DrumBeat: November 26, 2006
Posted by threadbot on November 26, 2006 - 9:31am
Topic: Miscellaneous
The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials....To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”
AP analysis: Firms crimping oil supplies
Why would Shell Oil Co. simply close its Bakersfield refinery? Why scrap a profit maker?The rumor seemed to make no sense. Yet it was true.
Whatever the truth in Bakersfield, an Associated Press analysis suggests that big oil companies have been crimping supplies in subtler ways across the country for years. And tighter supplies tend to drive up prices.
High court to hear global warming case
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming.
US "will miss" window to tackle climate change
US senator Jeff Bingaman has warned that the US will not be able to take sufficient action to curb its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the timeframe scientists say is necessary.
Ben Bova: Intrigue over hydrogen as auto fuel? It’s not the science fiction you may think
Nissan plans to sell electric cars in 3 yrs: Nikkei
TOKYO - Nissan Motor Co. plans to develop and start selling subcompact electric cars powered by self-developed lithium-ion batteries in about three years, the Nihon Keizai (Nikkei) business daily reported on Sunday.
Most of those advocating the new energy technologies are not suggesting any reduction in overall energy consumption.
Utilities try PR blitz as lawmakers consider keeping electric rate freeze in place
SPRINGFIELD, ILL. — Just when Illinoisans thought they had seen the last of those menacing campaign commercials, along comes the most ominous televised message yet: Support us … or your lights might go out.
Scenes From a New Mall: Urban Shopping In Suburbia
The ersatz urbanity does leave some aghast. "Lifestyle centers are corporate attempts to mitigate the fact that we've turned our nation into a parking lot filled with places that are not worth living in or caring about," says author Jim Kunstler, who decries suburbia in his book, "The Geography of Nowhere."
Admiral Rickover: The future of fossil fuels
A friend of mine in Pennsylvania sent me a care package yesterday (from the era when newspapers still considered Americans literate), and in it he put a copy of an article he stumbled upon in a 1957 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. Amazing stuff below:
Power Companies Order Up Texas Toast
Texas is already the number one CO2 polluter in the United States, which is the number one CO2 polluter in the world. If Texas were a separate country, it would rank as the world's tenth largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Wind power can't match coal potential
Americans need economical, dependable electricity - and plenty of it. For the time being, that means coal.
Accord on coalfield survey signed
KARACHI: China Machinery Import Export Corporation (CMC) on Saturday signed an agreement with Sindh Government to carry out a comprehensive geological survey of Sonda-Jherruk coalfield, renewing hopes for a long-awaited breakthrough in coal-based power generation.
How to Prepare for Peak Oil and Climate Change
Corn supply must grow, some say
Scientists warn higher yields will be vital to balance needs of food, ethanol industries
Choose food or fuel? No, we can produce both
Report: Coal-power ethanol plant emissions 92% higher than with gas
“Most ethanol plants use a lot of water,” [City Councilman Robert] Fiala said, “and our wells have gone down about 14 feet in the last 10 years, I think.”Raising more corn in the area will take more water and more agricultural chemicals, said the retired Concordia University professor. “I guess I personally think we should put a lot more money into raising our mileage possibilities for cars and trucks.”
Japan: Don't use biofuels to power farm industry
The main purpose of promoting biofuels for vehicles is to help prevent global warming, rather than shoring up the nation's agricultural industry. Unfortunately, this fact seems to have slipped the minds of some government officials.
Indigenous Amazonian people score rare victory against oil company
By taking drastic action, the Achuar people of the Amazon have forced an oil company to finally start cutting back on pollution
Opec to cut output if market unbalanced: Saudi oil minister
World oil database seeks better producer reporting
RIYADH - Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela are among major oil producers that have yet to fully comply with global oil database JODI, set up to increase transparency in energy markets, its coordinator said yesterday.
In Moscow, Putin warned China and the United States that he was drawing on Russia's new oil and gas wealth to expand and improve its nuclear-war capabilities. He announced that in 2007 alone he would be spending $ 11.2 billion on new weapons, including 17 new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. He added that between now and 2015 he would be spending $ 188 billion on new weapons.
EU official urges caution on Russia-Algeria gas deal
ORAN, Algeria - The European Union should be "on guard" about Gazprom's cooperation deal with Algeria's Sonatrach because it cannot take security of supply for granted, Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said on Sunday.
