Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Editors The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community /
Portrait of a Perfect Economic Storm /
How Likely Is Collapse? /
Surviving Hard Times; It’s Not for Sissies /
North Korea & Cuba: Peak Oil Preview /
It Takes Energy to Make Energy / More…
Fossil fuels, especially oil in the form of gasoline and diesel, are essential to every stage of the nuclear cycle, and CO2 is given off whenever these are used. (Photo essay)
"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash"… A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.
The proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.
The abiotic theory holds that oil is from inorganic origin, and that there must be nearly limitless pools of liquid primordial hydrocarbons at great depths on Earth. If the abiotic theory does eventually prove to be partially or wholly scientifically valid (a big “if”), it might have little or no practical consequence in terms of the imminent global oil production peak.
Full text of a lost speech. “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?… Oil is unique in that it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soapflakes or leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to the world’s economy.”
The journalist’s rule says: follow the money. This rule, however, is not really axiomatic but derivative, in that money, as even our vice president will tell you, is really a way of tracking energy. We’ll follow the energy.
