In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company received a patent for a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons.
Joule Unlimited, co-founded by
George Church, appears ready to forever alter the way we produce fuel.
[more inside]
posted by Baby_Balrog
on Jan 18, 2011 -
140 comments
A
Saudi Prince tells America to give up futile dreams of energy independence.
Op-Ed in the NYT says Peak Oil is a waste of energy and an illusion. Meanwhile, the OECD's energy advisors, the IEA are saying cheap oil will
run out in ten years, a decade sooner than estimates made as recently as 2007.
posted by bystander
on Aug 26, 2009 -
88 comments
Recently,
John Michael Greer has been exploring a little known idea of the deceased economist
E.F. Schumacher (a student of the oft-discussed
Keynes).
"Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. The latter of these includes everything dealt with by conventional economics: the goods and services produced by human labor and exchanged among human beings. The former includes all those things necessary for human life and economic activity that are produced not by human beings, but by nature. Schumacher pointed out that primary goods, as the phrase implies, need to come first in any economic analysis because they supply the preconditions for the production of secondary goods. Renewable resources, he proposed, form the equivalent of income in the primary economy, while nonrenewable resources are the equivalent of capital; to insist that an economic system is sound when it is burning through nonrenewable resources at a rate that will lead to rapid depletion is thus as silly as claiming that a business is breaking even if it’s covering up huge losses by drawing down its bank accounts." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks
on Jul 10, 2009 -
14 comments
Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some
problems with the plan.
posted by Laugh_track
on Jul 10, 2008 -
41 comments
"
The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This
change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost
all aspects of our daily life."
The new Oil Report from Energy Watch Group makes a strong case that we have now passed peak oil.
[more inside]
posted by roofus
on Oct 22, 2007 -
87 comments
Boundless energy or bad math? Randell Mills thinks he has the solution to our energy problems. In his company's patented
process,
"energy is released as the electrons of atomic hydrogen are induced to undergo transitions to lower energy levels producing plasma, light, and novel hydrogen compounds." It also implies that quantum mechanics is wrong.
posted by Espoo2
on Nov 5, 2005 -
73 comments
Real-Time Biological Natural Gas Generation. A research lab has discovered that microbes living in Wyoming's Powder River Basin are generating methane (natural gas) through their natural metabolism of local coal beds. In relation to the many Peak Oil discussions here, could be way to get more energy for the future. (via SpaceDaily.com)
posted by zoogleplex
on Nov 17, 2004 -
22 comments
Peak Oil? Include Me Out, is one of the best reads about the whole issue of peak oil. Its author, Mick Winter "is a former Y2K community activist who currently suffers from chronic déjà vu and still hasn't figured out what to do about Peak Oil." I am a
peaknik and I can tell you this is a good read, no matter your stance on peak oil! (
psssst, if you are already a peaknik, or just curious, Winter maintains a good a peak oil metadirectory. )
posted by samelborp
on Oct 18, 2004 -
41 comments
Greenspan on oil (speaking to the the National Italian American Foundation, which
De Niro would never do :) "We will begin the transition to the next major sources of energy perhaps before midcentury as production from conventional oil reservoirs, according to central tendency scenarios of the Energy Information Administration, is projected to peak." And just to make it political, here's
a chart relating presidential approval ratings to gas prices!
posted by kliuless
on Oct 15, 2004 -
9 comments