India, China to form joint venture to acquire oil assets
Energy-hungry India and China, often fierce rivals in the race for global oil and gas supplies, have agreed to form a joint venture company for acquisition of hydrocarbon assets in Africa and Latin America.
Fire-hit Kuwait oil refinery back to full capacity
A Kuwaiti oil refinery shut down by a fire three weeks ago has resumed operations at its full capacity of 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), officials said.
Algeria considers windfall tax on foreign oil firms
A tax on windfall foreign oil company profits could earn Algeria $1 billion in 2007, a move that is both fair and politically necessary in view of high prices, the country told energy multinationals.
As i said, they start getting worried! It's not going to ease.. And Switzerland imports absolutely ALL of its oil/gas..
In 1945 Switzerland used only 27,000 tonnes of oil.
Today, more homes have been away from tram lines, people are less interested in bicycling and more freight moves by truck (that will change with rail improvements). Still many in Switzerland could move to electrical transportation.
Do you have data on how homes are heated ? What % gas, oil, geothermal, simple electrical resistance ? Is there a move to geothermal heat pumps ?
Is Switzerland likely to build a new nuclear reactor anytime soon ? And is the Grande dix hydro project likely to be fixed ?
Thanks very much for the earlier information & links :-)
Best Hopes,
Alan
Switzerland, in 1945, was not that rich country that we know. My grand-grand father, were farmer and they did not take one day of holiday in his entire life... So we might not use a lot of fuel, but that's because we were very poor!!
Now, back to statistics. The last official Federal statistics goes back to 2000, so it's not accurate.
But i've this, in french sry, that says:
56% of new family houses are equipped with heat pumps (geothermal if u want), in 2003 it was only 40%.
THe heating oil is only 12%.
For new buildings, 25% (!) come with heating pumps.
I could give u the overall numbers from 2000 but i don't think it reflects the real change that is in progress.
I must notice that there is more and more solar roof installations, as the price of diesel goes up..
Manmax
The buildings heated with heating oil are around 20%, and so is the share of the heating oil in the family houses, so the NG must be something like 80% overall.
I don't thing that we will build a new nuclear reactor, because the authorities need a popular vote for that, and that is not (yet) won. But let come shortage and ya'll see if they really think about the consequences.
I always say, to my dad too: if u are for nuclear power, put u down on a list, that shows which people will have to do the concrete sarcophagus on the blasted reactor.
The army here is a militia, i don't want the young 20-years-old men to die miserabily, in the old soviet fashion....
And what is exactly with the Grande Dixence? I thought it works perfectly?
From 1993 to 1998 a high-pressure pipeline was built to considerably increase its peak capacity. It transported water 1,800 metres down to an additional power facility. The pipeline was welded using a new type of steel; it is out of service since it burst in December 2000, with the flood wave killing three people. Work on a replacement pipeline has recently started, with use of a more common steel and additional safety measures.
Thanks,
Alan
BTW, what Canton are you in ? I know some engineers in Vaud.
I'm from Geneva, just 60 kms near Lausanne, capital of canton Vaud.
OK, i seen that you have just taken the small description of Wikipedia!!
here, they say, operational again in 2010.
I live in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans, part of the 20% not flooded in Katrina, although the block accross the street burned completely during the storm.
I you ever decide to visit, please let me know.
Best Wishes,
Alan
I've never been in the US, and i want to do a trip there (to see La Nouvelle Orléans naturally, but especially to visit colorado, the State where Otis Taylor, a blues musician, lives) but i'm really afraid that it will only be possible by ship, like in the early 20th century (remember TItanic?) !!
Alan
PS: with Swiss francs it is not so expensive :-)
I would be glad to help make arrangements :-)
Alan
But there's always this little problem of GW, nothing is simple now..
The problem is that velfare in the US, Europe and Japan has gradually been turned into a giant Ponzi scheme where young people are expected to foot the bill for older people. In earlier times the money came from taxes but now increasingly comes from taking on more and more debt, that younger people is somehow expected to repay. Add to this mortgages, student loans, credit card debt, raising children, and I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to let old people die off.
Being in my thirties I can't wait for this gigantic fraud to come to an end.
