The Blog

A collection of resources i have come across during my internet travels. The focus is on quality video content, interesting data visualisations and raw data from reputable sources. Check out the tags and category menus to the right of screen to filter the results.

Natural Gas Fracking Process – ConocoPhillips

Posted by Matt Beer - May 7, 2014 - Energy, Level 3, Natural Gas, Peak Oil, Peak Oil Level 3

This video developed for the oil & gas company ConocoPhillips gives a very good visual overview of the drilling process involved in hydraulic fracturing, AKA fracking. You’ll just have to take a few pinches of salt to compensate for the sickly sweet perfection in which this video presents the drilling process and how it couldn’t possibly impact the surrounding environment. The process isn’t as clinical as a well rendered animation and biased PR friendly narration.

Steve Keen – Hardtalk BBC 2011

Posted by Matt Beer - April 7, 2014 - Economics, Economics Level 4, Level 4

As one of the few to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis, Australian economist Steve Keen has something real to say about the un-sustainability of our current financial system. “Debt that can’t be paid off, won’t be paid off” is essentially the focus of this interview and he talks about how the financial system has allowed levels of debt to reach astronomical levels and in doing so the industry has become parasitic in nature. He argues that a modern debt jubilee (cancelling of debts) is a much more preferable outcome than 20 or so years of slowly paying off the debt in the usual fashion, and the economic stagnation that will accompany it. It will take a bold idea such as this to avoid living through another economic depression.

Money Creation in the Modern Economy – Bank of England

Posted by Matt Beer - March 12, 2014 - Economics, Economics Level 2, Level 2

This isn’t the most riveting of short films but in amongst it is an incredibly important statement that would blow most people’s minds (mine at least). This fact is: banks create money when a loan is made. I’ll repeat that. In todays fiat money system, commercial banks are the main source of new money. They don’t shift money from savings accounts to loans as a lot of people think, but rather own a digital printing press and use it each time someone takes out a loan. If you stop and think about this it will turn all your preconceptions about money and debt upside down. You might then wonder why banks seem to have more control over the economic system than governments do and why everyone is ok with this.

Confronting the Status Quo – Dr Susan Krumdieck

Posted by Matt Beer - January 28, 2014 - Economics, Economics Level 3, Energy, Level 3, Oil, Peak Oil Level 3

In this great little talk Dr Susan Krumdieck speaks about our energy conundrum through a lens that is rarely used: financial return. Presumably talking to business leaders she quickly dismisses the relevance of peak oil, climate change and sustainability as reasons to change and goes straight to the formula for a resource base that is consumed by exponential growth and how everything inevitably follows a path of boom and bust. In other words the same curve as what peak oil describes.

She then goes into depth about the falling levels of EROI (Energy Return on Investment) and has some great sankey diagrams showing how as the rate of return drops so to does the amount of energy available to service the economy, particularly the energy levels needed to grow the economy. Her conclusions are clear and stark. Economic growth will not continue and economic survival will be dependant on the ability to adapt. The communities/companies/people who change the most to a low energy consumption pattern will be the most successful in the future.

The Crisis of Civilization

Posted by Matt Beer - March 8, 2013 - Climate Destabilisation, Climate Level 4, Economics, Economics Level 4, Energy, Geo-politics, Level 4, Oil, Peak Oil Level 4

This 77 min pseudo documentary “The Crisis of Civilization” is based on the Book by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed of the same name. It goes through multiple parts each exploring various elements of our interconnected world, namely Climate Catastrophe; Peak Energy; Peak Food; Economic Instability; International Terrorism; and the Militarization Tendency with some final thoughts on a Post Peak World. I have mixed feeling about this one and I still can’t figure out if I like it. For starters it really is just a long talk done in an interview style with some old stock footage and the occasional custom animations to provide some visual distraction. I don’t have a problem with this, but that is what the pseudo documentary refers to.

What it does do well is take a holistic view of the world and the many problems we are currently facing and pulls them together. I am in broad agreement of most the overall stuff that Nafeez talks about, especially highlighting the link between our current neo-classical economic model and energy use. But the scientific/academic side of me cringed a few times at some of the statements he made and I was inwardly saying “that’s not technically correct”. It just made me question his thinking when he said this and this and therefore that. There was certainty some cherry picking of data and some logical inconstancies that made his truth more obvious than it fact it likely is.

