Can Coal Feed The Global Energy Appetite In A Healthy Way?

No other fuel source has been tarred more than coal. Yet, no other product has done more to electrify the global population and to bring prosperity to so many. The question the world now faces is whether to up the stakes in relatively cheap coal or whether to make investments in and to depend on […]

China Finds Major Gas Hydrate Reserve in South China Sea

China said it has identified a major gas hydrate reserve in the northern part of the South China Sea, joining a small group of nations in the world seeking to tap a potentially vaste future source of energy. There is currently no technology to commercially unlock the energy also known as “flammable ice”, gas frozen […]

The Top 10 Developments in Clean Energy of 2013

The end of the year is always a good time for reflection and introspection, but why should we stop at analyzing ourselves?  As 2013 draws to a close, I invite you to take a couple of moments to relive some of the major highlights in clean energy that took place this year. And share your […]

The Taper Is On – 8 Ways That This Is Going To Affect You And Your Family

The unelected central planners at the Federal Reserve have decided that the time has come to slightly taper the amount of quantitative easing that it has been doing.  On Wednesday, the Fed announced that monthly purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds will be reduced from $45 billion to $40 billion, and monthly purchases of mortgage-backed securities […]

The story of Plume-Gate, the world’s largest, provable cover-up

Part 1 Plume-Gate: the world’s largest, provable cover-up and conspiracy “For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of […]

What Peak Oil Means

Professor Heinberg explains what peak oil means. The theory of peak oil started with M. King Hubbert, who said that global oil production would decline. Predictions for when global oil reserves will run out vary but there is general consensus on oil depletion.

The squeeze on global resources

Are we nearing the precipice of global resouces, or will technology save us? In about 1800, when the world population was roughly one billion people, Thomas Malthus predicted coming catastrophe as population outstripped the world’s capacity to feed itself. If many catastrophes have occurred since then, none have been of Malthusian dimensions. Paul Ehrlich was […]

Economic Development and Long-Term Consequences of Growth

A population’s growth is strongly influenced by the proportions of individuals of particular ages, which in turn is influenced by economic development. fig. 1 Population bar graphs for stages of demographic change from expansion to contraction The leftmost diagram representing the age structure of a rapidly-growing population indicates that the number of individuals decreases rapidly […]

The Farm: Where we have come from and our plans for the future

As we in the North approach the winter solstice – traditionally a time of slowing down, contemplation, and letting go of the past year — we are filled with gratitude for so much that we have been given, and only barely awakened to the new possibilities these gifts bestow. Our small non-profit educational and scientific […]

Nope, Definitely No Inflation Here

Despite yesterday’s governmental reassurance (a la Venezuela and Argentina) that there is no inflation in the US, the reality for the average man in the street is a little different. We have previously noted that gas prices are 25% above their average price of the last decade but it is another staple that is more […]

Pakistan: Water scarcity has put survival in jeopardy

Increasing population worldwide, particularly in Pakistan has caused deterioration of the environment and challenges of food and water security, speakers at a seminar on Integrated Flood Management said on Tuesday. The seminar was organised at the New Senate Hall by the Water Management Research Centre of the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. It was chaired by […]

Ford: Global car market to double in next 20 years

Ford claims that global demand for cars will double to two billion vehicles a year in 20 years’ time, up from the current total of one billion a year. This prediction comes from Bill Ford, executive chairman of the company and great grandson of founder Henry Ford. ‘In the next decade 75% of the global […]

The World’s Crop Yields Are Maxing Out

Photo:farouqtaj/Flickr/Creative Commons License In order to understand the draw of the zombie movie, you have to first get that zombie movies are pretty much never about zombies. (Like anything, there are exceptions to this rule, but not many.) They’re really about our own society, and what happens to it when the basic comforts we’ve built […]

Crash on Demand: David Holmgren updates his Future Scenarios

David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture concept, published Future Scenarios in 2007, originally as a website, and then published by Chelsea Green in 2008 as a small book (126 pages). He explores four possible human futures as the two great crises of Peak Oil and Climate Change converge into what he has coined our energy […]

A New Movement for Community Self-Determination

Some communities in Ohio are fed up by the way that corporations, colluding with state legislatures, simply override the concerns of local communities.  Communities are often helpless in preventing their local environment from being blighted by hydrofracking, factory farming, and the extraction of groundwater supplies, among other enclosures of the commons. So, banding together as […]

