KUNSTLER'S VIEW IS DARKER...

What was strange from Louie's point of view was not the topic of the day, but that we were stuck in the house. Usually at that hour, we'd be working in the backyard, where he can better leverage his skill set, which includes chasing squirrels, digging up tomato plants, eating wicker patio chairs, etc. On this particular afternoon, however, the typically cornflower-blue San Jose sky was the color of wet cement, and thick soot was charging down from the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains. Sitting outside would have been about as pleasant as relaxing in a large ashtray.

As fertilizer prices continue to soar, crop producers may be turning to manure for their fertility needs. Manure management will be the focus of a one-day event, being held this summer at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center in London, Ohio.

Lehman added it believes the oil market is "approaching a tipping point" with prices expected to decline to an average of $90 a barrel in the first quarter of 2009.

The state-run oil company, however, denied the existence of such a deal and said local media had misquoted company officials.

The forecast comes as Russia is competing with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States to grab a chunk of the huge energy resources in the Arctic, an area growing more accessible due to global warming melting the ice.

China, the two Koreas and Japan are hungry for energy, natural resources and, at the same time, strive for economic and political cooperation. In such circumstances, the opportunities offered by trans-national railroads and pipelines appear to be more powerful than weapons. Given this new leverage and understanding, can Russia exert its soft and hard power on North Korea in promoting the goals set in the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program?

Dr Peter McCabe, from the CSIRO, says predictions of a peak oil phenomenon date back to the 1920s but are no more relevant today than they were then.

When BP chief Tony Hayward commented earlier this year that he’s trying to figure out how BP shareholders can get more credit for the company’s alternative energy efforts, speculation arose that the company was planning to sell its green businesses. In this interview, the head of BP’s Alternative Energy Division, Vivian Cox, clarifies the company’s commitment to green energy development.

Nobody was injured, but more than 419,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of heavy fuel oil spilled from the barge, said Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau, a Coast Guard spokeswoman

If you are living in the eastern United States, the environment around you is being harmed by air pollution. From Adirondack forests and Shenandoah streams to Appalachian wetlands and the Chesapeake Bay, a new report by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and The Nature Conservancy has found that air pollution is degrading every major ecosystem type in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States.

Costs to get crops in the ground will jump by about a third in 2009, fueled by fertilizer prices expected to surge 82 percent for corn and 117 percent for soybeans, said Gary Schnitkey, an agricultural economist who conducts the annual survey of input costs.

Combining existing data with new analysis, the eight studies project the long term economic impact of climate change on Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and Ohio. Studies on additional states are in the works.

It seems that we (not the TOD 'we', but the collective society 'we') have been conducting an ongoing witch hunt since around $70-$80 oil to pinpoint an 'explanation' for our high oil and gas prices that's unrelated to finite geologic flow limits or Malthusian themes (e.g. benign). Greedy oil companies, dastardly OPEC plots, and off-limits drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and Outer Continental Shelf are among the reasons oft floated in the conventional media for why oil has risen in price over 10 fold in the last decade. Yesterday, a report from a credible institution was released detailing why at least one of the high oil price bogeymen, 'the speculators', are not to blame. In this report, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), threw cold water on the recent rhetoric in Congressional testimonies and television commentary that high oil prices are caused by investment speculators.

Researchers with the National Safety Council report a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May compared with the first five months of 2007, including a drop of 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April.