Bob Browning's blog

The International Energy Agency (IEA) produces oil production forecasts which are used by governments around the world to plan their future energy needs.  The last forecast showed a growth from 84 million barrels per day (Mb/d) to 106 Mb/d in 2030 which is exactly the production required to meet the expected growth in GDP over this period.

So that is all right then.

The University of Uppsala in Sweden has taken a close look at these figures and finds that they are based on recovery rates which exceed, by a large margin, the recovery rates ever achieved with any previous oilfield development.  Plugging in more realistic recovery rates they show a slow decline in world production to 75 Mb/d in 2030.

It depends how fast you develop the fields of course and they have used different assumptions that move the peak oil date from now till 2013.  However whatever assumptions they make the 2030 figure always comes out around 70-75 Mb/d.

It looks as if the IEA has simply projected requirements for oil and assumed that they would magically be met as they always have in the past.  However Uppsala has news for them – the stuff can run out and is running out.

This is a massive difference and given that big capital energy projects have a very long lead time, this level of error can blow the government’s plans out of the water.  Like the efforts on climate change, we have a choice.

1. Bite the bullet and do something – even if it is expensive
2. Put our heads in the sand and hope it comes out all right.

With todays miserable excuse for a government, guess which one we will go for.

No prizes.

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I love this site http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

Quote

You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind?   Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward.  Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

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About a year ago I blogged about Telebid, the on-line bidding site with a difference. The difference is that you need to be a chump to fall for the proposition.  I just checked to see if they had been closed down now, but I see they are now called Swoopo.    (www.swoopo.co.uk)

It looks like a very cool auction site with some real bargains. There is an upmarket Viaio laptop going for £44.80p  What is the catch?

The catch is that it costs money to bid. They state very clearly that bidding starts at 10p and it costs 50p for each bid. And each bid ups the price by 2p or 10p.  Do some math.  The Sony was a 2p auction, so a price of £44.80  means that there must have been 2240 bids.  At 50p per bid that means they have made well over a grand in bidding fees with five minutes to go.

In a bizarre twist, they are auctioning packs of 300 bids (worth £150). One pack was sold for £28.32 on a 2p auction so they have made an amazing £708.

Is this a scam? Not at all.  They are not cheating and are very clear about how the site works.  You just have to be dumb to fall for it.

This was started by a very clever German guy  with presumably no conscience  at all.  There is an interview with the Manager of Sucker Development  – sorry Business development here.

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I overheard a guy talking on his mobile phone on the train yesterday.  I heard the term ‘Project Governance’ for the first time.  What a useful phrase.  And how out of date I must be – it even has a Wikipedia entry.

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I got a call the other day from www.meettheboss.com  a business social network.  I had been recommended by the CEO of HSBC or some such nonsense and I could participate in some sort of program and get in front of the creme de la creme of decision makers yada yada  I kept on asking ‘how much’  then there was yada yada ‘how much’.  £9,000.  I put the phone down.

I have signed up as a punter and checked the launch press release.  Apparently it is a business social network aimed at the finance industry launched last summer.  It looks very nice (expensive – allegedly $50million – HOW MUCH!!!). 

There is no evidence that  the members are finance industry people, so I guess that objective fell by the wayside fairly quickly.  The USP is that there is a two-tier system with ‘C’ level executives in a different class from us punters.  From the press release:

 “These executives are protected and this is what is missing from any other business networks out there – they don’t have the safety and security of being in a safe environment with peers and the top 10 global financial services organisations in the world don’t have the ability to network within the C level, and we’ve created a safe platform for them to do this.”

Now I don’t see the CEO of anyone significant spending time at his computer networking with other CEOs via some social networking site.  I just don’t see it.  These are important busy people, if they want to network with someone they get their secretary to fix lunch. 

The discussion forum got six posts/comments in the last 4 business days so it is not eactly a hive of activity. 

Compared to a really useful facility like Linkedin I somehow don’t see this one making it.  But we will see in due course.

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I hated quicktime because whenever you ran it it offered a paid upgrade which you had to refuse before you could run the clip.  Now I have another reason.  Do you want a quicktime update? Yes? Then here is ziggabytes of itunes as well with no option.  

I don’t want itunes on my computer.

For that matter I don’t want quicktime either except some websites insist on using it.  Please don’t.  There are better options that don’t annoy your visitors.

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An excellent video from ViASPIRE here is worth a look.  They point out that words are only a small part of a communication message and once you start getting into emotional content use the phone because your words can be easily misunderstood.

I heartily agree.  However using their argument a video link should add another layer of meaning that should be quite significant, but it isn’t.  When my Skype video is on, I see myself (and the other person) looking anywhere but at me (i.e. the camera).  They are looking at the ceiling, their screen and so on.  It actually makes things worse.

So we need to train ourselves.  If video is on – look at the camera when you are talking.

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I may have mentioned before that once a concept becomes ‘hot’ everyone wants to get on the bandwagon and spin their products. So IBM has announced a new rack-mounted server “designed for heavy traffic web 2.0 social networking sites”.

In marketing terms an own goal because the product almost certainly is good for any heavy-duty computer cluster application where fault tolerance for individual systems is not a huge issue (that is the trade-off). By marketing it in this way they are limiting their market to a very small number of specialised web sites. Admittedly these guys buy servers by the thousand, but the market must be much bigger.

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I love eye tracking studies. This study tracked men and women separately on the Marks and Spencer home page.

http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/05/five_days_bonus_ms_revisited/

Quote “As you can see, these findings are somewhat counterintuitive. The women were extremely focused on the navigation menus and rarely looked at the main body of the page. However, while the men were also predominantly navigation-focused, they were a lot more willing to venture into the main body of the page – even though the majority of the feature located therein targeted women!”

People! Think!. The centre of the page is a picture of Twiggy with a big smile on her face and below her a couple of other very beautiful women. The men take a sneaky look at some attractive females? Big surprise!

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