The robot is ready – so when will deep sea mining start?

The world’s first deep sea mining robot sits idle on a British factory floor, waiting to claw up high grade copper and gold from the seabed off Papua New Guinea (PNG) – when a wrangle over terms is solved. Beyond PNG, in international waters, regulation and royalty terms for mining the planet’s subsea wealth have […]

Food shortages could be most critical world issue by mid-century

The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “For the first time in human history, food production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water […]

Nicole Foss aka Stoneleigh – A Century of Challenges – Peak Oil

Nicole M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh.

New Energy Frontier: Drilling Into Coal for Gas

With their sights on stores of low-grade coal beneath the coasts of England, the ranches of Wyoming, and the fields of Inner Mongolia, entrepreneurs around the world are touting the promise of yet another “unconventional” approach to energy extraction. The technique resembles the hydraulic fracturing technology that has produced an oil and gas boom across […]

“King Coal” Is Dying; Prince Oil & Gas Is Next

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a […]

Has crude oil production already peaked?

“Wait a minute,” you must be saying. “Haven’t we been hearing from the oil industry and from government and international agencies that worldwide oil production has been increasing in the last several years?” The answer, of course, is yes. But, the deeper question is whether this assertion is actually correct. Here is a key fact […]

Out of control: Fukushima manager admits to ‘embarrassing failure’

The manager of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has admitted not having full control of the facility. Contrary to the statements of the Japanese PM, TEPCO’s Akira Ono said attempts to plug the leaks of radioactive water had failed. Image: Fukushima Plant (Wiki Commons). “It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of […]

Peak Oil: Facts Aren’t Optional

Part of the problem with rising oil prices is that they radiate through the economy in many ways: in higher food prices, because oil is used to produce and transport food; in higher metal prices, because oil used in metal production; and in higher  finished products, such as automobiles and new homes, because they use […]

A solar powered hydrogen reactor, a true game changer?

Menlo Park based technology firm Solar Hydrogen Trends, Inc. (http://www.solarhydrogentrends.com) today announced that it has revolutionized the world of energy production with their invention of the world’s first hydrogen reactor for the production of unlimited hydrogen (patent pending). The hydrogen reactor uses water as a main fuel and is 100% carbon free. The groundbreaking technology […]

Harold Hamm: The Billionaire Oilman Fueling America’s Recovery

Harold Hamm has transformed the U.S. oil industry like no one since John D. Rockefeller, while helping to keep domestic prices low — and making himself a $17 billion fortune. The great domestic energy boom, he says, is just beginning.  Two Scotches in, with seats on the floor of Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy CHK +2.47% […]

What Oil War Premium?

Central bank’s ongoing and so-far-successful efforts to crush short-term volatility and encourage hapless individuals into the world’s nominally rising stock markets has had consequences. Inequalities abound (rich vs poor, corporate profits vs capex/jobs, bond yields vs growth hopes) but nowhere else is this more evident – given the ever-increasing crescendo of the drum-beat of war […]

North Dakota oil boom keeps getting the wrong kind of attention

Despite already dealing with a slew of issues ranging from a housing shortage to an increasing crime rate, North Dakota officials now have another problem grabbing headlines: illegal dumping. On May 11, several news outlets reported that 200 hundreds bags of radioactive material were found in an abandoned building in Noonan, a small northwest town […]

Russia ships first oil from offshore Arctic platform

President Vladimir Putin hailed Russia’s first shipment of Arctic offshore oil on Friday, saying the platform decried by environmentalists will help Moscow expand its global energy markets share. Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia’s top gas producer Gazprom, shipped the first 70,000 tonnes of oil by tanker from the Prirazlomnoye platform, the site of […]

The Age of Diminishing Returns

The Earth’s Mineral Supplies: The Age of Diminishing Returns A Q&A with Ugo Bardi, author of Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet   Q: Which of the rare earth minerals that fuel our industrial system are most likely to be depleted first (at current mining levels)? Are there any resources […]

Is This The End Of China’s Coal Boom?

“The End Of China’s Coal Boom,” is a new, must-read chart-filled report from Greenpeace. It documents the response of China to the almost unimaginable life-shortening air pollution caused by its rapid growth in coal use. One of its charts highlights the stunning statistic that over half of the growth in global carbon pollution in the past decade has come […]

Michael C Ruppert staged suicide?

