|
| |  |
Discussions about Peak Oil and Our Future
|
The midpoint of global
hydrocarbon production
read more
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Australian cities need radical changes |
|
AUSTRALIA circa 2050: population 35 million, climate change-induced rising sea levels have flooded the Gold Coast region, apartment blocks are used to grow food and people commute in monorail pods above the sea.
In another city, Australians live on floating island pods with apartments both below and above sea level, the population has shifted from land to the sea because of the sky-rocketing value of disappearing arable land. Climate change has also forced many Australians to move inland and create new cities in the outback, relying on solar power to exist in the inhospitable interior.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Sunday, March 21 @ 08:25:02 PDT (97 reads)
(Read More... | 1305 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| Gas the Next Fuel to Fire Australia's Boom |
|
KARRATHA, Australia (AP) -- First gold, then coal and iron ore. Now, a new bonanza is about to be unleashed from beneath Down Under: Australia's got gas.
Projects being ramped up to tap huge undersea fields off the country's northwest could quadruple Australia's exports of liquefied natural gas in the next few years and turn it into what the country's resources minister has called an ''energy superpower.''
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Sunday, March 21 @ 07:13:04 PDT (95 reads)
(Read More... | 984 bytes more | Score: 3) |
|
|
|
|
| Stuart Staniford: The net energy of pre-industrial agriculture |
|
Following on from yesterday's discussion, I want to make a point that seems like it must have been made before, but I cannot quickly find a good discussion of it. That is that the net energy of pre-industrial agriculture, taken as a whole energy-gathering system, must have been low, with EROEI probably on the order of 1.1-1.6 depending on place and time.
Prior to the industrial revolution, the main source of primary energy in society was biological - agriculture and forestry, with a significant assist from water mills. The biological energy was used to feed horses (used themselves in ploughing, but also in transportation), as well as agricultural workers. The water-mills were primarily used to mill flour (ie also used in agricultural production, for the most part).
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Sunday, March 21 @ 06:28:22 PDT (123 reads)
(Read More... | 1823 bytes more | Score: 0) |
|
|
|
|
| Clean Tech Sector Thriving, Survey Finds |
|
The recession has battered investors, but new data suggest that the clean technology sector was largely immune from the global economic collapse.
According to a survey released Tuesday by Clean Edge, a research firm in Portland, Ore., revenue for wind power, biofuels and solar photovoltaics grew in 2009 by 11.4 percent to $139 billion around the world.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 21:13:23 PDT (134 reads)
(Read More... | 1365 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| Are US Marines Expendable? |
|
Deploying US Marines in uninhabited desolate terrain in Afghanistan to secure an area where oil pipelines get built may be considered crucial to the national security of the United States.
After all, oil is vital to keep our cars running, our airplanes flying, our homes heated and our tanks, ships, helicopters and other military vehicles operating. But what remains inexcusable are plans to bivouac more than 3,000 US Marines in a single compound in hostile territory.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 19:38:34 PDT (204 reads)
(Read More... | 2158 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| States Take Sides in Greenhouse Gas 'Endangerment' Brawl |
|
States took their places in the trenches this week as they joined the court fight either for or against U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases.
Sixteen states asked a federal appeals court this week to become parties in what has grown to be a major legal fight pitting EPA, states and environmental groups against industries, global warming skeptics and other state challengers.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 18:28:20 PDT (102 reads)
(Read More... | 1144 bytes more | Score: 3) |
|
|
|
|
| UK: Energy firms could be forced to buy low-carbon power |
|
Government considers plan to oblige British Gas and others to buy proportion of their power from nuclear and clean coal plants
The government will next week signal a move towards the introduction of a "low-carbon obligation" that would force British Gas and other suppliers of energy to buy a percentage of their power from nuclear and clean coal plants.
