Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
There was a step forward this week for recognition of peak oil in the UK political agenda. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has agreed that the Department for Energy and Climate Change and ITPOES (UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security) should work more closely together on peak-oil threat assessment and contingency planning.
– British Government Faces Up To Peak Oil
– Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking like a sieve
– U.S. Suit Sees Manipulation of Oil Trades
– China’s Utilities Cut Energy Production, Defying Beijing
– WikiLeaks Documents Hint of Slick Plans for Arctic Oil
– Danish warship sails into Greenpeace Arctic oil protest
CSE’s view is that wind power is a necessary part of the energy mix that is required to meet our carbon emission reduction targets and help tackle climate change. However, wind power is not appropriate everywhere, and we believe it is the duty of local communities themselves to decide where there is a place for it through engaging responsibly with the best available evidence, and through working together to assess their own locality.
– WikiLeaks: A battle to ‘carve up’ the Arctic
– China Admits Problems With Three Gorges Dam
– Ugo Bardi: The return of cold fusion?
– Jeremy Leggett interview (now an editor)
– Jan Lundberg interviewed in Shanghai Oriental Morning Post
There appeared to be signs of growing panic behind the latest declaration from the International Energy Agency. The statement calls on oil producing countries to increase production and reduce costs in order to avert economic crisis. To date Opec members have been insisting that the market is well supplied and that prices are being driven by speculation…
User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization shows how our major crises share the same root causes and thus can be solved only by taking into account their complex interactions. Ahmed acknowledges that in this age of specialization it’s understandable for issues like climate change and oil depletion to be studied and discussed separately—indeed, he observes that this mode of inquiry into the causes of specific phenomena has enabled many of our greatest scientific advances. But it’s also, he argues, beginning to seem like an increasingly antiquated method, preventing experts from seeing the whole picture and the public from receiving consistent information.
Generals are particularly famous for planning for the last war rather than the next one, but it’s a common failing; most of today’s industrial civilization, for example, is busily planning its future on the basis of the energy supplies it had available in the recent past, rather than those much sparser supplies it will have to make do with in the recent future. Outside the myopic conviction that temporary conditions will last forever, there are plenty of options that can make the Long Descent ahead of us less grueling than it will otherwise be.
Is the central assertion of this book – that world economic growth is over – already disproved? How else to explain China’s continued exuberant expansion, or signs of recovery in the U.S. in 2010?
– Paul Krugman: The Unwisdom of Elites
– Juan Cole: The New Sputnik
– Joe Bageant: Escape from the Zombie Food Court
Utah’s first commercial wind power project, located in the city of Spanish Fork, faced stiff opposition at every turn. Developers had to deal with changing and inconsistent city and state policies, siting and pricing roadblocks, a fickle investor, and resistance from nearby residents—virtually all at the same time. The success story in Spanish Fork provides some lessons for how to get urban communities to accept and encourage local wind energy development.
Oil demand appears to finally be responding to high oil prices, most significantly in the US where petrol prices have hit $4/gallon. The IEA cut its 2011 demand forecast by 190,000 barrels/day on news of increased US stockpiles and reduced consumption, and prices dropped back from recent highs to around $110/barrel for Brent…
It is clear that moving towards renewables is about more than simply adding more wind turbines and solar panels, but rather it is about a significant system re-think. For instance, one important measure would be to make the national power grid independent from the ten major electricity supply companies. That way anyone can set up their own electricity supply company and the current monopolistic structures would give way to a more diverse system.
