DrumBeat: December 13, 2006
Posted by threadbot on December 13, 2006 - 9:55am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Coal Liquefaction Project Raises BILLION Dollar Question
I've found consistently level-headed informative coverage of energy issues at The Oil Drum. There most recent discussion of coal liquefaction stresses these issues. With energy companies spending millions on PR, you'll also find a lot of "noise" out there--yet, even coal liquefaction proponents sheepishly agree strong government enforcement of C02 emissions limits is a good idea.
Grid Limitations Increase Prices for Electricity
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — It is a tiny, flickering signal of an expensive problem looming for tens of millions of Americans: The cost of electricity for households in this southern Pennsylvania town soared this year by 31 percent, or an average of $24 a month.Like the nation’s highways and bridges, the network of transmission lines has not been maintained and expanded enough to meet growing demand, the United States Department of Energy says.
A model for tackling the energy challenge
Project Apollo surfaces repeatedly as a model for tackling the energy challenge. Given the urgency of the situation, achieving a secure energy future will, indeed, call for a similar commitment in funding, policies, and passion. The execution, though, will have to be different. More than a discrete undertaking with a single goal, the energy project will have to deliver a broad portfolio of solutions, playing out on timetables measured over a few years to several decades.
Indonesia may cancel huge gas pipe project ends with this interesting bit:
Indonesia, the world's largest gas exporter, has mostly sold liquefied natural gas to foreign buyers but recently adopted a policy to allow bigger share of domestic consumption to deal with the energy crisis."We choose to develop domestic industries by cutting (gas) export," [Vice President Jusuf Kalla] said.
Russia gets tough on energy sales to Europe
BERLIN: In a new signal that Russia has toughened its position on energy sales to Europe, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had no intention of observing guidelines in the EU's energy charter that would allow non-Russian companies access to the country's vast pipeline network.
Azerbaijan to Stop Importing Russian Gas
Azerbaijan will stop importing Russian gas beginning January, a top Azeri energy official said Tuesday, after Moscow asked for more than double its previous price.
US hopes Opec won't cut output
Tokyo: US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said yesterday that he hopes Opec ministers will not decide to cut crude oil output levels further when they meet tomorrow.Bodman also said he wants to encourage China to rely more on the global energy market and less on acquisitions as a way to bolster its energy security.
Cuts Prompt Home Focus for Scottish Oil and Gas Sector
The high price of oil and a shortage of manpower and equipment have prompted Scottish oil and gas companies to concentrate more of their activity in the North Sea, according to a survey by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI).
NEW DELHI - A report by India's Ministry of Petroleum has said that the country will possess surplus natural gas in the next two years and its rapidly growing economy is likely to be fueled by it after major discoveries by state-run and private energy companies. Currently, India meets 70% of its energy requirements through imports.
Nigeria: Fuel Scarcity Paralyses Activities
Nigeria has again been gripped by fuel shortages. Long queues and black marketeering has resurfaced again in Kano, Katsina and Dutse following recent shortages of petrol-eum products to the states.In Jos, most of the filling stations have not opened since last Friday.
Shortages were denied in Abuja by the manager of the NNPC station, who said queues were caused by 'panic buying'.
Biofuels seen as a luxury China cannot afford
China cannot afford to embark on industrial production of grain-derived biofuels because supplies of corn and other crops are needed to feed the country's 1.3 billion people."It would be a disaster for us if we depend on a huge amount of corn and other grains for energy," said Zhai Huqu, president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in comments quoted by the official China Daily.
South Africa: South Africa: Biofuels Industry 'Could Drive Up Staple Food Price'
The government's decision to establish a biofuels industry -- producing fuel from agricultural crops - has been taken without proper consultation and could drive up the cost of maize, a staple food.
2006 Warmest Year in Netherlands in 300 Years
DE BILT, Netherlands - This year is on track to be the warmest in the Netherlands since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Tuesday, linking the record with global warming.
Massive growth in the Middle East's renewable energy sector anticipated
Drastic increases in oil prices and increased awareness of the limited availability of traditional fossil fuels is giving the new and renewable energy sector enormous momentum, with many of the world leaders in the field of photovoltaics (solar power), wind power and other environmentally friendly energy schemes accelerating product innovations that are being embraced across the region as alternative power sources.
Turkey: Wind Energy Project Fails
New legislation originally intended to increase benefits from wind energy and decrease dependency on foreign sources of energy has failed. |
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Pope alarmed over environmental destruction and energy exploitation
Vatican City - Benedict XVI is worried by the increase of pollution and the impoverishment of the planet due to 'a race towards available resources that cannot be compared to previous situations'.
