DrumBeat: November 6, 2006
Posted by threadbot on November 6, 2006 - 8:20am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Twenty-nine of 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, they note, experienced some kind of civil war during the 1980’s or 1990’s. The causes of any war are of course incredibly complex — or are they? The economists discovered that one of the most reliable predictors of civil war is lack of rain. Using monthly rainfall data from many different African countries (most of which, significantly, are largely agricultural), they found that a shortage of rain in a given growing season led inevitably to a short-term economic decline and that short-term economic declines led all too easily to civil war. The causal effect of a drought, they argue, was frighteningly strong: “a 5-percentage-point negative growth shock” — a drop in the economy, that is — “increases the likelihood of civil war the following year by nearly one-half.”
Idea that forests are 'carbon sinks' going down drain
Forests can do little to improve the future climate or to lower the atmosphere's carbon levels. What they can do is make global warming worse.
'Seven out of 10 fear UK energy supplies are at risk'
Public concern over possible threats to their energy supply still outranks worries over climate change, despite the publication of the Stern review
Italy urges central EU energy authority
Italian president Romano Prodi has suggested there should be a central EU energy authority following energy blackouts over the weekend affecting millions of people in Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Africa needs help to win clean energy investment
An Oil Rush in (Yes) Iraq: The Kurds may be sitting on buried treasure, and foreign firms want to do business
Oman investing $4b to raise output
China not to pursue oil resources monopoly in Africa
China will not pursue monopoly of oil resources in Africa, and will not exclude and affect the cooperation between Africa and other countries, said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on Sunday in Beijing.At a joint press conference held by Chinese, Ethiopian and Egyptian foreign ministers, Li Zhaoxing said "the criticism of China's energy policy in Africa is unreasonable."
Kuwait to Retain $26 Billion Oil Expansion Plan as Prices Fall: Oil prices "unlikely to fall below $40 a barrel ever again"
Hi-tech the key to boosting oil reserves, say experts
Officials and experts at an oil and gas conference in Abu Dhabi have said that advanced technology was essential in boosting oil reserves to meet increasing global demand."We will be soon facing a challenge of producing difficult oil. Easy oil is slipping away from our hands," Omani Oil and Gas Minister Mohammad bin Hamad al-Romhi told the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC 2006).
Russian bear could punch our lights out
With the clocks now back and the cold weather drawing in, our leaders' minds are turning to the possibility of an energy shortage this winter.
A new diamond in the rough: Pennsylvania starting first plant to turn coal waste into diesel fuel
Four-day week makes the grade in Idaho
The four-day week has its origins in the energy crisis of the 1970s, which drove up costs of heating and transportation, prompting some rural districts to cut one day of school.The concept has survived, mostly in small, rural districts. It is most popular in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Oregon, Arizona, Louisiana and Utah. Schools in Orofino, Idaho, also use a four-day week.
The numbers are in. PG& E owes us $17.89. If we lived in Seattle we would be getting a check for this amount, but here in California we are not reimbursed for power generated in excess of what we use. Technically speaking we did not generate all the power that we used from our solar panels alone. Net metering is how we managed to live within our energy budget. Because PG & E paid top price (31 cents) for the power we generated during peak hours (between noon and 6 p.m. from May to October) and sold it back to us for 8 cents at night, we only had to generate a portion of what we used.
Blighted by this blot on a spectacular landscape
The point will be put, no doubt, that wind power holds answers in the burgeoning energy crisis. Perhaps. Yes, we need alternatives to fossil fuels; no-one disputes that. Yes, there is an argument which holds that wherever wind turbines are put, they will be unsightly. There are even those who celebrate the construction as adding some kind of spurious interest to the vista.But there could not be a location in the land more inappropriate than the Braes of Doune. Those who proposed and approved it should be ashamed.
Waiting for Prius hybrid seen over
Shortage of popular gas-electric cars eases, but demand is cooling, report says.
