Feeding the expanding global population

pys.org says we can’t do it the way we’ve done it for the past 2,000 years.  Maybe the news hasn’t reached parts of the academy that we aren’t doing it the way we did it 2,000 years ago.  An article on phys.org covers recent work by Dr. Poppy of Southampton University.  Professor Poppy believes that […]

142 Cities In Brazil Are Now Rationing Water As Drought Goes Critical

Did you know that the drought in Brazil is so bad that some neighborhoods are only being allowed to get water once every three days?  At this point, 142 Brazilian cities are rationing water and there does not appear to be much hope that this crippling drought is going to end any time soon.  Unfortunately, […]

Tepco Finds New Radioactive Leak at Fukushima

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), operator of the crisis-ridden Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, said it found a new leak near the tanks holding contaminated water at the disaster site. The utility, which serves 29 million customers in the Tokyo metropolitan area, is collecting soil where the leak occurred and doesn’t believe any water reached […]

Its time to take fusion energy seriously

Last week, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) near the Silicon Valley in California moved a step closer to one of humanity’s most cherished goals: build a fusion reactor that can provide cheap and abundant energy to the entire planet. Scientists there got, for the first time ever, more energy than they put in to heat […]

China Confirms 14 Gigawatts of Solar Energy Incentives for 2014

china solar, solar industry growth 15 37 2 54 China will be the number one solar market again in 2014 if it meets its recently announced goals. China’s National Energy Administration has set a 2014 goal of incentivizing 14 gigawatts of domestic solar capacity, 6 gigawatts aimed at utility scale and 8 gigawatts aimed at […]

As Fracking Booms, Growing Concerns About Wastewater

With hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas continuing to proliferate across the U.S., scientists and environmental activists are raising questions about whether millions of gallons of contaminated drilling fluids could be threatening water supplies and human health. An hour south of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania’s Washington County, millions of gallons of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing wells […]

The Future Looks Dull From Here

I remember talking to a historian shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. I envy your generation, she said. The grip of history is tightening around you, even if you don’t know it yet. She was right. In short succession, the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan, then Iraq. It began to torture captives from those […]

Saudi Arabia jails men 20 years for demonstrating

A Riyadh court sentenced seven men to between six and 20 years in jail on Wednesday for offences that included taking part in protests in the town of Qatif, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, state news agency SPA said. SPA said the seven had been also convicted of chanting slogans against the kingdom as well […]

US Energy Secretary Favors Reducing Oil Shipped By Rail

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz supports reducing the amount of crude oil shipped by rail in favor of pipelines that are safer, cheaper and cleaner, Capital New York reported on Wednesday. “What we probably need is more of a pipeline infrastructure and to diminish the need for rail transport over time,” he said in an […]

Venezuela Renames Top Oil Reserve After Hugo Chavez

Venezuela on Tuesday renamed its largest crude reserve, traditionally known as the Orinoco Belt, after the country’s late socialist leader. “I’ve decided as of today to name it the Hugo Chavez Oil Belt,” said President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s protege and successor, during a rally of oil workers. “Do you agree?” The crowd roared its approval. […]

Peak Oil is Real and the Majors Face Challenging Times

The idea that global oil production was nearing its peak, only to plateau and then decline was a common view in the energy world for many years. The geophysicist M. King Hubbard predicted in the 1950’s that US oil production would peak in the 1970’s, a forecast that held true until technology allowed companies to […]

A 10-year oil supply retrospective shows unwarranted optimism

Our guest blog today comes from Steve Andrews, who is  a retired energy consultant and contributor to the Peak Oil Review, reachable at sbandrews@att.net. We reached out to CERA to determine its interest in providing a response, but did not hear back. “False optimism leads to very poor investment decisions.”: Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and Chief Investment […]

Orlov: The Good Life: Mobility, Anonymity, Freedom

The recent advanced in networked mobile computing has made it rather unnecessary for a large class of people—ones who use computers for work—to maintain a fixed abode: it is now possible to do all the same things, via the Internet, from any place in the world that has a wifi signal. If your work involves […]

China grapples with food for fifth of world

Feeding nearly a fifth of the world’s population is no easy feat – and the Chinese government says farming methods will have to be overhauled if it’s going to feed its 1.3 billion people in the future. A visiting senior Chinese government official and agricultural expert, Chen Xiwen, told a meeting at the Beehive on […]

200 Years Of Scorchitude: Professor Warns California To Brace For A “Mega-Drought”

Two years into California’s drought and locals are repeating (mantra-like) “we’ve never seen anything like it.” They are right, of course, since this is the worst period of rainlessness since records began… but if Cal Berkeley professor Lynn Ingram is correct, they ain’t seen nothing yet. The paleoclimatologist fears, if very long-run history repeats, California […]

