Saturday Open Thread and News Dump
Posted by Prof. Goose on March 11, 2006 - 12:42pm
...and if you need something to get you started, go read Kurt Cobb's "What if Daniel Yergin is Wrong?".
...or go check out an article about our friend Roscoe Bartlett and his appearance in Oil Crash.
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
—Albert Einstein
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The Swiss became tired of heavy trucks transporting goods through their country. Road congestion, pollution, fuel use and general "environmental effects". Peak Oil & Global Warming probably fit under the last catch-all.
As I noted before, the Swiss made do with VERY limited quantities of oil during WW II (in all of 1945 they used what they used in 26 days in 1938) by electrifying their transportation.
They are spending enourmous amounts on the world's longest tunnel (34.5 km), which, when combined with the earlier Simplon tunnel, will give 250 km/hour rail link through Switzerland. More importantly, taxes on heavy trucks will pay for the new tunnel and force shippers to use it.
The tunnel and associated improvements will be completed past Peak Oil but they will be a welcome improvement in EU adn Swiss transport when completed
One excerpt.
nvestment amounting to more than 31 billion Swiss francs will be needed to modernise the railway system in Switzerland over the next 20 years. Construction of the 34.5 km Lötschberg base tunnel will cost some 3.22 billion francs (for the first construction phase). By comparison, about 60 billion Swiss francs were spent constructing the network of national roads. The finance concept is based on the model of constructing and financing the public transport infrastructure (FinöV/FPT) which was adopted by the Swiss electorate in 1998. The fund consists of revenue from the fuel tax, the mileage-related heavy vehicle tax, an additional 0.1% value-added tax and loans from the capital market. Once the Lötschberg base tunnel becomes operational in 2007, Switzerland will then be able to levy the full rate of the mileage-related heavy vehicle tax
But I think the swiss neighbours are better in organizing such large procjects than the EU.
http://www.ita-aites.org/cms/1075.html
Can you tell us more about these Saudi fuel storage tunnels?
Matt Simmons talked about the Saudis having storage which he suspected that they used to ramp up 'production' when the need arose.
I just tried Googling for your fuel storage tunnels and found no information about them.
Are these the secret fuel storage that Matt aludes to?
I have a long term informal discovery project ongoing concerning S.A. crude storage tanks outside the Kingdom. S.A. and Shell share 50% interest in Motiva Enterprises' refineries located in Port Arthur, Texas; Convent, Louisiana; and Norco, Louisiana. Motiva refineries can process approximately 780,000 barrels per day, and have a distribution system including appx 47 product terminals with 19 MM BBLS of storage. Since these are product terminals, fortunately I don't have to identify those.
Using a WAG of 20X refinery capacity, I can get around 50MM BBLS, not counting Rotterdam possibilities.
Ras Tanura Refinery 325,000 bpd
Aramco/Exxon Yanbu 400,000 bpd
Aramco/Shell Jubail 305,000 bpd
@ 20 x 20.6 MM BBLS
Norco, La Crude: 240,000 BPD
Port Arthur, Tx. Crude: 235,000 BPD
Convent Ref, La. Crude: 255,000
@ 20 x capacity = 15 MMB
S.A. may be leasing tanks from Valero Corp http://www.valerolp.com/Customers/TerminalDataSheets/
At this Caribbean Island VLCC "service station" from Valero Corp.
http://www.valerolp.com/NR/rdonlyres/83C1FDE0-ABE8-4B18-B64E-F17DA79FE3A8/0/StEustatius1_25_06.pdf
with 51 tanks 11.3 MM BBLS of storage. (they can process only 15,000 BPD of light stuff)
Rotterdam?
S.A's. transportation subsidery can probably hold almost 10 MMB in their ships alone.
OFF TOPIC
13 March 2006
"Iran's Nuclear Plans Complicate China's Energy Security"
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=456&language_id=1
The Swiss are building two North-South rail links. The first will open in 2007 (partially built, single track at first) with a new 34.5 km Lötschberg tunnel and the existing Simplon tunnel. 200 kph seems to be the likely max speed.
The other, with a 57 km Gotthard tunnel, will be fully open in 2015 and provide an almost straight and level track from Zurich to Milan and pax train speeds of 250 kph. Again, roll on-roll off auto & truck service plus other freight will generate most of the revenue.
Massive investments that will help Switzerland and parts of the EU adapt to Peak Oil.
WE've had an %18 rate increase in electrical service from Bangor Hydro on top of what I believe is the highest base rates in the U.S.
Our 'consumer champion' OffGas has told us to shop around for better deals. Ha! . We got lucky this year. Temps in the UK were no where near predicted from the anticipated effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation. However, it may have been just this that hurt central Europe in January.
In Theory it lets ultra cold air in from Siberia. It is possible that this effect created problems for the Germans in 1941 and Napoleon in 1812.
We got fairly warm Atlantic weather all the way through until just a couple of weeks ago and North East Scotland and the East Coast of England got Arctic air funneled down the North Sea. The gas problems are currently being blamed on the lack of supply across the Interconnector from Europe and the lack of economic harmonisation of Gas Majors in the EEC. We are at the end of a very long pipe from Russia and we found out what that means...
Though our clueless 'Elders, betters and the Great and Good' have yet to wake up and smell the peak, It has at last got Energy (or lack of it) on the agenda.
Now is not the time to be old or poor in this sceptered isle: We loose people every year due to fuel poverty.
We got lucky. But Winter comes around every year...
