In War for Canadian Oil Sands: Keystone XL is Winning

A huge blow to the anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusade occurred earlier this month when the State Department released a “Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement” (SEIS) for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.  The report is extensive and gives detailed analysis of a myriad of issues surrounding the proposed project such as water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, […]

Let’s stop fooling ourselves: Americans can’t afford the future

The American spirit is rooted in the belief of a better tomorrow. Its success has been due to generations of men and women who toiled, through both hardship and boom times, to make that dream a reality. But at some point over the past several decades, that hope for a better tomorrow became an expectation. […]

US Oil, Gas Production to Climb While US Energy Consumption Declines

U.S. oil and gas production will continue to rise through 2040 from 2010 levels as unconventional oil and gas resources and production from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico come online, while U.S. energy consumption is forecast to decline during the same time period, ExxonMobil Corp. reported in its 2013 energy outlook. U.S. oil and gas […]

John Michael Greer: Reinventing America

It’s been more than a year now since my posts here on The Archdruid Report veered away from the broader theme of this blog, the decline of industrial civilization, to consider the rise and impending fall of America’s global empire.  That was a necessary detour, and the points I’ve tried to explore since last February […]

Peak Oil: Natural Gas Truth v. “The Truth” Pt 7

This is the seventh and final part of a series [links below], discussing how the same “skate past the facts and hope no one notices” strategy typically employed by most Peak Oil deniers is not-so-surprisingly used by those cheerleading for shale gas development. What triggered this is a March 2012 article written by a Chevron […]

MEP’s new report ‘Europe Facing Peak Oil’

MEP’s new report ‘Europe Facing Peak Oil’: “The transition to a post-oil society is inevitable” Plentiful and cheap oil has enabled Europe to become one of the world’s wealthiest modern econo- mies. But today, this has also become Europe’s main weak point. Sectors essential to people’s way of life have become completely dependent on this […]

What Happened To The Uproar Over Energy Speculators?

Gasoline prices in the U.S. Midwest have pulled back from the seasonal highs reported in February. Motor group AAA reported Monday that U.S. commuters paid, on average, $3.69 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline, just over 1 percent less than they paid last week. For some markets, that’s the first time gasoline prices have […]

The Fracked-up USA Shale Gas Bubble

At a time when much of the world is looking with a mix of envy and excitement at the recent boom in USA unconventional gas from shale rock, when countries from China to Poland to France to the UK are beginning to launch their own ventures into unconventional shale gas extraction, hoping it is the […]

China expects regional energy security concerns to intensify

Asian-Pacific nations can be expected to intensify their efforts to improve their energy security as North America achieves that goal, a senior researcher at China’s Energy Research Institute said. Yang Yufeng made that observation as he described conclusions Chinese policymakers reached as they prepared the country’s first Energy Outlook last year. China potentially could produce […]

Ugo Bardi: The World is a Fountain

The world is complex, variegated, convoluted, multi-faceted, interconnected, complicated, circuitous, and more. And, yet, there is a logic in the way it works. Look at the Trevi Fountain, in Rome, it is complex and variegated, but in the end there is a logic: water always goes down. It is physics: it is the gravitational potential […]

Germany’s Energiewende — What Has Been Learned So Far?

Within the next decade, Germany will have shifted from a coal- and nuclear-powered economy to a thriving, decentralized system with power from renewable sources. This transformation, writes John Mathews, will not only make a real reduction in global carbon emissions. It is leading to a democratization of economic power that is unprecedented in the industrial […]

Road to natural gas vehicles vexes GM

Daniel Akerson is a bit chicken of the egg. That’s understandable given that the egg in this case is government support and Akerson is head of General Motors, a company that received a $49.5 billion federal bailout to keep it in business. He doesn’t want to be seen as calling on the government for help, […]

Our Energy Predicament in Charts

A friend asked me to put together a presentation on our energy predicament. I am not certain all of the charts in this post will go into it, but I thought others might be interested in a not-so-difficult version of the story of the energy predicament we are reaching. My friend also asked what characteristics […]

Pentagon weapons-maker finds method for cheap, clean water

* Filter could sharply cut energy needed to remove salt from water * Officials say firm has patented process, looking for partners * Cheaper seawater purification could help ease water security fears A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of […]

Public Pays for Fukushima While Nuclear Industry Profits

Two years after Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the country faces 100 to 250 billion dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, tens of thousands of displaced people and widespread impacts of radiation. The nuclear industry and its suppliers made billions from building and operating Fukushima’s six reactors, but it is the Japanese government and its […]

EIA: Worldwide liquid fuels consumption to rise in 2013-14

Worldwide liquid fuels consumption will reach 90.1 million b/d in 2013 and 91.5 million b/d in 2014, due to a moderate recovery in global economic growth, the US Energy Information Administration forecast in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. EIA estimates that world liquid fuels consumption was 89.1 million b/d in 2012. As oil product inventories […]

