Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The NY Times discovers Peak Oil! The article begins:
“If the cost of energy skyrockets, are the suburbs doomed? Would Long Island, already paying among the highest fuel and electricity rates in the country, become an unsustainably expensive place to live?”
“Prices will never [again] go under the $40 per barrel mark,” Hani Hussain, Kuwait Petroleum Corp’s chief executive, told Gulf News in an interview yesterday.
Oil energy (gasoline and diesel) can be likened to the fruit of a cherry tree that bears but once in our tiny lifetimes.
The Hirsch report on “peak oil” is unprecedented in US government circles. It is not just the existence of the report itself that is such a landmark in the current oil debate. Its conclusions also pull no punches.
The first mainstream politican to take a stand on peak oil is in the Queensland Parliament (Australia). Bravo, Andrew McNamara!
China said it intends to set up a special task force to handle energy issues as its top economic planner painted a dire picture of the nation’s desperate power shortages.
“Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before implementing crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer,” according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) by Science Applications International Coporation (SAIC). [Link to the full report mentioned in ASPO Bulletin #51]
The energy-literate scoff at perpetual motion, free energy, and cold fusion, but what about the hydrogen economy? Before we invest trillions of dollars, let’s take a hydrogen car out for a spin.
Germany’s ambitious plan to phase out nuclear power by 2020 while also reducing its reliance on fossil fuels has made it a leader in efforts to fulfil the Kyoto protocol.
But critics are now predicting an energy crisis.
Wind farms are an expensive and inefficient way of generating sustainable energy, according to a study from Germany, the world’s leading producer of wind energy.
Representative Ellen Story of Amherst is hosting an informational
session on Peak Oil and its consequences in Boston on Tuesday. The purpose
of the session is to inform Massachusetts’ legislators, staff, and the public
about the implications of the imminent decline in global petroleum production.
Later this year, Americans will likely hear the acronym LNG and see new tankers carrying LNG sailing into some U.S. ports. LNG is intended to save the heart and core of American civilization — to save our automotive civilization from possible rust and decay, and the Republicans from political decline.