OPEC chief: Another output cut may be needed
INCHON, South Korea - OPEC President Edmund Daukoru warned on Sunday that the cartel may have to cut oil production again next month because the market was still "soft".While many other OPEC members have also said a further reduction may be in order at its December meeting, Daukoru's comments are the latest to signal that the cartel may not be satisified until it sees prices once again above $60 a barrel.
UK 'failed to save gas reserves'
This episode of Panorama aired in the U.K. last night, and can now be viewed online.
Fears over Sakhalin-2 revealed in Shell emails
Shell was warned more than four years ago by one of its own senior officials that he had major reservations about safety issues inside the troubled Sakhalin-2 development in eastern Russia.Internal Shell emails sent to the then technical director of the Shell-led Sakhalin Energy company raise fears about the size of wells, drilling in an earthquake area, and an unforgiving schedule.
Rat
In other, very cynical and imprecise words, does Halliburton scratch its own back with a back scratcher, or does it use a flunky as its first preference?
This administration does pretty much as it pleases, regardless of the laws or regulations - and even if they get caught, they just ignore the outrage, or simply change the laws to fit their interpretation - see torture or invading Iraq because Congress said invading Afghanistan would be an appropriate response to what happened in NYC and the Pentagon.
And please notice that the amount 'loaned' still has not been paid back - maybe because if the oil which was refined and sold at $3 dollars a gallon is never repaid as ever more 'emergencies' loom, the American taxpayer gets to pay twice for the privilege of what they bought to begin with? So to speak - and yes, this is pure cynicism speaking - after all, I believe ExxonMobil borrowed some SPR oil, but putting it back would have actually, maybe, caused their 10 billion profit last quarter to be less than completely record breaking - and you know what that means to Wall Street. (And yes, I do hold heirloom ExxonMobil stock, so of course, I am just thrilled at such corporate behavior. Thrilled. For example, that ExxonMobil didn't take about 4 billion of their quarterly profit to solidly fund employee retirement - pure capitalism at work, people, I'm a shareholder and I think the only contracts that matter are the ones that result in a check in my bank account, not the ones where anyone expects a check from me for their bank account.)
Interesting you mention retirement. I'm wondering how much of the record profits that companies are recording now is related to them basically robbing their own internal systems to record a profit at all cost. This basically means significant underfunding of all cost centers such as research employee training new product development etc. I know that historically the amount of money going into research at most companies has dropped significantly along with the introduction of pretty shady practices regarding retirement accounts and health benefits.
It seems that many American companies have become marketing firms. Now we still seem to have a robust technical economy for higher end products like equipment for microchip manufacturing lines test equipment airplanes and parts etc.
But I'm suspicious that the record profits of today's corporation are more based on short term investment strategies that make many companies susceptible to market downturns.
If anyone has links that can confirm or deny this I'd like to read them.
Mike
- Herman Daly
Can't wait to see what happens when younger generations finally realize there is no pension waiting for them when they get old, but that they are still supposed to fund the retirement of the previous generation.
Why is it that those who invest money in a business are supposed to share in its fruits, and those who invested their lives in it are not?
The bigger-picture reason why "retirement" as a concept is failing, is because we have a monetary system that requires "growth", and that's becoming impossible. That will mean a destruction of the value of "savings".
But the system did what it was designed to do: make the early "players" rich, at the expense of everybody else. When the game ends, it will be clearly seen as a pyramid scheme.
I'm more interested in what the requirements are, rather than the political machinations, not that I disagree with your analysis. How would loans be repaid if we had an honest administration? (Just regarding the SPR; don't want this to go all over the place).
I certainly admire your belief that the laws and regulations will be followed in a more perfect world.
