Resource Insights

• Taking a Break--Happy Thanksgiving!

  I am taking a holiday break and expect to post again on Sunday, December 6. Happy Thanksgiving! [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 6:00am EST
  

• The trouble with apocalypse

  
  Although for us the End has perhaps lost its naive imminence, its shadow still lies on the crises of our fictions.
  
  When you read, as you must almost every passing day, that ours is the great age of crisis--technological, military, cultural--you may well simply nod and proceed calmly to [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 8:15am EST
  

• Amelia Earhart and the complexity problem

  As I watched the recently released film about Amelia Earhart, I couldn't help thinking about parallels between her journey and ours as an industrial culture. The Earhart in the film noted that her path up to time when she attempts to circumnavigate the globe had been free of major' [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 2:37pm EST
  

• Immigration and our ecological predicament

  Whenever the word immigration is mentioned, two polarized camps almost immediately emerge. One camp considers new residents an asset, bringing new ideas and entrepreneurial zeal to a society, while the other considers immigration a bane, bringing crime, disease, poverty and culturally disruptive practices.
  
  Only very rarely mentioned by those [...]
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  Posted: November 08, 2009, 10:18am EST
  

• The peace movement and the cornucopian view

  
  If you want peace, work for justice.
              --Bumper Sticker (originally from the New Year's Day message of Pope Paul VI, 1972)
  
  The above statement seems so much a truism that when someone says it, we rarely think to inquire about what the speaker means by either peace or' [...]
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  Posted: November 01, 2009, 12:45pm EST
  

• Speaking the unspeakable

  Legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens has managed to say in public what many policymakers and pundits who championed the invasion of Iraq only think to themselves, namely, that oil companies based in the United States are "entitled" to access to Iraq's oil fields because of the American treasure and' [...]
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  Posted: October 25, 2009, 11:35am EDT
  

• Resource nationalism: The last stand for the oil optimists

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Resource Nationalism: The Last Stand for the Oil Optimists" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:The price of oil has more than doubled from its nadir of $30 a barrel earlier this year. To explain the resilience of oil prices in [...]
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  Posted: October 23, 2009, 9:09pm EDT
  

• Sound familiar?

  Compare these statements concerning oil and natural gas made a decade apart:
  
  Oil in 1998-99:
  
  [I]f you're still operating under the assumption that the earth's petroleum--or at least the cheap stuff--is about to run out, you're not going to thrive in the new oil era. Technology is making' [...]
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  Posted: October 18, 2009, 9:40am EDT
  

• The purpose of it all

  The human search for meaning is a timeless theme and central to our existence. That search has led to complex religious doctrines about the afterlife and how one will be rewarded or punished during it depending on one's record in this life. It has also led to entirely humanistic' [...]
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  Posted: October 11, 2009, 9:03am EDT
  

• National parks and the idea of conservation in the fossil fuel age

  In the past week many people have been watching Ken Burns' latest documentary film, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, on television. The series is a moving tribute to the men and women who saved some of America's most stunning landscapes from the greedy hands of the mining,' [...]
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  Posted: October 04, 2009, 8:37am EDT
  

• Oil optimists grow more outlandish

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Oil Optimists Grow More Outlandish" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:As the troubling realities of future oil supplies begin to penetrate official circles, the oil optimists are making even more outlandish claims.....Read more. [...]
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  Posted: September 24, 2009, 2:10pm EDT
  

• Taking a break for September

  I will be taking a break from posting for the month of September while I travel to do research for a large writing project. I expect to post again on October 4. Meanwhile, I hope you will visit these excellent sites:
  
  Energy Bulletin
  
  The Oil Drum
  [...]
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  Posted: September 06, 2009, 8:28am EDT
  

• Deep time and the human future

  In Basin and Range, the first of several books he wrote on the geography of the United States, John McPhee tries to explain the deep time of the geologist to the reader:With your arms spread again to represent all time on earth, look at one hand with its line [...]
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  Posted: August 30, 2009, 7:26am EDT
  

