The second edition of the new SkeptEco podcast is up! This week the SkeptEco team- Eoghain, Christina, Michael and myself talk about why we started the podcasts, the relationship between science, rationality and the environmental movement, and what other topics we might cover in later episodes. http://skepteco.wordpress.com/
Just got back from a short trip to Dublin to see controversial environmentalist Stewart Brand and Booker-prize winning British author Ian McEwan speak at the speak at the Dublin Writers Festival. They were discussing their respective books “Whole Earth Discipline” and “Solar”. Apparently the two writers have known each other for some time. Their recent [...]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Zone5 Podcast #3 with Dr. Colin Campbell on Peak Oil, the Financial Collapse, Adaptation and What the Future May Hold Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of peak Oil and Gas, is officially retired from his career as oil geologist and Peak Oil pundit but kindly agreed to this interview for the [...]
Tom has just blogged here about a sweepstake he initiated five years ago with myself, Rob Hopkins, Tom’s partner Ruth and a couple of other friends. We each made a prediction on what we thought the price of oil would be in five years time. My first thought when Tom told me the five years [...]
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Update Aug 10th: Thanks to Robbie for sending me the link to Dominic Lawson’s piece on the FSA report and responses from the organic movement in the Times. Lawson quotes research suggesting farmers may have lower cancer rates possibly because pesticide use may protect against cancer! Now that has just got to be corporate spin… [...]
Update: 16/07/09 See Dan Dennett on “Belief in belief” here Updates: I’ve just put a couple of updates for clarification and a couple more links. I’ve marked them in the text. I also want to say, whatever about my concerns regarding the ideology behind Transition, there is heaps of great work being done in the [...]
The view expressed in recently reviewed books like Holmgren’s Energy Scenarios and Chamberlin’s The Transition Timeline is that peak oil will be followed by a long, slow decline- Energy Descent- rather than an abrupt collapse. For an alternative view, Dmitri Orlov, author of the acclaimed Reinventing Collapse puts the case for sudden collapse very well [...]
Book Review: The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future Shaun Chamberlin Forward by Rob Hopkins 190 pp pbk Chelsea Green 2009 The follow-up to Rob Hopkins’ seminal The Transition Handbook uses the method of “backcasting” from an envisioned future from which we create a timeline of how the transition to a more local, resilient [...]
Book Review- Future Scenarios How Communities Can adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change David Holmgren Chelsea Green 2009 When I first saw David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios talk and slide at a permaculture design course in Slovenia in 2005 I was still quite new to the concept of peak oil and listened transfixed at what [...]