Peak Oil Wars

Educational animation on the world’s depleting oil supply. Created for the Post Carbon Institute. Software Used: Illustrator, After Effects, C4D Company: Monstro Animation Direction and Design: Alexander Perry and Michael Wilson Producer: Dalton Crosthwait Sound Design: Ben Roider

Global energy demand to rise by 35 percent through 2030

  JEDDAH – Global energy demand will rise by an average annual rate of 1.2 percent a year through 2030, when the world will be using almost 35 percent more energy than it did in 2005, ExxonMobil said in its “Outlook for Energy : A View to 2030”. Though economic growth drives energy demand, the […]

Welcome to Dystopia: the dangerous food and energy crises

Jeremy Grantham, the former chairman and chief investment strategist for the $100 billion funds manager GMO Capital is known as a contrarian. But his quarterly investment newsletters are eagerly awaited, because they usually give some fascinating insight into some of the big themes that affect investments. His latest, distributed to his investors in July but […]

America’s Descent into Poverty

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse. Economically, America has […]

The end of the Industrial Revolution

What a privilege it is to be alive in these times, in such a significant period in human history. It’s not always easy to see moments of great historical importance when you’re in the middle of them. Sometimes they’re dramatic, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the landing on the moon. But more […]

Peak Helium, worldwide shortage begins

Party Pleasers general manager Tim Peres recently got a phone call from an employee that confused and shocked him. The employee, on his regular run to fill the Camarillo store’s helium tanks at a supplier in Oxnard, was turned away because of a helium shortage. “We weren’t even given a warning,” Peres said. “They told […]

Crashing off the Olduvai Cliff

READERS of my correspondence to The Gisborne Herald should now be familiar with terms like Peak Oil, Energy Descent, Fantasy Finance and the current clash of wills between those who seek to control the resources of the world by endless money creation, and the laws of nature that demand a sustainable approach. All of these […]

Price of gas hits August record

You may pay more than ever for a late-summer drive. U.S. drivers paid an average of $3.72 per gallon on Monday. That’s the highest price ever on this date, according to auto club AAA, a shade above the $3.717 average on Aug. 20, 2008. A year ago, the average was $3.578. More daily records are […]

The Demise Of The Car

India’s recent series of power blackouts, in which 600 million people lost electricity for several days, reminds us of the torrid pace at which populations in the developing world have moved onto the powergrid. Unfortunately, this great transition has been so rapid that infrastructure has mostly been unable to meet demand. India itself has failed […]

We’re still on the slippery slope to peak oil

Technology and exploitation of unconventional sources can’t defer the long-predicted decline in global oil production IN 2007 former US energy secretary James Schlesinger claimed the arguments in favour of peak oil – the key theory that global production must peak and then decline – had been won. With production flat and prices surging towards an […]

Humans Seem to Need External Energy

Strange as it may seem, humans seem to have evolved in a way that we have a need for external energy, such as energy from burning wood or fossil fuels. While the evidence is not 100% certain, it appears that we learned to use fire long enough ago that it is now  necessary for our […]

Drought, food, and fuel

Drought in the US shines harsh light on the lunacy of converting food into vehicle fuel. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the corn yield this year will drop to its lowest level since 1995. With 40% of the corn crop now used for the production of fuel ethanol, the federal requirement for which […]

Peak Oil: Keeping Reality In Mind (Pt 6)

Oil has us literally over the barrel. If this situation is to change, we will all need to recognize that our present course is not sustainable. All of our institutions are geared to an era that was designed for a different set of circumstances that mainly relied on cheap domestic oil. That day is over. […]

Visions of the future

In the current peak-oil situation, building sustainable cities has become a necessity. While the world wakes up to this fact, Hyderabad’s cyber city area continues to grow in an unplanned manner. Cities bring to mind squalor, crowds and congestion. Existing urban spaces may have started out as planned areas, but rapid population growth and migration […]

Tech Talk – Considerations of Chinese demand growth

Three years ago I took my third trip to China, flying this time to Qinghai Province and then taking the train back down from Xining City through Xian to Shanghai. One of the more striking parts of the trip was the first day of the train travel, where the tracks cut down from the Tibetan […]

India: Power cuts to be longer

The AP Transco has announced enhanced duration of power cuts for domestic consumers and others following tripping of three thermal units and closure of a hydel plant, resulting in an abrupt loss of 1,076 MW of installed capacity to the grid which is equivalent to 20 million units per day. Two units of Rayalaseema Thermal […]

Running on empty: big airlines in big trouble

I have a joke with a friend of mine that airline pilots are nothing but glorified bus drivers. As cynical as this may be, for the majority of us with regular jobs who fly economy air travel is increasingly becoming like its land-based cousin: cramped, overcrowded and at times downright unpleasant. Most people living in […]

Oil Prices Need to Double in a Decade

Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions*. The world economy could not cope with a […]

U.S. Takes 9th Place in Energy Efficiency! (Out of 12).

