Education

Getting the Story Right: The Peak Oil vs. Climate Change Inanity Continues

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The IEA has pretty much conceeded peak oil, announcing that growth to meet demand in the coming decades will come from entirely mythical sources. Ok, they didn’t say that, what they said in the latest World Energy Outlook was that the majority of oil production by 2030 will be coming from “fields yet to be developed or found.” But what that means is “we’re hoping someone with magic powers will come and reverse the long-stand trend towards decline in oil discovery.”

Not In the Labor Force

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Some of us think America is in Big Trouble. The often sarcastic way I cast doubt on government unemployment statistics today may strike you as negative in the extreme, and in a way it is. But the real dilemma we face is simple: are we going to address deep structural problems in our economy? Or are we going to keep lying to ourselves about those problems? How long are we going to pretend they don’t exist?

The Common Link with Climate Change, Peak Oil, Limits To Growth, Etc. – Belief Systems

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Many of the issues discussed on this bandwidth are large, long term, and threatening. Consider the three primary society-wide topics of analysis and discourse: climate, energy and the economy. It is my belief these 3 are linked by an underlying cultural growth/debt imperative running into a planet with finite sources and sinks…If you find yourself in a debate about any of these issues you’ll find apathy or you’ll find cognitive biases underlying a polarized opinion.

Food & agriculture – Dec 10

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-Cultivating Resilience: The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan
-think global : eat local
-The Local Price Premium
-Nitrous oxide concerns cloud future of biofuels
-Regreening Africa
-Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Marketplace
-Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!
-N.J.’s food pantries and politics: Hungry people need food– end of discussion

Is “Clean Coal” a Dead End?

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Many energy experts, politicians on both sides of the aisle, and representatives of the coal industry agree on the need to spend billions to develop technologies to capture and store the carbon from burning coal, thus making coal “clean” from a climate standpoint.

Local-food activist makes the farm-bike-sailboat connection

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Jan Lundberg moved to Portland a year ago because it seemed like the best place to pursue his intersecting passions for food security, peak oil, bicycles, and sailing. These passions will be coming to fruition later this month when the oil analyst’s brainchild, the Sail Transport Network, will launch into its first major, ongoing local venture.

Sasha and Barack Debate the Merits of Peak Oil Preparation

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Industrial civilization is rapidly running out of net fossil-fuel energy — and alternative energy sources won’t be able to make up the difference. Obama knows this, but is unable to say it publicly. But if we don’t start making some basic preparations for our non-optional, lower-energy future right now, we’ll likely end up with a much lower standard of living than if we did prepare…– Heck, even an intelligent child could do a better job planning for energy descent than we’re doing now! Sasha in 2012!

Copenhagen begins – Dec 7

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-Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’
-The Physics of Copenhagen
-Earth More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than Previously Thought
-Cap and Fade
-‘Climategate’ at centre stage as Copenhagen opens

Was Volatility in the Price of Oil a Cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis?

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A cause for the financial crisis of 2008 is described that differs from conventional wisdom. It is proposed that in the early 2000s, an increase in the volatility of oil took place…The oil shock of 2008, when price doubled over less than a year (peaking at ~ $140 a barrel), is shown not to be an isolated event. Instead, the oil shock of 2008 is the largest in a series of 7 prominent spikes in oil price variance that began some 7-8 years ago.

Jared Diamond Done Drunk the Kool-Aid

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Jared Diamond seems to have missed one of the central observations of his own _Collapse_ – that when societies actually avert collapse, the tend to do so with strong levels of prohibition and regulation. That is, Japan didn’t ask the gun manufacturers to self-regulate, they prohibited the use of guns entirely. The reason the Dominican Republic is so much better off than Haiti isn’t because people refined their logging practices, but because they restricted them.