Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It’s not the apocalypse. And it’s certainly not the Death Star or the planet Tatooine. But The Windup Girl is a compelling vision of our industrial world as it could be in a low-energy future. Paolo Bacigalupi’s techno-political thriller imagines how, in the time after peak oil and economic collapse, global trade could return via airships and GMOs.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-China’s coal production
-The Australian floods
-BP and Rosneft
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
If you expect a model – any model – to be able to predict the future you are going to be sorely disappointed. The Hubbert model is no exception, but many models can tell you enough about the future that you may prepare for it.
– OPEC pumping at near maximum
– Jack Gerard, head of API, on peak oil
– Tverberg: Problems with corn ethanol
– Hidden Pitfalls of Increasing U.S. Dependence On Canadian Oil Sands
If you write about, speak about, or talk with your family, friends and co-workers about peak oil, you’ve almost certainly been asked: “Well, who else is saying what you’re saying?”
This week saw the release of the full report by the National Commission into the Deepwater Horizon Spill and Offshore Drilling. Last week’s pre-release of Chapter 4 saw blame for the disaster attributed to a culture of complacency around safety both in the industry and its regulators. This week’s full report included the commission’s recommendations…
For decades, economists (Cornucopians or optimists) have been at odds with natural scientists (Malthusians or pessimists) when it comes to the scarcity of natural resources.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-The EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook
You may know author Michael Ruppert in one of his many roles as a truth-seeker: the chain-smoking star of the documentary film “Collapse,” the seemingly boundless energy source behind CollapseNet, a former beat cop and police detective and a sometime 9/11 theorist. In this interview, Ruppert reveals a new role as a spiritual seeker, saying that with societal collapse in the offing, “God is on the table.”
-Oil spill report: Initial analysis
-Disregard for safety led to Deepwater Horizon spill
-Panel Faults Oil Firms, Calls for Better Oversight
-National Oil Spill Commission Finds Right Problems, Issues Wrong Solutions
-Missed Opportunity: Spill Commission Rejected by Drillers
For over five years national oil companies and publicly traded oil companies have been free to sell oil into an ever-rising price environment. But no increase in global crude oil production has been forthcoming.
In the second video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth productions, Richard Heinberg, senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute, discusses how depleting oil supplies threaten the future of global economic growth. According to Heinberg, historically there has been a close correlation between increased energy consumption and economic growth. If the economy starts to recover after the financial crisis and there is an increased demand for oil but not enough supply to keep up with that demand, we may hit a ceiling on what the economy can do.
