DrumBeat: April 8, 2008
Posted by Leanan on April 8, 2008 - 9:01am
Topic: Miscellaneous
The de-flattening of the world
Of all the new barriers to free trade, the most damaging are probably export restrictions, as on rice in Egypt, India and Vietnam, or export tariffs, as in Argentina. Rice export restrictions have had the effect of doubling the world market price of rice in three months, to the immense suffering of the Third World's urban masses. They are the product of an ideology of scarcity, in which resources are thought to be severely limited and trade is viewed as a negative factor in the welfare of a country's inhabitants.Not only do they damage the economy of commodity buyers, they are even more damaging to the country that imposes them. Nevertheless, in a world in which corn becomes scarce because of massive US ethanol subsidies, they have made their malign appearance, and they will not be eliminated until food and other commodity prices decline.
Oil trader faces criminal charges
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- New York Mercantile Exchange energy trader Steven Karvellas, a former NYMEX director, is pleading guilty Tuesday to cheating clients.Six other traders are also being arrested for allegedly engaging in similar schemes on the NYMEX floor, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
We really aren't ready for Peak Oil and we aren't going to be ready in a few years. GM's pluggable electric hybrid Chevy Volt was originally projected to cost $30,000. GM's latest estimate for the Volt's cost? $48,000.
Marathon's East Brae Field Remains Shut After Technical Fault
(Bloomberg) -- Marathon Oil Corp. said its North Sea East Brae natural-gas and condensate field remains closed after a power failure yesterday halted work on three platforms.
ConocoPhillips, BP forge ahead with Alaska pipeline
ConocoPhillips has joined forces with BP to move forward on a plan to build a massive natural gas pipeline stretching from Alaska's North Slope to Alberta in what would be the largest private sector construction project ever in North America, the companies said today.
Apache Reports Gas Well Output in British Columbia
(Bloomberg) -- Apache Corp., the U.S. oil and natural-gas company that has almost a quarter of its reserves in Canada, said three shale gas wells began production in British Columbia in the western part of the country.
French govt recommends 5.5 pct natgas price hike
PARIS, (Reuters) - The French government has asked the Energy Regulation Commission's (CRE) opinion on an average increase in the natural gas tariff of 0.264 euros per KWh, Gaz de France said on Tuesday.
Russia's largest oil producer sees nearly 500 per cent jump in profit
MOSCOW — State-controlled OAO Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer, on Tuesday reported its fourth-quarter profit rocketed almost five-fold due to acquisitions and production growth.
Pakistan: Gas leak kills two at nuclear plant
TWO workers were killed today after a gas leakage at a Pakistani nuclear facility, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission said.The accident took place at the Khushab heavy water plant, which had been shut down for annual maintenance, the commission said.
Tensions rise in energy rich Central Asia
Analysts say to expect more energy deals - and potential trouble - in the quickly militarizing region.NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's got all the makings of an international geopolitical thriller: World powers move their armies into a violent, remote, and politically fragile region brimming with valuable oil and natural gas resources; except it's not fiction.
Central Asia is the scene of this powerplay. Europe is maneuvering to satisfy its energy needs while it cuts greenhouse gas emissions. China and India need the region's reserves to quench their booming economies' thirst for fuel. Meanwhile, the U.S. is challenging Russia's traditional control of the region's gas reserves - which are large - but not large enough for everyone.
Jewish group says Swiss-Iran gas deal finances terrorism
GENEVA: A major U.S. Jewish organization on Tuesday stepped up opposition to a multibillion-dollar ( -euro) Swiss-Iranian natural gas deal by claiming it makes Switzerland "the world's newest financier of terrorism."
Energy Dept: U.S. Crude Oil Should Average $101
NEW YORK (AP) -- Crude oil prices in the U.S. are expected to average $101 per barrel this year, the Energy Department's analytical arm said Tuesday, revising upward its price projection on the back of expected global demand growth and low surplus production capacity.
