US Midwest Hit By Perfect Gasoline Storm

Retail gasoline prices in the U.S. Midwest were as much as 50 cents higher than in the rest of the country. By Monday, the price of a gallon of regular unleaded jumped 13 cents from last week in Detroit to settle at $3.99.  The spike in retail gasoline prices follows a series of pipeline spills […]

US infrastructure, highways and power grids, failing under relentless heat wave

America is falling apart, literally, and the extreme weather events of the past few months and years surely have not helped the situation any. A recent New York Times (NYT) piece explains that various roads, bridges, and even nuclear power facilities all across the country are crumbling, or otherwise undergoing severe structural damage, as a […]

China Slams the US for “Stirring Up Troubles” over the South China Sea

Chinese state-run media ratcheted up criticisms of the US Tuesday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party’s top newspaper – People’s Daily Online – telling Washington that it is “stirring up troubles”. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned a US State Department statement published on August 3, 2012, that said Washington was […]

Solar Data Treasure Trove

I have not kept it secret that I’m a fan of solar power. Leaving storage hangups aside for now, the fact that the scale of available power is comfortably gigantic, that perfectly efficient technology exists, that it’s hard-over on the reality axis (vs. fantasy: it’s producing electricity on my roof right now), and that it […]

It’s a disaster that ‘peak oil’ is not a disaster

For regular entertainment, look no further than George Monbiot, the one-time green-leftie who is building a reputation as a master of the candid volte face. Having fallen in love with nuclear power after Fukushima, he has now been convinced that “the facts have changed” on peak oil. But that, he says, is a “disaster for […]

Chavez touts Venezuela’s huge nat gas reserves

Venezuela has proven natural gas reserves of 200 quintillion cubic feet, placing them among the largest in the world, President Hugo Chavez said. “We have proven that we have some of the most important gas reserves on the planet, and we are at 200 quintillion cubic feet and we will continue discovering more,” Chavez said […]

Pricey Oil, Cheap Natural Gas, and Energy Costs

Historically, oil and natural gas prices have moved hand in hand. However, in the past few years, while oil prices climbed to near record peaks, natural gas prices fell to levels not seen since the mid-1970s as a result of new hydraulic fracturing technology. U.S. consumer energy expenditures are still mainly driven by oil prices, […]

Orlov: Revolutionary Conditions

Travel advisory: Starting in 2013, in many parts of planet Earth there will be too little food and too much political unrest to make them pleasant destinations. Food is about to get very expensive everywhere: farming states in the US are living through the worst drought since the Dust Bowl; in Russia and Ukraine, heat […]

Peter Shawn Taylor: Jeff Rubin gets Peak Oil wrong

Two hundred and twenty five bucks. In April 2008, Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, predicted a barrel of oil would cost $225 by 2012. With oil at $118, it was a controversial call. But Rubin, the best-known bank economist in Canada at the time, was no stranger to risky predictions. In 1989, […]

DOE sees vast energy resource in Permian basin residual oil zones

Billions of barrels of oil that could increase domestic supply, help reduce imports, and improve US energy security may be potentially recoverable from residual oil zones, according to initial findings from a study supported by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy. The recently completed study, conducted by researchers at the University of […]

The Hunger Wars In Our Future: Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs, Global Unrest, By Michael Klare

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, […]

Total Available Renewable Resource

Several commenters questioned Friday’s post on the grounds that the total amount of solar and wind power potentially available is insufficient to power modern civilization This is incorrect. Total available wind power available on land and near shore has been estimated at 72TW.   This is close to five times current total primary energy consumption, and […]

Peak Sun Cycle Threatens Satellites, Power Grids from Space Storms

The delicate threads that hold modern life together are dramatically cut by an unexpected threat from outer space, with disastrous effects. It’s the stuff of science fiction usually associated with tales of rogue asteroids on a collision course with earth. But over the next two years, as the sun reaches a peak in its 10-year […]

Mitt Romney: peak oiler?

