Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– BBC: Oil shock warning to government from UK business
– Protect us from peak oil, says Richard Branson (and others)
– Big names warn of danger of UK’s ‘addiction’ to oil
– Steve LeVine: Peak or no peak?
– Ken Deffeyes: IEA on Board, Sort Of
– IHS CERA study says oilpatch costs rising
– WSJ: China’s Coal Crisis
– ‘Peak coal’ to see prices soar (audio)
– Should we be planning for the end of cheap coal?
– The Chinese Coal Monster – running out of puff
– The Atlantic: Dirty Coal, Clean Future
– Cleaning Up Coal
– Fridley, Heinberg discuss ‘peak coal’ in NATURE journal
The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has increased the risk of an imminent global oil crunch — so says the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Insecurity (ITPOES). The group, whose members include Virgin and Stagecoach among others, called on the government to speed up adoption of renewables and energy efficiency measures…
The idea that coal is cheap and plentiful drives much thinking about future world energy consumption. It can explain the resistance of the United States and China to carbon-cutting policies — both countries have lots of coal, and they don’t plan to stop using it anytime soon. But is it a reasonable assumption? Richard Heinberg and David Fridley argue in this week’s Nature that coal prices are likely to start rising much sooner than everyone thinks — perhaps by the end of this decade.
This week, science journal Nature says the world is on the verge of exhausting its cheap coal supplies. With rising demand and dwindling supplies of high quality usable coal, prices could be much higher by the end of the decade. The finding could also have implications for the controversial technology, carbon capture and storage. ABC (Australia) reporter Greg Borschman interviews Richard Heinberg.
Coal is very vital to China and decreasing exports, together with increasing import clearly show that they have a supply problem. But whether this is due to resource problems, production problems or infrastructure bottlenecks is hard to say yet. A more comprehensive study of the Chinese coal assets needs to be done.
The world is going to get rounder and bigger again. We’ll discover — surprise! — that the global economy was a set of transient economic relations that obtained only because of a half century of cheap energy and relative peace between the big nations.
The disconnect between the American body politic and reality grows larger every day. In reviewing hundreds of pages of commentary on the election, one searches in vain for analysis that even come close to describing what is happening to the nation – i.e. we are in the midst of a massive deflating credit bubble and running short of affordable liquid fuels at the same time.
This special show highlights contributors to the Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises. John Kaufmann was lead staff for Portland, Oregon’s Peak Oil Task Force, and he has consulted with local governments around the continent on how to prepare for energy scarcity. He describes how local governments are planning for scarcity, and what they’re missing (hint: a lot). Michael Shuman is Director for Research and Economic Development at BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local, Living Economies. He describes the surprising cost competitiveness of local businesses, despite government policies designed to destroy them.
So, last night CBS hauled Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, on board their flagship Sunday infotainment vehicle, 60 Minutes… McClendon told the credulous Leslie Stahl and the huge viewing audience that America “has two Saudi Arabia’s of gas.” Now, you know immediately that at least half the viewers misconstrued this statement to mean that we have two Saudi Arabia’s of gasoline.
There are simply too many people out there who will never sit through a talk or read a book of non-fiction about our energy situation, but who would read a novel that lays the issues out clearly in the language of fiction. Cobb took on this project, not to write a best-selling novel, but to write the kind of book you can give to your sister-in-law who won’t read the other books you want to give her!
With the election frenzy behind us, and the Fed printing money like there’s no tomorrow, it seems like a good time to return to the shale gas “boom” in the Marcellus.
