Media & Communications

The energy consumption of avatars


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Virtual worlds (World of Warcraft, Second Life) and the avatars that exist in them use energy. Often more than the average person in many countries of the world. Many IT pundits forget or ignore that computers are physical objects that require resources for their construction and maintenance and that they thus have an (under-explored) ecological footprint.

The Oil Crunch: a wake-up call for the UK economy (report excerpt)

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On 10 February 2010 at the Royal Society, six UK companies – Arup, Foster + Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group and Virgin – joined together to launch the second report of the UK Industry Task-Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES).

Delusions of Finance: Where We are Headed

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Back in October, I participated in the 2nd International Biophysical Economics Conference at SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, New York. Charlie Hall had written to me, inviting me to come and give a talk. Specifically, he wanted me to go back to my post from January 2008 called Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008 and explain why my forecasts had turned out pretty close to correct, while many others widely missed the mark. The title he suggested for the talk was Delusions of Finance.

Economics – Feb 9

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-False Profits: We Will Be Suffering from Greenspan and Bernanke’s Ineptitude for a Long Time
-G7 close to accord on banks paying for global recession
-How Brussels Is Trying to Prevent a Collapse of the Euro
-Europe loses seat at top table
-Corruption, Culpability and Short-Termism