US sends the wrong messages to Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ25Ak01.html

   -Larry

As far as the oil supply is concerned, the world bubbles over with optimism.

During the day I usually keep the TV on CNBC. Listening, day after day, to the analysts and commentators, optimism absolutely abounds where the oil supply is concerned. No one believes the OPEC cuts will make one whit of difference. As the talking heads come and go, they all have the very same message: "There is plenty of supply out there." Don't worry, be happy, all is well in the oil patch.  

I have heard not a single comment about what effect high prices are having on world consumption. No one mentions the fact that average oil production in 2006 averages about 119 million barrels per day below 2005 production for both crude + condensate as well as all liquids.

All this wild optimism leaves me puzzled. It seems to be like a meme, a contagious idea that has infected the mind of almost everyone in the investment world. And I keep wondering; how long before this meme leads them to disaster.

Ron Patterson

I have an absoutely beautiful and pristine view of the mountains from my house. No one has yet proposed putting wind towers on our ridges around here but if they did I could hardly oppose them when I consider the alternative of more coal fired plants.

And what's the view like of those destroyed mountains and valley and streams in West Virginia.

Again a year-to-year decrease for Vehicle Miles Travelled this month -- the fifth straight month there has been a decrease -- something that has not happened since 1979!  Only Jan and March have been increases over the corresponding months in 2005.

From Jan 1981 through Dec 2004 there have been only 14 months of decreases in Vehicle Miles Travelled (and none from March 1982 through Dec 1990 -- I guess the "easy motoring 80s").  Now for 2005 there have been 7 negative months and 2006 (through Aug) 6 negative months.

I realize these are small decreases so far and probably represent "discretionary" driving.  But I do want to look at these figures some more (as well as re-read the discussion here last fall on VMT) and try to see how much VMT is correlated to actual gas prices, GDP, etc.

"A Utility Deal With a Few Big Winners. - Four big investment firms bought a group of Texas power plants in 2004 for $900 million and sold them the next year for $5.8 billion."

Lots of profit taking by allowing power plants to be sold at often greatly undervalued prices and moved into unregulated subsidiaries and then shuffled back into the regulated arena to regain profitability with consumers eating any losses.

If the analysis of Ruppert and FTW is correct on the consequences of deregulation and the repeal of the Depression-era Public Utility Holding Company Act last year, then we all better brace ourselves because the combination of greed, concentration of ownership, a decrepit grid system and increasing scarcity will leave many users out in the cold - literally.

Thanks to Leanan for the link to this important article that so clearly explains the power plant shell game being played on unsuspecting utility customers.  What a rip-off!  I felt like someone was rifling through my pockets as I was read the article.  As my father used to say, "they get you coming and going".

Hoowah!  Monbiot's got me steaming, slaughtering my sacred cow like that!  Actually the cow's fine, just a little bruised and embarrassed, and George will notice something smelly under his boot later on..

He rests on that common chestnut of "Wind can't possibly supply ALL our power.."  "SOLAR could never replace ALL our power" .. and then coming out with those erudite dismissals like 'Staggeringly expensive'..  the boob..

1. Self-generation surely may not supply ALL the power we currently use, but that volume clearly has to and can be reduced, leastways in England and the US, in which case, the percentages provided by the alternatives would strengthen.  Reduce, Reuse, Bicycle!

2. A combination of Wind and SolarElectric and a net-metered GridTie can cut well into your energybill, and increase your home's value, to boot.  Add Solar Heat, Solar Fridge, WinterFridge, Methane Digester, Greenhouse, etc  AND a potential workforce consisting of everyone who lives in a home and pays unsympathetic energy bills, and you have the motive and opportunity to cut down on all manner of centralized energy dependence.  The 'means' is where we need to help each other and get more of this moving.

  Reading about the Pakistani Gas Line disruptions had me considering what a terrorist strike on the US Grid would do to us, how hard would it be to do it, how hard to recover from it?  This is one of the reasons I'm glad I own a few panels already, and am working towards having some access to heat and electric in case the supply lines were all of the sudden cut off.  (And hence, my disappointment at Monbiot's dismissal of self-generation.  During a blackout, even a few watts could be precious and even lifesaving.. keeping radios, phones, some lights charged..  but if it all comes from "Massive Offshore Installations".. not much to do but sit and wait for help.. pretty lame)

   I know I shouldn't be giving 'them' any ideas about how to hurt us..  I mean attacking the grid is almost as unthinkable as 9/11 was, (only it wasn't, eh?)  So I'm sure there's already a blueprint for that scenario on their laptop.. is there a reaction plan on any of ours?

Bob Fiske

As currently referenced in Energy Bulletin, and noted here before, Jared Diamond seems to be taking it on the chin for his arguments that Easter Island suffered an ecological collapse. Even USA Today has mentioned the debate:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-12-05-easter-island_x.htm

Barry Peise has links to several articles and a PDF of his own article:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/CCNet-10-03-06.htm

There seem to be two main challenges, first that the island was settled much later than Diamond's source claimed, and second that the oral traditions of the Rapa Nui are unreliable if not outright invented by Europeans. Furthermore, Barry Peise claims that Diamond's work shows confirmation bias.

I wonder if Diamond is being attacked for being wrong, for being successful, or for being opinionated. In A Short History of Progress, although Ronald Wright spends more time on the damage caused by rats eating palm seeds and saplings, he otherwise tells almost the same story as Collapse. Diamond's much more popular books seem to have drawn all the attacks.

I haven't heard of any response from Diamond, or Wright, as yet.