For example he talked about how the world oil production would peak (I agree), then he said that nuclear energy uses oil (yes) and therefore oil peaking would make uranium mining unviable (which I cannot agree with). Yeah sure it might not work under the exact market conditions of today, but if I was a head of state with an oil crisis on my hands I would sure as hell prioritise getting oil to critical economic functions like electricity generation. Lets not confuse peak oil with running out all together and there is a hell of a lot of waste in the system so making just a small saving in domestic transport will free up more than enough to make nuclear energy viable (or building renewables for that matter). There certainly is a risk of what Nafeez talks about coming true, but there is probably a bigger likelihood that collective human effort and technology will be directed into solving some of these energy problems. That side of things doesn’t really get a mention. I could go through another few examples but I won’t.

What I will say to you watch this to get an overview of our problems from holistic viewpoint. You should certainly be aware of the broad areas that this film covers and how they fit together. As for the details I would say don’t take them as the gospel truth even there is a lot of truth in there. This is still basically another opinion film and I generally always have a problem with pure opinion as broad statements can be made without the viewer knowing the truth behind them. This is why I will continue to stick to keeping data at the centre of any videos and articles that I make.

James Balog on Capturing our Disappearing Glaciers – Bill Moyers

Posted by Matt Beer - February 19, 2013 - Climate Destabilisation, Climate Level 4, Level 4

James Balog, one of the world’s premier nature photographers, joins Bill Moyers and explains how “the earth is having a fever.” At tremendous risk to his own safety, Balog has been documenting the erosion of glaciers in Switzerland, Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska. In this interview he shares his amazing photos, discoveries, and self-discoveries – including his transformation from climate change skeptic to true believer, and his mission to capture footage of these destructive environmental consequences before it’s too late. Balog’s film, Chasing Ice, is a breathtaking account of climate change in action (yeah, I copied and pasted most of that from the Bill Moyers website – lazy)

Click the links to see the official trailer for the film as well as the TED talk that covers a lot of the actual changes in these rapidly receding glaciers.

James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss – TED

Posted by Matt Beer - February 19, 2013 - Climate Destabilisation, Climate Level 2, Level 2

This is an 18 minute TED talk that renowned photographer James Balog, of the Extreme Ice Survey gave in Oxford in 2009. He talks about his quest to merge art and science together to produce irrefutable proof of the impact climate destabilisation is having on the glaciers of this world. Not only is his (time lapse) photography visually stunning but it is perhaps more compelling evidence than some of the weighty scientific reports on the matter.

James ends his talk by concluding our current inaction on climate destabilisation is one of “perception”, in other words, not enough people really get it yet. They don’t really get the magnitude of change and the danger it will bring. I whole heartedly agree and can only applaud James’s effort to produce material that makes this so abundantly clear.

Check out the trailer of the full length documentary Chasing Ice that tells this same story in a more powerful way. Also check out the in depth interview of James with Bill Moyers.

Chasing Ice – Trailer

Posted by Matt Beer - February 19, 2013 - Climate Destabilisation, Climate Level 2, Level 2

I watched the documentary Chasing Ice in at the ICA theatre in London and even on that relatively small screen the power of this film was almost overwhelming. It is the story of photographer James Balog and his quest to capture the changes that are happening in the Arctic. In 2007 he started up the Extreme Ice Survey which, in their words, is an innovative, long-term photography project that merges art and science to give a “visual voice” to the planet’s changing ecosystems. The film documents the story of James and his team self engineering the 28 cameras to withstand the arctic conditions and then installing them at 13 glaciers around the world. As you can imagine with dealing with Arctic type extreme weather quite a bit went wrong and due to the nature of time lapse photography any failure was a year down the drain. The film is a testament to the both the character and vision of James, of how much he (and his team) risked to tell one of the most important stories in human history. Not only is his evidence compelling, but so too are the visuals of these truly unique landscapes. I urge you to check out the film’s website to find out how you can watch this truly important film (and support EIS in the process).

Here also is a link to a TED talk James gave in Oxford, UK that is based on the work EIS did as the basis of Chasing Ice.