media

Tv
CBS: Greener Horizons
BBC: Fueling the Future, Education
PBS: EXTREME OIL

Press
NY Times: The Energy Challenge
Chicago Tribune: Oil:A Travelogue of Addiction

Radio
NPR: Paying at the Pump

Videos, etc
See my earlier post, Materials on energy

ethanol, the panacea?

on a TV near you
NBC: Dateline NBC but see this MSNBC piece .
CBS 60 minutes but see other CBS piece
ABC: World News Tonight and this
CNN: Presents segment on ethanol in We Were Warned (for more info)

But see the Wikipedia piece on fuel ethanol, and its external links, such as the 2004 scholarly article by Tad Patzek and Pimentel's research. Patzek writes:

In this paper, I will describe in some detail the unfavorable thermodynamics of the industrial production of ethanol from one particular food crop, corn. I will use the Second Law of thermodynamics to track what is happening to us as mere years pass, and the precious resources the sun and the earth have been making and storing for millions of years are being squandered in front of our eyes.

The focus of Patzek's article is corn, but he does briefly compare the net energy of corn to switchgrasses and sugarcane. For more on sugarcane, see this other Wikipedia article.

Mainlining

In her Newsweek column this week, The Price of Our Addiction, Jane Bryant Quinn speaks bluntly about the downslope (of peak oil). The column begins:

For years to come, we'll be paying for our oil in both treasure and blood, as we fight and parley to keep ever-tighter supplies flowing our way.
The U.S. lives in an energy trap. We fell into it gladly, dug it deeper and sit fat and happy, with blinders on. We're fed daily meals of imported oil, from countries we pay in IOUs and think we can push around.

and concludes:

Unfortunately, we're investing in war, not in crash projects to develop new energy sources. Maybe there's time to spare. But some events, like true civil war and collapse in Iraq, could change everything in a day. We're running a faith-based energy policy—still addicted to oil. If something goes wrong, it will go wrong big.

This comes from a writer known for her careful and sober counsel. See also her later piece, What We Need Is Policy.

CBS News continues to ask the hard questions about ethanol . CNN reprises its Frank Sesno report, We Were Warned.

Oil sands salvation

There's a lot of oil in that there taiga. But it's hard to get out.

Regarding yesterday's CBS 60 minutes piece on the The Oil Sands Of Alberta see the following analysis: Tar baby: Oil sands and peak oil.