Lynn Romanek has launched a grass-roots environmental campaign she hopes will be a real turnoff: less idling in automobiles.

The longtime Glencoe resident has posted signs at schools, temples and businesses asking drivers to shut down their engines while waiting in an effort to curb emissions implicated in global warming.

A Nevada developer wants to take massive amounts of arid NW Arizona's groundwater, and to hopefully sweeten the deal, wants to pump some arsenic tainted water back into the Arizona acquifer.  From this AzCentral link.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

To get a solid glimpse of our postPeak global future: may I suggest Haiti?
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With an area comparable to the state of Maryland and a population (at about 8.5 million) roughly the size of New York City's, Haiti is closer to Florida--just an hour and a half from Miami by jet--than is Washington, D.C. But in a very real sense, the distance between the United States and Haiti is almost unimaginable.

Clinging to Life

By the yardstick of income, Haiti is by far the poorest spot in the Western Hemisphere, and in fact one of the poorest places on the planet. State Department and CIA guesses put the country's per-capita income at about $550 a year, or about a dollar and a half per day--but these formal, exchange-rate based estimates are highly misleading, if not meaningless. (Could anyone in the United States today survive for a year consuming no more than $1.50 worth of goods and services a day?) A better sense of Haiti's plight comes from comparisons of purchasing power. Perhaps the most authoritative global estimates of this sort have been done by eminent economic historian Angus Maddison. At the start of this decade, according to Maddison, Haiti's per-capita output was thirty-five times lower than that of the United States. To get a sense of what this means, think how things would go for your family if you had to get by for the entire year on just ten days of your current earnings [bolding by Bob S. for emphasis --ELP anyone?]

Haiti looks impoverished even when compared to other impoverished countries. By Maddison's reckoning, per-capita purchasing power in Haiti is one-third that of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. There is no country in the Middle East or Asia with an income level as low as Haiti's--not even Bangladesh. And although sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of desperate poverty in the modern world, a majority of sub-Saharan countries enjoy per-capita income levels that are higher than Haiti's.
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Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Easter Island foreclosing on a viable future by building stone statues was bad enough.  Haiti as Easter Island so close to Florida will be a modern day example for us to study.  

Another island nation, Madagascar, is culturally focused on it's past, instead of wisely planning for its future.  This link states that due to global warming 99% of it's coral reefs are dying.  But digging up the dead for parades and parties seems to be widely practiced
instead of a thoughtful plan for the future:

Excerpts:
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Madagascar, an island nation half again the size of California, has long had an uneasy relationship with Christianity. During the 19th century, Queen Ranavalona I suspected that missionaries were colonial agents, so she ordered her soldiers to push Christian converts off a cliff, which they did.

Today, 52% of Malagasy practice indigenous religions, while 41% are Christians, according to the CIA World Factbook. The reality, however, is far more complicated. Many families include both Christians and animists. And many individuals blend Christianity with a belief that the ancestors can intercede with the Creator to bless the living with wealth, health and happiness or, if mistreated, curse them with unemployment, disease and misery.

The melting pot often comes to a boil over the turning of the dead, or famadihana, as the ceremony is called in Malagasy. Although the Malagasy are an ethnic blend of Malaysians, Indonesians, Africans and Arabs, the origin of the famadihana itself is a mystery. Elie Rajaonarison, an anthropologist at the University of Antananarivo, says that the ceremony survives in part because it reinforces social order. People lead good lives so that they, too, will be honored as ancestors some day.

Generally, the exhumations are held in the dry season every five or seven years, after a family member has a dream in which a dead relative complains that he is cold in the tomb.

Exhumation ceremonies can be very expensive in a country where the average person earns roughly $900 a year. The new shrouds range from about $3.50 for a synthetic fabric to $110 for a fine shroud of light-brown raw silk. Buying a cheap one raises the specter of offending the ancestors, and the living.

Unlike Mr. Rabeatoandro's divided family, Georges Rakotomalala and his siblings agreed on the need to rewrap the ancestors entombed in Sahomby, a village of perhaps 100 residents overlooking rice paddies and eucalyptus groves 40 miles from Antananarivo. The problem was money. It took Mr. Rakotomalala, a 52-year-old butcher, 18 years to raise enough money to be able to exhume his ancestors in style.
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Just imagine if he had spent that money on solar panels, or a well.  As their ecosystem collapses and 'curses' them with unemployment, disease and misery--expect a deluded cultural frenzy of parading the dead until even the living won't have the strength to dig their own graves.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

WTI CRUDE FUTURE ($/barrel) 59.440

Frozen in Memories, but Melting Before Their Eyes

An 1870 postcard view of the Rhone glacier in Gletsch, Switzerland, contrasted dramatically with the shrinking 21st-century version of it.

To hear the locals tell it, you would think they were referring to a loved family member declining in old age.

Experts say the Rhone glacier may melt completely in this century.
"It hurts, it hurts," Philipp Carlen said of his feeling toward the vast Rhone glacier, which once came to the edge of his hotel, but now has receded several hundred yards. The glacier, whose soft contours and dirty gray surface make it resemble some huge sea creature, a whale perhaps, is rapidly shrinking, in the mild autumn weather, by 12 to 15 feet a day.

Eight thousand years ago, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier was the largest in Europe, with arms that reached all the way to Lyon, in France. Indeed, it remains the source of the Rhone River, which flows westward into France and from there into the Mediterranean. Now, however, it is only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland, and experts foresee the day, probably in this century, when the glacier, all six miles of it, will melt away to nothing.