Kunstler: Reviews Movies!

     This week, with a nod to the onrushing holiday, and various freight trains of dread barreling down the track at us, I want to take a break from the usual concerns and talk about something else: why Hollywood exemplifies our worst collective blunder of the historical moment: our techno-narcissism.      I went […]

The 7 Biggest US Solar Projects Under Construction Right Now

Despite all the talk of Solyndra and Chinese solar companies dumping their products onto the US market, the development of projects in the US continues apace. Driven by falling costs for photovoltaics and California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, many utility-scale projects are in the works in the southwest United States. These seven mega projects were culled […]

Japan Says Nuclear Power Cost May Be 50% Higher Than Estimated

Nuclear power generation in Japan is about 50 percent more expensive than estimated after factoring in the cost of paying for an accident like the Fukushima disaster, a government panel said. Nuclear energy costs at least 8.9 yen (11 cents) per kilowatt hour, compared with a government estimate of 5.9 yen in 2004, the panel […]

Jack Keller: Understanding Peak Water

“A very, very large amount of our total food production is depending on a diminishing supply of water,” remarks Jack Keller, one of our own regulars here in the CM.com community and an accomplished world expert on water management. Similar to oil and other key natural resources that are mined and consumed, water is subject […]

How Maliki and Iran Outsmarted the U.S. on Troop Withdrawal

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s suggestion that the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is part of a U.S. military success story ignores the fact that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military had planned to maintain a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq. The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how […]

The incompetent and unscrupulous: Confidence in the age of MF Global

Those who are incompetent require our correction. The incompetent need to know how to succeed. Maybe this takes education. Maybe it takes better judgement. Maybe it takes a thoroughgoing review of their errors. While the incompetent may elicit our scorn, they do not merit our moral indignation. That is reserved for the unscrupulous. The unscrupulous […]

Natural Gas Fueling Stations Popping Up Around The Country

It had to happen sooner or later. Natural gas is considered a much cleaner fuel than petroleum. Now a company called NCI is building natural gas fueling stations in Lee County, Florida for the general public and businesses. The fist will be a service station near Southwest Florida International Airport. Earlier this year, the city […]

Real wealth: Howard T. Odum’s energy economics

Money and market values cannot be used to evaluate real wealth from the environment. – Howard T. Odum In the 1970s, Howard T. Odum explained human economics using ecology and energy fundamentals. His work remains essential for ecologists, who imagine achieving “sustainability.” His 1974 “Energy, Ecology, & Economics” provides a good summary of his concerns […]

Still no sign our oil addiction is ebbing

In a move reminiscent of drug dealers peddling their addictive wares to school kids in order to guarantee, um, future market growth, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal recently opined that the world’s largest producer of crude would like to maintain a target price of around US$70 to US$80 a barrel for its crude lest […]

The news is terrible. Is the world really doomed?

It is a crisp bright winter morning, but in a windowless basement gallery at Tate Britain, minutes after opening time, there is already quite a crowd for the paintings of the end of the world. The 19th-century artist John Martin has an erratic reputation, the exhibition has been running for months, and entry is a […]

Russian company signs up to develop Iran oil field

Iran signed a deal reportedly worth up to $1 billion with Russia’s Tatneft on Sunday to develop an oil field, a rare example of new foreign investment into the oil and gas sector of a country under ever tighter economic sanctions. Oil Ministry website SHANA said the development at the Zagheh oil field, on the […]

Peak E-Cat

Number of searches of the term “E-Cat” according to Google Trends The interest in the “E-Cat“, the supposed “cold fusion reactor” invented by Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi, is waning. You can perceive that clearly from the activity of the various sites dealing with it; while “Google Trends” confirms that the trend is indeed down. […]

Green Technology that Pollutes the Planet

In previous columns, we’ve exposed that “renewable” technology is neither renewable, nor clean, nor green because it relies upon rare earth elements—it’s also neither cost effective nor efficient but that’s another column. Currently the Chinese have a stranglehold over all phases of rare earth production, including mining, processing, and refining. China accounts for ninety five […]

Rare earths rising for next five years

Despite China’s virtual corner on the market of rare earths, demand is skyrocketing along with investments in new mines worldwide that has some pundits talking of a “rare earth bubble.” The U.S., Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and even Afghanistan all have strategic efforts underway to reopen rare earth mines, many of which will be producing […]

Former nuclear industry insider speaks out on lessons and disillusionment

The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that triggered an unprecedented nuclear crisis forced a former nuclear energy advocate from his home due to its proximity to the stricken nuclear power plant, leaving him disillusioned with an industry he had so willingly believed in. Toshiro Kitamura, 66, now lives in a rental home in the […]

