Short Takes  

Paul Krugman has another post mentioning peak oil (referring to The Oil Drum thusly "the peakers I read don’t suffer from the kind of uninformed intellectual arrogance that was behind the early-70s doomsaying") and looking at the food crisis - Commodity prices: Deja vu all over again.

TreeHugger is swimming against the tide on the food crisis story, decrying the Common BioFuel Myth: Corn-Based Ethanol To Blame For Global Food Shortages, instead blaming climate change, population growth, increased consumption of meat in Asia, the (drought initiated) "chardonnay effect" in Australia and GM crop yields that are 10% lower than regular varieties (if that is correct it would have Herman Kahn spinning in his grave).

The New Statesman has an article by Mark Lynas on the food crisis that focuses mainly on the food / energy link, but does mention some of the other factors - How the rich starved the world - "Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.".

EcoGeek has a post on Nano "Popcorn Balls" that increase Dye Solar Efficiency by 250%.

Renewable Energy Access has an article on The Coming Baseload Power Crisis.

Salon has a review of a book called "Bananas!: How The United Fruit Company Shaped the World" looking at the baleful influence of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Bananas) - "When bananas ruled the world" - subtitled "Intrigue. Power. Corruption. Death. Sex. The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit.". Its worth reading about the way the largely imaginary threat of communism in Central America was used by PR companies to initiate the overthrow of democrats in the region who didn't toe the company line.

The BBC has a report on Saturn's moon Titan - Treasures of Earth's oily twin - and its rivers of methane.



Vanity Fair has a look at "Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear" - "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.".

UPS' recipe for increasing fuel efficiency ? Never turn left.

Jamais Cascio warns that in future, people may be speaking a lot more on the record than they imagine, as lie detection based on facial expressions becomes common.

Jeff Vail has a long essay on Guided Emergence from hierarchy to rhizome.

The New York Times reports that military analysts on US TV networks are doing propaganda work for the Pentagon and the military industrial complex - Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.

Cryptogon notes that a prominent alternative energy researcher and advocate has passed away - Alexander Farrell, Berkeley Biofuels Expert, Dies At 46.