The storm in agriculture

Whether Thomas Malthus will have the last laugh will be known in around 50 years. For most of the past few decades, powered by the confidence of the Green Revolution, we have been laughing at the Malthusian paranoia of population growth outstripping food production. World population has grown from around three billion in 1960 to […]

Secret German strategy leaked: Plans for peak oil

A newly-leaked study — which Der Spiegel has confirmed is authentic — out of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center’s Future Analysis division — which advises the German military — paints a bleak picture of the post-peak oil world, including a complete market collapse and various forms of social unrest. The report was not meant to be […]

Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?

All resources can be found in any required quantity if there is enough energy input available. For example: – Most elements are present in seawater. Want gold? You can extract it by the ton from sea water. – Oil can be synthesised from any organic compound. So why shouldn’t production rates increase pretty much indefinitely? […]

Systemic Risk Arising from a Financial System that Requires Growth in a World with Limited Oil Supply

It seems to me that if we are in fact reaching limits with respect to oil supply, this should be of considerable concern. We have a financial system that demands economic growth, for reasons that will be discussed later in this paper. At the same time, as we approach limits with respect to oil production, […]

Stages of Peak Oil Awareness

For years, those of us who were unwilling to face the bad news used a number of defense mechanisms to try to deny the reality of Peak Oil.  To help my readers understand the nature of these defensive structures, I created a mock psychiatric category I call Panglossian Disorders with a host of subcategories. Panglossians, […]

Anima Mundi film trailer – David Holmgren, Michael Ruppert

Anima Mundi movie trailer. Anima Mundi is a new documentary (Coming Soon) on Permaculture, the Gaia theory, Peak Oil survival and Climate Change (man-made or not) featuring David Holmgren (co-originator of Permaculture), John Seed (Deep Ecology), Dr Stephan Harding (Gaia Science and author of Animate Earth), Dr Vandana Shiva (Human Rights – Environment – Philosophy), […]

Will Future Generations Remember Our Skyskrapers as Eccentricities of an Ostentatious Era?

Consider this…if laws have to be made to convince a motorcyclist to wear a helmet, is there any hope for protecting humanity from the less perceptible, yet more calamitous risks? The following is based on true stories – many of which have taken place throughout human history, but one of which has yet to occur. […]

Questions About Fracturing

The Environmental Protection Agency is about to begin a much-needed study of the health and environmental effects of extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing. The issue isn’t whether the country should keep drilling for natural gas, which is vital to our energy future. It is whether it can be done this way safely. A 2004 […]

Japan eyes countermeasures in event China begins drilling in gas field

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Sunday began considering specific countermeasures to be taken in the event China commences drilling at a disputed gas field in the East China Sea, Japanese government sources said. Possible countermeasures include a plan for Japan to conduct its own test drilling in the sea near the Chinese offshore facility under […]

Robert Rapier on Peak Oil

Energy analyst Robert Rapier discusses Peak Oil and his strategy for investing in renewable processes that require very limited fossil fuel inputs.

BP and Government Representatives Still Keeping Scientists and Reporters Away from Areas Impacted by Oil

As shown by the following videos, BP and government representatives are still keeping scientists and reporters away from areas impacted by oil. Award-winning investigative reporter Dahr Jamail says in a new interview that a federal agent confiscated Gulf oil samples: Representatives of the oil spill commission are harassing independent scientists who are finding contamination in […]

A Post-Growth Economy FAQ

Behind the problems of climate change, resource depletion and biodiversity loss, not to mention a fair degree of injustice, is our pursuit of economic growth. It is the driver behind ever increasing consumption, and we will never achieve a sustainable society without addressing the issue of growth. There is one compelling, and in my opinion […]

Lindsey Graham drinks the tar sands Kool-Aid

Just do the math. There is more oil received from the oil sands region than Saudi Arabia and Iran combined. So from an energy source it is hugely important. You talk about dirty oil. Oil sands oil is dirty. They are reducing their carbon footprint. They are making it cleaner. It is less carbon intensive […]

Michael Klare: Twenty-First Century Energy Superpower China, Energy, and Global Power

The year 2009 was a bad one for the United States. And no, I’m not talking about unemployment, or poverty, or home foreclosures, or banks too-big-to-fail, or any of the other normal bad news. I’m talking about something serious. As the world’s leading maker of things that go bang in the night (and I don’t […]

Saudi Aramco’s 80-Year Reserves vs. German “Peak Oil”

Saudi Aramco claims to have an 80-yr steady supply of oil or more, while a German thinktank predicts that “peak oil” is imminent. Despite Bill McKibben’s pleas to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million, or face serious consequences, and despite the myriad innovations worldwide aimed at shrinking our […]

