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DrumBeat: September 7, 2008
Posted by Leanan on September 7, 2008 - 9:10am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Cost of oil could dim a solar light
Mark Bent wrestles with oil prices. Never mind that crude futures have fallen $20 a barrel from their record in July.Bent's company, Houston-based SunNight Solar, has seen costs for shipping its solar-powered flashlights rise by about 30 percent so far this year, and they show no sign of abating.
...SunNight's flashlights use small solar panels to power rechargeable batteries that last as long as 6,000 hours, compared with 15 hours for conventional disposable batteries. The powerful light-emitting diodes are bright enough to illuminate a room.
Bent sees SunNight as a way to take low-cost lighting to places that don't have electricity, such as parts of Africa and South America. The company's products often replace kerosene lamps.
The trick is to make customers — who may spend 30 percent of their disposable income on kerosene — understand that paying more for the light now will cost them less over time than what they spend on kerosene. Even a modest price increase can derail the careful equation, he said.
Charlie Maxwell to Barron's: $300 Oil is Inevitable
According to a Monday, September 8 Barron's article titled "What $300-a-Barrel Oil Will Mean for You", Charles (Charlie) Maxwell, Senior Energy Analyst at Weeden & Co., thinks $300 oil is "inevitable."With three or four new Saudi oil fields coming on line soon, Charlie thinks supply and demand are roughly in balance for the next two years. Charlie predicts oil prices between $75 and $115 for awhile. After that, he sees prices soaring again.
Sailor killed as militants seize oil vessel in Nigeria: army
LAGOS (AFP) - Nigerian militants on Sunday killed one sailor and kidnapped another when they hijacked a vessel belonging to the Nigerian unit of Italian oil company Agip, a military spokesman said."The vessel Fulmar Lamnaco was attacked at Sambriero river off Bonny in southern Rivers state," Lieutenant Colonel Musa Sagir told AFP. "One crew member was killed while another was taken hostage."
Ministers agree to extend Arab gas pipeline to Europe
CAIRO (Xinhua) -- Oil ministers in the Arab gas pipeline project have agreed to extend the pipeline to the European market, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported on Sunday.
Whether to drill might be foregone
It makes elemental sense to me to hold some or all of those offshore and ANWR reserves for some future date when our national security, including food supply, is severely at risk. Perhaps a program that would allow us to explore, drill and cap those productive areas for emergency use - and not just an extra trip to Grandma’s house - might be in order. If that were the case, those of you who say "no drilling" would be sorely pressed to win your argument. I’m confident we have the skills to accommodate the caribou.There are several reasons why we can’t retain "capped" oil for strategic purposes. One is that the oil will be sold on the world market.
Most astounding to me is that we have no plan. Though we know oil has "peaked" - T. Boone Pickens and Matthew Simmons say 2005 was the year - or will "peak" soon, there has been no plan on what to do when that occurs. Another is this: Could you possibly believe the oil industry sees billions of barrels of oil lying around at $150 per barrel and doesn’t want it? The game here for both the oil companies and countries for whom 90 percent their GDP is from oil is the same: They know it’s running out, and they want to sell the very last drop at the highest possible price.
Cheney Warns Russia to Reverse Its Course
Mr. Cheney has long been the Bush administration’s most vocal hawk, but his remarks on Saturday, originally intended to reflect broadly on Euro-Atlantic security, amounted to a sweeping indictment of Russia’s actions in recent years and a challenge to its leaders to reverse course. The speech, his aides said, was carefully vetted in Washington and reflected the administration’s deep anger over Russia’s incursion into Georgia a month ago.He called for a continued expansion of the alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine, despite Russian threats, and a diversification of energy supplies, which, he said, Russia has wielded like a weapon to intimidate European nations.
Fuel supply to ease soon, says minister
KATHMANDU: Minister for Commerce and Supplies Rajendra Mahato has said that the government would ease the supply of petroleum products within the next 10 days as there has been a decision to provide Rs3bn to the cash-strapped state-owned oil import monopoly Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) for this.
This is not your father's coal boom.Record high coal prices suggest, and industry analysts and executives confirm, that demand for Appalachian coal is at an all-time high.
Yet that demand hasn't produced companies, jobs and new mines that a 1970s coal boom produced.
