Energy Links Jamboree - 04/30/07

Brown’s Latest Oil Tax Blunder – Sunday Times

The Scottish National Party today [Sunday] commented on a reference in the Sunday Times about Surrey University economist, Carole Nakhle, stating that Gordon Brown’s tax increases on the North Sea industry damaged output.

Get Congress to pave way for U.S. alternative fuel sites

Our country is facing a severe energy crisis. "Peak oil" was once considered a radical theory, but current research has given it a high degree of credibility. Some believe the peak already may have passed, while others think it will occur between 2005 and 2010. Not only are we running out of oil, we are running out of time.

Choosing between life and lifestyle

People in western countries have to make some tough decisions. We simply cannot continue to live the way we have been over the last few decades. We can get smart and change our behaviour, or we can keep doing what we are doing and condemn everyone on the planet to great hardship and eventually death.

Chavez and Big Oil gear up for struggle over Venezuela's oil future

Forcing Big Oil to give up control of Venezuela's most promising oil fields this week will be relatively easy for President Hugo Chavez, but he will face a more delicate challenge in getting the world's top oil companies to stay and keep investing.

If Chavez can convince companies to stick around despite tougher terms, Venezuela will be on track to develop the planet's largest known oil deposit, possibly to surpass Saudi Arabia as the nation with the most reserves.

Israeli PM says attacks can disable Iran’s nuclear programme

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying Saturday that the disputed nuclear programme of Iran could be severely hit by firing 1,000 cruise missiles in a 10-day attack.

Asked in an interview with Germany’s Focus magazine whether military action would be an option if Iran continued to defy the United Nations, Olmert said: “Nobody is ruling it out.”

Preparing for 'peak oil'

The world has a big problem: It's running out of oil. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the long-awaited "peak oil" crisis will certainly happen by 2040 - and may be happening right now.

Fortunately, President Bush has a strong energy plan in place that can be easily augmented to respond to concerns in both the oil industry and the global warming community.

Hurricane forecaster: Oceans, not CO2, cause global warming

Hurricane forecaster William Gray said Friday that global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming, and the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.

Gray, a Colorado State University researcher best known for his annual forecasts of hurricanes along the U.S. Atlantic coast, also said increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere won't produce more or stronger hurricanes.

The Truth About Global Warming

Global warming: Is it a man-made crisis that could spell doom and a serious moral issue? Or is it a normal, inevitable and cyclical process of nature? Scientists have not come to consensus on these questions, and their answers may have sweeping consequences for how we live in Chicago and surrounding communities.

On the Road, Hope for a Zero-Pollution Car

WHEN the largest aircraft ever built — the pride of Nazi Germany — crashed in flames at the United States Navy’s airship base here, it took 36 lives and smeared the reputation of hydrogen for decades.

In less than a minute, the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 turned hydrogen, which provided the zeppelin’s lift, into a pariah. But 70 years later, a growing number of advocates are promoting hydrogen as a panacea, a promising alternative to petroleum. In the last decade, every large carmaker has jumped on the hydrogen express.

DEFENDING CAPITALISM'S INTEGRITY

For most of its history the capitalist economic system has been both admired and criticized. Its capacity for making productivity possible in human communities is unparalleled and hardly anyone can deny this. Even the late American Marxist, Robert Heilbroner, famous for his book The Worldly Philosophers, acknowledged this after the fall of the Soviet Union. He wrote in The New Yorker Magazine that "... Ludwig von Mises ... had written of the 'impossibility' of socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic system. ... It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. ..." And Mises, of course, was one of the most consistent, uncompromising defender of pure, laissez-faire capitalism.

Coming Soon - Hydrogen Refineries At Your Corner Gas Station

Hydrogen fuel cell technology is the answer most often touted as the solution to greenhouse gas emitting cars. But until local fueling stations have the technology and capability to provide the hydrogen fuel at the community level, it's still a pipe dream.

Thankfully, one company seems have developed a solution that could solve the community distribution problem.

Postdocs' series explores hype and hope of a hydrogen economy

The pint-sized model car sitting on a classroom table in Building E13 encapsulates the title of the four-part IAP seminar held in January: "Hydrogen: Hype or Hope?"

The model car, built from a kit by the seminar presenters, MIT postdoctoral associates Caetano Rodrigues Miranda and Francesca Baletto, runs on hydrogen and represents the promise of a hydrogen-based economy, with its lure of pollution-free, renewable energy.

End of the Road for Hydrogen

With climate change on everyone’s mind and rumours of an energy crisis, what could be better than a car which doesn’t run on fossil fuels and has no emissions except water? BMW’s new Hydrogen 7 fits the bill. This is the V-12 BMW 7 modified to run on hydrogen. It has a petrol tank as well; it also runs on petrol, which is handy if you are far from the UK’s only hydrogen filling station – one of only six in the world. Of course, if hydrogen catches on there will be filling stations all over the country, won’t there?

Hydrogen Is Not The Answer: Transitional Technology in the Alternative Energy Market

Most of the so-called sources of alternative energy are, at best, transitional in nature. By “transitional,” I mean that they can carry us from the hydrocarbon era into something entirely new.

By “entirely new” I mean such things as zero-point energy. (I know an esteemed aerospace engineer who attests to having seen one of these operating steadily for two weeks on a tabletop in a black ops project), cold fusion (I know a US Naval Research Laboratory physicist who’s catalogued evidence that it’s real), hot fusion (I own stock in a company that’s achieved 1 billion degrees Celsius), a Tesla-based technology that uses the ionosphere as a capacitor and others.