Will There Be Progress Between U.S. and Iran?

Bloomberg Contributing Editor Richard Falkenrath discusses U.S., Saudi Arabia and Iranian relations with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television’s “Money Moves.” (Source: Bloomberg)

The propaganda campaign against peaking fossil fuel production

(Paper produced after a presentation at the Fenner Conference on Population, Resources and Climate Change: Implications for Australia’s Near Future, Canberra, October 2013)   Energy and civilisation A formal definition of “energy” is “the capacity to do work”. The overwhelming majority – ~80%) of the work done in our advanced technological society (i.e. the “economic […]

We’re running out of water to grow food, Lester Brown warns

Forget peak oil. It’s peak water we should worry about, says Lester R. Brown. “Water is far more important than oil,” according to the prolific author, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and now president of the nonprofit Earth Policy Institute. Brown, whose early warnings about the dangers of climate change and resource overuse have made […]

EROEI: The global economy sinks under its debts as the real cost of energy rises

ALTHOUGH the economy is improving, this is turning out to be “a recovery, but not as we know it”. Britain may be getting better off, but people keep getting poorer, as the costs of essentials continue to grow much more rapidly than incomes. Yet far from being a uniquely British problem, this is a worldwide […]

Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can “pressure-cook” algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. “We’re trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine […]

Unfortunately, peak oil is not at hand

A Citi Research report on so-called peak oil demand has been drawing a lot of attention lately. Understandably: what could be bigger news for anyone concerned with climate change, energy security, etc.? The report comes out hot right from the start, suggesting “The End is Nigh” and we are “Approaching a Tipping Point” on global […]

Nuclear Called a Lesser Evil than Fossil Fuels

Four prominent climate and energy scientists are calling on environmentalists to rethink their longstanding opposition to nuclear energy, warning that there is no “credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power”. The warning comes just ahead of a new round of international climate negotiations, slated to start next […]

From the Mouths of Babes

A 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL EXPLAINS HOW WE CAN STOP THE ADDICTION TO ECONOMIC GROWTH THAT’S DESTROYING THE EARTH Hi! I’m Amy Johnson-Martinez, the 14-year-old girl who’s saving the earth from environmental destruction. A lot of people don’t understand how the destruction of the earth is connected to our addiction to economic growth. Actually, a lot of […]

Sustainability: How Humans’ Economy Differs from Natures’

A few years ago, I had an ah-ha moment when it comes to what we as humans would need to do to live in a sustainable manner. It is very easy. All we have to do is leave our homes, take off all of our clothes, and learn to live on the raw food we […]

Revolt and Change Our Lives

It’s a sign of a really good essay when bits of it linger with you for days after you’ve read it and it keeps popping up in your mind. Naomi Klein’s “Why Science is Telling All of Us to Revolt and Change Our Lives Before We Destroy the Planet” is one of those. Her theme? “Global capitalism […]

Noam Chomsky on Peak Oil, Economics, Financial Markets

Noam Chomsky on Peak Oil, Economics, Financial Markets, Bailouts, Investment, Climate Change (1998) Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. Global production of oil fell from a high point in 2005 at 74 mb/d, […]

Hopium for the masses, renewable energy edition

The hydrogen economy always seems to be 20 years away. Photo: The Chosun Bimbo/Flickr. As Derrick Jensen points out, this “culture as a whole and most of its members are insane.” The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin, Palgrave Macmillian, 304pp, $17. For my […]

Peak Coal: Will the US Run Out of Coal in 20 Years or 200 Years?

“Most U.S. coal is buried too deeply to be mined at a profit.” U.S. coal production has peaked, and the miscalculations that have led to estimates of a 200-year supply could create a serious electricity deficit for the nation, according to a new report from advocacy group Clean Energy Action. “The belief that the U.S. […]

Ron Paul: What Cannot Be Said About Iraq

October was Iraq’s deadliest month since April, 2008. In those five and a half years, not only has there been no improvement in Iraq’s security situation, but things have gotten much worse. More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq last month, the vast majority of them civilians. Another 1,600 were wounded, as car bombs, […]

Civilizations Rise and Fall with Soil Quality: Dangers for Modern Agriculture

Civilizations rise and fall depending on the quality of their soil. With good farmland, cities and towns can flourish. Without it, though, they can easily fall. Now, scientists have revealed that the modern world could suffer a similar fate to past civilizations if soil quality degrades enough. “Cultivating soil continuously for too long destroys the […]

