gas prices history

05.23.13- Is Putin Running Out of Gas?
Kevin D. Freeman

The Cold War is now so over that it might as well be grouped with the ancient ice ages, but there is one echo rolling across Europe from East to West: the Russian attempt to dominate the natural gas market on the European continent. As the energy sector accounts for 25 percent of Russia's economy, any large changes in energy markets present major challenges for Vladimir Putin. Those old enough to recall the Soviet gas pipeline controversy of the early 1980s—a high-profile fight of the Reagan administration to deprive Moscow of hard currency—are right to have a feeling of déjà vu, as Putin's motives transcend honest commerce . . .

Gazprom is the linchpin of Putin's political and economic strength. The state-controlled natural gas conglomerate is a huge source of revenues for the Russian budget, but also a slush fund for Putin's clan—the corrupt network of power-political and economic relationships that rules Russia today. Immediately after coming to power in 2000, Putin moved to put the company under his direct control . . . It is widely believed that Putin makes all of the key Gazprom decisions himself . . . Read More

05.22.13- Electricity-Producing Bacteria From Massachusetts
Jim Sliwa

Ah, the wonders of science. Though, I can’t yet say if I’m all that thrilled about bacteria being engineered to produce electricity. Would hate to see what would happen if it all got out of hand. Maybe we should just stick to the trustworthy and cheap renewables we have today.

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon.  Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

"This represents the first result of current production solely on hydrogen," says Amit Kumar, a researcher on the study who, along with his co-authors are part of the Lovley Lab Group at the university. Read More

05.21.13- The Coming Collapse Of The Petrodollar System
Andrew McKillop

The theory of Petrodollar Warfare can be attributed to US analyst and author William R Clarke, and his 2005 book of that title which interpreted the US-UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He called this an "oil currency war", but the concept of the petrodollar system and petrodollar recyling dates back to the eve of the first Oil Shock in 1973-1974. The role of the petrodollar system as a driving force of US foreign policy is explained by analysts and historians as basic to maintaining the dollar's status as the world's dominant reserve currency - and the currency in which oil is priced.

The term "petrodollar warfare" as used by William R. Clark says that major international war, legal or not, was seen as justified to protect the petrodollar system. Over and above the loss of human life, the combined costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars for the US are controversial like the interpretation of these wars as "oil wars", but analysts like Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes put the total combined war cost at above $4 trillion. Read More

05.20.13- Let them eat… insects
Simon Black

In what may go down as one of the most obtusely out-of-touch policy memos ever written, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released a paper entitled “Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.”

For 171 pages, the paper argues for insect-based diets, explaining why governments should “[d]evelop a clear and comprehensive legal framework” to ensure that we all start eating insects.

So what’s the UN’s reasoning behind this? How could the organization possibly justify such an idea?

Simple. Because it’s better for the environment. Read More

05.18.13- This "Left For Dead" Industry Is Roaring Back
Byron King

How can you make money by investing in the stock market? It helps to go where the money is flowing. Along those lines, two of the strongest sectors of the current U.S. economy barely existed a few years ago.

In fact, one sector was left for dead (and I mean roadkill!) when the U.S. government effectively shut it down overnight in 2010. The other sector was rooted in then-novel technology that few people understood, and in which only visionaries saw the future.

Yet now, both investment sectors are moving fast. They channel eye-popping levels of capital and generate big bottom-line profits for a myriad of companies that I'll name below. Read More

05.17.13- Avoiding the 'Energy Abyss'
Robert O'Neill

John Hofmeister doesn't call it 'peak oil,' instead he calls it the 'energy abyss'.

Hofmeister is the former president of Shell Oil, the same Shell Oil that is preparing to drill the deepest hole yet drilled to reach oil and gas 200 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in 9,500 feet (2,900m) of water, surpassing the working depth of Shell's Perdido rig, also located out in the Gulf and producing around 100,000 barrels a day. The cost of that rig: $3 billion.

"It's inevitable. The industry that produces oil can't produce enough, unless the world doesn't grow. Read More

05.16.13- The Next Food Crisis Will Be Caused By Globalist Land-Grabs and Food Privatization
Susanne Posel

The UN warns that global food stores like grains are depleting at an expediential rate and when combined with failing harvests, there will be a food crisis in 2013.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) explain that “we’ve not been producing as much as we are consuming. That is why stocks are being run down. Supplies are now very tight across the world and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected events next year."

Since 2010, the FAO have stated that the rise in food prices is directly correlated to the 80 million people being added to the world's population annually. This fact, according to the globalists at the UN, is beginning to "tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth's land and water resources." Read More

05.15.13- Who Wins from Rising Natural Gas Prices?
Robert Rapier

Over the past two years the spot price of natural gas fell from nearly $5 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in June 2011 to less than $2 per MMBtu in April 2012, before beginning a steady climb back to the current level of about $4 per MMBtu. Prices have been supported by resilient demand as well as diminishing supply from some of the more mature shale formations and the depleted wells offshore.

Stronger natural gas prices are good news for some and bad news for others. Natural gas producers like Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) were hit especially hard as gas prices fell. Between June 2011 and April 2012, CHK's share price declined 25 percent. But over the past 12 months, CHK has rallied 36 percent as gas prices recovered. Since Chesapeake is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas, it's not surprising that its shares track the price of the commodity. The company isn't diversified, so it is nearly a pure play on natural gas. Read More

05.14.13- A Total Overhaul Of The Global Oil Patch
Byron King

John Wooden — the late, great UCLA basketball coach — once said, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

With coach Wooden’s advice in mind, let’s think positive. Let’s review the upside of the resource news flow.

Hey, oil prices are stable. The Brent crude oil price is hovering in the low $100 range, while North American oil prices — embodied in the price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — are $10 less, give or take.

Of course, OPEC oil exporters hate $100 oil… Read More

05.13.13- A Look At The Energy Of The Future: Natural Gas
Matt Insley

America's natural gas industry can make you rich.

If you've been sleeping under a rock for the past few years or you've thrown your DRH missives to the wayside, allow me to reiterate this important thesis.

Natural gas and associated "wet" byproducts like propane, butane and ethane, are flowing rapidly from America's shale formations. It's a bonanza of cheap energy! It's also set to make a few industries insanely profitable…

Before we get started on the latest way to play this trend, take a second to dig out that dusty heap of electricity bills you keep in the closet. (If you're a frugalisto like me you've likely got every bill dating back to the time that you bought your house.) Read More

05.11.13- The Obama Administration's Natural Gas Policy Is Tragically Misguided
Chris Martenson PhD

The Obama administration has come out in support of the idea of exporting U.S. natural gas. This stance is counterproductive and shortsighted, and if followed, it will prove harmful to domestic manufacturing (i.e., value generation) and to future generations of Americans.

While exporting natural gas would certainly prove to be an economic boon for a very select minority of companies and individuals, it makes no sense from an energy standpoint and undermines our national interests. All it will do is enrich a few while boosting prices for all domestic consumers and shortchanging the energy and environmental inheritance we pass along to our children.

First, the news: Read More

05.10.13- Invelox wind turbine claims 600% advantage in energy output
Antonio Pasolini

SheerWind, a wind power company from Minnesota, USA, has announced the results of tests it has carried out with its new Invelox wind power generation technology. The company says that during tests its turbine could generate six times more energy than the amount produced by traditional turbines mounted on towers. Besides, the costs of producing wind energy with Invelox are lower, delivering electricity with prices that can compete with natural gas and hydropower.

Invelox takes a novel approach to wind power generation as it doesn't rely on high wind speeds. Instead, it captures wind at any speed, even a breeze, from a portal located above ground. The wind captured is then funneled through a duct where it will pick up speed. The resulting kinetic energy will drive the generator on the ground level. By bringing the airflow from the top of the tower, it's possible to generate more power with smaller turbine blades, SheerWind says. Read More

05.09.13- Shale Oil and Gas:
The Contrarian View

Alvin Lee

By Robert U. Ayres, INSEAD Emeritus Professor of Economics and Political Science and Technology Management , The Novartis Chair in Management and the Environment, Emeritus.

No one is questioning the fact that we have either reached or will soon reach "peak oil"; that existing fields are being depleted at the rapid rate of 7 percent a year, and that the search is on for "unconventional oil" as alternative forms of energy are slow to reach critical mass.

There are many kinds of "unconventional oil" – meaning  hydrocarbons that are not found in fluid form, but that can be "fluidised" in a straightforward way (unlike coal, for instance). These resources include Venezuelan heavy oil and Canadian tar sands. Read More

05.08.13- The Next Big Thing: The Fear Of Climate Change
Wolf Richter

The last big thing was green tech – from wave-power generators to the smart grid. It was hyped in the bipartisan stimulus bill, promising gobs of jobs, billions in revenues, and untold riches through the eventual market capitalization of these outfits. Private investors plowed in billions too. It ended up in a massive pileup of capital destruction. Fatalities were everywhere.

One was Solyndra that – after devouring close to $1 billion, including $385 million from the Federal Government and $25 million from nearly bankrupt California – declared bankruptcy in 2011. There were scores of other boondoggles. Some were startups. Others were projects run by mega-corporations like GE and Siemens. But the euphoria has since hissed out of the construct. Private investors and taxpayers alike grabbed what they could and fled. And not just in the US. Read More

05.07.13- The Most Mind-Blowing Technology in the World Today
Louis Basenese

What's the key to unearthing outstanding tech profits?

In a word… timing.

It's everything when it comes to investing in disruptive technology stocks.

And the only way to get the timing right is to begin tracking the most promising innovations from birth.

With that in mind, over the next two columns, I'm going to share the seven most incredible technologies that I'm currently tracking. Although none are investment-ready (yet), the market for each application easily reaches into the billions of dollars.

So without further ado, let's get going… Read More

05.06.13- Difficult Words #5: Illth
Christian Ford

You may not know it, but food is cheap. As a percentage of total family income, food is cheaper, actually, than ever in history, anywhere. Families in the United States spend an average of 10% of their income to buy food. That is not an accident. It’s policy.

Blame it on the 70s, when an enormous sale of wheat to the Soviet Union collided with a bad harvest. The result was skyrocketing prices and political blowback from the American electorate. So Nixon turned to his Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, and told him to make it go away.

Boy, did he.

What he did was trash the New Deal era system that lent farmers money to keep grain off the market, thus preventing the overproduction spiral that always crashed prices. Butz replaced it with a system that just paid the farmers for the grain they couldn’t sell. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is a huge incentive to grow as much grain as you can, regardless of whether there’s a market for it. But by changing the government’s role from supporting farmers in tough times to subsidizing lower prices, Butz vaporized the public protest. Read More

05.04.13- What Is Tesla Motors Really Worth?
Alex Daley

One thing I've learned about investing – and life – over the years is that hindsight has a tendency to show us just how silly many of our assumptions were, and just how bad we are at predicting how the world will turn out. Where, after all, are the flying cars and robot butlers the year 2000 was to bring?