• Burning Picassos for Heat

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Burning Picassos for Heat" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Burning natural gas to extract and process oil from the Canadian tar sands has been likened by one industry insider to burning Picassos for heat. But the bidding at the "Picassos" [...]
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  Posted: August 27, 2009, 7:43am EDT
  

• The show must go on

  
  
  
  Paris, But Not France
  
  It is a sign that the world may be upside down when French tourists in Las Vegas take pictures of themselves in front of the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino complex which includes a half-scale replica [...]
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  Posted: August 22, 2009, 7:50pm EDT
  

• Short break

  I am taking a short break while I travel this week. I expect to post again on Sunday, August 23rd. [...]
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  Posted: August 16, 2009, 7:00am EDT
  

• A thing of beauty

  
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp --John Keats
  
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass,
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp --Henry Miller
  
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp It is amazing how complete is the [...]
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  Posted: August 09, 2009, 11:04am EDT
  

• Burning the furniture

  When there is no money for fuel in the middle of winter, desperate residents have on occasion resorted to burning the furniture. That works as long as the furniture lasts. But come spring, there may be no place to sit or sleep, and no prospect of resorting to the same [...]
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  Posted: August 01, 2009, 9:14pm EDT
  

• Is Canada becoming a petrostate?

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Is Canada Becoming a Petrostate?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Canada's increasing reliance on energy exports, especially oil from the Alberta tar sands, risks unsettling its politics and economy and turning the country into a petrostate--an authoritarian society in which' [...]
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  Posted: July 30, 2009, 9:54am EDT
  

• The unfathomable universe

  The one thing we know for certain about the universe is that it is unfathomable. We try to come to terms with this fact by telling stories, by creating narratives that are an attempt to abstract general principles from day-to-day events. In fact, making narratives is the primary way in [...]
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  Posted: July 26, 2009, 8:59am EDT
  

• The big question

  In 1883 renown Yale professor William Graham Sumner examined the question of what the social classes owe to each other. Sumner was a classical liberal--what we might call a conservative today if only we could find a real one--and his answer to this question can be summarized [...]
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  Posted: July 19, 2009, 8:47am EDT
  

• Canada is leaking emergy

  That's not a typo in the title. Emergy is a term coined by famed energy and ecology researcher Howard Odum. An analysis underpinned by the emergy concept explains why importers of Canada's natural resources such as crude oil, natural gas, unfinished wood, grains and metal ores are getting [...]
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  Posted: July 12, 2009, 9:17am EDT
  

• A brief ecological manifesto

  I'm not a European, but I play one on the Internet--at least for the next month. Comment: Visions, a website which "explores the personal views of thinkers, innovators and scientists about possible solutions to global warming, overpopulation and dwindling resources," asked me and other "European intellectuals and leaders"' [...]
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  Posted: July 05, 2009, 9:05am EDT
  

• Is the United States drifting toward "war socialism"?

  Jay Hanson is a well-known voice on issues of peak oil and sustainability. A systems analyst by trade, he established one of the first web sites (dieoff.org) to discuss these issues in depth in the mid-1990s. His latest web venture is a site called War Socialism on which [...]
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  Posted: June 28, 2009, 9:50am EDT
  

• Which matters most? The size of the tap or the tank?

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Which Matters Most? The Size of the Tap or the Tank?" has now been posted. The theme will be familiar to frequent readers of this blog. Here is the teaser:Energy optimists are fond of citing very large numbers for worldwide fossil fuel [...]
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  Posted: June 25, 2009, 1:18pm EDT
  

• Green shoots: An alternative view

  I am seeing green shoots everywhere these days. But not in the places in which Wall Street's strident financial cheerleaders and Washington's happy economists are. I am seeing green shoots in the many cracks in the suburban neighborhood roads I now travel daily by bicycle.
  