Gas pipeline not enough to avert New England energy crisis

New England is facing an energy crisis brought on by high natural gas prices, and the call by governors in the six states for a new, publicly funded natural gas pipeline does not go far enough to solve the problem, according to a detailed analysis of the region’s energy options. The 30-page analysis, released on […]

The Growing Value of Sandy Countries

Many centuries ago wealth mostly flowed from land, especially good agricultural land.  For Malthusian reasons the Earth’s population increased to roughly the maximum level that could be fed with existing technology and existing political institutions.  Most people lived in Eurasia, especially China, India and Europe. Sandy countries were not very important. Because of improvements in […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: A Winter Update

As the years go by, those studying peak oil are beginning to develop a better understanding of what has been happening since the concept of limits to oil production came to widespread attention. First of all, it is important to understand that in one sense, production of what had been thought of as “conventional oil” […]

How to Sustain Energy Industry for Growth

While consumers benefit from energy independence and stable prices, some of the most vocal opposition to the industry comes from those who fear the new technologies that make price stability possible, according to a group of panelists from the public and private sectors that addressed the oil and gas industry at the recent Winter NAPE […]

Health systems, neoliberalism, and the end of growth: The World Health Organization in denial

The WHO (World Health Organization) has released its latest in a series of reports[i] on public health in 53 European nations, and presents this assessment through a focus on the social determinants of health[ii]. Rather than sounding an alarm or considering the possibility that epochal economic decline is underway which threatens the health of the […]

Japan Secretly Developing Nuclear Weapons

Asia Weekly, a Hong Kong-based news outlet, is reporting that Japan is secretly developing a nuclear weapons program in response to increasing hostilities with China over the East China Sea dispute. According to the report, paraphrased by the Want China Times, “With the capability to build at least 2,000 nuclear warheads, Japan has recently demanded the […]

Feeding global population without degrading the environment a major challenge

Scientists are warning we are undertaking “the greatest challenge we have ever faced” in trying to get more from the earth to feed the world’s growing population. Writing in and editing a special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Professor Guy Poppy, of the University of Southampton, says the world’s approach needs […]

Do Renewables Lower Energy Consumption?

If a coal power plant is closed and replaced by a wind farm and that wind farm produces the same amount of electricity as the coal plant, what happens to energy consumption? Depending on the coal power plant, and how you define energy consumption it could do anything from stay the same to falling by […]

One free pizza and a two-liter of soda for every fracking well that explodes

Last Tuesday, the residents of the small rural community of Bobtown in the far southwestern corner of Pennsylvania woke up to a horrible shock — the sound of a massive explosion in their backyards. The source of the blast and the intensely hot fire that followed was a Chevron fracking well that had been set […]

Expert Warns of Hyperinflation: “The American Way Of Life Will Be Destroyed”

If there’s one thing that’s certain about what’s happening in the world right now  it’s that uncertainty is pervading every aspect of the global economy. From fabricated employment statistics and consumer spending reports to obscene levels of debt and a failing domestic monetary policy, the writing is on the wall. According to top Casey Research analyst […]

Middle-class consumers to increase 4.8b by 2030

Middle-class consumers will increase to 4.8 billion by 2030 and 95% of them will be from developing countries, said United Kingdom Foreign Secretary’s special representative on climate change, Professor Sir David King. He said, currently the world has 1.8 billion middle-class consumers and that 3 billion more were expected by 2030. “Ninety per cent of […]

Confronting the “System Problem” Cooperatively

First and foremost, three cheers to Gar, Thomas, and Andrew for a fine start to this uniquely important cooperative conversation. Rarely has the exchange of words and ideas left me with such a well-spring of hope. Not only did this dialogue provide us with thoughtful, nuanced, and provocative reflections, but its process – the careful […]

How Sustainable is Africa’s Green Energy?

Jonathan Robinson, Senior Consultant at Frost & Sullivan, discusses the green energy market in Africa and what technologies match well with different countries. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse.” bloomberg

Big numbers for New England electricity auction might not be enough to bring new capacity

Many generators cheered the recent results of ISO New England’s forward capacity auction.  The market cleared at what one analyst called an “astonishing” price of $15/kW-month. That is five times the clearing price in the last year’s auction. The high price, prompted by a sudden swing from surplus capacity to a deficit, should be enough […]

15 Reasons Why Your Food Prices Are About To Start Soaring

Did you know that the U.S. state that produces the most vegetables is going through the worst drought it has ever experienced and that the size of the total U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been since 1951?  Just the other day, a CBS News article boldly declared that “food prices […]

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