Coal

The End is nigh – Deepwater Horizon and the technology, economics, and environmental Impacts of Resource Depletion

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Following the failure of the latest efforts to plug the gushing leak from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and amid warnings that oil could continue to flow for another two months or more, perhaps it’s a good time to step back a moment mentally and look at the bigger picture—the context of our human history of resource extraction—to see how current events reveal deeper trends that will have even greater and longer-lasting significance.

Some Transition thoughts on the energy bits of the Queen’s speech

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So the Queen’s Speech has set out the policy priorities for the new government, but were the policies announced a cop-out or do they set out a wartime mobilisation scale of response to climate change and peak oil? These reflections are based on the article about the speech that appeared in yesterday’s Guardian.

How long will the coal last?

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It is now more than two months since we published out article (read the peer-reviewed paper) that showed that the IPCC’s emissions scenarios of 2000 (the same scenarios that are used by the world’s climate researchers to calculate future temperature increases) cannot be realized. We have also reported on this internationally at the Energy Bulletin. What amazes me most is that not one single journalist around the world thinks that this is interesting. I don’t think they realize the magnitude of our research result.

Peak soil: it’s like peak oil, only worse

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Resource collapse is bigger than peak oil, and bigger even than the projected depletion of natural gas, coal and uranium – it encompasses each and every natural resource extracted, exploited or otherwise processed on an industrial scale. We’re experiencing problems with our living environment – climate, soil and water – that are more than just energy issues.

Replacing coal with green jobs in Navajo Nation

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As a small girl, Enei Begaye knew to be quiet when visiting friends’ houses. Nearly everyone in the 4,900-person town of Kayenta, Arizona, part of the Navajo Nation, worked in the area’s coal mines, Black Mesa and Kayenta, which operated twenty-four hours a day. Begaye and her friends would play quietly so they wouldn’t disturb sleeping elders back from the night shift.

It’s worse than you think: plotting global hydrocarbon collapse

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More than 90 per cent of the world’s energy comes from non-renewable sources – and its decline can be projected on a Hubbert bell chart. It’s just that we are more familiar with the concept of peak oil. After all, oil is the world’s largest source of energy, and the size and immediacy of the problem tends to overshadow debate on the remaining energy sources. But Hubbert’s model proves versatile, as the exploitation of any non-renewable resource – from oil to uranium – follows similar patterns.