The Green Files: October 2005 Archives

The Green Files > October 31, 2005

Europe study shows climate risks

[ : : : nostress ~ sidelinks : : :] Mediterranean and mountain regions of Europe will be hardest hit by the changes set to affect the continent's natural resources this century

Restoring the Earth & Healing Ourselves - Bioneers

[:::nostress::: ...(please?)] Our shared mission is more important and urgent than ever: the restoration of the Earth's imperiled ecosystems and the healing of our human communities.

Posted at 10:33 AM

October 31, 2005

Europe study shows climate risks

[ : : : nostress ~ sidelinks : : :] Mediterranean and mountain regions of Europe will be hardest hit by the changes set to affect the continent's natural resources this century

Posted at 10:36 AM

Restoring the Earth & Healing Ourselves - Bioneers

[:::nostress::: ...(please?)] Our shared mission is more important and urgent than ever: the restoration of the Earth's imperiled ecosystems and the healing of our human communities.

Posted at 10:33 AM

German Nuclear Update

[NEI Nuclear Notes] It doesn't look like German Chancellor-designate Angela Merkel is going to back down on her campaign promise to overturn that nation's planned phaseout of nuclear energy by 2020. For our previous posts on what's happening in the German nuclear business, click here.

Posted at 10:32 AM

Please, Professor, April comes before Thanksgiving

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Perhaps to counter the less glowing report on long-term production that we discussed last week, it may be interesting to note how the Saudi Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Naimi outlined them at the recent meeting in South Africa. The report comes from Petroleumworld which, interestingly, makes a statement at the end of the article that it does not necessarily share the minister's views.

Posted at 10:24 AM

October 30, 2005

Do You Take Your Lawn Wasteful or Tacky?

[Why?] ``Lawns don't have much place being here in our arid environment,'' said Jerry de la Piedra, senior water conservation specialist for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Posted at 01:43 PM

Sheep River Water Concerns

[CIVITATENSIS] Sheep River Water Concerns October 29th, 2005 On the heels of damning news about contaminated water in Indian reserves across the country, Sheep River Valley residents in southern Alberta, those who live down stream from the dilapidated Turner Valley Gas Plant, may be growing concerned by news of possible contaminants in the river. Federal and provincial environment officials are investigating whether a historic gas plant is poisoning the Sheep River in southern Alberta.

Posted at 01:42 PM

Taking Halloween Back to Nature

[TreeHuggerMum] As Halloween is becoming more and more commercial, we are losing touch with its origins that were in many ways quite environmental. Instead of...

Posted at 01:40 PM

Take an Off-Grid Vacation in Mexico

[sustainablog] Kevin Humphrey at Unplugged Living has started a new feature called Off-the-Grid Vacations which focuses on "...actual resorts, hotels, etc that are completely energy self-sufficient." The first subject, Mexico's Hotelito Desconocido, is now officially on my list of "dream vacations": ”˜Hotelito”˜ generates it own power via solar means and that’s only used for indispensable resort needs like hot water and refrigeration. At night, the rooms and restaurant are lit by hundreds of candles and luminaries light the pathways that meander throughout the property.

Posted at 01:39 PM

The leaves and data are changing . . . .

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] It begins to appear that the refineries are switching around and that the EIA are now showing not only a swing upward in production but an increase in imports as well - perhaps not before time. But then all the folk who will need fuel in the North East have already stocked up !

Posted at 01:32 PM

October 29, 2005

The BU Trustee Scholarship Competition

[NEI Nuclear Notes] The author of Something Clever is a female high school student from Seattle, Washington who has been accepted at Boston University. She just found out that she's been asked to apply for the school's Trustee Scholar program that would qualify her for full tuition and room and board for all four years.

Posted at 02:09 PM

Critical Mass - Succcess

[slightly lost in the world] (all photos are from Parliament Square) Brockley 5.45pm I met Linda at her place, geared up our bikes, with flashing lights and set off through 'Sarf London' towards Waterloo. This was Linda's first Critical Mass and as we headed on the way there she was talking about similar events she had been on over her years as an activist.

