Kurt Cobb |
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Kurt
Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist
focusing on energy and the environment. He is a regular contributor to the
Energy Voices section of The
Christian Science Monitor and author of the peak-oil-themed novel Prelude. His work has been featured on
Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Econ Matters, Peak Oil Review,
321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique and many other sites. He is a
founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA, and he
serves on the board of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. He
maintains a blog called Resource Insights and can
be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
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Contributions |
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The Oil Industry's Deceitful Promise of American Energy Independence4 May, 2012 11:09 am Faced with increasing political obstacles to oil and natural gas exploration in many countries around the world, the oil industry is focusing again on... | ||
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Time to Worry: World Oil Production Finishes Six Years of No Growth2 Nov, 2011 12:29 pm As oil prices rose ever higher in the last decade, the optimists kept predicting rising production capacity and plummeting prices... | ||
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Shale Gas: Not a 'Game Changer' After All15 Jun, 2011 04:51 pm Newly accessible natural gas from deep shale deposits around the world has been touted as a solution to everything from oil dependence to climate change... | ||
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The Road to Fukushima: The Nuclear Industry's Wrong Turn11 Apr, 2011 10:32 am Nuclear researchers knew long ago that reactor designs now in wide use had already been bested in safety by another design. Why did the industry turn its... | ||
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The Electric Car Fetish29 Dec, 2010 01:01 pm Many automobile enthusiasts believe that the electric car is the wave of the future that will help save the environment while expanding the availability... | ||
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Is Venezuela the Next Flashpoint for Oil?4 Oct, 2010 02:01 pm In a world desperate for new oil supplies, Venezuela beckons. But will its fumbling management of oil production lead to foreign intervention,... | ||
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Fossil Fuels vs. The Public Interest1 Sep, 2010 12:32 pm The fossil fuel industry often pretends to have the public's best interests in mind. The operative word is "pretends." | ||
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Global Coal Supplies: It Might Be Worse Than Anyone Thinks10 Aug, 2010 04:11 pm A new study on global coal supplies suggests a worldwide peak in production from existing fields in 2011. | ||
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Is Net Energy Peaking?5 Jul, 2010 06:28 pm When most people think of fossil fuel supplies, they think in terms of barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and tons of coal... | ||
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The Wages of Complexity18 May, 2010 11:45 am While accusations continue to fly back and forth about who is to blame for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and investigations commence into... | ||
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Will Toe-to-Heel Air Injection Extend the Oil Age?21 Apr, 2010 12:38 pm When the oil optimists say that new technology will extend the oil age for at least several more decades, they almost never discuss the limitations of... | ||
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Will Enhanced Oil Recovery Be An Oil Supply Savior?24 Mar, 2010 07:01 pm Oil supply optimists often say that the application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to existing and future wells will vastly expand oil reserves and... | ||
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Do Texas and the North Sea Foretell the Future of Oil Production?25 Feb, 2010 12:22 pm Oil supply optimists claim that new technology combined with private development of the world's remaining oil resources--most of which are now under the... | ||
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Biophysical Economics: Putting Energy at the Center20 Jan, 2010 03:25 pm Many scientists have long complained that standard economics fails to account for the biological and physical systems that form the basis of the economy... | ||
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Why climate change adaptation could make things worse23 Dec, 2009 04:38 pm Because many of the proposals for adaptation to climate change require further extensive release of greenhouse gasses, they will only make climate change... | ||
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Resource Nationalism: The Last Stand for the Oil Optimists23 Oct, 2009 03:53 pm The price of oil has more than doubled from its nadir of $30 a barrel earlier this year. To explain the resilience of oil prices in the face of a severe... | ||
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Oil Optimists Grow More Outlandish24 Sep, 2009 06:07 pm As the troubling realities of future oil supplies begin to penetrate official circles, the oil optimists are making even more outlandish claims. | ||
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Burning Picassos for Heat26 Aug, 2009 11:05 pm Burning natural gas to extract and process oil from the Canadian tar sands has been likened by one industry insider to burning Picassos for heat... | ||
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Is Canada Becoming a Petrostate?26 Jul, 2009 06:50 am Canada's increasing reliance on energy exports, especially oil from the Alberta tar sands, risk unsettling its politics and economy and turning the country... | ||