Long ago the ancient Egyptians practised a religion of the sun, now we can no longer afford to ignore this inexhaustible resource.
Wall Street eyes heart of darkness: global warming
CHICAGO - The topic of the conference was climate change and the rhetoric was sobering, haunted by scientific projections of a roasted world for our children and a looming environmental disaster of Biblical proportions.But this was no talk shop of environmental activists. It was a meeting of Wall Street investors, insurance executives, state treasurers and pension fund managers, who between them manage about $3.7 trillion in assets.
IEA: OPEC oil cut already tightening world market
LONDON - OPEC oil cuts already in place are tightening the world market ahead of winter and may prevent a recovery in consumer stocks, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, urging OPEC to hold off on a new reduction.
OPEC ministers say may hold off on more oil cuts
ABUJA (Reuters) - OPEC appeared willing on Wednesday to pull back from more oil output cuts, responding to consumer nation calls to hold off until winter has passed to guard against price spikes that would hurt the world economy.
Lease royalties add up. Agency must audit records and make companies pay what's owed to taxpayers.
The American treasury is already short more than a billion dollars because of the Interior Department’s failure over the last decade to collect all the royalties owed from oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico. The new Congress needs to fix the problem, or persuade a sluggish Bush administration to do so.
Britain sets sights on "zero carbon" homes
LONDON - Britain set out plans on Wednesday to help tackle global warming by making all new housing "zero carbon" within a decade.
South Korea builds world's largest garbage-fuelled power plant
SEOUL - South Korea has opened the world's largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result.
U.K: Revised wind farm plans unveiled. But the locals still vow to fight.
Is thorium the answer to our energy crisis?
It could power the planet for thousands of years, the reactors would never blow up and the waste is relatively clean. So is thorium the nuclear fuel of the future?
Geologists have discovered underwater deposits of hydrates — icy deposits of frozen methane gas — at far shallower depths under the ocean floor than expected. The finding suggests that, in a globally warmed world, the hydrates could melt suddenly and release their gas into the atmosphere, thus warming the planet even more.
Exxon sees oil use, carbon emissions soaring. The biggest change to their new forecast is they see coal use soaring.
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Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world's biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin's willingness to use the country's growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon. |
Yesterday's reader discussion of the tensions between the world views expressed by technological optimists of the Norman Borlaug stripe, who believe an unending "green revolution" will keep allowing humanity to escape the consequences of its own proliferation, and those who believe that sustainability requires a comprehensive change in how humans live on this planet, inevitably led to the invocation of the ultimate prophet of doom, Thomas Malthus. Some believe we are already well past the breaking point of how many humans the planet can support. Others believe that further technological innovations will only prolong the inevitable reckoning. It's an argument that's been raging for at least 200 years, and the addition of another three billion or so humans to the total already living on the planet in the next fifty or sixty years is going to keep the debate hopping quite nicely.But what I draw from the U.N.'s report is that this is a question that may well have an answer. As population and per capita consumption stabilize by the middle of this century, my daughter will have a pretty good idea of whether Malthus was right, or finally, absolutely, indubitably wrong.
From an old database of Megaprojects I have added up 2.88 mbpd total with 2.06 mbpd of non OPEC increases for 2006. So far this year it seems that non OPEC production has increased by 0.7 mbpd although that number will change by next March when preliminary numbers from OPEC MOMR come in for 2006. My guess is that the number will decrease as UK, Norway and Mexico have higher 4Q figures than are likely to be realised.
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/invguide_stocks/3.html
Glad to see I am not the only one who thinks COP is undervalued. And yes, I do own shares of COP.
FYI, I loaded up at $58. Technical traders will note that it has traded between $58 and $72 this year, but COP is currently trading at a significant discount to the other majors. Historically, the reason for that is that capital spending has been higher than Wall Street likes, but the capital budget is being scaled back next year.
http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html
Health officials back circumcision in AIDS fight
Ouch!
But doing it when they are children is probably better, for the same reason the cervical cancer vaccine is best given to girls: the best time to protect them is before they are sexually active.
If a man decides he wants to be chopped, let him decide.
this is barbarism!
Only a tiny fraction of US AIDS infection comes from hetrosexual sex. And I would not be surprised to if circumsion dramatically reduces the chances of hetrosexual AIDS infection.
Ron Patterson
Besides, are we really going to have the resources post-peak for everyone to have an elective surgery of questionable value in a sterile environment? How much energy is needed to keep a Hospital sterile?
