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The Forum > Article Comments > The coming liquid fuel crisis > Comments

The coming liquid fuel crisis : Comments

By Jenny Goldie, published 2/11/2010

Lack of oil will be a problem within two to five years, but there are solutions according to a Washington DC conference.

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Sarnian,
I read one of the urls you provided.
ABARES answer to Senator Milne's peak oil question shows that ABARE
still believes as their previous evidence;
"If the price of eggs is high enough, roosters will start laying."
Posted by Bazz, Thursday, 11 November 2010 11:44:53 AM
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how often do economists get it right?

how many predicted the latest financial picnic?

tenth law of sustainability;" Growth in the rate of consumption of a non-renewable resource, such as a fossil fuel, causes a dramatic decrease in the life expectancy of the resource."

Dr. A Bartlett
Posted by kiwichick, Thursday, 11 November 2010 12:58:10 PM
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Bazz,
The point I was making was that Christine Milne is and has been aware of peak oil and has been trying to do something about it, since at least 2005.
Posted by sarnian, Thursday, 11 November 2010 1:57:50 PM
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Sarnian,
Yes, I was aware that Senator Milne was awake.
Barnaby Joyce is another that spoke on it in the senate.
It is said that Martin Ferguson is a closet peak oiler.

There was the Minister for Sustainability in Queensland who tried to
get the governments moving, but he lost his seat in the last election.

Perhaps the others took note !
Posted by Bazz, Thursday, 11 November 2010 3:10:19 PM
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Thank you, sarnian, for those links, and for what could well be a key extract therefrom, in your post of Thursday, 11 November 2010 at 10:08:10 AM. I have read them all. My apologies for not responding earlier, but I was away for the day.

Before commenting on that key extract I would like to make a key extract of my own from the first link supplied, by way of settimg some background in place. Senator Milne said:

"The Government and Opposition today
[Wednesday 18th November 2009] voted
against a Greens motion calling on the
Government to plan for peak oil in the
light of the most recent global figures
showing that a shift from oil power to
coal power is increasing global
greenhouse emissions."

To me, the response to Senator Milne's question asked in Committee on 24 May 2010 of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) spokesperson, Jane Melanie, as to whether in ABARE's view peak oil had been reached, was revealing. That response was:

"[ABARE] do not tend to look at the issue
from that perspective. Basically, underlying
our forecast is the notion that markets-demand
and supply-will determine the price of oil and
will determine when alternatives come in. The
point is not so much whether we will be running
out of oil; it is more when and whether the
alternatives will become economically viable."




My own translation of that response is "Yes ABARE knows about peak oil, we consider there is a solution, but we do not want to talk about it."




If my translation of that response is broadly accurate, given that ABARE is a government instrumentality, and given that BOTH major parties voted against the Greens' motion of which Senator Milne has spoken, then Australians at large have a problem. In the immediate sense, that problem is that they are being kept in the dark.

I am trying to have some light shed as to WHY it is thought necessary that Australians at large be kept in the dark about liquid fuel supply security.

TBC
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Friday, 12 November 2010 9:21:45 AM
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Continued

Before continuing, however, I feel I must draw attention to a seeming 'situating of the appreciation' implicit in the words of Senator Milne quoted by way of background in my previous post. That 'situating of the appreciation' subsists in the words:

"... a shift from oil power to
coal power is increasing global
greenhouse emissions."

Whilst that statement may be arguably true as it stands in splendid isolation, there are other factors at play, and other PRIORITIES that should determine when and how such other factors are brought to bear upon this to-all-accounts immediate problem of an impending Australian liquid fuel supply crisis. My concern is that those priorities should be AUSTRALIAN priorities, rather than those of trans-national corporatism or 'the rest of the world', the dis-United Nations.




Solving this liquid fuels problem in and for Australia may well mean it can be solved for the world.




Big Oil and its fellow-travellers is visibly running out of product to sell, at viable prices, to us its heavily dependent customers. I see no reason why Australia in particular should not immediately commence to build a business structure of its own to provide a (better quality) substitute, to its own timetable, around its own very abundant coal resources. I see no reason why Australia and Australians should not own such a business lock, stock, and barrel. Why wait for 'Big Oil' and its entourage to move into this field at its own convenience?

Sadly, it seems as if just such delay is what Australia's political parties, including the Greens, have so far been facilitating. Nothing, to me, highlights this more than the near-total absence from public discussion of the world significance of the recent Pedirka Basin coal discoveries.

UCG-GTL looks very like it could be a large part of a solution, buying time for Australia at least, if not the world, to get off the oil tiger's back without being eaten, without our society imploding - which is what we otherwise all face without cheap available energy, particularly in the form of liquid fuels
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Friday, 12 November 2010 10:31:19 AM
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