The contents below are paid advertisements. Their appearance does not imply an endorsement by The Oil Drum.
“Pessimism of the Intellect; Optimism of the Will.”
—Antonio Gramsci
Search The Oil Drum with Google
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
- Enjoying Life Close to Home: Fun Streets
TOD:Europe
- UK Energy Flow Chart 2007
- Brown pretends to be tough on Russia
- Russian gas and European energy security - a reprise
TOD:Canada
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
- Weekend Energy Listening: Wind Power with Paul Gipe
TOD:ANZ
Peak Oil Primers
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- Ecological Economics
- David Strahan
- Econbrowser
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- Environmental Economics
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Organizations
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
The "government", if there is such a singular creature is a political animal. It does as those at the top dogmatically dictate:
Read here on Bush & benzene fracturing:
http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_oil_and_gas.htm
More:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/sciencewars/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-20-bush-science_x.htm
If his science policies outlast him, however, I will be forced to conclude that we are further along Tainter's curve than I thought.
A society feeling the pinch of diminishing returns begins to engage in "scanning behavior." People feel dissatisfied, and begin looking around for alternatives. Foreign customs may become the vogue, new religions may arise, ideological strife intensifies, governments invest more on R&D.
But once a society reaches the point where investments in further complexity no bring any return, scanning behavior ceases. The government instead enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency. And they can no longer afford R&D.