The Best Of TOD ANZ

The Oil Drum recently published a "Best Of" list of posts - these are the best from TOD ANZ writers :

Big Gav

Concentrating On The Important Things - Solar Thermal Power
While we spend a lot of time talking about traditional energy sources based on depleting resources that are extracted from the ground, I think its important to remember that the fastest growing sources of energy are solar and wind, and that these will never run out.

Tapping The Source: The Power Of The Oceans
A post examining the use of artificial islands to collect wind, wave, ocean current and solar power in the tropics, along with a more unusual energy source - harnessing the difference in water temperatures between the warm surface and the cold depths using a technique called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion).

Geothermal Energy: Geothermia
Crossposted from my blog Peak Energy as the subject of geothermal power has cropped up in the comments a few times lately.

Floating Offshore Wind Power
An update on a post I did last year on the potential for floating offshore wind power, which looked at a number of different prototypes at various stages of development.

The Limits To Scenario Planning
A review of some common misconceptions about the Limits to Growth book.

Iraq's Oil: The Greatest Prize Of All
In this post I'll outline why I believe that Iraq probably has the world's largest oil reserves - or, as Daniel Yergin once said of the middle east, it is "the greatest single prize in all history".

Natural Gas In Australia - How Long Will It Last?
In this post I have a look at how much gas Australia has and how long it will last under a variety of scenarios.

Coal Seam Gas In Australia
In this post I look at recent events in the gas industry and what they mean for Australian gas production in future.

The Hydrogen Economy and Peak Platinum
A comprehensive review of the issues involved in the "hydrogen economy".

Hubbert: King Of The Technocrats
In this post I explore the Technocracy movement and Hubbert's role in it

Locabucks: Are local currencies a way to escape the liquidity trap?
I look at the concept of local currencies (or "locabucks" as I'm now dubbing them), an idea which has its roots in the Great Depression as a mechanism for escaping the liquidity trap - and thus might be relevant again in the not-too distant future if present trends continue.

Terra Preta: Biochar and the MEGO Effect
In this post I have a look at modern day techniques to produce terra preta (often called biochar or agrichar) which have the potential to increase soil fertility, generate energy and sequester carbon all at the same time.

Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path
A review of Buckminster Fuller's last work, Critical Path.

Is It Time For a 4 Day Working Week?
In this post I look at various proposals to reduce the amount of time we spend at work, as a way of addressing energy, environmental and other issues facing us.

Peak Oil And The Tea Party Movement
In this post I have a look at the boost this (peak oil) is likely to give to populist politics and some of the possibilities for addressing this.

David Clarke

The Failure of Networked Systems: The Repercussions of Systematic Risk Revisited
Cascading collapse and why the corporate drive towards increasing efficiencies could be driving our interacting networked systems towards this mode of collapse.

The Networking of Resource Production: Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?
The flaw in the techno-cornucopian dream: Modeling why and how a networked resource-extraction system fails.

kiashu

The Freezing Point Of Industrial Society
This piece considers that industrialisation could only happen with cheap fuels, and by looking at the countries of the world, tries to figure out just how cheap fuel has to be before lots of people start using it – before a country can industrialise with fossil fuels. The flipside to this is seeing how expensive fuel must be before it deindustrialises. This then gives us a clue to if and when will industrial society will end.

Phil Hart

Meet Trev: A two-seater renewable energy vehicle
I believe there is instead a bright future for a spectrum of 'micro' electric vehicles, from battery powered bicycles up to compact size cars, including this new concept car named Trev (Two-seater Renewable Energy Vehicle).

International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
In World Energy Outlook 2009, the International Energy Agency seems to have dropped a bombshell that has been quietly (and politely) ignored.

The Economics of Volatile Oil Prices
Considering the fundamental nature of oil supply and demand provides a coherent explanation not just for the rapid rise in oil prices, but also the dramatic fall.

The 2008 IEA WEO - Oil Reserves and Resources
Despite significant changes, the 2008 IEA report still relies on inflated estimates of reserves from OPEC countries, overplays the contribution of reserves growth due to technology and predicts the reversal of a decades long trend of declining oil discoveries.

Oil, House Prices, Credit? Three parts of the same story
The long forgotten 'oil crisis' of just a few months ago has been replaced by a full blown 'credit crisis' - related events that represent the unravelling of half a century of unsustainable trends in oil consumption and debt.

High-Tech Hitchhiking
Could a hitchhiking scheme for the iPhone era work in practice and change attitudes to hitching a ride?

How Technology Increases Oil Production
How can you double something and still have ten times less than you started with? The answer to this question will help us reassess claims that advances in oil field technology will postpone the peak in global oil production.

Oil Reserves: Where Ghawar goes, the rest of OPEC follows
In May 2007, the work of Stuart Staniford and Euan Mearns culminated in a new and unprecedented assessment of oil reserves in Ghawar, the world's largest oil field. This article combines their assessment with additional information sources, to produce a revised estimate of reserves in Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries.