I.E.A. Says World Will Increasingly Turn to Americas for Oil

HOUSTON — Over the next few years, world consumers are going to become more dependent on North and South America to satisfy their growing thirst for crude oil, according to a forecast to be released Thursday by the International Energy Agency. The Paris-based organization estimated that the world would increase total oil production every year […]

China says won’t approve new nuclear projects until safety plan in place

China will suspend approvals for new nuclear power plant proposals until a new nuclear safety plan — that is being drafted — is put in place, said Li Ganjie, deputy minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Li said this during a meeting with Peter Lyons, the US assistant energy secretary for nuclear power, last […]

German Renewable Energy: A Bright Future for Companies Focused on Wind Energy

ermany’s dramatic decision to close down by 2022 its nuclear plants – currently providing about a quarter of the country’s electricity needs – means a significant boost to its status as a renewable energy powerhouse. At the end of 2010 renewable sources were responsible for about 17% of the country’s electricity. The government’s target is […]

Chevron Bets $30 Billion on Volcanoes

Chevron Corp. drilled 84 wells to a depth of two miles beneath the Indonesian rainforest to tap steam, not oil and gas, that’s trapped in the world’s richest store of volcanic energy. The geothermal plant, set among wild orchids and bamboo trees, uses 315 degree Celsius (600 degree Fahrenheit) heat to spin turbines 24 hours […]

Government Official suggests Japan could become ‘uninhabitable’

Recent reports confirming that Reactors 1, 2, and 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility completely melted just hours after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the area on March 11 (http://www.naturalnews.com/032537_F…) have been trumped by even worse news that those same reactors have all likely “melted through,” a situation that according to Japan’s Daily […]

Peak Oil – The Long & The Short

Does it seem like we’ve been here before? A barrel of Brent Crude (the truest indicator of worldwide oil scarcity) sits at $118, up from $75 per barrel in July 2010 – a 57% increase in eleven months. In the U.S., the average price of gasoline is $3.69 per gallon this week, up 37% in the last year […]

Shale Gas: Not a ‘Game Changer’ After All

Newly accessible natural gas from deep shale deposits around the world has been touted as a solution to everything from oil dependence to climate change. But our actual experience with shale gas extraction is telling another story. The natural gas industry would like you to believe that newly accessible gas previously locked away in deep […]

Heinberg: Personal Advice on Adjusting to the End of Growth

As someone who has for several years been speaking and writing about the consequences of impending energy scarcity, I’m often asked for personal advice. “Where should I live in order to avoid the worst impacts from Peak Oil?” “What career should I prepare myself for?” “What should I invest in?” I’m generally uncomfortable answering such […]

We can’t afford subsidies for renewable energy

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculated the costs in dollars per megawatt/hour of different energy sources as follows: Conventional coal power: $100.40; Natural gas: $83.10; Nuclear: $119.00; Onshore wind power: $149.30; Offshore wind power: $191.10; Thermal solar power: $256.60, Photo-voltaic solar power: $396.10. According to the EIA, the availability, i.e. the ability to produce […]

Rare Drop in Sunspot Activity Could Cause Little Ice Age

The sun is most likely going into hibernation as the latest unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles suggest that we are headed towards a solar event that hasn’t happened in hundreds of years, according to new data released Tuesday at the annual meeting of the solar physics division […]

Misunderstanding Peak Oil

There’s a common and very annoying misunderstanding about peak oil. One that leads all sorts of people to worry about it a great deal more than they ought to: The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be “significant negative economic consequences” to the UK posed by near-term […]

UK ministers ignored ‘peak oil’ warnings, report shows

The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be “significant negative economic consequences” to the UK posed by near-term “peak oil” energy shortages. Ministers were told it was impossible to know exactly when production might fail to meet supply but when it did there could be global consequences, […]

Transition Towns – Where Innovation Takes Place At A Certain Pace

What really drives changes in people’s lives? When I wrote about innovation policy challenges yesterday I noted how important towns and cities are in forging the new economy. Places are extraordinary compounds of activity and while some of the big ideas that emerge at conferences like TED arise in traditional academic/big company  culture, ideas about […]

How China Could Yet Fail Like Japan

Until 1990, Japan was the most successful large economy in the world. Almost nobody predicted what would happen to it in the succeeding decades. Today, people are yet more in awe of the achievements of China. Is it conceivable that this colossus could learn that spectacular success is a precursor of surprising failure? The answer […]

EROEI as a Measure of Feasibility

Currently, I am trying to convince Charles Hall, Tom Robertson, and the rest of the world that I have solved the problem of computing the ratio of energy returned to energy invested, i. e., ER/EI or EROEI or EROI, depending upon who is writing the term.  My latest effort to state the solution concisely is […]

Freewheeling: Bicycling and the art of being broke

More and more of us have less and less money these days. Fortunately, there are a lot of things you don’t need money to do, and bicycling is one of them. When you’re broke, a bicycle can help a lot. Financially, for starters. Cars are expensive beasts. If you make less than $70,000 a year, […]

Sierra Club goes totally peak oil — almost

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Michael Brune’s book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, just released in a revised edition to talk about the Deepwater Horizon spill, more or less starts with peak oil. Why surprised? Because mainstream environmentalists often shy away from the topic. Maybe the idea that cheap […]

Peak Women?

