I can't find something

In his most recent Clusterfuck Nation, James Kunstler made the following statement:

North Sea and Alaskan oil fields have passed their production peaks and are depleting at phenomenal rates -- in the case of Great Britain's fields, up to 50 percent a year

Now, I can find various indicators demonstrating that North Sea production has declined at much faster rates than expected, and that current production is nearly 50% below predictions made back in 1999, but I can't find anything indicating a year-to-year of around 50%.

I can also find all sorts of notice about how the British government has gone rather sharply into planning for an import-driven fuels situation, and that even the situation as I'm finding it has suddenly hit home - they're expecting to be a fuels importer by 2007 now - but I can't find that 50% year-to-year on North Sea crude.

This actually matters, because the North Sea fields have historically been well-managed with very modern, very up-to-date drilling technologies. The fact that they went into early and rapid decline (17% year-to-year as of September, iirc - that's pretty dramatic by itself) is interesting in and of itself. If that curve maintains, it could suggest that the question over whether advanced drilling technologies being used now really increase the total OOIP recovery significantly or whether they just help extract the usual amount of recoverable oil more quickly might be being answered in a way that is not particularly comforting.

A 50% year-to-year drop in actual production not due to external difficulties, on the other hand, would be less a suggestion, and more a rather sharply-worded communique that includes the phrase, "oh fuck." But I'm having a stupidly difficult time finding any indication of that. I'm thinking he may have misread the vs-1999-prediction information as year-to-year; I found one article in particular that's very confusedly written and could be misread in that way. I've asked him where he got that; he's on a trip right now and could only provide the URL of the energy bulletin website where he read it.

Kunstler is a crank, but he's usually a crank with good references - and his monthly architecture column has historically been pretty funny. I'd like to figure out where he got this. If I can't find it, I'll write him back next week and see what, if anything, I get.


A Single Red Leaf on Asphalt

Have two imperfect pictures of the late season market down at the shops. I'm not entirely happy with either. The first one almost works, but doesn't quite; I think it's because of the person in the black-and-white sweater. I shot several shots, but just kept having people problems:


Market Peppers (1)

This one also has a person-problem; the worker in the white T-shirt kept being in one bad place after another. This was the best of the lot:


Market Peppers (2)

But at least you know the seafood is good:


It's Troll-Caught!

New kind of bird!

What the hell is this?


Unexpected Bird

Pale grey back, breast, neck; more neutral, paler, and less brown than it looks like in this picture. Dark charcoal grey (almost black, but not quite; darker than in this picture) wings, head, tail, but with pale grey strikes over the eyes and what seemed to be some pale grey spots at the tail. Along the back of the neck, a vertical dark charcoal-grey stripe. The beak was closer to a flicker, but it was smaller than any flicker I've seen. NO other colour. It looked a lot like taking a three-toed woodpecker and separating out all the black and white sections into solid areas, removing all hint of striping or spotting except just at the tail.

Oh, and since I'm posting again already, our neighbour's house at night is apparently, Ladies and Gentlemen:


The Great State of Kentucky

( Alternate version with as much brightness as I could wring out of the black )