So, to assess the realistic possibilities for Tesla's valuation, let's take a hypothetical look back at the company, from the near future. Just what might Tesla accomplish by the start of the next decade? Let's imagine (using assumptions from articles like this one and this one):

2020 was an amazing year: The election of the US's first female president. The release of iPhone 9. Google's direct brain implant: Google Borg. The return of monarchy to our neighbors up north, and the fabulous Canadian Royal Wedding. And of course, the continued explosion in demand for electric cars, with market leader Tesla Motors' Model Q the undisputed best seller in its category. Read More

05.03.12- The Key to Running the World on Solar and Wind Power
Robert Rapier

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of solar and wind power is their intermittency. In locations like Hawaii, where I live, wind and solar power are already competitive on price. My fossil-fuel supplied electricity typically costs above 40 cents a kilowatt-hour, and wind and solar power can compete with that. But since they can't supply power that is available on demand (firm power) they must be backed up by power sources that can provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

This scenario could change dramatically if cost-effective energy storage solutions were developed. I consider this to be the most important unresolved problem in the energy business. Read More

05.02.13- This WWI Oil Stash Is Set To Pay Off Again
Matt Insley

It wouldn't be too far off to say that Oklahoma won World War I.

That is, the majority of fuel that powered the ships, planes and tanks for U.S. forces came from the Sooner state's oil patch.

Without that fuel, maybe the Western Front falls. Hey, crazier things have happened.

Today, underneath the fields that supplied crude oil for WWI, lies Oklahoma's second wave of oil riches. And although this oil may not win our country a hot war overseas, it'll surely help win a few battles for the American economy. Here's how to get your share…

In the 1800s native Americans used it as medicine. In Oklahoma, along creeks, oil seeps would ooze black goo that locals believed had healing power. Read More

04.30.13- Robots Will Do Everything You Do Now, Only Better
Jason Dorrier

The S&P 500 is at record highs, having finally regained all it lost in the 2008 financial crisis. It would be cause for celebration if it didn't feel so out of touch with the "main street" reality of continued high unemployment. As a recent New York Times headline read, "recovery in the US is lifting profits, but not adding jobs."

The NYT goes on to blame the divide between rising corporate profits, recovering stocks, and stubborn unemployment on big gains in productivity over the last few years. The article notes that the giant industrial conglomerate, United Technologies, “does not need as many workers as it once did to churn out higher sales and profits." Read More

04.29.13- 'Peak Fossil Fuels' Is Closer Than You Think
Tom Randall

Every time an iPhone is charged or an episode of "Mad Men" plays on a television, puffs of vaporized carbon join the atmosphere, products of power-plant combustion. And every year the world demands more. That era may be nearing an end, as the world approaches "peak fossil fuels," a phrased used by Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder Michael Liebreich at the group's annual conference.

The concept of "peak oil" -- that world oil production will plateau and decline -- was popularized by a Shell Oil geologist named M. King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil production would max out in the early 1970s and gradually decline. Globally, the peak oil hypothesis has been consistently undermined by new extraction techniques: deep-water drilling, tar-sands extraction and most recently the fracking boom. The world now has enough of these fuels to last hundreds of years. Read More

04.27.13- Solar Energy: This Is What A Disruptive Technology Looks Like
Brian McConnell

A picture is worth a thousand words. 

This graph compares the price history of solar energy to conventional energy sources. The comparison is striking. This is what a disruptive technology looks like. While conventional energy prices remained pretty flat in inflation adjusted terms, the cost of solar is dropping,fast, and is likely to continue doing so as technology and manufacturing processes improve.

First, about the graph. I recently published an article, Bitcoin Energy and the Future of Money, which explores the idea of using energy as the basis for money. One of the key concepts in this is to standardize the way energy commodities are measured, to measure them in terms of energy content rather than parochial units of measure (e.g. therms or cubic feet of natural gas, gallons of diesel, kilowatt hours of electricity, and so on). See also www.joulestandard.com for more information about this idea. Read More

04.26.13- Physical Metal Is Still Scarce, Here's Why…
Byron King

Precious metals, energy and commodities recently hit a rough patch.

But will these low "pullback" prices last forever? Even in the face of what seems (to me) as an extreme wave of inflation rushes over us?

Today we'll cover all the bases. Starting with crude…

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is in the high-$80s per barrel, while the iconic Brent Crude price is under $100. That’s low, by recent standards, for two reasons.

One reason is that global oil demand growth is moderate, due to the creeping worldwide lack of economic confidence. China has slowed. Japan is moribund. Europe is a mess. The North American economy is iffy, on the best of days. Read More

04.25.13- IBM researchers model human blood system to build solar power prototype
Michael Cooney

IBM says system delivers electricity, potable water and cool air in remote locations

IBM today said its researchers are developing a solar power system that concentrates solar radiation 2,000 times by using a human-blood supply modeled way of cooling and converting 80% of Sun's heat into useful energy. IBM says the system can also desalinate water and cool air in sunny, remote locations where such systems are often in short supply.

IBM says current concentration photovoltaic systems collect electrical energy and dissipate the thermal energy to the atmosphere. But this prototype known as a High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal system eliminates the overheating problems of solar chips while repurposing the energy for thermal water desalination and adsorption cooling. Read More

04.24.13- The BP View of the Future
The Oil Drum

I suspect I should apologize. Here I am talking about the future projections for energy production made by companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell, as though they were still the key and only players in the world. Yet in reality, Saudi Aramco (12.5 mbdoe), Gazprom (9.7 mbdoe) and National Iranian Oil (6.4 mbdoe) appear in the list before ExxonMobil arrives (at 5.3 mbdoe), and then there is PetroChina (at 4.4 mbdoe) before BP arrives (at 4.1 mbdoe), and it is only then that we find Shell, which lies 7th at 3.9 mbdoe.

So the projections of the ExxonMobil’s of the world are of somewhat lesser value than they might have been at one time. (For those curious, the list continues with Pemex (at 3.6 mbdoe), Chevron (at 3.5 mbdoe) and Kuwait Petroleum Co (3.2 mbdoe). This not only rounds out the top ten, it also closes out the list of those producing more than 3 mbdoe. (Abu Dhabi comes next at 2.9 mbdoe). Read More

04.23.13- Suddenly Carbon is a US$6 Trillion Bubble
The Daily Bell

Carbon-Intensive Investors Risk $6 Trillion 'Bubble,' Study Says ... Investors in carbon-intensive business could see $6 trillion wasted as policies limiting global warming stop them from exploiting their coal, oil and gas reserves, according to research by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and a climate-change research unit at the London School of Economics. If this rate continues for the next decade some $6 trillion risks being wasted on "unburnable" or stranded assets, according to the report, released today ... – Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme: Carbon is a plague and we need to wipe it out.

Free-Market Analysis: Suddenly, the reality of carbon investing is sinking in. According to this Bloomberg article, "banks, funds and institutional investors are seeking clarity from government and central banks about how greenhouse- gas emissions may affect the value of their investments." Read More

04.22.13- Nestle CEO seeks to control the world's water supply
Lance Devon

(NaturalNews) Gun control may be a hot topic, but what about water control? Recent comments from Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck imply that the world's water will soon come under the control of corporations like his. Brabeck makes the astonishing claim that water is not a human right, but should be managed by business people and governing bodies. He wants water controlled, privatized, and delegated in a way that sustains the planet. View the astonishing interview here.

Water control hitting the United States

All of this means that Brabeck's future plans include monitoring and controlling the amount of water people use. One day, cities and towns may be forced by international law to limit each household to a set amount of water. People may have to obtain permits to dig wells or pay fines for collecting rainwater. Read More

04.20.13- Aluminum, not Lithium. Swap, Don't Recharge.
Bruce Mulliken

In Israel, Phinergy is developing both aluminum-air batteries and rechargeable zinc-air batteries. Given the higher stored energy potential, the company seems to have a preference for its aluminum-air energy systems for vehicular use.

From the Phinergy website:

Widely available, aluminum contains high amounts of energy (8kWh/kg). It is also easily recyclable, making it an attractive material for energy systems.

Thanks to its revolutionary components, Phinergy’s aluminum-air energy systems use the energy released by the reaction of aluminum with oxygen to generate electric power. Our proprietary air electrodes transform Phinergy’s aluminum-air energy systems into highly effective, robust, and reliable clean energy sources. Read More

04.19.13- How Oil Exporters Reach Financial Collapse

Recently, I explained how high oil prices can bring on financial collapse for oil importers. In this post, I’ll discuss the flip side of the situation: how oil exporters reach financial collapse.

Unfortunately, we have many examples of countries that were oil exporters, but are dealing with collapse situations. Egypt, Syria, and Yemen all have had political disruptions since 2011. These may not be called financial collapse, but they all took place as the country’s oil exports decreased and as the price of imported food rose. Another example is the Former Soviet Union (FSU). It collapsed in 1991, after a period of low oil prices, in what looks very much like a financial collapse. Read More

04.18.13- Shale Oil Is a Big Game Changer for Dow-to-Gold Ratio
Gary Dorsch

Financial history is marked with times when populations took collective leave of their senses and succumbed to delusions of ever-expanding wealth. Times of rampant speculation have been enthralled by the introduction of new technologies, that are used to justify pumping-up market valuations, - not just for the present, but also for the near future, and far over the horizon as well. Quite often, the new found wealth is nothing more than a mirage. The wild enthusiasm for the stock market is often overtaken by speculative froth and emotional mania. As such, spectacular rallies deliver massive gains for one generation of lucky investors, but also create massive overvaluations that plague the next generation.

In the case of central banks, - they usually ignore stock market bubbles that expand as a result of liquidity conditions that have been "too easy for too long." Read More

04.17.13- Complexity of the Modern Algae-Powered Building
The Daily Bell

Algae-powered apartment complex blooms in Hamburg BIQ House ... A 15-unit net-zero energy apartment complex clad with an algae-filled bio-adaptive shell, is completed in Hamburg, Germany, as part of the International Building Exhibition. – Mother Nature

Dominant Social Theme:

Hard to build a house these days.

