News from July 2009

Drillers bid adios to Canada, hola to Mexico

CALGARY – Calgary-based drillers are ripping out heaters and installing air conditioning units on their rigs as the crews trade winter gloves for sunblock to get in on a growing Mexican oil boom. As low natural gas prices continue to idle drilling equipment in Canada, the national oil company of Mexico is implementing plans to [...]

The Path to Fusion Power

The This energy use is very uneven. For a few selected countries, the figures for use per person are: the USA (near, but not quite at, the top of the scale)

Cuba

HAVANA: It The communist government imposed conservation measures even as it continues to get free oil for services from Venezuela, fueling rumors that Cuba is selling President Hugo Chavez

Should Thursday Be the New Friday?

The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek As government agencies and corporations scramble to cut expenses, one idea gaining widespread attention involves cutting something most employees wouldn’t mind losing: work on Fridays. Regular three-day weekends, without a decrease in the actual hours worked per week, could not only save money, but also ease [...]

Energy giants hunker down to slash costs

Producers embark on major re-evaluations as hopes of quick turnaround fade The world’s energy giants are increasingly cutting back in the face of slumping demand that they warn is not likely to pick up any time soon. Little more than a year after oil jumped to its high of $147 (U.S.) a barrel, the industry [...]

Norman Borlaug: Farmers Can Feed the World

Better seeds and fertilizers, not romantic myths, will let them do it Earlier this month in L But just as the ground shifted beneath the Italian community of L

Top 10 checklist: How societies can avoid

In his book Accepting that the human sphere exists within the larger biosphere, you might further generalize Diamond

DOE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Moving away from fossil fuels will only take four things: time, money, technological advances and a calibrated judgment about what projects should be pursued. “The commonly invoked silver bullet is the wrong way to look it. We have limited time and limited resources,” said Steve Koonin, undersecretary for science Department of [...]

The Real Perils of Human Population Growth

About forty years ago, the world population was only 3.5 billion, or about half of the present population of 6.7 billion people. Most of us seem to ignore or be unaware of the magnitude of this rapid expansion and the vast changes that it is causing throughout the world. Indeed, the daily and even the [...]

Pemex Output Goal

(Bloomberg) — Petroleos Mexicanos, Latin America Last year, Pemex