The Peakist

For the past year, Rob Hopkins, co-ordinator of the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, permaculture activist and producer of www.TransitionCulture.org, has been looking into the concept of Energy Descent Planning in preparation of the Transition Town Totnes initiative and as part of an MSc at Plymouth University. ASPO’s Colin Campbell has said of the resulting dissertation: “Far from it being a doomsday message, we are left with a sense of real hope that a more benign age may follow the oil-based excesses of the present world”. You can support Rob in his work by buying a copy here.

Peter Cizek reports in Canadian Dimension Magazine (July/August 2006) on the appalling impact of mining the tar sands of Alberta:

Faced with the undeniable reality of “Hubbard’s Peak” in global conventional oil supplies, the world’s largest multinational energy corporations are now hell-bent on squeezing oil out of tar in northern Alberta, like junkies desperately conniving for one last giant fix in a futile attempt to quench America’s insatiable “addiction to oil” (described so eloquently by President George Bush II). Along the Athabasca River near Fort McMurray, a sub-arctic town almost 1,000 kilometres north of the U.S. border, tar literally seeps out of the riverbanks where Aboriginal peoples once used it to patch their birch-bark canoes. But most of the tar sands lie hidden below northern Alberta’s boreal forest, in an area larger than the state of Florida. (more…)

New scientific modeling shows that a regional nuclear conflict between countries such as India and Pakistan could spark devastating climate changes worldwide. “We are at a perilous crossroads,” said Owen Toon of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. “The current combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics form perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society since the dawn of humanity.” (more…)

Study finds enough electric capacity to ‘fill up’ plug-in vehicles across much of the nation

If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that “off-peak” electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country’s 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. (more…)

In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.

See the whole article over at physorg.com:

http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html

In a dramatic demonstration of W Joseph Stroupe’s argument concerning the emerging new world oil order Shell has given in to pressure from the Kremlin over control of the massive Sakhalin-2 gas project.

Terry Macalister and Tom Parfitt of The Guardian write: “The steady drip of months of pressure and accusations against Shell from the Russian authorities have taken their toll. The company is about to back down in its struggle over Sakhalin-2, the huge liquefied natural gas project off the country’s far eastern coast. Shell, which took the lead role in the scheme under the first production sharing agreement with the Kremlin in 1994, has been accused of violating a series of “green” regulations in the pristine environment of the region. The pressure has been mounting since the summer.” (more…)

Meet the world’s top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow. A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs. (more…)

Steve Connor, Science Editor of The Independent writes: “The Arctic could lose virtually all its summer sea ice by the year 2040 - 40 years earlier than previously thought - according to a study by leading climate scientists. A rapid acceleration in the loss of sea ice seen in recent years will be dwarfed by the massive melting, up to four times faster than previously, which could take place within 20 years, the scientists predict. (more…)

Every citizen would be issued with a carbon “credit card” - to be swiped every time they bought petrol, paid an energy utility bill or booked an airline ticket - under a nationwide carbon rationing scheme that could come into operation within five years, according to a feasibility study commissioned by the environment secretary, David Miliband, and published today. In an interview with the Guardian Mr Miliband said the idea of individual carbon allowances had “a simplicity and beauty that would reward carbon thrift”. (more…)

The provisional UK-wide mean temperature for autumn was 11.3 °C, beating the previous record set in 2001 of 10.5 °C, in a temperature series that began in 1914.

The Met Office confirms that the autumn 2006 has been the warmest in the last 347 years across central parts of the UK.Central England Temperature records dating back to 1659 are the longest instrumental temperature records in the world, and autumn 2006 has been warmer than any equivalent autumn since then. The provisional mean temperature this year was 12.6 °C. The previous highest figure for the equivalent period was 11.8 °C, recorded in 1730 and 1731. (more…)

Dear Friends:
Over the past 10 years, we at Oilwatch have been building a strong and active network of resistance to the negative impacts of fossil fuels activities on peoples and their
environment. With member organizations from over 50 countries, we are dedicated to developing global strategies for the communities affected by the oil operations and of
supporting their processes of resistance in the struggle against those activities. (more…)

New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

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Russia attacks the West’s Achilles’ heel
By W Joseph Stroupe

Russia has found the Achilles’ heel of the US colossus.

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Russia tips the balance
By W Joseph Stroupe

Russia has set the agenda for the global transition to an entirely new model of international energy security designed to address intensifying concerns, especially those of the rising East.

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