David Roffey

Occasional jottings and some choir concert recordings

  • Safe energy

    A friend recommended reading an opinion piece on the UK’s shambolic policy on nuclear energy. I stopped reading after “The facts on nuclear are pretty clear. It is far and away the safest means of generating a given amount of electrical energy known to man”. Idiot.

  • Will the oil price trigger the long-predicted double dip?

    Back in March 2008, I put down my prediction that later that year the oil price would reach $145  – from the $110 it had reached then – and bring an end to world economic growth. Now we’re back at $90, will it happen again?

  • September oil and other GFC nuggets

    A quarter or two where the GDP manages a dribble of growth isn’t “out of recession”. If I’m right about the likely oil price reaction to any sustained return to growth, we possibly never will be.

  • No earnings, no price

    “If you give me $1, I promise to give you 15¢”. The SMH can’t understand why people aren’t taking up this outstanding offer. I think I can …

  • Can algae save the world?

    Yet another story today about how genetically engineered algae can produce much more crude oil per acre than biofuels. But how do the numbers stack up?

  • Climate Science for Dummies

    If the mainstream science is wrong, we need to reduce GHG emissions even more than is currently planned. Simple really. Now let’s get on with it.

  • More oil price speculation

    Back in February, I wrote that “oil prices will continue to rise until they have suppressed demand back to match supply”, and forecast a headline barrel price of $120 in June and $145 at year end. Now it’s June and $139.69, what’s next?

  • Is it politically possible to avert dangerous climate change?

    The Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios describe 3 plausible futures resulting from 3 different approaches to climate policy at the international level. Worryingly, none of the scenarios provides a policy which achieves climate ‘success’ as defined by the UK, EU and UN (a greater than 90% chance of no more than 2°C warming above preindustrial levels).

  • “Dear Mr Rudd” – nothing needed on Welfare or Education?

    Robert Manne’s collection Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia covers some interesting ground, if relatively superficially (or “readable”, according to the blurb). But what I find more interesting is what it doesn’t cover.

  • Oil Dollar Euro ULP

    I’m interested by the claim repeated in numerous news analyses that “investors are buying oil to hedge against the sliding greenback” – it seems to me to be a tad more significant that world oil demand has exceeded world oil supply for the last several months, and looks like doing so for at least the…