Posted at 02:04 PM

Fairtrade Advent Calendar

[TreeHuggerMum] The amount of packaging that is the advent calendars that you can buy in the shops just drives me crazy. They contain barely anything and yet they have to look big to be "worth" the £5 odd they cost.

Posted at 02:00 PM

Over 100,000 signatures for a Car-Free Central Park

[The Oil Drum: New York City] He came out in full support of not only a car-free Central Park all year round, but said that "we need to completely re-think how the city helps move people to and through the city".

Posted at 01:57 PM

Political sensitivities

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] According to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2005, China consumed 310 million tons of oil in 2004, accounting for 8 per cent of the world total, whereas the United States guzzled 938 million tons - a quarter of the global total and three times China's consumption. While the story does not convey many new facts, it does suggest that the Chinese are not amused by being an object of blame.

Posted at 01:53 PM

October 28, 2005

NEWS: Wal-mart smarts

[City Hippy: The diary of our struggle to live a green and fair life.] Am very excited to hear (via BoingBoing) about a critical documentary about Wal-Mart which is going to be shown in the US, in places of Worship no less, after its debut in theatres in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles next week.

Posted at 12:18 PM

While we're at it, let's dump nuclear waste in reservations

[Tasteful Future - the champagne of weblogs] Various First Nations assemblies, such as The Assembly of First Nations, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, Ontario Aboriginal Métis Association, the East Coast First People’s Alliance, the Western Indian Treaty Alliance, and the Atlantic Policy Conference of First Nation Chiefs, have all refused to cooperate with the NWMO's plans to dig deep geological dumps for the nuclear runoff. The NWMO is looking to perform this deep geological disposal in Ordovician sedimentary rock formations, or in the crystaline rock of the Canadian Shield.

Posted at 12:16 PM

Green Energy Grants for UK Schools

[TreeHuggerMum] During this past weekend The Guardian has reported that UK schools are now able to draw on a number of grant resources to help them become more...

Posted at 12:11 PM

Ecosystem in seals Ecosphere

[My Ideal Blog - Blog.MyNetCity.com] Ecosystem in seals Ecosphere October 26th, 2005 by John | Related entries: Misc Gadgets I knew you want to...

Posted at 12:05 PM

One must expect dissent . . . .

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] This has, in turn, led to more critics of the concept that we are heading into a crisis. On Tuesday there was an article in the St Louis Post Dispatch by Barclay Jones, a Professor of nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering at the U of I Urbana-Champaign.

Posted at 11:53 AM

October 27, 2005

Building Momentum for Gas Taxes

[The Oil Drum: New York City] Some of that money would have to be used to provide offsetting tax breaks to low-income households, such as an increase in the earned income tax credit." One part of their editorial that I'm not completely on board with is the SUV buy back idea: "...lawmakers could consider would be to use some of the revenue to buy back S.U.V.'s. The buyback notion is a variation on the "scrappage" idea from earlier crises, when it was proposed that the government buy up old clunkers so that their owners could more quickly upgrade to less-polluting cars"

Posted at 07:05 PM

It's About Oil Shortage, Not Price!

[Mover Mike -] ...doubts about Saudi Arabia's assurances of how much it can expand capacity - and for how long - have been raised in a secret intelligence report and in a separate analysis by a leading government oil adviser, according to a federal government official and the oil expert.

Posted at 06:54 PM

So Much For That Idea

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] So Much For That Idea Posted by Stuart Staniford on Thu Oct 27 at 4:56 AM EDT Topic: Economics Tags: oil prices, peak oil, hubbert peak, gas prices (all tags) It's back to the drawing board for me. Here's growth in the California State Product, and our Vehicle Miles Traveled. Source: Caltrans, and California Department of Finance There's more... (136 words)...

Posted at 06:52 PM

Viral Campaign Greenpeace

[MediaCatalyst - the irresistible force] Fun, but they pull their punch with the endline. “Don’t let Blair be Bush’s puppet”

Posted at 06:51 PM

NEWS: Let's all FUKC

[City Hippy: The diary of our struggle to live a green and fair life.] The advice offered on this site is to be taken in conjunction with your own intelligence and common sense. Please seek professional advice before following any course of action you may find mentioned in the site content.

Heard the Word of Blog?

