Extreme Manufacturing

We are proud to announce the beta release of an the Extreme Manufacturing platform for Open Source Ecology. We are now testing the platform. Extreme Manufacturing (XM) is an open source hardware development methodology based on the principles of Extreme Programming in the field of software. XM focuses open source design and collaboration, and the revenue model is Distributive […]

MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030

Forty years after its initial publication, a study called The Limits to Growth is looking depressingly prescient. Commissioned by an international think tank called the Club of Rome, the 1972 report found that if civilization continued on its path toward increasing consumption, the global economy would collapse by 2030. Population losses would ensue, and things […]

Peak eggs: Hubbert and the Easter Bunny

Here is a little Easter post where I try to model the Easter Egg hunt as if it were the production of a mineral resource. A simple model based on system dynamics turns out to be equivalent to the Hubbert model of oil production. We can have “peak eggs” and the curve may also take […]

CIA: Iran expanded nuke program last year

Iran expanded its nuclear program last year with continued uranium enrichment and growing infrastructure development, according to an annual CIA report to Congress. The report on arms proliferation covering 2011, made public by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), reveals that Iran has produced 4,900 kilograms of low enriched uranium. “Iran continued […]

Push it!

This Week: 1. No Dick for Canucks 2. Margaret Thatcher is dead 3. Resistance in Quebec 4. Lakota tar sands blockade 5. The San Francisco Commune 6. Dark roast in Barcelona

The Future of Algae Biofuels

Researchers at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have assembled the draft genome sequence of a marine algae,  Nannochloropis gaditan, that may be capable of producing the lipid yields necessary for a viable fuel source. Algae is an ideal alternative, renewable fuel source because it can use various water sources ranging from wastewater to brackish water […]

The Race for BTU

The world’s major central banks — including the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Federal Reserve — appear to have finally won a major battle in the deflationary war that broke out five years ago in 2007. While the ultimate victor is yet to be determined, it now seems likely […]

Food inflation back on the table

World food prices are likely to rise for a third successive month in March, and could gain further beyond that, with expensive oil and chronically low stocks of some key grains putting food inflation firmly back on the economic agenda. Food prices grabbed world policy makers’ attention after hitting record highs in February 2011 and […]

Son of Frackenstein

In a few short years the term “fracking” went from obscurity, mostly mistaken for an obscenity, to a household word, now often associated with flammable tap water. The technology is not new, but the market conditions that make such reckless forays deep into the earth’s crust profitable, are new. Welcome to the post peak oil […]

Jeremy Rifkin’s new world vision

What role should UNIDO play in the third industrial revolution? Given the situation the world is facing right now, if there were no UNIDO, we’d have to invent it immediately. Whatever relevance it had in the past, pales in comparison with the relevance it has now. The reason is that the second revolution is on […]

John Michael Greer America: The Eagle and the Lion

I’ve commented more than once in these essays on the way that so many people on the leftward end of today’s American politics act as though America’s current empire is unique in the history of the world, either in scale, malevolence, or some combination of the two. In any form, this notion is impressively absurd, […]

Peak Oil Denial: Looking Left and Right (Pt 4)

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order […]

Physical oil market plenty at odds with pricey Brent

Europe’s oil futures market and its physical crude markets paint widely devigent views on oil. Brent oil futures have remained stubbornly high around $122 to $126 per barrel, even while Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, has repeatedly assured the market there are ample supplies. Price differentials for physical oil grades suggest that Naimi is […]

Does the U.S. Really Have More Oil than Saudi Arabia?