When news hit the headlines of a suicide of Michael Ruppert a renowned whistleblower, journalist, commentator, author, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. According to CollapseNet.com people are being urged PLEASE DO NOT SPREAD SPECULATION! If you’ve been listening to iON you’d hear that every death is a suicide so this cause of death is […]

Norwegian Crude Oil Reserves And Production Per 2013

In this post I present actual Norwegian crude oil production and status on the development in discoveries and reserves and what this has now resulted in for expectations for future Norwegian crude oil production. This post is also an update of an earlier post about Norwegian crude oil reserves and production per 2012 (in Norwegian). […]

Kansas oil production jumps; natural gas continues decline

Oil production in Kansas took another leap in 2013, rising 7.2 percent from the year before, while natural gas production in the state continued its long slide, according to final figures compiled by the Kansas Geological Survey. Kansas producers extracted the most oil since the early 1990s assisted by the horizontal drilling boom in the […]

Please, Not Another IMF

Copying a Bad Idea Why is there an IMF? It seems a good question, so here is the short answer: in the post gold standard world, central bank-supported fractional reserve banking has enabled the emergence of such huge credit booms, that governments frequently get into severe trouble when a boom collapses and their countries’ current […]

The Case Against Sustainability

Do you recycle? Cool, me too. Do you turn off your lights when you leave the room? Good idea. Do you only buy produce that’s in season? Nice! Way to support your local farmer. Are you worried about the future of the planet? Politically active in some way around conservation of resources or green energy? […]

Electricity Prices Surge to Record

The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. The relative price of electricity in the United States tends to rise in spring, peak […]

Personal travel growth significantly influences projected transportation energy demand

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2014, Issues in Focus Personal travel, measured in light-duty vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per licensed driver, reached 12,900 miles per year in 2007 and decreased to about 12,500 in 2012. This shift in travel behavior is important because it directly influences light-duty vehicle (LDV) energy demand for […]

China’s soil: How polluted is it?

A nationwide investigation has shown that as much as 16 percent of China’s soil contains higher-than-permitted levels of pollution, the environment ministry said on Thursday. China is desperate to tackle the impact of rapid industrialization and urbanization on its food supplies, with the aim of maintaining self-sufficiency and reducing its dependence on grain imports amid […]

The Oil Industry’s Era of Austerity

As the major oil companies struggle with how best to boost their profitability in an era of rising oilfield costs, business models are being adjusted. The changes are a reflection of managements’ attempts to change the culture of their organizations. The most popular theme is to split a company’s business into separate units with different […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Cold Fusion Update

There are at least four contenders in the race to bring a cold-fusion powered heat-producing device to market in the near future. These are the Rossi E-cat project now based in North Carolina under the aegis of a new firm called Industrial Heat; the Brillouin and SRI effort to develop a nuclear reaction boiler out […]

Is Natural Gas No Better than Coal?

A new study by scientists from Purdue and Cornell suggests that the methane emissions from shale gas could be much higher than previously thought. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at fugitive methane emissions in Pennsylvania by flying an airplane over drilling sites and collecting samples. What they […]

Energy Crunch: The end of business as usual for fossil fuels?

Image via Voice0Reason/flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 license. Three things you shouldn’t miss this week Article: IPCC climate change report: averting catastrophe is eminently affordable – Landmark UN analysis concludes global roll-out of clean energy would shave only a tiny fraction off economic growth. Chart: Solar energy costs rapidly approaching those of conventional energy sources. Business Insider – Data based […]

Fukushima Basements Mistakenly Flooded with 200 Tons of Radioactive Water

A pump at Japan’s battered Fukushima power plant has mistakenly flooded its basements with highly contaminated cooling-tank water. But the latest mishap follows a far more worrying discovery about one last year’s leak. About 200 tons of water ended up flooding the basements beneath the complex, although the water didn’t have a pathway to reach […]

Mike Ruppert’s Suicidal Tendencies and Suicide Note

In response to the internet sages who have concluded, in the face of all known evidence from the people who were most in…timately familiar with him as well as with the admittedly real dangers that had faced him over the course of his life as an investigative journalist, that Mike did not kill himself but […]

The End of Employment

Nothing is easier, as the Long Descent begins to pick up speed around us, than giving in to despair—and nothing is more pointless. Those of us who are alive today are faced with the hugely demanding task of coping with the consequences of industrial civilization’s decline and fall, and saving as many as possible of […]

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