Yes, if you live in a wealthy nation and are assuming things will continue as they are now, for the entire life of your child.
But consider peak oil. Even if it doesn't result in a Mad Max collapse, it may mean we cannot afford to give away clean needles or condoms. It may even mean ordinary folk can't afford to buy them.
Those of the Jewish faith have practiced circumcision without hospitals for millennia.
Circumcision is actually pretty low-tech - far more so than condoms. As anyone who has seen Roots knows, it's something they've been doing in Africa for centuries. Indeed, that's what led to the research to begin with. It was noticed that AIDS was much more of a problem among some groups than others in Africa. The difference, it turns out, was that some practiced circumcision, and some did not.
Right now, this research is seen as applying mainly to Africa and other Third World areas. But if you believe that the U.S. is on its way to becoming a Third World country...it's something to keep in mind.
Has anyone read this study? Anyone got a critique of its design? Maybe it's complete rubbish.
There are many 'scientific studies', badly designed, poorly controlled, etc., cited as proving this, that and the other. And all of them wrong. Medical literature in particular is replete with such stuff, perhaps more so than anywhere else.
A bit of scepticism, please, folks.
I realse that Americans have been conditioned not to question circumcision, but I would ask that you refrain from promoting circumcision until there are benefits attributed to it(that have been accepted by mainstream medicine) that outweigh the fact that it is mutilating.
Also,
Yes, and jewish newborns have been dying of infections and bleeding for millennia, not to mention the lack of anesthesia!
This website is about energy, not medicine. Please promote your unneccessary surgery elsewhere.
One guesses there is a powerful X factor at work, i.e. that adult men who agree to circumcision, which is not a trivial thing, will be `richer' (more secure, stable, reachable to the services in question, etc.), more responsible, more health aware, more community minded, more submissive, and generally less `wild' (married vs. single for example.) All such characteristics (one or many combined or others along the same line) would make these men less sexually active in the `multiple partners' sense.
I haven't read the original study, but it is certain that the factors I mentioned were not controlled for, simply because it is too much work.
This is just BS, junk science. It all comes from an old correlation between the spread of Aids / circumcision in Africa. That correlation is not causation never found a more illustrative example.
It looks very much like some will go to any lengths to stop people using condoms. Btw, castration leads to a 0 infection rate for the castrati.
Did they actually take circumsized / uncircumsized males and then get them to have sex with HIV-positive women and see what happens? Of course not. (An ethics problem, at the least). The circumsized fellows are obviously having less or less risky sex for some reason that correlates with, but may not caused by, circumcision, ergo they turn up with lower infection rates. It is not as if the mere fact of being circumsized alone has any effect on HIV spread (again, how could it? Mechanism, please).
One other factor: maybe many of them regret submitting to the chop and feel mutilated afterward. Just conjecture, that. I'd feel that way. Also, being circ'd is supposed to decrease a male's sexual sensitivity - maybe they just don't enjoy it as much as before. (Of course, if you got the chop at birth you'll never know what you are missing anyway, so that takes care of an argument that appeals to promiscuous circ'd US males).
It's correlation. That's all.
Here's a brief blurb from Discover:
As we found out yesterday, said trials were ended early, because circumcision was so obviously beneficial it was deemed unethical to withhold it from the control group.
Not true. It's not like they suddenly decided to try circumcizing men for the heck of it. They noticed that some groups in Africa had much lower infection rates than others. They thought at first that it was due to different religious values, or socioeconomic factors, etc. But it wasn't. They found that there was no difference in socioecnomic status, number of sexual partners, etc. That's what led them to circumcision.
As it turns out, the cells of the foreskin are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection. They've got a lot of HIV-friendly receptors.
And they've been studying this for a long time now. This is just the latest study in a long line of them.
How about this: Let's surgically remove an equivalent amount of penile skin that doesn't have said 'HIV-binding mucosal membranes,' and see where it goes. That would be scientific. Don't forget to cut off the entire penis of others (don't withhold the ultimate HIV-safety device, the lop shears), as a control group for needles/buttsecks.
To actually do this scientifically, you have to get Mengele on the people you're saving.
Now could we get back to energy?
Do children not feel pain on your planet? You might want to look into somthing called empathy.
Because kids won't be having sex for many years (presumably), so it's hard to do a double blind study in this manner.
I'm not making that name up. It's from the article...
It has been pointed out that the research is flawed, indeed must be so for fundamental reasons. So there isn't anything wrong with being sceptical about the conclusions of the study. It's quite appropriate in the circumstances.
It's like a mass murder, which is what the recent Popes are really, complaining about all the dead bodies.