Simon Donner today answered a bunch of questions I had about US food production numbers: [T]he extra corn for ethanol has to be planted on productive croplands, lands with the right soils, and most of that land is being used. In 2007, soybean planting – the other major feed crop grown in the midwest US …
Food prices popped back up a bit over the last week, according to the Economist, but have remained relatively stable for the last month. Down 1.7 percent over the last month, up 58.7 percent over the last year. West Texas Intermediate is up 99.8 percent over the last year (that would be “double”), and gold, …
When we talk about energy independence here in the United States, there’s a sort of tribal subtext. We don’t want to be dependent on them for our critical energy needs. Listening to a Platts’ podcast today about pipeline production south from Canada made me wonder whether them in our collective mind includes Canada. I don’t …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Diane Albert’s view of the city is different than the one you might get trapped inside a glass-and-steel cage on your morning commute. Out along the Rio Grande bicycle trail on her morning commute, she sees the coming and going of ducks, the cottonwoods changing from green in spring to gold …
The Energy Information Administration’s This Week in Petroleum out today opens with a fascinating discussion of the decline in use of home heating oil in the United States. And, oh, yes, by the way… The U.S. average retail price for regular gasoline jumped to yet another all-time high as the price increased by 10.9 cents …
My new favorite blog, because anyone who can explain resource allocation conflicts using Scooby-Doo jokes is a truly formidable voice.
0.04 inch of rain overnight at my house (0.1 cm). First measurable precip since April 10. It looks from the COCORAHS map as though some folks down in the valley got a good soaking.
New Scientist has been banging the drum about wheat virus doom of late, but I wasn’t convinced that they were not being alarmist. (My key metric: no one else was writing about it.) Oh crap. Other people are writing about it: The fungal disease could spread to other wheat producing states in the Near East …
I wrote a piece in Sunday’s newspaper about new work by Ben Cook at NASA Goddard and his colleagues about the role of dust in the Dust Bowl drought. As the name implies, we knew the Dust Bowl was dusty. The new bit here is a much more clear understanding of the role of dust …
Tomb of the VW Vans Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. The Junkyard Loop is one of Albuquerque’s great bike rides. It takes you past the city’s sewage treatment plant (the largest tributary on the Middle Rio Grande), and along the Tijeras Arroyo concrete diversion channel. One of its great highlights, the old Duke City Raceway, sadly …