Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the late 1800s northwestern Ohio was at the center of an oil boom as the state became the nation’s largest crude producer. Today Ohio is at the center of another fossil fuel boom, where a new drilling method — hydraulic fracturing (fracking) combined with modern horizontal drilling — is releasing natural gas from deep underground shale, leading to a rush of new leases. Is drilling safe or are contamination concerns unfounded?
Odum often drew an analogy between the way meteorological storms such as hurricanes disperse heat and the way that other systems do, including information systems. After Tom Abel’s excellent post last week on trends in education in a world in transition, it is a good time to share Odum’s analogy linking storms of information and weather storms. But to make that analogy, we first need a meteorology lesson, starting with the second law of thermodynamics.
The sustainability crisis has provoked an unexpected and dramatic response from academia. Until now, higher education institutions have tended to focus on sustainability within their own borders. This has predominantly been via sustainability education, research and designing green or carbon neutral campuses. Yet borders between society and academia are dissolving.
Education has a remarkably inelastic demand curve and even in a contracting economy people will spend their last dollars to educate their children. Along with healthcare, high-tech weaponry, food, water, drugs, and internal ‘security’, Americans will pay almost any price for education, which is why the Right has furiously worked to privatize it and as well the rest of these. In a time when economies around the globe are stagnating (due to flattening or declining net emergies) they are the last growth industries of the capitalist growth economy.
– Can we please just declare the end of ‘peak oil’ and start worrying about something important?
– The U.S. Has A Lot Of Shale Oil, So What?
– Chevron VP: Technology can unlock new fields, curb fears of peak oil
– The Biggest Threat to High Oil Prices
– Amory Lovins: A 50-year plan for energy (video)
– U.S. energy independence is no longer just a pipe dream
What do you get when you cross an astronomically-inclined physicist with concerns over energy efficiency in lighting? Spectra. Lots and lots of spectra. In this post, we’ll become familiar with spectral characterization of light, see example spectra of a number of household light sources, and I’ll even throw in some mind-blowing photos. In the process, we’ll evaluate just how efficient lighting could possibly be, along the way understanding something about the physiology of light perception and the definition of the increasingly ubiquitous lighting measure called the lumen. Buckle your physics seat-belt and prepare to think like a photon.
Tom uses simple, easy-to-understand math — yes, that four-letter word — to logically — I say quite logically — make the case that simply extrapolating past trends in energy and economic growth is not going to cut it. Instead, we face gigantic challenges and significant risks to our current model. Not least of which is, when asked what we will use when fossil fuels dwindle away, the most typical answer is I’m sure we will think of something. That is, our future of energy is a question mark right now.
In the midst of all the doom and gloom about the economy, where’s the hope for building resilience back into family and community finances? Which personal choices will make a difference in regaining prosperity? Join two experts speaking about where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
– Jeffrey J. Brown: Instead of “Waiting for Godot”, emphasize vocational and agricultural training
– Learning That Works
– Young Italians flock to become shepherds
– The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps
In this post, I consider the limited impacts of climate policy on fossil-fuel production and discuss estimates of fossil-fuel production in the long run.
– IMF working paper – “The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology”
– World Oil: Aleklett’s new analysis of peak oil is refreshingly comprehensive
– Now Playing at a Computer Near You: The ASPO-USA Webinar Series
– T. Boone Pickens: Biggest Deterrent To U.S. Energy Plan Is Koch Industries
– Cheap Oil Built ‘The American Way’ but All the Cheap Oil is Gone
Peak oil is a fact, not a theory. From US conventional oil production peaking in 1970 to global conventional oil production peaking in 2006 the figures are indisputable. Even institutions such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and publications like The Economist that are not known for alarmism have admitted that oil production from conventional sources has peaked.
So why are there still commentators who refuse to believe peak oil?
