Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Electric aviation can replace our oil based transport with a system that is faster, cleaner and cheaper using existing technology. No advanced batteries are required to build this system!
(Replacing oil with electric aviation using take-off assist)
Petroleum geophysicist and author Jean Laherrère explains that we are in the current energy crisis not only because fuel is running out, but because its cost is too cheap. Laherrère, a former TOTAL oil company employee, used his insider knowledge to co-author a game-changing 1998 article in Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil,” which studied oil depletion based on the most accurate database of the world’s oilfields at the time.
As oil prices rise, heating our homes with wood becomes more attractive. Steven Hamburg is the Chief Scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, and he co-authored a recent report on the potential of northeastern forests to meet our energy need. Tom Whipple writes the weekly Peak Oil Review, and his latest edition says, “Collapse would not be too strong a term to apply to the global economy should Saudi oil production of 9 million b/d be halted or severely restricted by domestic unrest.” We talk to him about what he sees that indicates Saudi production may become shut in, and why that’s so important.
Thirty-four years have come and gone since Energy Secretary James Schlesinger described the American approach to oil supply problems. “We have only two modes—complacency and panic.” Nothing has changed. As popular revolt spread from Egypt into Libya, panic smoothly replaced complacency in the markets and the overwrought minds of the American people. Apparently, since Egypt blew up first, and Libya, which is west of Egypt, blew up next, it has been deemed logical to conclude that Algeria, which is west of Libya, will be the next domino to fall.
Traders have adopted a new yardstick for oil security, and it’s influencing the abrupt climb of oil prices. Call it the Flaming Oil Port Index. It’s a notional appreciation of how many more OPEC countries may see fighting, taking their oil production with them.
It’s okay to warn or complain, but one of the attractive habits in American civilization is to ask: well, what’s your plan? In his recent book World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, Lester Brown offers one.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-the Saudis besieged
-China’s National People’s Congress
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
We are not running out of oil yet. We have, however, reached an apparent limit to the amount of oil that we can produce every day. That is because newly discovered fields are, at best, replacing supply from older declining and depleted fields.
Organic will be the conventional agriculture of the future, not because of wishful thinking or because it is the right thing to do, or because of some universal truth revealed from on high.
A society is not as simple as a balloon but it can easily explode in revolutions, collapse, breakdowns, civil wars and all sort of rapid and unpredictable changes. Societies, it seems, are fragile, at least in terms of the stability of their governments. This behavior looks normal to us because we have seen it happening many times. But, just as for balloons, it is difficult to explain exactly why societies “explode.”
There are reports that the unrest in the Middle East has spread to the Sultanate of Oman. While at the moment there have been only one or perhaps two deaths, small in number relative to the larger number of fatalities in countries like Libya, such a milepost, nevertheless, is sadly likely to indicate that the situation will get much worse. … Oman is not a member of OPEC, but contains the largest oil reserves of any country outside that group in the Middle East.
– Robert Fisk: America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels
– Venezuela and Libya
– NYT: A Libyan Leader at War With Rebels, and Reality
