For several years now, a number of peak oil advocates such as Matt Simmons, T. Boone Pickens (aka “I believe in free markets, but give me subsidies”) and Ken Deffeyes have been arguing that May 2005 was the peak of world oil production. They arrived at this by noting that crude plus condensate (excluding natural gas liquids, biofuels, etc) peaked and declined in that month. Matt went so far as to wager with me that we would never surpass that amount.
Aside from the fact that C+C production has peaked and dropped several times in the past 2 decades, only to recover, it has, on preliminary data, surpassed that again this July. However, there is a distinct possibility that the numbers will be revised downwards leaving May 2005 as the highest point to date. …
Continue ReadingPaul Ehrlich founded the neo-Malthusian movement with his 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, and John Holdren was an instant convert. In 1971, mentor-and-disciple wrote:
… Continue Reading“We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one – whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen – is hardly grounds for complacency.)”
Skeptics of climate alarmism have often trotted out the fact that a number of climate scientists sounded the alarm over global cooling before they sounded the alarm over global warming–an argument for humility in the face of complexity, uncertainty, and change.
Global cooling was more than fringe thinking. As Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich wrote in their 1996 book, Betrayal of Science and Reason (p. 34): …
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