Fracking the UK

The Tyndall Centre report on potential shale gas extraction doesn't look too cheerful, pointing out that hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking' consumes and pollutes huge quantities of water - a vital resource increasingly under stress already now. With Britain being a much more densely populated country than the USA all the impacts will be even greater on us than Americans are currently suffering.

Are you going to get fracked?

Check out this map from the British Geological Society.

Live by the Dictator, Die by the Dictator

While the Establishment eagerly hope for a quick return to their Business-as-Usual model, doing their usual rounds of hob-nobbing with the international elite, luxury hotels and the attendant business jamborees, trade fairs and arms sales, others, like Humanist on Yahoo, are asking the obvious question: "Do Foreign evacuees from Libya remind you of rats leaving a sinking ship?"

Seems like some are happy to take stolen money and goods, but don't like the consequences of their actions when the people they've trodden over to get that wealth start objecting.

Bottom Massage

“… 200 years of abundant energy have allowed us to build an extremely complex civilization based on dozens of interrelated systems without which we can no longer live - at least not in the style to which we have become accustomed … Those who believe that ten years from now we will be able to get along with much reduced government have little appreciation of how modern civilization works or how bad things are going to get as fossil fuel energy fades from our lives …”

Read more at “peak oil crisis: the future of government” by Tom Whipple.

And more on 'bottom bouncing' at Shadowstats, where Walter J. "John" Williams notes that "despite minor changes to the system, government [economic] reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last decade or so." Can this be purely accidental? Surely not. After all, covering the hideous truth in a cheering blanket of confusion always helps, leaving only a few suspicious buggers to write dry headlines like  "November Jobs Increase Was Statistically Indistinguishable from Decline."

Fished Out

One product of this weekend's semi-structured wilfing was yet another absorbing eco-blog, Constantine Alexander, who on his latest round-up, features research on the denudation of our oceans caused by industrial fishing, reported by Science Daily:

"Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researchers that charts the systematic expansion of industrialized fisheries."

“… the reality is that for decades now, numerous fisheries are corporate operations that take a mostly no-fish-left-behind approach to our oceans until there's nowhere left to go …"

"The National Geographic Society, the Waitt Foundation, the SEAlliance along with strategic government, private, academic and conservation partners including the TEDPrize, Google and IUCN, are beginning an action-oriented marine conservation initiative under the banner of "Mission Blue" that will increase global awareness of the urgent ocean crisis and help to reverse the decline in ocean health by inspiring people to care and act; reducing the impact of fishing; and promoting the creation of marine protected areas. For more information, go to http://www.iamtheocean.org/."

UK Marine Protected Areas: Interactive Map

Managing the Descent

When you have vertigo it's best to get your feet back on the ground. You'll feel a lot better for it.

Dr Mathis Wackernagel  of ecological footprint fame on Post Growth blog:　
　
"Our current palliative economic therapies have compromised our economies’ potential to deliver in the future. These investments have not helped us access cheap, abundant resources (which no longer exist), but have brought us more deeply into “peak everything.”

Hence the questions are not: do we want growth, nor how much growth is desirable? Rather they become: What will be the consequences of a resource-imposed “end of growth?” How can economies cope with non-linearities such as unexpected contractions? How can we avoid uneven contractions that would lead to social unrest? How can economies be stable, resilient and prosperous in a peak everything world?"

Read more ...

Feeling a Bit Peaky

Type peak oil into Google search and you’ll get the following drop-down list:

Peak oil news
Peak oil debunked
Peal oil myth
Peak oil theory
Peak oil

So there’s obviously plenty of people still out there in denial of resource depletion, clinging resolutely to their cosy blanket even as it is shrinking and disintegrating.

Not the guys at The Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security though - what a bunch of hippies!

Here’s 3 minutes of Philip Dilley, Chairman of Arup, at the introduction to the Peak Oil Task Force launch earlier this year.  Now “The Taskforce warns that more urgent action is needed from Government to address the threat of peak oil following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It urges the UK Coalition Government to take action to reduce the impact of the oil crunch by 2015.” They have brought out a new briefing note about the implications of deep-water drilling for oil now that we are, supposedly, getting towards the end of easily and cheaply available supplies.

But I'm sure they're just imagining it, so don't worry.