Newtown joins heating oil consortium
NEWTOWN, CT -- The town has become a member of the Cooperative Oil Purchasing Consortium because of the significant uncertainty in the fuel oil market, Ronald Bienkowski, the school system's director of business, told the Board of Education on Tuesday night.
High heating costs baffle even suppliers
Laura Borst, the co-owner of Borst Oil Co. on South Thompson Street in Schenectady, said she watches the cable news networks all day, every day, to see which news event will be the next to affect the price of her company’s product.“[Earlier this year] Iran tested missiles, or something, and the price [of crude oil] went up like $11.50 in one day. It’s extremely political,” she said. “One day all of the forecasters will say the price is coming down and two days later they’ll say it’s going to go back up. The same forecasters will say the complete opposite thing.”
Police OK with new fuel policy
The policy takes effect on Oct. 1. Patrol officers are allotted 120 gallons of gas per month, which includes gas needed to patrol and drive the cars home. Patrol sergeants are allotted 65 gallons a month; investigators 75 gallons a month; drug investigators 95 gallons a month; and administrative staff 45 gallons a month. Any department employee who exceeds the specified amount will be required to pay for the cost of the gas it takes to drive the car to and from home each month. No officer will be required to pay for gas used to patrol, according to the policy.
Assessing the Value of Small Wind Turbines
Fascination with wind turbines small enough to mount on a roof is spreading from coast to coast. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York last month proposed dotting the city with them. Small turbines have already appeared at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, atop an office building at Logan International Airport in Boston, and even on a utility pole in the small New Hampshire town of Hampton.These tiny turbines generate so little electricity that some energy experts are not sure the economics will ever make sense.
Vanishing Barns Signal a Changing Iowa
Thce tale of the disappearing barn, a building whose purpose shifted, then faded away, tells a bigger story too, of how farming itself, a staple in this state then and now, has changed markedly since those writers drove through.What had in the 1930s been an ordinary farm here — 80 or 160 acres and a few cows and sheep and chickens — is today far bigger and more specialized to pay for air-conditioned, G.P.S.-equipped combines and tractors, so much fuel and the now-skyrocketing price of farmland.
Arctic Ice Hints at Warming, Specialists Say
Leading ice specialists in Europe and the United States for the first time have agreed that a ring of navigable waters has opened all around the fringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean.
U.S. should stop selling off its needed natural gas
While the cost of natural gas has nearly tripled during the past five years, exports of U.S. natural gas to Canada have risen 155 percent. In fact, 38 percent of all piped U.S. gas goes to Canada. Another 33 percent is pipelined to three Michigan hamlets on rivers across from Ontario. Mexico does not receive quite as much as Canada.Responsibility must lie in NAFTA and free trade. For by shipping our life-preserving gas out of the country during an energy crisis — and endangering the lives of her people during the winter — the United States is treating its own citizens no better than the English served the enslaved Irish.
Global problems obviously require a global response. As the world's most profligate user of energy, and as one of its most technologically gifted nations, the United States should lead the way by developing more efficient vehicles and by expanding carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar power.The John McCain of a few years ago understood this. He sponsored a bill with John Kerry that would have aggressively raised fuel economy standards, and another that would have put a stiff price on carbon emissions to encourage investment in cleaner technologies.
Unfortunately, that John McCain has receded from view. He has dropped his opposition to offshore drilling, pandered shamelessly by urging a gas tax holiday, and missed several crucial votes on bills extending credits for wind and solar power.
Drill: Domestic oil recovery creates domestic jobs
One thing you've got to say about developing more domestic energy sources: the jobs won't be outsourced. It will be American workers drilling in new oil fields and recovering natural gas reserves along the Outer Continental Shelf and on the Alaskan North Slope. American workers will recover the oil shale in Colorado.
MARSHALL ISLANDS: Responding to the Emergency
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has recently experienced unprecedented increases in the costs of imported fuel and staple food items. This high and sustained inflation in energy and food prices has had significant impacts on the economy and people of the RMI. This prompted President Litokwa Tomeing and his Cabinet to officially declare a State of Economic Emergency on July 3, 2008.