Posted at 06:49 PM

October 25, 2005

Eggling

[Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women] This would definitely cheer me up on a cloudy, gray day like today. Crack open the little ceramic egg, add water, give it lots of sun and love...and watch the seedlings grow.

Read related posts for „Eggling“.

Posted at 02:15 PM

The Razor's Edge

[The Stinkin' Desert Post] Mandil said OPEC's decision will be seen as a positive move by the market but any extra OPEC output will be sour, heavy crude oil that is harder to refine.

Posted at 02:14 PM

Two Shocking Reports From Petroleum Review

[Past Peak] But, according to Petroleum Review, you must also factor in two things: 1) historically, projects slip (are delayed) by 10-20%, and 2) many existing oil fields are in significant decline. I.e., new capacity will be less than the ideal figures indicate, and much of it will just be filling in for lost capacity elsewhere.

Posted at 02:09 PM

Peaked?

[Ippoippo] This is Gavin's Website and Blog. Japan started as just a section of my old website, as one of my interests.

Read related posts for „Peaked?“.

Posted at 02:06 PM

It would be nice, but . . . . . .

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Without finding another one of those - the odds on which are miniscule, and the time line for development of which would likely be at least 7 years - it does not seem likely that the Russian government will be able to meet the new targets. Further, since many of the Russian fields use concurrent water flood with primary production, this led to the high depletion rates for both of the above fields, once they reached peak production.

Posted at 02:04 PM

October 24, 2005

Lost in the Noise

[The Stinkin' Desert Post] Ordinarily this item from the Beeb would roil oil markets, but in the aftermath of Katrina and the onset of Rita it's not that visible: A second oil...

Posted at 02:09 PM

$600 gets your house on solar power

[Where We're Bound] Want to begin the move to sustainable energy production? Off-grid has an excellent article on how cheap the first step can be.

Posted at 02:07 PM

Addressing Peak Oil at the Local Level

[sustainablog] Global Public Media has published a detailed article on the potential for peak oil awareness and preparation at the local level. This dovetails nicely with yesterday's post on retrofitting the suburbs, as well as providing a thorough overview of the few communities in the US and elsewhere that have found the courage to consider the ramifications of peak oil.

Posted at 02:05 PM

Car Free Central Park

[The Oil Drum: New York City] Car Free Central Park Posted by peakguy on Sun Oct 23 at 5:04 PM EDT Topic: Policy/Politics Tags: oil, peak oil, transportation alternatives, cars...

Posted at 02:01 PM

Whither Wilma?

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] THE CENTER OF WILMA IS FORECAST TO BE NEAR THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST OF THE FLORIDA PENINSULA EARLY MONDAY MORNING. HOWEVER...WILMA IS A LARGE SYSTEM AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WILL REACH THE FLORIDA KEYS AND FLORIDA PENINSULA WELL BEFORE THE EYE MAKES LANDFALL.

Posted at 01:59 PM

October 23, 2005

Tropical Storm Alpha

[NewMexiKen] “The NHC does not use the letters X, Y or Z to name storms. This is the first time it has exhausted the Roman alphabet and has had to resort to the Greek one to name storms in the Atlantic basin.”

Posted at 02:56 AM

Climate Mash

[Daffodil Lane] What do you do to the environment if you're a Republican? You do the Mash...The Climate Mash! Check out the Climate Mash here!

Read related posts for „Climate Mash“.

Posted at 02:55 AM

Who's Paying for Climate Skepticism? ExxonMobile Is!

[Triple Pundit - An 'integrated bottom-line' approach to looking at business] I'm not usually much for conspiracy theories, but this one seems well documented, and very juicy. The vast majority of scientists hold climate change to be a fact - and the vast majority of them also accept that much of it is due to human activity - mostly industrial and automotive emissions.

Posted at 02:50 AM

Peak Oil in the Corporate Media

[Where We're Bound] Another roundup. A small sample of the increasingly common corporate/mainstream media articles dealing with peak oil.

Posted at 02:45 AM

We've gone Greek

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] (Unless we get a 4-5 year lull in hurricanes at which point the insurers forget what the hullabaloo was about.) Self-insurance, captives, reciprocal arrangements have been a safety valve of sorts where insurance is unavailable in other industries. However, these arrangements work when a company or a group of similar firms feel that the insurance market has painted their industry with too broad a brush, and with superior loss control measures, they can do the loss financing on their own.

