Roger Blanchard

Bakken shale and U.S. oil production

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On Sept. 25, 2011 National Public Radio’s All Things Considered program had a segment consisting of what I considered highly questionable information concerning oil production in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota and U.S. oil production in general. The segment indicated that U.S. oil production would rise dramatically in the foreseeable future due to new technological developments. Segments like this may play well to the public’s desire for optimism but they don’t present an accurate assessment of future oil production in the Bakken Shale region or in the U.S.

Politics: the third-rail of peak oil analysis

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Just as the growth-based prosperity that our broader culture has liked to attribute to its own good virtues can easily be seen as a product, first, of colonial expansion and then of the unleashed abundance of coal, oil, and natural gas, so also have our chief political beliefs developed under similar circumstances. Individual liberalism, and thus freedom as we have largely known it, are also the products of abundance, often an ill-begotten sort of abundance. Individual liberalism’s main dictum, that you can do whatever you want, up until the point where it does harm to another, made sense as a principle political good only in a world of relatively unlimited space, whether geographical space for migration and resource exploitation, or the less defined space that appeared available to unlimited economic expansion and all the waste and destruction that goes with it.

Wes Jackson: A perennial revolution in agriculture

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After study and reflection, Jackson devised the mission that has fueled his career ever since. He would work to mimic the systems of the natural prairie, with its wide variety of plants growing together. He would focus on developing perennial crops that produced edible seeds, and required far fewer inputs than most of modern agriculture. He would address what he calls “solving the problem of agriculture” by creating new ways to produce grain that drew inspiration from natural energy flows, and did not require annual disruption of the soil.

Chemistry of an empire: the last Roman empress

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The story of the Empress Galla Placidia deals with such things as system dynamics, the fall of empires, resource depletion, controlling complex systems and, yes, also a little about Christmas.

Her story seems like the plot of an adventure movie. She started as a princess, then she was prisoner of the Goths, then she became their Queen, then she was again their prisoner.

In the 5th century, when she came to power, the Roman Empire had been running out of reactants. It had been growing on the profits made from military campaigns but, at some point around the 2nd century, it had reached its limits. With no more easy conquests in sight, the Empire had to live on its own resources and it never really learned how to do that.

During the 5th century, what an emperor (or empress) could have done was to give to the events just a little push in the right direction. Don’t fight the change, ease it. It is the way of pushing the levers in the right direction. Could Placidia have done just that? Incredibly, perhaps she did.

Energy – Dec 23

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– Former oil expert from the IEA: decline of ‘all liquids’ soon after 2015 (in French)
– Nigeria on alert as Shell announces worst oil spill in a decade
– Shelling out the Oil in Waters off Nigeria: Radar Satellite Image December 21, 2011
– Oil Workers Rise Up in Kazakhstan, Face Brutal Crackdown
– MIT: The Chinese Solar Machine

Light posting during the holiday period

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(Some posting continues … see below and to the right.) We will be taking some time off and posting lightly over the next week between Christmas and New Year.

Regular postings will resume on January 3, 2012. In the meantime, why not enjoy some of the many and varied articles that we have posted during the last year and review some of the highlights of 2011? (Maybe even have a peek at some editor’s picks?)

We’d like to take this chance to say a big thank you for all of your support. If it weren’t for our amazing community of readers, contributors, and supporters, we wouldn’t be here. Happy Holidays!

Collapse! The Game: Early draft

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Some of you are aware that I have been working on a cooperative board game called Collapse! designed to help people learn and practice grassroots community-building and preparing locally for the various crises that may precede civilization’s collapse. I’ve finally got a first outline draft of the game, and decided to share it with the world before I go any further. Here are the rules and some images of the game equipment that I have developed thus far, along with a list of what I still have to do to complete the game’s development.