Amazing Shale Revolution; US CO2 Emissions Plummet Towards 1990 Levels

America's carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011. But the shale gas revolution makes a reality of many things recently thought impossible. Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing! --John Hanger's Fact of the Day, 2 July 2012

CO2 emissions in the US have been in decline since 2005. That is without a carbon tax, without a cap and trade system, and without mandatory, Kyoto style limits and a global carbon treaty. In Europe CO2 emissions are not falling — and Germany is even moving back to coal. What made the difference? The revolution in natural gas. Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than, for example, coal and the natural gas bonanza in the US is making cleaner energy sources cheaper than their rivals. --Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest, 6 May 2012

Despite the desperate hopes of the many who want to dismiss any impact of UK shale as inconsequential, that old trouble called facts keeps getting in the way. The recovery rate of Cuadrilla's 200TCF resource would range from 5 to 40%. How large the recovery would be depends on the results of  further drilling and future technology. We already know that Cuadrilla have revealed over 3,000 feet shale at Preece Hall. The question is how big is the resource.  Igas figures show what could be confirmation that the Cuadrilla and Igas PEDL's have a lot of gas, since now we see that forty miles south of Preece Hall the Bowland Shale is still 1000 feet thick.  In other words, the surface extent is as healthy as the thickness. --Nick Grealy, No Hot Air, 2 July 2012

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that the experience of  the Rio+20 summit proves that the political will to take action on climate change isn’t there – and argues that a new form of activism is the only answer. “I would submit that the time has come that we shouldn’t really wait for governments,” he said. --Responding to Climate Change, 2 July 2012

India is facing an energy crisis that is slowing economic growth in the world's largest democracy. At stake is India's ability to bring electricity to 400 million rural residents—a third of the population—as well as keep the lights on at corporate office towers and provide enough fuel for 1.5 million new vehicles added to the roads each month. --Amol Sharma and Megha Bahree, The Wall Street Journal, 2 July 2012

Over the past few weeks, a passion play of a very modern kind has been acted out in the North Devon countryside – one that may have implications for each of the 44 dioceses in the Church of England. At the heart of the drama is a clash between the Church (in the form of the Bishop of Exeter) and the inhabitants of three small villages with a total population of just under 1,400. The cause of the schism has been the bishop’s plan to build wind turbines on Church-owned land at the edge of each village. --Christopher Middleton, The Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2012

If we leave it any longer, and no politician seems to be taking Peak Oil seriously, then we are going to see total economic collapse. --George Monbiot, The Third Estate, 24 September 2009

Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world’s oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise; if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production. --George Monbiot, The Guardian 16 November 2009

The facts have changed, now we must change too. For the past 10 years an unlikely coalition of geologists, oil drillers, bankers, military strategists and environmentalists has been warning that peak oil – the decline of global supplies – is just around the corner. We had some strong reasons for doing so: production had slowed, the price had risen sharply, depletion was widespread and appeared to be escalating. The first of the great resource crunches seemed about to strike. Peak oil hasn't happened, and it's unlikely to happen for a very long time. So this is where we are. The automatic correction – resource depletion destroying the machine that was driving it – that many environmentalists foresaw is not going to happen. The problem we face is not that there is too little oil, but that there is too much. --George Monbiot, The Guardian, 2 July 2012