Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Le Monde Diplomatique, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.
With oil prices hovering near historic highs and coal, natural gas and uranium prices yo-yoing during the last several years, concerns about the future of…
I've been watching old episodes of The West Wing, the acclaimed television series about life and work in the West Wing of the White House.…
It's not exactly clear where the term "snake oil" comes from. But, most everyone knows that it refers to any number of concoctions sold by…
What would you expect them to say?That's the question you should ask whenever spokespersons for the oil and gas industry (or fake think tanks funded…
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. That's the credo of the oil and gas industry as it continues to…
Many readers will know about the claim that a frog plopped into boiling water will hop right back out if it can, while one put…
The one thing you need to know about President Obama's plan to address climate change is that the most it will accomplish is slowing very…
As the United States contemplates exporting natural gas to the rest of the world, previously energy-poor Israel seems about to jump on the export bandwagon.…
If you've ever looked at the elements that create the images in a kaleidoscope, they are unremarkable: pebbles, beads and bits of colored glass, all…
The name of the popular American television series "Mad Men" comes from the nickname given to those who worked in New York City's advertising agencies…
In Douglas Adams' science fiction series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a computer dubbed Deep Thought discovers the "answer to the ultimate question of…
The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, "Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future." And so, as the world considers yet another…
U.S.-based industries and utilities that consume a lot of natural gas have been trying to figure out just how to respond to proposals in Congress…
Maybe it's the gloomy Seattle weather that has made investment manager Jim Hansen and his son and partner, Kevin, at Ravenna Capital Management immune to…
Okay, I'm going to give you the shortest course ever in energy abundance: Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow. Let me…
Each morning when I release my cat from the basement where he sleeps, he rushes to the upstairs bathroom to drink water from a bowl…
With all the talk about new oil discoveries around the world and new techniques for extracting oil in such places as North Dakota and Texas,…
Current U.S. energy policy is, in fact, a hodgepodge of disconnected policies designed for specific constituencies with no coherent goal. The country has subsidies for…
As U.S. natural gas prices flirt with the $4 mark, some skeptics of the so-called shale gas revolution think prices are headed much higher. Such…
With the media awash in stories telling us how much oil is being discovered around the world, there is one word which the optimists quoted…