Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns Friday announced the release of USDA's Energy Estimator for Nitrogen, a web-based awareness tool that farmers and ranchers can use to identify potential nitrogen cost savings associated with major crops and commercial nitrogen fertilizer applications.

...Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the largest indirect uses of energy on an agricultural operation. Fertilizer accounts for 29 percent of agriculture's energy use, according to USDA research data.

But the background to this is greenhouse gases continuing and increasing at a high rate and 850 coal power plants (at least most will have cleaner coal technology) planned or coming on line combined in the USA, China, and India in the next few years.

I think it will take ski runs being closed down in Colorado and the Alps for people to get serious. Until then, business as usual will continue with some renewable energy getting a larger, but not massive, slice of the energy pie.

The Straight Dope has a short piece on Peak Oil this week. In response to a question asking if peak oil production is going to hit in the next 40-60 years:

Sit down, Scott. What you're describing isn't the worst case; arguably it's the best case. While it's not clear when oil production will peak, or whether the peak is already past, no one doubts oil production is bound to decline--the only questions are how soon and how fast. Opinions vary (boy, do they), but my feeling is, 40 to 60 years? We should be so lucky.

Word is getting out indeed.

The West takes lead on climate change

DENVER -- Half a dozen Western governors impatient for more federal action on global warming are mounting state campaigns to deal with climate change on their own.

Driving their efforts are signs that harmful effects may be occurring in the West: record dry spells, millions of acres of dead forests, warmer winters, dwindling water and catastrophic wildfires.

"Under the Bush administration, the United States is ignoring the world's best scientists on climate change," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat named in polls as a possible presidential candidate. "The real action ... is at the state and local level."

Also:

Parched New Mexico gets a taste of climate change

New Mexico got a stark glimpse this year of what the future could be if steps aren't taken to curb climate change.

A state report last month predicted a possible rise of 8-12 degrees in New Mexico's average temperature by the end of this century. That would bring hotter summers and shorter, warmer winters with less snow, the 47-page study said.

New Mexico's chief environmental official says the forecast describes the state's plight already.

"In New Mexico this year, we have no ski areas operating on natural snow," says Ron Curry, secretary of the state's Environment Department. He notes the huge loss last year of pinyon pines -- the state tree -- because of a beetle infestation that was worsened by drought and warmth. "This just adds to the argument of what global warming is doing to the climate."

http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/mayor/climate/default.htm#cities

This is a bottom-up initiative in the States, lacking federal leadership.

can somebody tell us how well coal gasification could be performed underground? I ask this because recently an enormous coal resevoir has been located underneath the sea in Norway. Obviously there are quite a number of problems if one were to mine those layers, but would it be commercially attractive to gasify those layers underneath and extract the resulting gas via drilling?

Wait drags on for foreign access to Kuwait's oil

"The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to achieve," Farouk al-Zanki, head of the Kuwait Oil Company, told Reuters. "There's a really positive indication that it's a priority."

"We need more help. We have an ambitious production plan. We want to meet our target. We can't do it on our own," he said.

But, realistically, he said a breakthrough was unlikely until late this year.

Better living through chemistry:

DuPont Looking to Displace Fossil Fuels as Building Blocks of Chemicals

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, unlike most chemical companies, has moved the quest for bio-based raw materials off the wish list and onto the to-do agenda. The company has allocated nearly 10 percent of its $1.3 billion research budget to extracting ingredients from carbohydrates -- things that grow and can be infinitely replaced -- rather than from hydrocarbons, which are mined or drilled and readily depleted.

DuPont already makes 10 percent of its products from nonpetrochemical substances, and Charles O. Holliday Jr., DuPont's chief executive, expects to increase that to 25 percent by 2010. By then, he says, such products will yield the equivalent of $3 billion in revenue in current dollars. The way Mr. Holliday sees it, so-called industrial biotechnology can solve myriad problems. It can insulate DuPont from the relentless rise in gas and oil prices. It can win kudos from environmentalists and shareholders who worry about the harmful effect of extracting and burning oil. It can play well in Washington, particularly since a quest for alternate energy sources was a crucial point in President Bush's State of the Union message. But during a nearly two-hour conversation in his spacious office above the Hotel DuPont, Mr. Holliday stressed his real motive in pushing for bio-based materials: his belief that they yield better products. He notes, for example, that the corn-based propane diol, a product used in carpet fibers that DuPont will begin selling this spring, offers better dye absorption and stain resistance than the petrochemical version DuPont now sells.