Rising inflation in Asia stings in the West
BAT TRANG, Vietnam: The free ride is ending. For decades, Westerners have imported goods produced ever more inexpensively from a succession of low-wage countries - first Japan and Korea, then China, and now increasingly places like Vietnam and India.But mounting inflation in the developing world, especially Asia, is threatening that arrangement. Not just in China, where rising energy and labor costs have already made exports to the United States and Europe more expensive, but in the lower-cost alternatives to China, too.
Turning commodity increases into economic development
They say money can't buy happiness, but the question facing the world's poor countries is slightly different: Can money buy economic development?The sharp upturn in prices for commodities has presented some of the poorest countries with an enormous opportunity. Many of the beneficiaries, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, export mainly crops and raw materials. During this decade, the value of those commodities rose about 75 percent compared with the value of other goods, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest economic outlook.
Kuwait posts $43 bln fiscal surplus on oil revenue
KUWAIT, April 8 (Reuters) - Kuwait posted a budget surplus of 11.44 billion dinars ($43.02 billion) last fiscal year, 10 percent more than it forecast in February, as oil revenue was higher than expected, government data showed.
Wales pays 10% more than England for fuel
Electricity consumers in North Wales pay on average 4% more and consumers in South Wales pay on average 10% more for their electricity compared to the English average, according to new research by the fuel watchdog energywatch.The news will be discussed by the Welsh Assembly sustainability committee on Thursday as it tries to tackle the problem of fuel poverty in Wales.
Two Sides To The Dear-Oil Coin
There's an additional factor that could drive up crude prices even further: dwindling reserves. According to Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a Washington-based group that analyzes oil economics, a "perfect storm" of events within the last five years--including political instability in Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria--has undermined production expectations by as much as 3 million barrels per day."The real issue is: what's it going to cost to replace these reserves over time," says Pugliaresi. "That's going to be expensive." He laments that even with crude trading at $100 per barrel, there's still little political will in Washington to expand offshore drilling or to open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve for more production.
Rick Wagoner's worst nightmare
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- When he spoke with Fortune at the end of last year, GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner worried about "headwinds" that would impact the automaker's results in 2008.What Wagoner had in mind were issues that affect the whole economy: oil prices, commodity and steel price inflation, the possibility of a recession. Those headwinds, which GM can do little about, are blowing just as hard or harder than Wagoner expected.
The Lost Decade – a retrospect on “Oil Production in the 21st Century,” Scientific American magazine
Back in 1998, when I wrote the above article for SciAm, I was feeling optimistic about the prospects for production growth in the oil industry. The drop-header read: “Recent innovations in underground imaging, steerable drilling, and deepwater oil production could recover more of what lies below.” There is certainly plenty of room for improving the percent of discovered oil that can be brought to the surface, and indeed, the impressive technologies I discussed in SciAm have improved that recovery efficiency by more that 10% since 1998. However, average recovery still languishes between 35% and 40% of the original oil in plac in the majority of the world’s oil fields. Two unfortunate and short-sighted management trends have affected my optimism, and in my view, prevented discovery and production technologies from keeping up with increased demand in what I think of as the “Lost Decade” since I wrote that article.
Farmers adjust to record corn prices
“Pretty much everybody I know, we're not going to plant any more corn than last year,” said Belding cash-crop farmer Joe Marhofer, who farms a few hundred acres of alfalfa and corn just off Krupp Rd. “Guys are really putting a pencil to it, they're looking to tighten their belts this year. With the input costs for corn so high, we decided not to break our normal crop rotation.”...“If you had to pick and could get the same inputs for any crop, corn would definitely be the thing to do,” said Portland cash-crop farmer Jeff Sandborn, who owns an 1,800 acre operation split between soybeans and corn production. “But the inputs on corn are so much more expensive.”
Those input costs include purchasing nitrogen fertilizers, sprays and seed corn, much of which are imported overseas. Economically, the weak dollar ultimately means it costs more to purchase goods abroad than it did even last year, which has a domino effect on prices.