  Unlike the supposed financial [...]
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  Posted: June 21, 2009, 8:30am EDT
  

• What if the techno-optimists and cornucopians are half right?

  Some days I wake up and wish for the world's techno-optimists and cornucopians (TOCs) to be right. The future would be so much easier for all of us. But perhaps more immediately, the present would become a less worrisome time zone. Those who anguish about peak oil, climate change, water' [...]
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  Posted: June 14, 2009, 9:29am EDT
  

• Peak oil, sustainability and the problem of freedom

  In lieu of my weekly posting, I'm linking to a guest post I wrote for The Oil Drum entitled "Peak Oil, Sustainability and the Problem of Freedom" which was posted today. Here is the lede:In the film "A Beautiful Mind" the putative hero is John Nash,' [...]
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  Posted: June 06, 2009, 8:38pm EDT
  

• Hypocritical modelers

  Oil companies like to use models to estimate their reserves and the potential of unexplored fields. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil company and a longtime supporter of the global warming denial lobby, tells us the following on page 8 of its 2007 annual report: "Using proprietary'" [...]
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  Posted: May 31, 2009, 8:47am EDT
  

• Holiday Break

  I am taking a holiday break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, May 31st. In the meantime, I hope you'll take a look at my latest column on Scitizen entitled "Energy: The Achilles Heel of the Resource Pyramid." Enjoy the weekend!' [...]
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  Posted: May 24, 2009, 8:30am EDT
  

• Energy: The Achilles heel of the resource pyramid

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Energy: The Achilles Heel of the Resource Pyramid" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:When economists say that we have far larger mineral resources today than ever before, they are usually referring to a model known as the resource pyramid. What [...]
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  Posted: May 23, 2009, 5:44pm EDT
  

• The freedom lobby

  There is nothing so intoxicating as freedom. That's partly because the word is so abstract that people can define it in any way that they want. And, naturally they define it in ways that they believe will give them the maximum purchase on wealth, power, pleasure and security.
  
  So,' [...]
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  Posted: May 17, 2009, 7:22am EDT
  

• Let's party 'til the helium's gone

  Helium is fun. When you fill balloons with it, they defy gravity. If you fill your lungs with it and then talk, you'll probably sound like one of The Chipmunks, a fictional all-animal singing group whose voices were sped up to give them a high-pitched, squeaky quality. Children,' [...]
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  Posted: May 10, 2009, 4:42pm EDT
  

• Geoengineering the climate: Bad for you and our energy future

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Geoengineering the Climate: Bad for You and Our Energy Future" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Proposals to reduce global warming through giant engineering projects or so-called geoengineering abound. Almost all are in the idea stage. But even if they were [...]
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  Posted: May 04, 2009, 11:18am EDT
  

• Peak oil and mass communication

  In lieu of my weekly posting, I'm linking to a guest post I wrote for The Oil Drum entitled "Peak Oil and Mass Communication" which was posted today. Here is the lede:If you remember one thing about mass communication, remember this: Effective mass communication is sloganeering. Unfortunately, this' [...]
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  Posted: May 03, 2009, 10:50am EDT
  

• Does understanding complexity beget a tragic view of life?

  Sheer exuberance is often enough to carry the young into the most daunting and dangerous of endeavors. But as we age, experience can make us more hesitant. Many people discover that the universe can sometimes be arbitrary, that completely unforeseen events can ruin careers and even end lives, that, in [...]
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  Posted: April 26, 2009, 9:15am EDT
  

• Does Rick Perry see the future?

  Not long after the end of the First World War Germans, now able to cross the border with Switzerland freely, began showing up at the office of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. They described dreams that he believed foretold a great social and political upheaval in Germany. He later wrote [...]
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  Posted: April 18, 2009, 4:36pm EDT
  

• Until all the evidence is in

  Nobody actually waits until all the evidence is in. The simple reason is that all the evidence will never be in. For that to occur one would have to know about everything going on in the universe right now and where those things would lead in the future. For Earth-bound [...]
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  Posted: April 12, 2009, 3:18pm EDT
  

• The unbearable lightness of information

  This decade was the one that was supposed to usher in the era when bits and bytes would replace tons and barrels as the measure of what an economy does. The information economy would eclipse the economy of blast furnaces and railcars.
  
