Earth’s population is approaching seven billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day. Rich nations have long assured poor nations that they, too, would one day be rich and that their rates of population growth would decline, but it is no longer clear that this will occur for most of today’s poor nations. Resource scarcities, especially oil, are likely to limit future economic growth; the demographic transition that has accompanied economic growth in the past may not be possible for many nations today. Nearly 220,000 people are added to the planet every day, further compounding most resource and environmental problems. The United States adds another person every eleven seconds. We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now.

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Their new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014. The researchers claim it is an open secret that OPEC is likely to have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency (IEA), BP, the Energy Information Administration and World Oil do not take this into account in their statistics.

“It is necessary to investigate ambiguities and sources of error that are broadly acknowledged but not taken into account in public data due to political sensitivities,” the researchers said. The paper also raises concerns that public statistics have started to incorporate non-conventional reserves such as the Canadian tar sands, where oil and gas are much more difficult to extract and may never be economically attractive to develop.
Sir David said that although the IEA was doing a good job of warning that more investment in oil and gas exploration is needed, governments need to pay more attention to independent research.

“The IEA functions through fees that are paid into it by member countries,” he said. “We’re not operating under that basis. This is objective analysis. We’re not sitting on any oil fields. It’s critically important that reserves have been overstated, and if you take this into account, we’re talking supply not meeting demand in 2014-2015.”

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7500669/Oil-reserves-exaggerated-by-one-third.html

Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world humanity has created for itself over millennia.

As the decade neared its close, the U.N. gathered presidents and premiers of almost 100 nations for a “climate summit” to take united action, to sharply cut back the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told them they had “a powerful opportunity to get on the right side of history” at a year-ending climate conference in Copenhagen.

Once again, however, disunity might keep the world’s nations on this side of making historic decisions.

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James Hansen, the current director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said forging a global agreement to cut emissions once the Kyoto treaty expires were based on a “fundamentally wrong” approach.

“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper ahead of the December 7-18 summit.

Hansen is the most sceptical about the preferred measure of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a cap-and-trade system under which a progressively stricter ‘right to pollute’ would be exchanged in a carbon market.

He concluded that a direct tax on fossil fuels was the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.

“The approach that’s been talked about is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation, Hansen told the paper. “I think it’s just as well that we not have a substantive treaty, because if it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing, and people agree to that, then they’ll spend years trying to determine exactly what that means and what is a commitment, what are the mechanisms. The whole idea that you have goals which you’re supposed to meet and that you have outs, with offsets (sold through the carbon market), means you know it’s an attempt to continue business as usual.”

Hansen, who was a headline name across the worldwide press in 1988 with his US Congress testimony that climate change was already well under way.

“We’ve got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets,” Hansen said.
However, he insisted there was still hope, telling the Guardian: “I find it screwy that people say you passed a tipping point so it’s too late.”In that case what are you thinking: that we are going to abandon the planet? You want to minimise the damage.”

Ohio University scientists using nickel-based electrodes have managed to convert cheap hydrogen from urine samples. Hydrogen gas is actually quote a common element but its difficulty to produce and control makes it not cost effective enough to use as a resource. However when scientists experimented with the electrodes in urine samples and applied an electrical current, hydrogen gas was released – and used in fuel cells for all sorts of things.

The prototype produces up to 500 milliwatts of power and is only about three inches by three inches large. The scientists are planning to apply for grants and lease the technology so that commercial versions of the technology can be produced. Applications for this could mean that the industries looking toward fuel cells to cut back on fuel costs like car rental companies or manufactures might be interested to hear about this breakthrough.

“It’s estimated that a fuel-cell urine-powered car could theoretically travel 90 miles per gallon, said Botte.
“One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses,” Botte said. “Soldiers in the field could carry their own fuel.”

More specifically the scientists are focusing on urea, a byproduct of the urine.

“Urea is a byproduct of a lot of cities and farms, but even if you take all the people and all the animals, there’s not enough to run the world,” he says. “So this technology isn’t something that’s going to take over for Saudi Arabia.”

He went on to say that although the technology is not efficient enough to be a replacement for our current resources he said working on the study is still important.

“The work we do is not irrelevant. It’s good to work on a lot of different fronts because you never know which one is going to work. We are going to have to put together a lot of greener ways to collect energy that don’t produce greenhouse gases and don’t require us to go to war,” he notes. “While this wouldn’t solve all our problems, it could be a useful technology. And if you designed a farm correctly then the waste products could produce the amount of energy required to run that farm.”

Urea was previously used primarily as a fertilizer, but it went on to have several other applicable uses. In India, a soft drink made with bovine urine was recently under development and that country’s leading Hindu cultural group hoped to market it as a “healthy” alternative to traditional soft drinks.