I was surprised to read what Cory Suter in “Polycimic” reports about Mitt Romney’s 2010 book “No Apology; The Case for American Greatness. ” In the book Romney  speaks about Peak Oil, cites Matt Simmons’s book “Twilight in the desert” and says that, “whether the peak is already past or will be reached within a […]

‘Fracking’ for Natural Gas Is Linked With Earthquakes

Hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) recovery techniques for oil and natural gas are a controversial business. The practice—in which a mix of water, sand and chemicals is injected deep into bedrock at high pressure to create fractures, allowing gas and oil to flow upward—was developed in the late 1990s and has become more and more common […]

A Terrifying Study Of Planetary Collapse

A few days ago, I posted an article on how the Brazilian government has sacrificed the lush Amazon Rainforest for short-term economic profits over the course of a few years. Today, I’d like to share more “good news” about the global environment that probably went unnoticed by many people (h/t Jaded Prole). About two months […]

What EROEI is – and How to Use It

In Friday’s Oil & Energy Investor, I began a discussion about the importance of a metric known as Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). As our research disclosed in the “Your Future: The Ultimate Pyramid Scheme” documentary, the factor is becoming a substantial element in the availability and cost of energy in general. But oil […]

Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality with Dr. Charles A.S. Hall

Dr. Hall provides an assessment of global energy trends from his perspective as a systems ecologist and pioneer in the emerging field of biophysical economics. This webinar examines key concepts regarding energy quality and energy return on investment in the context of current world energy and economic challenges. A critique of neoclassical economics and its […]

Our Rube Goldberg Economy

Two prominent energetic systems principles that drive our complex economy are hierarchy and autocatalysis. Earlier posts highlighted the concepts of energy transformity and hierarchy. The concept of autocatalysis can be seen in many circular loops in our current society, such as current proposals for geoengineering technology to fix the problems that industrial and post-industrial technology […]

Peak Oil Denial: Debunking The Attempted Debunking

It was all so perfect … the only report anyone could ever need to consign Peak Oil to the trash heap; hailed far and wide as the definitive answer. One entire report! Don’t believe me? Check out these headlines from individuals eagerly embracing the findings of Leonardo Maugeri’s effort. The Vanishing Peak William O’Keefe 06.18.12 […]

Why America Can Make or Break A New Global Gas World

With summer vacations on the horizon, we thought we’d give Forbes readers with a penchant for natural gas a real treat. I’ve hooked up with fellow European energy analyst, Andreas Goldthau to sketch our thoughts on how global gas dynamics play out in the next decade in a specially co-authored piece. We go on a […]

EIA Revises Estimates Of America’s Energy Bonanza

On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) updated its estimates of America’s proved reserves of oil and natural gas for 2010.  Here’s a summary of the key findings: 1. Proved reserves of both oil and natural gas in 2010 rose by the highest amounts ever recorded in the 35 years EIA has been estimating […]

Meat the Food of the Future: Insects

BBC reports that rising food prices, the growing population, and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have food futurologists thinking about what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it. In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets as some in the […]

Tech Talk – an introduction to China

When I first began this review of future production from the different oil producing countries about fifteen months ago, I produced this list of the relative performance of the top 30 producers.   Figure 1. Top 30 oil producing countries (those increasing production over 2009 are shown in red).So, after covering the top three the […]

Open Source Ironworker Machine – Prototype II Completed

Hello World, it’s Brianna again, with the final update on Ironworker Prototype II. You can see former work on Prototype I from 2 years ago. The build of the Prototype II has been completed  with great success on some fronts, and failure on other fronts. The machine was successful in that it shears even more […]

Unprecedented number of US coal-fired power stations to be shut down in 2012

The Obama Administration continues to move forward with plans to completely shut down the American coal industry, as a record 57 coal-fired power stations are slated for shutdown in 2012. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 175 coal-fired generators that collectively represent a whopping 27 gigawatts (GW) worth of electricity-generating capacity are set […]

Paul Farrell: Big Oil is Earth’s Public Enemy No. 1

The world has “1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years,” brags Thomas Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO: “We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years, and we need to […]

A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium’s Potential As An Energy Source

Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today’s marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand. Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be: Much safer – no risk […]

Doombama: Accelerating the Death Spiral of Civilisation?

An atmosphere of general uneasiness and malaise has been growing across the leading military and economic power of the globe, since the election of US President Obama. The level of US government debt over the past few years has been growing at unprecedented — and unsustainable — rates. This turbo-boost of debt has apparently not […]

Oil in 2013: aberration or paradigm shift?

Short-term forecasts for the oil market over the next 18 months portray a starkly different picture to the long-term outlook. While some aspects of this variance may be temporary aberrations from trend, others can be put in the context of longer-term developments based on policy direction and technological innovation. It may be time for a […]

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