But when finding the Thomas link again, I noticed the text 'Most laws passed by Congress are public laws.' Of course, in the last generation or two there have been non-public laws relating to things like national security, but I still find it surprising, recognizing the reality of today's America, that America also has secret laws - like much of the recent laws/regulations related to flying, tough interrogation, or anything related to energy policy which involves the Vice President. I find it especially interesting that someone subjected to tough interrogation is currently being forbiddent to talk about it to his lawyer or in an open court, since it is important for the government to preserve its methods from becoming public.
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/reserves/index.html
'In addition to national energy emergencies, crude oil has been withdrawn many times from the SPR sites for other reasons. Small quantities of oil are routinely pumped from the storage caverns in tests of the reserve's equipment. And in several instances, oil has been removed from the caverns under the legal authority to "exchange" SPR crude oil. This authority allows the SPR to negotiate exchanges where the SPR ultimately receives more oil than it released; in other words, the exchanges can be used to acquire additional oil for the SPR. The Hurricane Katrina loans, mentioned above, were conducted using the exchange authority.'
But even though your link includes the text 'The recently enacted Energy Policy Act of 2005 directs the Secretary of Energy to fill the SPR to its authorized one billion barrel capacity.' notice that replacing/filling the SPR was frozen by Bush after oil prices started to rise to new heights.
In other words, look at the oil going in, the oil going out, and never forget - words are cheap, but a barrel of oil will still cost you around $60. And remember - the drawdown of the SPR stocks was actually an increase, since it was an exchange which means more oil in the future.
I remain too cynical for my own good, except that it is just so difficult to just close my eyes to what is really going on in the U.S. Hey, how is that voting machine process running? You know, the one where apparently all the reported mistakes seem to benefit the Republicans? Just more proof of that liberal media bias, I guess.
Don't have the links avail at the moment - this was covered a few weeks ago. Easy to GOOGLE.
The Norwegian Pearl will again sail on the Ems, and again, E.on AG will shut down the transmission line. They had simulated the effects of the shutdown the last time, and are still not sure why there was a problem.
E.on AG admits that they shut down the line, but notes that the power outages started a half hour later, and though they are not trying to avoid responsibility for what they are responsible for, it still really couldn't have been their fault.
The German Federation of Wind Energy (Bundesverband Windenergie) notes that the amount of wind energy being fed into the system at the time was 30% of the maximum, and that the wind producers reacted correctly to the system shutdown, especially in eastern Germany.
The system was not heavily used at all on Saturday night.
A few sidenotes from earlier articles -
'Die Stromausfallzeiten seien seitdem von durchschnittlich 15 Minuten auf 23 Minuten im Jahr gestiegen. "Das ist nicht akzeptabel", kritisierte Kelber.' That is, in average, amount of time electricity is not available in Germany has gone from 15 to 23 minutes since the 1980s, which is unacceptable. (For American readers - per year, not per incident, at least according to my understanding of the German text - that is, what people in a place like the mid-Atlantic are used to for reliability is considered laughable here.)
The amount of investment in the German transmission network has declined approximately 40% since the 1980s.
Politically, it looks like the high rates the energy companies charge will no longer be so easily accepted as part of maintaining high reliability - after all, the power was out for an hour in some places. An entire hour, which is outrageous and insulting for those people who pay good money to have electricity available.
Now, who shouldn't it be acceptable to put 10 mln. people in the dark for 2 hours to let this ship pass?
Though I tend to be wary of any calls for a new agency at the EU level, it is possible that an EU wide view of the system could be useful at this point.
Why cellulosic ethanol will not save us
Thanks RR. (I think.)
Now I'm so confused I don't know how I'm going to vote on Prop 87 (if at all) tomorrow in California.
I was leaning towards Yes for the purpose of sending a message, but the closer one looks at all the special interests that have vested interests in not getting to the truth, the more one worries that our whole society is nothing but a bunch of special interests, all lying to each other just so that they can get theirs and screw everybody else.
As for Governor in California, Arnie is going to win hands down. So I think I'll vote Green --just to send a message of sorts.
What are you other Californians out there doing tomorrow? Voting? Not voting? Voting for 87? Against?