  The allure of such an economy is [...]
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  Posted: April 05, 2009, 8:27am EDT
  

• Why doomer porn is good for you

  Spend an afternoon reading peak oil doomer sites on the Internet and you may alternate between the desire to reach for a kitchen knife and end it all and the inclination to dismiss the information on the sites as complete bunk. Hence the often voiced criticism of this approach [...]
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  Posted: March 29, 2009, 9:54am EDT
  

• Is thorium an energy alchemist's dream?

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Is Thorium an Energy Alchemist's Dream?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Advocates say that already existing thorium fuel and reactor technology could provide centuries and perhaps millennia of safe, abundant nuclear power. Are they right?......Read more' [...]
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  Posted: March 27, 2009, 10:17am EDT
  

• The return of the middleman

  (Blogger failed to post this week's piece automatically in my absence. To my regular readers I apologize for the delay in posting.)
  
  The middleman has gotten a terrible name.
  
  Not too long ago I attended a meeting on food policy where I heard sharp comments about the negative' [...]
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  Posted: March 24, 2009, 9:32am EDT
  

• We must make a lot of mistakes quickly

  We often think of progress these days as coming from carefully planned research conducted by government- or corporate-funded laboratories with large staffs of scientists and technicians. As it turns out, many of the key innovations in history have arrived serendipitously or resulted from trial and error.
  
  Most people know [...]
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  Posted: March 14, 2009, 3:36pm EDT
  

• Complications

  Some advocates for a sustainable future claim that the fulfillment of their vision will result in a simpler, healthier, happier existence when compared to our current consumption- and status-oriented unsustainable present. They may very well be right about healthier and happier. But will that sustainable future seem simpler to the [...]
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  Posted: March 08, 2009, 2:40pm EDT
  

• Jeffrey Brown and the net oil exports crisis

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Jeffrey Brown and the Net Oil Exports Crisis" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:With peak oil comes peak oil exports. Why Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown thinks the world is headed for a drastic energy downsizing and soon.......Read more[...]
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  Posted: March 06, 2009, 10:20am EST
  

• Apollo 13: A Guilty Pleasure in the Age of Scarcity

  I was watching the movie Apollo 13 recently for what was probably the fifth time, consuming it in the manner of a guilty pleasure. I say guilty pleasure because this movie is the paradigmatic technofix movie. And, I have little faith that the mounting challenges of resource depletion and [...]
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  Posted: March 01, 2009, 11:03am EST
  

• Why your investment adviser can't advise the world

  As stock markets around the world continue to plummet, most investment advisers are telling their long-time clients to stay put and wait for a rebound. With the world overflowing with newly printed (actually, electronically created) money waiting to be invested, a rebound might come despite sentiment that is now so [...]
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  Posted: February 22, 2009, 1:22pm EST
  

• Please state the nature of your emergency

  When a 911 operator answers a call, the operator often begins as follows: "Please state the nature of your emergency." As anyone who has called 911 knows, how you describe your emergency has everything to do with how the police respond.
  
  I was speaking to a friend by phone [...]
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  Posted: February 15, 2009, 8:40am EST
  

• The information society and its limits

  The breathtaking expansion of the Internet and the sources of information now available on it have served to conjure a cybernetic vision of unlimited growth--growth that can never be slowed for long by lack of physical resources because it is mostly virtual. The Internet has undoubtedly allowed people to find [...]
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  Posted: February 08, 2009, 9:49am EST
  

• Lightering our way to abundance

  
  Lightering is the process of transferring oil cargo between vessels of largely different sizes and is undertaken as many port facilities cannot accept ocean-faring tankers of the size of oil transports.
                                                                                                                              --Wikipedia
  
  An old Wall Street shibboleth says that nobody rings a bell at the top. To prove [...]
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  Posted: January 31, 2009, 11:08am EST
  

• Over the cliff for natural gas in North America?

