CollapseNet’s First Full-Length Documentary To Focus On Las Vegas Trailer

CollapseNet’s First Full-Length Documentary To Focus On Las Vegas Trailer

Crashing off the Olduvai Cliff

READERS of my correspondence to The Gisborne Herald should now be familiar with terms like Peak Oil, Energy Descent, Fantasy Finance and the current clash of wills between those who seek to control the resources of the world by endless money creation, and the laws of nature that demand a sustainable approach. All of these […]

Price of gas hits August record

You may pay more than ever for a late-summer drive. U.S. drivers paid an average of $3.72 per gallon on Monday. That’s the highest price ever on this date, according to auto club AAA, a shade above the $3.717 average on Aug. 20, 2008. A year ago, the average was $3.578. More daily records are […]

Oil Sands: Crude, Dirty and Dangerous

EVERY day more than one million barrels of oil flow to refineries in the United States from western Canada’s oil sands region. Producers hope to quadruple that amount in the next decade, arguing that oil from a friendly neighbor will deliver an extra degree of national security. But this oil is no ordinary crude oil, […]

Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020

“In a feature that recalls Asimov’s Foundation series and ‘psychohistory’, Nature profiles mathematician Peter Turchin, who says he can see meaningful cycles in history. Worryingly, Turchin predicts a wave of violence in the United States in 2020. Quoting from the piece: ‘To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, […]

Netanyahu ‘determined to attack Iran’ before US elections

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is determined to attack Iran before the US elections,” Israel’s Channel 10 News claimed on Monday night, and Israel is now “closer than ever” to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive. The TV station’s military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the […]

Bill Gates: World Needs Fewer People

Software billionaire Bill Gates, who previously has advocated the reduction of the human population through the use of vaccines, and his wife Melinda marked the 100th year since the First International Eugenics Congress in London with a “family planning” summit with abortionists and the United Nations. The July 11 event, co-hosted by the United Kingdom […]

Roscoe Bartlett: ready for doomsday

Deep in the West Virginia woods, in a small cabin powered by the sun and the wind, a bespectacled, white-haired man is giving a video tour of his basement, describing techniques for the long-term preservation of food in case of “an emergency.” “We don’t really think of those today, because it’s so convenient to go […]

The Demise Of The Car

India’s recent series of power blackouts, in which 600 million people lost electricity for several days, reminds us of the torrid pace at which populations in the developing world have moved onto the powergrid. Unfortunately, this great transition has been so rapid that infrastructure has mostly been unable to meet demand. India itself has failed […]

US Corn Crop Outlook Dimming as July Heat Compounded Drought Damage

U.S. corn farmers hurt by the worst drought in a generation probably will harvest smaller crops than the government forecast this month, based an analysis of dry spells in the past 42 years. In the five drought years since 1970, farmers on average harvested 85.4 percent of the acres planted, U.S. Department of Agriculture data […]

We’re still on the slippery slope to peak oil

Technology and exploitation of unconventional sources can’t defer the long-predicted decline in global oil production IN 2007 former US energy secretary James Schlesinger claimed the arguments in favour of peak oil – the key theory that global production must peak and then decline – had been won. With production flat and prices surging towards an […]

Humans Seem to Need External Energy

Strange as it may seem, humans seem to have evolved in a way that we have a need for external energy, such as energy from burning wood or fossil fuels. While the evidence is not 100% certain, it appears that we learned to use fire long enough ago that it is now  necessary for our […]

Trend in Global Crude and Condensate Production

The EIA produces a breakdown of their version of the global liquid fuel numbers into components – it’s very useful to understand how the different parts contribute to the whole.  This chart shows the four streams since 1995 and through April 2012: Here crude and condensate (liquid hydrocarbons coming out of the ground) are on […]

Drought, food, and fuel

Drought in the US shines harsh light on the lunacy of converting food into vehicle fuel. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the corn yield this year will drop to its lowest level since 1995. With 40% of the corn crop now used for the production of fuel ethanol, the federal requirement for which […]

Peak Oil: Keeping Reality In Mind (Pt 6)

Oil has us literally over the barrel. If this situation is to change, we will all need to recognize that our present course is not sustainable. All of our institutions are geared to an era that was designed for a different set of circumstances that mainly relied on cheap domestic oil. That day is over. […]