To seriously reduce winter heating energy use, you'd have to take extreme measures, like wearing a snowsuit in the house, with a motorcycle helmet with heated air! Sure, you can throttle down on a thermostat, but at some point, it gets dangerous, not just uncomfortable. Also, as the house temp drops to 0C (32F) pipes freeze, causing problems that are a bane of homeowners - even if you sit in your La-Zee Boy chair in your homebrew space suit.
Why home heat isn't considered "essential" for the economy is easy to understand. That energy use does not correspond to productivity, unlike propane in a forklift or electricity in a web server for a .com store. Since that energy use doesn't directly aid and abet productivity, economists call it "non-essential" - until they can't heat their house that is! Meanwhile that propane tank on a forklift does aid and abet productivity by loading and unloading semis on a loading dock. And the web server makes the .com store possible.
British Gas chaos leaves thousands without heat
You may find this site interesting re the Gas situation in the UK:
http://gasissues.blogspot.com/
WE've had an %18 rate increase in electrical service from Bangor Hydro on top of what I believe is the highest base rates in the U.S.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/contents.html
Religion has had very little influence in the overall development of population numbers.
Human technology has.
Agriculture has.
The Industrial Revolution has.
Please take your anger somewhere else.
While what you mention allow us humans to maintain higher levls of populations. Uusally the Religious aspect of our lives pushes us to have more kids or fewer kids. Regilion is a key role player in all this.
ceojr1963@yahoo.com if you want to discuss this further.
As far peak is concermed. Human faith still plays a part.
But I'm discussing sociological macro-tendencies which might be threatening life on our petri-dish here. There are not very many long lasting examples like sailorman's Netherlands. Even if they are found, one can usually find other reasons for the growth rate dichotomy which have nothing to do with religion: different levels of wealth, different levels of industrialization, education, etc...
Simply put:
Agricultural and underdeveloped industrialized regions/peoples have more kids than hunter/gatherers or complex ind. and informational societies.
Italy is a historically Catholic (known to be opposed to artificial birth control) region but has a birth rate of 1.31, about the lowest in Europe. Germany has about 25million Catholics but has a birth rate of 1.39. Now, you can argue that Catholics in these areas don't even go to church, so can they really be Catholics? But which came first, Industrialization, staying away from Church or having fewer children? They go hand in hand, of course, and offer a chicken and egg problem.
Back to the US: Those having the most children at the moment are not Catholics or Mormons (as the clichee goes) but the Amish.
Again, you can claim that it's religious - I claim it has a halibut lot to do with their agricultural (pre-industrial) lifestyle.
Birthrates among urbanized immigrants to U.S. of Catholic ancestry (primarily from Latin America) are much higher than birthrates of non-Catholics, other factors [such as education level] held constant.
Always check data.
Immigrants - I take it these are primarily Hispanics (WITHOUT checking the Data) take a generation or two to change from the lifestyles of their homelands. Demographic processes are very long winded.
The assertions I made above are hardly refuted by your comments, if that was your goal.
Quote is from following post.
Curbing population growths will take fifty years to make an effect. Only the third world has a positive population growth rate at the moment. The rest of the world hasn't been positive since the 1970s and most of their populations are still growing. It takes more than a generation to change absolute growth direction. If you want it done faster, you can either use the bomb or let nature do its devastation.
Though you could say that I make this statement because I know it is a Paradox. And somehow I am leading you into false logic.
It looks random but it is not.
Might just be my faith.
And yes if a Loved one were to die I would mourn, BUT I would keep on my course.
Charles, Aka Dan Ur (a Fictional Charactor is short story series, by Charles Owens.)
I am not saying that we should not start powering down immediately, powerdown has been my argument all along. All I am saying is we need to address the population issue. Curbing population growth in a humane, fair fashion will be the greatest challenge humanity will ever face.
Every species is biologically programmed to reproduce. Getting laid is fun. Being told what to do and what not to do is not fun. My guess is we will not rise to the challenge. We will let the only true invisible hand, nature, do the dirty work for us through plague, starvation, pestilence, and war. That will make the task of building the sustainable infrastructire of the future all the more difficult and perhaps will scatter our efforts forever. Then, once the dust settles and the species has exhausted itself and come to a population balance, we will be left with whatever disorganised ruins that may be left, and we will carve out an existence of some sort, no matter how short and brutish.
Given the internal politics of the US, and the rise of cultists who are nominally "Christians", are we really to conclude that we are going to adopt rational policies in relation to the population problem any time soon?
To finish on a controversial theological note, who exactly does Bush and his ilk pray to? Is he praying to the un-named, desert sky God from the East the rest of us worship or what? I'm serious here. I was brought up a Catholic and my church has had a long history with people who "hear voices" and use those voices to justify various forms of action. The Chatholic church has always been sceptical of these sort of people, simply because it was felt that these voices might actually be the whisperings of demons or even Satan himself. Listening to voices can get you into a lot of trouble, ask Joan of Arc!
Personally I doubt Bush is praying to a Christian God at all. He's praying to something else entirely. Something that may be Evil and dangerous. He never seems to say much about Jesus does he? But he talks a lot about his God. Given his track record doesn't it seem likely he's praying to the horned beast and his soul is doomed? How's that for Bush bashing?
1. Makes an about-face from its long-established and traditional doctrine of its first one and a half thousand (or thereabouts) years of the Church (which defined fetuses of less than 60 days as nonhuman, following Aristotle, as they did in most things--because that is the way St. Thomas Aquinas saw things) to effectively deny abortion to women.