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Over the cliff for natural gas in North America?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Is natural gas production in North America headed for a cliff? No one can know for sure; but all signs point down......Read more [...]
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  Posted: January 27, 2009, 11:18pm EST
  

• Peak oil investment verities

  Like many other verities in the investment world, peak oil investment verities have turned out to be anything but. Investment newsletter writer and author Jim Grant likes to say that knowledge in the sciences is cumulative, but knowledge in finance is cyclical.
  
  And, so it has been with [...]
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  Posted: January 25, 2009, 6:28pm EST
  

• The price illusion

  The Institute for Energy Research (IER) emailed me last week to warn me about the Obama administration's "green jobs" plan. The press release said that the plan would increase energy prices and actually cause total employment to decline. Furthermore, the release stated, renewable energy production has "stagnated" for the' [...]
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  Posted: January 18, 2009, 8:56am EST
  

• Will energy show us that inflation and deflation can occur at the same time?

  At the beginning of this decade investment advisor Marc Faber told incredulous investors that rising economic prosperity in Asia signalled the beginning of a new bull market in commodities, but would also have deflationary consequences for consumer prices. How could these inflationary and deflationary effects coincide? The answer has [...]
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  Posted: January 11, 2009, 2:30pm EST
  

• No second chance

  It is the mission of nearly every mainstream economist to overcome the pessimism of those who study the natural world and who don't see how the human endeavor can continue on its current course of endless exponential economic growth. "Now, now," these economists will say to the natural scientists, "you'" [...]
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  Posted: January 04, 2009, 10:45am EST
  

• Energy and money

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Energy and money" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Is energy merely another commodity among many in the modern industrial economy? Or is it the very basis of our financial and material life?
  .....Read more [...]
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  Posted: December 23, 2008, 2:22pm EST
  

• Holiday break

  The post below is my last one of this year. I'm taking a brief holiday break and expect to post a regular piece again on Sunday, January 4th. In the meantime, my latest column on Scitizen will be appearing shortly, and I'll provide a link to it when it [...]
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  Posted: December 21, 2008, 9:00pm EST
  

• Uncertainty

  To live in an uncertain world is one thing. To know it is altogether something else. In the last 30 years policymakers and then investors came to believe that the ups and downs in the economy and the financial markets were simply bumps along the road to long-term prosperity. In [...]
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  Posted: December 20, 2008, 10:14pm EST
  

• Energy and Ponzi schemes

  The recent collapse of what is believed to be the largest Ponzi scheme ever says as much about what the public believes regarding wealth and the possibilities of infinite growth as it does about the scruples of investment managers. (In a Ponzi scheme, old investors are paid off using [...]
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  Posted: December 14, 2008, 5:55pm EST
  

• The singularity: The fantasy and its effect

  
  (I am posting early this week since I will be on vacation and away from home until late next week.)
  
  This Thanksgiving I was discussing the idea of technological progress with my father. I asked him if he had ever heard the term "singularity." He recognized the word had [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2008, 8:52pm EST
  

• The overoptimized society

  For former Wall Street hedge fund manager and self-styled student of uncertainty Nassim Nicholas Taleb an important cause of the current financial meltdown is best described by ecological science. The system has become overoptimized. The consolidation of finance into the hands of fewer and fewer large players--banks, insurance companies, [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2008, 6:12pm EST
  

• The energy optimist's lexicon

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "The Energy Optimist's Lexicon" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:The world's energy optimists often employ a particular lexicon to make their case for abundance far into the future. Whether the lexicon is used cynically or out of ignorance, the result [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2008, 9:04pm EST
  

• Timing is everything

  As I watched a panel of speakers take questions about Michigan's and, by extension, the world's energy future at a recent conference, I was struck by how different their unspoken timetables for change were.
  
