Peak Oil - lib-dems list

At the suggestion of John Hemming, MP, I've set up a mailing list for Liberal Democrat activists who are interested in peak oil. Any member of the Liberal Democrats can subscribe to the list at http://lists.libdems.org.uk/wws/subscribe/peakoil/. You may need to register your email address - and you'll need your party membership number to do so.

Lewes win the league

Congratualations to Lewes FC! Their 2-0 victory over Dorchester today wins them the Conference South competition. Next season, they'll be playing in the Conference, which means that their results will be reported on TV. They'll be playing against the likes of the mighty Histon, and maybe Cambridge United (teams from my home town).

Local rivals Eastbourne finished second. That puts them in the playoffs, so they could join Lewes in promotion.

The US Army on peak oil

The US Army has published a report "Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations". On page 8: "Oil production is approaching its peak; low growth in availability can be expected for the next 5 to 10 years." They don't say what will happen next, though.

Encouragingly, when talking about security implications, they're not lobbying for more work, but say: "A more equitable distribution of resources is in our best interest for a peaceful future"

Russia hits oil peak

The FT reports that Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil says Russia's oil production has peaked.

Why does that matter? Because Russia is the world's second largest oil producer, just a shade behind Saudi Arabia, and a shade in front of the USA. All these countries produce more than double the amount that Iran, placed fourth, does. It's also the second largest oil exporter, way ahead of Norway (yes, Norway) in third place.

The USA's production peaked decades ago, and Saudi Arabia is notoriously secretive about its reserves and future production capacity, and there's been a notion that we're going to increasingly rely on Russia for energy in the future. Well, not now, we're not. Basically, the future of oil is down to whether Saudi Arabia can turn up the the pumps, or whether some new reserves will magically appear.

Buffey the snow cat

It doesn't snow much in this part of the world. Today we had the heaviest snow fall that I've seen in the past decade, though. Buffey came out to play.

Race across London

I don't normally do this, but I just found myself watching Top Gear.

It was pretty cool, though. They arranged a race from Kew Bridge to the London City Airport. Richard Hammond cycled, James May drove a 4x4, The Stig took public transport (bus, underground, and light railway), Jeremy Clarkson took a power boat down the Thames.

The boat was restricted to 9mph for part of the journey, but finished the journey at 70mph - there's no speed limit below Wandsworth Bridge. Nevertheless, Richard Hammond won the race on his bike, and the car came dead last!

You can watch it on BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ Search for "top gear", the race starts about 40 minutes into episode 5.

Clive James on Privacy

Clive James expounded a great defence of privacy on Radio 4's A Point of View today.

He says: "Most of us are capable of grasping that if everyone could suddenly read everyone else's thoughts then very few people would survive the subsequent massacre…

To live in society at all, we have to keep a reservoir of private thoughts, which, whether wisely or unwisely, we share only with intimates. This sharing of private thoughts is called private life… 

You can still keep your thoughts to yourself - nobody has yet invented a machine that can get into your head and broadcast what it finds - but if you try to communicate those private thoughts to anyone else you run an increasing risk that they will be communicated to everyone."

Now, he wasn't explicit about this, but we use our private thoughts and private conversations to explore ideas. It's most important when we have important or difficult decisions to make. And, people in all walks of life need to be held accountable for the decisions and actions that they take, not for the options that they consider.

Our surveillance society makes it harder and harder to trust people, not because our confidants are more likely to reveal our private indiscretions, but because fewer and fewer of our actions really are private.

There was an example in the news yesterday: 'Cat confession' man not guilty. Now, you'd think that you'd be able to share a confidence with your cats, but this guy was being bugged by the police, when he told his cats "I miss my Joyce". Unfortunately the recording wasn't clear - maybe he mumbled, but he was just talking to his cats - and the police heard "I hit my Joyce", and this appears to have been a pivotal piece of evidence. Fortunately, the jury had a different opinion. So, this leads us to another objection to surveillance - it's inaccurate because it's piecemeal, and it's necessarily lacking in context and clarification.

You can read Clive James' full script, or listen again.