The Difference Between Oil Shale and Oil-Bearing Shale People are often confused about the overall extent of U.S. oil reserves. Some claim that the U.S. has hundreds of billions or even trillions of barrels of oil waiting to be produced if bureaucrats will simply stop blocking development. In fact, in a recent debate between Republican candidates contending […]

China overtakes US as world’s biggest grocery market

China has overtaken the United States to become the world’s biggest market for grocery shopping, according to the latest report to underscore the country’s growing global economic dominance. The Chinese grocery sector will continue its fast growth over the next few years to hit almost £1tn by 2015, according to grocery industry researchers IGD. That […]

Clock ticking on U.S. SPR release to avert summer gasoline spike

President Barack Obama faces an unforgiving foe in his bid to marshal global support for releasing strategic oil reserves: time. For maximum effect, the Obama administration needs to tap into U.S. government reserves no later than the end of this month to avert a spike in gasoline prices to $5 a gallon this summer, which […]

Disposable Cars

In the argument for our future wellbeing, we are told we can rely on the market and human ingenuity to conquer our problems. We are increasingly presented with a vision of a future of electric, hybrid, bio-fuel, and even hydrogen powered cars as the way of the future, so no worries about our unsustainable path […]

Global Oil Risks in the Early 21st Century

Abstract: The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that most of the oil left is deep offshore or in other locations difficult to reach. Moreover, to obtain the oil remaining in currently producing reservoirs requires additional equipment and technology that comes at a higher price in both capital and energy. In this regard, the physical limitations on […]

Natural Gas: Pros and Cons

Natural gas has been in the news a lot lately, being hailed as the solution to our energy problems on the one hand, and a potential environmental nightmare on the other. Let’s try to sort out the reality behind this old friend with a new face. Before we start, it might be useful to make […]

A World without Oil

Companies Prepare for a Fossil-Free Future Drivers may hate rising gas prices, but some companies are delighted as they watch the oil price soar. Firms like BMW and Airbus which are leaders in fuel efficiency actually benefit from expensive oil. They are just two of a growing number of companies that are already developing technologies for a […]

Standing Down as Iran’s Power Struggle Unfolds

A strike on Iran, however limited, would push the current internal power struggle to a premature end that would not be in the US’ best interests – that is the message, whether intentional or not, of the recent “intelligence leak” that has provided the Obama Administration with justification for standing down with regard to Iran. […]

The cost of blunting peak oil

The notion of “peak oil” says that the world’s rate of oil production will hit a permanent decline, if it hasn’t already. It’s one compelling reason why we’re supposed to pursue alternative fuel sources, especially for transportation, where oil rules. But as the latest Time Magazine notes (subscription may be necessary, although you get a […]

BEWARE of the Peak Oil Apocalypse

Host Grant J. Kidney explainst the reality of peak oil and how it will gravely affect our planet and way of life. This and other anti establishment news is discussed

Don’t let the sun set on fusion

President Obama has touted federal investment in energy technology as a smart and environmentally friendly way to create jobs. When it comes to fusion research, however — which could deliver boundless clean energy, if the scientists get it right — Obama is basically shipping jobs overseas. His budget for 2013 chops federal funding for American […]

Production of Oil

Production of Oil Video

Review of Lt. Col. Eggen’s thesis, Impact of the Peaking of World Oil Production on the Global Balance of Power

Impact of the Peaking of World Oil Production on the Global Balance of Power, USACGSC, Dec. 2011 (91 pgs) The U.S. war colleges continue to generate insightful analyses of the potential effects of Peak Oil. Recently the U.S. Army Combined and General Staff College (USACGSC) released an excellent study by Lt. Col. GS Pascal Eggen, […]

‘So you really want a national energy policy?’

Lamentations Monday at Platts Global Power Markets Conference about the lack of a national energy policy. There should be one. … Why can’t we just get it together and make one?. … Accept it, there never has been one and there never will be. Benjamin Salisbury of FBR Capital Markets brought it all up short. […]

Oil: Saudis are burning through it

Everyone knows why oil prices, at around $125 for a barrel of Brent crude and $103 for West Texas crude, are so high. The long-term trends are meager supply growth and soaring demand from China and other emerging economies. And in the short term, the market is tight, supplies have been disrupted and Iran is […]

A new energy third world in North America?

by Michael Klare The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land.  Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi […]

Kunstler: Unthinkable

     In the drunken, drug-crazed twilight of its run as Leader of the Free World, America’s collective imagination swerves from one breakdown lane to the other while the highway patrol throws a donuts-and-porn party down at headquarters and the news media searches the gutter on hands-and-knees looking for the spot where it dropped its […]

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