Energy – Sept 12

-Wind could meet many times world’s total power demand by 2030, Stanford researchers say
-EU proposal would limit use of crop-based biofuels
-Indian blackout held no fear for small hamlet where the power stayed on
-Asia Risks Water Scarcity Amid Coal-Fired Power Embrace

Review: Too Much Magic by James Kunstler

…Kunstler has a new work of social criticism titled Too Much Magic, his first nonfiction book since The Long Emergency came out in 2005. The book is an inquiry into a skewed, delusional perception of reality that Kunstler thinks has become “baseline normal for the American public lately.” Americans, he says, have been led astray by the incredible technological advancements of recent times. We’ve come to believe that any problem we face is solvable—as if by magic—with the application of some new technology.

Our years of magical thinking: interview with James Kunstler

“Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson

“That’s a pithy way of saying where our country, perhaps the developed world, is at right now,” notes author James Howard Kunstler. We’ve blown past the mileposts for global peak oil, says Kunstler in his new book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation, and we expect technology to save us.

Considerations of Chinese demand growth

There are many parts of the country where these interconnections and improvements to the infrastructure are still going on. As those changes occur, the increasing use of power-driven vehicles continues to rise, and with it the need for increased supply. The risk of exacerbating popular unrest if that change were to stop is just one reason why it is bound to continue, and with it China’s continued need for additional supplies of all forms of fossil fuels.

World Energy Consumption Facts, Figures, and Shockers

In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production. Today, I want to examine the changes in consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas since 1965 in the three major consuming regions of the world: Asia Pacific, the United States, and European Union countries.