What has been Driving Global Oil Prices Recently?

he price of Brent crude oil fell $35/barrel between April and June. But increases this summer have taken about $25 of that back. Price of Brent in dollars per barrel, Jan 1 to Aug 13. Data source: BP. The increase in crude oil prices also wiped out most of the gains realized by American gasoline […]

World powers eye emergency food meeting

Leading members of the Group of 20 nations are prepared to trigger an emergency meeting to address soaring grain prices caused by the worst U.S. drought in more than half a century and poor crops from the Black Sea bread basket. France, the United States and G20 president Mexico will hold a conference call at […]

US-Israeli deal on Iran? No Israeli strike now if Obama pledged a spring attack

House this week scrambled to reconnect with Jerusalem after the Obama administration was persuaded that Israel was serious about conducting a fall military operation against Iran’s nuclear program before the Nov. 6 US presidential election – notwithstanding the heavy opposition guns firing against it at home and from Washington. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense […]

Pump Action Spurs Iraqi Oil Production

Iraq has reclaimed its place as the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, overtaking Iran for the first time in 24 years and shifting the balance of power in the group. After years of conflict and poor security, Iraq has finally begun to rebuild its shattered oil industry. In July, it […]

Saudi Arabia Pumps Oil at 3-Decade High

Saudi Arabia pumped crude at the highest level in more than three decades in June, overtaking Russia as the world’s largest oil producer during the month, according to the Joint Organization Data Initiative. The desert kingdom’s output rose 3 percent to 10.1 million barrels a day in June from May as it exported the most […]

Film School Project: Peak Oil

Vancouver Film School Term 3 Team Project I was responsible for creating a Motion Piece for the Peak Oil Anonymous project. Our project is now nominated for the VFS Impact Awards 2012. Results are due in September 2012. Many thanks to Ryan Ali, our project producer, for helping me with this motion piece and for […]

Increase in North American oil output to depend on pipeline capacity

Light oil production in North America could increase by 800,000 to 900,000 barrels per day per year through 2016, including an annual increase of 380,000 b/d in Canadian oil sands output that will continue through 2020, if the industry can resolve the lack of pipeline capacity, CIBC World Markets said Friday. Andrew Potter, an analyst […]

‘Severe abnormalities’ found in Fukushima butterflies

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests. Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident. The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report. The […]

Iraqis helping Iran skirt sanctions

* Iranian banks, oil-smugglers bringing in needed dollars * Some officials close to President Maliki profiting * Obama bars Iraqi bank from U.S. dealings WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Iraq has been helping Iran skirt economic sanctions imposed because of its nuclear program, using a network of financial institutions and oil-smuggling operations that are providing […]

Visions of the future

In the current peak-oil situation, building sustainable cities has become a necessity. While the world wakes up to this fact, Hyderabad’s cyber city area continues to grow in an unplanned manner. Cities bring to mind squalor, crowds and congestion. Existing urban spaces may have started out as planned areas, but rapid population growth and migration […]

Tech Talk – Considerations of Chinese demand growth

Three years ago I took my third trip to China, flying this time to Qinghai Province and then taking the train back down from Xining City through Xian to Shanghai. One of the more striking parts of the trip was the first day of the train travel, where the tracks cut down from the Tibetan […]

Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times

When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end […]

Chinese vessel traverses Arctic Ocean for first time

China has completed its first voyage across the Arctic Ocean to Iceland using an icebreaker. The Arctic’s ice melt which experts attribute to climate change is opening new trade routes and exposing mineral resources. A Chinese vessel has voyaged from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean for the first time in the […]

Australia’s acute water shortages mapped

The 2012 State of the Climate report revealed that 2010 temperatures were the warmest on record, and projected that average temperatures would rise by 1.0 to 5.0°C by 2070 when compared with the climate of recent decades. Models in the study projected an increase in droughts, and also a rising number of ‘intense’ rainfalls. The […]

Arctic Drilling Will Begin This Year, Shell Official Says

Despite embarrassing delays and trouble with its equipment, Shellremains confident that it will get final approval from regulators and be able to begin drilling for oil in Arctic waters off the Alaskan coast this summer, the oil company’s top Alaska executive said on Friday. “We absolutely expect to drill this year,” Peter E. Slaiby, Shell’s […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy