LifeItself

In 2015, about 100,000 forest and peat fires were started in Indonesia to clear land for oil palm plantations. Palm oil is a valuable commodity used as an automotive fuel, for cooking, in shampoos, creams, lipsticks, mascaras, ice cream, chocolate, and so on.  We consume ever more palm oil. The Indonesian fires blanketed the entire region with haze and emitted more carbon dioxide than the U.S. Here is a good summary .  I know you are busy and you probably will not devote 31 minutes of your time to watching something that might impact negatively your country and you. Please look at least at the first 10 minutes of this hard-hitting Coconut TV program.  At nine minutes and 41 seconds you will hear about personal threats and thugs sent to dissuade activists from ever mentioning the criminals who run the largest Indonesian racket and pay off the government officials. These criminals work for several large corporations controlled by other nations, mostly rich Western democr...

Modern societies run on power, not mere energy.  Power is energy per unit time, or force times speed.  We aren't interested in driving as fast as we run, or in phone calls that take a day to go through.  We also don't like sitting in the dark, while food is getting warm in the refrigerator, only because our outlets ran out of juice.  In short, we crave for power that is just there, waiting for us to be used at will.  And, yes, most environmentalists have similar sentiments. Two tons of American love of power, including 450 pounds of human payload.  Source: Don Petersen for T he New York Times , September 14, 2012. But, there is a price to pay for our cravings. No, I am not speaking about carbon dioxide emissions or mercury in the fish we eat.  Hardly anyone cares about such things anymore.  I am talking about our utter, total reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, with large dams providing a thin icing on a huge power cake.  You...

My wife and I are in Australia, in Brisbane, a beautiful thriving city on the east coast, with roughly 3 million people in the metropolitan area that includes the paved-over beaches along tens of kilometers of a formerly pristine habitat in places that used to be the surfer's paradise and sunshine coast.  It is highly impressive what developers can do to a fragile coastal area by pouring millions of tons of concrete onto it and making a financial killing.  The biggest concrete enclave is called the Gold Coast for good reason. Communion with nature in Australia's former pristine ecosystem, now known as Gold Coast.  Several hundreds of thousands of vacationers can come here each year and take three showers a day in air conditioned condos. Please do not get me wrong.  Brisbane is a splendid city with wonderful public transportation, universities, and restaurants.  In the 39-floor condo building, where we have stayed, all elevators are globally optimized to min...

On Friday, 06 May, 2011, Professor David Summers posted on OilPrice.com an oddly emotional article,  A Look at the Serious Energy Shortages in India and Pakistan . Dr. Summers correctly points out that severe shortages of coal supply in India and Pakistan will not be quenched by imports from Australia, because China will outcompete anyone for the same coal imports. From our analysis it follows that China's coal production will be difficult or impossible to maintain at the current high level. And China's coal demand is skyrocketing despite attempts to reign in coal burning by their most inefficient industrial enterprises. Dr. Summers then goes on to say that the folks like Tad Patzek and Dave Rutledge have it wrong anyway, when they talk about the global peak of coal production and inability to satisfy demand that follows.   Well, here we are: Too much demand worldwide, and not enough supply. The coal price goes up, way up, and still not enough supply.  How does o...