Oil production and consumption. Oil production fails to keep up with demand CRUDE-OIL prices shot up on June 8th—Brent crude to a one-month high of $118.59 per barrel—after OPEC representatives meeting in Vienna were unable to reach an agreement on production quotas. Many had expected an increase in quotas as members with spare production capacity, led by Saudi Arabia, pushed to avoid a price spike that may dampen long-term demand.
As figures released in BP's "Statistical Review of World Energy" show, global oil production has struggled to keep up with increased demand recently, particularly from Asia. In China alone consumption has risen by over 4m barrels per day in the past decade, accounting for two-fifths of the global rise. In 2010 consumption exceeded production by over 5m barrels per day for the first year ever, as world oil stocks were run down. Groundwater Depletion Is Detected by Grace Satellites. They found problems in places as disparate as North Africa, northern India, northeastern China and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley in California, heartland of that state’s $30 billion agricultural industry.
Jay S. Famiglietti, director of the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling here, said the center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, known as Grace, relies on the interplay of two nine-year-old twin satellites that monitor each other while orbiting the Earth, thereby producing some of the most precise data ever on the planet’s gravitational variations. The results are redefining the field of hydrology, which itself has grown more critical as and population growth draw down the world’s fresh water supplies. Grace sees “all of the change in ice, all of the change in snow and water storage, all of the surface water, all of the soil moisture, all of the groundwater,” Dr. Famiglietti explained. Water politics was hardly on Dr. But, Dr. Max Boisot. The spatial dimension of knowledge flows: a simulation approach (2008) Canals, Agustí , Boisot, Max , MacMillan, Ian Drawing on a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space, and using agent-based simulation, our paper offers a theoretical exploration of the spatial dimensions of knowledge management.
By... Codification, Abstraction, and Firm Differences: A Cognitive Information-based Perspective Max Boisot , Yan Li knowledge, codification, theory of the firm, firm heterogeneity, resource-based view, information asymmetry, B52, D01, D82, D83, L25, Organizational versus Market Knowledge: From Concrete Embodiment to Abstract Representation knowledge management, transaction cost economics, codification, abstraction, B52, D01, D82, D83, L25, Data, information and knowledge: have we got it right? Max Boisot , Agustí Canals Property rights and information flows: a simulation approach Max Boisot , Ian MacMillan , Kyeong Han The spatial dimension of knowledge flows: a simulation approach. From Open Business Models to a Commons-Orientated Economy. Efficiency of the Commons. The tragedy of the commons (in simple Env-Econ form) goes something like this: Unrestricted access means greedy bastards will exploit resources into oblivion.
The problem of the commons comes down to property rights. If no one owns a resource then everyone thinks they are free to use it. Completely banning access creates incentives for illegal exploitation. A solution? Privatize the commons...or at least auction off restricted access to public property. Without fear--or at least with less fear--that any Tom, Dick or Harry can come in freely and use up resources, private owners have the incentive to efficiently manage resources for the long haul.
Via www.cnn.com. Replacing Efficiency with Reliability. Coop-oriented thinker Bob Cannell discusses some of the ideas of our friend Roberto Verzola: “So what should we be looking for as our guiding light in an age of redundancy and low/no cost production. Roberto Verzola, at the International Conference on the Commons, Berlin, Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2010, says it is reliability. He says that in an age of abundance (of information, data, relationships, networking) what people now want is reliability.
He says we live in a new age of information ‘commons’. Unlike old style grazing grounds our e-commons cannot be degrade by over grazing (although Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom showed that the ‘tragedy of the commons’ was a fabrication if commons based economies were left to find an equilibrium). The more these new data commons are used the stronger and more sustainable they become. Reliability means customers get what they actually want, when they want it and whenever they want it. For example a warehouse collating orders for customers.
10 hypotheses about abundance & commons. The following is from a really remarkable keynote speech by Roberto Verzola, Abundance and the generative logic of the commons, which was a keynote for the International Conference on the Commons, Berlin, Germany, Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, 2010. For the complete version with added commentary, go here. Roberto Verzola: “I will present my talk in the form of ten assertions about abundance and its relation to the commons. Some of the ten are quite obvious and uncontroversial. Others may provoke intense debate. Hopefully, they can help clarify the issues covered by this conference. 1: The Internet is creating an abundance of information and knowledge This is hardly news by now. Disturbing issues remain, such as inappropriate content, unaffordability, exclusion, embedded value systems, toxic production and e-wastes. 2: The abundance concept is even more neglected than the commons Abundance is even more neglected. 3: The wellspring of information abundance is the human urge to communicate Postscript.