Americans may fret that Wheat Thins cost 15 percent more than a year ago but in poor nations, such price hikes aren't taken lightly. In Ivory Coast last week, women rioted against higher food costs, leaving one person dead.In Haiti, four people were killed in protests last week over a 50 percent rise in the cost of food staples in the past year. From Egypt to Vietnam, price rises of 40 percent or more for rice, wheat, and corn are stirring unrest and forcing governments to take drastic steps, such as blocking grain exports and arresting farmers who hoard surpluses.
Area bakeries feel bite of rising flour prices
A "wheat crisis" is what the baking industry is calling the wheat shortage.The country is experiencing its lowest reserves since 1946, said J. Bohn Popp, vice president of marketing for the Fort Wayne, Ind. -based Perfection Bakeries Inc.
Perfection Bakeries does business as Aunt Millie's Bakeries, the product line carried by supermarkets including Meijer Inc., Spartan Stores Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
"Before, we were at two to three months of reserves. Now, it's less than a month," Popp said.
Namibia: The Price of Uranium Mining - a Namib Desert Scarred By Pipelines
The water requirements of at least 12 new uranium mines by 2015 will come to about 53 million cubic metres, compared to a total water supply of 67 million cubic metres presently provided by NamWater to all its customers countrywide.
Oil price strength here to stay; demand fails to waver
DOHA - Oil price volatility is here to stay, with prices fluctuating within the range of $70-110/bbl and averaging $85-90/bbl this year. Also, demand growth has failed to waver because new players have emerged, with growth in China and the Middle East, according to Fereidun Fesharaki, chairman and chief executive officer of FACTS Global Energy.
Pakistan: Eunuchs warn of power outage protest dance
Islamabad - Four eunuchs in central Pakistan threatened to dance in protest at a regional power company office if it fails to provide a schedule for daily power outages, local media reported Tuesday.The eunuchs in Muzaffargarh, in the south of Punjab province, said they often had to abruptly end their performances and were not paid the full fare because of power outages, the daily Dawn News reported.
Ethiopia: EEPCO Finally Admits Power Shortage
A week after the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO) stated that there was no shortage of power in the country, the management on Thursday April 3 admitted that a power shortage has occurred due to the prolonged absence of Belg rain.
Australia: Premium unleaded prices rise amid shortage
A shortage of premium unleaded petrol in Canberra has seen the price skyrocket to a $1.69 litre.A BP petrol station has been charging that price, which is $0.29 a litre more than the regular unleaded price. The oil giant is also charging $1.63 for its mid-range, lower octane premium fuel.
Familiar story: More need help, fewer can give
“As the economy gets worse, more people will need our services, but we have less funding for them,” Talcott said. “Last year, we received $22,800 from the United Way campaign, and this year it’s dropped to $16,400.“It may not seem like a lot, but we run a tight ship here, especially with the cost of fuel, heat and transporting our goods,” he said.
Saudis raise oil prices for Asia, but widen US discount
SAUDI Aramco, the world’s largest state oil company, raised prices of light crude oil grades it will export to Asia in May, while cutting them for customers in the US and Europe.The premium for Arab Light, the most common variety exported by Saudi Arabia, to Aramco’s Asian benchmark was raised for the first time in four months, widening to $1.45 a barrel from $1.05 a barrel in April, the Dhahran-based company said in a faxed statement on April 5.
Dominion CEO Touts Using All Available Energy Options
The nation is facing an “energy train wreck” unless it uses every energy option available, including construction of new coal-fired power plants, Dominion Resources Chief Executive Officer Thomas F. Farrell II said on Monday.“We do not have the luxury of limiting ourselves to a few sources of energy and excluding others,” Farrell said. “We need to draw on every resource at our disposal – coal, nuclear, oil, natural gas, renewable power and aggressive and smarter conservation and efficiency programs.”
Bangladesh Fears Industrial Cost from Gas Shortage
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh's textile producers, major export earners, said on Monday that a government decision to limit gas use by industry would cause at least $18 million in lost production each month.State-run Titas Gas and Transmission and Distribution Company (TGTDC) last week told all major industries to stop natural gas consumption for five hours a day at peak time to ease pressure on the power sector.
