The news out of the southern part of Arizona doesn’t seem to be losing its ability to shock. Apparently the Cartels that are responsible for most of the drug traffic across the southern US border are now branching out to stealing oil from pipelines coming out of Mexican refineries headed north into the United States. The money from the sale of the oil is used to supplement the arms race between the Cartels and the […]
Saw this just now in the Guardian: “‘By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,’ says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis. It adds: ‘While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for […]
The US Department of Energy, which officially rejects the idea of Peak Oil, admits that the only way oil production will increase after 2011 is if we find new oil resources with greater reserves than those Saudi Arabia – and put them into production immediately. And that all has to happen in the next few years. “The graph labels as ‘unidentified’ the additional supply projects needed to fill in a gap that is expected to […]
While some have claimed that we already passed “Peak Oil” in 2008, and others think that it’s still some years away, a group of Kuwaiti petroleum engineers have developed a new method to measure the oil production curve, and predict that 2014 is the best guess. “Ibrahim Nashawi and colleagues point out that rapid growth in global oil consumption has sparked a growing interest in predicting ‘peak oil’ — the point where oil production reaches […]
I’ve been offline most of this week at our annual presbyter retreat here in Arizona. As I pointed out to the bishop, if he has any doubts about my commitment to ministry, he need only look at my willingness to attend lectures on collegiality at the time when the Steve Jobs is announcing the latest technology toy. I was reduced to sitting in the back of the room and refreshing twitter feeds on my phone […]
There are many people concerned right now about the continued ability of oil reserves to keep up with demand. We’ve had a bit of a reprieve because of the global recession, but as the recession lessens around the world, demand for energy is increasing and oil prices are starting to rise again. A number of countries, France and Japan in particular, have decided that they are going to try to lessen the impact of an […]
Well. This isn't good news at all. I'd been hoping that my inherent pessimistic attitude had wrongly convinced me that the world's oil supply was going to be getting significantly tighter. According to a report today, that's not the case. The reason that the topic of Peak Oil hasn't been in the news of late isn't just the fact that the price of oil had dropped, or that gasoline wasn't as expensive as it was […]
Back when I was in High School and the works of Eric Von Daniken were still new and popular, I was fascinated by the mysterious works of the Nazca people in Peru. Von Daniken claimed that the giant figures that the Nazca people carved into the plateaus of Peru were meant to be seen by alien spaceships. (A bit of a reach perhaps, but if you know Von Daniken’s work, exactly what you’d expect.) But […]
The chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris is sounding the alarm that Peak Oil may be closer than people have been thinking: “In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 […]
(I’m working on a piece about General Convention but it’s not ready to post yet. So in the meantime, here’s something for y’all to chew on.) The cause of the Roman Empire’s collapse has been variously attributed. Gibbons thought that it had to do in part with the empire’s adoption of Christianity. I just finished a book that argued it had to do with the fundamental need of the Roman economic model to constantly grow, […]
Entangled States 