Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We have a natural desire to find a way that we and our loved ones can be “safe” in the midst of the upcoming Peak Oil, Economic Collapse, and Climate Change cataclysms. This leads us to think of Arks or Fortresses, which simply won’t work. What then is a model for the coming times? The only model that can work is the decidedly unsafe and generous City of Light.
– Hans Noeldner: Peace on Earth / Human legs
– Dr. David Fleming: a tribute
– Songs of Petroleum – Jan Lundberg’s Autobiography
– Space Enough and Time: An Expat’s Siberian Experience
A mid-weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-China
As 2010 ends, what really interests me aren’t the corrosions and failures of this system, but the way another system, another invisible hand, is always at work in what you could think of as the great, ongoing, Manichean arm-wrestling match that keeps our planet spinning. The invisible claw of the market may fail to comprehend how powerful the other hand — the one that gives rather than takes — is, but neither does that open hand know itself or its own power. It should. We all should.
– CERA’s Yergin: US gas demand should fall for good after ’06 peak
– The Global Oil Diet: a graphic view
– Subsidy Cuts in Iran
– Iran Stops Fuel Delivery, Afghanistan Says, and Prices Are Rising
The biggest stories of 2010 were financial. But you could say that the continuing Great Recession, the deficit debate, and more and more mortgage defaults were really stories of energy-driven economic crisis. This year also had plenty of big stories directly on energy, including some breakthroughs on peak oil. Here are our top picks. It’s a highly subjective list; so please chime in with any stories you think we left off.
If we look at a graph of historical world oil production, we see a somewhat bumpy production pattern with two major price spikes (in 2009 $)–one peaking in 1981 and one peaking in 2008. The first spike in prices occurred when Persian Gulf production dropped starting in 1980, so seems to be oil supply related. The second spike occurred when world oil production would not rise above a bumpy plateau, despite rising demand, in the 2005 to 2008 period. In this post, I will show some breakdowns that I think give a little insight into our current situation.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Iran
-US Natural Gas
-China
-Briefs
“Fuel demand continues to strengthen, a positive sign for the economy.”
– John Felmy, Chief API economist
“Latent conditions in technology and organisation can exist for a significant time, waiting for circumstances to line up that create a calamitous accident. … A systemic perspective is essential to shed light on the complex interplay of actions and how the loss might have been prevented.”
Christmas comes but once a year and its excesses pack a crippling punch. Then there’s all those “so what’s new in your world” conversations. Bringing up peak oil feels tricky. How to cope? Let me count the ways…
Now that global peak oil is history perhaps it’s time to work on predicting peak empire instead. If you followed the work of Joseph Tainter, he offered the theory of diminishing and eventually negative marginal return to territorial growth and complexity of societies.
Post-Carbon and Heinberg are telling a critical story – but the actors they need to engage, all the hands they want on deck are not engaged, because they aren’t part of the tale. That needs to change.
