The International Energy Agency's Report on the State of the World's 400 Largest Oil Fields

I'd posted back in May about the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s concerns about the decline in global oil production. At the time, they were planning to release a report this November about the depletion profiles of the world's top 400 oil fields. A recent article by Richard Heinberg on the Post Carbon Institute website states that the Financial Times has leaked some of the results of this report. According to Heinberg, the IEA found that "Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent." He states that according to the leaked information, we can only conclude that global oil production has now passed its peak, which would have been this past July.

According to Heinberg (and many others), the drop in oil prices over the past month or two means that the sort of investment needed to explore new oil projects just isn't going to happen, and even if it did, it would involve the exploration of expensive and / or environmentally devastating projects similar to the Alberta tar sands -- projects whose outputs very likely couldn't ever keep up with current and future demands for fossil fuels.

It'll be interesting to see the full report when it comes out on November 12.

Realistic gardening (and some links on storing and preserving what you grow)

Energy Bulletin has a short article by Zachary Nowak touching upon what he calls the ''illusion'' that those concerned about Peak Oil have about being able to adequately feed themselves with their own gardens. He presents some hard and realistic questions that prospective gardeners should ask themselves and he makes a handful of suggestions. The gist of it is that there's a difference between being a backyard hobby gardener and on literally needing to be able to fill your cupboards with what you grow. It takes a lot of time and energy and a lot of knowledge to grow food. At least to grow enough to feed yourself adequately. Nowak has recently written a book called Crash Course: Preparing for Peak Oil which looks at his 7-year-long attempt to become self-sufficient and addresses the challenges of post-Peak life. You can download the intro and first chapter for free, as well as order the entire book itself on his website.

Oh yeah... I added a new links section called ''Food Storage'' earlier today, and I posted a link to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s information on storing horticultural crops. Further along in their document, they have a section on processing horticultural crops, including info on solar drying, canning, etc. Most of the information is designed to be used by a non-technically oriented audience. If you nose around their site, you'll find tons of useful information there, including Ecocrop, a searchable database of over 2300 plant species that provides environmental crop information.