Fossil Fuels

Growing through the storm

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How can we adapt mentally, and socially to Peak Oil, climate change and an economic bust at the same time? 3 interviews with solutions: interviews: “Peak Oil Shrink” Kathy McMahon from Vermont on unexpected lessons from Hurricane Irene. Urban homesteader Jules Dervaes – food self-sufficiency on a city lot. Richard Heinberg on coping with the End of Growth – will fertilizer shortages mean “Peak Food”? What are Common Security Clubs and “Resilience Circles”?

Have frackers pushed their luck too far?

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Over the past week, I’ve heard from serious observers of the U.S. shale gas industry — from investment analysts, think-tank scholars and others — that we seem near a tipping point in the heated debate over the companies’ drilling methods: If there is another serious accident or two in which shale gas drillers appear to have polluted a water aquifer, look for significant regulatory curtailment of the industry, as one investment analyst put it.

Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster?

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The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline.

A guide for the perplexed energy policymaker

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If you are an energy policymaker (or layperson interested in energy) and you are NOT perplexed by the last decade, read no further. You have little to gain from what I write below. However, if you are a perplexed energy policymaker (or perplexed layperson interested in energy), please continue and learn why poor quality data, lack of transparency, broad uncertainty and flawed thinking about risk have made it difficult for many experts and the public alike to think sensibly about our energy future.

ASPO-USA Conference: Experts to seek “truth in energy”, find solutions to end of cheap oil

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Experts on energy and the economy will gather on Capitol Hill, November 2-5, to confront the global challenge of resource depletion, Peak Oil, and the end of cheap energy—with a focus on economic implications and strategies to navigate an uncertain and rapidly changing future.

“Peak Oil, Energy & the Economy”, the 2011 conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA (ASPO-USA), will feature cutting edge research and analysis by leading experts from North America and Europe. Under the theme of “Truth in Energy”, the event will take a hard look at America’s energy and economic challenges, and the actions required to tackle them.

The Oil Game: a free pdf workbook

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A while ago I posted a film here about Tom Harper’s “The Oil Game”, a programme of teaching young people about peak oil that he has been doing in schools in the south east of England. Tom has now finished a workbook for people who want to run this programme elsewhere, containing the games and activities that he developed. It was interesting to read on Energy Bulletin today about a cartoon book called Luz which uses cartoons to introduce ideas around peak oil to a younger audience. More of these kind of resources seem to be emerging all the time.

Energy literacy is the education we need

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Cell phone and hand-held technology depend on myriad inputs that are not simply conjured from thin air, however magically they appear in iStores and Web ads. All that plastic wrapping of the device itself comes from…you guessed it, petroleum. Oil. The very stuff the International Energy Agency said has hit its peak. In the future, all the way to the year 2020 (and before) the cost for everything is going up, uP, UP! And all this because of the increasing scarcity and rising cost of energy. That’s difficult on its own, and made no easier when jobs are going down, down, down. This is the dot to connect to make predictions about the future.