The Energy Sustainability Dilemma : Powering the Future in a Finite World

A fascinating talk by J. David Hughes, a research fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, given at Cornell Universtiy on 5-2-12, “Energy Sustainability Dilemma : Powering the Future in a Finite World”. Most of the easy energy is gone. Now we are pursuing Deep Ocean Drilling, Tar Sands, Fracked Shale Gas, etc. Are we heading […]

Many households switching to natural gas

Although oil prices are not expected to spike this winter, local utility companies report thousands of people continue to switch their heating fuel to natural gas. An NStar spokesman said his company expects to make 2,500 conversions to gas this year while a National Grid spokesman said the company expects to complete about 6,200 between […]

Scotland and China are natural energy partners

Scottish oil and natural gas workers are natural partners for a China as it seeks ways to satisfy growing energy demands, Scottish leader Alex Salmond said. The country’s first minister said energy partnerships would top the agenda during his trade mission to China this week. “Scotland’s enviable reputation as the European capital of oil and […]

How Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition are responding to austerity

One of the most inspiring Transition initiatives I visited in the US recently was Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition in Boston. With our theme for this month focusing on austerity, JPNET (as they are known to their friends) have useful contributions to make to our discussions.  They formed in 2009, and hosted a Transition Training. […]

Iran Burning Gas Worth Billions Set to Lead Exporters Group

Iran will lead a club of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters as its own shipments abroad are hampered by U.S. and European Union sanctions that force the country to burn off billions of dollars worth of the fuel. Mohammad Hossein Adeli, the country’s former deputy foreign minister, was elected secretary-general of the Gas Exporting […]

Experts say nuclear power needed to slow warming

Some of the world’s top climate scientists say wind and solar energy won’t be enough to head off extreme global warming, and they’re asking environmentalists to support the development of safer nuclear power as one way to cut fossil fuel pollution. Four scientists who have played a key role in alerting the public to the […]

Tech Talk – of Alaska, Libya and the belated bleat of awareness of a problem

I have written in earlier posts about the problems that the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) will face, as production declines below 500,000 bd. The conclusions from that post are pictorially summarized in a graph in the recent edition of the Oil and Gas Journal. Figure 1. Declining throughput through TAPS showing the points of concern […]

Israel to drill for oil in the West Bank

A large reserve may lie under Israel and the occupied territories, but Palestinians are unlikely to reap the benefits. Israeli investors had reason to celebrate last month with the news that Israel may soon be joining the club of oil-producing states, in addition to its recent finds of large natural gas deposits off the coast. […]

This Natural Gas Find Could Completely Change the World As We Know It

One thing that makes the energy sector so intriguing is the constant overlap between markets and politics. In many ways, energy security is synonymous with national security, and the supply and demand needs of the oil market can make the most unlikely bedfellows. One country that has been at the center of energy and politics […]

What’s After Oil ?

If you’re wondering about the direction of gasoline prices over the long term, forget for a moment about OPEC quotas and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and consider instead the matter of Hubbert’s Peak. That’s not a place, it’s a concept developed a half-century ago by a geologist named M. King Hubbert, and […]

Mexico’s Theology of Oil

In almost every country, the availability and exploitation of oil are essentially economic issues — every country, that is, except Mexico, where it is a matter of secular theology. For many Mexicans, the question of whether to open the national oil industry to private investment is much more than a practical decision: It is an […]

Goodbye, $100 oil. Hello, $3 gasoline!

Crude-oil stockpiles in the U.S. are heading toward a record, pushing off a return to $100-a-barrel oil, and giving drivers a shot at $3-a-gallon gasoline. “With the overhang of crude supplies building over six weeks, we are unlikely to see $100 oil again very soon,” said Kevin Kerr, president of Kerr Trading International. “This is […]

Venezuela’s government seizes US-owned oil rigs

Venezuela has quietly seized control of two oil rigs owned by a unit of Houston-based Superior Energy Services after the company shut them down because the state oil monopoly was months behind on payments.   The seizure took place Thursday after a judge in the state of Anzoategui, accompanied by four members of the local […]

Russia breaks oil output record

Russian oil output, the largest in the world, reached 10.59 million bpd (barrels per day) in October, setting the record for the country’s post-Soviet period, Energy Ministry data showed. The landmark was reached due to Rosneft increasing production at the Vankor field in the Krasnoyarsk Region, the Vedomosti paper reports. The output at the field […]

Iraq’s pipeline bombings halt oil pumping

Country’s main oil pipeline is attacked in Nineveh province, forcing pumping energy to Turkey to be suspended. A major oil pipeline has been bombed in northern Iraq, forcing pumping to be suspended, security officials said. Three blasts went off on Saturday in Nineveh province along the pipeline, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, […]

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