Free-Market Analysis:

It is getting more difficult to live, isn't it? We only need to look at this example in Hamburg, Germany to understand that living in a modern home is an undertaking of a "village" not an individual. Read More

Nikola Tesla performed double ground experiments with impulses as early as 1892, reporting these in lectures and patenting some embodiments in 1901. Not one of these later systems ever achieved the same results of clarity, tone, and volume of Stubblefield ground telephony. Tesla apparently never discovered the true powerpoints which powered Stubblefield's device. Priority in all these arts belongs to Nathan Stubblefield alone. In addition, his was the only system in which natural energies were obtained, magnified, and entirely employed as the empowering source. All other inventors used "artificial" sources (batteries, alternators, dynamos).

Mr. Stubblefield reasoned that, since electrical waves traverse the whole earth, it might be possible to send signals to distant places. These ground-permeating natural electrical waves might serve as carriers for the human voice. The ground would act as both power generator and signal conductor. Like a gale carrying messages downwind, these electrical waves could bring wireless communications instantly to any part of the world. Read More

04.15.13- Sweden's Quest To Be The First Oil-Free Nation
Zana Nesheiwat

Famous for Volvo, Ikea and Absolut Vodka, Sweden is now on a new pursuit to become the first completely oil-free economy in the world by 2020.

The oil crisis in the early 1970s forced Sweden to embark on a quest for alternative energy sources. Its phasing out of oil has proceeded smoothly; in 1970, oil accounted for 77% of Sweden's energy, but by 2003 that figure fell to 32%. 

According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern among nations that global oil supplies are peaking and will soon become scarce, causing the price of oil to skyrocket. Committee members predict that a global economic recession could ensue, and Sweden is taking action to make its economy less vulnerable. Read More

04.13.13- Maryland Governor Taxes Rain
Matthew Boyle

Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley has instituted a tax on citizens for the amount of rain that falls on their property.

The tax, officially known as a "storm water management fee," will be enforced in nine of the state's counties. The state legislature passed it in 2012 purportedly to "raise revenue to cleanup [sic] the Chesapeake Bay," according to MarylandReporter.com.

Former 2012 GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino bashes the tax in a Wednesday afternoon press release. The law "requires individuals, businesses, and even charitable organizations and houses of worship to pay a tax based on the amount of rain that falls on their property and the 'impervious surfaces' on their land," he says.

The tax, mandated by the EPA and enforced locally, will be calculated "through satellite surveillance of your property," the statement claims. Read More

04.12.13- Qui Bono?... Who profits from global climate change?
Yuri Skidanov

(Editor's Note: in July, 2010, we reported on Dr. Zangari's findings in a report entitled Gulf of Mexico Loop Current Broken!! Risk of Global Climate Change By BP Oil Spill! It didn't occur to me, at the time however, that there was a potential profit to be gotten. Of course, no one has ever lost, betting on the rapasity of the Darkside, - JSB)

In August of 2010, the famous Italian physicist Dr. Gianluigi Zangari by examining available by the time materials and information on the disaster made a stunning conclusion. Due to the release of vast amounts of oil and chemicals into the ocean, the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled.

Translated into plain language, the circulation of cold and warm water in the Gulf of Mexico has stopped, leading to deterioration "of the ocean river" - the Gulf Stream that determines the weather in the northern hemisphere. Read More

04.11.13- And Now for Something a Little Bit Different: Genetically Modified Poison
The Solari Report

Read More

04.10.13- Norkor
Ol' Remus

This is information from sources ol' Remus uses to judge speculations about an EMP missile attack by North Korea. This isn't expert analysis, it's a layman's understanding of it. And how much of public information is disinformation, or is just plain wrong, can't be known by your average Dick Tracy hat-wearing, pipe smoking, superannuated hillbilly. Even the best of it amounts to good faith guesses by western experts, but even so, in this life y'gotta be willing to be surprised. Again and again. Before Pearl Harbor, Japan's carrier-based air power was said to be low-tech knockoffs of western designs. Then we met the Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Long Lance torpedo.

To begin, there's North Korea's Lodestar-3 satellite which successfully entered sun-synchronous polar orbit in December 2012 at an altitude varying from 306 to 363 miles. North Korea claims the satellite weighs about 200 lbs, its mission to be "survey and communications," and it's useful life to be two years. Read More

04.09.13- Breakthrough in Hydrogen Fuel Production Could Revolutionize Alternative Energy Market
Virgina Tech

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

"Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future." Read More

04.08.13- Phinergy's metal-air battery could eliminate EV range anxiety
Darren Quick

Israel-based company Phinergy claims to have developed metal-air battery technology that promises to end the range anxiety associated with electric vehicles. The company's battery currently consists of 50 aluminum plates, each providing energy for around 20 miles (32 km) of driving. This adds up to a total potential range of 1,000 miles (1,609 km), with stops required only every couple of hundred miles to refill the system with water.

There are a number of companies and university research teams currently working on air-battery technology – usually lithium-air batteries – with the goal of improving the range of electric vehicles. These batteries offer significantly increased capacity in a more compact form factor by replacing bulky conventional cathodes, which contain the oxidizer within the battery itself, with lighter "air cathodes" that instead draw oxygen from the surrounding air. Read More

04.06.13- The Profitable Way To Play LNG (Bet You Can't Guess!)
Matt Insley

"Canada is pulling ahead of the U.S. in a contest to be the first exporter of liquefied natural gas from the North American shale bonanza to Asia's $150 billion LNG market" Bloomberg reports this week.

As you likely know, the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) business is set to boom over the coming years. More natural gas demand from Europe and Asia is spurring an energy trend that could last for multiple decades. It's a big moneymaker, too.

Importantly, the fog is beginning to clear in the global race for LNG. The ink is drying on new contracts and today we're able to get our bearings in this long-term, big money, energy game. Read More

04.05.13- A longer life for lithium-sulfur batteries
David Stockman

Technology has advanced markedly since the dawn of the silicon age, but our portable gadgets and gizmos are still largely held back by the limitations of their power source. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden report progress in this regard, with the development of a new longer-lasting lithium-sulfur battery that has the potential to outperform lithium-ion batteries, at a lower cost.

Though more powerful and less expensive to produce than the more widely used lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries have typically sported a comparatively poor lifespan. However, the Dresden-based researchers have successfully developed a new design that increases the charge cycles of lithium-sulfur batteries by a factor of seven. Read More

04.04.13- Gas Starts Flowing from Israel's Levant Basin, What Now?
Jen Alic

The first gas has started flowing from Israel’s supergiant Tamar gasfield in the Levant Basin. Where it will go will redraw the Mediterranean energy map and the geopolitics that goes along with it.

The Tamar field stakeholders announced on 30 March that the gas had started flowing.

For now, the gas is being pumped to mainland Israel, where it will feed the domestic market, but exports should begin in 2-3 years. What Israel has in mind is the European market, via a hoped-for undersea Mediterranean pipeline to Turkey, which has the infrastructure to get it to Europe. Read More

04.03.13- Concerned Officials Warn: "North Korea Could Explode a High-Altitude Nuclear Device Over the United States"
Mac Slavo

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s rhetoric over nuclear weapons and the possibility of war with the United States and its allies makes almost no plausible sense considering that their long range missile capabilities are lacking and their military hardware is reportedly outdated when compared to the militaries of developed western nations. While the communist regime does have millions of soldiers at their disposal, the notion that North Korea will start and win a war against the U.S. seems outlandish.

So, either Kim Jong Un’s recent actions are a part of internal posturing to keep the North Korean populace compliant through propaganda, or the young leader has been empowered by an ace up his sleeve that the North’s enemies do not yet fully understand. Read More

04.02.13- Fake Science Alert: Fukushima Radiation Can't Be Compared to
Bananas or X-Rays

Dan Amoss

Nuclear Energy Apologists Are Going Bananas

Nuclear apologists pretend that people are exposed to more radiation from bananas than from Fukushima.

But the EPA explains:

The human body is born with potassium-40 [the type of radiation found in bananas] in its tissues and it is the most common radionuclide in human tissues and in food. We evolved in the presence of potassium-40 and our bodies have well-developed repair mechanisms to respond to its effects. The concentration of potassium-40 in the human body is constant and not affected by concentrations in the environment. Read More

 

04.01.13- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: MinusIQ:
The pill to lower your IQ permanently
Sleep Thinker Films

View Video

03.30.13- Our Energy Predicament in Charts
Gail the Actuary

A friend asked me to put together a presentation on our energy predicament. I am not certain all of the charts in this post will go into it, but I thought others might be interested in a not-so-difficult version of the story of the energy predicament we are reaching.

My friend also asked what characteristics a new fuel would need to have to solve our energy predicament. Because of this, I have included a section at the end on this subject, rather than the traditional, “How do we respond?” section.

Given the timing involved, and the combination of limits we are reaching, it is not clear that a fuel suitable for mitigation is really feasible, however. Read More

03.29.13- Are They Nuts!? IMF Proposes $1.40 a Gallon Gas Tax on US Drivers
Fox News

Read More

03.28.13- The Arrival of Japan’s Sunset
Gregor Macdonald

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman

Waiting for Japan’s economy to make a strong recovery has been an ongoing game since 1990. Shall we play that game one more time?

There have been many false dawns in Japan over the past 20 years. Struggling with a combination of crushing debt and deadly demographics, Japan's economy has stubbornly refused to make progress, despite numerous government efforts that range from currency devaluation to endless public works projects.

None of this was enough, however, to prevent further declines in the country's fertility rate, for example, which only exacerbated deflationary pressures on the economy. Nor were the collective set of policy measures enough to boot capital flows away from the bond market, as Japan's savers simply kept on saving. Read More

03.27.13- CFR Tells Good News About Commodity Prices
Daily Bell

Energy, Security, and Climate ... CFR experts examine the science and foreign policy surrounding climate change, energy, and nuclear security. Bad News for Pessimists Everywhere: Malthus Was Wrong ... There is a tempting intuition to the idea that the real prices of non-renewable goods like coal, iron ore, or oil should rise, more or less, forever. It's an easy argument to make, and it sounds right ... Supply of the stuff is limited—once it's gone, it's gone. So, this argument goes, as we exhaust our resources, we'll have to mine, drill, or otherwise get our hands on it somehow but it will get more and more expensive to do so, because we'll have exhausted the best stuff. Left to exploit ever-greater quantities of ever-more-marginal deposits, prices will rise indefinitely into the future. – CFR blogs Read More

03.26.13- The Mechanical Transmission of Power: Endless Rope Drives
Kris De Decker

You don't need electricity to send or receive power quickly. In the second half of the nineteenth century, we commonly used fast-moving ropes. These wire rope transmissions were more efficient than electricity for distances up to 5 kilometres. Even today, a nineteenth-century rope drive would be more efficient than electricity over relatively short distances. If we used modern materials for making ropes and pulleys, we could further improve this forgotten method.