High cost of weekly shop to last a decade, warn producers
“We have been through a period of low costs. I don’t think we are going to see those again,” said Alan Lafley, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, whose products include Pampers nappies and Ariel washing powder. “Energy and commodity costs will be higher in the first two decades of the 21st century than in the 1980s or 1990s.”
One of the world's best known economic forecasting and market analysis firms is headed by Dr. Horace "Woody" Brock. He recently spoke at a conference in Sydney, Australia (no, I was not there but wish I had been) and offered the best assessment of the oil market I have heard.He gave three reasons for why the oil market is where it is. The first reason is increasing demand from all over the globe. Even though demand in this country has tapered off, other countries have made up for our weaker appetite for oil. The second reason is about peak oil. I wrote about this some time ago when we were just starting to see peak oil. A few years ago, several of the world's largest oil fields peaked in terms of production, not because of demand but because of supply. Brock cited the oil production in Mexico that is down 30 percent over the past four years as well as declines in other areas of the world such as the North Sea and Russia. The last reason is the most intriguing and controversial.
Novice farmers bloom in gardens
Heinberg believes that modern industrial agriculture — which relies on farm machinery, irrigation, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers — is particularly vulnerable.“We’ve created a form of agriculture that was perfectly suited to the 20 th century with cheap fossil fuel, but I’m afraid it’s going to be a catastrophe in the 21 st century,” he said.
Bangladesh climate victims search for new land
Rough tides linked to rising sea levels have drowned 40 percent of the land on Kutubdia Island over the past half century, according to non-government organisation Coast Trust, which says the situation is getting worse each year.The villagers who have fled the island are what scientists -- including those from the United Nations Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- are calling Bangladesh's first climate refugees.
Gulf oil production poised to increase by 10 million barrels a day
Dubai: A massive $300 billion investment in boosting oil production is underway which could see the Arabian Gulf deliver a staggering 10 million barrels of crude a day in added capacity by 2015 more than half from Saudi Arabia alone according to project research firm Proleads."Recent analysis of total global oil production and development projects indicate that world crude production capacity from all sources has the potential to rise from 87 million barrels per day to as much as 108 million by 2015," said Emil Rademeyer, director of Proleads.
"Our analysis shows that if all current projects across the region meet their projected targets in barrels of oil a day, it would mean that by 2015 the hydrocarbon rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be supplying more than half that future added oil capacity," said Emil Rademeyer, director of Proleads.
Drill now, pay later: The drive to tap oil reserves in Alaska and offshore overlooks our long-term need for petroleum
Upon recent discoveries of oil in the kingdom, King Abdullah ordered that those new finds be left untapped to preserve the nation's oil wealth for future generations. "When there were new finds, I told them, 'No, leave it in the ground, with grace from God, our children need it,'" the king said.Behind the king's statement lies a plain truth: The Saudis prefer to sit on their oil, while we are rushing to deplete ours. The Saudi reserve-to-production ratio - an indicator of how long proven reserves would last at current production rates - is 70 years; Iran's is 82; the United Arab Emirates' is 90; and Venezuela's is 91. Iraq and Kuwait are at more than 100. How long does the U.S. have left? Eleven years.
There are at least two invisible things that tend to be ferociously difficult to understand. One is relations among humans and the other is energy. Especially when the former want more of the latter. And for some reason, understandable perhaps but also unfortunate, we are mostly loathe to try to comprehend where our energy comes from. Thus there is a kind of 'energy secret': we cannot see energy and we don't seem to be very good at understanding it, even though without it there is no life here or anywhere else in the universe.
Iran wants OPEC output cut to target quotas
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran said on Sunday that OPEC members should cut output to the agreed target quotas in the face of falling oil prices, two days before the cartel meets in Vienna, state-run IRNA news agency reported."The market does not need more oil and there is no need for excess production given the fall of oil prices," Iran's envoy to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Mohammad Ali Khatibi told IRNA.
"Members should return to the agreed quota and respect it. If a member does not want to go back to the OPEC quota they should have a reason," he added.
OPEC struggles with falling oil prices
LONDON - The question facing the OPEC oil producer group which meets this week is when, not if, to cut its oil production target as crude prices slide in the face of weakening economic growth, analysts say.
Gulf Arab States to Urge OPEC Not to Cut Oil Output
(Bloomberg) -- OPEC's Gulf-Arab members, which pump half of the group's oil, are likely to urge their colleagues to leave output unchanged when they meet this week as prices above $100 a barrel squeeze the global economy.
