Articles by JMG

Another distraction debunked

Fertilizing the ocean with iron looks to be just so much ... fertilizer.

Necessity is the mother of invention … and some really bad ideas

Mein Gott. I was so hoping that this article was from The Onion or something. Porta-nukes will power oil-shale melters, because there's just no topping the American spirit -- the willingness to take a truly abysmal idea (oil shales) and make it worse:

A critical issue wrapped in a dose of black helicopters

This 47 minute video on the essence of debt currency briefly touches on perhaps the critical environmental issue of the time: can anything be done about our deficits in the real world (in carbon sinks, fisheries, clean water, etc.) if we have no way to think about public policy except through the language of "what it will do to the economy"?

Despite the paranoid tone, the fundamental question asked in this video is the right one: is a sustainable world even plausible if we continue to accept a monetary system that must grow without end?

Disturbing news is more likely to be ignored

An interesting post on the phenomenon encountered by peak oil "doomers" in trying to explain their dour views to those that are unaware:

But if the purpose of the peak oil movement is to spread awareness and ultimately spur action, then telling uninformed people news which radically challenges their worldview may cause them simply to tune us out. In this regard, the worse the news is, the less likely people are to want to hear what we have to say or to believe it if they do listen.