Kurt Cobb

Place of work: United States of America

Resume

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer who speaks and writes frequently on energy and the environment.

His work has been featured on Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, 321energy, Le Monde Diplomatique, Common Dreams, EV World, Life After the Oil Crash, Peak Oil News & Message Boards, and many other sites.

Kurt is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas—USA, and he serves on the board of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan and maintains a weblog called Resource Insights. His email address is kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.

Contributions


Do Texas and the North Sea Foretell the Future of Oil Production? 25 Feb, 2010 12:22 pm Oil supply optimists claim that new technology combined with private development of the world's remaining oil resources--most of which are now under the...

Biophysical Economics: Putting Energy at the Center 20 Jan, 2010 03:25 pm Many scientists have long complained that standard economics fails to account for the biological and physical systems that form the basis of the economy...

Why climate change adaptation could make things worse 23 Dec, 2009 04:38 pm Because many of the proposals for adaptation to climate change require further extensive release of greenhouse gasses, they will only make climate change...

Resource Nationalism: The Last Stand for the Oil Optimists 23 Oct, 2009 03:53 pm The price of oil has more than doubled from its nadir of $30 a barrel earlier this year. To explain the resilience of oil prices in the face of a severe...

Oil Optimists Grow More Outlandish 24 Sep, 2009 06:07 pm As the troubling realities of future oil supplies begin to penetrate official circles, the oil optimists are making even more outlandish claims....

Burning Picassos for Heat 26 Aug, 2009 11:05 pm Burning natural gas to extract and process oil from the Canadian tar sands has been likened by one industry insider to burning Picassos for heat. But...

Is Canada Becoming a Petrostate? 26 Jul, 2009 06:50 am Canada's increasing reliance on energy exports, especially oil from the Alberta tar sands, risk unsettling its politics and economy and turning the country...

Which Matters Most? The Size of the Tap or the Tank? 22 Jun, 2009 11:19 pm Energy optimists are fond of citing very large numbers for worldwide fossil fuel resources such as oil and natural gas. But they conveniently leave out...

Energy: The Achilles Heel of the Resource Pyramid 22 May, 2009 04:24 pm When economists say that we have far larger mineral resources today than ever before, they are usually referring to a model known as the resource pyramid...

Geoengineering the Climate: Bad for You and Our Energy Future 3 May, 2009 06:29 pm Proposals to reduce global warming through giant engineering projects or so-called geoengineering abound. Almost all are in the idea stage. But even...

Is Thorium an Energy Alchemist's Dream? 27 Mar, 2009 02:20 pm Advocates say that already existing thorium fuel and reactor technology could provide centuries and perhaps millennia of safe, abundant nuclear power....

Jeffrey Brown and the Net Oil Exports Crisis 6 Mar, 2009 11:54 am With peak oil comes peak oil exports. Why Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown thinks the world is headed for a drastic energy downsizing and soon....

Over the Cliff for Natural Gas in North America? 26 Jan, 2009 09:23 am Is natural gas production in North America headed for cliff? No one can know for sure; but all signs point down....

Energy and money 22 Dec, 2008 12:59 pm Is energy merely another commodity among many in the modern industrial economy? Or is it the very basis of our financial and material life?...

The Energy Optimist's Lexicon 25 Nov, 2008 10:18 pm The world's energy optimists often employ a particular lexicon to make their case for abundance far into the future. Whether that lexicon is used cynically...

The (Not So) Invincible Society 3 Nov, 2008 03:11 pm Policymakers and the public think of modern industrial society as being resilient and durable. Are they right?...

Receding Horizons for Alternative Energy Supplies 5 Sep, 2008 11:52 am When energy optimists tout the huge supply of oil that is still available to us in the form of tar sands and oil shale, they forget to mention that costs...

Oil Prices and the Mayflower Problem 29 Aug, 2008 02:34 pm Do oil prices really tell the market what it needs to know when it needs to know it?...

The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived 29 Jul, 2008 02:57 pm Understanding how the great hopes of early nuclear power advocates eventually turned into great disappointment may shed some light on nuclear power's future...

Move People, Not Metal 6 Jun, 2008 11:51 am Our current transportation system uses enormous amounts of energy primarily to move the weight of vehicles which transport passengers and freight. Bill...

Will the Rate-of-Conversion Problem Derail Alternative Energy? 23 May, 2008 02:02 pm Many alternative energy advocates claim that it is possible to replace our fossil fuel economy with one that runs on a combination of nuclear power and...

Can the natural gas economy become a reality? 5 Apr, 2008 11:49 am Natural gas has been often been prophesied as the fuel of the future, one that will fill the gap when oil declines and give us the time we need to transition...

Why Energy Efficiency Won't Matter Without Energy Caps 30 Mar, 2008 07:16 pm Energy efficiency advocates will continue to do the equivalent of running up the down escalator unless they embrace limits on total energy use....

How Many Windmills Does It Take to Power the World? 26 Feb, 2008 10:51 am Power densities are a measure of the land required for both energy sources and energy users. The current infrastructure matches the small footprint of...

The Coal Question Revisited 17 Jan, 2008 10:59 am Many people believe the world has enough coal to last hundreds of years. Recent assessments now suggest that coal production could actually start to decline...

Charlie Hall's Balloon Graph 19 Dec, 2007 10:11 am Energy researcher Charlie Hall's balloon graph challenges the notion that alternative energy sources will provide a smooth transition to a post-fossil...

Clarke's Wager 20 Nov, 2007 11:04 am Some 350 years ago, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that it is better to wager for the existence of God than against it since the benefits...

Should Scientists Embrace Economic Growth? 16 Oct, 2007 11:50 am The assumption of continuous economic growth lurks behind most scientific endeavors. Should scientists embrace this growth which is often presented as...

The Trouble with Predictions 19 Sep, 2007 01:29 pm The trouble with predictions is that they are mostly wrong. But is there a way that forecasting can be used to help us confront climate change, world peak...