Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– CERA-week: Total’s Upstream Chief Says Peak Oil Is Around The Corner
– CERA Energy Conference: Oil Industry Giddy With New Discoveries
– Michael Klare: America’s Fossil Fuel Fever
– Nader: Obama Can Do More on Oil Prices
– Dr. Colin Campbell: Playing with Fire
– Peak todo (Spanish – peak everything)
This time around, Europe, and in particular the Eurozone, is the area of the world getting hit the hardest by high oil prices. Part of this has to do with the relative level of the Euro and the US dollar.
In the end, it may not matter which countries were first and most affected by limited oil supply and high oil prices. It will be all of us that feel the impact.
My personal journey into home energy reduction began with taking stock of past energy use as reported on my utility bills. I quickly migrated toward reading the meters directly to gauge the impact of particular activities. What I learned from our gas meter shocked me, and ultimately led to our single-biggest energy-saving behavioral shift. I’ve already ruined any hope of suspense in the title of the post, but just how bad does something have to be before I’ll resort to a word like “evil? And how bad are your own demons? Ah—now you can’t wait to find out!
-Rolling Stone Responds to Chesapeake Energy on ‘The Fracking Bubble’
-Why Not Frack? – Book & Film review
-Fracking: The New Global Water Crisis – Report
-Kept in Dark by BC’s Oil and Gas Commission
-A Fresh Scientific Defense of the Merits of Moving from Coal to Shale Gas
I was thinking of Seuss this morning, because my children are anxious to celebrate his birthday, but also because it strikes me that the world-turned-upside-down qualities of our present situation are in some ways Seussian. And how surprising is that, when so many of us were formed by his writing? I suspect, thinking about Seuss’s endings and stories, that maybe we owe him more than we think – some measure of our ability to process reality, rather than fantasy, may come precisely from the fantasy creator.
Not only are high levels of growth an undesirable goal and an utterly insufficient rubric for assessing the ‘common wealth’, it is also simply not possible to return to the annualized GDP growth of the post-war ‘golden age’.
The Post Carbon Institute animation 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Minutes with Russian subtitles.
– Telegraph: Plateau Oil meets 125m Chinese cars
– Globe & Mail: All the signs point to a falling oil price – except supply
– WSJ: Oil Gives Economy Both Barrels
– WSJ: For Europe, Costly Oil Could Be ‘the New Greece’
– Rolling Stone: Why Obama Is Wrong About Natural Gas
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Iranian confrontation
-Gasoline and election 2012
-A New EIA Report on East Coast Refining
-Gas: Climate Panacea or Industry Propaganda?
-Estimates Clash for How Much Natural Gas in the United States
-The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom
-Poland May Cut Shale Gas Estimates After Data From Wells
-China claims world’s biggest shale gas reserves
Whenever North Americans fill up their vehicles with gasoline these days they should reflect on their ongoing contribution to the dysfunctional status of petro states and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular.
About a month ago, when Iranian officials started venting the idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, Western media was prompt in reviewing the events of 1981. At that time, Iranian forces mined the Strait and engaged commercial vessels with rubber speedboats in what was largely seen as a pathetic attempt to control the area. The media seems to think that Iranian officials are talking about using similar tactics today. In reality, the military technology deployed by Iran in the region is completely different today, creating a strategic scenario totally different from that of 30 years ago.