  The panel included peak oil lecturer and author Richard Heinberg who other than [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2008, 10:27am EST
  

• Higher lows

  (I am posting early this week since I am leaving today for the Conference on Michigan's Future where I will be presenting.)
  
  Back in February in a piece entitled "Do High Commodity Prices Speak for Themselves?" I wrote that the emerging spike in commodity prices would tell' [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2008, 11:11am EST
  

• The (Not So) Invincible Society

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "The (Not So) Invincible Society" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:Policymakers and the public think of modern industrial society as being resilient and durable. Are they right?
  .....Read more [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2008, 9:49pm EST
  

• Governing the ungovernable

  Some of my acquaintances have been saying for a long time that President George Bush has been leading the United States toward fascism. I have responded that they should be more concerned about anarchy than authoritarianism. For starters, the anti-authority gene runs deep in American culture. But I'm also in' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2008, 5:08pm EST
  

• Election-induced break

  I've decided to take a break from posting until after the U. S. elections. I'm currently doing radio and television ad production for two political campaigns, and as we come down to the home stretch I simply find myself without a moment to reflect or write on anything of consequence. [...]
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  Posted: October 19, 2008, 4:48pm EDT
  

• Too complex to fail?

  Much that has happened in the last few weeks in the markets was shocking in its swiftness even to the financially literate. But it shouldn't have been all that surprising. The explosive cocktail of too much debt and too little energy has now had the effect of toppling the already' [...]
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  Posted: October 12, 2008, 10:21am EDT
  

• Aubrey McClendon's natural gas smoke screen

  It would be lovely to think that the United States and even the entire world could transition from oil to natural gas as its major energy source. Natural gas is inarguably cleaner when it burns than oil or coal; it produces less carbon dioxide per unit of heat delivered, a [...]
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  Posted: October 05, 2008, 5:51pm EDT
  

• Receding Horizons for Alternative Energy Supplies

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Receding Horizons for Alternative Energy Supplies" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  When oil optimists tout the huge supply of oil that is still available to us in the form of tar sands and oil shale, they forget to mention that [...]

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  Posted: September 25, 2008, 4:01pm EDT
  

• Off to ASPO and a short vacation

  I will attending the ASPO-USA conference in Sacramento in the coming week and traveling in California thereafter. I expect to post again on October 5. In the meantime, my September column on Scitizen should be appearing shortly and I will post the teaser on my blog when it [...]
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  Posted: September 19, 2008, 9:58pm EDT
  

• The Last Bailout

  My post this week will be short and early as I am on my way to the ASPO-USA conference.
  
  While watching this week's turmoil in the world markets, I thought back to a piece Howard Odum wrote in 1974. In it he wrote:

  Worldwide inflation is driven in [...]

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  Posted: September 19, 2008, 9:50pm EDT
  

• The net energy cliff

  Charles Hall, the father of the energy return on investment (EROI) concept, once told me that our current society would probably not be able to function if the EROI for the entire society slipped below five.
  
  What does that mean? First, a quick review. It takes energy [...]
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  Posted: September 14, 2008, 3:59pm EDT
  

• It's just a phase

  Some deep ecologists have suggested that agriculture was a fundamental mistake in human evolution and has created more ills than it purports to address. There is perhaps a larger group of people who believe that it was the discovery of fossil fuels and their contribution to the industrial revolution that [...]
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  Posted: September 06, 2008, 10:34pm EDT
  

• Oil Prices and the Mayflower Problem

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Oil Prices and the Mayflower Problem" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  Do oil prices really tell the market what it needs to know when it needs to know it?....Read more

  [...]
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  Posted: August 31, 2008, 1:25pm EDT
  

• What my congressman does (and does not) know about energy

  It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
  It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
  
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp --Mark Twain

  Last week I participated in an energy forum sponsored by a congressional candidate from my district. In preparation I thought it would be useful to understand [...]

