Swamped as we are by election coverage, still it was a joy to see all three stories lined up in The Punch, Australia's most repetitive and redundant conversation:
There's Tory Maguire with Gillard gets herself tangled up further in the Rudd factor.
Then just below is David Penberthy Looking for Kevin in the State that's ditching Labor.
And then just below that is Leo Shanahan's Campaign countdown: What the hell to do about Kevin?
By golly, where I come from that's the trifecta. I have to confess I didn't bother reading any of them. If I'm already over the media in this election campaign, damn sure I'm over The Punch brooding about Kevin.
No, the connoisseur, the gourmet with a sweet tooth, wants something more exotic, something full of high fructose corn syrup for the mind. Sure it makes you fat and stodgy but oh how yummy it is. And where better to find it than in a Gary Johns' piece for The Australian?
Don't believe the Greens, we'll be running on gas, the header shrieks, and right away the scribbler's hard hitting posture on climate change is established at the get go:
If you thought Kyoto and Copenhagen were nonsense, wait until you see what the Greens have in store next with their global oil depletion protocol.
Oh indeed they must have been nonsense because apparently they were attempts to deal with a nonsense issue, namely climate change.
You see, Johns is one of those old fashioned believers in Genesis, along with hordes of creationists:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Talk about a mission statement. Thank you dear absent lord for the contractual authority to go out and indulge in a little random looting, raping, ravaging and otherwise disposing of the earth, not to mention all those creepy things that creepeth.
You see, it's - as usual - all the fault of the Greens.
This is based on a deep peak-oil belief: that oil and gas extraction will peak and decline terminally in the near future.
Trouble is, it seems Armageddon has been delayed yet again.
Yes when you want mind boggingly stupid assertions about an area where there is plenty of science to consider, Johns is your man. Never mind that M. King Hubbert devised his peak theory back in 1956 to accurately predict the decline in US oil production, a theory which has since been applied to other countries.
Never mind that the argument is not so much about whether the world will exhaust its easily accessible oil supplies but when. Never mind that it's not actually about oil running out, so much as the point when it becomes too expensive, or other resources become competitive, or people judge that looting and soiling the environment isn't worth the rewards designed to keep old systems running. Sorry but maybe it's time to move on from your FX Holden running on standard.
Never mind that you could find a helluva lot more information and informed speculation in the wiki Peak oil than in a mountain of Johns' scribblings.
Nope, just mention the greens and apocalyptic thinking, and that's it, case closed. Now how about a little bit of 'fuck you, we're alright Jack' thinking? Sure thing:
Jumping on the tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, a fact almost forgotten in the rush to show pictures of oil-fouled sea birds, the Greens would have us believe the world can do without such mining. Think again.
Oh yes, that fits right in with our regular theme regarding The Australian. Think. again.
But you see that's because Johns is quite happy drill baby drill.
You see there's not just the greens fiendish attempt to preserve marine reserves from oil and gas exploration. Great Barrier Reef? Drill, baby drill. But there's also this attempt to stop people drilling off the coast of Newcastle. Apparently the pussies are worried about oil on the beach. Drill Novocastrians drill. And then of course there's the Arctic, which Johns quotes as holding 22% of the world's reserves. Drill, natch baby, drill.
Thank the lord with global warming accessing that oil and using the new north west passage will get so much easier. Drill Arctic drill. And then there's the Antarctic. Who knows what loot for pillaging we might find down there if we just put our minds to it. Drill Mawson drill. Drill dog sled drill.
Johns takes great comfort in quoting the thoughts of Peter Odell, and in the process conflating oil and gas production. What a pity that Johns didn't bother to take a look at Odell's more nuanced approach, which you can do on this site's old friend Michael Duffy's ABC show Counterpoint, in The Good Oil:
Peter Odell: Well, my guess is Thanksgiving Day in about 2035, if we can be as precise as each other. I’m not quite sure when Thanksgiving Day is, of course, as we don’t have one.
Eek, not that bit, lordy lordy, next thing you know we'll be quoting Odell warning about the volatility of oil pricing in the future. No, this bit:
Michael Duffy: Do we have any idea of what the natural gas reserves are or when they’ll run out?
Peter Odell: Volumetrically, just in terms of energy content, they’re just about on a par with oil, but of course much less has been used and therefore there remains very much more left to use. In my study of the future for natural gas I’ve come to the conclusion that the use of gas by the end of this century could be more than five times the size of current gas use and it will make it the single, largest, most important source of energy in the world as a whole from about 2050-2060 onwards. One advantage of that over oil is that, of course, it’s much less environmentally polluting and produces less CO2 per unit burned, and so it’s considered advantageous even by the environmentalists.
Peter Odell: Volumetrically, just in terms of energy content, they’re just about on a par with oil, but of course much less has been used and therefore there remains very much more left to use. In my study of the future for natural gas I’ve come to the conclusion that the use of gas by the end of this century could be more than five times the size of current gas use and it will make it the single, largest, most important source of energy in the world as a whole from about 2050-2060 onwards. One advantage of that over oil is that, of course, it’s much less environmentally polluting and produces less CO2 per unit burned, and so it’s considered advantageous even by the environmentalists.
Yep, oils is oils, and oils ain't gas.
But then really Johns isn't interested in a sensible discussion of the science, or strategies for the future, not when simple minded snake and green whacking can be the order of the day:
Put it another way:
While Johns might want to stop the wrapping of the world in cotton wool, because he's a John Wayne man's type man, and has hair on his chest for beating on, and doesn't need no pussy cotton wool and so the world shouldn't either, and meantime indulges himself in undergraduate denialist rhetorics and cheap drill baby drill point scoring, the rest of the intelligent scientific community is getting on with the business of solving issues surrounding peak oil, gas, energy reserves, the growing energy demands and needs of the estimated 9 billion people on the planet by 2050, and climate change, without wishing to irretrievably soil the one nest humanity has with too much shit, and not wishing the issues away with a simple mantra about how we can just keep fucking the place over ... aka drill baby drill.
And thank the lord for that. And thank the lord that Gary Johns is no longer a minister, his one claim to fame being that he was a head kicker in the Keating Labor government, and now between scribbles for The Australian, spends his time hanging around the Institute of Public Affairs, long term apologist for all kinds of businesses happy to offer support for their endeavours, or tyre kicking Public Policy at the Australian Catholic University's Public Policy Institute.
If he's the best in futurists doing the rounds right at the moment, the world is in serious trouble ...
Meanwhile, if you're interested in peak oil, and want to learn things - as opposed to reading a Gary Johns' column - this page here has a series of links. They're no longer being updated, but the ones that do, and the wiki, will get you to more authoritative and informative insights than Johns has to offer ...
Week after week The Oz publishes this kind of drivel instead of articles by people with insight and information relating to the issue to hand. And then has the cheek to blather on about how fair and balanced and informative it is ...
Think. Again.
"antiodean"? What the? My concise Oxford dates from the early 1990s, but I still doubt whether this is a word even in this 2010-type hi-tech age.
ReplyDeleteA hard hitting incisive analysis of the issues to hand and I thank you for it. We employ a former Murdoch subbie for proofing and sad to say the standards are lacks. Corrected.
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