Energy secretary: Use tech to diversify energy supply
WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told an energy conference here yesterday that the nation must diversify its energy supply.Technology is the key to solving the country’s most pressing energy challenges, Bodman said.
The Bush administration favors putting the private sector in the lead. Already, he said, private investment in the development of clean energy has taken off.
U.S. needs leader during energy crisis
World demand for oil is growing faster than supply, and prices are rising to near-record levels. Gas is well over $3 per gallon, and some experts are predicting $6 per gallon in the near future. Further, our dependence on foreign oil, especially from the Middle East, is severely affecting our foreign policy. Whether we like to admit it or not, oil-producing countries have really got us in a box, as we currently import about 60 percent of our oil.The president's response? He recently said we have an oil problem, and we should do something about it. His plan is to urge the producers to produce more. Never mind we then become even more dependent on foreign oil. Never mind our Middle East policy will become even more difficult.
Just make sure we suffer no pain. Well, thanks Mr. President, but no thanks.
More waters off California may be off limits to oil drilling
Los Angeles - A stretch of the Pacific Ocean off California's wild north coast seems poised to get permanent federal protection from oil exploration and other development, in recognition that the area lies within one of the four richest marine feeding grounds in the world.The US Senate is expected this week to vote in favor of extending two marine sanctuaries to cover ocean waters off a 76-mile stretch of the Sonoma County and south Mendocino County coasts – a move that would be a major victory for California in its 50-year battle to restrict offshore oil drilling. The House of Representatives approved the measure April 1.
Opponents say California power initiative is ill-advised
University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and his son, Peter, are backing a ballot initiative that would force the state to more than quadruple its production of solar, wind and other alternative energy sources by 2025.But the state's major alternative-energy companies and environmental groups say the Solar and Clean Energy Act of 2008 is poorly drafted and riddled with loopholes, and they plan to oppose it.
Rubber Trees For Tyre Industry Shrink China Rainforests
Three decades ago, jungles and high mountain forests covered about 70 percent of Xishuangbanna, tucked between China's borders with Laos and Myanmar. By 2003, that proportion had shrunk to less than 50 percent."With rubber prices rising like crazy, any tree that can be cut down has been cut down to make way for rubber," said Liu, a professor at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, run by the Chinese Academy of Science.
ScienceDaily — A new, high- resolution, interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has found that the emissions aren't all where we thought."For example, we've been attributing too many emissions to the northeastern United States, and it's looking like the southeastern U.S. is a much larger source than we had estimated previously," says Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project.
Oil peak theorist warns of chaos, war
WASHINGTON -- Matt Simmons sounds the alarm like the Cassandra of the oil industry, warning that crude production has peaked and that looming energy shortages could derail global growth and even spark armed conflict.As a prominent "peak oil" theorist, the veteran oil industry financier paints a grim picture of a world facing resource scarcity. Still, it doesn't take a "peak-ist" to conclude that the global oil producers will find it increasingly difficult to keep up with growing demand.
He squared off yesterday against other experts who argue that the world has yet to reach the physical limits of oil production. But while they disagreed on the extent of the problem, the panelists at a U.S. Department of Energy conference in Washington concurred that future crude production will be constrained by physical, economic and political factors that add up to tight markets and higher oil prices.
In Greenland, locals hunt reindeer for food and use dog sleds to traverse the ice sheet. Soon they may be working on offshore oil rigs and counting their money.Oil companies have begun looking for crude deposits off the west coast, and Joern Skov Nielsen, deputy director of Greenland's Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said there may be more oil there than the entire past production of the North Sea. That's about 50 billion barrels, according to figures from Norway and Britain, the region's biggest producers.
China to consume 63% more oil in 2020 compared with 2006
BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhua) -- China is expected to consume 62.5 percent more oil in 2020 compared with 2006 as fast economic growth will continue to fuel domestic oil demand, says a government think tank.China's oil consumption would rise from 346.6 million tons in 2006 to 407 million tons in 2010 and 563 million tons in 2020, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences forecast in a new report.
