Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
KMO welcomes Albert K. Bates back to the program to talk about the themes of his forthcoming book, The Biochar Solution. Could a form of homebrewed carbon sequestration provide a stopgap measure that could buy us time to implement effective atmospheric remediation? Should biochar be considered a form of geo-engineering? How do we prevent carbon credits from becoming the new credit default swaps? All this and music by Zarathrutra.
As Iraqi’s prepare to go to the polls on Sunday the country has been subjected to a month of increased violence including a string of blasts in Baghdad on Thursday targeting early voters which killed at least 14 people. The election, which will decide the next chapter of Iraq’s future, is being keenly watched by the oil industry…
One of the least understood dimensions of the crisis of industrial society is the role of energy concentration, rather than the simple quantity of energy, in making the modern world possible. Renewable energy sources have much lower concentrations than fossil fuels, and that distinction can have critical impacts on what can and can’t be done with them — a lesson easily learnt from one of the few really mature renewable energy technologies we have at present.
-Environmentalists question coal’s place in Obama policy
-The Dirty Truth Behind Clean Coal
-Parsing fact from fiction with the Bloom Energy box
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Looming electricity shortages
-China’s macro control
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
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…
-Does Facebook deserve the hell it’s catching from Greenpeace?
-Saudi Arabia to export solar power soon, US says
-Energy expert Lovins brings conservation message
-The new wave: Harnessing the power of the ocean
The predicament of industrial society unfolds to a large extent from its mishandling of energy issues. Because of that, the laws of thermodynamics — and no, to borrow a phrase, they’re not merely suggestions — have to be taken into account in any attempt to make sense of the economics of the approaching deindustrial age.
After almost thirty years of telling people to burn only dry wood and not to let their fires smolder, we should admit that such general instructions don’t work very well. I speak from experience, having co-authored the following statements decades ago in a booklet that was widely distributed. . .
More than 1,800 homes in Northwest Ohio are powered by wind thanks to Ohio’s first large scale community wind project—part of a new, growing trend in alternate energy.
Fuel cell company Bloom Energy made quite a stir over the weekend, with a spot on the CBS “Sixty Minutes” TV program in the United States (The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? – see the link for the video and transcript).
Even for staunch proponents of U.S. biofuel policy, it is hard to argue that the current subsidy on grain ethanol serves the purpose it was designed to serve. With ethanol mandates now in place in the form of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), there is a mechanism – with penalties for non-compliance – to ensure that gasoline blenders use the mandated amount of ethanol. Maintaining a subsidy on top of a mandate would be like paying people to obey the speed limit.
