Five things you should know about climate change

It can be really difficult for anyone not well-versed in the debate to get any sense of the science at all, something that’s clear from the huge gap between the scientific community’s acceptance of climate change and the public’s wariness about the topic. So it’s probably useful to step back from the latest findings, and […]

A Growing Disaster

THE ethanol industry, once the darling of corn growers, environmentalists and the auto industry, has fallen on hard times. Producers spent this year caught between falling ethanol prices and rising corn costs, causing many to go bankrupt. In response, they are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to increase the amount of ethanol they can blend […]

Climate talks remain alive, but so do many obstacles

By offering concrete emission targets last week, the United States and China have resuscitated global climate talks that were headed toward an impasse. But the details that have yet to be resolved — including the money that industrialized countries would offer poorer ones as part of an agreement — suggest a political deal remains a […]

Thanks for the blessings of oil

Thanksgiving Day is a special day for those following the peak oil news. Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of Hubbert’s Peak, predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2005 would mark the peak in world oil production. After that, oil production would decline, irreversibly. And he may have been right. Crude oil production figures have been removed from the […]

Russia vows quick completion of Iran atom plant

TEHRAN – Russia Moscow, which is under Western pressure to distance itself from Tehran over its nuclear activities, stressed at the time that politics had nothing to do with the decision.

An Upbeat Perspective on Peak Oil: Bart Anderson on Coming Challenges

With last year’s high gas prices fading in our memories, and with the Copenhagen climate talks grabbing the headlines, the peak oil meme seemed, until recently, to have been taking a bit of a breather. Then along came an (admittedly anonymous) whistleblower from the International Energy Agency claiming that statistics on global oil reserves have […]

EPA: Uranium from polluted mine in Nev. wells

YERINGTON, Nev. (AP) For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells. They say they have been met by a stone wall from state regulators, local […]

'Only free trade' will end hunger

THE threat climate change poses to agriculture makes the free trade of food crucial if the world hunger crisis is to be effectively tackled, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke says. Speaking to The Age a week after he returned from the UN food summit in Rome, Mr Burke said productivity improvements in farming would not deal […]

Global warming is real

…Just a couple of weeks reading and watching and you can be out there, crushing dinner-party eco-warriors with devastating arguments based on cold, hard facts. You will be a stern, hard-headed denialist, your iron jaw set firmly against the tree-hugging, soft-headed warmists in their irritating hats. That was me, once. I thought global warming was […]

An Economist's Invisible Hand

Arthur Cecil Pigou, overlooked for decades, provides a guide to the financial crisis …Mr. Pigou drew an important distinction between the private and social value of economic activities, such as the opening of a new railway line. The savings in time and effort that users of the railway enjoy are private benefits, which will be […]

Radiation leakage in India nuclear power plant act of sabotage: official

NEW DELHI (Xinhua) — The radiation leakage in a state-run nuclear power plant in southern India is an “act of sabotage” possibly by a disgruntled employees at the plant, India’s Atomic Energy Commission chief Anil Kakodkar said on Sunday. Some 50 employees of highly protected Kaiga Atomic Power Plant in the southern Indian state of […]

Energizer Bunnies: Turning Rabbits into Green Fuel

Sweden’s Tommy Tuvuynger and his team of professional hunters don’t have to go far to find their prey. Tuvuynger is employed to keep down rabbit numbers in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The rabbit population there has exploded over the past few years thanks to owners setting free their pets. Last year the eradication squad killed […]

Bringing gas supplies in from the cold, the task facing the former spy

It is teatime in the Swiss lakeside town of Zug. Matthias Warnig blushes crimson and shuffles in his chair. Nord Stream received one of the final construction permits required, from the Danish Government, this month and construction could start as early as the spring. Once built in 2011, the 1,200km pipeline will pump 55 billion […]

Capital markets gear up for climate change

LONDON (Reuters) – As the world wrangles over how to fight climate change, with national leaders to meet in Copenhagen early next month, capital markets are gearing up to handle the consequences if the effort fails. The insurance industry, including reinsurers, who distribute risk around the sector, has traditionally been the main way to hedge […]

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

I’m constantly amazed at the inability of US economic and financial “expert policymakers” to understand the true reason behind gold’s big move: OIL. The inflation adjusted high for gold was set in January 1980 at $2,290 an ounce. It is not a coincidence this high was set just after the oil crisis of the 1970s. […]