China's demand for oil is expected to slow
BEIJING — China's total oil demand is projected to rise at a modest annual rate of 3.3 per cent between 2010 and 2020, easing from 4.5 per cent in the 2007-2010 period, Chinese media said on Tuesday....The report gave no reasons for the projected dip in growth.
Drive to copy Prius's green halo
When Tom Weatherbee swapped his minivan for a Toyota Prius hybrid two years ago, he was mostly hoping to save money at the bowser.But he was pleasantly surprised by both the requests from friends for a test drive and the grins its aerodynamic profile drew at the grocery store, and he basked in the attention.
"Even the people who own more expensive cars acknowledge the Prius as being pretty cool,'' said Weatherbee, an electrical engineer who lives outside Traverse City, Michigan.
UK: Ofgem investigating two companies
Two of the UK's largest energy companies are being investigated by their regulator over allegations they abused their dominant market positions.Ofgem said it had launched the study into Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Electricity following a formal complaint from an unnamed complainant.
The investigation centres on the companies' activities in the electricity generation sector.
ConocoPhillips settles Texas EPA charges
The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday oil company ConocoPhillips has agreed to pay $1.2 million to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations at its Borger, Texas refinery.The agencies alleged ConocoPhillips violated discharge limits more than 2,000 times between 1999 and 2006. The discharges from the facility involved two types of water pollutants -- selenium and toxic wastewater.
Resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson has warned the country's growing dependence on imported energy could reach critical proprtions, speaking at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Perth.“With only about a decade of known oil resources remaining at today's production rates, Australia is looking down the barrel of a $25bn trade deficit in petroleum products by 2015,” Mr Ferguson said.
China, Syria sign deal on oil refinery
China and Syria have signed an agreement to build a joint venture refinery in eastern Syria, expanding their cooperation to include oil processing, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. has disclosed.China's state-owned oil industry has been investing heavily abroad in hopes of securing energy supplies to fuel its booming economy.
Blast rocks Gazprom export link
An explosion has hit Gazprom's Urengoi-Uzhgorod pipeline, which pumps gas to Europe via Ukraine, but supplies to Europe continue to run smoothly, the country's Emergencies Ministry said.The blast and subsequent fire hit the pipeline, which takes Gazprom's gas from the Arctic region of Urengoi through Ukraine and into Europe, at a point 170 kilometres north-east of the town of Perm in the Ural mountains.
America at a critical turning point
The specter of global warming and Peak Oil are threatening to make dramatic changes to our lifestyle and to the very future of our planet's existence. Do we Americans understand what the issues of global warming and Peak Oil mean to our future? Have Americans taken the time to educate themselves about these threats looming on the horizon? The impact that these twin impending disasters will have on every element of our daily lives and our very existence into the future? And not only the impact upon ourselves but also the lasting, terrible impact that they will have on future generations? If you do not know now you better prepare yourself for the future. It is not the least bit difficult to spend some time to research these critically important issues and anyone can easily do so by simply Googling these two terms on the Internet. Doing so will open up a window into a knowledge of things to come that most of us cannot even begin to imagine. Doing so will prepare you to face up to the future that is coming your way and one that is unavoidable. What is so difficult about getting educated about critical issues endangering our future?
Soot Plays Big Role in Global Warming
Black carbon, the stuff that gives soot its dirty color, could be the second most important contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide and a key to preventing warming, at least in the short-run, a new study suggests.
Gore convinced US will sign up to new climate treaty in 2009
TORSHAVN (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former US vice president Al Gore said Monday that he believes Washington will sign up to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen in 2009."The United States will definitely join the next treaty," Gore said at a conference on global warming and rising oceans in the Faroe Islands. "The good news is that after the next (presidential, November 2008) elections, we will have a new politics."
I see that Tapis is over 3 yergins. Does anyone have any kind of profile of the players on the various exchanges?
This may have been posted already, it's impossible to keep up with Leanan, but here goes:
I'm just passing the news. I have not had the time to look into it yet.
If you have, please post insightful analysis.