The rope drive is the culmination of a long history of mechanical power transmission. In the 1500s, mining engineers designed "Stangenkunsten": a method to transmit power from distant water wheels to machinery at the mineshaft, using reciprocating wooden rods. This early predecessor of electricity was improved in the 1860s oil industry's "Jerker line systems", which used steel cables instead of wooden rods.  Read More

03.25.13- Will the final blow for America's shale gas 'revolution' be high prices?
Kurt Cobb

As U.S. natural gas prices flirt with the $4 mark, some skeptics of the so-called shale gas revolution think prices are headed much higher. Such a move would, not surprisingly, seriously undermine the official story that the United States has a century of cheap natural gas waiting for the drillbit.

Several years ago when natural gas began flowing in great quantities from deep shale deposits beneath American soil, it seemed to be the beginning of the end of America’s troubled journey into dependence on energy imports—a journey marked by frequent worry, occasional war and enormous expense Read More

03.23.13- The Connection of Depressed Wages to High Oil Prices and Limits to Growth
Gail the Actuary

In my view, wages are the backbone an economy. If workers have difficulty finding a job, or have difficulty earning sufficient wages, the lack of wages will be a problem, not just for the workers, but for governments and businesses. Governments will have a hard time collecting enough taxes, and businesses will have a hard time finding enough customers. There can be business-to-business transactions, but ultimately somewhere “downstream,” businesses need wage-earning customers who can afford to pay for goods and services. Even if a business produces a resource that is in very high demand, such as oil, it still needs wage-earning customers either to buy the resource directly (for example, as gasoline), or to buy the resource indirectly (for example, as food which uses oil in production and transport). Read More

03.22.13- The Unexpected Winner Of The U.S. War In Iraq: Turkey
Chris Mayer

The winner of the U.S. war in Iraq looks like it will be Turkey. Ironic, because Turkey opposed the war. Nonetheless, a story in the Financial Times resonated with me — as I just returned from the country:

"A new candidate has emerged as the true victor of the Iraq war. A decade after Turkey infuriated Washington by blocking the deployment of U.S. troops through its territory for the 2003 invasion, its businessmen are proving the champions in the battle for the Iraqi market."

I heard inklings of this while I was there, that Turkey was gaining from an Iraqi revival. It's hard to argue with the figures — which we'll get to below — and thus, our investment theme on Turkey deepens. I also found a new idea to play the region, which I will tell you about down below. Read More

03.21.13- Huge Victory for Offshore Wind in Maryland
Mary Ann Hitt

The winds of change brought some great progress to Maryland this week when the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 passed through both houses of the legislature. The offshore wind bill has been championed from the start by Governor Martin O’Malley, who stands ready to sign the bill into law.

This is a huge victory that is nationally significant for two reasons. First, it could well be the tipping point that allows us to finally tap the massive offshore wind potential off the East Coast. Second, it will ensure historically underrepresented minority groups and small businesses will benefit from the jobs and investment dollars that offshore wind projects will generate. Read More

03.19.13- Nova
Ol' Remus

When you step back and look at the big picture, it really makes one wonder—how big of a piano needs to be dropped on people's heads before they notice what's happening? - Simon Black

Stars shine for billions of years, fusing one element into another, hydrogen into helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, until one day fusion into iron begins. There, quietly, at the heart of the star, it's doom is sealed. Fusion into iron generates no net heat, in fact, it's a heat sink. There comes those last few seconds when equilibrium is lost, the star can't support its own weight, the outer shells collapse inward at nearly the speed of light and the star is torn apart in a spectacular cataclysm. When gravity wins, it wins all at once. So it shall be with us. Read More

 

03.18.13- 2 Year Anniversary of Fukushima: The Accident Is NOT Contained
WashingtonsBlog

(Editor's Note: This comes as no surprise. I have been predicting this outcome since the onset of the tsunami. Listening to the presstitutes will always end up badly, as their entire mission entails obscuring the truth. Just as the Deepwater Horizon spill has yet to be contained, the bulk of the horrific damage by seeping radiation at Fukushima has yet to be realized. "Tokyo is all aglow". - JSB)

Worse Than Ever?

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said today that the containment vessel at Fukushima reactor 2 has a large crack in it. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 all exploded. BBC reports today:

They know very little about what's going on inside Reactors 1, 2, and 3 [...] They don't really know what the state of the reactor core is. Read More

03.16.13- The Marijuana Conspiracy - The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
Doug Yurchey

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03.15.13- Your "Cheat-Sheet" For Coming Oil Prices
Byron King

Today I want to answer a question that I've heard from more than one reader about the North American oil patch, and what it’s doing to world markets. Consider this your cheat sheet.

Doubtless, you’ve heard stories about how U.S. and Canadian oil output is climbing. All true — well, most of it. In the U.S., it’s the “shale gale,” with all the new output from fracking in shale, tight sands and such. In Canada, it’s a similar share story and, of course, the oil sands boom.

I’ve written about the shale gale, both to describe it with admiration, for the technology and ingenuity involved. Also, I’ve offered cautions about believing too much of the press release kind of news, about so-called “energy independence” based on vast new volumes of oil from shale. One big issue is the "drilling treadmill" — the need to drill more and more wells to keep output up. Read More

03.14.13- Nanotubes boost potential of salinity power as a renewable energy source
Darren Quick

In November 2009, Norwegian state owned electricity company Statkraft opened the world's first osmotic power plant prototype, which generates electricity from the difference in the salt concentration between river water and sea water. While osmotic power is a clean, renewable energy source, its commercial use has been limited due to the low generating capacities offered by current technology – the Statkraft plant, for example, has a capacity of about 4 kW. Now researchers have discovered a new way to harness osmotic power that they claim would enable a 1 m2 (10.7 sq. ft.) membrane to have the same 4 kW capacity as the entire Statkraft plant. Read More

03.13.13- LFTRs in 5 minutes -
Thorium Reactors

Fraser Nicholas

View Video

03.12.13- Zero energy home uses 40,000 recycled plastic bottles for insulation
Bridget Borgobello

Italian architectural firm Traverso-Vighy and the Department of Physics at the University of Padua have teamed up to create an innovative zero-energy home dubbed "Tvzeb." Located in the woodlands a few kilometers from the historic center of Vicenza, the home combines the use of recycled materials, geothermal and solar energy generation, LED lighting and wall and roof insulation made from 40,000 recycled plastic bottles

Following on from other projects developed by Traverso-Vighy, the home's structure incorporates the use of CNC machined and handcrafted components. This allows the building to be disassembled at the end of its life cycle so its materials can be more easily separated and recycled. Read More

03.11.13- Self-sustaining "farmscrapers" proposed for Shenzhen
Jonathan Fincher

As one of the most densely populated cities in China, Shenzhen has been dealing with a sudden population boom for years now, leaving urban planners scrambling for innovative building designs that manage resources and space more efficiently. There have been a few unusual proposals, but the latest design from French architectural firm, Vincent Callebaut Architects, probably takes the cake. The group recently revealed its concept for "Asian Cairns," a series of six sustainable buildings that resemble a stack of pebbles and produce their own food. Read More

03.09.13- Researchers find molecular switch to make old brains young again
Darren Quick

Researchers at Yale University have now found a molecular switch that can give an adult brain the plasticity of a young brain

It's no secret that juvenile brains are more malleable and able to learn new things faster than adult ones – just ask any adult who has tried to learn a new language. That malleability also enables younger brains to recover more quickly from trauma. Researchers at Yale University have now found a way to effectively turn back the clock and make an old brain young again. Read More

03.08.13- Rogue Investors And Opportunity With Hess
Dan Amoss

The world oil market is hardly free and frictionless, with supply responding seamlessly to high price signals. U.S. oil production gains from shale are just a tiny part of the global oil market. Evidence mounts that the per-barrel marginal cost of oil is higher than advertised. Inefficient government-run oil companies and high oil taxes are one big problem; paper currencies, deficits, and other demand-boosting factors are another problem.

Production disappointments in Russia, Nigeria, and Venezuela cannot be ignored.

It seems Russian oil millionaires 'n billionaires need their tax breaks to spur lagging Russian oil production, and even Putin himself has a hard time getting his tax reform proposals to turn things around. Ouch, this according to Bloomberg: Read More

03.07.13- US oil and gas boom takes many by surprise
Patti Domm

The rapid growth in U.S. oil production has surprised even industry insiders.

Forecasts that once sounded far-fetched are becoming reality. The oil production boom had been expected, but the magnitude of change in such a short period of time is a surprise. U.S. oil production is at its highest level in 20 years, while at the same time U.S. oil demand is at a 17-year low.

The International Energy Agency projects the U.S. could even leap frog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's biggest oil producer by 2020. Read More

03.06.13- A Quiz For Gold Lovers
Chris Mayer

Let's start with a little quiz. See how many you get right:

Who holds the majority of U.S government debt?

a) China
b) Japan
c) USA

What percentage of products consumed in the U.S. are produced in the U.S.?

a) 25.3%
b) 58.6%
c) 88.5%

What percentage of products consumed in the U.S. are produced in China?

a) 78.6%
b) 23.8%
c) 2.7% Read More

03.05.13- Will 3D Printing Change the World?
PBS

View Video

03.04.13- "The Middle East will blow up – the only question is when"
Lars Schall

In this exclusive interview, the renowned economist and energy expert Hossein Askari reflects on some crucial topics of our time, inter alia: current developments in the energy business; the high oil price and the main drivers of it; the Iranian conflict and other challenges in the Middle East; China as the rising energy power; gold-for-oil trading; and Islamic Finance.

Hossein Askari, who was born in Iran and went to the UK at the age of nine to receive his schooling, earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since 1982 he has worked at George Washington University, where he has served as Chairman of the International Business Department and as Director of the Institute of Global Management and Research and is now Iran Professor of International Business and International Affairs. Read More

03.02.13- How can we link monetary systems to the natural world?
Josh Ryan-Collins

Money may not grow on trees, but it does grow at a much faster rate – particularly when created by banks as interest-bearing debt. In modern economies, nearly all money is created in this way. To maintain a stable money supply, debtors must repay both the initial loan and the interest on the loan.  This means we need either economic growth at a rate in line with the interest on the debt and/or inflation, both of which we’ve had a great deal of in the past century.

But back in the real, natural world, there are limits to growth. The ultimate limit is energy, something all production requires. Humans require food to survive and re-produce. To create this food we need energy, energy that comes, ultimately, from the sun. Read More

03.01.13- The End of the Shale Bubble?
John Michael Greer

It’s been a little more than a year since I launched the present series of posts on the end of America’s global empire and the future of democracy in the wake of this nation’s imperial age. Over the next few posts I plan on wrapping that theme up and moving on.  However traumatic the decline and fall of the American empire turns out to be, after all, it’s just one part of the broader trajectory that this blog seeks to explore, and other parts of that trajectory deserve discussion as well.

