Year: 2011

The turn of the year

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These days feel like a countdown; we are drying herbs for tea and seasonings, pickling vegetables, brewing wine, and checking the miles of hedgerow elderberries inching closer to ripeness. The increasingly rainy weather means time is running out to get peat for fuel from the bog; we have enough, but tractor pull wagons past our front gate laden three metres tall with peat sometimes, the father driving and the rest of the family standing and holding the sides. Even though it is still summer, we all feel the oncoming darkness.

Civil disobedience vs the tar sands – Aug 22

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-Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers
-A Debate: Should the U.S. Approve TransCanada’s Massive Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline?
-Interview: James Hansen on the Tar Sands Pipeline Protest, the Obama Administration and Intergenerational Justice
-Dozens Arrested in Pipeline Protest
-Tar Sands Pipeline Protests Continue

The New Green Revolution: how twenty-first-century science can feed the world

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The combined effects of climate change, energy scarcity, and water paucity require that we radically rethink our agricultural systems. Countries can and must reorient their agricultural systems toward modes of production that are not only highly productive, but also highly sustainable. Following the 2008 global food price crisis, many developing countries have adopted new food security policies and have made significant investments in their agricultural systems. Global hunger is also back on top of the international agenda. However, the question is not only how much is done, but also how it is done—and what kinds of food systems are now being rebuilt.

Agroecology, the application of ecological science to the study, design, and management of sustainable agriculture, offers a model of agricultural development to meet this challenge. Recent research demonstrates that it holds great promise for the roughly 500 million food-insecure households around the world. By scaling up its practice, we can sustainably improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable, and thus contribute to feeding a hungry planet.

Who are the real radicals?

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It is becoming standard procedure these days to decry those who oppose you politically as radicals as in “radical agenda,” “radical views,” “radical friends,” and “radical past.” Often this refers to suggested changes in policies that are no more than a few decades old. But I’d like to do something that will seem truly radical to those who are narrowly focused on the contemporary world. I want to look at what might be regarded as radical when considering not the last few decades, but the last 100,000 years.

Colin Campbell on embedded energy

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Colin Campbell is the originator of the concept of “peak oil” with the article that he wrote in 1998 in “Scientific American”, together with Jean Laherrere. He is also the founder and honorary chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). He lives in Ireland, in the village of Ballydehob with his wife, Bobbins. Last month, he wrote me a letter that contains several interesting observations on embedded energy and on people’s life. With his permission, I am reprinting it – slightly edited – together with my answer.

Five bummer problems that make societies collapse

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“If anyone tells you that there’s a single-factor explanation for societal collapse,” says collapse guru Jared Diamond, “you know right away that they’re an idiot. This is a complex subject.” So, forget about peak debt, peak oil, peak climate, peak Harry Potter or even peak everything as the single most important problem that could bring today’s whole pulsing, beaming and txt-mssgng mess down into a lifeless pile of shorted-out microchips, rusted carburetors and busted sporks from Taco Bell. Diamond gives the Five Fatals that could do us in, using the example of the unlucky Greenland Norse.

The US Energy Information Administration’s faulty peak oil analysis

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The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) remains optimistic about the future of global oil supply and maintains that global peak oil will not likely occur before 2030. How does the EIA remain optimistic given the growing trend throughout the world towards energy pessimism? This post will explain the methodology that underlies the EIA’s optimistic oil supply vision, and will point out two important flaws in this methodology that call their results into question. … a corrected application of EIA’s approach agrees well with many reports suggesting the likelihood of a near-term or historical peak in global conventional oil.

Our fears are unwarranted. America is in fact well-governed.

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America is in better shape than Europe and Japan. We have good demographics, sound fundamentals, relatively easily solved problems, and no powerful enemies. Why the constant sense of crisis? QE2, hyperinflation, climate armageddon, Obama the socialist, AIDS, alar on apples, jihadists, debt, swine flu – a constant drumroll of doom. Answer: elites govern a weak people by exploiting their fears. For example, look at the “government is broke” panic.

Shale gas EROI: Preliminary estimate suggests 70 or greater

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The key to the future of shale gas is its EROI. I’ve been unable to find estimates of the EROI of shale gas in the literature. However, I’ve made a preliminary first-order estimate that the EROI of shale gas is in the range of 70 to greater than 100. This is probably significantly better than most other energy sources available today.