2. Actively campaigns against the use of condoms, even to prevent the spread of AIDs.
3. Delights in the higher birthrate of Catholics vs. nonCatholics, e.g. in the Netherlands, which used to have a large Protestant majority and now has a slim but growing Catholic majority.
4. Outlaws contraception wherever possible.
5. Defines contraception as a mortal sin, which must be confessed to. Thus the Church
6. Encourages abortion among devout women in poor countries, because the abortion--also a mortal sin--needs to be confessed to only once.
I could go on, but what is the point? You want to do something constructive? Get the Roman Catholic church to be Christian instead of the reactionary male-dominated sexist institution that it is.
Good luck.
What are these other things? Well they are the people he surrounds himself with. Many around Bush are not conventional Christians at all. They have some very odd views about society. Basically, I don't believe the neo-cons are Christians. They worship another God with another name.
We need to reform the evil religious leaders of the world. There is nothing wrong with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam (or Buddhism, for that matter), but there are very serious things wrong with the way the teachings of the great prophets, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet have been twisted and distorted out of all recognition into evil instititutions and organizations.
I've noticed a lot of anti-Islam sentiment on TOD, and to counteract this, I am going to start posting a few of the sayings of Mahomet (in appropriate places) so that those ignorant of comparative religion may learn a few things. The problem is not with the founding principles of the great religions but with the way these principles have been distorted 180 degrees from the original intention, e.g. to the point that for 250 years "Christian" preachers in the American south used twisted interpretations of the Bible to justify slavery.
Before we start throwing stones at Islam, we should look at the evils done in the name of Christianity, notably the Crusades--which rank with what Hitler did in Poland as some of the greatest atrocities in history.
I'm an atheist, and I oppose all religion becuse now religion only generates death and suffering. As far as the soul, if the soul is REALLY immortal, all those files you deleted will be waiting for you in Paradise, ready to be gotten again when you're issued your Heavenly Laptop and your 72 virgins. Same with lost files with hard drive crashes. After all, your "soul" is data in a bio-computer system that is the brain. When you die, the data is gone - just as gone as a gallon of fuel you burn on a commuting mission.
We are doomed. Already the worshippers of the invisible sky-beings are at each other's throats.
Let the cull begin.
Signed,
A buddhist.
Human technology has.
Agriculture has.
The Industrial Revolution has.
Please take your anger somewhere else.
Why would you? Before it became popular and acceptable to be a "neo-con" hater, it was commonly known that many used the term as code-language for Jew. It must be tough trying to figure out what you're supposed to hate on any given day.
I never called you anti-semitic, nor did I say you said anything about Jews. If you will relax a moment and reflect, you will see that I am correct.
If you don't think that the term has been used as a substitute for Jew in the past, then you don't understand the history of the term. What you "think" the term means is of little relevance.
You need to do some basic research behind what "neo-con" means, if it means anything at all. You need to read up on the history of the term as it applies to a "movement" or to certain individuals on a political level.
The reason I wrote what I did was because I didn't think you were making sense.
So again, I don't understand why you would think neo-cons would have to be "conventional" Christians, since if there was a religious connotation ever associated with the term it was that the individuals labeled as such were Jews.
You mistake Administration officials with "neo-cons." And you confuse neo-con with your own sketchy understanding of what one is. I wouldn't normally go into something like this here, but you seem to have a weird hang-up with religion and peak-oil, I thought I might help you more properly form your thoughts.
Try this article by Michael Lind from early 2004
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040223/lind
The more people people blindly throw this term around, the less it means. Which is fine by me, since I have always found it meaningless - just an epithet people can use to articulate their hatred for ideas they can barely understand.
No, It would mean that America is full of Jews that shred neo-con policies. The logic in the second phrase escapes me.
No it was not commonly known.
Use of "code language" and accusations regarding who is part of the "in crowd" and who shares their secret common knowledge and who does not have this illusive common sense, is part of a charade of mental manipulation tactics.
The root "neo" simply means "new".
The suffix "conservative" used to mean one who sought to maintain the old ways, one who opposed change.
The combination of neo and conservative is an oxymoron because it implies there is a "new" way to stick to the "old" ways.
As for each of us hearing coded voices in the desert, this is an inherent part of the Jewish religion when it speaks separately of "the God" of Abraham, "the God" of Isaac and "the God" of Jacob.
Each had his own God, his or her own voices heard in the cranium. Jesus --yet another Jew-- had his own version of voices in the head, as did Mohammed and other so-called prophets.
Yes Virginia, God exists. But she's all in your head.
My main point that people throw this term around, or use it for less-than-honorable purposes, depending on how you look at it still stands, however.
Consider the fallacy of the lack of proportion. You bash Bush. But all we need is one brain transplant (to the Pope) to do 100 times more good for the world than Bush could possibly do.
In the spirit of Jonothan Swift, herewith a Modest Proposal: Let the poor of the world send their babies to the Vatican to be eaten, for the economics would make good sense.
How can you possibly defend the absolute and total evil done in the name of Jesus, when He was totally and 100% opposed to the sexist anti-woman doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
Most satanists I know are boring people. The most interesting people I know include agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and a couple of practioners of wicca.
Hitler was a choir boy.
Have you seen what the hierarchy is doing in an attempt to cover up child-rape by bishops and priests?
Where have you been the last forty years?
In Illinois we have a governor named Blagojevich, a Yugo, and some people call him "Blago" like Slobo.
Human technology has.
Agriculture has.
The Industrial Revolution has.
Please take your anger at the world somewhere else.