The radical measure – an extension of the renewable obligation that is funding wind farms – will appear in a document to be published alongside the budget next Wednesday.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 17:31:56 PDT (99 reads)
(Read More... | 1348 bytes more | Score: 4) |
|
|
|
|
| Pakistan gas pipeline is Iran's lifeline |
|
TEHRAN (UPI) -- As Iran braces for another broadside of economic sanctions over its nuclear program, Tehran moves closer to opening up a new lifeline -- a natural gas pipeline to Pakistan and possibly India and China as well.
If everything goes as planned, this much-delayed, controversial project could wreck U.S. efforts to check Iran's expansionist ambitions.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 16:31:41 PDT (163 reads)
(Read More... | 1064 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| Military advises climate change could threaten national security |
|
Military leaders advised state politicians Friday of the dangers of fossil fuel dependence and potential climate change threats.
The Senate Select Committee on Climate Change and AB 32 Implementation hosted the hearing, “Energy Security & Climate Change: Global Problems, Local Solutions,” at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 11:03:16 PDT (197 reads)
(Read More... | 851 bytes more | Score: 3) |
|
|
|
|
| Non-renewable phosphorus both a curse and a necessity |
|
We Canadians like to think of ourselves as a resource-rich nation. And it is true -- we are well-endowed with energy, water, land and minerals.
But there is one nutrient necessary to our well-being -- in fact our food security -- that we don't have in plentiful supply, and a new report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) warns we are squandering what little of it we have.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 10:27:10 PDT (251 reads)
(Read More... | 829 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| China’s Growth Shifts the Geopolitics of Oil |
|
Last summer, Saudi Arabia put the final bolt in its largest oil expansion project ever, opening a new field capable of pumping 1.2 million barrels a day — more than the entire production of Texas. The field, called Khurais, was part of an ambitious $60 billion program to increase the kingdom’s production to meet growing energy needs.
It turns out the timing could not have been worse for Saudi Arabia.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 08:34:08 PDT (327 reads)
(Read More... | 2291 bytes more | Score: 3) |
|
|
|
|
| False economic paradigm, false employment, artifical employment |
|
In this ongoing series with economist Mike Folkerth, www.kingofsimple.com, and author of The Biggest Lie Ever Believed, he writes about “When reality comes knocking; be long gone” as it applies to present day America.
Americans continue operating in a 20th century economic paradigm that cannot continue in the 21st century. We think we can grow, consume, grow and consume more.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 08:02:43 PDT (401 reads)
(Read More... | 898 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| Is Earth past the tipping point? |
|
Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere.
A team of 30 scientists across the globe have determined that the nine environmental processes named above must remain within specific limits, otherwise the "safe operating space" within which humankind can exist on Earth will be threatened. Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Saturday, March 20 @ 06:42:56 PDT (305 reads)
(Read More... | 1157 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| Perils of the Stationary State |
|
When economic growth finally levels off, what kind of world comes after? Shall we be unchained from the mad rush for money of the last century? Or will other but equally chafing chains weigh us down instead?
In 1930, Keynes wrote that “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.” Keynes has not been the only person to predict that the modern rise in living standards will come to an end, and that a better kind of society will follow. Marx thought universal abundance would usher in socialism. And those who predict a running out of resources like oil are predicting a move to more sustainable, and thus more humane, ways of living.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Friday, March 19 @ 22:12:36 PDT (282 reads)
(Read More... | 2306 bytes more | Score: 5) |
|
|
|
|
| UK: We'll open a nuclear power station every 18 MONTHS, say Tories |
|
One new nuclear power station would be opened every 18 months under a Conservative blueprint to avoid the first widespread electricity blackouts since the 1970s.
Shadow energy spokesman Greg Clark told the Daily Mail there would be 'no limit' on the expansion of nuclear power under a Tory government.
|
|
Posted by Leanan on Friday, March 19 @ 20:06:00 PDT (204 reads)
(Read More... | 898 bytes more | Score: 3) |
|
|
|
|
|  |
|
|