Pickens: Let’s make the switch to natural gas

Four years ago, we kicked off the Pickens Plan and changed forever the discussion of energy in the United States. From a standing start we attracted 1.7 million Pickens Plan supporters who have been able to keep up a conversation with their state legislators and members of Congress to make sure the issue of reducing […]

Syria reaches oil deal with ally Russia

Syria has reached an agreement with ally Russia to secure much-needed fuel as a delegation of ministers sent by President Bashar al-Assad asked Moscow to help alleviate the effects of sanctions on the war-torn country. The trip was a rare foreign visit made by high-level Syrian officials, whose circles of support are shrinking as violence […]

The implications of overpopulation are terrifying. But will we listen to them?

Sitting on my own in the bar of the Royal Court theatre on Wednesday with my orange juice and lightly sea-salted packet of crisps, I remembered that I was first here more than 50 years ago, as a teenager down on holiday from Scotland and determined to witness England’s cultural revolution. In 1961 that still […]

Steve Keen: Why Economics Is Bunk

Listen now (30 minutes) Synopsis Newsnight Economics Editor Paul Mason interviews the controversial economist Steve Keen before an audience at the London School of Economics. Keen was one of a small number of economists who predicted there would be a major financial crisis before the 2008 crash. He argues that if we keep the “parasitic […]

Noam Chomsky – Peak Oil and Climate Change

Noam Chomsky – Peak Oil and Climate Change

Petroleum Demand in Developing Countries

Oil Prices Rise, But Demand Growth Remains Strong Access to affordable, stable energy supplies is critical for economies throughout the world. For developing countries, affordable energy can offer a pathway to a better quality of life. But between 2000 and 2010, world oil prices became much less affordable. The average global oil price advanced from […]

Economist Richard Duncan: Civilization May Not Survive ‘Death Spiral’

Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America’s $16 trillion federal debt has escalated into a “death spiral, “as he told CNBC. And it could result in a depression so severe that he doesn’t “think our civilization could survive it.” And Duncan is not alone in warning that […]

Fixing the world’s biggest blackout

About 10 percent of the world’s population lost power recently as a blackout swept across northern India. As many as 700 million people, or twice the population of the U.S., were affected. Fortunately there have been no reports of deaths connected to the blackout, but the loss of power did result in traffic snarls, stranded […]

John Michael Greer: The Degeneration of Politics

There’s a certain wry amusement in looking back over the last few months of posts here on The Archdruid Report.  Each week, I’ve gone to the keyboard intending to proceed further with the outline of the impending fall of American empire that’s the putative theme of this sequence of posts; each week, I’ve ended up […]

Indian grid failure offers lesson to us all

A little conservation is in order. As is an upgrade to the US electrical grid. Photo: Woodley Wonder Works via Flickr. A Washington Post story yesterday about the (so far) two-day electricity blackout that affected 600 million citizens was a study in trying to find an answer to the acute predicament facing Mother India. Numerous […]

China unveils oil offensive in South China Sea squabble

First came the diplomatic offensive, then the flexing of military muscle. Now, China is opening a third front to assert its claims in the South China Sea – moving ahead with its first major tender of oil and gas blocks in disputed parts of its waters. China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), a state oil […]

A Day In The Life Of Big Oil

Every hour so far in 2012, the five largest oil corporations have recorded a $14,400,000 profit. And every hour, they received more than $270,000 in federal tax breaks. That adds up to $2.4 billion in subsidies every year for the five largest oil corporations — Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips — all […]

Iranian Ayatollah: “War Within Weeks”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told top Iranian military chiefs to expect “war within weeks,” at a recent war council meeting, according to Israeli news outlet DebkaFile. “While retaliation had been exhaustively drilled in regular military exercises in the past year, Khamenei ordered the biggest fortification project in Iran’s history to save its nuclear […]

All Power Grids are Vulnerable — Not Just India’s

Power has been restored to blacked-out portions of North and East India. But the danger is far from passed. A series of failures and excessive demand on the national grid knocked out power for 640 million people in northern and central India on July 31, a day after a separate blackout left 360 million in […]

‘Gasland’ movie doesn’t tell the whole story

We can all agree that natural gas is a clean and abundant energy resource in the U.S. In fact, there is so much natural gas in this country that there is general consensus that it has fundamentally changed the nature of energy policy. As former chief of staff and acting deputy administrator of the EPA during […]

Checking the numbers on a gasoline claim in the WSJ

There was an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, critical of the Obama administration on several fronts. We won’t comment on the piece as a whole, but one passage caught our eye: This administration’s policies — its refusal to allow a private company to build the Keystone XL pipeline, its reduction in permits […]

Researchers Develop Method to Create Photovoltaic Solar Cells from Any Materials

Discovering new materials to make cheaper and more efficient solar cells is the holy grail of the photovoltaic solar industry and recent news indicate that some significant steps in that direction are being taken. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley […]

The Most Often Forgotten Survival Preparations

I think it’s safe to say with some conviction that in the year of 2012 the concept of survival prepping is NOT an alien one to most Americans.  When National Geographic decides there is a viable market for a prepper TV show (no matter how misrepresentative of true preppers it may be), when Walmart starts […]

Natural gas driller warns New York: Stop the local bans, or we’ll sue

A natural gas drilling company is taking a new tack in the industry’s fight against local drilling bans: It’s threatening to sue if New York regulators don’t step in and extinguish the prohibitions. John Holko, president of Lenape Resources, sent a letter Thursday to state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens saying a moratorium […]

As truth about Fukushima radiation emerges, Japanese authorities struggle to maintain cover-up

The cat is out of the bag, as more evidence continues to emerge proving that clean-up workers at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan deliberately covered up high radiation readings at the order of their superiors. And as more people become aware of this disturbing fact, Japanese authorities are trying to maintain […]

1846: The Year We Hit Peak Sperm Whale Oil

Energy experts predict that the global production of oil will soon start to decline, what’s referred to as peak oil. Now while we may not be there yet, there was a time in our history when we did reach a similar plateau, but it was a very different kind of energy source — one that […]

Arithmetic, Population & Energy – Oil, Peak Oil

a talk by Al Bartlett : Arithmetic, Population & Energy – Oil, Peak Oil

Permaculture and Peak Oil – Beyond Sustainability Interview

Permaculture and Peak Oil – Beyond Sustainability Interview

Shell Oil scales back Arctic drilling plan

Shell Oil Co. is downsizing its plan for off-shore drilling in the Arctic this year amid delays completing a spill containment barge required by the federal government, a spokesman said Tuesday. Shell now hopes to complete two wells in 2012 instead of five. One would be in the Beaufort Sea off the northern Alaska coastline, […]

Oil-spill dispersants may have hurt Gulf food chain,

A study on possible effects of the 2010 BP oil spill indicates dispersants may have killed plankton — some of the ocean’s tiniest plants and creatures — and disrupted the food chain in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation’s richest seafood grounds. Scientists who read the study said it points toward major future […]

Dmitry Orlov: Reinventing Collapse & Preparing for Survival

Ian Gordon and Dmitry Orlov return to update us on the “progress” of the breakdown of social order in the Western world caused by debt/GDP levels that far surpass those of the 1930s. Orlov’s book, Reinventing Collapse outlines the stages of decline starting with the financial system and ending with a basic breakdown of infrastructure, […]

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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