http://www.grinzo.com/energy News, statistics, commentary and activism Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:29:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Jim Kingsdale has a post up that includes a longish piece by the financial deity Peter Lynch on the cost of energy. Please go read the whole thing, but let me present just a few snippets to entice you to do so: In my opinion, “Energy” is the number one ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/07/05/must-read-peter-lynch-and-the-cost-of-energy/ rjacobsen0 pointed out over on the discussion board (post) that one of the 14 candidate questions in Science Debate 2008 is right in our wheelhouse: 3. Energy. Many policymakers and scientists say energy security and sustainability are major problems facing the United States this century. What policies would you support ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/07/03/science-debate-2008/ My letter to the IEA Press Office, sent just moments ago: I would like to know what the IEA's official response is to a story that's just starting to make its way around the Internet regarding the Bush Administration stopping the IEA from updating its projections until after this November's US ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/07/02/iea-bushs-puppet/ I've seen weirder news days than today, but not many and not by much. To recap the highlights: GM's June sales dropped 8.3 percent vs. June 2007, and that was so much better than the expected drop (-19%) as well as the results from Ford (-19%) and Toyota (-12%), that the company's ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/07/01/a-leap-through-the-looking-glass/ The IEA sent out the following press release about the latest Medium-Term Oil Market Report, which I'm quoting in its entirety (emphasis in the original): Despite Slowing Oil Demand, IEA Sees Continued Market Tightness Over the Medium Term “Record prices in the oil market in recent months have become a threat ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/07/01/ieas-medium-term-oil-market-report/ Bill McKibben, one of Those Who Must Be Read, in my opinion, has a thoughtful, moving piece up at Orion Magazine's site, "When Words Fail" (emphasis added): I almost never write about writing—in my aesthetic, the writing should disappear, the thought linger. But the longer I’ve spent working on global warming—the ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/30/mckibben-words-messages/ Joe Romm touched on a critical point in a post at Climate Progress this morning, "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us": Equally important, conservatives now have a very potent political issue to beat back advocates of an economy-wide cap & trade system — ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/29/comfort-zones-and-consequences/ The Independent has an article about global warming in today's edition that raises some very disturbing questions. Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole: It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/27/a-blue-arctic/ In the spirit of the very great and dearly missed George Carlin, let me borrow a technique he used on his brilliant 1996 album, Back in Town, and present my own, energy- and journalism-themed list of "free-floating hostilities", without using any of the Seven Words You Can Never Say On ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/26/enough-already/ Jeff Rubin and Behjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets, Inc. have issued a short paper addressing what will happen in the US if we see $200/barrel oil and $7/gallon gasoline by 2010, as their analysis says is possible. The paper is Getting Off the Road: Adjusting to $7 per Gallon Gas ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/26/the-7gallon-trigger/ From my e-mail queue to your screen: Energy Information Administration EIA Reports U.S. Department of Energy Washington, DC 20585 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 25, 2008 World Energy Use Projected to Grow 50 Percent Between 2005 and 2030 World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 50 percent between 2005 and 2030, driven by robust ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/25/eias-latest-international-energy-outlook/ Read the article Rising seas threaten west Antarctic, and it's all but impossible to think, yet again, of all the chances to take serious, desperately needed action on CO2 emissions that we've thrown away over the last twenty years. What could trigger such a bout of depressing navel staring? ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/25/the-lost-generation-and-possibly-much-more/ In the endless war of words over whether it's a war about oil (meaning the current war in Iraq, not the prior war in Iraq), people sometimes bring up the issue of what US Vice President Dick Cheney said in a public appearance in 1999, what it implies about his ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/24/cheney-and-peak-oil/ Here we go again--another article about economists measuring uncomfortable things like the value of human life in trying to figure out what our policy priorities should be. This time around, I have more than the usual objection to what my fellow economists have cooked up. The article is Fixing the ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/22/dismal-non-science-indeed/ Michael T. Klare, did a 45-minute interview with Jim Puplava and the Financial Sense Newshour, and you should go listen to it. Klare is the author of several books on the international ramifications of resource competition, most recently Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. In this interview ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/21/must-listen-michael-t-klare/ So, we now see that there's about to be one heck of an oil deal between some US companies and Iraq (emphasis added): Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/19/thinking-the-unthinkable/ I didn't want this to be lost in the comments on my prior post about the Bush/McCain ANWR/OCS drilling nonsense, so I'm posting it as a standalone item. Joe Romm pointed out over on Climate Progress that even drilling the heck out of the outer continental shelf won't make any significant ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/19/anwr-and-offshore-drilling-update/ This post isn't going to win me any friends in the blogosphere, but I've donned my Kevlar underoos in anticipation of the response, and it has to be said: Economics trumps energy. What am I talking about? Simple: There's this obsession, bordering on a fetish, in some circles with the ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/18/economics-trumps-energy/ OK, now that Bush and McCain are making an issue out of opening up currently off-limits area to oil drilling, most notably offshore areas, it's time for me to address this yet again. There's a lot of noise on this issue, and almost all of it ignores the peak oil factor. ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/18/offshore-and-anwr-oil-drilling-again/ As the dual problems of global warming and peak oil become so pressing that even US politicians can no longer ignore them, they, and all Americans, will face a daunting series of public policy questions. In one way or another, all the questions raised by the need to rein ... http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/16/the-airline-conundrum/