The global ratio between boys and girls is becoming increasingly skewed. Should we be worried? A world without women? In her book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, journalist Mara Hvistendahl argues that it’s certainly a possibility. According to her research, the world is experiencing a […]

Transmission lines and GOP politics: It’s all local, and it’s impenetrable, too

The power of eminent domain to site transmission lines isn’t going to be make-or-break in the 2012 US presidential race. It could play a tiny role in the always-critical New Hampshire primary, though, where a power line is a big issue right now. Since CNN’s Monday night Republican candidate debate was in that state, the subject did come […]

Vietnam Confronts China Over South China Sea Energy Riches

An increasingly fractious maritime confrontation is developing in the South China Sea, with enormous implications for international companies interested in developing East Asia’s offshore hydrocarbon resources. Far from the radars of city of London and Wall Street investors, the clash has seen Vietnam emerge as spear carrier for its fellow ASEAN members on the dispute. […]

The Sermon to the Sharks

The publisher was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of John Michael “The Archdruid” Greer’s recently published book The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered. It took me a couple of days to get through the book, which I did although much of the material is not new to me, […]

Fukushima Radiation Nears Chernobyl Spiking To 261,000,000 uSv/hr – Indicates Ongoing Nuclear Meltdown

Fukushima reactor 1 radiation levels spike to 261,000,000 microsieverts per hour, so high it is 100% lethal in less than 2 minutes, and just short of Chernobyl reactor levels. Lucas Whitefield Hixson tips us off to the latest radiation reading from the Fukushima nuclear reactor #1 hitting 261 sieverts per hour. For conversion purposes, that […]

SPR may be ‘Plan B’ after OPEC

US President Barack Obama and members of his administration again talked of dipping into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve as energy prices climbed June 8 after ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to change production at an acrimonious meeting in Vienna. Obama was quoted by the Huffington Post as saying, “My general […]

Farming Needs ‘Major Shift’ as Food System Fails

World farming needs a “major shift” to more sustainable practices as intensive crop production since the 1960s has degraded soils, depleted ground water and caused pest outbreaks, the United Nations said. More farmers need to reduce ploughing and alternate cereals with soil-improving plants, and use an “ecosystem approach” based on natural systems to promote crop […]

The Bernanke finesse

Oil figured prominently in the important June 7 speech during which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a somber economic outlook while finessing a central question about fiscal policy. His comments left a wake sure to rock the oil and gas industry. At a conference in Atlanta, Bernanke regretted failure of the US economy so […]

Principles for society

1. The first principle for society is science. We need to make decisions based on repeatable, observable understandings of how things work. Currently, this is frequently not done, is often not done by scientists. That might seem like a strange claim to make. But it is a simple matter. Whenever people say that scientists will […]

Should We Take United Nations’ Projections Seriously?

The United Nations warned recently that the global consumption of natural resources could almost triple to 140 billion tons a year by 2050 unless nations take drastic steps to decouple economic growth from an ever-expanding use of natural resources.  The United Nations also recently projected that the world’s population would exceed 9 billion by 2050.  […]

The Oil Production Story: Pre- and Post-Peak Nations

The world oil production data below tell a story about:   1) nations that are past peak (see “Peak Year,” turquoise fill), because of geologic limits (e.g., US, Norway, etc.) or other reasons; and  2) nations that have yet to peak (see “na” under “Peak Year;” Saudi Arabia, UAE, China), or if they have peaked it […]

Kunstler : A Distant Sound of Churning

In my last dream of a febrile night, I put my flat-screen TV on top of an old house in town and watched it crash onto the street. There was nothing inside it. The darn thing was empty. The ghost of Little Caylee wasn’t even in there. From the news this weekend, you’d think the […]

We’re all…just little bits of history repeating

In May 2011 the United Nations Population Division released “The 2010 Revision” of its world population estimates and projections. The headline story was that the projection was up greatly on the previous medium variant estimate. We were now projected to number 10.1 billion within the next ninety years, 9.3 billion by 2050. The Division’s press […]

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