Syria, Iraq to build pipeline

Syria and Iraq have signed an initial agreement to build two crude oil pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea, an Iraqi official said. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the larger pipeline with a 1.5 million barrel daily capacity would carry heaver crudes and the smaller pipeline with a 1.25 million daily capacity would carry lighter […]

Gold, Oil and China

Goldman Sachs is forecasting a 27 percent jump in energy and a 17 percent rise in precious metals over the next 12 months. On the oil side, Goldman credits a rebound in industrial production for a 520,000-barrel-per-day increase in China’s implied oil demand in August (year over year). As you can see from the left-side […]

SMH: Peak oil and climate must be tackled in tandem

PEAK oil and climate change are on parallel paths. Both are inextricably linked and can only be solved together, requiring a shift away from a reliance on fossil fuels into what is now called the “post-carbon economy”. For Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s climate change committee, peak oil is an inconvenient truth, and BHP Billiton chief […]

Iran now self-sufficient, stops importing petrol

Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi said yesterday that Iran had now stopped importing petrol, a commodity targeted by world powers in new sanctions against Tehran’s controversial nuclear drive. “No purchase has been made of petrol since last month,” Mirkazemi was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying. It reported him as saying Iran’s daily petrol production […]

BP leak just a bump in road for oil industry

For BP, the crisis has been shattering, putting the future of the company in jeopardy. For the global oil industry, it looks like being no more than a bump in the road towards further exploitation of deepwater oil reserves, even in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil companies worldwide have reviewed their practices following the spill, […]

European Parliament rejects plan to increase budget for ITER fusion reactor

A proposal to fund a multi-billion-euro fusion experiment through cuts in Europe’s research budget has met with a frosty reception in the European Parliament, which must ultimately give its imprimatur to the deal. ITER is a planned giant, superconducting reactor that will squeeze hydrogen isotopes together until they fuse into helium. The process, which is […]

How Big will Big Algae be?

Big news. Not only because it is big algae – that is, macroalgae, or seaweed. But because it is further confirmation that BAL is making huge progress in its drive towards commercialization, and Statoil is deepening its commitments in biofuels. Statoil is well known in the EU, less so in the States. They are the […]

Col. Fletcher Prouty Explains how oil came to be classified a fossil fuel

The classification of oil as a fossil fuel was the result of 1892 convention in Geneva when David Rockerfeller used the classification to create the perception of scarcity.

Cluck Trek: a tour of local chicken coops

This past weekend, one of the Transition groups in our greater Los Angeles area offered a Cluck Trek: a tour of local chicken coops. Chickens are the happening thing in the city — as evidenced by the fact that the event was highlighted by the Los Angeles Times (none of our Transition events have ever […]

world population growth

– In 1900, the world’s population stood at around 1.65 billion. By 2000, it had reached six billion. Today it is more than 6.8 billion, growing at around 78 million a year. By early 2012, it will exceed seven billion. – The highest rate of population growth was in the late 1960s, at 2.04 percent, […]

Ontario: Replacing Coal with Biomass

As part of an effort to phase out all coal plants in the Canadian province of Ontario by 2014, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) is working with power-plant owners to close facilities down or transition them to burn biomass. One such facility, the 211-MW Atikokan Generating Station, will be the first to move entirely to […]

Saudi Arabia Buys Peak Oil Insurance With $60B Arms Deal

Saudi Arabia is seeking the U.S. government’s approval for the largest foreign arms sale in U.S. history. It wants to buy $60B worth of advanced fighter aircraft and helicopters. That’s significant enough to set tongues wagging inside the Beltway and elsewhere. Media discussion centers on Saudi Arabia’s supposed desire to counter potential threats from Iran […]

Technology critical to future energy supply

Industry must continue to find and produce oil and natural gas from increasingly complex geological settings in remote regions and deeper waters, said Schlumberger Ltd. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Gould. Speaking on Sept. 15 at Barclays Capital Energy-Power Conference in New York, Gould said an estimated $350 billion/year is needed in upstream investments […]

The Truth Behind Peak Oil…

Yep, sitting here in downtown Baltimore, we had nothing better to do. So we made the whole thing up. Peak oil isn’t real. It’s a fake. We have so much oil in the world remaining, there’s no way we’ll ever run out. So on behalf of peak oil theorists… you’re right. We’re wrong. We apologize… […]

Interview with Robert L. Hirsch

James Schlesinger, President Carter’s Energy Secretary, wrote the foreword to a book written by Dr Robert Hirsch, an former US official who predicts a fall of the oil production within 5 years. Never before has a high-ranking political figure like Schlesinger given his support to such a prognosis. The book will be published in the […]

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