I assume you would have your brain implanted?
Hate won't get you anywhere as a pope.
And it won't solve peak oil.
I think only the bomb will get you to reach your goals of hate.
In this regard you do not know my good friend, Jack Shiterman. In Latin America, for example, during the twentieth century the leading cause of death for woman in many (perhaps most) hospitals was complications from botched abortions.
How can you claim any knowledge of history and at the same time deny the well-known and fully documented facts of Vatican support for the Horthy regime in Hungary, the Nazis in Vichy France, etc.
I am pro-religion.
I am opposed to evil.
Where do you stand?
Let's begin with the basics:
GWBush is president of USA. He claims he got religion.
1a) I don't care what his religious views are (to the most part) because I care about policy and political choices instead. Religion is no argument. I can argue with you or with Writerman about particular policies or whether he is the man to lead the US as president or not. (Actually he's a lame duck...)
1b) A group of voters DO care what his religious views are - much of my family among them. That's too bad. WHAT these VOTERS believe is a totally other discussion.
- The Vatican (John Paul II) has not denied its sins. And logically: Any institution, especially one with a 2000 year history will have made personal and official decisions which were wrong, sinfull and have had bad effects. ("The Church is battered and splattered with the mud and blood of history" and is made up of imperfect people.) This, in and of itself, does not challenge its legitimacy or its own claims of what it is. You'll have to argue on a different level in order to challenge that. And I'm sure you'll have a gazillion arguments on those levels (a priori levels) too;-)
- You disagree with the Catholic Church's view on contraception, abortion, and probably a number of other things. Why - because the RESULTS are not those you wish for OR because you agree with the use of contraception, abortion, etc. on a moral level?
If the RESULTS are your goal, then you adher to utilitarianism (John Stuart Mills) - a Christian ethic says that the ACT (the moral choice) determines good or bad. The results are not in our hands anyway. THE MEANS do NOT justify THE ENDS. Utilitarianism says that the means DO justify the ends. I will not argue morals with you on the basis of results.4) I assume that you agree with the statement that our problem at the moment is population growth, although this was actually not the bent of your arguement - Writerman was implying it and Cherenkov said it explicitly. But what is meant here? (This is not necessarily a direct question to you.)
Do you mean the reproduction rate?
Do you mean the growth rate?
Or do you mean Absolute population numbers?
The (former) East Block, Japan and most of the Asian Tigers, China, all of Europe, and any other country that would claim to be "developed" have had negative reproduction rates since the 1970s. The US and Turkey have neutral reproduction rates at the time. Many "developing" countries like Egypt and Brasil are approaching neutral.
"Growth" rates are or will be negative in Japan, East Block and most of Europe within a decade. This means Population numbers are/will be soon shrinking there. The fulminously copulating catholic Dutch will not be able to do little more than keep the population stable after 2015 (They already have a average age of 39):
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=NL&out=d&ymax=250
There are many Catholics in the developed world. If the Pope is at fault for rising growth rates, wouldn't the French, Irish, Italians, Portugese, Poles, Spanish, cath. Germans, Flemmish, cath. Dutch be responsible for a huge population boom in Europe?
No, at the moment, only the Skandinavians (Protestants) are again approaching a 2.0 (i.e. neutral) birth rate once again.
4b) IF you mean the growth rate of the Third World, then blame the technology of the West for helping change death rates. Life expectancy in the Third World is (usually) at the moment well above 50 years. This wasn't even the case in Europe/USA in the 19th century.
Complex situations demand complex analysis.
5) When you suggest a brain transplant for the Pope, do you mean:
a) he should change the Church's stance on Contraception and Abortion? Then I offer a debate on the morality of contraception, NOT ON ITS RESULTS. Then we should keep the argument at the current Pope and the current stance of the curia, OR we can have a historical discussion. Stalin was an alterboy too. What kind of an argument is that?!!!
b) the Pope should disappear as an institution? That would be a bit more difficult and I would assume that you're not offering your brain as a replacement.
c) the Roman Catholic Church should disappear as an institution. Then I offer a debate on a biblical/theological level.
...If you are even still reading this Post!
Cheers, Dom, a Catholic who believes and knows why.
p.s. You asked!
The brain I would like to transplant into the Pope's head is that of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was probably the second smartest man in the history of philosophy. (The smartest was probably DesCartes, another devout Roman Catholic, who developed his mind-body dualism theory largely to save the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.)
Now here is what I like about Aquinas. He made his premises explicit. He was a man of great common sense, as was Aristotle. He was also a surprisingly tolerant man--except when it came to heresey. Aquinas believed in science, believed in reason, and he knew 100% for sure that there could not be a conflict between reason and faith, because he thought (and I agree) that the most important thing reason and science can do is to build a wall to defend true faith and expose heresy.
I do not know how much you have studied theology, nor how familiar you are with the original Greek and Latin texts, but in a strict sense, I am accusing the Pope of heresy, and although St. Thomas is no longer with us, his books are. And yes, I know that Thomas wrote a bunch of silly stuff on angels, but who among us is without error, except for thee and me;-) ?
You took grad classes in demographics? Yes, I envy you for that, although the classes were probably a lot drier than discussing amateur demographics on a PO-blog (surely an insult to the site owners).
Well, now that we're comparing credentials, my Greek and Hebrew are nill, my many Latin classes make it easier for me to sing Greg. Chant, but not to read philosophy or even help me understand the history that I mastered in. For all that, I now live in Munich and sell mortgages in German! Not bad for one of those stupid Americans who aren't supposed to be able to learn foreign languages for the life of them, right?-)
Oh, and my father is an oil producer in a state which peaked in 1893 and produced the Rockefellers.
