One of my goals in my peak oil studies is to understand the whole system of planet+economy as best I can. I want to develop an informed opinion on what humanity's options are as it faces these interlocking crises-in-the-making. That's obviously an enormous task. The relevant disciplines include at least geology, petroleum engineering, economics, sociology, urban planning, international development, climatology, demography, political science, mining engineering, military strategy, archaeology, history, chemistry and chemical engineering, physics, statistics, biology, ecology, agricultural science, and electrical engineering. No-one can hope to master all these subjects to the point a specialist in them would know them.

And yet it seems to me that, while accepting this limitation, it's worthwhile for a few generalists such as myself to attempt to try to understand the situation as deeply as possible in all aspects; it may be that new ideas and insights can only come from deeply integrating a number of the important perspectives. Only time will tell.

In that spirit, I'm trying to understand the carbon cycle and in particular the current carbon flows in the economy. I have two goals - one is to better understand the debate over the viability of biofuels. The other is to better understand whether we have any real options over climate change other than just suffering the consequences of our collective fecklessness. Either way, I can never make any sense out of any debate like this until I start to understand the relative sizes of the flows involved, and the trends in them.