Exxon believes in global warming

A snippet from an item by Dirk Notz on RealClimate:

On 30th August, Exxon announced a deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. As part of this deal, Exxon will invest more than US$2 billion to support Rosneft in the exploitation of oil reserves in the Kara Sea, which is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. One requirement for the success of this deal: a further retreat of Arctic sea ice. Given that climate model simulations indeed all project such further retreat of Arctic sea ice, it seems that at least to some degree, managers of big oil companies have started to make business decisions based on climate-model simulations. That may be good news. Or not.

The oil crunch

The ABC’s Catalyst is a regular part of my (limited) TV viewing and last night’s programme was exceptionally good, tackling an important subject intelligently and entertainingly.

The topic? Peak Oil, the idea that global oil production has to decline after all the easily-extractable oil is exploited. Some experts think the peak was in 2006, others claim we haven’t reached it yet, but the consequences are going to be challenging either way: much higher oil prices forcing enormous economic, and hence social, changes. (Did someone say ‘collapse’?) Continue reading “The oil crunch”