My thinking is that defeat of 87 now will dissuade better proposals from coming on ballot later.
Are humans more emotional (and less rational) than yeast?
Maybe we are.
Voted straight D, except for Senate; went green. Yes on 87. No on Iraq (county proposition)
democRAT
Hothgor (from yesterday's open thread):
In his book, Deffeyes was apparently using crude + condensate (C+C), with a Qt of 2,000 Gb. I think that Khebab came up with a Qt of about 2,250 for total liquids. It's possible that Deffeyes may have posted something about total liquids, but I haven't seen it.
When you do a HL plot, it is very important that you try to get the best cumulative data you can. If you want to compare apples to apples, you might want to work with the same data set that most people are using, rather than guessing at the prior cumulative data. I'm sure Khebab could send you his world total liquids data plot if you asked him. But I am a little puzzled as to why you should try to reinvent the wheel. I haven't seen anyone better at doing HL work than Khebab.
In any case, the crux of your argument is that the last three data points of world data have some kind of magical meaning. As I pointed out yesterday, Texas, the Lower 48 and KSA all showed the same kind of change in slope right before they started declining. And on Khebab's consistent vertical scale the "anomaly" doesn't really show up at all.
You are arguing that we have not peaked even as world C+C production trends down, as Deffeyes predicted, while the four current super giant fields are almost certainly all declining or crashing. I would also point out that, as I predicted (based on an analysis of Khebab's work), the world net export situation looks pretty bad as time goes forward.
For the sake of argument, let's ssume that you are correct that we have another 300 Gb of conventional total liquids. At our current rate of consumption of total fossil fuel and nuclear energy, we burn through the energy equivalent of 300 Gb of oil (which would take decades to produce) in about four years.
My response:
I have work and some house work to do today, so I will not be available to immediately respond until this evening. Hint: it will probably include my charts based on just C + C, and we will see how those numbers stack up yet again. For those of you who were wondering, the following was my rebuttal to westexas on this issue:
Alright westexas,
I had all day at work to think about this little gem of a response and how best to debunk your little rant on this issue once and for all. This took me a couple of hours because I'm not a graph whiz, but this is what I've come up with.
First, I downloaded the Total World Oil Supply for the last couple of years xml file from the EIA at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t14.xls
Then, I downloaded the Total World Oil Supply from 1980-2004 xml also from the EIA at http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableg2.xls
Now I will admit that I was unable to find the EXACT figures of cumulative production from the pre-1980 years, but after studying several global charts and a little trial and error, I was able to come up with an approximate number of 560 Gb.
After plotting these figures in an excel chart, I came up with this:
Which approximates with the previous posted graph:
Now the entire crux of your argument is that Laherrere uses a different vertical axis then you do, and this 'distorts' the chart making the anomaly appear to be more important than it actually is. Because you quote the 20% vertical scale as appropriate, I chose to use your own figures to come up with this:
As you can see, the new vertical axis only 'compresses' the figures, actually making them harder to read. After some more tweaking, I included my own 4% axis:
Now at this point, we have 3 different views of the same chart. This shows how much easier and harder it is to view the same information using a different vertical scale. Now for the fun part:
I updated Laherrere's chart to include 2006 at the current posted 8 month average. The above chart is what I came up with. Note that it doesn't exactly match his previous chart. I can offer only 3 solutions for this:
First, he manipulated his own trend line to show the ultimate recovery to be far larger then it actually will. Second, my own figures are not exact enough to accurately produce a trend line in agreement with his own. Third, I included the 2006 figures, helping to paint a more accurate picture over all 'My figure was based on the current 8 month average, perhaps if its higher the trend line would extend'. Personally, I believe the third option is the most likely.
Now I know that you don't like using the 8% vertical axis, so I included the following based on your own 20% axis:
Notice how the ultimate trend line does not change! 'Please use your imagination and fill in the remaining blank part of the line' Finally, I 'zoomed in' to a 4% vertical axis:
Again, the trend line does not change at all! The ultimate recovery amount is approximately 2550 Gb. This is 300 Gb more then Deffeyes states!