I don't like forums because they go too fast. Look, it's already Monday evening (here in Germany) and I'm still on a thread from Saturday... Well, have to work and take care of the wife and kids in between.
So, now to the heresy bit:
A pope can be a heretic, as long as he doen't make it doctrine. A heretic is someone who not only disagrees with the official teachings, but with a major teaching - disagreeing with the trinity, for instance.
Now, which pope are you accusing of heresy - in disagreement with which teaching?
Or do you just simply disagree with Humanae Vitae?
If you have issues, Ask the Pope yourself.
This case was first made to me by an Egyptian friend of mine forty-eight years ago, and it is a stong case that I have never seen convincingly answered nor refuted in any way shape or manner. And yet, so huge is the ignorance of most Westerners that few of us have studied the Koran.
Ignorance is remediable. Stupidity is not. People who stereotype the nature of any of the great religions in a negative way seldom if ever speak from informed intelligence.
but what does that have to do with PO?
The "clash of civilizations" issue has much to do with Peak Oil and what the world is going to look like during the next fifty years.
The prognosis is Not Good.
I'm asking you what your point is. I'll stand on the side of the muslims with you.
BTW, they don't like contraception or Abortion either - That's for the heathen West/Unbelievers. They just don't have a central unit which produces unconfortable "dogmas".
No, I have never seen Syrianna, I have never seen a Simmons talk and I hate camping. I live in Germany and will probably have to wander south to the N.Sahara in an attempt to survive PO.
Once again, I recommend the film I mentioned, and Simmons is definitely worth a read.
LOL - China only a couple of weeks ago lifted its ban on One Child Per Family - why? because they are going to need the cheap labor -
If the US wanted to reduce its baby boom, then immediate back the move to return all illegals back to their country along with all their kids ...
No Bush does say much about which God he serves nor should he, the enlightened know and understand what he means ...
Thanks
That's long for GWB.
Yes, God exists, but only in our heads.
True Gods exist in the heads of true believers. God existed through Mother Teresa because she did God's work. His will was done through her. False Gods exist in those who talk the talk but walk a different path. Gearge Walker Bush begot a little Bush that walks the different path. IOW: I "love life" and that is why I am going to shock and awe those unbeleiving Iraqi's. Sounds very much like a crazed Muslim doesn't he? There is almost no difference between the two. They hold the same God in their head, the God of me and nobody else. Mother Teresa's God was the God of Caring for others. A very different kind of God.
This with running a pedophile racket is some serious business, and it is sickening. The management is using peoples' need to "believe" simply so they can do their racket - and the Vatican is LOADED with money. Sounds like mafiosi to me.
Cobb going after Yergin is fine with me, I do it as often as possible. But when he says
Nonsense. What a weak argument! Take a stand and study some data. We've got a pretty good idea how much oil there is left to find. Hubbert Linearizations, historical discovery data, the failure of current E&P to replace anywhere close to what we consume, country-by-country analysis of URR, etc. The "uncertainty" precautionary principle argument has been used with equally insignificant effect regarding climate change. When you can't heat your house or you're having constant rolling blackouts or there's gas rationing, then something will happen. And we're just one oil shock away from any of this. There is no spare capacity. That's it. Face up to it. And there's probably not going to be any going forward.So, Kurt, quit pontificating from the pulpit. Look at some data and get your hands dirty.
We can see trends certainly (in prices, in discoveries, in politics, in technology), but I can't think a wise observer is going to be too certain about where they lead ... not on a "30 to 40 year" timeline.
No one knows, and that's why the commodity markets take the easy way out, and use today's price as good a prediction as any.
I don't know what else to say. And especially with all the good work Stuart has done on the linearizations. One argument for a non-peak now is that there is a lag time between discovery and production which is maybe 5 to 10 years. If this discovery data is correct, as I believe and Bubba does too, then even with the lag we can foresee new URR coming online. And even with the usually bogus argument that EOR technology will squeeze more oil from existing fields, you've got to admit that things look bad since depletion from older, giant fields is the key variable.
The world is thoroughly explored geologically. Yes, there may be the odd "elephant" field out there. But, as I noted on a previous thread, what constitutes such a field has decreased from 1 Gb URR to 0.25 Gb URR in recent years. I'd say we have a pretty good idea of what world oil production looks like 30 to 40 years out.
So, yes, we do have a good approximation of the remaining recoverable oil in the ground and Cobb's precautionary principle is a weak argument given the data at hand.
You say "I'd say we have a pretty good idea of what world oil production looks like 30 to 40 years out."
OK, name it.
Year 2036 -- 10/mbpd (all liquids) maximum down from about 84/mbpd now. I believe this is a generous estimate. No harm, no foul.
best, Dave
Dave,
There's your problem. You joined the engineering fraternity at school. You didn't do enough partying. Instead, you wasted your time studying boring numbers and graphs.
The Yerginites joined the liberal arts, fun fraternities. They drank mega-kegs of beer and hard liquor. They still do. They know how to party hardy. They don't waste their time studying boring numbers and graphs (boring, as in boring a well). The nerdy tech fraternities do that low level work. They will provide. They always have. It's "their" problem, not Yergin's. The markets always provide.
A week ago that wasn't even known. This week it has to be both known and projected.
I'm curious about the "health alert" related to Canadian tar sands. This blew right by me.
Could you further descibe it, or link to it?
