Boys Crying Wolf

Another Greenist Calamity Disappears Quietly Into the Night

Just a few short years ago--around 2010--scary (in the sense of "scaremongering") environmentalists were pronouncing that we were confronted with what they had been doomy about for so long: the world was running out of oil.

Now, of course, the greenists were secretly very pleased that the world's oil supply was going to shrivel to a trickle, because oil was a nasty environmental pollutant and the chief cause of alleged global warming.  But they needed a doom-scenario back in 2010 to get people's attention and to overcome political lethargy.  They wanted a green planet.  Hilariously, they forgot to mention (if they ever opened their mind to the thought) that carbon dioxide is the greenest gas known to man.  A green planet requires a CO₂ rich planet; burning lots of oil would help a great deal towards a global green paradise.

In any event, we now need sleepless nights no longer.  There's plenty of oil to go around and no end to it in sight.  This means plenty of  CO₂  released into the atmosphere in the years ahead, which implies a very green planet indeed.

Here is a headline from one of our local papers:

Supply Glut Spells End of Oil Price Rally

Opec and its partners have seen the rally in oil prices evaporate as the US inventory glut becomes impossible to ignore. West Texas Intermediate closed at its lowest price since November 29, the day before Opec approved the first supply cuts in eight years. Crude supplies in the US rose to the highest level since 1982, according to Government data.

 Harold Hamm, the US shale oil billionaire, warned this week that the industry could "kill" the market if it embarked on another spending binge. Oil had fluctuated above US$50 a barrel since the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other countries started trimming supply to reduce a global glut. "People are nervous about the global supply-demand balance," said Adam Sieminski, a former head of the Energy Information Administration (EIA). "Shale is coming back with US$50 oil and there's uncertainty about whether Opec and its partners are going to roll over the production agreement." [NZ Herald]

Meanwhile, travelling recently in the North Island just north of Wellington we were mesmerised by a colony of slow turning wind-turbines atop the majestic hills, marking the end of the Tararua ranges.   Suddenly we came across a cluster of dead turbines.  No movement.  Blades frozen.  And the cost of maintaining and repairing those malfunctioning turbines?

Don't ask.  There are some things which one simply does not talk about in polite society.