Dysfunction – May 19
Flying cars
The Surge (in lame excuses)
When cars compete with people for food
Staff
Peak Oil Review – May 19th, 2008
An executive summary of weekly news from a US peak oil perspective, featuring:
– Production and Prices
– China
– Iran’s Production Cut
– Energy Briefs
Distillates
The evidence is mounting that the US might just encounter the first real crisis of the oil depletion age before the year is out. The crisis at first will be one of spiraling prices for diesel and heating oil that will cause considerable economic havoc, and then there may be actual shortages right here in the United States.
Peak oil and the oil export–import game
The president of ASPO-International was invited to write a comment to the article “The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to do” by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.
Supply side follies
Lower oil production, exploding production costs and capturing a shrinking fraction of oil profits has not prevented oil companies from enjoying record high profits. These profits are so large that they have masked the fact that US corporate profits are otherwise in the doldrums
Farmer-hunter-gatherer
We’re still sending out the cultural message “we’re different from the old agrarian roots” even though that’s become painfully obvious. The difficulty, of course, is that we may need to be rather more like the old people.
Remember Malthus? He’s back for good
His ideas have been the inspiration since 1798 for anyone concerned about over population and food scarcity. Relegated to history’s back shelf in the 1960s by agriculture’s Green Revolution, his forecasts are back, with a vengeance.
Solutions & sustainability – May 18
Clare Short: Birmingham should become a transition city
A family farm in the midst of suburbia
No wonder Iceland has the happiest people on earth (their secret revealed)
To teens in the first decade of the 21st century
While hard work and discipline are essential to the successful life, true success is not in an award, or bank account balance. It’s in the number of real friends you have, and intangibles such as your ability to enjoy life in deep and profound ways, and to have stood for something far greater than your own comfort, convenience, and bank account.
Crisis & collapse – May 18
Expert warns climate change will lead to ‘barbarisation’
Thomas Homer-Dixon interview
The Onion: Everything falling apart, reports Institute
US natural gas: the role of unconventional gas
US natural gas production has been flat for a number of years. We keep hearing that US production is expected to begin declining sometime in the next few years, but it doesn’t seem to happen. While it is not obvious from most published data, the reason production remains level is because unconventional gas production has been rising.
Stop me before I fill up again!
It is a supreme irony that a wealthy Bedouin should be playing the role of a tough-love drug counselor to the world’s oil-addicted consumers even as he continues to be the globe’s biggest pusher