Saudi crude price hikes may offer Opec production hints
The latest term crude prices suggest Aramco may be starting to price in a period of lower output, even if Opec next week doesn't formally sign off on a production cut.
Mexico: Running Out of Oil and Options
As equities commence the dramatic autumn slump I've been anticipating in recent weeks, it is uninspiring to witness the standard of political debate in the US Presidential election. It seems that neither candidate is aware of, or at least willing to articulate, the tectonic shifts taking place in global financial power which threaten to severely limit the room for maneuver of the incoming administration. Roosevelt said America should talk quietly to the world but carry a big stick; now a big begging bowl is more appropriate. We hear references to Iran and Russia as geopolitical challenges, but nobody is talking yet about a bigger threat right on America's doorstep: the potential implosion of the Mexican state.
Putin predicts West won't cool ties with Russia
MOSCOW: Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin predicts there won't be any cooling of ties with the West because the West needs Russian oil, gas and minerals.
Don't Believe Industry Scam on Drilling Arctic Refuge
Unfortunately, patently false claims by the oil and gas industry continue to find traction in news stories across the nation. One of the biggest myths that industry would like the media and the public to believe is that drilling the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will require only 2,000 acres.
Bush likely to scrap nuclear deal with Russia
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is likely to scrap a civilian nuclear pact with Russia soon as punishment for its war against Georgia last month, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
Greenpeace proposes giant North Sea windfarm grid
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - North Sea nations could link their offshore windfarms via a giant electricity grid on the sea bed and bring huge benefits for Europe, according to a Greenpeace report gaining interest from the European Commission.The environment group said on Wednesday the grid would build on existing infrastructure to link tens of thousands of turbines located offshore, helping to smooth out power fluctuations caused by turbulent weather around the stormy North Sea.
Demand for solar panels exceeds supply
The sun may set early on anyone trying to take advantage of expiring solar-energy tax credits this year.Many solar manufacturers and installers say they can't take on more jobs for 2008 because they're either out of panels or out of time.
Chrysler showing off plug-in hybrids to dealers
NEW YORK - Chrysler LLC has been demonstrating plug-in hybrid prototypes to some dealers that are further developed than those previously shown by the automaker, the company's president said.In comments Tuesday at the Motor Press Guild in Los Angeles, Chrysler Vice Chairman and President Jim Press said the vehicles are being developed by Chrysler's Envi unit, which the automaker created last year to create electric vehicles and other advanced propulsion technologies.
Biofuels War: The New Scramble for Africa by Western Big Money Profiteers
Biofuels war has broken out in Africa. Newspaper headlines have not proclaimed it but the gist of it is already out. Big money profiteers from Europe and United States are rushing to Africa in a new scramble for the continent, transforming large swathes of arable land into massive biofuels plantations.Local but poor populations in many parts of Africa are increasingly being driven deeper into economic obscurity yet 60% of them still depend on agriculture for survival. Another 60% of that eke out a living by subsistence farming and animal husbandry.
Eat less meat to fight climate change: UN expert
LONDON (AFP) - People should cut their consumption of meat to help combat climate change, a top United Nations expert told a British Sunday newspaper.Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told The Observer that people should start by having one meat-free day per week then cut back further.
Is our taste for Sunday roast killing the planet?
Your Sunday roast stands accused. According to the United Nation's chief climate expert, Rajendra Pachauri, that tasty piece of top rump resting on your dining table is the source of many of the world's environmental woes, in particular those involved in the dangerous warming of the planet's climate.Our appetite for animal flesh is boosting fertiliser production, pollution and emission of greenhouse gases to dangerous levels, Pachauri has told The Observer. Give up meat - at least for one day a week - and we can help to save the Earth, he added.
Demand seen thin in first U.S. greenhouse auction
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Northeast power companies likely will not race to buy permits to emit the main greenhouse gas in the country's first carbon auction later this month because the region's emissions of the gas have slipped over the last few years, experts said.
Research suggests refinery emissions higher than estimates
EDMONTON - A recently published report suggests that Canadian refineries are underestimating emissions of greenhouse gases and cancer-causing chemicals.The study, which used a new method to track so-called "fugitive emissions" from pieces of equipment at an unidentified Alberta refinery, finds such releases of gases such as benzene are up to 18 times higher than previously thought.