A new report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy(ACEEE) ranked the energy efficiency of the world’s 12 largest economies. The U.S., unfortunately, ranked 9 out of 12. So while we were out dominating at the Olympics, we were quietly slipping behind on a metric that, if improved, would yield a substantial benefit […]

2012 May Be Most Expensive Year for Gasoline

When it comes to gas prices, the “all-time high” is one record that drivers hope won’t be broken anytime soon. Last year proved to be the priciest ever for gasoline, with an overall national average of $3.53 per gallon, and now it looks like this year will surpass 2011′s mark and take the unfortunate title. […]

Natural Gas And The Brutal Dethroning Of King Coal

It’s been tough for natural gas drillers. The boom in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that gave access to enormous gas-rich shale formations around the nation led to record production. Prices crashed. Drilling activity collapsed: rig count, down 45% from last year, hit the lowest level since July 1999. Producers are writing down their natural […]

Estimated 2012 US Corn Yield

The USDA has published an early estimate of what they think this year’s United States average corn yield will be – a much depressed 123.4 bushels/acre due to the current record-breaking heat and drought in the US. Since they also maintain statistics for average yields back to 1866 (!!), I made the graph above showing the […]

Water shortages hit US power supply

As the United States’ extended heat wave and drought threaten to raise global food prices, energy production is also feeling the pressure. Across the nation, power plants are becoming overheated and shutting down or running at lower capacity; drilling operations struggle to get the water they need, and crops that would become biofuel are withering. […]

Automation key to supply and demand

Last month I succeeded in provoking considerable discussion around the notion that the power industry needs to wring efficiencies from the grid, not just hector customers to change their behavior – “rationing,” as one of my colleagues has put it. And I suggested that one way to do that is by deploying advanced sensors and […]

Community Resilience, Ecosystems and Sustainable Economics

Contemplate, if you will, the concept of “resilience in complex adaptive systems.” “What’s that all about? ” you might well ask. “And what’s it got to do with me?” I’ll answer the second question first. In recent columns I have pointed out that humanity is living in a state of environmental overshoot. We are using […]

IEA trims 2013 oil demand outlook

  Based on weaker economic growth assumptions, the International Energy Agency has reduced its outlook for 2013 worldwide oil demand by 150,000 b/d from its month-ago forecast. Oil demand growth now is pegged at 870,000 b/d in 2012 and 830,000 b/d in 2013, according to the Paris-based agency’s latest oil market report. Oil demand among […]

Gail Tverberg: An Energy/GDP Forecast to 2050

We talk about the possibility of reducing fossil fuel use by 80% by 2050 and ramping up renewables at the same time, to help prevent climate change. If we did this, what would such a change mean for GDP, based on historical Energy and GDP relationships back to 1820? Back in March, I showed you […]

Venezuela boosts oil sales to China

Venezuela has increased oil sales to China to 640,000 barrels a day, the Andean nation’s energy minister said. “Before, we never sold a single barrel of petroleum to China and now we sell them 640,000 (bpd) … at a better price than … in the U.S. market,” Rafael Ramirez said in an interview with El […]

Asian oil buyers help Iran move away sanctions

Asia’s major crude buyers are finding ways around tough U.S. and EU sanctions to maintain imports from Iran, suggesting that, for now, the sanctions may be over for the OPEC producer. China, India, Japan and South Korea buy most of the one million barrels per day of crude Iran is able to export despite financial, […]

Who Wants The Highest Crude Oil Price? Presenting The OPEC Cost Curve

With the presidential elections fast approaching, the last thing the incumbent wants is for the one thing that can spoil the party – a surge in oil, and thus gas prices – to happen. Which is why despite a sharp return in Iran/Syria war rhetoric, we doubt that the trade off between a “wag the […]

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