Author Archives: energyskeptic

Oil, The Final Warning

OIL: THE FINAL WARNING June 25, 2008. Ian Sample. New Scientist (pg. 32) Howls of protest have been echoing round the globe as the price of oil punches through record highs with every passing week. In the UK, last month, hundreds … Continue reading

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Not-So-Safe-Deposit Boxes: States Seize Citizens’ Property to Balance Their Budgets

Not-So-Safe-Deposit Boxes: States Seize Citizens’ Property to Balance Their Budgets May 12, 2008. Elisabeth Leamy. abcnews The 50 U.S. states are holding more than $32 billion worth of unclaimed property that they’re supposed to safeguard for their citizens. But a … Continue reading

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Credit Card Debt

May 1, 2008 U.S. Credit Card Debt Soars to Unprecedented Heights http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-4-28/69849.html Studies indicate that credit card defaults and related write-offs increased drastically since 2006. Today, lenders write off 33 percent more in credit card debt than they did two … Continue reading

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Credit Default Swaps & CDO’s

Why Wall St. Needed Credit Default Swaps http://seekingalpha.com/article/73060-why-wall-st-needed-credit-default-swaps Take a CDO with a 50 basis point spread over US Treasures. Banks will buy credit default swaps costing them 20 basis points, but by doing so, even they seem to make … Continue reading

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2nd largest oil field in the world, Mexico’s Cantarell, declining rapidly

Mexican oil exports: start saying adios! by Martin Payne, 19 Mar 2008. Energy Bulletin. 1)      This story illustrates the problem of RATE of production – you might have a lot of oil, but if you can only produce it at … Continue reading

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Richard Heinberg We need 50 million farmers

Fifty Million Farmers by Richard Heinberg, originally published by Energy Bulletin  | Nov 17, 2006 (Note: This is the abbreviated text of a lecture by Richard Heinberg delivered to the E. F. Schumacher Society in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on October 28, … Continue reading

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We’ll need more Farmers

Energy Descent and Agricultural Population Jason Bradford on March 11, 2009 Some excerpts of this article below: Among the cadre of folks who think about food systems and sustainability in the U.S., there’s a concern about the number of farmers … Continue reading

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Softer landing if we can keep the Combines going

Save it for the Combine August 24, 2010. Jason Bradford Excerpts from this article: The combine performs tasks that replace an enormous amount of labor in a reliable and timely fashion.  It cuts the stalks of seed crops, threshes the … Continue reading

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Energy in the Food System uses 19% of all energy consumed in the USA. Pimentel 2008

Pimentel David, et. al. 2008.  Reducing Energy Inputs in the US Food System.  Human Ecology 36:459–471 [ Here are some excerpts from this paper. I don’t list many of the ideas in the article on how to do this though, … Continue reading

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Energy in Food System. March 2010. USDA

Canning, P. 2010. Energy Use in the U.S. Food System.  USDA Economic Research Report Number 94 Another great review of this article is Beyond Food Miles by Michael Bomford, a research scientist and extension specialist at Kentucky State University, an … Continue reading

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