NightBlogger

The Oil Drum
The majority of Peak Oil writing and discussion centers around the upcoming date of an all liquids peak and how steep the subsequent decline rate might be. There’s also active debate on how to best replace the coming shortfall in fossil energy with renewable flows. Fewer discussions are about relocalizing a global economy dependent on cheap transportation fuels, and how best to structure a world with lower density energy. Yet fewer still delve into who we are, how we got here, and what and why we use energy, and seemingly want more of it every year. Essentially, most of our energy conversations, at conferences, schools, institutions, and the blogosphere, focus on the means, and not the ends. The ends have generally remained unquestioned. There seems to be an implicit assumption that worldwide energy demand will continue to grow something akin to a natural law, and that solutions should focus on ways to increase supply and/or efficiency of energy. But in an economic system based on self-interest on a finite planet, the true drivers of demand will need to be better understood beyond the microeconomic mantra “price will change behavior”. More

Recombinomics Commentary 21:22
May 24, 2008
The recent sequence data from Japan and Russia and the reported identities of 99.7% or greater with the isolates from South Korea clearly demonstrate a global expansion of the Fujian (clade 2.3) strain of H5N1. None of these countries has previously reported the Fujian strain, raising concerns that the strain is poised for a dramatic global expansion similar to the expansion of clade 2.2 which began in the spring of 2005 at Qinghai Lake. Clade 2.2 migrated to Chany Lake in Novosibirsk in Siberia and the Erhel Lake in ongolia in the summer of 2005, and then spread to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in late 2005 / early 2006 as well as south Asia in the same time frame. Read more