EPA tightens lawn mower, motor boat emission rules
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Exhaust-spewing lawn mowers and speed boats will get a green make-over under tough new rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designed to reduce smog and save millions of gallons of gasoline.Gas-powered engines in lawn and garden equipment will be required to cut smog-forming emissions by 35 percent, while engines in personal watercraft will have to cut smog-forming emissions by 70 percent and reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 20 percent.
Speculators and water an uneasy mix
CANBERRA (Reuters) - On the cracked grey clay of an ancient lake bed on the edge of Australia's outback, Guy Kingwill is at the frontier of a global rush to commercialize water.Despite a long-running drought, Kingwill, who runs the vast Tandou farm, 142km southeast of the mining town of Broken Hill, has just sold his property's critical water on a national market rather than pump it into irrigated cereal crops.
"The return on the water is higher," Kingwill told Reuters. "Where we are it's broadacre cropping. But the market now is driving significantly more per megaliter from horticulture than you can get a profit margin out of wheat and barley," he says.
Across the world, speculators are increasingly looking to water as a new profit engine as supplies dwindle, caught between booming populations demanding more access and climate warming threatening its very availability.
The Montreal Protocol rescued the ozone layer, but also prevented drastic regional climate changes.
Global warming greatest in past decade
Researchers confirm that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1300 years, and, if the climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous for at least 1700 years."Some have argued that tree-ring data is unacceptable for this type of study," says Michael Mann, associate professor of meteorology and geosciences and director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center. "Now we can eliminate tree rings and still have enough data from other so-called 'proxies' to derive a long-term Northern Hemisphere temperature record."
That Arabian Gulf story about 10 mmbpd in new capacity says nothing about costs....
And they seem to be using the special Saudi reserve assumptions, i.e., you can produce billions of barrels per year, with no reduction in proven reserves. If we just look at crude oil production, in just three years Saudi Arabia will have produced about 10 Gb of oil, which is roughly two East Texas Fields, the largest oil field in the Lower 48, which took decades to fully deplete.
If we use ExxonMobil's upper end estimate of a 6% per year decline rate from existing wellbores (which is below some estimates), the world would need about 50 mbpd of new total liquids production in 2015 that we didn't have in 2005--just to maintain flat production.
I don't suppose we have any way to know if that article's info includes decline, eh? Using the assumptions of 6% decline, as you state, 86mmb/d for '08 and only 1% increase in demand per year we would need 40,000,000mb/d by 2015. Using 2005, I also get 50mb/d needed.
It's critical to know if the writer and the study are including decline or not. If they are claiming those numbers with decline included, someone is lying through their teeth, or they are going to go all out then we'll have a massive crash in production.
Cheers
Well, I don't know if it's any good, but adding up the upcoming production from the Gulf states mentioned in the megaprojects list would result in about 8.5 mbd new production coming online in the years 2008-2014. Assuming in good faith that the list has a minimum of completeness regarding major projects (and that my calculation isn't wrong) I think it seems not very likely that the proclaimed increase is decline-adjusted. But then, what do I know?
You probably know more about forecasting future oil production than Proleads does (but they know that marketing and promotion is the bottom line).
Will reports like this stifle any lingering speculative tendancies in the market and cause per barrel prices to drop to less than $100? If so, for how long? That is, would per-barrel prices remain low enough, long enough to create a resurgence in high-consumption levels? I don't know about the rest of the world, but Americans are quick to jump on any opportunity to over-consume, and lower per-barrel prices would give them just such an opportunity. That would increase depletion rates...so what then? How often can such a cycle be repeated? I think a lot of us thought the price events that occured earlier this year were the beginning of the end. Now they appear to be merely the end of the beginning.
BTW, some more Texas & Saudi comparisons.
If Texas had maintained its 1972 production rate (3.45 mbpd) for three years, we would have produced 3.78 Gb. We actually produced 3.67 Gb, a 3% decline in cumulative production, relative to the 1972 peak rate. Based on HL, Texas produced about 14% of remaining URR (crude oil) in the three years after 1972.