Posted at 02:42 AM

October 22, 2005

NYU Forum Today

[The Oil Drum: New York City] The event will be moderated by NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz and chaired by Jeffrey Tannenbaum, president of Fir Tree Partners. Participants will discuss investment opportunities in the transition from oil dependence, the role of energy in national security, the role of defense in leading technology advances, and the legal and regulatory implications of a transformed energy sector.

Posted at 09:51 PM

Greenspan On Oil

[Past Peak] How did we arrive at a state in which the balance of world energy supply and demand could be so fragile that weather, not to mention individual acts of sabotage or local insurrection, could have a significant impact on economic growth? Even so large a weather event as August and September's hurricanes, had they occurred in earlier decades of ample oil capacity, would have had hardly noticeable effects on crude prices if producers placed their excess supplies on the market or on product prices if idle refinery capacity were activated.

Posted at 09:46 PM

The Eschatology of the Left

[ The Anthropik Network] As a mediocre science fiction writer, his main claim to fame at this point is that one of his novels inspired a big blockbuster movie with great special effects--and two horrid sequels. While his now famous (or, more appropriately, infamous) speech, "Environmentalism as Religion," counts as some of his worst fiction yet (oh, wait, you mean he meant that seriously?), there is something resembling a good point that he steers in the general direction of: namely, that environmentalism is "the eschatology of the left."

Posted at 09:39 PM

ANWY/Oil Dependance Video Now Better Quality

[Triple Pundit - An 'integrated bottom-line' approach to looking at business] The video makes a solid economic argument in favor of preserving the Arctic Refuge in its current state. Please pass it on, blog about it, write your politicians and let people know that investment in renewable energy is what this country needs.

Posted at 09:37 PM

Weekend Open Thread

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Russia is a very important gas and oil supplier with gas pipelines to EU, but its oil production is obviusly having a second peaking right now and it will not have easy job trying to offset the decreasing North Sea Gas. The first real OECD energy crunch since the '70s seems to be this winter in the UK, where natural gas shortage threatens (or is a reality - GDP growth has stalled already).

Posted at 09:35 PM

October 21, 2005

Oil Crisis: Natural or Manufactured

[Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box] What is real is that many refineries are not capable of efficiently refining heavy crude to meet the demand for fuel supplies. You can pump all the heavy crude you want, but if it cannot be efficiently refined to a marketable product, then there are major problems.

Posted at 02:01 PM

Hydrogen Hype

[Belly of the Beast] I'm here to tell you that just ain't so. Hydrogen, as it occurs on the Earth, is not a primary energy source.

Read related posts for „Hydrogen Hype“.

Posted at 01:53 PM

Let's Build a New Farmers Market

[The Oil Drum: New York City] Let's Build a New Farmers Market Posted by peakguy on Thu Oct 20 at 8:23 PM EDT Topic: Environment/Sustainability Tags: oil, peak oil, farmers market...

Posted at 01:44 PM

Minimal Behavioral Adaptations to Oil Shocks

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] This post is part of a series on the economic response to oil shocks, which I'm doing to gain a deeper insight into likely post-oil-peak economic occurrences. It began with a discussion of the stability of the mix of consumer spending, moved on to consider the productivity and efficiency of transportation, and then dived more deeply into what the US economy did to become less oil intensive. Readers with long memories will also realize the significance of these issues to my decline-rate based model of what might happen to the US economy post peak.

Posted at 01:42 PM

Genetically Modified Cotton Field Monitoring

[The Biotech Weblog - Your ultimate guide to bio technology - Grand Rounds Vol 2, No 4: Medical Blogging] Biotech cotton is genetically modified to include the Bacillus thuringensis Bt gene, also used in maize and rice, conferring resistance to insects. When pink bollworms feed on the cotton, the Bt toxin is released in their gut and they die, bringing insect population under control, which in turn reduce the necessity to use chemical pesticides.