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  Posted: August 31, 2008, 11:28am EDT
  

• Prof. Harold Hill's America

  Drill!
  &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp--Homemade yardsign

  Optimism sells. It is one of the staples of American life. And, it makes it difficult to tell Americans bad news.
  
  I was reminded of this on a recent trip to Canada for a week of theater performances. Two of the performances were American musicals and one [...]

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  Posted: August 24, 2008, 7:56pm EDT
  

• Taking a short break--No post this week

  I've just returned from a week in Canada and am now catching up. I expect to post again on Sunday, August 24. [...]
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  Posted: August 17, 2008, 1:05pm EDT
  

• Does queueing theory explain oil's wild price swings?

  To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the oil bull market's demise have been greatly exaggerated. With crude oil down a mere $30 from its recent peak, many economists and financial analysts are proclaiming the end of the oil bull market. They seem to have forgotten that not too long ago [...]
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  Posted: August 10, 2008, 2:53pm EDT
  

• The problematic future of U. S. energy investment

  Can the current financial system in America help us make the energy infrastructure investment we need for a transition away from fossil fuels?
  
  First, let's look at how things are going right now. As investors have watched like deer in headlights while their stock portfolios melted down in recent [...]
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  Posted: August 03, 2008, 9:11am EDT
  

• The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  Understanding how the great hopes of early nuclear power advocates eventually turned into great disappointment may shed some light on nuclear power's future.....Read more

  [...]
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  Posted: July 29, 2008, 10:38pm EDT
  

• Could we start industrial society from scratch today?

  Could we start industrial society from scratch today? The answer is probably not. While such a question seems merely hypothetical, its answer has important implications regarding the prospects for a sustainable industrial future.
  
  The reason it would be so difficult to start an industrial society from scratch today is [...]
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  Posted: July 27, 2008, 11:48am EDT
  

• Peak retirement

  As members of America's baby boom generation come to retirement age, they are experiencing an unwelcome confluence of events that is already causing many to postpone or scale down plans for retirement. The swoon in the world's stock markets, the crash in housing prices, low interest rates that reduce [...]
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  Posted: July 19, 2008, 9:05pm EDT
  

• Could sustainability lead to an authoritarian future?

  Those who imagine humans eventually returning to agrarian societies also often imagine that such societies have the potential to be much more democratic and egalitarian than our current world. But, among those who imagine what I'll call a sustainable industrial future, there is little discussion of future political arrangements. It [...]
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  Posted: July 13, 2008, 8:04am EDT
  

• Which future should we prepare for, industrial or agrarian?

  The more Harrison Brown talks about the future of industrial society, the more unlikely it seems that it has a future. Brown is the author of a seminal book entitled "The Challenge of Man's Future" which outlines the ecological predicament we find ourselves in today. Perhaps the most [...]
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  Posted: July 05, 2008, 3:38pm EDT
  

• Free speech and the fate of humanity

  We all know that even in the United States the guarantee of free speech has limits. The Supreme Court long ago said that no one has the right to endanger his or her fellow citizens by, for instance, falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Such acts of speech are [...]
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  Posted: June 29, 2008, 11:00am EDT
  

• Move people, not metal

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Move People, Not Metal" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  Our current transportation system uses enormous amounts of energy primarily to move the weight of vehicles which transport passengers and freight. Bill James thinks we can improve transportation energy efficiency by [...]

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  Posted: June 26, 2008, 6:23pm EDT
  

• Summer Solstice Break - No Post This Week, Common Dreams Accepts a Piece

  I'm taking a short break from posting here and plan to post again Sunday, June 29. I expect my column on Scitizen to appear shortly and will provide a synopsis and link as I usually do. Also, yesterday Common Dreams accepted a slightly condensed and retitled version of [...]
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  Posted: June 22, 2008, 10:15pm EDT
  

• Clever and deceptive: API's new ads

  The high price of oil has given birth to a thousand solutions. They include such fantasies such as running cars on water and perpetual motion machines. And, they include sensible ideas for quickly cutting the consumption of oil and moving to electricity to power most of our transportation [...]
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  Posted: June 15, 2008, 9:50am EDT
  

• Tinkering our way to sustainability

  When we think about the scope of the ecological challenges we face--peak oil, climate change, soil degradation, water depletion and species loss--we often think of responses big enough to match them. We might ponder large, national or international crash programs for the deployment of alternative energy; for the conservation of [...]
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  Posted: June 08, 2008, 8:43am EDT
  

• The end of money?