While I think cellulosic ethanol or any kind of gasoline/kerosene fuel derived from cellulose could be a "good" thing, I'm quite fearful of the potential consequences of giving the American populace another reason to deforest the land, either to clear it to grow crops, or to harvest trees to turn them into ethanol for SUVs.
Trees may be renewable, but tell that to the people who lived on Easter Island when building those cool stone heads. Most humans don't have the sense to stop over-consuming anything. Deforestation, over-fishing, species extinction, aquifier depletion, the list goes on. As a species, we simply don't learn from history.
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)
Quite right to be concerned. Unsurprisingly, the article has the usual 10 years-to-commercialization disclaimer. I want to see an EROI analysis of this process (and no, it doesn't need to go back to the big bang to offer useful information).
I have no doubt that we are going to see more bio-fuel in the future, once natural gas resumes its cost/price climb. But the bio-fuels will be solid, burnt for heat and electricity in high efficiency furnaces. The pressure on agriculture land and the problems associated with mono-culture will continue to manifest. Perhaps the ethanol boondoggle will force better land use policies (regulations), in time for a truly economically-driven expansion of (solid) bio-fuels.
Perhaps I am being simplistic, but doesn't it make more sense in the short term to adapt our engines to the biofuels, rather than the other way around? It seems that we are seeking to force square pegs into round holes.
Yeah, I would agree. Adoption of electrified rail is the round peg for the round hole. Some of that electricity may come from large bio-mass fed generators. Still, I expect most of the bio-fuel will feed household furnaces, and in the case of more socially and intellectually advanced regions, small co-generation plants providing district or industrial heating and electricity.
OlePossom, that may be a long term strategy but it could not possibly be a short term strategy as you suggest. It takes about 15 years to completely replace our automobile fleet. So unless you expect all automobile companies to completely change their fleet next year, and everyone to buy a new car next year,... Well, you get the picture.
On the other hand if we had a biofuel that everyone could run their car on today, all they would have to do is pull up to the pump and fill her up.
Ron Patterson
Most fuel injection cars can be retrofitted for not too much money to burn E85. I seem to recall figures like $150/car. Essentially a few fuel lines may need to be replaced and the computer's fuel tables must be altered to allow the burning of E85, along with a sensor to allow the computer to determine how much of an ethanol blend is in the fuel.
I'm personally more interested in retrofits with motorcycle engines or electric motors, but those are MUCH more expensive. :)
Doesn't E85 rot seals and fuel lines and such?
I guess one nice thing about being out here in the Red State Asteroid Belt is, no E85. And when/if I return to the Bay Area, it's bicycle for me and that can run on pure ethanol. Especially in cold weather. This type of bicycle fuel is also very contamination-tolerant, such as the worm in good tequila, or whatever it is they put in Jager.
15 years to turn over the fleet is still more than 6% per year- more than all but the most pessimistic estimates of the decline rate of oil (elm has upwards of 20% in the last few years though)
Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island
New evidence points to an alternative explanation for a civilization's collapse
Terry L. Hunt
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?full...
Summary: rats and Europeans.
Rats and Europeans caused a 90% dieoff of the Hawaiians. Easter Island being very small, the even greater dieoff and devastation* may be simply a product of the island being so small and having less "inertia". There are also psychic effects, the average Hawaiian found her world turned upside-down, even with the restrictive kapus and capricious chiefs, it was THEIR world, and its rapid destruction brought on suicide, infanticide, revenge killings, and people just plain sitting down and refusing to live any more. The Hawaiian's (and other Pacific peoples') ability to just lie down and stop living, to be dead in 2-3 days crops up in the literature of the European invaders of the time quite often.
*Hawaii, even Oahu, has huge areas with no one living there. There are huge areas where people lived 100+ years ago and not now.
They still cut the last one down, no?
I'm confused about the continual obsession with the Easter Island Collapse.
Whether the Rapanui settled Easter Island in 1200 AD or 900 AD what difference does it make? Whether they collapsed because of European germs and rats or the human habitation denuded the local environment or a combination of the two is rhetorical. Most anthropologists would agree that the Rapanui were by no means a flowering society by the time Captain Cook and his thugs arrived to visit the remanants of this flawed environment in the 1800's.
