Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won’t Save Us
-Power by the People
-Nuclear power vs. people power
-Breakthrough Material for Carbon Capture Developed
-Effect of Global Warming on U.S. Energy Consumption
-The missing link to a $7 billion market
In surveying the multiple, uprisings, insurgencies, insurrections, confrontations and what have you currently going on in the Middle East, it is hard to believe that all this turmoil will not eventually find its way to our local gas pumps. In the last week the overall situation clearly has taken a turn for the worse with large numbers of Syrian insurgents infiltrating Damascus and Aleppo for the first time accompanied by the spectacular bombing of a security meeting that killed four of the regime’s top leaders.
-High oil prices are caused by consumers, not speculators
-Oil Price Spike Exacerbated by Wall Street Speculation?
-Crude truths about oil prices
The pipeline debate is often framed in terms of whether the jobs it will create justify its environmental risks. Let’s ignore those risks for the moment. Forget climate change. Forget leaks. Forget potential damage to streams and aquifers. Now does the pipeline make sense?
Not much.
-Frackers Fund University Research That Proves Their Case
-Doing Some Math on Fracking Propaganda
-Industry money and questionable ethics contaminate UT Austin fracking study
-Nationwide Mutual Declines to Cover Fracking
-U.S. calls New York anti-drilling lawsuit premature
– Chris Nelder: Is peak oil dead?
– Oil, politics and resource wars (interviews with Robert Hirsch, Michael Klare … )
– The Unfinished Story of Iraq’s Oil Law: An Interview with Greg Muttitt
– Will Drought Cause the Next Blackout?
– The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER… (from HBO)
– John Perkins: Occupy the Dam: Brazil’s Indigenous Uprising
– Appalachia Turns on Itself (over coal)
– ‘Deep Green Resistance’ — how not to build a movement
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Middle East in turmoil
-The drought worsens
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Only the oil industry would now have the audacity once again to peddle a story that it has gotten wrong for more than a decade as if it were brand new. Enlisting the media and its army of paid consultants, the industry is once again telling the public that oil abundance is at hand. And, what is doubly audacious is that it is promoting this tale as oil prices hover at levels more than eight times the 1999 low.
The usual assumption that economists, financial planners, and actuaries make is that future real GDP growth can be expected to be fairly similar to the average past growth rate for some historical time period. This assumption can take a number of forms–how much a portfolio can be expected to yield in a future period, or how high real (that is, net of inflation considerations) interest rates can be expected to be in the future, or what percentage of GDP the government of a country can safely borrow. But what if this assumption is wrong, and expected growth in real GDP is really declining over time?
Oil prices rose this week as geopolitical tensions trumped economic concerns. The Syrian conflict, oil sanctions against Iran, and a suicide bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, which Israel blamed on Iran, all added to fear of disruption in the region…
-Near drought conditions impacting Marcellus shale gas drilling
-EPA study on fracking and water questioned
-Gas drilling a boom for drug traffickers, too
-Shale Energy Divides French Government, Putting Ban In Question