I’d planned to have this week’s post take last week’s discussion of voluntary associations further, and talk about some of the other roles that can be filled, in a time of economic contraction and social disarray, by groups of people using the toolkit of democratic process and traditional ways of managing group activities and assets. Still, that topic is going to have to wait another week, because one of the other dimensions of the broader trajectory just mentioned is moving rapidly toward crisis. Read More

02.28.13- Why Canada Will Divorce The US And Marry China
Peter Schiff

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02.27.13- Ethanol
Don Stott

One of the greatest frauds today, is that ethanol reduces carbon dioxide (C02) emissions, and in doing so, saves the earth from global climate change.  Responsible scientists say that CO2 plays no role in climate change, and shows up well after any increase or decrease of temperatures.  Ethanol is bad science.  It is bad for the engines of cars that must use such a gasoline blend.  It increases the cost of gasoline, and all other corn based products.  It actually increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  It reduces the fuel mileage a car would get with pure gasoline.  An authority on the U.S. oil industry, is Sei Graham, the author of "Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High."  He is a man with more than fifty years experience.  First, as a petroleum reservoir engineer, and later as an oil and gas attorney.  He is also a graduate of West Point.  Here is what he has to say about the current gas prices: Read More

02.26.13- Suddenly, There Is Energy Everywhere, Even in Africa
Daily Bell

Energy revolution promises to transform East Africa ... An energy revolution is taking place in East Africa as the price of solar technology tumbles and huge resources of geothermal steam beneath the Great Rift Valley start to be exploited, moves which have the potential to lift millions out of poverty and cut greenhouse gas emissions.BBC

Dominant Social Theme: So much unexpected good fortune. Who would have thought there was all this energy?

Free-Market Analysis: Suddenly, the US has enough available energy to be self-sufficient for a thousand years. And now we are told – by the BBC no less – that one of the world's more impoverished nations – Kenya – may be able to tap the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil on an ongoing basis via geothermal steam (see article excerpt above). Read More

02.25.13- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Opera duo Charlotte & Jonathan - Britain's Got Talent 2012 audition
Britain's Got Talent

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02.23.13- Powerful Lies: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster And The Radioactive Effects On Human Health
Richard Wilcox

Even one atom of uranium undergoing alpha decay has the potential for creating a fatal cancer. - Paul Zimmerman, A Primer in the Art of Deception
(1; p. 53)


When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous, and its speaker a raving lunatic
. - Dresden James (2)

It ain't what we don't know that causes all the trouble, it's what we do know that ain't so. - a saying from Jim in Texas (Ibid.)

The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. - Molly Ivins (3)Read More

02.22.13- Wireless Technology Is Ushering In a New Era of Computing
Adam J. Crawford

A transformation is happening in the world of telecommunications: a technology improvement known as "LTE" now allows for the transfer of data to mobile devices at speeds equivalent to home Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) Internet connections. This has created a transitional market in mobile phones and tablets that is projected to rapidly accelerate in the coming years.

What Is LTE?

Originally, copper wires strung from pole to pole established the connection between telephones. Today, wireless networks usually establish that connection, using towers and antennas to relay sound and data by radio waves. Read More

02.21.13- The Big Shift
Andrew Nikiforuk

Governments should be 'educating their citizenry of the risk of contraction to minimize potential future social discord,' says Swedish expert Mikal Hook.

An energy transition has begun, but it's probably not the one you imagined.

It might have an ugly financial face, an authoritarian political mask or come in the guise of geographic disunion.

But it probably won't look like a solar panel or a windmill. And it won't include flying cars or undersea homes.

Although no one really knows where the globe's energy mix is headed or how it will shape our lives in the future, energy experts now offer a diversity of forecasts, stories and warnings. Read More

02.20.13- The Energy and Currency Cartels, the Economy and Your Life
Szandor Blestman

When I express my views on energy and the future of humanity I am oft times labeled a dreamer. I am sometimes told the technologies I speak of are too expensive and are therefore not worth it for homeowners to install. I am told that homeowners would be better off financially if they continue to pay the low prices charged by energy companies with their coal burning and nuclear power plants. I am told that cars can't make the change over to battery power because the technology simply isn't there. I don't believe any of that is true. I think that technologies have been developed that are far ahead of anything many of us might imagine. I believe that the power elite I often talk about are preventing these technologies from getting out simply so they can continue to control your life. Read More

02.19.13- Preparing For a National Fuel Shortage
Tom Chatham

The availability of fuels in society is what literally makes the wheels go around. The U.S. is addicted to petroleum products and we would find it hard to suddenly go without. Our fuel supplies and distribution system are just as fragile as our electrical grid and food supply chain and could be cut off for any number of reasons.

An EMP/CME, war or financial collapse are just some of the situations that could cut our supplies and leave the nation in a very bad situation. Without liquid fuels we won't get to work, go to the grocery store, grow process and transport food, or mine and transport fuel such as coal to keep the power on. We may not be able to get shipments of goods from overseas such as food, clothing, building materials or oil. The sudden lack of fuel would shut down society as we know it. Read More

02.18.13- Global Geophysical Just Went "All In", Should You Follow?
Matt Insley

Markets are closed today, but that doesn't mean we can't hunt for bargains in America's energy patch.

North American energy is running full-tilt. Drill rigs are spinning more efficient than ever and oil is flowing to the surface at an increasing rate in places like North Dakota and Texas. It's no flash in the pan, either.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world, minus a few budding energy plays, is having a tough time finding low-risk oil prospects.

That's a win/win for the U.S. – and it also leads us to our next round of profit opportunities. Including one oft-overlooked industry – and in particular one beaten down energy player that just went "all in"… Read More

02.16.13- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Five tools to
protect your privacy online

Simon Black

We've discussed many times before—hardly a month goes by without some major action against Internet users… from Obama's 'kill switch', to ACTA, SOPA and PIPA, to stasi tactics against people like Kim Dotcom.

Online privacy is becoming more important by the day. And nobody is going to give it to you, you have to take steps yourself to secure it.

Below are five different tools and services that will get you started: Read More

02.15.13- As US Gasoline Prices Soar, Hedge Fund Oil Bets Near Record
Reuters

U.S. motorists searching for someone to blame for the highest gasoline prices ever at this time of year have an easy target: hedge funds who have been quietly amassing winning bets on hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.

At a filling station in Midtown New York last week, several people were prepared to blame traders on Wall Street as they paid more than $4 per gallon to fill up their cars.

"It really is not supply and demand. It's definitely speculation," said John Keegan, an exterminator with pest control company Terminate Control, who was filling up his van. A cab driver said he was convinced the price would be just $1 a gallon if the government "stopped Wall Street trading oil." Read More

02.14.13- World's Largest Solar Sail Headed To Space Next Year
CleanTechnica

Solar sail technology is continuing to rapidly move towards its potentially game-changing role in the future of space flight. NASA will be launching in 2014 what is, as of now, the world’s largest solar sail ever constructed. This solar sail spacecraft, dubbed Sunjammer, will serve as a test and demonstration for the technology, and will then likely be used in the future in missions to near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), and possibly in missions to objects at the edge of and beyond the solar system.

The technology stands out for its relative affordability and complete lack of fuel use. It is accelerated entirely by photons from the Sun. The somewhat different electric solar sail also possesses many of the same advantages as the conventional solar sail, but is probably further off into the future. Read More

02.13.13.- Rationally speaking, we are all apocalyptic now
Robert Jensen

If we are rational and consider objective scientific evidence of environmental collapse including groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, ocean dead zones, species extinction, bio-diversity reduction and climate disruption, we need to be apocalypticists, argues Robert Jensen.

We are all apocalyptic now, or at least we should be, if we are rational.

Because "apocalyptic" is typically associated with religious fanaticism and death cults - things that rational people tend not to take literally or seriously - this claim requires some explanation. Read More

02.12.13- Rocket Stove Mass Heater
Paul Wheaton

rocket mass heaters in a nutshell:

heat your home with 80% to 90% less wood

exhaust is nearly pure steam and CO2 (a little smoke at the beginning)

the heat from one fire can last for days

you can build one in a day and half

folks have built them spending less than $20

the verbose details on rocket mass heaters:

This could be the cleanest and most sustainable way to heat a conventional home. Some people have reported that they heat their home with nothing more than the dead branches that fall off the trees in their yard. And they burn so clean, that a lot of sneaky people are using them illegally, in cities, without detection. Read More

02.11.13- The global water grab
Shiney Varghese

Writing in National Geographic in December 2012 about “small-scale irrigation techniques with simple buckets, affordable pumps, drip lines, and other equipment” that “are enabling farm families to weather dry seasons, raise yields, diversify their crops, and lift themselves out of poverty” water expert Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project cautioned against reckless land and water-related investments in Africa. “[U]nless African governments and foreign interests lend support to these farmer-driven initiatives, rather than undermine them through land and water deals that benefit large-scale, commercial schemes, the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered.” Read More

02.09.13- Wind Power – Just Better?
The Daily Bell

Australian Wind Energy Now Cheaper Than Coal, Gas, BNEF Says ... Wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels in producing electricity in Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. – Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme:

Wind power and alternative energy solutions are just better. Read More

02.08.13- Water: The Next Great Technological Frontier
Doug Hornig

All day I've faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water
Cool water...

Cool Water
by Bob Nolan (1936)

When Nolan wrote that song - about a man and his mule in the desert - it's doubtful he knew that he was prefiguring a world to come. Despite the massive abundance of water on our planet (and throughout the known universe, in fact), access to potable water (or a lack thereof) may prove to be the defining social struggle of this century, much like oil in the last. But a plethora of new technologies aim to nip the problem in the bud. Will they be enough? Read More

02.07.13- Aubrey McClendon and the Destruction of the Natural Gas Market
Dan Dicker

Aubrey McClendon is gone – or at least he's on his way out from Chesapeake energy (CHK). But the destruction of the natural gas market, where he was the ringleader in the shale gas land grab and cratering well price, is his real legacy, and not likely to be recovered from anytime soon. While Aubrey will now go into a very wealthy retirement, he leaves behind a decimated market and a long road to making natural gas a true transition fuel to energy independence and a renewable future.

