Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Matthew Wild Despite constant growth in oil prices and projected record demand, many companies working in the industry are experiencing a tough start to the year and face “uncertainty over project costs and expected returns.”
Mention superstitions, and most people nowadays think that you’re talking about planting by the signs or leaving a dish of milk on the back step for the fairies. A superstition, though, is simply an observance that has become detached from its meaning — and by that measure, the most widespread and dangerous superstitions these days are those practiced by economists and blindly accepted by politicians.
– Food aid shortfall threatens Yemen
– Food vs. fuel: growing grain for food is more energy efficient
– Colonizing cassava
– The coming famine: risks and solutions for global food security (book)
– China offered oil for sanctions deal over Iran
– Why the US fears a nuclear armed Iran
– Want peace? Solve the energy crisis!
– US Navy to launch Great Green Fleet
– U.S. military shrinking its carbon ‘boot print
Energy crisis imminent (2011): DOE refused to comment on its own hypothesis
– Will toe-to-heel air injection extend the Oil Age?
– Arctic oil drilling threatens Norway government
– Playing with Peak Oil awareness (video game)
– The energy policy morass (conservatives recognize peak oil)
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– The volcano
– Update on the droughts
Renewables have been growing as inside a bottle so far; a bottle made of disbelief, red tape and not enough financing. It is time for a little satori in renewable energy. Renewables can hold on their own with new and more efficient technologies, in particular the CdTe thin film version which may have an EROEI of 40. With such EROEIs, we can start thinking of renewable energy as abundant and cheap.
There is at least one important class of threats where we might expect modern civilization to be much more resilient than past civilizations. Specifically, modern civilization operates at far higher levels of economic surplus than past civilizations, and this means that it is in a position to devote far higher levels of economic resources on solving certain kinds of problems.
A number of commenters to my previous post argued that I’m being unfair to Earth Day – of course, there’s greenwashing. of course people are cashing in, but underlying the greenwashing, there’s something good and serious and worthwhile there and I’m being churlish to deny it.
Using less, cutting back, saving resources, conserving energy, reducing impact—such actions, though vital responses to our planetary peril, conjure up images of a strictly proscribed and rather austere future. If a singular focus on cutting carbon dioxide is mistaken, what then, is the environmental movement to do? Thankfully we can save the planet while strengthening autonomy of our communities by re-localizing vital goods and services.
These days, I see how optimistic and positive disaster and apocalypse movies were. Remember how, when those giant asteroids or alien space ships headed directly for Earth, everyone rallied and acted as one while our leaders led? We’re in a movie like that now, except that there’s not a lot of rallying or much leading above the grassroots level.
The slide presentations have been posted from the recent symposium on Climate and Energy: Imperatives for Future Naval Forces, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the Centre for Naval Analyses (March 2010). This review examines three of the presentations which focused on oil supply problems.