Here are the basic facts as I understand them:
1. The island was geographically isolated.
2. The Rapanui obsession with Moai construction would have no doubt distracted from the necessary work of survival on a small finite island.
3. The construction of Moai was not in practice by the time the Europeans arrived. Many of the statues had already been destroyed. This makes common sense. When people are starving they would have retaliated against the local Big-Men. I say men because it has been documented that it was not a political monopoly. The local groups competed for status by the size of Moai that individual chiefs built.
4. The destruction of local fauna was history by the 1800's.
5. The remanants of Rapanui natives were already in starvation by the time of the European arrival. No doubt they would have been able to put up little resistance to either germs or steel.
6. Whether the rats overwhelemed the few remaining trees (if there were any left by this time) or not is irrelevant.
There is a long held notion that indigenous peoples are somehow noble and are far wiser stewards of the environment than evil Europeans. This notion is patently false.
The historical precedent is simple: Humans, without exception, are an invasive species and are largely destructive to local environments.[**sustainable societies are hunter gatherers. The introduction of farming spurred modern civilizations 10 to 12 thousand years ago.]
The warning of the Easter Island collapse for earthlings is this:
We are a small, isolated and finite planet with no neighbors and the local big-men (nations) compete for finite resources and hegemony.
Will we overwhelm our local environment, the earth? Probably.
Hard to post any insightful analysis given the info in the article. It would be interesting to have some details on the process, the real energy requirements (and EROEI), the catalyst involved, etc.
I'm sure Mr. Rapier knows something about the process. As always I would like to hear his insight on it.
First of all, just "Robert", please. "Mr. Rapier" has an odd feel for me.
If you look at cellulose - and I recently wrote about this in one of my essays here - there are several avenues of attack that could turn that cellulose into something like hexane or other C4-C6 molecules in the gasoline range. My thoughts were that a thermochemical process had the highest probability of success, and it sounds like what they have done. Whether or not this breakthrough is significant, from my perspective it is important that we have some sort of breakthrough in this area - and I don't believe that will be via the historical fermentation route for cellulosic ethanol. That avenue - in my opinion - is a commerical dead end.
I do agree with the poster who bemoaned the ICE. We are going to have to transition away from these for personal transportation. But long-range transport will continue to have a need for liquid fuels. And there is a lot of biomass that is truly waste and currently going to landfills that could be utilized for some energy via some sort of cellulosic process.
This process doesn't differ from other biofuel processes in using biomass (less than 0.1% sunlight to cellulose efficiency) as the feedstock, for the purpose of fuelling an internal combustion engine (5-25% efficient), usually to drive a rubber-tire vehicle. If the process is 55% efficient at making biofuel vs 45% for the competition, it makes little difference to the overall process.
I am not opposed to "biofuel crops". They will soon be seen as "polymer crops" to replace petrochemical feedstocks, and will do so efficiently, compared to any alternative (look into Cargill's biopolymer process).
From what I can gather, it seems they're using flash pyrolysis of biomass. The whole reaction only takes a few seconds. The products are typically liquids (bio-oil, what the person in the article is likely holding for the camera), syngas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and charcoal.
Slow pyrolysis has been around for many thousands of years: it's just the process by which dry wood is turned into charcoal. The byproducts of slow pyrolysis are tar and syngas, which is usually just vented. Flash pyrolysis normally involves heating dry biomass to about 400 C very quickly; the non-equilibrium nature of the reaction drives the product towards liquids rather than gas. The resulting liquid cannot be used in a typical gasoline or diesel engine, and is not miscible with petroleum. It can however be burned directly in a modified diesel generator, and as a lighting/heating fuel. Further processing of the bio-oil can potentially yield a gasoline substitute, but this seems far from economical for the time being.