But how does 300 Gb affect the peak of production? Its quite simple: 300 Gb / 2 = 150 Gb for the 50% point. 150 Gb / 30 Gb = 5 more years until the peak. Deffeyes stated that the peak was approximately on January of 2006, and these figures push this back to January of 2011, in VERY close agreement with the latest ASPO projection of 2010, and to Cry Wolfs own projection of 2012!
Again, I must also point out that these figures will be modified in the future as a lot of production is scheduled to come online next year and a few giant fields in 2008. How will this confound the issue? Rembrant could probably shed some more light on it. I suspect it will push the ultimate recovery rate out to a maximum of 2750 Gb. That figure will undoubtedly increase as we discovery more oil in the future.
In conclusion:
Your assertion that the vertical sale of a HL significantly changes the outcome is based on bogus knowledge: There is clearly NO DIFFERENCE when using a 20%, 8%, or 4% scale! Furthermore, the lower % vertical axis serves only to allow a viewer to 'drill down' and see fluctuations in the total production clearly. In fact, it actually helps the average viewer see the ultimate recovery figure more accurately using a SMALLER vertical scale.
Westexas, I do not want to hear from you again that my statements in regard to this are not based on actual fact. I have done my homework and debunked your entire argument using your own cherished HL plots. Furthermore, the global average for HL correctly showing production peaks at 50% thus far is mostly correct, as 95% of all fields peak within 48-52% of their ultimate recovery amount 'as per the same HL'. There is no reason whatsoever to suspect that the world production will not follow this trend, as it is simply based on the average of every fields production in its 'region'.
But I guess I'm just a paid troll and disinformation spreader!
(I posted a note on yesterday's thread, prior to today's post, that I was responding on today's thread.)
What we have is an HL total liquids plot that Khebab did--using the best production data he could find--showing somewhere around 2,250 Gb or so for Qt--very similar to Laherrere's middle case in the above graph. Note that the infamous three points that Laherrere used to justify the much higher Qt only show up on a vastly expanded vertical scale, and I as have noted this change in slope is common in regions just prior to peaking production.
While I'm sure that we all appreciate your contribution to the Hubbert Linearization debate, I would point out that you have been doing it now for apparently 24 hours or so--and based on guesstimated production numbers. Again, Instead of guessing at the production data, why don't you just get the actual data from Khebab?
I would just ask the long term readers the following question: whose HL analyis do you value more, Hothgor's or Khebab's?
One of you has been doing this work for 24 hours, using guesstimated data, while the other has a Masters Degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in signal processing, and has been working with this method for a period of some years at least, using the best data he could find.
I have a BS in Geophysics, and I largely quit doing HL work when I realized how extremely capable Khebab is.
I just came from a meeting where I went nose to nose with one of the premier New Urbanists (also good friend of Kunstler).
I called him on a basic fact in his analysis (people will not walk > 1/4 mile) and pointed out that they will up to a 1/2 mile in "good conditions" such as the French Quarter. He finally agreed with my point.
The neighborhood (some good decades long community activists that live in the FQ) tended to agree with me, that the length of Rampart Street ought not be made a "B" street, that should be Basin Street. Traffic and parking should be focused there
The point is that reputation and experience count but they should NOT be beyond challenge.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Commenters here can claim that US marines are going to invade Mexico, Halliburton is building death camps, or any of a number of other wild and off topic conspiracy theories with no evidence and expect gentle treatment. But dare to question Westexas or HL and you might as well be drawing cartioon of the other prophets.
Hothgor came on quite strong in the beginning and would have done well to refine his arguments before issuing strong challenges to several of the credible posters here. However, his recent posts on HL are based on what appears to be solid analysis. I think they should be dealt with in the same manner.