Over the past year or so there seems to have been far more train derailments of cars carrying crude oil that have resulted in huge, deadly explosions, and it is not a coincidence that the oil in these explosions originated from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.
Read more...Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil” — the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline — was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.
But this assessment may be premature.
Read more...Stock speculator Jay Gould remarked, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” That, sports fans, is the real foundation of the generational warfare propaganda effort.
Read more...The problem of who should bear the costs of climate-change-induced rises in flood frequency in coastal communities is difficult even before throwing in the not-trivial problem that is it also highly politicized.
Read more...Yves here. One of the big problems with the growth v. “de-growth” debate is how terrible our measures of productive activity are.
Read more...Get a cup of coffee while you settle down to watch this video of Nancy Fraser discussing the crisis as a joint problem of ecological, financial, and social systems.
Read more...Yves here. It is not hard to imagine that the position taken by Ohio officials regarding what sure looks like fracking-induced damage to water supplies is being replicated in other states.
Read more...Fracking skeptics have been concerned about methane releases, since methane is a vastly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This report is particularly grim and calls the entire case for shale gas into question.
Read more...Yves here. The post below by Michael Klare is hardly radical; in fact, the Department of Defense has been for at least the last five years working on geopolitical scenarios that give a large role to climate change induced political instability, such as mass migrations out of heavily populated low-lying areas. So as much as Klare anticipates more and more popular uprisings, I’d anticipate that the powers that be are expecting them and are prepared to suppress them brutally. Thus the places they might succeed are in advanced economies with comparatively little police brutality in large cities (ie, where you’d have lots of media coverage which would constrain how harsh the retaliation would be).
Read more...Yves here. We’ve written repeatedly about how short-lived shale gas wells are compared to conventional oil wells. The fact that the much-touted shale gas play will in aggregate abate relatively quickly is not something its proponents want the greater public to hear.
Read more...Yves here. This post by Gaius not only reports on the latest rumors surrounding the Fukushima clean up (such as it is) but also the huge danger the site poses to Japan and the US if it is not stabilized.
Read more...I really enjoy speaking with Harry Shearer, both for his engaging manner and his thorough preparation. I also hope you’ll see fit to circulate this interview, since the more attention we can bring to this plan to legalize corporate pillage, the better.
Read more...Yves here. One of the things on our very long list of important issues we’d like to write about is the way Google, an unregulated information-screener, can dictate companies’ business models and keep information out of the public eye by how they handle search queries. Richard Smith give an example below.
Read more...I’m generally very taken with Ian Welsh’s work, particularly two recent posts, A New Ideology and How to Create a Viable Ideology. He then continued with 44 Explicit Points on Creating a Better World. And I hate to say it, but the last piece was no where near as well thought out as the preceding pieces. What troubled me about his latest piece was its combination of confidence (as opposed to modesty and soliciting reactions and input) in combination with it having internal contractions and a lack of precision of language. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming was trying to finesse the question of governance.
Read more...Yves here. Given the almost innate bullish bias of equity investors, when they start worrying about something, that means it actually has non-trivial odds of happening. So the idea that investors think it’s possible that a lot of current proven fossil fuels won’t be lifted is an unexpected bit of good news on the climate change front. Whether this comes to pass soon enough to save our collective bacon is another question entirely.
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