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a community peak oil portal
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 Picture this: a 6-mile-wide solar-power satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space. Photo-sensitive panels on the satellite collect light from the sun and turn it into microwave radiation that an antenna beams down to a ground station, where it's converted into enough electricity to power a large city.
Sound like science fiction? Last year, a government study group issued a report that said space-based solar power not only was technically feasible but also offered a potentially clean, renewable source of energy that could significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
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| Call to dub climate change 'a catastrophe' |
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 The government should stop talking about global warming and start using the term "climate catastrophe", a leading scientist said yesterday.
Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, also called for a commitment to deliver a large-scale use of renewables and nuclear power, rather than encouraging "trivial solutions" such as washing clothes at low temperatures.
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| China: Melting glacier leaves world's worst polluter with no room for doubt |
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| Up close, the sound of global warming at the face of the Urumqi No1 Glacier is a simple, steady drip, drip, drip. Just 30 metres from the main wall, the flood of meltwater becomes so powerful that it cuts a tunnel under the floor of grey ice, leaving only a blotchy, wafer-thin crust on the surface.
Compared with the collapse of ice shelves in the Antarctic, the melting of the mountains in China's far west is one of the less spectacular phenomena of global warming, but it is a more immediate cause of concern and hope.
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| 'We call it the Three Gorges of the sky. The dam there taps water, we tap wind' |
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| In the vast natural wind tunnel that is Dabancheng, the gales that roar between the snow-capped mountain ridges get so strong that trains have been gusted off railway tracks and lorries overturned.
Today, the gales themselves have become big business in Dabancheng. The area is home to one of Asia's biggest wind farms and a pioneer in a Chinese industry that is forecast to lead the world by the end of next year.
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| A Turkish theater for World War III |
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 As the price of oil increased rapidly in the past three years, Saudi influence has grown. The rapid decline of the US into a credit crisis has also prompted the need for rich friends in high places, particularly to rescue moribund banks and continue buying bonds issued by bankrupt federal agencies. It now appears that instead of a share of US banks or its corporate that "lesser" Arab rulers may be happy with, Saudi Arabia has been slowly pushing the US to capitulate its Turkish fiefdom.
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| China's coal price caps could worsen shortages - Morgan Stanley |
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 China's attempts to cap coal prices in order to encourage power generators to maintain full output could be counterproductive, with private miners likely to cease operations until the caps expire, said Morgan Stanley.
In a note to investors, it said that 'given the inelastic coal demand, we believe the incentives for coal mines, especially privately owned mines, to ask for higher prices remains high.'
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| BNSF CEO sees global coal demand high for next several years |
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| Global demand for coal should remain high for the next few years, the top executive of No. 2 U.S. railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp said on Thursday.
Chief Executive Matt Rose told Reuters in a telephone interview that all indications show that demand will "continue to outstrip supply for the next several years at least."
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| New biofuels lobbying group formed by some of the biggest agribizz players |
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| The argument over using crops to make biofuels is about to get a little louder, courtesy of a new group formed by some of the biggest agribusiness companies in the world.
The new group — formed by Monsanto Co., Archer Daniels Midland, Deere & Co. and DuPont Co. — announced Thursday it will use national advertisements and lobbyists on Capitol Hill to build the case that new technologies can make it feasible to produce crop-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel, even as grain prices climb worldwide.
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| 'Botswana could have up to 8% of world's uranium' |
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| Botswana has the potential to become a major uranium producer and even rival neighbour Namibia in the coming years, A-Cap Resources Managing Director Andrew Tunks said on Wednesday.
Tunks was speaking at the Botswana Resource Conference held at the GICC at which he also said his company was currently exploring one of the largest places of contained uranium.
"Countries next door to Botswana hold about 15 percent of the world's current uranium resources," he said. "(But) Geology doesn't know boundaries, so Botswana will be the next major uranium producer."
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| Want floor time? First, get past Bartlett |
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| ...By his own count, Bartlett has given 48 hourlong floor addresses since March 14, 2005 –– far more than anyone else, and almost all of them on peak oil, the notion that when oil production begins to decline, prices will skyrocket and bring the world economy to its knees.
With oil prices in the stratosphere, is it time to start listening to the House of Representatives’ Chicken Little?
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| Russia's military conducts test flights near North Pole |
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| MOSCOW: Russia's navy conducted test flights near the North Pole on Thursday, boosting its military presence in an area believed to contain vast quantities of oil and natural gas.
Cpt. Vladimir Serga, a naval spokesman, said that Il-38 anti-submarine bombers and Tu-142 long-range strategic bombers of the Northern Fleet took part in the exercise, in which the planes' crews tested radio and weapons systems management equipment.
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| The Peak Oil Crisis: America's Electricity |
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Earlier this week, the National Conference of State Legislators held an energy policy forum entitled "The Future of State Electricity Policy" for the benefit of legislators from all over the U.S. who were attending the annual conference. At the outset, the organizers announced they had been considering a transportation fuels forum, but had finally deemed the subject too confusing and too politicized to grapple with at this time.
The first speaker, a senior Energy Information Administration (EIA) official, felt impelled, however, to tell the gathering that before talking about electricity, he should warn them that his agency is very concerned about the cost of home heating which is set to at least double this coming winter.
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| The coming gas supply shock in the Gulf |
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| IT IS ironic that the Arabian Gulf, which contains two thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves and is the epicentre of the energy business, faces a regular gas shortage, possibly as high as 7 billion cubic feet in the next decade. This is going to have a seismic impact on the GCC’s oil production, consumption and exports, a major factor in crude oil prices.
Only Qatar among the GCC states has the scale of reserves, production and infrastructure to ignore gas supply constraints in industrial production in some of the highest nominal GDP growth economies in the world.
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| Just how thin is the North Pole ice? |
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| vox_mundi writes: Last spring we broke the news that the North Pole could be ice-free this summer. Now we've got some numbers that show just how thin the ice at the North Pole has become over the past 17 years, and they suggest that Santa isn't sitting very pretty.
Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and colleagues estimated the thickness of late summer ice at the North Pole in 2001, 2004 and 2007. They found that the ice was on average 1.3 metres thick at the end of the summer in 2007. By contrast, it was 2.3 metres thick in 2001 and 2.6 metres thick in 2004.
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| New Microgrid Network Proposed For More Dependable, Cheaper Power |
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| vox_mundi writes: Hurricane Katrina helped University of Texas professor, Alexis Kwasinski, formulate a new plan for the U.S. telecom system: a de-centralized power architecture that would have kept the lights and phones on in New Orleans. Kwasinski maintains that a microgrid-based power plant with its own local power sources and independent control would be more dependable, efficient, and cost effective than traditional telecom power systems.
Microgrids would also be a quick and inexpensive way to include renewable energy sources for both existing and developing systems.
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