The intelligence “leak” game that has intentionally provided the Obama Administration a temporary way out from under Republican and Israeli pressure to strike Iran is a fortuitous one that perhaps unintentionally recognizes the wider implications of pushing the internal power struggle in Iran to a premature and dangerous end. In recapping the events of this week that saw “intelligence leaks” to the effect that there is no need to attack Iran as there is no imminent threat of it achieving nuclear weapons capabilities and…

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Those taking part in a survey published this month found so-called Millennials are less concerned about the environment than previous generations. To a certain degree, so-called flower-power during the 1960s and early 1970s was just as much about environmental protection as it was about world peace. But this is not your parent’s generation. Those in their 20’s, the survey suggested, expressed apathy toward the issue. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, argued that wanton use of pesticides was causing rampant environmental…

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After initial outrage, bluster and bravado, Iran appears to have come to terms with impending Western sanctions on the country’s oil and financial sector, to the point of saying they don’t think it will have any meaningful impact at all. Iran deems Western politicians as lacking the courage to stick with the ban in the face of a further rally in oil prices; inevitable, as they see it, if the West goes ahead with the ban. So are they right to be so sanguine? Will Iran’s Asian customers take up the slack in buying production that…

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About 30 years ago Sandia Labs developed polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits for geothermal drilling.  Today nearly two-thirds of the oil we use comes from wells drilled using the (PDC) bits.  That’s technology gone astray, valuable – and still missing the original point.  Now Sandia and the U.S. Navy recently brought the technology back full circle, showing how geothermal drillers might use the original PDC technology with added decades of improvements by the oil and gas industry. Polycrystalline diamond compact…

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Climate change is generally attributed to carbon emissions, and efforts to reduce carbon emissions tend to focus on clean energy sources such as wind or solar power. However despite the advances in clean energy sources many believe that humanities greenhouse gas emissions are so vast that these technologies can no longer help solve the problem on their own. A new MIT study led by Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has proven that there is enough capacity in deep…

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Obama has proposed that Congress should kill tax breaks for the oil and gas industry … again. He failed to end the subsidies when the Democrats controlled congress, so it is unlikely he will have any more success persuading Republicans, who fear that the loss of the tax breaks will lead to even higher fuel prices. Tax subsidies for oil and gas companies amount to about $4 billion and Obama hopes that this money could instead be used to develop alternative energy sources. He said that the vote will prove whether congress will “stand…

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