Now the most interesting part,

Note!  According to the description, the Barnett Shale is a live gas generator, with anerobic bacteria feeding on trapped organics and releasing methane gas.

Note!  The reporting geologist believes the bacteria can be feed using CO2 to make NG and increase the production.  

If this is true, it throws a bit of cold water on gas depletion to some extent and would additionally be a nice place for Montana to send all the CO2 they propose to make from their coal to liquid process.

Find it at this URL,
http://www.thebarnettshale.com/

There are nine samples, ranging from extra-light to extra-heavy.  Generally, the lighter samples are sweet, whereas the heavier ones are sour.  All in all, the smells remind me of certain occasions where I have driven along certain stretches of the northern New Jersey Turnpike (what a surprise!).  One surprise is that many of the grades have a viscosity less than that of water, and even the oil designated as extra heavy has more of a fluidic character than one might think.

What puzzles me is why we spend so much energy and technology trying to making deep sea coal work.  Why not spend the energy, human capital and time capturing sunlight, wind, waste energy, etc.  Maximize energy efficiency, building design, transportation, etc. so they need less energy.  All those areas are under funded, have great potential and are ultimately more sustainable.

No matter how obvious, justified and logical question this is, the answer is also as much obvious and logical: because it is not profitable. Nobody would profit from conservation, and to lower extent nobody would profit from clean (but expensive) technologies. Therefore nobody is doing it seriously. By profitable I mean for corporations, the individual "consumers" are too weak to have much other choice but take what they are given.

Of course there are companies that make money by selling more efficient vehicles, insulations etc. but this affects the efficiency of the things we use. Conservation would mean that we voluntary cut back and use less energy, doing less stuff.

So question is: how do we make conservation profitable business? How can for example Philip Morris make money by not selling their tobaccos? Any ideas?

They cut me off the minute I fired in the question. During the pre-live screening session, the screener said he had never heard of Hubbert's curve. I told him to Google it. The screener said it sounded like some kook theory because from the very first day mankind started pumping oil, we were by defintion "depleting" it. So what's the big deal? I explained about production rates and that seemed to satisfy him, so he put me on air.

Max Shultz dodged the question with the usual rhetoric about Tar sands and the idea that the Chicken Little peak freaks have been saying this for over 100 years. It was pretty obvious that Ronn Owen had never heard about Peak Oil. He bought Shultz's dodge answer and moved on. Yeaaah. It all flashes by in a few seconds on talk radio. (Any way, maybe someone out there in the Bay Area was alerted, googled Peak Oil, and became part of the PO aware herd. Maybe not. Who knows?)

Another caller before me asked where the so-called Manhatten Institute gets its money from and Shultz dodged that one too. He claimed he didn't know and he just got to the place 4 months ago. Ha.

"But what's troubling now is that Shell is falling way behind rivals like Exxon and BP despite spending billions more each year on exploring and drilling new wells. Last year Exxon replaced 112 percent of production, and BP came up with 95 percent. "I have never seen anything like this," says Fadel Gheit, a veteran energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Shell used to represent the gold standard in this industry, but lately they can't get their act together."

I did not think that either Exxon or BP were replacing their production at anything like this.

Are they overstating their discoveries or are they really discovering all this oil?  If this is the case what is wrong with Shell.

Recently I've been seeing pro-nuclear ads.  Scenes of little children playing in the midst of natural beauty, with a voiceover implying that you're a bad parent if you tell your kids they have to chose between technology and the environment.  

They're by the Nuclear Energy Institute:

http://www.nei.org/

Apparently, they started the ads in response to Bush's SOTU speech.  It's supposed to be a multi-year campaign.

Militants give 10 conditions - To release other hostages "be ensured that oil companies no longer operate behind the soldiers, disband the security Joint Task Force (JTF) and demilitarise Ijaw land."

Oil pipeline blown up in Nigeria, but said to be unlinked with militants "No. If this actually happened, it may have been carried out by local villagers or thieves," Gbomo said.