  It is a commonplace among hard money advocates that the U. S. dollar and all other fiat currencies are doomed to become worthless. History seems to be on their side. There is a long list of currencies based on nothing other than the say-so of a government that have [...]
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  Posted: June 01, 2008, 9:14pm EDT
  

• Will the rate-of-conversion problem derail alternative energy?

  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Will the rate-of-conversion problem derail alternative energy?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  Many alternative energy advocates claim that it is possible to replace our fossil fuel economy with one that runs on a combination of nuclear power and renewable energy [...]

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  Posted: May 25, 2008, 9:55am EDT
  

• Above ground factors: The propaganda tool of choice

  So many annoying things have been said recently about high oil prices that it would be hard to rate which one is the most annoying. Could the winner be found in statements made by members of Congress while they were busy vilifying major oil company executives during recent hearings? [...]
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  Posted: May 25, 2008, 8:38am EDT
  

• Stop me before I fill up again!

  Number of comments: 1
  It is a supreme irony that a wealthy Bedouin should be playing the role of a tough-love drug counselor to the world's oil-addicted consumers even as he continues to be the globe's biggest pusher. It was not the intention of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to take on such a role, [...]
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  Posted: May 18, 2008, 8:12am EDT
  by Kurt Cobb

• What we don't know (A response to John Michael Greer)

  Number of comments: 8
  John Michael Greer is as intelligent a voice on the issues of peak oil and sustainability as one can find. His recent piece entitled "Not The End of World" displays his broad reading in history and his deep understanding of culture. And, while history is an excellent source [...]
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  Posted: May 11, 2008, 8:56am EDT
  

• The just-in-time economy crumbles

  Number of comments: 3
  Almost two years ago I wrote a piece called "Is just-in-time nearly out of time?" laying out how completely the just-in-time inventory management idea had infected businesses, governments and even nonprofit organizations. I catalogued concerns that the practice of holding razor-thin inventories of many critical items such as food, [...]
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  Posted: May 04, 2008, 10:03am EDT
  

• More coins in the fuse box

  Number of comments: 1
  Even as the signs of a growing oil crisis gather around us, there are those who prefer to put coins in the fuse box. I am referring, of course, to the very dangerous practice of putting a coin in a fuse box where the fuse ought to go.
  
  Sometimes [...]
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  Posted: April 26, 2008, 10:21am EDT
  by Kurt Cobb

• Can the natural gas economy become a reality?

  Number of comments: 1
  My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Can the natural gas economy become a reality?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

  Natural gas has often been prophesied as the fuel of the future, one that will fill the gap when oil declines and give us the time we [...]

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  Posted: April 22, 2008, 6:41am EDT
  

• Disaster in progress: North America's home heating transition

  Number of comments: 12
  With natural gas prices creeping higher on a daily basis, some homeowners dependent on natural gas for heat are starting to look for cheaper alternatives. In my area the outdoor wood burning furnace which is designed to supplement existing home heating has become a major source of friction among [...]
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  Posted: April 20, 2008, 12:46pm EDT
  

• Manufactured foodscape

  For many in North America food has become essentially a manufactured item, carefully packaged in colorful plastic and cardboard wrappers. The packages list the ingredients in small type as if they were elements from the periodic table rearranged by some present-day equivalent of the Star Trek replicator.
  
  Few consumers [...]
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  Posted: April 13, 2008, 2:27pm EDT