Exponential Growth, Finite World

I want to talk about the challenge of exponential growth in a finite world. This is a concept that while on its surface seems easy to get, most people don … Put another way, right now we use 7.76x as much energy per person as in Asia (keep in mind these figures include relatively rich […]

In Theory: Biofuel no competition for oil

Oil reserves will be sufficient for the next 100 years, while natural gas is expected to last longer When security situations in the Gulf region become tense, the Strait of Hormuz gains the world’s attention because it is the most important sea passage for oil supply. During the 15th annual Energy Conference held at the […]

U.S. is using less imported oil

A jump in U.S. oil production and lower demand for petroleum products this year have led to a sharp reduction in the amount of imported oil the country is consuming. U.S. oil production is set to have its biggest annual jump in four decades, according to an analysis by Platts, a provider of information on […]

DNV starts sustainable supply chain certification

MILAN (Reuters) – Det Norske Veritas, a leading international certifier, has drafted standards which businesses ranging from coffee making to diamond sourcing can use to flag sustainability of supply chains, DNV senior executives said. Sustainable business models in the developing world have grabbed the limelight as the world’s political and business leaders seek ways to […]

For Maldives, climate deal is a survival issue

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – For Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, the cold scientific numbers of the climate debate add up to the very survival of his tropical Indian Ocean state. If global temperatures rise just 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), “we won’t be around, we will be underwater,” he told Reuters in Trinidad and […]

Britain's oil business just manages to keep trickling along

With production halved since 2000, companies want more help with tax breaks Europa Oil & Gas has just started drilling in Lincolnshire, part of a long tradition of small companies hoping to strike “black gold” in Britain. But, whereas hope springs eternal in the minds of the oil men, Peak Oil came to Britain almost […]

The knock-on effects of peak oil

Rising prices and greater environmental awareness are among the possible outcomes IF OIL really is running out faster than is generally realised then the real price of crude should be well over double the current already high price of about $75 a barrel, experts believe. A level of $200 a barrel was predicted as recently […]

Peak oil: the summit that dominates the horizon

Crude is still being discovered; existing fields are not being exploited to the full. So it’s hard to predict the exact point at which the world’s dwindling reserves will precipitate a crisis. But it’s coming Massive new oil finds off the southern states of America and Brazil plus exciting discoveries in currently non-producing countries such […]

How Will We Eat When Peak Oil Hits? Tofu, Tree Farms and Electric Tractors

As the wonderful BBC documentary A Farm for the Future has shown us all too clearly, modern agriculture is woefully dependent on fossil fuels, and oil in particular. And with International Energy Agency (IEA) whistleblowers suggesting peak oil may be nearer than we think, and even the IEA chief saying time is not on our […]

Syria turns to private sector to ease electricity shortage

After years of battling to increase the output of the power sector in Syria to meet the growing needs of the population, the government looks set to give the job of building a new generating plant to a private company. The decision was seen by analysts as part of the government Electricity ministry officials say […]

Report Outlines Best Practices for Connecting Renewables to the Grid

A new report on state renewable energy regulations gives California, Colorado, New Jersey and Oregon top marks and failing grades for Georgia, Idaho and Texas.

Supercomputing: Beyond Algorithmic Trading and Oil Exploration

For a guy squeezed the Supercomputing Conference in between appearances on Larry King Live and Saturday Night Live, Al Gore delivered a surprisingly effective keynote address at SC09. Gore, who characterizes himself as a “recovering politician,” is a techie at heart, having authored some of the original legislation that helped establish the supercomputing centers in […]

India: Living with 100% food price hike

NEW DELHI: The past year has been a particularly tough year for households as food bills seem to be headed for a roofless upward spiral. From vegetables to fruits, milk products to grains and packaged foods, prices of all commodities have been going up since the beginning of the year. The mutton crisis recently also […]

At Odds Over Land, Money and Gas

In New York City, natural gas exploration is largely seen as a threat to the drinking water the city gets from watersheds to the north in the Catskills. But in the rural communities above the shale, the reaction has been far more mixed In some cases, the issue has pitted neighbor against neighbor or spouse […]

Piped gas from Russia to boost Britain

Britain is to start piping gas directly from Russia for the first time in 2012, according to the chief executive of Nord Stream, the Kremlin-backed gas pipeline venture. In an interview with The Times in Switzerland, Matthias Warnig said that more than 4 billion cubic metres of gas a year had already been booked for […]

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