And that is before we take into account unfunded pension liabilities, as you mention. They are not included in the debt numbers.
When this fraud comes to an end...you will not get a pension. Or you will work until you are 75. As simple as that. Because the alternative (i.e. re-distribution of wealth) will require a modern version of storming the Bastille. Today the top 1% of the US population owns 38% of ALL financial assets (bank deposits included). The top 2% owns 55%. Truly "E Pluribus Unum".
When Robert Maxwell started "borrowing" from the company's pension fund to pay for short term expansion, other companies then realised what a "great" idea that would be, and effectively petitioned the UK government to change the rules on pension funds. Some of these rule relaxations included not having to pay into the fund if it was in surplus (meaning that all contributions from the workforce were not being used for their intended purpose). Of course, the stock market changes mean that a fund need not be in surplus all the time, particularly if the company is not expanding the workforce.
The problem now is that the funds have been so pillaged in the last 10-15 years that now, those making contributions are now paying for those retired, rather than paying for their own retirement.
The (slight) rise in life expectancy in the last 10 years is not the real reason for the shortfalls - it is the actions of both this and the previous government.
If the government is running a deficit, and the contributions went into bying their bonds. The result would be the same.
The giant Ponzi scheme might actually work, if there were infinite world resources and the size of the "pie" of available resources kept growing year after year. Then investments might grow rapidly enough to support the pension plans. In the case of government pension plans, the larger resouce pie, when divided among both the retired and those yet to retire, might have enough for all.
If, in fact, we are dealing with finite resources, we know that the size of the resource pie will start to shrink at some time, due to peak oil, peak gas, peak water, depleting soil, etc. With a shrinking pie, it is highly unlikely that investments will continue to grow in real terms- although perhaps with rapid inflation they may give the impression of growth. Government pension plans will be faced with dividing up a smaller pie among the retired and those yet to retire.
With a smaller resource pie, I expect that pension plans will run into problems, even when they now appear to be adequately funded. These problems could include investments plagued by bankruptcies, high inflation so the benefits are worth very little, or possibly complete failure of the monetary system.
Do you suppose Hubbert's Curve qualifieds as a "formula-based model which make predictions bbase on extrapolating past results?" I think it might.
One of my personal suppositions is that as thinking and emoting humans we all have a task of trying to integrate these processes-call it self awareness. I throw the I Ching and also go to church, part of the disciplines I practice to do just that integration. But don't ask me what my beliefs are-I really don't know. Combining Taoism with High Church Episcopal ritual? It sounds nuts, but it keeps me balanced.
The collapse of ever-expanding boomer capitalism because of the physical constraints of the system is a definite possibility. But we change possibilities by our actions-look at the nuclear war scenarios of 30 or 40 years ago. They didn't happen because we changed our behaviour. We can change other bad results by changing our behaviour. And thats the real value of these models, they give us a pause about our behaviour. And that's why I'm a cautious optimist-we have free will and insite to guide us.
I think Hubbert's method is relatively strong on that scale, because of its relative simplicity and low subjectivity.
On the other hand, I think Doomers and Technocrats are relying on weaker induction. They both basically rely on their worldview as the model for future worlds. Such predictions are both complex and subjective.
More likely it is closer to an "Autoregressive distributed lag model."
This also study suggests that the CERA report, today being reviewed on another thread, is likely to have low predictive powers.
I think it likely that the Oil Drum is a collection of "foxes" and since we hammer each other to death . . . excuse me, I meant to say that since we expose each other to such a wide range of opinion and knowledge, that the predictive capacity here is likely to be high.
Cheers!
The CNN story I liked the best concerned Virginia, which had finally got around to changing its various blue laws - Sunday closing rules - a couple of years ago, and since the rules were so riddled with exemptions and special clauses over the years, the Virginia lawmakers actually ended up putting back into force a law that guaranteed workers one day a week free for religious worship, and also (from memory) forbid forcing workers to work 'consecutively' - that is, you couldn't force someone to work a shift from 6pm to midnight, and then have them work midnight to 6am.
After noticing what a disaster this would be for the employers in Virginia (care to imagine which?), which only came to light after the end of the legislative period, the legislature called back for a special session to fix these 'problems' - and the CNN article was happy to point out how responsive the legislature was to the needs of employers. Yes, even in the homne of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, some things are more important than one day a week where an employer can not fire someone due to their exercise of religious beliefs/devotion.
