Kurt Cobb

Latest articles from Kurt

• How The Pace Of Climate Change Keeps Surprising Us

  Published 22 May 2023 | viewed 2,798 times

  This seems like the 10th time that I've read a story that says Greenland's glaciers are melting faster than previously thought and thus the consequences of climate…

• Are We Prepared For The Unintended Consequences Of Emerging Tech?

  Published 28 April 2023 | viewed 3,251 times

  Certainly, there a plenty of horror stories about possible disasters awaiting us from emerging technologies. I've written about two of them: 1) the possibility of small…

• Can Technology Really Solve Our Climate Problems?

  Published 17 April 2023 | viewed 1,113 times

  My expectations are never disappointed when I read the news each day and find out that the solutions to the problems created by our modern…

• Satellite Waste Is Becoming A Huge Problem

  Published 13 March 2023 | viewed 2,728 times

  Here we go again. Satellite companies that plan to put tens of thousands of satellites into orbit to create space-based internet and cellphone networks are…

• Controversial Cost-Cutting Measures To Blame For Ohio Derailment Disaster

  Published 20 February 2023 | viewed 6,880 times

  Complex, tightly networked systems run very efficiently and can work with precision for long periods, until they don't. Money saved on the front end can…

• A Water Crisis Is Looming Over Western United States

  Published 06 February 2023 | viewed 4,916 times

  The most recent poster child for the failure to understand resource limits is the town of Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated part of Maricopa County…

• Between Drought And Flood: California Faces Extreme Weather

  Published 16 January 2023 | viewed 1,501 times

  "Global warming" morphed into "climate change" which now seems inadequate to describe the weather chaos we are experiencing on planet Earth.* The recent "atmospheric rivers"…

• What Options Do Global Industries Have To Lower Fossil Fuel Consumption?

  Published 10 January 2023 | viewed 1,643 times

  Few of us think about heat as an essential ingredient in the products we use every day. And, yet industrial process heat constitutes two-thirds of…

• Can Global Oil Production Climb If The U.S. Shale Boom Is Over?

  Published 01 January 2023 | viewed 26,620 times

  Prior to the pandemic-induced downturn in world oil production, U.S. oil production growth was responsible for 98 percent of the increase in world production in…

• East vs West, 'Stuff' vs 'Finance'

  Published 01 November 2022 | viewed 2,371 times

  As a military conflict rages in Ukraine between Russia and what the Russian government calls "the West" (apparently meaning NATO allies and particularly the United…

• The Dutch Resolve: Will The Netherlands Boost Gas Production?

  Published 24 October 2022 | viewed 4,616 times

  Modern global society is steeped in the idea of trade-offs, the notion that one must suffer losses to obtain desired gains. This prepares the way…

• Can The World Really “Adapt” To Climate Change?

  Published 04 August 2022 | viewed 3,267 times

  Climate change deniers have had to adjust their story in recent years as the effects of climate change have become more and more apparent to…

• Technology vs Scarcity: The Worrying Reality Of Exponential Growth

  Published 17 July 2022 | viewed 9,333 times

  Half of all the oil consumed since the dawn of the modern oil age in 1859 has been consumed from 1998 through 2021 inclusive based…

• U.S. Oil And Gas Exports Are Fueling Higher Domestic Prices

  Published 22 June 2022 | viewed 7,903 times

  The U.S. oil and natural gas industry long fought for and in the last decade finally won release from federal restrictions that limited exports. The…

• Resource Scarcity And Rogue States Are Undermining U.S. Power

  Published 14 March 2022 | viewed 6,743 times

  There is nothing like a sudden decline in available oil supplies to bring out forgiveness in what is dubbed in and around Washington, D.C. as…

• The End Of The Global Economy As We Know It

  Published 10 March 2022 | viewed 33,812 times

  At the beginning of nearly every war, including the current one in Ukraine, there are those who loudly declare that it will be over shortly…

• Rising LNG Exports Are Becoming A Problem For Biden

  Published 08 February 2022 | viewed 8,298 times

  Few people noticed when energy reporters wrote in early January that the United States had become the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).…

• Has The EIA Massively Overestimated The Potential Of U.S. Shale?

  Published 08 December 2021 | viewed 16,925 times

  Earth scientist David Hughes—who is out with a new skeptical report on the future of U.S. shale oil and gas—has two very important things in common with…

• Why Wireless Charging Is A Waste Of Energy

  Published 13 August 2020 | viewed 3,001 times

  It turns out the cellphone industry believes its customers just can't be bothered with setting their phones in charging cradles or worse yet, actually plugging…

• Wall Street’s Big Coronavirus Mistake

  Published 16 March 2020 | viewed 43,447 times

  Investment professionals on Wall Street spend their days reading financial reports and looking at numbers flash on screens. These numbers record the moment-to-moment changes in…