It takes a lot of phosphorus to support our diet-about 222.5kg per person per year for a normal balanced diet. Professor Stuart White, Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney suggests that it follows the same Hubbert’s Peak pattern as oil, and that we are just about at the peak. He writes in […]
‘Once-in-a-century’ drought sending campers indoors and stunting crops North Texas has had average rainfall this year, and three “cool” days this week felt like Christmas in July. But don’t tell your friends in Central and South Texas, because they are feeling hot, parched and bothered. A “once-in-a-century” drought is baking a big swath of Texas, […]
From Calculated Risk: Just using Sacramento as an example … I wish the NAR broke out the data like this! The Sacramento Association of REALTORS® is now breaking out monthly resales by equity sales (normal resales), and distressed sales (Short sales and REO sales). Here is the June data. They started breaking out REO sales […]
Slide 12In analogy with oil scarcity: it’s highly unlikely that we will find another “Saudi-Arabia” or another “North Sea” of rich mineral deposits. Metal Minerals Scarcity and the Elements of Hope Technorati Tags: resource depletion
We talk about drought in California, rainwater capture issues in Colorado, and fresh water troubles in the South East. But, as water expert Peter Gleick pointed out yesterday, we haven’t a clue about what a real water crisis looks like. Australians do. As we discussed during June when we examined Peak Water, Australia has some […]
From Calculated Risk: Last night Reis reported that the U.S. office vacancy rate hit 15.9 percent in Q2. (See Reis: U.S. Office Vacancy Rate Hits 15.9% in Q2 for a graph). This graph shows the office vacancy rate vs. the quarterly unemployment rate and recessions. The unemployment rate and the office vacancy rate tend to […]
From Calculated Risk: By popular request … The FDIC closed seven more banks yesterday, and the following graph shows bank failures by week for 2009. So far there have been 52 FDIC bank failures in 2009.It appears the pace has picked up lately (12 bank closings over the last two weeks). … FDIC Bank Failures […]
Increased melting of the large polar ice sheets contributes to the observed increase in sea level. Observations of the area of the Greenland ice sheet that has been at the melting point temperature at least one day during the summer period shows a 50% increase during the period 1979 to 20086 (see figure). The Greenland […]
From Calculated Risk: The graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions for the last 45 years. New Home sales have fallen off a cliff. … New Home Sales: Record Low for May Technorati Tags: financial collapse
From The Oil Drum: By David Murphy Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has reported that the EROI of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930’s to 30:1 in the 1970’s to roughly 11:1 as of 2000 (Figure 1). But beyond the fact that society receives currently around 11 […]