Posted at 01:41 PM

October 20, 2005

Farmers Fret Over Fertilizer Costs

[Frat Pack College Fraternity, Sorority, Frat Party Community Message Board Frat Pack Forum] But the $410 a ton Nielsen paid is symptomatic of the crunch farmers are feeling this year as the cost of fertilizer soars. While rising natural gas prices are causing concerns about heating costs this winter, farmers are wondering how they'll pay for fertilizer, which uses the energy source to produce its main ingredients, such as ammonia or nitrates.

Posted at 01:15 PM

Green electricity use on the rise in NSW

[CSR Asia - Corporate Social Responsibility in Asia] Green electricity use on the rise in NSW Filed under: Environment Australia ”” Jonathan Hills @ 12:55 pm There has been a 50 per cent increase in the...

Posted at 01:12 PM

Tokyo Motor Show Goes Green

[Greenthinkers .... the environment-friendly blog] The overriding message at the Tokyo Motor Show, opening Saturday to the public, is that gas-guzzlers must make way for green cars that pollute less and rely less on shrinking supplies of fossil fuels.

Posted at 01:10 PM

Hurricane Wilma

[Jack Bog's Blog] I hope people in the path of this new monster storm are more prepared than the people of New Orleans were. Here's a model approach to preparedness...

Posted at 01:08 PM

Junket in the Trunk

[The Last Liberal in Central Florida] ESA foe Pombo took two trips paid for by anti-animal-welfare foundation The ever-widening net of Republican-corruption busting may have snared a green bÃªte noire: Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). It seems Pombo took two trips, to New Zealand in 2000 and Japan in 2002, underwritten by a nonprofit foundation notable for opposition to environmental and animal-welfare protections. Problem is, tax laws prohibit private, nonprofit foundations from financing international travel by government officials. According to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, Pombo, his wife, and a staffer have taken $23,000 worth of international travel paid for by the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources, whose backers include the Japan Whaling Association and the International Fur Traders Association. "This is an organization that has made a cottage industry out of opposing any animal-welfare reform," says the Humane Society's Michael Markarian. Pombo claimed he didn't know the...

Posted at 01:07 PM

October 19, 2005

Social Signal: the next step for me, the next step for online collaboration

[Rob Cottingham] Using tools like blogs, RSS and tagging, we help people create online community ecosystems ”” networks of sites, each with its own unique identity and community, but all sharing content and users to work more effectively together. This helps organizations to engage their members, while working with other organizations to achieve common goals.

Posted at 06:27 PM

Graphical Oil Paths

[GrimReader] Below is the updated but entirely American version of Figure 3 in Amory Lovins' Winning the Oil Endgame (which depicts world consumption). The data comes from the EIA historical website (production and oil prices to the refiner, adjusted to 2005 dollars with the BLS inflation calculator).

Posted at 06:21 PM

Lighting the Way to Lower Electric Bills

[The Oil Drum: New York City] The lower electrical demands reduce the amount of carbon emission depending on the source of that electricity. Each CFL replacing a regular bulb prevents emissions of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of greenhouse gases (CO2) and 8 to 16 pounds of polluting sulfur dioxide from power plants, as well as eliminating the need to produce, and ultimately discard, up to a dozen incandescent bulbs.

Posted at 06:10 PM

Wilma Category 5: Lowest Pressure Ever

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] High pressure in mid-levels of the atmosphere across the central and western Gulf of Mexico has actually remained fairly strong and that explains why Wilma has been moving more west than north during Tuesday night. An upper-level storm system moving out of the southwestern states will head northeastward and cause this upper-level high to weaken, especially over the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Posted at 06:06 PM

Stop Kimberly-Clark from destroying ancient forests!

[TheGreening] Concerned for the health of forests, well you might want to make that Kleenex your last.... Stop Kimberly-Clark from destroying ancient forests! | K L E E R C U T . N E T On Del.icio.us: forests, kleenex, boycott, environment, ecology, action, Greenpeace...

Posted at 06:04 PM

October 16, 2005

Processing Oil With Nuclear

[Past Peak] The surest way to know what oil companies really think is to look at where they spend their money. No new refineries in decades, no new supertankers...

Posted at 12:10 PM

Uh Oh...

