Peak oil & supplies – April 7
– The Pentagon also expects an imminent oil shock
– Peak oil man [Colin Campbell] shifts focus to peak price, demand
– DECC start to ‘get’ peak oil… or maybe not
– Saudi Arabia’s crucial role in the crude price outlook
Staff
Implications of Unmeasurable Capital
I was very struck by a piece by Steve Randy Waldmann at Interfluidity yesterday, entitled Capital Can’t be Measured. He is basically arguing that modern financial institutions are sufficiently complex that the concept of their “capital” is subject to measurement errors of the same order of magnitude as the capital itself. This rang true to me, and put into words something that had nagged at me in reading about financial reforms, but had not come clearly to the surface of mind.
Officials Wake Up To Peak Oil, Part 1
When I began writing about peak oil professionally in 2006, it was generally considered a tinfoil hat theory. The notion that oil production might peak around 2012, plus or minus, was only taken seriously by a few analysts who were considered extremely pessimistic.
The Meaning of Wood Heating: In their own words
Most of the participants in this case study reported that wood energy provides a “deeper experience” that enhances quality of life and possibilities for learning. Using wood energy results in a number of personal benefits that offer some insight into requirements for generating wider citizen interest in energy sustainability.
Out of Africa – Apr 6
-Is Africa underpopulated?
-Zambia’s farming revolution poster boy
-Africa’s banking laws shut out the poor: Yunus
It’s a gas – Apr 6
-Dash for Poland’s gas could end Russian stranglehold
-Natural-Gas Data Overstated
-BP fights to limit controls on shale gas drilling
Deep thought – Apr 6
-Alex Steffen’s Optimistic Environmentalism: The Bright Green City
-Looting Main Street
-Walled In
‘Pay It Forward’ Pays Off
For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts – acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation – spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference.
A teacher openly crusades for better school food—and gets seared
Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes ,and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.
Solar greenhouses, Chinese-style
In Europe and North America, eating fresh perishable produce out of season usually means hauling it in refrigerated containers from regions where it’s in season, or growing it locally in heated greenhouses…Although these greenhouses boast extremely high yields, the amount of fuel needed to heat them generally far exceeds the amount that would be needed to haul an equivalent amount of produce from a region where it’s in season.
Horseradish trees and hummingbirds
Some of the species of life that share this planet really want to be our friends, and have gone to great evolutionary lengths to prove it.
Stunner: Nature’s review of 20 years of field studies finds soils emitting more C02 as planet warms
One of the single greatest concerns of climate scientists is that human-caused warming will cause amplifying feedbacks in the carbon-cycle. Such positive feedbacks, whereby an initial warming releases carbon into the air that causes more warming, would increase both the speed and scale of climate change, greatly complicating both mitigation and adaptation.