Personally, I see a lot of promise in flash pyrolysis. It's a low-tech procedure that produces a liquid fuel (albeit a much less useful one than crude oil). It think of all the energy lost in our massive forest fires--a direct result of not tending to our forests--which could be sustainably harvested, mostly through removal of dead matter. This is no substitute for crude oil, as it doesn't scale; but it may become a local solution for communities in the future.
"which could be sustainably harvested, mostly through removal of dead matter."
The dead matter must remain in the forest, or you won't have a sustainable harvest. Forest soils gotta eat, too.
and fires are a normal part of the life cycle of forests.
In "Thaw exposes Greenland's oil":
"Oil companies have begun looking for crude deposits off the west coast, and Joern Skov Nielsen, deputy director of Greenland's Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said there may be more oil there than the entire past production of the North Sea. That's about 50 billion barrels, according to figures from Norway and Britain, the region's biggest producers."
How much prospecting has been done?
Heard on the BBC news a couple of days ago: "It is estimated there is twice as much oil in the Arctic as in the whole of Saudi Arabia"
50 billion barrels, says the director of Petroleum. No vested interest there... BBC says maybe 500 billion. Yikes! The fact is nobody knows at this point.
The Caspian Basin, as of the late 90's, was "expected" to hold more than 200 billion barrels. Now that we've looked, what's the current estimate? 12? 15?
Even if all that oil is there, it'll take a decade at least to BEGIN pumping it out. And the financial costs, as well as the cost in energy, will be huge and probably prohibitive at that point.
There is the same problem with all biofuels. Production costs will rise, particularly the energy needed to run whatever the process is.
What I expect to see, and it'll be sooner rather than later if/when we bomb Iran, is that we are simply going to run out of gasoline. Pumps closed. Everyone stay where you are and try to cope. And theoretical oil under the ground in Greenland, or knowing that your lawn clippings COULD be turned into a little "gasahol", won't make any difference.
costs will be prohibitive at some point but that's when prices are LOW and not high like they are now. going forward peak oil will make prices go up and make marginal projects profitable not the other way around. I was reading about the canadian oil sands and how people didn't think they'd ever get oil out of there because the price of oil was so low that it didn't pay.
my point is with high oil prices the oil companies are the one's who will have the financial were withal.
Funny, some of the stories I've read lately about the TAR(!) sands are about shrinking profit margins because of increasing production costs. Running out of that "low-hanging fruit" already, tsk tsk.
Please note that the quote above starts with "if all that oil is there". Which it isn't. So....never mind...
The era of personal tranportation is drawing to a close, except for the very richest. They'll lose out too, eventually.
what costs are you talking about? labor or something else? what that just means is that the oil price needs to go up. it's probably just a short-term problem.
It takes a powerful heat source to convert tar-coated sand into oil. Natural gas was supposed to be the solution, but under NAFTA Canada must sell a certain % of its natural gas to the US in perpetuity, and there's not enough left over without importing LPG, which isn't easy right now. The native peoples also aren't thrilled about more gas pipelines snaking across their property. Since Albertans didn't warm up to the idea of using a nuclear reactor to heat tar, the value of the tar sands is chasing the cost of the fossil fuels that went into them plus a buccaneer's profit margin.
Good comment...
But when you said "a buccaneer's profit margin" I couldn't help thinking of subsidized corn ethanol...
sorry, sorry...
Actually, that's a good point. Tar sands investment must compete with other kinds of investments. Corn ethanol is in the same trap: its price competes against the price of the very energy inputs that go into its production. But the subsidy might create a certainty of profit that is not guaranteed for tar sands. So the money goes to Iowa instead of Alberta. When a buccaneer's profit margin were to be found in sleazy mortgage bonds and currency swaps, then the money went there, but I guess folks are jumping out of that stuff now. Question now is, will the amount of money to be lost in the current meltdown destroy the wealth of investors faster than they will transfer it from financials to unconventional energy?
Good comment and I'm glad you made it. In this case, though, you give my comment too much credit.
This morning my sleepy mind thought "a buck an ear's profit margin" was perhaps a target price for pro-corn-ethanol lobbyists...
hence my "sorry, sorry..."
I promise not to do it again.... probably....