If Saudi Araba had maintained its 2005 production rate (9.6 mbpd) for three years, they would have produced 10.5 Gb. I estimate that they will have produced about 10.0 Gb, a 4.8% decline in cumulative production, relative to the 2005 peak rate. Based on HL, I estimate that Saudi Arabia will have produced about 13% of remaining URR (crude oil) in the three years after 2005.
There is no debate, that conventional crude production in the following countries/regions is in decline:
- Canada
- US lower 48
- Alaska (from 1.4 Mio. to 400'000 barrels)
- Mexico
- Venezuela
- North Sea
- Russia
- Indonesia
- Australia
- Vietnam
- Oman !
NOT in decline, yet increasing production comes mainly from the Arabian gulf:
- SA
- Iran
- Irak (no surprise)
- UAE
- Kuwait
plus
- Lybia
- Angola (no surprise since they started pumping only 10 years ago)
- Caspian Sea region
Where is the reason, that only the Arabian gulf nations are able to ramp up production whereas the rest of the producing nations (except Caspian Sea region + north Africa) are in terminal decline?
Is it a question of reliable data, which is not available from the Arab nations or what? Are they sitting on abiotic oil?
That looks like one of the hundreds of propaganda pieces coming out of the financial media -- long on assertions, absent of facts. Worthy of disregard.
No, no, no, you missed the good news, there will be ~108 mbpd in 2015!
In order to consume that much more oil the price will have to come way down from the supply/demand balance point we have today at ~$110.
So much for the oil company windfall profits. /sarconol.
We will have a Hurricane Ike thread up shortly with Chuck Watson (from KAC/UCF)' initial estimates and forecast up shortly. Please try and put hurricane related resources and comments in that thread.
A prime example of preventive maintenance.
Excellent. A prime example of the opposite:
Here we go:
Then, last week, advisers from Morgan Stanley hired by the Treasury Department to scrutinize the companies came to a troubling conclusion: Freddie Mac’s capital position was worse than initially imagined, according to people briefed on those findings. The company had made decisions that, while not necessarily in violation of accounting rules, had the effect of overstating the companies’s capital resources and financial stability.
Indeed, one person briefed on the company’s finances said Freddie Mac had made accounting decisions that pushed losses into the future and postponed a capital shortfall until the fourth quarter of this year, which would not need to be disclosed until early 2009. Fannie Mae has used similar methods, but to a lesser degree, according to other people who have been briefed.
You got that?
Fannie and Freddie both said they had "more capital than any other time" and they were "well-capitalized" - this is from their CEOs - as recently as a month ago.
They lied."
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
That's a real whodathunkit!
I will not, however, be holding my breath for $2 gas.
We could get $2 of gas but it would come in a package with 20% unemployment. No, thanks.
And yet the MSM reports "No laws were broken".."This was all legal". I happen to know (GAAP) Generally Accepted Accounting Practices....You couldnt run a popcycle stand in this manner without arrest. Notice the MSM didnt say "All suspects are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law"???
N000OOOooo....they declared them innocent pretrail because there aint gonna be one! Talk about pre-emptive. hahahaha
Regarding article (Bush likely to scrap nuclear deal with Russia)
Likely Russia will scrap deal with America to continue
purchasing Fannie & Freddie mortgage debt notes.
I believe Russia is second only to China in this area.
Also news reports this morning say, "It will likely cost American tax payers collectively billions of dollars." This is true only in so much as a single trillion contains 1000 billions.
If I told you it would cost thousands of dollars for a
home and you found at closing the house cost 2 million
dollars, you wouldnt be amused when I explained I wasnt deceptive...as "$2 million is just 2000 one thousand dollar bills",or in essence, thousands of
dollars.
This ruse will absolutely work as only a very small fraction of Americans realise that there are 1000 billion in a single trillion. The rest of the world isnt so mathematically challenged and thats why American tax payers will shoulder this burden. The rest of the world isnt buying BS.
Is it true that in Europe and England, a "trillion" is a billion billions? 10^12?
That was the traditional understanding of "trillion" in England, but nowadays it is understood to be 1,000 million. Not sure about the rest of Europe.
Anyway, now that we've moved to your "trillion", when are you going to graduate to the metric system ?
As soon as you start serving your beer cold.
What you call beer, we call lager. And it is always served cold.
