Peak Humanitarian Aid: The period during which accelerating climate crises overwhelm the capacity of industrial civilization to handle them. Has this peak arrived, along with the others? The July 2010 flood catastrophe in Pakistan suggests that it has. The United Nations reports that the scale of the flood damage is larger than the combined damage […]
Of the many important results published during Desdemona’s second year of blogging, one stood out: a BioScience paper titled “Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?” This question is central to the Desdemona Thesis. Essentially, the authors of this paper (Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, et al.) challenge us to reconcile the […]
By Sylvia WestallMon Nov 29, 2010 8:25am EST OLKILUOTO, Finland (Reuters) – On a flat, low-lying island nestled in crisp waters off the west coast of Finland, the first nuclear power plant ordered in Western Europe since 1986 is inching toward start-up. Over 4,000 builders and engineers are at work on the sprawling Olkiluoto 3 […]
Annual flows (in million cubic meters) of the Colorado River into the delta from 1905 to 2005 at the Southern International Border station. Note that, in most years after 1960, flows to the delta fell to zero as total withdrawals equaled total (or peak) renewable supply. The exceptions are extremely high-flow years when runoff exceeded […]
Media Contact: Nancy Ross, Pacific Institute, nross@pacinst.org May 24, 2010 A new journal article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) highlights new “peak water” limits to global and regional freshwater availability and use. The May 24, 2010 early edition of the journal includes the new article “Peak Water Limits to Freshwater […]
It was Mike Ruppert who first woke up Desdemona to the Peak Oil story. Des had read the famous Campbell and Laherrère paper, “The End of Cheap Oil” in 1998, but the issue seemed more distant than global warming and the accelerating destruction of the biosphere. But Mike Ruppert had a doozy of a conspiracy […]
Business underestimating catastrophic consequences of declining oil, says Lloyd’s of London/Chatham House report By Terry Macalister, www.guardian.co.uk Sunday 11 July 2010 15.28 BST One of the City’s most respected institutions has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy. The Lloyd’s […]
LINDAU, Germany—Quick: What do MRI machines, rockets, fiber optics, LCDs, food production and welding have in common? They all require the inert, or noble, gas helium for their use or at some stage of their production. And that helium essentially could be gone in less than three decades, Robert C. Richardson, winner, along with Douglas […]
By Peter Foster in BeijingPublished: 11:35AM BST 02 Jun 2010 China is to further tighten its stranglehold on the mining of rare earth metals essential for the manufacture of high-tech products from iPods to wind turbines and military missiles. Mining rights for the 17 rare earth elements will now be restricted to only a […]
The cost of constructing a new coal-fired power plant has increased by 50% in the last year alone. Appalachian coal production is declining, coal prices are rising, and we’re importing coal from Indonesia. Now Dominion is promoting a plan to re-regulate electricity markets that would put all the risks onto Virginia’s rate payers. … Virginia […]
