Education

Carbon offset value of straw bale houses

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One of my goals in moving to Ithaca was to get into a position where I can began transitioning my family to a carbon-negative lifestyle. Obviously writing posts about alarming climate papers only goes so far; if one isn’t prepared to personally do something, at some point it starts to feel hypocritical (at least it does to me). This process is absolutely in its infancy, but I plan to blog about it to a certain degree. Our experiences may be helpful to others traveling along the same path. Perhaps a few other people who wouldn’t otherwise have contemplated this will get the idea. And at a minimum, I will be able to feel less guilty, and more smug and self-righteous, as the climate goes to hell around us.

Peak oil and gas prices and supplies – Aug 6

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-Independent Study: Oil Shale Is a Poor Energy Source
-Scientists Cast Doubt on Claims BP Spill’s No Threat to Gulf
-Ecuador pledges no oil drilling in Amazon reserve
-Deepwater oil drilling moratorium job-loss picture is getting clearer
-We Fight for the Oil We Need to Fight for the Oil
-Oil company, law enforcement block media access to public sites hit by Michigan oil spill

Cleaning up

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This essay this isn’t about bitterness. It’s about the decisions we make in light of an ambiguous future. One of the costs of making moral choices is breaking the strong emotional ties to a prior life. My own future, if I have one, is necessarily rooted in the past. For the better part of a decade, I was the model professor, if only from the standpoint of university administrators.

A history of deficits

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In President Clinton’s last full year in office (2000), the federal budget was roughly $1.8 trillion dollars. When President Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, his administration received the previous year’s $236 billion dollar budgetary surplus. By fiscal year (FY) 2010, a mere decade later, the United States’ budget had doubled to nearly $3.6 trillion, and incurred a $1.6 trillion budget deficit. A budget deficit is the difference between outlays (expenditures) and income for a single fiscal year.

Hollow men of economics

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Left unaddressed during the past 3 years in most of the debates between economists has been the problem of energy. The reason is simple: post-war economists don’t do energy, except as an ever-expanding resource that the credit system and technology makes available. For the post-war economist, the supply curve of energy–save for brief lags–is always coming back into rough equilibrium with the economy.

What will it take to convince people about the dangers of peak oil?

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I find myself these days especially attentive to people talking about their preparations for a post-peak oil world. I am partly learning and partly measuring myself against their level of preparation. If they are, in my evaluation, further along than I am, my focus is even more intense. That has turned out to be an important clue for me about what it will take to convince the public about the dangers of peak oil.

First results from Transition Together evaluation

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“Transition Together”, the street-by-street behaviour change programme developed by Transition Town Totnes and now being piloted in 10 other communities, has just completed analysing the data that has come back from the first 4 groups, comprising 32 households in Totnes. They have completed all 7 of the sessions set out in the workbook, and the data offers a fascinating first look at whether the process works or not. The results from the other 31 groups currently underway are expected this Autumn. Here, Fiona Ward of Transition Together shares the results that have emerged.

UK Gov’t Department of Energy and Climate Change Pathways 2050 report – July 30

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-2050 Pathways Analysis
-UK energy scenarios: working with a flawed model
-DECC publishes plans for achieving 2050 targets
-DECC lays out six possible futures for low-carbon energy

The cybernetics of black knights

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What do fifty years of failed fusion research, today’s avant-garde believers in the Singularity, and the antics of the characters in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” have in common? The answer lies in information, which forms — along with energy and matter — a triad of principles that shape whole systems, and have to be understood in order to craft new systems for the deindustrial age.

A critical examination of Matt Simmons’ claims on the Deepwater spill

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Matt Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, has long been one of the most famous and influential voices on the subject of peak oil. After the release of his book, Simmons rose to fame as Saudi Arabian oil production declined and global oil prices skyrocketed. However, Simmons has lately been making hyperbolic claims related to the deepwater spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on the scenarios Simmons has outlined, he argues for responses such as using a nuclear explosion to seal the well and evacuating 20 million people from the Gulf Coast. Extraordinary responses such as these would impact a great many people, so The Oil Drum staff felt that a critical look at some of Simmons’ claims was in order.