The Oracle of Oil, book review

By David Strahan Comment Closed
This article was first published in New Scientist, 1 June 2016. THIS is a curious time to publish a biography of M. King Hubbert. The story of how this brilliant but irascible Shell geologist accurately forecast in 1956 that US oil production would peak and go into terminal decline by 1970 is by now well worn. (more…)...
Read More

Reasons to be fearful

By David Strahan Comment Closed
This article was first published in New Scientist, 27 July 2013. DOOM-MONGERS of the climate variety might want to look away now – we apparently have more time to save the planet. A recent study published in Nature Geoscience suggests it will warm more slowly than feared, perhaps buying an extra decade for action. (more…)...
Read More

Liquid air: the birth of the nitrogen economy

By David Strahan Comment Closed
This article was first published in gasworld in September 2012. Everybody’s heard of the hydrogen economy, with its promise of limitless low carbon energy. But after decades of R&D, the dream seems scarcely any closer. Apparently still confounded by major technical challenges, the hydrogen economy remains an elusive mirage – always ‘just 10 years away’. (more…)...
Read More

Peakonomics: no country for old men

By David Strahan Comment Closed
This article was first published in New Scientist, 16 August 2012. In 2007 James Schlesinger claimed the intellectual arguments around peak oil had all been won. With global oil production flat-lining and prices surging towards their all-time high of $147 per barrel, the former US Energy Secretary declared “we are all peakists now”. (more…)...
Read More

Monbiot peak oil u-turn based on duff maths

By David Strahan Comment Closed
In his column of July 2nd George Monbiot recanted peak oil, claiming “the facts have changed, now we must change too”. Much of the article was spent regurgitating a recent report by Leonardo Maugeri, a former executive with the Italian oil company Eni, which Monbiot breathlessly reported “provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun”. (more…)...
Read More