The market failed us, failed all of us as a nation. Read More

02.06.13- Coal Power and Air Pollution
The Oil Drum

Fifty years ago I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds in the UK. It is not something I particularly dwell on, but the stories out of Beijing describing the air pollution in the Chinese capital this week brought back a memory. This story on CNN notes that visibility in Beijing has been cut to under 200 yards. Back in Leeds in December of 1962, the air quality had registered the highest levels of sulfur dioxide that had ever been recorded as air conditions generated smogs covering large parts of the country. What made it personal for me was that I lived about a mile from the University and had to walk there through the smog that covered the city. Despite it being daylight, there came a point where I could not see my hand with my arm outstreched (and I still vividly remember doing this). Crossing the Park to the University, there were cries in the mist as folk fell over some of the now invisible decorative iron edging along the walkways. Read More

02.05.13- The Gas Price Story of
Hurricane Sandy
Jeffrey Tucker

For those schooled in economics, the gasoline shortage during Hurricane Sandy last November was no surprise. Demand for gas goes up. Supply lines are disrupted. It’s the old supply-and-demand thing. The price goes up. Higher prices attract new supplies from unconventional paths. Prices respond and fall back again. The market handles it just fine.

All is well except for one thing: There were anti-gouging laws on the books. These laws restrict the upward path of prices. Plus, most people anticipated exactly what happened. By executive order, governments at all levels impose even more restrictive controls. These controls prevented prices from being licitly raised at the onset of the crisis. Read More

02.04.13- Bright Spots in the Fertilizer Market
Zig Lambo

Global population growth and escalating food demand underpins long-term upside for potash, phosphate and nitrogen producers, but fertilizer oligopolies may have jumped the gun last year with aggressive rates that priced farmers out of the market. As farmers expand acreage rather than boost yields in now-tired fields, grain prices have backed off recent highs. That's why Robert Winslow, agriculture research analyst and director at National Bank Financial, is picking his stocks with care. In this interview with The Energy Report, he shares where he sees strengths and weaknesses in the industry and names some interesting contrarian plays.

The Energy Report: Your last interview took place in April of 2011. What have been the major developments on the agricultural front impacting the fertilizer markets since then? Read More

02.02.13- Heat Drives the World
(Most of it We Waste)

Bruce Mulliken

A ball of fusion energy boiling in space. So hot is our Sun that 93 million miles away it keeps our planet warm enough through its electromagnetic radiation to allow most life on Earth to thrive. That radiation – infrared radiation - heats all things it comes in contact with, which in turn transmit that solar heat to other things. Slowly, we earthlings are taking better advantage of solar heat by concentrating it with mirrors to create high temperatures to generate steam to drive turbines to make electricity. We're wasting this free resource by not utilizing it enough.

The majority of the energy we use on the planet is in the form of fuels burned for heat. The human race is not that advanced from our cave-dwelling ancestors in that regard. Read More

02.01.13- Hidden Shale Assets, Set To Pay Off!
Dan Amoss

Cheap stocks are hard to find in today's market. Investor expectations are high; prospects for economic growth are low. However, this doesn't mean you can't make money in stocks with hidden or poorly managed assets…

Activist investors don't wait around for opportunities; they pressure companies to unlock hidden values. It often involves acquiring lots of a stock, proposing business changes, and pushing for seats on boards of directors. Read More

01.31.13- Resource Investors: Why You Can Expect Sunnier Days Ahead!
Frank Holmes

During the current commodity supercycle, there have been occasions—too many to count—when investor psyche has been damaged by reports about slowing U.S. growth, a hard landing in China or a debt crisis in Europe. Yet just behind the gloom, significant and positive trends are taking hold, causing the storms to start dissipating.

I often say that government policies are precursors to change, which is why we follow the monetary and fiscal actions closely as they can have a significant impact on asset prices. You have to go back about 16 months when Brazil kicked off the latest global easing cycle by cutting interest rates by 50 basis points. Read More

01.30.13- Drill Baby Drill
Euan Mearns

In January 1995 there was a total of 1738 oil and gas rigs drilling globally (excluding the former Soviet Union (FSU). By February 2012 that number had more than doubled to 3850. Global C+C+NGL production grew from 68 to 84 million bpd (24%) over the same period.

Global drilling for oil and gas is dominated by North America, in particular the USA. In January 1995 there were 737 oil and gas rigs drilling in the USA, 42% of the world total. By October 2011 this figure had grown to 2010 rigs, 55% of the world total. Read More

01.29.13- Just Add Water: How Scientists Are Using Silicon to Produce Hydrogen on Demand
Charlotte Hsu

New technology could help power portable devices like satellite phones and radios

Transmission electron microscopy image showing spherical silicon nanoparticles about 10 nanometers in diameter. These particles, created in a UB lab, react with water to quickly produce hydrogen, according to new UB research. Credit: Swihart Research Group, University at Buffalo.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Super-small particles of silicon react with water to produce hydrogen almost instantaneously, according to University at Buffalo researchers. Read More

01.28.13- When Solar Becomes Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels
John Aziz

Solar power has been getting cheaper and cheaper:

Current estimates suggest that solar might be as cheap as coal by the end of the decade, and half the cost of coal by the end of the next decade:

If the trend continues for another 8-10 years, which seems increasingly likely, solar will be as cheap as coal with the added benefit of zero carbon emissions. If the cost continues to fall over the next 20 years, solar costs will be half that of coal. These predictions may in fact be too conservative given that First Solar have reported internal production costs of 75 cents (46 pence) per watt with an expectation of 50 cents (31 pence) per watt by 2016. Read More

01.26.13- The "Dumbest" Energy Investment You Could Make
Matt Insley

There's been a lot of ways to play the rebirth of American energy.

The U.S. oil and gas patch has been booming – pipeline players, drillers, processing facilities and operators are just a few of the ways we've suggested to play it.

Today I want to share one American investment that you'll want to avoid.

It's hard not to get caught up in the euphoria.

Oil is flowing from South Texas to North Dakota – and America's total crude production is heading higher by the day. Same goes for natural gas. Today we're producing more of the stuff than we've ever produced. Read More

01.25.13- How High Oil Prices Lead to Recession
Gail Tverberg

There is ample evidence that spikes in oil prices leads to recession, at least in the US, which is an oil-importing nation. James Hamilton has shown that 10 out of the last 11 US recessions were associated with oil price spikes. How does this happen? An analogy can perhaps help explain the situation. This analogy also sheds light on a number of related economic mysteries:

  1. How can oil have a far greater impact on the world economy than its share of the world GDP would suggest? After all, BP's World Energy Outlook to 2030 shows the world cost of oil is only a little over 4% of world GDP.
  2. How can high oil prices continue to act as a "drag" on the economy, long after the initial spike is past?
  3. Why isn't a service economy insulated from the problems of high oil prices? After all, its energy use is relatively low. Read More

01.24.13- Coming soon, the car that runs on air: Peugeot Citroen unveil new 117mpg hybrid (and it's £1,000 cheaper than a Prius)
Ruth Sunderland

Peugeot Citroen invents technology for air car ready for the market by 2016

Company predicts 'Hybrid Air' to achieve 117 miles per gallon by 2020

If you have ever grimaced at your petrol bill and dreamed of a car that runs on fresh air, your prayers are about to be answered.

French car giant PSA Peugeot  Citroen believes it can put an air-powered vehicle on the road by 2016. Read More

01.23.13- How To Profit From The Emerging Energy World
Matt Insley

Despite what your mom said, you don't matter that much.

In fact, with each passing day, you, me and the rest of the developed-world-dwellers are losing our clout. Today I'll prove it to you with a few newfound energy statistics – plus, we'll discuss what you can do about it.

As I type, the developing world is gobbling up market share for the world's resources – oil, natural gas, coal, you name it. It's the same story, really, but it's coming true in front of our eyes.

To put it bluntly, the developing world is growing while we're standing still — there's more mouths to feed in developing countries, their population is growing, their income is growing and their demand for energy per capita is on the rise. Read More

01.22.13- How millions of farmers are advancing agriculture for themselves
Jonathan Latham

The world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the United States, but by a farmer in the state of Bihar in northern India. Sumant Kumar, who has a farm of just two hectares in Darveshpura village, holds a record yield of 22.4 tons per hectare, from a one-acre plot. This feat was achieved with what is known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).

To put his achievement in perspective, the average paddy yield worldwide is about 4 tons per hectare. Even with the use of fertilizer, average yields are usually not more than 8 tons. Read More

01.22.13- Gregor Macdonald: What the End of Cheap Oil Means
Adam Taggart

On the heels of Chris' recent report clarifying the global net energy predicament, he and PeakProsperity.com contributing editor Gregor Macdonald sit down to talk in depth about the broken relationship between energy costs and economic growth.

For much of the twentieth century, the developed world saw a steady march upwards in wages and living standards, due primarily to huge quantities of cheap, high-yielding liquid hydrocarbon. As we find ourselves bumping along the plateau of Peak Oil's apex, suddenly we find that "growth" is a lot harder to come by.  Read More

01.21.13- Suddenly we find that "growth" is a lot harder to come by.
The Oil Drum

Solutions lag as sea quickly rises

Sandy is the future, climate scientists say. As carbon dioxide emissions exceed worst-case scenarios, rising sea levels and storm surges will reshape every U.S. coastline, from San Francisco to Houston to New York. It is only beginning to dawn on Americans, half of whom live on the coast, that their future is a battle against the sea.

In the impulse to rebuild from Sandy, much of it financed by the federal government, big questions need to be answered. What to protect, and how? Where to retreat? Where to stand fast? Read More

01.19.13- Washington State Reps Battle UN Agenda 21 with New Bills
Mikael Thalen

Washington State recently made news after local farmers in association with the Washington State Farm Bureau adopted new policy blocking all aspects of U.N. Agenda 21.

United Nations Agenda 21 is based off of the The Commission on Global Governance’s controversial 1995 report entitled “Our Global Neighborhood” that calls for more power to the United Nations in countries affairs, including the United States.

One of the most troubling aspects of this is the United Nations claim that it has the authority to change policy in the United States and even dictate what people can or can’t do on their own private property under the supposed guise of environmentalism to the point of restricting massive amounts of land to American citizens. Read More

01.18.12- How To Profit From America's Arctic Riches
Byron King

Less than a month ago, Shell Oil suffered a major setback to its Arctic drilling program.

Shell’s 28,000-ton drill ship Kulluck ran aground off of Kodiak Island, Alaska, after breaking tow lines during stormy weather. Prior to that, the U.S. Coast Guard evacuated the 18-member crew from the rig.

