Frank Kaminski

Review: Blackout by Richard Heinberg

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Richard Heinberg’s new book Blackout tries to demolish current assumptions about the world’s remaining coal endowment: namely, that it is immense beyond belief, barely tapped and will last for centuries to come. Heinberg argues that these assumptions are off-base, misleading and not at all supported by recent studies that suggest global coal production could peak in less than two decades.

Deconstructing Dinner: Permaculture at the Blue Raven Farm

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Deconstructing Dinner revisits with the topic of permaculture… a concept and philosophy that has grown significantly in popularity since we first aired a show on the topic back in 2006. In September 2008, Deconstructing Dinner’s Andrea Langlois visited The Blue Raven Permaculture Farm on Salt Spring Island British Columbia. Farmers and Instructors Brandon and Patti Bauer escort Andrea around the farm and describe the principles of permaculture as they apply on their particular parcel of land.

The demise of the middle class

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It has been pointed out that collapses are hard on ruling classes. It is a fact that they are far more dependent upon the continued existence of a complex society than the average subsistence farmer and when the said complex society unravels, they tend to be brutally replaced by people more adapted to the new situation…There is, however, another, less talked about, casualty of collapses : the middle class.

Review and application of SSI study, “Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development”

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The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at the US Army War College has issued many stimulating research papers in recent years, several of which deal with energy security issues. Nathan Freier’s recent SSI paper (which we will examine here) does not focus on energy issues. Rather, the central purpose of his study is to present a paradigm for the examination of potential strategic shocks.

Commentary: Global Energy Drivers in a “Black Swan World”

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Last year the global credit crunch and its knock-on effects precipitated the sharpest oil and gas price declines in over two decades. Despite the recent $100+/ Bbl price implosion and subsequent partial recovery, we have now entered an historic inflection point—call it “practical peak oil”—in the global balance of conventional energy supplies…

Burning the furniture

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When there is no money for fuel in the middle of winter, desperate residents have on occasion resorted to burning the furniture. That works as long as the furniture lasts. But come spring, there may be no place to sit or sleep, and no prospect of resorting to the same practice should a heating emergency arise the following winter. Yet, this is more or less the equivalent of what many states and municipalities are doing in the face of our unprecedented financial crisis.