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Update [2005-10-15 23:11:26 by Stuart Staniford]: In advisory #2 "some strengthening is forecast", as the depression continues "gradually organizing".

Read related posts for „Uh Oh...“.

Posted at 12:08 PM

No Adverts Please.

[Ippoippo] If you stick these adverts on, you could argue that they start to look ugly. This would probably increase public resistance to them being built.

Posted at 12:07 PM

Chavez enters the peak oil debate

[My Way of Thinking] Hugo Chavez explains why my monthly LPG bill has gone from £60 to £100 and enters the peak oil debate: SALAMANCA, Spain (AFP) - The world will have to get used to a barrel of oil of 50 dollars or more because producers are almost at the limit of production capacity, reserves are dwindling and increasing demand keeps pushing up prices, Venezuela's president warned. "The world will have to get used to a barrel of oil priced above 50 dollars," Hugo Chavez said Saturday, speaking on the fringes of an Ibero-American summit.

Posted at 12:06 PM

Wiping out ancient forests

[extra!extra!] Its manufacturer, the Kimberly-Clark corporation, has been unwilling to improve its practices, continuing to rely on paper and pulp made from clearcut ancient forest including Canada’s Boreal forest. Kimberly-Clark clears these ancient forests, essential in fighting climate change and providing home to wildlife like caribou, wolves, eagles and bears, into products that are flushed down the toilet or thrown away."

Posted at 12:04 PM

October 12, 2005

Another "Peak Oil" Movie

[sustainablog] Much like The Deal and Oil Storm before it, Syriana is a movie in which bad things happen as a result of fuel shortages. Unlike those two movies, however, Syriana is a big budget Warner Brothers film starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper and a bunch of other big names.

Posted at 12:30 AM

Today's reading assignment

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Today's reading assignment Posted by ianqui in Supply/Production Tags: oil, peak oil, CERA (all tags) Tue Oct 11 at 12:07 PM EDT According to cultural...

Posted at 12:20 AM

Join Your Local Meet-Up - Or Start One

[Peak Oil NYC] In fact the manpower for the Petrocollapse Conference was largely provided for by the 150+ people that we have as members of the NYC Oil Awareness Meet-up, the largest in the country.

Posted at 12:19 AM

OIL PRICES DOWN ON LOW DEMAND??

[TP.c] Or at least Forbes.com and/or AP.org are because they reported in an article yesterday that: Crude oil fell slightly Monday as traders weighed the approach of the Northern Hemisphere cold season against the drag of continued low demand. Diminishing fuel demand has eased concerns about inadequate oil supplies following hurricanes Katrina and Rita - a development reflected by prices last week that hit lows not seen since August.

Posted at 12:17 AM

Yet Another Wristband

[Greenthinkers .... the environment-friendly blog] I'm all for helping the environment, but does the world really need another wristband? If you think so, check out the Joss Stone Trust wristband...

Posted at 12:16 AM

October 09, 2005

Cartoon

[Vital Trivia] Here’s a topical cartoon for the weekend, drawn by a friend of mine out in New Zealand. It was for a newspaper and based on the uproar they had when petrol prices went up recently.

Read related posts for „Cartoon“.

Posted at 09:18 PM

Abrupt switching

[Odograph.com] In contrast to Bushite flat-Earthers and shills for the oil industry, their skepticism has been founded on fears that the IPCC models fail to adequately allow for catastrophic nonlinearities like the Younger Dryas. Where other researchers model the late 21st-century climate that our children will live with upon the precedents of the Altithermal (the hottest phase of the current Holocene period, 8000 years ago) or the Eemian (the previous, even warmer interglacial episode, 120,000 years ago), growing numbers of geophysicists toy with the possibilities of runaway warming returning the earth to the torrid chaos of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM: 55 million years ago) when the extreme and rapid heating of the oceans led to massive extinctions.

Posted at 09:16 PM

Treasure America ANWR Video is Out - Have a Look!

[Triple Pundit - An 'integrated bottom-line' approach to looking at business] 3P followed the adventures of the Treasure America team this summer as we visited the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in search of economic arguments against opening the refuge to oil development. The project successfully showed that tourism and other locally born industry could be a more viable long term economic strategy than oil exploration.

