Burning up food prices: More corn going to ethanol production now than food production

The world has a food shortage. This isn’t speculative or subjective, and it’s not fear-mongering or alarmist. It’s a well-documented fact and, what’s more, the real experts – those who aren’t influenced by government or corporate interests – have been trying to make that case for months. Moreover, these same experts say, the shortages are […]

Fukushima Japan – the China Syndrome Meltthrough in Progress?

Helpful Links: Fairewinds Associates/Arnie Gundersen: http://www.fairewinds.com/ http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-japan-nuclear.html http://enenews.com/ Nuclear Regulatory Commission daily reports (what’s happening at nuclear plants near you): http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2011/index.html Fukushima links: http://lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/lucaswebcamwatch.html http://www.youtube.com/user/fuku1live Weather (radiation flow) from Fukushima: http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250 News and Updates: http://nukefree.org/ http://www.youtube.com/user/MsMilkytheclown?blend=1&ob=5 http://www.scoop.it/t/nuclear-news-what-the-physics http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/04_04.html http://www.llrc.org/ Miscellaneous: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2_us.shtml http://www.weather.gov/view/states.php http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php#DISC… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfgYRIGjNkA http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25884 http://news.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98cMHsBsks http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110815152027.htm SACE Bellefonte Nuclear Plant (Alabama, TVA) […]

The Underlying European Oil Contagion ‎

As we await another down day on Wall Street, attention once again turns to weakness on European banks as the culprit. Actually, that seems to be only half the situation. Crude oil in New York was poised to move down again this morning, following an almost 6% drop yesterday. Brent in London, however, dropped only […]

World vehicle population tops 1 billion

One billion. To put such a lofty figure in perspective, let’s look at it this way: 1,000,000,000. One with nine zeros. It’s gonna take a lot of fingers and toes for us to count that high. Why do we care? According the number crunchers over at Wards Auto, 2010 marked the first year that the […]

Michael Ruppert: Say My Fucking Name

Latest Video from MCR

The US Energy Information Administration’s Faulty Peak Oil Analysis

Crude oil provides 35-40% of global primary energy and is a vital driver of economic productivity. The question of when oil supply will reach its global peak is an important and controversial question that is gaining increased attention from a wide array of researchers, commentators and policy makers. Many analysts, including now even the International […]

Colin Campbell on embedded energy

I recall doing my thesis, mapping the geology of Connemara in the 1950s, when I stayed for a while with Jimmy and Bridie Mulroe up in the hills. Perhaps his father or grandfather had built the little cottage out of local stone, but Jimmy, his wife and daughter lived there without electricity or running water, […]

Joint Chinese-Indian Oil Tanker Patrols Possible?

Aside from cost, the major problem for oil importing countries is getting the purchases safely home. Essentially, there are only two options – pipelines and maritime transport. Both are vulnerable to attack and this is increasingly preoccupying Chinese leaders, especially as, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s dependence on imported oil […]

The global era and the end of foreign policy

In the past foreign policy mainly consisted of adjusting relations between states – what they will do with or to each other. Now foreign policy mainly consists of adjusting the domestic policies of different states – of what they will do with or to their own people. It is a simple argument, but if fully […]

Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Energy Ambitions

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) plans to build 16 nuclear reactors over the next 20 years spending an estimated $7 billion on each plant. The $112 billion investment, which includes capacity to become a regional exporter of electricity, will provide one-fifth of the Kingdom’s electricity for industrial and residential use and, critically, for desalinization […]

Roubini: Is capitalism doomed?

The recent credit rating downgrade and Eurozone debt crises are slowly showing signs of The Great Depression 2.0. The massive volatility and sharp equity-price correction now hitting global financial markets signal that most advanced economies are on the brink of a double-dip recession. A financial and economic crisis caused by too much private-sector debt and […]

Exxon, U.S. Government Duel Over Huge Oil Find

Exxon Mobil Corp. is fighting with the U.S. government to keep control of one of its biggest oil discoveries ever, in a showdown where billions of dollars hang in the balance for both sides. View Full Image The massive Gulf of Mexico discovery contains an estimated one billion barrels of recoverable oil, the company says. […]

Five bummer problems that make societies collapse

Collapse guru Jared Diamond says we should heed the warning of the Greenland Vikings, whose record was nowhere near as good as their Minnesota namesakes. “If anyone tells you that there’s a single-factor explanation for societal collapse,” says collapse guru Jared Diamond, “you know right away that they’re an idiot. This is a complex subject.” […]

Peak Phosphorus: Nanotechnology for Recovery of Phosphorus

In the last 50 years, the concentration of phosphate entering the water system has increased at an alarming rate, causing a significant water quality problem across the United States. An urgent need exists for improved methods of removing phosphorus from point sources, such as waste water treatment plants, and run off from agricultural farms and […]