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Which Matters Most? The Size of the Tap or the Tank?22 Jun, 2009 11:19 pm Energy optimists are fond of citing very large numbers for worldwide fossil fuel resources such as oil and natural gas. But they conveniently leave out... | ||
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Energy: The Achilles Heel of the Resource Pyramid22 May, 2009 04:24 pm When economists say that we have far larger mineral resources today than ever before, they are usually referring to a model known as the resource pyramid... | ||
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Geoengineering the Climate: Bad for You and Our Energy Future3 May, 2009 06:29 pm Proposals to reduce global warming through giant engineering projects or so-called geoengineering abound. Almost all are in the idea stage... | ||
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Is Thorium an Energy Alchemist's Dream?27 Mar, 2009 02:20 pm Advocates say that already existing thorium fuel and reactor technology could provide centuries and perhaps millennia of safe, abundant nuclear power... | ||
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Jeffrey Brown and the Net Oil Exports Crisis6 Mar, 2009 11:54 am With peak oil comes peak oil exports. Why Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown thinks the world is headed for a drastic energy downsizing and soon. | ||
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Over the Cliff for Natural Gas in North America?26 Jan, 2009 09:23 am Is natural gas production in North America headed for cliff? No one can know for sure; but all signs point down. | ||
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Energy and money22 Dec, 2008 12:59 pm Is energy merely another commodity among many in the modern industrial economy? Or is it the very basis of our financial and material life? | ||
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The Energy Optimist's Lexicon25 Nov, 2008 10:18 pm The world's energy optimists often employ a particular lexicon to make their case for abundance far into the future. Whether that lexicon is used cynically... | ||
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The (Not So) Invincible Society3 Nov, 2008 03:11 pm Policymakers and the public think of modern industrial society as being resilient and durable. Are they right? | ||
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Receding Horizons for Alternative Energy Supplies5 Sep, 2008 11:52 am When energy optimists tout the huge supply of oil that is still available to us in the form of tar sands and oil shale, they forget to mention that costs... | ||
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Oil Prices and the Mayflower Problem29 Aug, 2008 02:34 pm Do oil prices really tell the market what it needs to know when it needs to know it? | ||
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The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived29 Jul, 2008 02:57 pm Understanding how the great hopes of early nuclear power advocates eventually turned into great disappointment may shed some light on nuclear power's future... | ||
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Move People, Not Metal6 Jun, 2008 11:51 am Our current transportation system uses enormous amounts of energy primarily to move the weight of vehicles which transport passengers and freight... | ||
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Will the Rate-of-Conversion Problem Derail Alternative Energy?23 May, 2008 02:02 pm Many alternative energy advocates claim that it is possible to replace our fossil fuel economy with one that runs on a combination of nuclear power and... | ||
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Can the natural gas economy become a reality?5 Apr, 2008 11:49 am Natural gas has been often been prophesied as the fuel of the future, one that will fill the gap when oil declines and give us the time we need to transition... | ||
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Why Energy Efficiency Won't Matter Without Energy Caps30 Mar, 2008 07:16 pm Energy efficiency advocates will continue to do the equivalent of running up the down escalator unless they embrace limits on total energy use. | ||
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How Many Windmills Does It Take to Power the World?26 Feb, 2008 10:51 am Power densities are a measure of the land required for both energy sources and energy users. The current infrastructure matches the small footprint of... | ||
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The Coal Question Revisited17 Jan, 2008 10:59 am Many people believe the world has enough coal to last hundreds of years. Recent assessments now suggest that coal production could actually start to decline... | ||
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Charlie Hall's Balloon Graph19 Dec, 2007 10:11 am Energy researcher Charlie Hall's balloon graph challenges the notion that alternative energy sources will provide a smooth transition to a post-fossil... | ||
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Clarke's Wager20 Nov, 2007 11:04 am Some 350 years ago, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that it is better to wager for the existence of God than against it since the benefits... | ||
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Should Scientists Embrace Economic Growth?16 Oct, 2007 11:50 am The assumption of continuous economic growth lurks behind most scientific endeavors. Should scientists embrace this growth which is often presented as... | ||
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The Trouble with Predictions19 Sep, 2007 01:29 pm The trouble with predictions is that they are mostly wrong. But is there a way that forecasting can be used to help us confront climate change,... | ||
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