Saving Ourselves: Consuming Within Recharge Rates

…In fact, every resource has an inherent recharge rate , in the sense that the “balance of a system can be expressed as a relationship relating all of the inputs and outputs into or out of the system.” Water is perhaps the easiest to measure, as in the swimming pool example, although in the real […]

Deal ends oil refinery strikes

Wildcat strikes by thousands of contract workers were ending today after a deal was agreed to resolve a bitter row over jobs at an oil refinery. Union leaders and employers reached an agreement late last night to end the dispute which flared at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire. The deal will be recommended […]

Russia signals it will stay out of OPEC

LUANDA (Reuters) – Russia clearly sees itself as an observer and not a member of OPEC, President Dmitry Medvedev told the oil producer group’s current president on Friday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which accounts for around 40 percent of the world’s oil production, has repeatedly invited Russia to participate at its […]

Competition for remaining oil will be fierce

…Current thoughts: Industry secrecy clouds the issue, but peak oil worldwide may have occurred in 2005. Many economists believe the resulting price increases to $140 a barrel last summer triggered the global recession. Enjoy the present low gas price ($2.50) because it No matter whom we elect president or to Congress, the U.S. military will […]

Madagascar: Daewoo's Rainforest Land Grab in Nature's Paradise

South Korean Daewoo Group continues with plans to lease for 99 years up to 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of Madagascar’s land, much of it biodiversity rich rainforests and species rich local gardens. This is but one, albeit large, recent example of over-developed, over-populated, and land and water scarce Asian and Middle Eastern nations […]

Gordon Brown puts $100bn price tag on climate adaptation

Gordon Brown today attempted to seize the political initiative on climate change by calling for rich countries to hand over $100bn (Under the plan, funding would begin in 2013 and rise to $100bn a year by 2020. The money would be raised from private and public sources, such as levies on international carbon trading schemes. […]

A fight for the Amazon that should inspire the world

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine. In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of […]

Norway proposes sea-based wind power

Norway’s government proposed a new law on Friday to develop sea-based wind power as part of a plan to diversify from offshore oil and gas toward renewable energy. “Offshore wind energy may become the next adventure for the Norwegian industry and energy sector,” Oil and Energy Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said in a statement of a […]

Auto-psy

From the perspective of a deliberate non-driver, the car is indefensible. It’s the devil’s chariot, death on wheels, the ultimate privatised commodity. Motorists, meanwhile, believe car ownership to be a right. The authors of After the Car, both sociologists in the field of mobilities – the study of how people, things and information move and […]

House passes landmark climate change bill

President Barack Obama scored a major victory on Friday when the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to slash industrial pollution that is blamed for global warming. The House passed the climate change bill, a top priority for Obama, by a vote of 219-212. As has become routine on major bills in Congress this year, […]

Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis

Richard Heinberg has released his latest book BLACKOUT:Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. David Fridley, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs says “Blackout reviews the most recent analyses of global coal reserves and concludes that peak coal production is likely much nearer than is commonly assumed. Heinberg argues cogently that the most […]

Mills sees dim future for Texas oil and natural gas production

Alex Mills, president of Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, the largest state organization of independent oil and natural gas producers, operators, and service companies in the United States, spoke grimly about the future of petroleum production under proposed Obama administration tax changes when speaking to the June meeting of the North Texas Home Builders Association, […]

Jatropha tree examined as a biofuel alternative

FORT MYERS, Fla. Biodiesel from jatropha has powered test flights on Air New Zealand and Continental Airlines. It has prompted oil giant BP PLC to partner on jatropha projects in India and Africa. And here on Florida

A shale gas boom?