And this from a liberal media source.
I won't be surprised if the article about the drivers pops up briefly, or if the potential action has some interesting news angle, it won't get more attention. The game is about news management, not news censorship, after all - and who do you think pays CNN's bills? CNN's customers are not its viewers, after all.
But CNN is most definitely not a liberal news source. Why should they be? They're a business. And their reporters, anchormen, etc., are extremely highly paid, and have every reason to side with conservatives, at least on fiscal issues.
Nonetheless, Ted Turner's personal vision was important (remember that whole Goodwill Games - if that was the name?), and yes, he used to decide what and how his news channel would present information. But all things considered, Ted Turner was always a bit too much of a loose cannon for the corporate money that followed his pioneering trail, and these days, you don't hear too much about America's largest private land owner - at least, I recall he was at some point in the last decade.
Actually, the terms liberal and conservative don't really mean much anymore, apart from being labels kicked out in debates to distract - or as a bludgeon for those who now feel that identifying anyone identifying with such policy agendas as Nixon's EPA or Eisenhower's progressive income tax shows just how un-American liberals are.
As a note - one of the absolute best anti-Web censorship pieces I have ever read was from the IWW - http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/labeling/cyberpatrol/cyberpatrol-iww
'Talk about intellectual dishonesty! Violence and profanity!? Why are they ashamed to admit that they don't want working people to learn about the revolutionary program of the IWW? Why can't they just admit that they're afraid of the economic and political ideas that are communicated in the pages of the Industrial Worker? Instead of labeling us as "Communist subversives", which of course is what they think we are, these cowards have tried to brand us with "Violence and profanity", as if the IW is like some tasteless TV show. The boss class has always tried to stifle the voice of the IWW because we scare the hell out of them, no matter how small we are. (Look at that, violence and profanity in the last sentence, oh my god!)....'
It gets better from there.
And the ending personally sums up my own feelings about censors -
'Here's some unsolicited personal advice:
For your own good, while you still have a shred of self-respect, why not try to find a less shameful line of work? No freedom loving individual likes a censor, and I'm sure you are already circumspect about revealing your unfortunate occupation to people you meet. You'll feel a lot better about yourself if you find an honorable trade, and people will respect you more too.'
. And I learned the importance of solidarity during Viet Nam protests. Anarcho-Syndicalists stand with all working people striking for justice. The Industrial Workers of the Word were the first union to admit blacks, Indians, the Foreign Born, women. They are right with their hearts and vote with their feet. Shit, now I've talked myself into it. There's another advantage for any young person facing conscription-as a subversive you won't be moral enough to kill innocent civilians in resource wars, they won't draft you! Revolution Now ! The working class and the owning class have nothing in common! An end to the wage system!
What'll really toast your noodle is seeing pizza delivery people driving around in SUV's and mustangs and other low mpg vehicles.
I've always wondered if the economics worked out on pizza delivery people, though. Most of them only consider the upfront cost of the gas they use, but most of them drive their own vehicles and the wear and tear and depreciation on those vehicles is probably a greater cost than that of the gas. So when I see some young pizza delivery person in a nice car (probably bought by their parents), I always wonder if they're just eating into the value of the car and not actually making a true (sustainable) net profit.
He could also have bought the Prius to commute to some job, lost the job, and picked up the delivery job, which none of his SUV-driving neighbors would be able to do.
Most working-class Americans (that's 75% of us) have enough trouble coming up with enough money in one lump to make the rent, much less buy a car, so they get into the payment system. If anything changes, job, etc., they're stuck. There's such things as a voluntary repo but it's a horrible deal, since the car is sold at auction for about 1/4 what it's worth and the person gets billed for the remainder of the loan - by a collection agency. There are enough involuntary repos as it is.
This is why you see people in SUVs and so on delivering pizzas. It's desperation. The "pro" deliverers use a company truck or a gas-sipper car.
A LEXUS with a pizza delivery sign. No feces. Gave me a double take. Unless delivering pizzas is what he does in between dealing meth or something. But around here (WNC) I've seen kids with near-new mustangs, riced out Hondas and Toyotas, a rather significant number of not terribly new yet not terribly old SUV's, one Insight, and the usual fleet of old smaller cars.