The end of the oil gambit: economic contraction and Africa

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Notes

Biofuels will be ignored here, since it has long been clear that they cannot be grown on a sufficient scale globally without jeopardising food supplies. This is not to rule out other possibilities such as algae, but these need to be assessed.

With regard to the global warming debate, it is worth pointing out that insofar as carbon dioxide is a contributor to global warming, a reduction in oil and coal supplies will mitigate the problem in the future. Whether this would happen in time and on a sufficient scale to reduce major predicted impacts of climate change is a different issue. However, while it is not a central theme of this argument, it is worth registering the point that this author does not accept the scientific basis of claims that global warming is anthropogenic, that is, ‘man-made’. First, the global climate records going back thousands of years indicate very clearly that carbon dioxide levels rise only centuries, and in some cases millennia, after global warming takes place. There is certainly a correlation between global warming and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the time-lag self-evidently shows that the causation is the reverse of that usually claimed. Second, the more recent data sets take no account of the medieval warming period, despite the publicly acknowledged fact that there is simply insufficient evidence to show if this warming was confined to the northern hemisphere. If it was not, then the time series used to demonstrate global warming in recent centuries is fundamentally flawed. Other flaws in this time series have been pointed out, including the use of data in China that relied on weather stations near urban areas. Third, other scientific estimates using plausible data sets indicate that the world was warmer some 6000 years ago, and the drastic consequences now predicted did not occur then. Fourth, evidence exists that all major bodies in the solar system have in recent decades started to show an excess of thermal and/or electromagnetic energy, leading one to suspect that the cause of global warming is astronomical. Fifth, a peer-reviewed scientific paper using observational data shows that carbon dioxide actually leads to cooling, owing to the fact that it generates cloud cover which has a net cooling effect. This is not only the exact opposite of the usual claims, but would explain why carbon dioxide only increases many years after global warming takes place, in the time series data. One could go on, but the idea that ‘climate change deniers’ are adopting a right-wing obscurantist position is simply false. There are many competent scientists of various political persuasions who dispute the current consensus. It is a matter of proper appraisal of relevant evidence, something that those arguing in favour of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) have failed to demonstrate.

This also applies to arguments that uranium-based nuclear power can mitigate global warming. It is simply too small a component of the overall energy picture worldwide.

One small implication of a decline in oil output is that nylon may be replaced by sisal and jute for rope and sacking respectively. These crops have historically been grown in Africa.

To my knowledge, few companies are engaged in research on food crops that grow in salt water, and only one company is using glass to evaporate seawater and use the resulting condensed freshwater to irrigate arid land near the coast.

The most important emerging economies are Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC, as defined by the influential Goldman Sachs). Russia has large reserves of oil and gas, while in Brazil new oil discoveries offshore should come on stream within about five years.