-- thanks! -- Gary (beggar)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/canadian_oil_pr.php
He's tyring the soft sell. Here at TOD, we are past the soft sell WRT peak oil.
A: Empowerment of women. In places where women have equal rights, they want fewer kids. That's good for population slowing.
B: Allow easy to get abortion. Abortion not just slows childbirth, but it also slows down production of unwanted kids in accord with Freakonomics. The side benefit is less child abuse and fewer criminals later. Great for law and order types!
C: Allow easy to get contraception. Condoms, Da Pill, and don't forget RU-486 (and "RU-Pentium") prevent abortions in the first place. See the previous.
D: Allow men to "divorce" fatherhood. That'll be real controversial. Think of the case of Matt Dubay and a possible "Roe v. Wade for Men". This with being unable to use men as 2-legged ATMs will deter childbirth like nothing else with the other 3 things implimented. A policy like that will balance reproductive rights in a way that BOTH potential parents will want that kid, deterring the "oopser" woman from trying to entrap a man. And Freakonomics applies with this deterrent like abortion itself. Both would have to "sign off" on producing the kid. If the man backs out, the woman has to either abort or be ready to take care of the kid as a single parent - a serious detterent to childbirth.
In third world places, work will have to be done to develop a cheap but safe abortion procedure, possibly to be done by the woman herself. A drug that causes miscarriage (spontaneous abortion), maybe? Also, cheap but safe and effective contraception is needed for third world use. A buck a pill is the max in cases like that. Empowerment of women and Roe v. Wade for Men are legal items, that are low-cost. (and theoretically zero energy use, since they are legal constructs)
The tricky part is that a "world federal government" would likely be needed to impliment the mandates of woman empowerment and Roe v. Wade for Men. Also, a world government would be needed to distribute contraception effectively. Too bad the UN is mostly ineffective if not downright irrelavant. :( I did like Kofi Annan. (We Chicagoans tend to overlook minor corruption)
A major problem is that religious leaders, looking to increase their power base, tend to frown upon anything that might slow child production. After all, the more brainwashed followers they have, the more power they get, by controlling people serving as robots. If you control a billion people, you have 100 million horsepower in human labour alone. That does not include any machines the minions are using! If you REALLY want to get behind the flight yoke of a machine with millions if not billions of horses, start a religion.
That's why so many of today's cutting-edge thinkers are willing to ditch the "humane, fair" part and restrict their ambitions from "saving humanity" to something more feasible, like white nationalist ecofascism.
Are YOU going to start the genozide?!
If I were to deal with PO I would simply factor in the so called "externalities" in our oil usage and tax it up to the skies. The market would take care of the rest and people would find out the best solutions in an evolutionary way, not the ones proposed by somebody living in his/her own world who thinks s/he knows the "solutions".
We need to factor the carbon tax, the air quality degradation, the loss of lives and health in traffic incidents, the loss of community cohesion etc. etc.
The biggest tax though would be "the future generations" tax - one that must be proportional to the scarcity of a given resource, meaning that it will rise with time. And of course all of this must not apply only to our oil usage, but to anything we do.
A: Tax fuel like no tomorrow. Throttle up the taxes gradually for best results. That will get market forces to work to advantage, and by reducing consumption, result in less money fed to terrorists. Too bad it's politically impossible or next to it.
B: Encourage car alternatives. Since commuting is the most energy-inefficient economic activity, getting people to switch to more efficient methods gets better productivity per gallon. (OK, I'm sounding a bit like an economist.) Things to do is undo laws that require registration of mopeds and allow faster mopeds, say a 5HP limit (any cc rating) so people will develop "mopeds" that can do freeway speed. SWomeone will sell them! Undo the 30MPH moped limit, to encourage hot-rodders.
C: Subsidise mass transit. This includes trains. The benefit is obvious, as those not like a MacGyver can more easally cut fuel consumption merely by taking a bus instead of getting behind the yoke of a car.
D: Mandate a 4-day work week. That'll save 20 percent of fuel consumption right off the bat. 4/10 instead of 5/8. Who wouldn't want 3-day weekends every weekends?
Commuting is the most energy-intensive economic activity I can think of. Why? If a worker makes $100/day and lives 4 gallons away, the GDP/gallon is $12.50/gallon. Not good. (he uses 8 gallons a day) A pizza driver may deliver a $12 pizza but use less than a litre of fuel for the mission. That'll be $48/gallon. It's obvious that we need to reduce fuel consumption for commuting, given the nearly epic distances many people drive. I live 2 litres away as of now, and want to live closer to work, despite suburbs not being my cup of tea.
People really need to think in terms of fuel consumption, not just minutes as far as distance. The mantra of navigators everywhere:
Time, Speed, Distance, and FUEL LEFT ON BOARD.
And we've only just begun in the good old USA. How can we trust a government that is doing this to rationally spend the "commons tax revenue"?
As a concrete example of how markets are limited, look at the medium we're all using right now. Would the internet have ever come about without government (via public universities) support? I seriously doubt it. Would we even be sitting in front of PC's if the government initiated space program in the 1960's hadn't started the ball rolling?
But the concrete microeconomis solutions, technologies etc. will be born by the private sector, and later the private sector itself will demand corrections of the global course if neccessary.
For example it is the responsibility of the government to put the strategic goal of abandoning fossil fuels and they may decide for example to build hydrogen economy instead (and start putting off the infrastructure). Later on the market may decide that hydrogen is not good and electrical transportation is better, and the government must change its policy accordingly. It has always been this way - in hard times or transitions, goverments have always been the ones that need to create the framework for the business to evolve/change. It hardly happens by itself.