Baby Steps on Stanching Wasteful Flaring of Natural Gas

I hope you’ll read “Applying Creativity to a Byproduct of Oil Drilling in North Dakota,” a valuable Clifford Krauss feature on baby steps taken by the oil and gas industry to stanch the wasteful, polluting flaring of natural gas from the country’s booming Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. (There’s no infrastructure for storing or […]

Th Real Oil Extraction Limit, and How It Affects the Downslope

There is a lot of confusion about which limit we are reaching with respect to oil supply. There seems to be a huge amount of “reserves,” and oil production seems to be increasing right now, so people can’t imagine that there might be a near term problem. There are at least three different views regarding […]

The U.S.’s crude oil policy

THE UNITED States again is one of the world’s great energy powers. On Monday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that American crude oil output will peak at nearly 10 million barrels per day by mid-decade, up from 6.5 million last year. Last month, the International Energy Agency figured that the United States would overtake […]

Local Demand, Not Shale, Poses Risk for Saudi Oil

For Saudi Arabia, as well as the other oil-rich Persian Gulf countries, the challenge of recent years has been how far and fast it can increase oil production to offset any possible fall in market output. But now shale oil, responsible for an unexpected surge in production in North America, is starting to pose a […]

Algae converted to crude oil in less than an hour

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory This concentrated goo of algae can be converted into a bio-crude in less than an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The day when planes, trucks and cars are commonly revved up on pond scum may be on the near horizon thanks to a technological advance that continuously turns […]

How Mexico Can Restrike Oil

The far-reaching energy reform that Mexico’s Congress approved on Thursday was overdue, but it’s not enough to repair the damage caused by the state’s 75-year monopoly of the oil sector. Politicians intent on modernizing the country’s crippled oil business will need to make the sector more transparent, strike deals with oil companies that are advantageous […]

Tech Talk – The IEA World Energy Outlook

It is the time of year again that different folk stare into their own versions of a crystal ball and project how much energy the world will need in the future, and where they think that it will come from. It is interesting to look at these various predictions as the global supply picture morphs […]

Forget Peak Oil, The World Is Heading to ‘Peak Food’

Photo: Getty/David McNew The world may be nearing the upper limits of agricultural production, raising questions about how we will feed a more crowded planet. US researchers say yields of about 30 per cent of crops, including rice and wheat, have decreased abruptly or have plateaued in recent years. Most future projections that would ensure […]

American Collapse, Recovery or Whatever

“Don’t call me a whore!” a friend wrote me angrily. She was correcting me, explaining that her current work was not true prostitution because it only involved massage and hand jobs. I hadn’t paid attention to precise nomenclature as I was trying to convince her to quit. My point was that by working as a […]

Global oil reserves up

As a continuation to last week’s article titled “Oil industry’s R&D deactivates ‘peak’”, and as reported by the 2013 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the world has increased its global oil reserves by 15 billion barrels in 2012 reaching a total of 1,669 billion barrels by end of 2012. These additional global reserves amounted […]

Rapid Population Growth Imperils Egypt

The world’s population broke the 7 billion person barrier in 2011 and is projected to increase by 40 percent in the coming forty years. Population growth averages vary among the world’s nations, with the populations of developed nations expected to increase by just 10 percent, and the greater part of population growth expected to come […]

Downloading Responsibility

    An ongoing economic crash that feels like the onset of a deep freeze is far more exhausting than a rapid implosion. As bubbles are reflated and debts accumulate yet again, the system lurches towards its next financial accident. While the global operating system fails, can the exchange of critical goods and services detach […]

More Oil, More Gas, Less Carbon. Yay America!

The federal government’s Energy Information Administration is out today with an early version of its Annual Energy Outlook for 2014. Their headline finding: that the United States will continue to grow less dependent on foreign oil as the miracle of our tight oil boom adds to supply and more efficient vehicles reduce demand. Yay America! By […]

The human over population is near

The human overpopulation is near Earths maximum capacity Overpopulation remains the leading driver of hunger, desertification and species depletion across the planet. Conservative estimates report that China’s most recent food crisis, between 1958 and 1961, led to the starvation of over twenty million people, in part due to the erosion of China’s natural capital. Uncontrolled […]

Our Thirsty Future

Water resources are becoming more strained across a world with a rapidly expanding population. Flickr via Creative Commons/wonderlane As the saying goes, “water, water everywhere” — well, maybe not exactly everywhere. Finding adequate freshwater in a world with an exponentially growing human population is a tricky equation to solve. Droughts can have immediate impacts on […]

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