Friday, October 29, 2010

Energy Crisis Over! - Forbes.com

"...The recent news story about China's national oil company, Cnooc, purchasing a stake in Chesapeake Energy's Texas shale oil and gas fields and agreeing to pony up most of the capital to develop them underscores what an amazing transformation is taking place in the U.S.' energy picture.
...
The word "revolution" is overused, but it's truly appropriate when applied to these technological breakthroughs: hydraulic fracturing--a.k.a. fracking--and horizontal drilling. With fracking, drillers inject water, sand and chemicals deep underground to crack gas-bearing rocks.
...
The implications are staggering. Within a decade the U.S. will be a major natural gas exporter. In those Texas Chesapeake fields alone production will reach the equivalent of 400,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil a day. Pennsylvania and upstate New York will also become major gas producers.
...
Environmentalists worry that fracking might poison our water, even though the drilling takes place thousands of feet below the water table. Fortunately the technology is there to get at these reserves in an extremely safe way.

The Earth is awash in energy.

- Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief"



Trouble is, the water pollution is real, and it is already affecting some people, and may soon affect millions more...

GASLAND, a movie by Josh Fox

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Articles of Bill Buxton at BusinessWeek

Bill Buxton is Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research and the author of Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Previously, he was a researcher at Xerox PARC, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of Alias Research and SGI Inc.

TechTalk - NUI - What’s in a Name? excellent presentation by Bill Buxton @ Microsoft Channel 9

PDC10

PDC10: Microsoft Professional Developers Conference

28,29 Oct 2010
Completely available online, free, video streaming (Silverlight)

Not a "real" web: can not use web bookmarks :(