over the next four years, "the fear remains that most of these projects will be canceled because of high levels of decline." The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that oil supplies could reach a ceiling, but "recent evidence of failure in output growth will prove the dead to the producers. " They have not been able to respond to the incredible rise in prices. "The total production of liquid hydrocarbon has been stalled since mid-2005 and is in slightly more than 85 million barrels a day."
The issue is more complicated than ever as the OPEC countries are reluctant to increase production. According to Citibank so far has changed is that producing countries outside OPEC can not respond to prices. Does this mean that production in these countries has reached its zenith? If so, what will happen to our government?
ago nine months and asked the British government his studies of world oil reserves. His answer puzzled me, have not made any. They are based on an external source: a book published by The International Energy Agency (IEA) (International Energy Agency). The omission is even more strange when you read the book and discover that there is great controversy, calling those who questioned future oil supplies "doomsayers" (sensationalist) without providing evidence to support its conclusions. While OPEC countries have great interest in exaggerating the amount of its reserves to boost their quotas, the IEA is wary of their own studies future supply.
Last week I tried again and got the same answer: "The government agrees with IEA analysis that say oil and gas reserves are sufficient to sustain economic growth in the near future." You can who have not realized that the IEA is now backtracking. The Financial Times says the agency "has admitted to not paying enough attention to supply constraints and that more and more evidence that new discoveries are being made more slowly than expected ... the decline in discoveries new deposits are a well kept secret by industry oil, and the IEA is concerned about whether the data are not precise handling. "What if these data are wrong? What will happen if OPEC's stated reserves are a pack of lies? What plans does the government? The answer is none.
The European Commission on the contrary if you have a plan, but it is a disaster. Acknowledges that "the oil dependence of transport sector ... is one of the most serious problems experienced by the EU in terms of insecurity in energy supply." In part to diversify fuel supplies, partly to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, has ordered Member states that by 2020, 10% of the fuel we burn in cars will be replaced by biofuels. This will not solve peak oil, but maybe even put it into perspective by causing an even greater problem.
fairness to the Commission, has admitted that biofuels are not a green panacea. The rules included in the draft say that they should not be produced by destroying primary forests, grasslands and wetlands, as this may cause a net increase in emissions. Nor can damage any ecosystem with high biodiversity to plant biofuels.
Sounds good, but there are three problems. If biofuels can not be grown on virgin land, these should be confined to existing agricultural land, which means that every time we fill the tank remove food from the mouths of people. This also increases food prices, which encourages farmers to extend cultivation into other lands, forests, ancient grasslands, wetlands and so forth. We congratulate you for keeping us morally pure, but the impacts are the same. No way out for this: on a finite planet with tight food supply, or competes with the poor or new land use.
The third problem is that the Commission's methodology has been discredited by two new studies. Published in the journal Science, calculated the total costs of carbon in the production of biofuels. When one takes into account the 'cleansing' of new land (directly or indirectly caused by the displacement of crops for food) all the major biofuels cause a massive increase in emissions.
Even the most productive source of sugar-cane planted in the little fertile savannas of Brazil, causing a carbon debt which takes 17 years to be canceled. Since most of the reductions must be done now, the net effect of this plant is increasing climate change. The worst source, the palm oil displacing tropical rainforest growing in peat-causes carbon debt of 840 years. Even when it produces ethanol from corn grown on land "rested" arable land (which in the EU is called set-aside and the USA is called conservation reserve), it takes 48 years to repay the debt. The facts have changed. Will they change policy?
Many people think that there is a way to avoid these problems, biofuels do not produce seed but if the waste-transport fuel can be obtained from straw or grass or wood chips, there are no implications on the use of land and there is no danger of spreading hunger. Until recently I believed this too.
Unfortunately most of the "waste" agriculture is not. It is the organic material that maintains soil structure, nutrients and carbon storage. A study commissioned by the U.S. government proposed to help achieve its goals in biofuels, 75% of crop residues must be collected annually. According to a letter published in Science last year, removing crop residues can exacerbate erosion a hundredfold. Our addiction to the car, can lead to peak soil as a peak oil. Collect
crop wastes means replacing the nutrients from fertilizers that cause more emissions of greenhouse gases. A recently published study by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen says that emissions of nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 296 times more than CO2) from nitrogen fertilizers cancel all the reductions that could produce biofuels, even before taking into account the effects of the use land.
If grown-called second-generation special as trees or switchgrass (1) (a summer perennial grass), does not solve the problem: like other energy crops displace food production and carbon emissions. Growing switchgrass (a perennial grass summer), as shown in one study of Science, creates a carbon debt of 52 years. Some people aims to produce second-generation fuels from grass harvested in natural meadows or from municipal waste, but it is quite complicated to produce a single subject, much harder manufactured from a mixture. Apart from the oil used there is no biofuel is sustainable.
All these complicated solutions are designed to avoid a more simple: reduce fuel consumption for transportation. But that requires using a different matter. Unfortunately, the overall supply of political courage appear peaked some time ago.
References: (1) http://www.buscagro.com/Detailed/33774.html
Original Article
: Apart from Used chip fat, There Is No Such Thing as a Sustainable biofuel
George Monbiot The Guardian, Tuesday February
December 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008 / feb/12/biofuels.energy
Translated by Félix Nieto Globalízate
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