Posted at 09:09 PM

The Perils of Biking

[Peak Oil NYC] Permalink Petrocollapse Round-Up: Dr. John Darnell Posted by peakguy in Policy/Politics Tags: oil, peak oil, petrocollapse, John Darnell, Roscoe...

Posted at 09:08 PM

Weekend Open Thread

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] One thing about Peak Oil at this time whether it's in three years or twenty is that with India and the Chinese entering the oil economy is a significant way, there are likely to be other events in the near term that are disruptive like Hurricane Katrina and Rita and those events will be more magnified than events of years past (and the Chinese have already experienced supply problems as a result of a typhoon two months ago).

Posted at 09:04 PM

October 07, 2005

K'ante ”˜el - Precious Forest: Endangered Patrimony of Humanity and Life Itself

[The Shaman Traveler] The peaceful Guatemalan rain forest hides an ancient story of empire building and disaster in the ruined Maya city of Waka', now called El Peru. K'inich Balam (Sun-faced Jaguar), who ruled Waka', severed ties with the city of Tikal and married Lady T'abi, a powerful royal princess from Calakmul.

Posted at 09:26 PM

New Orleans: A Natural or Manmade Disaster?

[Complexcities] However, now that the shock of Hurricane Katrina is passing -- at least for everyone watching -- there seem to be a lot of thoughtful articles on the complex interaction between the city of New Orleans, its infrastructure, and the alteration of the natural geography of the area. Flood Control Systems The most obvious feature of New Orleans is that it lies below sea level, nominally defended by a complex system of levees, dikes, and canals.

Posted at 09:24 PM

Petrocollapse Round-Up: Dr. John Darnell

[Peak Oil NYC] His style was low-key and less dramatic than Kunstler, but no less effective at conveying the magnitude of the problem and the need to take immediate action to reduce demand.

Posted at 09:14 PM

In a shortage, businesses lose gas before homes

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] If the US didn't outsource manufacturing to countries that have lower net energy per capita requirements to live than American's, the US economy would see stagflation. It was the only way to keep the economy growing in an environment of declining net energy.

Posted at 09:12 PM

North Korea building bikes

[CYCLE-LICIOUS: Bicycle news and views] The factory will build up to 300,000 bikes per year to cut reliance on the second-hand bikes that have been imported from Japan and China. In this old news, women were banned from bike riding.Bicycles are used almost exclusively by men, and women find it difficult to ride bicycles even if they want to.

Posted at 09:11 PM

October 06, 2005

OIL DOWN BUT GAS PRICES STILL HIGH

[TP.c] Wow, this is very confusing. Just yesterday I blogged about how high gas prices in the US are supposed to last for up to 6 months...

Posted at 11:07 AM

Petrocollapse roundup: Ruppert

[The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil] Ruppert reminded the crowd about the Hirsch report (I forget—was it ever re-released or not?), which said that if we only initiate action when the peak occurs, there will be a liquid fuel shortfall of 2 decades. Since Ruppert believes the peak is already upon his, he takes this to mean that there will only be a shortfall because after 2 decades, there will have been enough of a die-off to go back to a lifestyle where the populations may be able to use liquid fuels again.

Posted at 11:04 AM

Post Petrocollapse Round-Up

[Peak Oil NYC] Permalink Petrocollapse roundup: Ruppert Posted by ianqui in Policy/Politics Tags: peak oil, government, petrocollapse (all tags) Wed Oct 05 at 9:28 PM EDT As Stuart did for the Community Solutions conference, peakguy and I will be writing a series of posts over the next couple of days about the Petrocollapse conference that was held in New York City today. There were many interesting speakers, and we'll get to all of them, but I wanted to start with Mike Ruppert. Now, I know Ruppert is a controversial figure, and he's been discussed (not necessarily positively) on TOD before. Before seeing him speak today, I hadn't really read much of the From the Wilderness publications, but when I came home I scanned the website, and on the recommendation of JLA's comment in the above linked story, I read the Nation article about him. When it comes to 9/11, he seems pretty nutty. And with respect to peak oil, he's firmly in the apocalypticon camp. Still, he's a dynamic speaker, and I can see people...

Posted at 11:01 AM