According to a Coast Guard spokesperson, winds were gusting to 70 miles an hour, and the sea state in the Gulf of Alaska is hurling 40-foot waves at Kulluck, as well as towing and rescue vessels. Read More

01.17.13- The Really, Really Big Picture
Chris martenson, PhD

(Many longtime followers of the Crash Course have asked Chris to update his forecasts for Peak Oil in light of the production increases in shale oil and gas over recent years. What started out as a modest effort at clarification morphed into a much more massive 3-report treatise as Chris sifted through mountains of new data that ultimately left him more convinced than ever we are facing a global net energy crisis despite misguided media efforts intended to convince us otherwise. His reports are being released in series over the next several weeks; the first installment is below.) Read More

01.16.13- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: She Gave Him an
IPad for Christmas...

BoBo Kbg

View Video

01.15.13- Crude by rail:
does it really make sense?

Deborah Rogers

Bloomberg published an article regarding the new frenzy of shipping domestic crude, particularly tight oil from shales, by rail rather than pipeline. This decision by shale operators is interesting for various reasons but most especially for the economics behind it. While industry touts shipping by rail as their latest great idea, there is, of course, another possibility as to why shipping by rail rather than pipeline makes sense. And it has more to do with unprofitability than great opportunity.

According to Bloomberg:

“A group of oil and gas pipeline operators led by Plains All American Pipeline LP (PAA) announced plans just in the past three months to spend about $1 billion on rail depot projects to help move more crude from inland fields to refineries on the coasts.” Read More

01.14.13- Scale Matters
Nicole Foss

Scale matters. When it changes, other things change as a function of it, often in unpredictable ways. Emergent properties are system characteristics that come into existence as a result of small and simple units of organization being combined to form large and complex multi-unit organizational structures. One can know everything there is to know about the original simple units and yet be unable to predict the characteristics of the larger system that emerges as many units come together to interact as a larger whole.

For instance, knowing everything about an individual cell sheds no light on the behaviour of a sophisticated multicellular organism. At a higher level of organization, knowing everything about an organism does not predict crowd behaviour, the functioning of an ecosystem, the organization of stratified societies, or the dynamics of geopolitics as societies interact with one another. The complex whole is always far more than just the sum of its parts. Read More

01.12.13- Warning Not to Use E15 Gas in Your Car:
FOX Business

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01.11.13- America's Crude Awakening:
8 Picks…

Matt Insley

Yesterday we covered the recent run-up in crude prices. Indeed, with crude oil popping above $94 a barrel, the black goo is starting to turns some heads in the trading pit.

Today the trend looks to be continuing upward. With more data out of China yesterday, the global story for oil just keeps getting better (for investors.)

Today, I want to cut to the chase and give you a handful of ways to play it. We'll cover everything, from exploration and production to processing and storage. All told, there are some bucks to be made in oil this year, let's grab em…Read More

01.10.13- Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness
Johnny Silver Bear

For the last seven years, I have spent almost all of my time trying to get a handle on the "big picture". The "little pictures" are made up of effects, and sometimes causes, but rarely motives. Its funny how all the "little pictures" don't always coalesce into a greater understanding until, all at once, the truth becomes blatantly obvious and undeniable.

In my attempt to determine "motives" I needed to ascertain the true meaning of "real wealth". I have come to the conclusion that besides hard assets, (real estate, factories, machinery, equipment, infrastructure, base metals, precious metals, natural resources, etc.), the only other source of "Real Wealth" comes as a result of human toil. Read More

01.09.13- AC vs DC Power?
PH Savage

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01.08.13- How Big Is Canada's Oil Subsidy to the US?
Jeff Rubin

Consider the tale of Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources, two of the largest oil sands producers in Alberta. Outwardly, they may appear quite similar. Each produces hundreds of thousands of barrels a day from the oil sands. And most of that oil eventually ends up in the same place—gas tanks across the continent. The path it takes to get there, however, is another story. The difference is a microcosm of the predicament Canada's energy industry currently faces.

Over the last few years, Suncor's emphasis has shifted from exponential production growth to milking the full value of what it digs out of the ground. Fortunately for Suncor, it processes nearly all of the bitumen it pulls from the oil sands in its own refineries. Read More

01.07.13- Why the natural gas industry hates the movie 'Promised Land' so much
Kurt Cobb

Matt Damon's new fictional movie about natural gas development in a rural township was being lambasted by the natural gas industry even before it premiered. And yet, the film shows no tanker trucks laden with toxic fracking fluid. It depicts no roughnecks descending on a small town unprepared for the influx of new workers. It features no ghastly wastewater ponds and not even one drilling pad or derrick. In fact, drilling has yet to begin in the fictional township of McKinley.

As a result there are no wheezing people made sick from fumes associated with the drilling. There are no flaming water taps--first seen by many in the documentary Gasland, a film which displays devastation which it attributes to hydraulic fracturing and other processes associated with natural gas drilling in America's deep shale deposits. Read More

Three Patents for the Egyptian Energy-saving Motor
OnIslam Staff

Creative minds always feel responsible not only towards their societies and communities, but towards humanity as a whole as well. They regularly think of developing, improving and easing the life of humankind and all the living organisms inhabiting Planet Earth entirely. (Say, "Are those who know equal to those who do not know?" Only they will remember [who are] people of understanding.) (Surat Az-Zumur 39:9).

"Now, the idea is logical, applicable, efficient, never been done before.. So it is patentable," this was the yell of Hosni Shafi'i, the Egyptian engineer who succeeded in inventing a genuine motor that recycles energy initially consumed by it in a closed energy-saving cycle. Read More

01.04.13- Does the U.S. Really Have More Oil than Saudi Arabia?
Robert Rapier

People are often confused about the overall extent of U.S. oil reserves. Some claim that the U.S. has hundreds of billions or even trillions of barrels of oil waiting to be produced if bureaucrats will simply stop blocking development. In fact, in a recent debate between Republican candidates contending for Gabrielle Giffords' recently vacated House seat, one candidate declared "We have more oil in this country than in Saudi Arabia." So, I thought it might be a good idea to elaborate a bit on U.S. oil resources. Read More

01.03.12- What future for petroleum?
Marco Pagani

This is a translation from Italian of a post by Marco Pagani on the blog "Ecoalfabeta" based on a comment by Antonio Turiel on the recent IEA report on the future of petroleum and fossil hydrocarbons. 

The IEA forecast for the future of petroleum is not only too optimistic, but also wrong because they are based on summing volumes of fuels which have different outputs and energy costs of extraction. Here you find the correct analysis, much less reassuring.

What will be the future of oil? Antonio Turiel recently published a very interesting post on his blog, The Oil Crash. Read More

01.02.12- Conservation Not Technology will be our Saviour: Chris Martenson Pt 2
James Stafford

In part 2 of our exclusive interview with Chris Martenson economist and editor of the popular financial website Peak Prosperity Chris talks about:

  • How tight oil is being oversold
  • An idea for solving the storage and Battery problem
  • How price, not technology, has unlocked boom reserves
  • Why it’s about conservation now, not new technology 
  • Why we should be concerned about another financial meltdown
  • Future opportunities for investors
  • Why exporting natural gas is a terrible idea
  • Why Governments should help renewable Energy innovation
  • Why net energy returns are the MOST important thing Read More

12.31.12- Five possible energy surprises for 2013
Kurt Cobb

Many people trot out their predictions for the coming year right about now. I'm generally allergic to predictions and think rather in terms of probabilities. Naturally, the world we live in is far too complicated to yield anything approaching certainty concerning such matters as the future price and supply of energy, future economic conditions, and future political developments. In the end, the future is simply unknowable. So, I've tried to think of some developments which conventional wisdom has judged rather unlikely and which would therefore significantly alter our lives and perceptions should they occur--precisely because we are not prepared for them. Read More

12.29.12- A Tale of Two Forecast
Gregor Macdonald

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for the American public over the past month, as it was treated to two high-profile, but deeply conflicting, economic forecasts.

Despite declaring in 2008 that the age of cheap oil was over, the International Energy Agency (IEA) surprisingly announced last week that the United States would become the largest oil producer in the world by 2020. Hooray! This superlative declaration titillated U.S. media organizations, who understand quite well that Americans love to secure a #1 ranking in just about any category (save for prison incarceration, divorce rates, and obesity). As I explained to the Keiser Report, however, the IEA has done little more than produce an attention grabbing headline here. Simply ranking the ‘top oil producer’ in 2020 may mean much less than the public currently understands. Read More

12.28.12- The New Ethanol Blend May Damage Your Vehicle
Hugh Pickens

About 80 percent of the gasoline consumed in the U.S. is blended with ethanol, primarily with a 10 percent mix of ethanol, generally derived from corn.

Now Kate Sheppard writes that the Environmental Protection Agency has approved a new policy that will allow states to raise the blend to up to 15 percent ethanol (also known as E15), approved for use for cars and light trucks from the model year 2001 and later.

A few weeks ago, AAA issued a statement saying that the EPA's new policy creates the 'strong likelihood of consumer confusion and the potential for voided warranties and vehicle damage.' Read More

12.27.12- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Skepticism and the New World Order Conspiracy
Szandor Blestman

I think skepticism is a good thing, a very good thing. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical and it can in many cases prevent one from being suckered into some big con or lie. Skepticism, however, can also be a very effective tool to keep the truth hidden from people. It can be used to prevent people from even wanting to know the truth, especially when presented by some very clever propagandist in a way that ridicules others. No one wants to be ridiculed and so when some "respected" source ridicules those who make some "fantastic" claim others quickly learn to keep their mouths shut and not question authority. Skepticism based on emotion or opinion is not skepticism, it is a simple choice to believe one thing or source over another. Sometimes the mind can't imagine that the incredible could be reality and so one tends to disbelieve based on that fact alone. Read More

 
     
 

12.26.12- The Great Oil Swindle: Why the new black gold rush leads off a fiscal cliff
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Headlines about this year's World Energy Outlook (WEO) from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released mid-November, would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil.

The report forecasts that the US will outstrip Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2017, becoming "all but self-sufficient in net terms" in energy production - a notion reported almost verbatim by media agencies worldwide from BBC News to Bloomberg. Going even further, Damien Carrington, Head of Environment at the Guardian, titled his blog: "IEA report reminds us peak oil idea has gone up in flames". Read More

12.24.12- Agenda 21 Is Being Rammed Down The Throats Of Local Communities All Over America
Michael Snyder

Have you ever heard of Agenda 21?  If not, don't feel bad, because most Americans haven't.  It is essentially a blueprint for a "sustainable world" that was introduced at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.  Since then, it has been adopted by more than 200 counties and it has been modified and updated at other UN environmental summits.

The philosophy behind Agenda 21 is that our environmental problems are the number one problem that we are facing, and that those problems are being caused by human activity.  Therefore, according to Agenda 21 human activity needs to be tightly monitored, regulated and controlled for the greater good. Read More

12.21.12- Don't Fall for the Shale Boom Hype...Conservation Not Technology will be our Saviour - Chris Martenson
James Stafford

We are in the midst of an amazing energy boom, but by sweeping the idea of peak oil under the rug we are ignoring a significant fact: the relationship between hydrocarbon reserves and flow rates are not the same as they used to be—reserves have increased but flow rates are not as high or sustainable.

