Matt Simmons
I have just received an email from Judy Gristwood at Ocean Energy Insitute to say that Matt Simmons passed away suddenly on Sunday. Matt was an extraordinary man, and will be remembered as one of those who tried to alert the world to the imminent dangers of oil and gas depletion and its effects on our way of life. Thank you Matt and Godspeed.
Oil Threatens Marine Life – ABC News
I’ve just met Dr. Guggenheim on Twitter. As we suspected the amount of Methane in the spill was being underestimated. It remains to be seen how the gulf will eventually cope with this level of Methane contamination.
If you’re interested in a great source for Ocean information go to 1-Planet 1-Ocean.
Oil Threatens Marine Life – ABC News, posted with vodpod
Matt Simmons on Bloomberg
I was talking about the Matt Simmons story in BP and the Giant Blender. This is his Bloomberg interview.
Nature is not a Machine
Nature is not a machine. I’ve noticed a growing hubris in the way in which people are talking about the BP catastrophe, not least Mr. Obama, who although he’s a lawyer, should know better. We are listening to these people talking about ‘putting it right’ in the same way that one would fix a broken watch. Replace broken parts and all is well. This drive for the metaphorical arises from the way our cognitive systems seek pattern, which is mostly an evolutionary good, but it has its limits. The wrong metaphor can lead us to desperately wrong analysis.
Nature is not a machine. There are no spare parts. There is no fix. Rather, it’s a cohesive biological system of unimaginable complexity. What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico has changed the environment – forever. The system state has been radically altered and the expectation that it can be put back the way it was is scientifically naïve. I’m sure there will be remediation efforts, but that will not, ever, put that coast back the way it was. This conceit of nature as our pet machine is clearly of machine age origin, but now that we have so much better metaphors for the way the world works, why do we insist on continuing with the same old nonsense? In the last 30 years, with the advent of genetics, the language of modern biology provides us with far more useful metaphors – and modes of analysis. We have nudged a complex ecosystem out of equilibrium. It will eventually find a new equilibrium, but that may not include the existence of blue fin tuna. You were tired of sushi anyway, right?
This is a map of what the Gulf looks like. Notice that it looks a lot more like a nervous system than a machine. It is. It is the nervous system of the beast we’ve made.
(Image thanks to Matthew Baker at ESRI Educational Services)
If we look at this as a biological system whose health we have compromised we can start thinking in terms of the way in which biological systems recover – they heal. And that healing process leaves scars. Life continues, but not with the same vigour as before. And sometimes recovery is impossible and life ceases. The Southeast coast of America may partially recover, but some of the more fragile populations will not. The complex web of life that makes up that ecosystem has been diminished, and pretending that it’s all just going to get taken to the mechanics and put right is offensive. Pretending that it’s just a matter of the BP executive writing impressive cheques makes it worse.
While we’re at it, why is the Gulf of Mexico a catastrophe and Alberta is a business opportunity? Every single peak oil geologist and ecologist I know has been on about what the downside of the oil production curve will look like since Colin Campbell started the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. No mystery. No magic. They have been saying for at least a decade that it will make parts of earth look like bad science fiction. Irrevocably damaged/destroyed ecosystems – which are not easily isolated from the larger planet wide ecology – will inevitably leak their toxins. What cancerous horrors await the good people of Alberta we can only imagine. Massive bird casualties are routine. But no one seems to think of it as a catastrophe.
Let’s put it in context. The largest dam in the world is China’s three gorges project. The second largest is in Alberta. It’s called the Syncrude Tailings dam. It contains 540,000,000 cubic metres of toxic sludge. That is one tailing pond. It total Alberta has 840,000,000 cubic metres in tailing ponds, covering 170 sq. km. This is an Edward Burtynsky photo of what that looks like…
And you thought Mordor was scary? So while I’m not in any way trying to diminish the scale of what is happening in the Gulf, I think it’s good to remember that it’s business as usual in Alberta. Maybe we’re at a turning point. Maybe the BP spill is the thing that finally makes us think about what we’re up to. Oil is killing us, because we are part of the same biology. We are not a machine.
Links:
Street Fighting Man
Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy,
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
Jagger Richards 1968
Finally I’m back. My Atlantic trip was extraordinary and I ended up doing two deliveries to and from France, so in all I covered more than 6000 miles.
Before I left I wrote a post called 2010: The Next Leg Down. I wanted to go over it and see how I’m doing in the trend forecasting business.
Oil and the Deep Horizon rig: I’m still waiting for the oil price spike. But the good people at BP are doing their best on my behalf, bless ‘em. Or rather, Transocean. Although Transocean is not well known publicly, it’s the largest rig operator in the world, with about 300 rigs. What makes this accident so important was that it was an ultra-deep drilling operation and if the US bans more ultra-deep in the Gulf of Mexico it will impact oil supply within a year. As the cheap easy oil disappears we are faced with difficult choices: Just how much ecological horror do you think you can stand to stay on the highway? We need to remember that Deep Horizon was no mundane oil operation. They were tapping into the Tiber field – 40,000 ft down. It was the deepest vertical well in history. You could lose Everest and have 13000ft spare in that hole. This was the Apollo mission for deep drilling. Was it dangerous? Of course it was. Whenever we take one of those giant steps for mankind, it’s inherently dangerous. But in all the fervour to get to the 70 billion barrels deep in the Gulf, we chose to suppress that information. What happens if we have a big hurricane season this year?
Nukes: While the west mutters and hovers, Asia is going all out. It will be interesting to follow the split in attitude. Just this week, Monju, the giant Japanese breeder reactor was brought back online after a 14 years of repair. China, which has 11 reactors in commercial production, has 20 under construction. I’m waiting for the argument in the West to get much more heated as people start to wonder how we’ll compete with nuclear Asian countries in 10 years.
Immigration: I get a gold star. In the UK immigration has become the biggest issue in the election. It was an immigration argument with Mrs. Duffy that caused Mr. Brown’s worst moment in the campaign. As we hit the next leg down, and the European economy buckles under the sovereign debt bubble, which will make Lehman brothers look like the teddy bear’s picnic, immigration will turn ugly. Big right wing gains across Europe. As southern Europe goes into full street fighting man mode it’s only a matter of time before they decide that it’s the foreigner’s fault. Look out.
I’m off to the Frontline Club to have a glass of wine and watch as Britain has a revolutionary election, involving three white guys instead of two. No, really. It’s time for real change. Honest.
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