Power, and where it comes from – Mar 3
-Environmentalists question coal’s place in Obama policy
-The Dirty Truth Behind Clean Coal
-Parsing fact from fiction with the Bloom Energy box
Fossil Fuels
Thinking About the Unthinkable: A U.S.-Iranian Deal
The United States apparently has reached the point where it must either accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons at some point if it wishes, or take military action to prevent this. There is a third strategy, however: Washington can seek to redefine the Iranian question. As we have no idea what leaders on either side are thinking, exploring this represents an exercise in geopolitical theory. Let’s begin with the two apparent stark choices.
Water – Mar 3
-Matt Simmons: Oil shortage spills into water
-Photographer Burtynsky recent focus on water rooted in political power, control
-Water and the War on Terror
The Peak Oil Crisis: China’s Year of the Tiger
With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly likely that the future of our gasoline prices and consequently our economic well-being over the next few years will be determined by what happens with China’s economy.
Peak oil, gas, prices, and supplies – Mar 2
-What the Olympics Can Teach Us About the Price of Gas
-Pickens expects approval of key natural gas plan
-Asia buys record volume of W.African oil in Q1
-Russia February Output Nears Post-Soviet Record on TNK-BP
-RBS accused over funding for tar sands ‘blood oil’
Peak oil review – Mar 1
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Looming electricity shortages
-China’s macro control
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Dispersion, Diversity, and Resilience
If we want to have any hope in controlling our destiny we have to understand our environment. In one sense, if we treat our environment as a control system, capable of responding to a stimulus, we need to understand not only its behavior, but how it will respond to the stimulus. One can ask: will it collapse in response to dwindling resources? Or will it rebound and stay resilient? For that we require a good model of the system. And of course, the simpler the model to describe, the better.
Commentary: Drawing the lower and upper boundaries of future oil supply
The oil supply challenge is often summarized in terms of the production volume equivalent of Saudi-Arabia’s that needs to be replaced. This popular metric is based on in-depth studies of global decline rates that show a decline range between 4.5 and 6 percent over the current 73 million barrels of crude oil produced per day.
Responses & Resilience – Feb 26
-The Spotless Garden
-Seed trends – food gardening, pickling
-Impressed by a Possible Future
ODAC Newsletter – Feb 26
The world is heading for a renewed oil crunch as soon as 2013 due to shrinking production capacity and growing demand in the emerging markets, according to reports from two investment banks. Both BofA Merril Lynch and Barclays Capital conclude non OPEC production is close to peak, meaning a shift back to reliance on OPEC for new capacity…
Gypsies at the peak
After having seen the Roma (gypsies) listen attentively to two hours of lessons on the biological carbon cycle and ask intelligent questions afterwards, I was impressed. So, I told myself; why not peak oil? And here I am in front of the whole class. Romani men and women; about 20 people; all coming from the same camp, nearby.
Do Texas and the North Sea foretell the future of oil production?
Oil supply optimists claim that new technology combined with private development of the world’s remaining oil resources–most of which are now under the control of government-owned companies–would vastly increase global oil production and put off any decline for decades. Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown isn’t buying it, and he cites the history of oil production in Texas and the North Sea to explain why.
