News from August 2007

In Colorado, Real Estate Occupies Two Different Universes

Will the boom ever bust? Maybe, Travis says. Maybe when the buyers are all dead. Or at least too old to want a palace in the mountains. Retiring baby-boomers are driving this real estate rush in the mountains, and when they

Peak Oil Passnotes: Where Do We Go From Here?

As we normally take a look at factors hustling the oil market, like storms, war, debt and fiscal madness, it is time we stopped. Let us have a quick look at where the oil market actually stands at the moment. In general the market is in backwardation; that is crude oil at around $74 per [...]

Life During Wartime

…In recent years, we have witnessed an accelerating degeneration of the U.S. political system, from rule of law to rule by force. Most of us have avoided confronting the shocking meaning of this change. As Al Gore writes in The Assault on Reason, the executive branch, with the complicity of the legislative and judiciary branches, [...]

The future is just overhead

We need to drastically change our energy mix, relying far more on renewable energy. If we can make this shift, we might avoid the most disastrous effects of global climate change. Over the last 600,000 years, the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere varied between 200 and 290 parts per million. It started to climb out [...]

Spreading deserts threaten world food supply-UN

GENEVA, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world’s surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday. M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in [...]

Sweet Biofuels Research Goes Down On The Farm

Oklahoma State University’s sorghum-related biofuels research is taking a localized approach, with the aim of making possible the effective production of ethanol in the farmer’s own field. Sweet sorghum can be grown throughout temperate climate zones of the United States, including Oklahoma. It provides high biomass yield with low irrigation and fertilizer requirements. Corn ethanol, [...]

First Things First: Let

Our leaders must step up and tell the nation the truth: We need coal. A number of West Virginia political leaders are promoting the conversion of coal into liquid fuels. They see coal-to-liquid technology — a decades-old process – as a common-sense strategy for a nation that needs a dependable supply of transportation fuel. Those [...]

Oil-producing nations will have to control gas flaring

Dubai: Companies in the Middle East will have to look at corporate sustainability seriously in the coming years as environment and climate change issues gain momentum, according to industry leaders. “According to satellite data, in 2006, oil producing countries and companies burned about 170 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas worldwide or nearly five [...]

Stuck in guzzlers on road to nowhere

George Bush will talk climate change at APEC, but at home the big car culture reigns regardless The Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards took a huge political gamble this week. He told an audience of unionists in Florida that they needed to make a big sacrifice: give up their four-wheel-drives in the interests of combating [...]

Oil prices higher on storm threat

World oil prices climbed on fears that a severe storm is threatening Gulf of Mexico energy installations amid already tight supplies in the United States, analysts said Friday. …Oil prices were well underpinned by a potential storm forming in the Atlantic which re-ignited fears that supply from Gulf of Mexico oil installations could be squeezed. [...]