…Suffice it to say that there is little reason to doubt that the potential natural gas resource base in the United States is very large. The hidden problem with such estimates relates to whether the gas is economic to produce, an issue which is outside the PGC …If we are at the beginning of a […]

T. Boone Pickens: Calling It Like I See It

…I’ve been in the energy business my entire professional career, and since 1950 I’ve watched our country go from buying some foreign oil to buying a lot of foreign oil to buying too much foreign oil. Do you think the U.S. can afford to spend half a trillion dollars on imported oil? I sure don’t, […]

US natgas rig count resumes slide, down 5 for week

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The number of rigs drilling for natural gas in the United States resumed its downward track, falling 5 to 687 this week, according to a report on Friday by oil services firm Baker Hughes in Houston. U.S. natural gas drilling rigs have been in a mostly steady decline since peaking above […]

US rig count up as oil prices lure back drillers

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The number of U.S. rigs working rose for a second week as improved crude oil prices lured back drillers even as natural gas activity weakened, according to figures from Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N) on Friday. The rise appeared to support predictions made a few months ago by oil services company executives […]

Iran

It may have been no coincidence that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran used a petrochemical facility as the backdrop for his first major speech since the elections to blast President Obama and strike a note of defiance after Iran But at a time of intense internal divisions within the ruling clique, the presence of the […]

The Global Crisis: Food, Water and Fuel. 3 Necessities of Life in Jeopardy

We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history. The process of global impoverishment unleashed at the outset of the 1980s debt crisis has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing World. There are many complex […]

Kurt Cobb: Which Matters Most? The Size of the Tap or the Tank?

Energy optimists are fond of citing very large numbers for worldwide fossil fuel resources such as oil and natural gas. But they conveniently leave out the critical variable. How fast can we actually produce these resources? Global economic growth is inextricably tied to growth in energy supplies, especially oil and natural gas. As the economy […]

Gas Dispute Offers EU an Angle

BRUSSELS The dispute arises from an unrealistic deal that the prime ministers Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko signed in January to end the previous round of gas wars between Russia and its former Soviet republic. That committed the Ukrainian company Naftogaz to fill up its storage tanks this summer with natural gas bought from the […]

Iowa State researchers contribute climate model to decreasing winds study

AMES, Iowa Slower winds could also mean more dew covering crops for longer periods, Takle said. That could mean problems with fungus and plant disease. That could also lead to lower yields at harvest time. “Air pollution episodes in major cities happen when there’s high pressure and stagnant air,” Takle said. “Less wind means less […]

Projected food, energy demands seen to outpace production

MADISON — With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25). The report, produced by Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s leading global investment banks, in collaboration with […]

Picture of the day: Extreme Self-Sufficiency

This toaster was built from scratch by Thomas Thwaites, a design student at the Royal College of Art, London, as a project in extreme self-sufficiency and to highlight the effects of mass production we take for granted. Using a

Ozone hole has unforeseen effect on ocean carbon sink

The Southern Ocean has lost its appetite for carbon dioxide, and now it appears that the ozone hole could be to blame. In theory, oceans should absorb more CO2 as levels of the gas in the atmosphere rise. Measurements show that this is happening in most ocean regions, but strangely not in the Southern Ocean, […]

Gas exporters meet but group

DUBAI/LONDON – The world

Ice on fire: The next fossil fuel

DEEP in the Arctic Circle, in the Messoyakha gas field of western Siberia, lies a mystery. Back in 1970, Russian engineers began pumping natural gas from beneath the permafrost and piping it east across the tundra to the Norilsk metal smelter, the biggest industrial enterprise in the Arctic. By the late 70s, they were on […]

Have We Reached an Inflection Point in Economics History?: Indeflation / Energy

A fierce debate now rages among economists, investors, pundits and the puppetmasters of fiscal policy: What A comforting 30% gain in the major stock market indexes since the March lows has given renewed confidence to the

ExxonMobil's Weapons of Gas Destruction

ExxonMobil has a loaded gun pointed at the U.S. natural-gas market — and it isn’t the only one. The ammunition is liquefied natural gas. Exxon is scheduled to start up another three LNG projects in Qatar this year. They will produce more than three billion cubic feet a day of natural gas and freeze it […]

The Coming Mystery Of The Missing Barrels Of Oil

We have been conditioned throughout the oil age to count our supply of energy by the barrel. And over the first half of oil’s production curve that’s been a fair and accurate way of doing it. But as we go through the topping of the curve, things are going to change drastically. There are two […]

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