Study Blames Humans for Half of Recent Arctic Ice Melt

A new study funded by the National Science Foundation is the first to attribute a specific proportion of the record Arctic ice melt to greenhouse gases and particulates from pollution. The study says about half the record ice loss is related to the increasing greenhouse gases, and that conditions will become more volatile from year […]

Update From Fukushima

Radiation Expert: Huge Quantities of Radiation Are Still Being Released from Fukushima … And Radiation Levels In Some Parts of Tokyo Are Higher than In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Huge Quantities of Radiation Are Still Being Released By Fukushima Radiation expert Dr. Chris Busby says that huge quantities of radiation – 1013 or 10 trillion […]

Sheen Seen Emanating from BP Thunderhorse Platform in US Gulf

A band of silvery sheen was spotted emanating from BP’s Thunderhorse platform Tuesday in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, though the company said that it has taken action to prevent further discharges, according to a government filing. A two-foot-wide band of sheen stretching 30 feet from the platform, which is located in deep water south […]

Family Planning Critics Soon To See Global Population Reach 7,000,000,000

On August 18th, 1920,  the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified as Tennessee clinched a necessary vote to become the 36th state to duly sign on to the groundbreaking legislation – thus ensuring a woman’s right to vote throughout America. The 19th Amendment forbids discrimination against any voter on the basis of sex. […]

John Michael Greer: The Twilight of Meaning

This is not going to be an easy post to write, and I’m not at all sure it will be any easier to understand; I trust my readers will bear with me. I could begin it in any number of places, but the one that seems most important just now is the vestibule of the […]

Natural World: Farm for the Future BBC documentary

Natural World: Farm for the Future BBC documentary on the precient global farming and food crisis, filmed in the UK. Topics covered are the influence of oil on the food production, peak-oil, food security, carbon emissions, sustainability and permaculture.

The most dangerous machine ever built

Are you a hypocrite if you criticize personal cars but yet own your own car? Do you have to achieve total transportation purity — relying only on transit, bicycling or hoofing it — to earn the right to open your mouth on all the problems that the automotive industrial complex has caused, from accident deaths […]

Why do Malthusians ignore the Sun?

This article at the Energy Collective on “plastic trees” got me thinking about something that doesn’t come up too often here at Energetics, though it should: geoengineering. From the article: The idea employs biomimicry by deploying small-scale units of “trees” to soak up more CO2 than real trees, wherever you might need them. “You can […]

“Peak Oil Awareness Survey”

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson is writing dissertation entitled “Running on Fumes: The Peak Oil Phenomenon and American Politics“ through the  Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.  As part of this dissertation, he’s collecting opinions from our community via “The “Peak Oil Awareness Survey.”  The survey is anonymous and intended to gather information about people engaged with peak […]

EIA analysis: the SPR oil is here

When the International Energy Agency announced a release of strategic stocks in June — with the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve providing the biggest share — there was controversy that continues today. Will it have any impact on prices? Shouldn’t this wait for something bigger than just the loss of Libyan crude? Isn’t the market well-supplied […]

Collapse scenarios – satire or vision of the future?

With the US debt mountain looking increasingly unresolvable and European state debts at levels sufficient to give the markets recurrent panic attacks, the stage is nicely set for authors of collapse scenarios. Their Armageddon visions might not come to pass, but then again, given the way the marbles are rolling around, they just might. These […]

Norway Sees Longer Oil Era as North Sea Find Offers Hidden Giant

Norway may slow a decade-long slump in oil production after a series of discoveries from the Arctic to the North Sea. Statoil ASA (STL) has made two offshore finds of more than 250 million barrels of oil equivalent in Norway this year. The country’s biggest oil and gas producer yesterday said Aldous Major South and […]

The true cost of the US military’s oil addiction

Among the many incentives pushing the military to use less oil, reducing the number of casualties it takes to protect vulnerable fuel convoys is one of the most important. CNN

First Measurements of Leakage from Fukushima Reactor

The first estimate of the amount of radiation that leaked from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in the wake of the devastating tsunami have been released by atmospheric chemists from the University of California, San Diego. Their estimates, which were published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy […]

What are ICE and CME fighting about this time?

If you’re confused about the brewing war of words between IntercontinentalExchange and NYMEX parent company CME Group over proposed conditional spot limits in energy and other commodity markets, you’re likely not alone. The proposal, after all, makes up all of three paragraphs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s more than 28,000 word proposal to set […]

Peak oil and public health: preparing healthcare for another kind of transition

“Three threats all arise from the Earth’s limited capacity to sustain unabated human growth and consumption,” wrote Peter Winch of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. “(1) Global climate change, (2) ecosystem degradation, and (3) peak oil production.” We have to admit that, until a few weeks ago, “peak oil” was not on our […]

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