Protests spread in troubled Kazakh oil region

Protests in Kazakhstan’s oil-producing Mangistau region, unprecedented in the Central Asian state’s recent history, spread Sunday to the regional capital, where hundreds of angry protesters faced reinforced police troops. Late Saturday, one person was killed and 11 people were wounded in a fresh clash with police in the village of Shetpe, bringing the total official […]

Shale oil project raises environmental hackles in Israel

BEIT GUVRIN, Israel: Among the serene vineyards and pine trees of Israel’s wine-growing heartland, a towering drill is boring 600 meters underground, dredging up black rocks that smell like petrol. This is oil shale, rocks saturated with kerogen, a material that turns into oil and gas under intense heat. Huge deposits of this kerogen-rich rock […]

China: Country in City

Guillermo Munro / China Daily     This happy rooftop farmer is a trendsetter, and if the “garden city” concept takes off, many more will reap the rewards of self-sufficiency in the city. Zhang Yanlin / for China Daily     Some cities have already started greenings campaign, like this apartment in Chongqing. Planting food […]

Ants, Angels and Armor: Further Conversations on Human Nature

“The big system can be pretty overwhelming. We know that we can’t beat them by competing with them. What we can do is build small systems where we live and work that serve our needs as we define us and not as they‘re defined for us. The big boys in their shining armor are up […]

permafrost thaw could compound global warming

A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere A bubble rose through a hole in the surface of a frozen lake. It popped, followed by another, and another, as if a pot were […]

Senate approves Keystone Pipeline Provision in Budget Deal

The Senate on Saturday voted to extend the payroll tax cut by two months, after both sides were unable to reach a comprehensive agreement to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for a full year. The deal, passed in a 89-10 vote, includes a provision to speed up a decision on the Keystone […]

Congress to Approve Keystone Pipeline Provision in Budget Deal

A Senate source tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that congressional leaders have worked out a two-month budget deal that includes a fully-funded extension of the payroll tax cut. The deal will also require the Obama administration to decide within 60 days on whether or not it will approve construction of the Keystone oil pipeline. President Obama […]

Why the US is sending oil overseas

The United States has become a net exporter of oil. Pick yourself up off the floor. It’s true — at least by one definition of “oil.” And the change to shipping oil overseas will have major effects on U.S. economic growth and on what you should hold in your portfolio. Let’s start by nailing down […]

A conversation with Dmitry Orlov about Europe

I came upon Dmitry Orlov’s writings—as with most good things on the Internet—by letting chance and curiosity guide me from link to link. It was one of those moments of clarity when a large number of confusing questions find their answer along with their correct formulation. For example, the existence of fundamental similarities between the […]

Exxon Mobil spent $3.2M on 3Q lobbying

xxon Mobil Corp. spent $3.21 million in the third quarter to lobby the federal government on offshore oil drilling and other issues, according to a disclosure report. That’s down from the $4.12 million that the world’s largest publicly traded oil and company spent in the year-ago period, and less than the $3.81 million it spent […]

John Michael Greer: The Future Can’t Pay Its Bills

I want to expand here on some of the points raised in last week’s post, because they deal with factors in our situation that operate well below the surface. One of the things that makes the predicament of industrial society so difficult for most people to notice, in fact, is that its effects are woven […]

The Global Village Construction: LifeTrac Design Challenge

The LifeTrac Design Challenge is now live at GrabCAD: Pass this on to any engineer friends. This is our first attempt to solve a technical issue by means of a crowd engineering platform. I am hoping that this platform will be a significant contributor to the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) development effort. We will […]

Fundamental fusion

Two of Europe’s mega-science projects have been in the news this week, although you could be forgiven for only noticing one of them. The latest findings from the Large Hadron Collider were widely reported, if poorly understood by pretty much everybody except the other CERN researchers and Prof Jim Al-Khalili — we might have glimpsed […]

the IEA is bullish on future US oil output

Almost ten. That’s the estimate of total US liquids production by 2016 that the International Energy Agency foresees, in millions of b/d, out of the US by 2016. The IEA, in its latest monthly report, was downright ebullient in its forecast of what the US, and to a lesser degree, other non-OPEC countries were going […]

Chevron finds natural gas off western Australia

Chevron Corp. said Thursday that a well being drilled off the coast of western Australia hit natural gas. The company said its Australian subsidiary found gas in water nearly a mile deep and 186 miles from the coastal city of Exmouth. The well was drilled to a depth of 12,461 feet. It was Chevron’s 12th […]

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