Brazilian-Made Plastic Solar Panels, a Clean Energy Breakthrough

As part of the country’s growing emphasis on green tech research, Brazilian scientists have developed plastic solar panels that could revolutionise power generation from this clean, renewable energy source. What looks like a thin, flexible sheet of regular plastic is actually a solar panel printed with photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight into electricity. This new […]

Methane hydrate flow established off Japan

Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp. (Jogmec), Tokyo, said it has produced methane from methane hydrates during tests of a well drilled in about 1,000 m of water offshore the Atsumi and Shima peninsulas of Japan. The well, operated by Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., produced methane by depressurization of hydrates in a layer 270-330 […]

When agriculture stops working: A guide to growing food in the age of climate destabilization and civilization collapse

This is Part 1 of an essay in 2 parts. Part 1, below, outlines the issues. Part 2, which will appear here tomorrow, offers ‘Ten Recommendations for Growing Food in the Anthropocene Source: photoblog.statesman.com/dry-season-the-texas-drought-of-2011 “Well it’s hotter ‘n blazes and all the long faces / there’ll be no oasis for a dry local grazier” – […]

Oil Explorers Beware: Hackers Are Eying What You Know

While most would think that the risks junior oil and gas companies are taking in exploring new frontiers as far away as the remote reaches of Africa are related to government instability and conflict, another risk they face is right at home and lies right beyond their network firewalls. Cyber security breaches are becoming more […]

OPEC Raises Crude Output to 3-Month High on Saudi Arabia, Iraq

OPEC boosted its crude production to the highest in three months in February led by increased output from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 30.31 million barrels a day last month, the producer group said in its monthly oil market report. That’s up from 30.24 million in January and is […]

Follow nature and avoid collapse

Neoclassical economists, business gurus, the Republican Party and every high school teacher that ever gave C+ to a slacker sophomore would have us believe that human society cannot function successfully without competition among its members. In life, we’re told, there are either winners or losers. There’s no other option. So you better be smarter, work harder, get […]

Start Geo-Engineering The Arctic By Spring 2013 Or Face Catastrophe!

As many everyday people have been observing atmospheric aerosol spraying taking place over the years, and billionaires like Bill Gates keep pouring money into Geo-engineering programs. I have known that a large public push for the weather manipulation programs was not far away. Between the countless main stream news articles being published on the topic […]

Energy Returned over Energy Invested: An Orderly Reading List

The principal difficulty in gathering information in a blog is the difficulty in indicating the best order to read the various posts.  That is especially true in the case of this blog which is not intended for continuing daily posts.  For some unexplained reason, the nearly random order in which the subject is covered bothers […]

2 Year Anniversary of Fukushima: The Accident Is NOT Contained

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said today that the containment vessel at Fukushima reactor 2 has a large crack in it. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 all exploded. BBC reports today: They know very little about what’s going on inside Reactors 1, 2, and 3 […] They don’t really know what the state of the reactor […]

Peak oil apocalyptoids: eating crow yet?

Remember the incessant squawking a few years back, when oil prices were spiralling, about how we were approaching “peak oil”? Been mighty quiet from that set recently, hasn’t it? Vince Beiser explains why in a piece called “The Deluge” in the Pacifc Standard, March 4: The widely circulated fears of a few years ago that we were approaching […]

US Threatens Pakistan with Sanctions over Iran Gas Pipeline Deal

The US has threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it goes ahead with a multi-billion dollar pipeline deal with Iran. Hours after the official inauguration of the final phase of the Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline, the US State Department has said the bilateral project would force Washington to employ the Iran Sanctions Act. “We have serious […]

Australia’s Liquid Fuel Security

The NRMA has issued a report on Australia’s fuel security – Australia’s Liquid Fuel Security (pdf). As the world’s ninth-largest energy producer, Australia has abundant renewable and nonrenewable energy resources. Despite these resources, we are heavily dependent on imports of refined petroleum products and crude oil to meet our liquid fuel demand.This import dependency has […]

Natural gas production in New Mexico declines

Natural gas production in northwestern New Mexico’s San Juan Basin continues to sink. Production dropped 4.2 percent in 2012 for the sixth straight year of declining production in the region. Northwestern New Mexico produced 780 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2012. That’s down from about 815 billion cubic feet in 2011 and the […]

Orlov: The proliferation of defunct states

[Another excerpt from The Five Stages of Collapse.] The triumph of the nation-state was made possible by the triumph of industry over artisanal production, especially in the area of weaponry. Industrialization gave the larger nations the means to produce vast quantities of war matériel, in turn giving them the impetus to homogenize and standardize the […]

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