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"The image below this post comes from the latest IMF working paper (May 2012) looking at the "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology" (opens pdf) which attempts to take both the models of oil availability - that proposed by geologists and that by technologists and work out what the likely price implications are going to be to 2020. An internal working paper that "does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground. It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product", it makes the wonderfully understated point that "the future may not be easy". I continue to be amazed at the number of people I meet, sitting in leadership positions, who are unaware of this issue. I have heard from colleagues of engagements in the past couple of years with groups of senior decision-makers who have refused to discuss the issue as they believe it to be a fringe problem."

The image below this post comes from the latest IMF working paper (May 2012) looking at the "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology" (opens pdf) which attempts to take both the models of oil availability - that proposed by geologists and that by technologists and work out what the likely price implications are going to be to 2020. An internal working paper that "does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground. It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product", it makes the wonderfully understated point that "the future may not be easy". I continue to be amazed at the number of people I meet, sitting in leadership positions, who are unaware of this issue. I have heard from colleagues of engagements in the past couple of years with groups of senior decision-makers who have refused to discuss the issue as they believe it to be a fringe problem.

describe current use of oil as using 22 billion free slaves - echoes thomas homer dixon's metaphor

Summary of a WikiLeaks story that the Saudis have been over-stating their oil reserves and some thoughts on why it go neglected by mainstream media.

It sounds counterintuitive, because lower oil prices are making fuels from farm and forest land less competitive. This is true, but only in the short run. The crisis has boosted awareness that dependency on a limited set of resources, including financial products, must be avoided by all means. The best response is diversification -- and biofuels will be a major beneficiary of this incipient trend.

One way to ensure you're right at least some of the time is to make the same prediction year after year -- after all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. "Dr. Doom" himself -- New York University economist Nouriel Roubini -- has been expecting a U.S. financial catastrophe for years. As Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute told the New York Times Magazine last year, Roubini's explanations -- increasing trade deficits, soaring current account deficits, Hurricane Katrina, skyrocketing oil prices -- have tended to evolve over time. But as we now know, he hit the jackpot by calling the housing bubble in 2006. Smart or lucky? Wait to see where his next predictions land.

"(ISNS)-With Arctic ice receding at an unprecedented pace due to global warming, many nations seem far more interested in carving up the newly exposed resources than doing something to slow climate change, according to documents released by WikiLeaks."

Are you ready for designer biohazards, an end to Middle Eastern dominance of the oil business, and a United Nations with a lot more countries sitting at the grown-ups' table? What about a robot chauffeur, Iranian smart bombs, or a United States desperate to encourage immigrants from south of the border, not keep them out? Welcome to Foreign Policy's first-ever predictions issue. We asked some of the world's most bleeding-edge thinkers to look at the planet in the year 2025-and those are just a few of their remarkable, and at times startling, projections. Most of all, what they told us is that The Future Is Now; the big trends and inescapable developments dictating our next few decades have already been set in motion, and though of course we can't begin to predict the unknowable, we actually already know an awful lot about how the world will look in the coming years.

AARHUS, Denmark, Jun 15, 2011 (IPS) - Images of the immense, dark stain of oil covering the waters of the Gulf of Mexico made their way across the globe last year as one of the largest oil spills in history unfolded. Other images - of the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch', a gigantic pile of litter floating in the North Pacific Ocean; of countless felled trees in the Amazon; of tar sands in Canada - have gained much fewer headlines, but are likely to remain as monuments to the price tag of wanton human appetites.

watching great preso on post collapse USA