Fracking seems to have slain this resources issue, once and for all.
Or maybe not. Some Peak Oilers, enablers of the hottest meme of 2005, are still out there. They’re just biding their time, sure as shootin’ that their pet issue will return to haunt humanity and send us all back to the horse-n-buggy era: few medicines and consumer goods made of wood and paper.
Environmentalism is a religion, you know?
Via Instapundit.
Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Texana, The Economy
Tagged peak oil
The new Tyler Formation could be another bonanza for the lower forty-eight, while the unctuous authors of unsustainability prattle on. Fortunately most of the leases are already in place and North Dakota welcomes drilling.
Comments Off on Peak oil takes another hit
Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Scribbles
Tagged drill baby drill, North Dakota, peak oil, tyler formation
Before it was in North Dakota. Now it’s deep under the Gulf of Mexico. Whether we need it or not is one thing. (Although it would be good not to be so dependent on dictators and absolute monarchs for it.) But the idea that we’re running out of it is pure baloney.
Via The Seablogger.
Comments Off on Another blow for ‘peak oil’
Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles, South of the Border
Tagged BP, Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota, peak oil
I read the sequel Axis first, only because it was available at the library and Spin wasn’t. Now I await Robert Charles Wilson’s conclusion, tentatively titled Vortex. Spin is pretty incredible. Apocolyptic but plausible. If you read a lot of scifi, I mean. The idea that a mystery race of sentient biotech machines would seek to save Earth by enclosing it in a living membrane, then speeding up time beyond it.
But it’s the coming-of-age, three lifelong friends’ saga and love story between two of them that sticks with you. The scifi binds them, beginning with the night in their puberty when the stars disappeared (thanks to the membrane) and only reappeared when they were in their forties. A bit heavy on the government conspiracy stuff for my taste. As I have said elsewhere I believe in the government’s innate incompetence, not it’s all-powerful whatever. And the idea that peak oil is our doom is tiresome. But, as I say, neither of those subjects dims the human story, which lingers yet in my mind.
Axis was a worthy sequel, with just enough of a hint about the original folks to send me out in search of Spin, which was reward enough for the trouble. Second books in trilogies usually pale beside the first ones, but Axis didn’t. Quite. The human tale was less compelling than in Spin, but worth the read. Now I await Vortex, curious to see how the sentient biotechs, called the Hypotheticals, will wrap it up.
Comments Off on Spin
Posted in Library, Science/Engineering
Tagged Axis, chiliasm, hypotheticals, peak oil, Robert Charles Wilson, Spin
Most of us, me included, figure what goes up must come down, and the prices of oil and gasoline have to get back to normal sometime. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But what if they don’t? What if gas goes to seven bucks a gallon, and the price of everything else runs up (diesel is already almost five dollars a gallon and almost all of our goods are shipped by truck), like it did in the oil pinch of the mid-1970s? The price of cars, alone, tripled. The Oil Drum, which is not exactly a fun read, considering its affirmative take on the "peak oil" argument, is nevertheless a timely and interesting one. And none moreso than this post on Hawaii’s plight with rising oil and gas prices. Their tourism industry seems to be cratering, as a result, and they don’t have a whole lot else to sustain them. Hope they figure it out.
Comments Off on Canary in the oil mine
Posted in Scribbles
Tagged Gas prices, Hawaii tourism industry, oil prices, peak oil, the oil drum
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 