Otherwise, how do you keep people from dumping their pollution downstream or downwind? Or damning up all the water so communities downstream have none?
It's already something of a problem. Coal burned in Ohio causes acid rain in New England. California and Nevada are fighting over the amount of radiation Nevada is allowed to dump in rivers that flow through California. Water wars are already an issue in the west, and are likely to get worse.
Peak oil is going to be a global issue. Coal burned in China will increase global warming for us all. Nuclear war in the Middle East is likely to have repercussions far outside the region. Etc. These are not things we can "deal with on our own."
There needs to be something/somebody acting as corrective to short-termed and short-sighted exploitation of nature or/and people. If you just take a look around you will see that we have so many of these correctives already installed and incorporated in our lives, to an extent that we even fail to notice them. We have laws, moral, complex sets of everyday rules etc. etc. all for one purpose - to keep the long-term stability (or sustainability if you wish) of the system.
Blueridge,
Excellent point. This is proof of how much we are all into denial.
Those who worship the Invisible Hand are in complete denial of how transistors, integrated circuits, personal computers (PC's) and the Internet all came into being.
It was all thanks to the government war machine.
Research into integrated circuits (IC's) was supported by the Pentagon because they wanted lighter electronics for their ICBM missiles. The private market sector could not have done it because there was not enough ROI (Return on Investment) in basic R&D.
Same goes for the Internet. It was invented in response to Dr. Strangelove's request: make me a system that can survive the bomb.
Dr. Strangelove is not interested in how the peons will survive Peak Oil. That's their problem. And "The Market" will not provide unless Dr. Strangelove pays it to try and do so.
For example, do we count the cost of the Iraq war? Some claim we're only there for oil, but that is far from universally accepted. Even worse, should we count the cost of our entire military budget as being about protecting oil resources? That is far more controversial.
You're worried about greenhouse warming and carbon emissions, but the problem is that if you do a straight, mainstream economic analysis of the costs of global warming, discounted to the present day as is the norm in such analyses, the costs are very low. Basically they are talking about a 2-3 degree C rise in 100 years, and discounted to today, that's nothing. Yes, there are those who say that the costs of global warming are coming sooner, even today, but those are controversial and not mainstream.
Looking at social factors like the loss of community cohesion, and such, these are far harder to quantify. And what about the beneficial externalities, like greater mobility and freedom? Sexual liberation? Car culture has made an enormous impact and is arguably responsible for many of the cultural changes we have seen from 100 years ago. Who would seriously argue that the culture of 1900 was superior to today?
As far as your "future generations" tax, that is not needed at all. Standard economic theory predicts that the price of a resource will rise exponentially as it approaches exhaustion, suppressing demand and leaving more for future generations. This theory also shows that this effect optimizes the net social benefit of the resource (again, with future benefits discounted as usual due to the uncertainty of what things will be like then).
Of course, if its goal was securing the oil indeed (and you have my bet on it). I imagine it would be hard for the politicians to explain why they need to make the public pay through fuel prices, but this could be some kind of enforcement of policy transparency, isn't it? Surely this is more of a science fiction we are talking about.
Basically they are talking about a 2-3 degree C rise in 100 years, and discounted to today, that's nothing.
How do you know for sure it would be 2-3 degrees, it would be in 100 years, and how do you know what will be the effects/costs? There are various scenarious and you have to account for all of them. Of course you can hardly put correct weights on each one of them, but you can at least try to estimate the risks correspondent to GW. What are the risks of global starvation due to draughts for example? How do you price in millions of deaths? If you price in the risks you will find out that the real price we do not pay today will be much too high. And... the costs in 50 or 100 years promise to be enormous even discounted to today. 2-3 degrees is not nothing - it would mean that New York, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam etc. etc. would be underwater. How much is worth the oil left in the ground? $60-80 trillion, todays prices, I guess. Just the cost of rebuilding these cities will be much higher IMO.
Standard economic theory predicts that the price of a resource will rise exponentially as it approaches exhaustion, suppressing demand and leaving more for future generations.
I'm sorry but this is an utter BS. It does not mean "leaving more for future generations" it means that we are leaving more and more expensive resource and more and more of lower standard and suffering for the future generations. The only way to avoid it is try to level things out and stimulate the market to avoid entering this trap by giving it time to accomodate.
Great idea, but I can still remember the screams of outrage from business and the auto industry.
Think how different the world might be if a carbon tax in the U.S. would have been in place for 13 years now.
Regarding the business resistance - this is a good testament of who in fact is ruling this country and how far this "who" is planning for the future. Turns out that the next decade or two profits of some miniscule percentage of the US population are more important that the fate of the whole country long-term.
The bad news is that these guys still have their rational-like ideology in the face of classical economics, and can easily slaughter any good idea with nice talks for "free market" and "market efficency".
I am away from home (in Phoenix helping my parents after my father's knee surgery) and do not have access to my complete list. Bascially every town of 200,000 or larger in France that "voted correctly" is getting one new tram line and those over a half million or so are getting two new tram lines.
Since 1973, France has been steadily building the infrastructure to cope with Peak Oil (national economic security has been the guiding force) even though Peak Oil was not on the radar in 1973. It takes a while to build alternatives to oil without a crash program (and their construction of nuclear reactors in the 1970s & 1980s to replace oil fired power plants could be considered a crash program).