Hey! We drink real beers now, yummy bitters, ales and porters(all delightfully cold). Only hoi polloi drink Bud and Coors...yuck.
Ales, bitters, porters and dunkels (dark lagers) served cold are entirely tasteless. You could as well drink Bud. Or serve ice cold red wine. "Ice cold" or less than 6 degrees Celsius is too cold even for most quality lagers, 6-8 degrees Celsius is about right for them. This of course is not a matter of taste rather than a matter of tastelessness: if you like your beer to have almost no taste, by all means serve it ice cold...
Of course, this being an energy site: do you really think there will be enough energy to cool beer 20 or 30 years down the line? Better adjust your tastes to tasty beer now. If you want tasteless, you can always drink water.
Piffle and rubbish.
I said cold; you said "ice cold". 45-48F is fine. Fifty-five may be cricket, but it is too warm for good beer; might make swill taste better.
As to the future of refrigeration? I live in the frozen north...we harvest ice all winter and drink(appropriately) cold beer all summer. Icehouse; two thousand year old technology, coming to a town near you soon.
We in Washington also grow the best hops in the world and world-class barley, and we are not too over-populated. The future will do it our way.
What is the point of drinking a bitter or porter cold?
The whole reason for drinking lagers cold is so you can't taste them. But a bitter is determined by its taste, if its cold you're missing out on the whole point of a beer that tastes of something.
It sounds as though you haven't tried a proper lager - they make fine ones, in, for instance, Budejovice!
I make 10^12 a thousand billion, which I think is a trillion. It is true the UK used to use a long scale system and a billion was 10^12 and a trillion was 10^18. It caused a lot of confusion, and still does with older references as the US and UK practices were both in use, it confused me when I was at school. UK government has used US short scale system since the seventies, apparently. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Also likely Russia to drop the Megatons to Megawatts program.
One-tenth of America’s electricity comes from fuel made from Russian nuclear warheads.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20080906002052zzzz.nb/topstory.html
What would happen if Congress just stopped trying to influence Arctic hydrocarbon production, and in effect said "go for it, guys."?
What is the likelihood anything at all would happen in the short run -- given credit constraints, uncertainty of markets and difficulty of working in that environment -- let alone, difficulty of getting any product to market?
Shouldn't Congress be more concerned about fixing infrastructure, increasing energy efficiency, and improving Amtrak if they really want to preserve the "environment" -- if that is really what they are concerned about in all that blather?
I am discouraged by the fact that the press, taken as a whole (an unfair, unjustified lumping of non-similars) seems to be so resistant to applying critical reason to complex problems -- it's not like there aren't a lot of smart people in the American media. What keeps everyone so dumbed down? What is the secret to unlocking the human potential?
Those who write do not own.
Cheers
The underlying reasons for promoting this are probably complex. Oil companies want to increase the size of their reserves. Probably gives them some financial benefit. There probably would not be a rush to drill quickly as there are constraints on drilling equipment, among other things. Possibly they are worried about future administrations not giving them as favorable terms on leases as the current administration or a John McCain administration would. Who knows what else.
The Mexican situation should be scaring the hell out of the rest of North America. Maybe the coming chaos in Mexico will finally wake up the masses here. The Mexican situation may take a few more years to develop but they will collapse sooner if the world economy goes. I think our government (Canada) realized that the economy is about to go bad in a big way and has just called a federal election hoping that the vote takes place before the real trouble starts. In this they are following the hopes of the Bush people. So far today all the leaders are pretending that their policies will be implemented in a world of business as usual. To borrow from Kunstler, the winners in Canada may simply be getting the biggest boobie prize in our history. I think that tthis will be the last "normal" elections that both the USA and Canada will see.
And the SPPA continues. MexAmerica isn't considered to be a problem for the elite.
If we want to cripple the criminal element of the narco-state, then we must de-criminalize drugs.
It scares the hell out of me. For some time now I've been thinking that after 2010 we'll see a surge of illegal immigrants like we've never seen before. However you feel about that you have to admit that will be hugely disruptive.
I'm not an expert on Mexico, but when you see that their oil exports will fall to zero within two or three years and it is reported that the Mexican government relies on oil exports for a third of its income you have to believe that something extraordinary is about to happen and it won't be pretty.