Perhaps the most important thing we need to pay attention to is net energy returns, on which we run society. Massive new discoveries are only netting a fraction of the returns compared to earlier decades. Read More

12.20.12- Gasoline & Oil Markets Rigged Far Worse Than Libor
EconMatters

UBS paid $1.5 Billion for manipulating Libor, and Barclay`s already paid the piper for manipulating the Libor rate. Well, it is about time the CFTC get its act together, and start going after the culprits who rig the oil and gasoline markets costing consumers and businesses a mafia tax by paying prices much higher than the markets should be priced based upon supply and demand fundamentals in the consumption marketplace. Read More

12.19.12- End of the World? Nah. End of the World as We Know It. Yah.
Ellen LaConte

Another reason climate change should top the new administration’s agenda.

In the nick of time the Mayan long-count calendar apocalypse was given the lie. A midsummer Discovery article, among others, reported that scholars of Mesoamerican history have unearthed new talking stones that round out the infamous calendar’s story. The hieroglyph from which doomers have drawn their prediction was not a prophesy after all but a response to unfounded oral reports of the defeat in battle of a 7th century Guatemalan ruler. It was the written-in-stone equivalent of a journalistic correction: “I’m still here, I’m still strong and, count on it, I’ll be around running things ‘til the next 13 K’atul cycle ends on 12.21.2012” – which in 696 must have seemed like forever. Read More

12.18.12- Conflict and Change in the Era of Economic Decline: Part 4 - Post-carbon governance
Richard Heinberg

 

Are we headed toward a more autocratic or democratic future? There’s no hard and fast answer; the outcome may vary by region. However, recent history does offer some useful clues. 

In his recent and important book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, Timothy Mitchell argues that modern democracy owes a lot to coal. Not only did coal fuel the railroads, which knitted large regions together, but striking coal miners were able to bring nations to a standstill, so their demands for unions, pensions, and better working conditions played a significant role in the creation of the modern welfare state. It was no mere whim that led Margaret Thatcher to crush the coal industry in Britain; she saw its demise as the indispensable precondition to neoliberalism’s triumph. Read More

12.17.12- Heat Drives the World. Most of it We Waste
Bruce Mulliken

A ball of fusion energy boiling in space. So hot is our Sun that 93 million miles away it keeps our planet warm enough through its electromagnetic radiation to allow most life on Earth to thrive. That radiation – infrared radiation - heats all things it comes in contact with, which in turn transmit that solar heat to other things. Slowly, we earthlings are taking better advantage of solar heat by concentrating it with mirrors to create high temperatures to generate steam to drive turbines to make electricity. We're wasting this free resource by not utilizing it enough.

The majority of the energy we use on the planet is in the form of fuels burned for heat. The human race is not that advanced from our cave-dwelling ancestors in that regard. They began building economies around the ability to make fire and put its heat to work. Read More

12.15.12- Weekend Rant:
Recognizing Reality

Chris Vernon

We have a problem. I’ve known we’ve had a problem for a long time. It’s only in the last few years though, after I left my career in engineering to take a PhD in glaciology, studying the changing Greenland ice sheet, that the magnitude and timeframe has become clear. It is now all but impossible to limit global warming, the warming of mean surface air temperature, to less than +2°C from pre-industrial temperatures [1, 2]. Understand also that temperatures over land rise more than this global average, and extremes are likely to be further exaggerated by positive feedbacks.

All but impossible because to have even a fifty-fifty chance of keeping warming below that somewhat arbitrary threshold, global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak within the next five years or so then fall rapidly for decades: “…the threshold of 2°C is no longer viable” [3]Read More

 
     
 

12.14.12- "You Say You Want a Revolution…"
Patrick Cox

The big story of the next year will be what I call the "phytochemical and nutraceutical revolution."

Phytochemicals, as you may know, are chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants. Nutraceuticals are plant- or animal-derived products. Both, however, are meant to provide health benefits.

While these compounds may function exactly like FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, they are not categorized as such.

As investors, this gives you and me a huge opportunity to invest in early-stage, revolutionary companies working on plant- and animal-based health solutions that bypass the lengthy and extremely expensive FDA approval process. Read More

12.13.12- Keystone XL: Welcome to the Proxy Energy War
Jen Alic

Now that elections are over, everyone is waiting for a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, but it’s not so easy amid the atmosphere of protests that have even traditionally oil-friendly Texans putting up a fight.

Lawsuits, intensifying protests, conflicts of interest and the underlying notion that the pipeline is not really essential are causing the Obama administration no end of discomfit. 

At stake in this atmosphere of civil disobedience is a $7 billion, 1,179-mile pipeline project that will transport Canadian tar sands to refineries in south Texas, courtesy of TransCanada. In Texas alone, the pipeline affects some 850 landowners. Read More

12.12.12- High-Voltage DC Breakthrough Could Boost Renewable Energy
Patrick J. Kiger

Thomas Edison championed direct current, or DC, as a better mode for delivering electricity than alternating current, or AC. But the inventor of the light bulb lost the War of the Currents. Despite Edison's sometimes flamboyant efforts—at one point he electrocuted a Coney Island zoo elephant in an attempt to show the technology's hazards—AC is the primary way that electricity flows from power plants to homes and businesses everywhere. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Electricity")

But now, more than a century after Edison's misguided stunt, DC may be getting a measure of vindication. Read More

12.11.12- Falling Oil Prices and the Shale Boom:
An Interview with Michael Levi

James Stafford

There’s been plenty of talk about potentially radical US foreign policy changes as a result of the shale boom. While one shouldn’t expect any dramatic US foreign policy move away from the Middle East, factors are influencing a greater focus on Asia. Only one thing is certain in this transforming world: The shale boom is real and the implications are many and difficult to predict.

In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com publisher James Stafford, energy security expert Michael Levi, the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), discusses: Read More

12.10.12- Another Reason For Americans To Fear The End Of The Year: The 'Agriculture Abyss'
The Economist

This week’s print edition has an article discussing another reason for Americans to fear the end of the year: the “agriculture abyss.”

Farm subsidies cost America’s government tens of billions of dollars each year, even though many farmers are earning more than ever thanks to high commodity prices. Little surprise, then, that with Congress desperate to avoid painful tax increases and spending cuts, both Republicans and Democrats are prepared to eliminate direct payments to growers. Read More

12.08.12- The war on Christmas and why it matters
Erik Curren

So what if Bill O’Reilly and Fox News, in the name of defending Christmas, are really hijacking the holiday to pit people against each other and against the planet?

Christmas season is making me tired.

Every year, I get tired of hearing jaunty, NutriSweet-y jingles that sound like they’re sung by Hello Kitty touted as “Chrismas Carols” and played earlier and earlier in the fall. “Here Comes Santa Claus” on November 11 — it’s a revolting enough song if you have to hear it once. But do we really need to endure this particular brand of nausea for a full six or seven weeks? Read More

12.07.12- Drumbeat
The Oil Drum

World's oil industry won't be the same in the wake of shale

US domestic oil production has jumped by 18 per cent in the past year as the shale boom has expanded, and in the first eight months of this year oil imports were 800,000 barrels a day fewer than a year earlier. America's oil exports rose over the same time by 300,000 barrels a day, so net imports have fallen in just one year by 1.1 million barrels a day, or about 6 per cent of total consumption. If that pace if sustained the International Energy Agency's prediction of self sufficiency for the US by 2030 will prove to be conservative. Read More

12.06.12- Australian researchers develop promising new approach to hydrogen storage
Leon Gettler

Scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, are developing a novel way to store hydrogen that could help turn it into a viable portable fuel source. The research centers on using synthesized nanoparticles of the compound sodium borohydride (NaBH4 for those who love chemistry), which when encased inside nickel shells exhibits surprising and practical storage properties including the ability to reabsorb hydrogen and release it at much lower temperatures than previously observed, making it an attractive proposition for transport applications.

Hydrogen is a clean burning fuel that can be extracted from sources including natural gas, biomass, coal and water. One of the major problems in making it a viable alternative fuel is storage – the atoms are so tiny that they can easily escape from many kinds of containers. Read More

12.05.12- Strategic Investing in the Solar Industry:
Who is Buying Whom and Why

Jennifer Runyon

Raj Prabhu, Managing Partner of Mercom Capital has been tracking funding announcements in the solar industry since 2009. His firm believes that by following the money, it can deliver valuable insight to its customers on market trends – sectors in distress and sectors that are thriving. "Following the money is a good indicator of the health of the industry. It gives us and our clients insights into trends in terms of technology and also just general market direction," he said.

When you look at the solar industry today, some market segments are in distress, while others are thriving.  “If you are in downstream you are healthy.  If you’re manufacturing, you’re not healthy,” Prabhu put it simply. Read More

12.04.12- The Crisis of Energy Infrastructures
Andrew McKillop

An International Crisis

Shortly before Hurricane Sandy, since September, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was handed the task by the Obama administration to create a security strategy for the power generating sector, electric grids, and gas and oil hydrocarbon facilities including pipelines and refineries, through the newly created Office of Energy Infrastructure Security. For the media, and for many politicians both in the US and elsewhere, the prime focus for concern is the terrorist threat. As the media often reports, energy infrastructures such as LNG terminals and nuclear reactors are "atomic weapon equivalent" and vulnerable to sufficient organized groups with basic weapons, equipment and the know-how. Read More

12.03.12- US Power Grid Vulnerable to Just About Everything
Jen Alic

As Washington hunts ill-defined al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, and concerns itself with Iran's eventual nuclear potential, it has a much more pressing problem at home: Its energy grid is vulnerable to anyone with basic weapons and know-how.

Forget about cyber warfare and highly organized terrorist attacks, a lack of basic physical security on the US power grid means that anyone with a gun—like disgruntled Michigan Militia types, for instance--could do serious damage. Read More

12.01.12- Understanding Our Oil-Related Fiscal Cliff
Gail Tverberg

The United States' fiscal cliff is very much related to several changes we have been going through recently, and will likely continue to experience:

  1. High oil prices (more than triple their level ten years ago). High oil prices cause people to cut back on discretionary spending, leading to layoffs in discretionary industries and debt defaults. Governments get less revenue in taxes at the same time they need to increase spending for unemployment benefits, bailing out banks, and stimulus funds. Result: financial problems for governments of oil importing countries, including many Eurozone countries and the United States. Read More

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