Germany’s energy transition – Nov 20
•Germany Has Built the Clean Energy Economy That U.S. Rejected 30 Years Ago •The German nuclear exit
Year: 2012
Hurricane Cassandra?
There is something prophetic about Hurricane Sandy in its foretaste of what Obama is now calling a ‘warming world’. Watching New York being battered by the storm was eerily like a scene out of climate-apocalypse movie The Day After Tomorrow.
The practice of anarchy
Whenever an existing hierarchically organized system becomes sufficiently ossified and dysfunctional to give an obvious edge to an improvised, anarchic, perhaps initially inferior alternative, there is a possibility that such an alternative will materialize out of nowhere, spread virally, become dominant, and then, in turn, become hierarchical and ossified.
Resilience: Why so many parents today are getting it wrong
I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read about the importance of developing resilience. It’s mentioned all over the web and for good reason, as it’s a critical coping mechanism. Most of those articles however, are directed at developing resilience within the adult population. Seldom, do we talk about how parents can and should create resilience in children, particularly when there are many parents out there who are doing the exact opposite of what’s required.
Oil – Nov 19
•US shale oil abundance: Bernstein vs the IEA •US limits oil-shale development in Rocky Mountains •Fracking: A new dawn for misplaced optimism •Nigeria Exxon spill spreads for miles along coast •Thousands Protest Keystone XL Oil Pipeline Outside White House •The World Running on ‘E’: The Coming Oil Crisis
Food & agriculture – Nov 19
•Peak Oil? What About Peak Food? A Conversation With Lester Brown
•Revolution in Mexico City, one lettuce at a time
•Chicago’s urban farm district could be the biggest in the nation
•Massive deforestation risks turning Somalia into desert
•These guerrilla cartographers are mapping the edible world
Frack fight
There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement. It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life.
Decontaminating Minamisoma: A community co-cleaning itself
Before 3.11 I rarely heard people in Japan talking about happiness. I did not hear people asking questions about what is good society. But that is what is in the air now.
Peak oil review – Nov 19
A weekly update, including:
•Oil and the global economy
•The Middle East
•The IEA’s forecast
•Quote of the week
•Briefs
Did oil decide the last three American elections?
Was the most recent American election outcome determined by the presidential debates, changing demographics, voter views on issues, Hurricane Sandy (and the president’s reaction to it) or voter turnout?
Science’s evil twin
Every time that I find myself discussing “cold fusion,” I need to explain why I think there exists a "good" science and a "bad" science; the latter sometimes defined also as “pseudo-science” or “pathological science.”. It is a point which is perfectly obvious to scientists, but very difficult to explain to non scientists.
The peak oil crisis: alternative futures
Global oil production has been on a plateau, at historically high prices, for so long now that it seems unlikely that it will ever resume sustained growth at the rates we saw in the decades prior to 2005. The only possible outcomes are prolonged stagnation, which some like to call the “bumpy plateau”, or decline of global production. The rate of decline, of course, will be critical to the future of the global economy and is the core of the IMF’s recent paper.