From a handfull of nuclear reactors in 1973 to over 90% of their electricity coming from nuke & hydro (and one tidal plant). After a lull, they are considering two to four more reactors.
They are working on the last few spurs of their high speed electric passenger trains, the TGV. And now trams in very town of any size (that votes correctly).
Their one weak point is freight rail. Most goods are transported by truck and not by rail. French rail unions are often blamed for the failure of the Chunnel (between England & France) to attract much rail freight. They work against a modal shift away from trucks because of their union rules, strikes, etc. per reports.
Still, even with this gap, France exports enough to get the oil they need for essentials, and they can survive Peak Oil quite well, IMHO. And moving freight from trucks to rail can be done with reforms IF it is seen as being essential for the national interest.
Here in Berlin, the eastern bourroughs have are served with a big tramline system, the western bourroughs have almost no tramline. In the 60ies, the city government decided to plan the car friendly city. On account of that, some underground lines were built, paid by money from the FRG to support the front city. Today it is almost impossible planning or building new tramlines in the western parts. Not only on account of lack of money.
My uncle moved from Berlin to Munich in the early 90's, so I lost track of what was happening in Berlin.
The S-Bahn rolling stock may not have been up to much, but the network was quite extensive, as I remember it. Still, I bet the land was valuable real-estate.
- Went to 75% Nuclear Power.
- Protects its farming and localised food supply.
- Ignores edicts fronm Brussels and the EEC whenever it suits them
- Looks after its strategic industries and protects them from buy out.
- Its politicians always put France First
- Acts in a realpolitik fashion.
- Gets things done wrt Transport
They have one of the best chances of surviving PO inEurope. Its almost as if they saw it coming.
France isn't, as I'm sure you're aware a country without substantial problems, all countries have problems after all. There is a great deal of unemployment. That's just one example.
I think we have to remember to that Peak Oil is a global problem which will affect the global economy negatively, even including countries which appear to be better situated than others. Our economies are all interconected these days.
What I like most about France is the food. I have eaten some really great meals in France, and cakes and pastries too die for!
What I really meant to say here, is, that France is perhaps the most centralised country in Europe. The State is really powerful and takes a far more interventionist stance than in the US. It's easier to undertake large national projects in France and see them implimented in full. This system of course has it's positive and negative sides. Can't see the US turning into France though. However, on second thoughts it might not be such a bad idea.
Yes, the French do have a relatively high level of unemployment (perhaps they are truthful in their statistics compared with say, the UK or the US...).
Every now and then, the French people go to the polls and elect somebody from right or left, but they always seem to get a Frenchman who believes in France. Unlike our poodles in the UK who would appear to follow whatever line is fed them from BushInc.
I certainly agree with you concerning the food! (and the wine)
And of course there are the summer sunsets. Paradise with an educated Civil Service and a centralised approach to national problems.
Still they are not perfect. As Bush stated: 'The trouble with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur'. Dorme bien.
Pre-euro, the French had the Franc as the unit of money. I still to this day use a French R if I say that word! I suppose I should take a French class, and let the teacher freak out on my install of a French accent. France wouldn't be a bad place to move to if you hit the lotto, except for a contingent of North African type Moslems. In Paris, they recently caused a bunch of trouble. I guess they couldn't get into being French people. Note that I have multiple accents installed, some normally not used.
As far as transport, the French have those really high speed trains. They use wires suspended over the tracks and a device on top of the locomotive to get the power, with the tracks being the ground. Being a nice big series-wound motor on wheels, it packs a lot of power in the package. Just the thing to give a train some get up and go. Our Amtrak try is pathetic as the train must carry a diesel genset as well as the series-wound motors, a major efficiency hit. It's dead weight to accellerate while wires do the same job in France.
To a northern, busy, city person the southerns seem lazy but I would not call it this way - maybe they just prefer to live like this and I don't think we can judge them. IMO, we too have that division in USA to some extent, but the non-socialistic environment does not allow it to show that much - here if you are unemployed you may as well be dead.
France is a southern country in many aspects, especially south of Paris and has some strong socialistic elements. I don't think French people mind that though.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5678833,00.html
Yes we are... no we're not.... yes we are... no we're not.....
and crush him.
Bike prices have shot up about 3000%.
Zimbabwe, once a garden of eden and net exporter of crops is on the brink of starvation. This is not due to PO though,it is due to appalling mismanagment. Oil Prices have just made it worse.
You know it's bad when they're hoping inflation will go down to 200%.
But the government would rather see its own people starve to death than admit failure.
This is relatively easy when you ban foreign news agenciesw
I have been reading this excellent site since the beginning, but I am an infrequent poster.
I have a question for everyone. My son is in second grade and has a science fair in May. I have been talking to him a bit about Peak Oil, and he is interested in doing a project that is somehow related.
Does anyone have any good science fair project ideas? Please remember that he is in second grade, and while he is very bright, it has to be something at a level that he can do the work.
Thanks everyone!
Could probably be done by rolling down a small hill. I have no immediate idea on how to do it as a simple indoor experiment.
- Small tire off trike/small bike. 4 would work best.
- ramp
- hand saw to cut 2x4 to make the tire holders
- white paper
- pen
- spring for tire holding 2x4's to slam into
- mousetrap. (for pulling the release pin and who doesn't love a mousetrap in a science project)
An object with less rolling resistance will compress the spring more than more rolling resistance. (cite various laws of energy conservation) The pen keeps track of the maximum compression. Have child collect data.Extra credit if you build the ramp with lottsa little holes to make an air table and do a frictionless spring slammer version of the tire-car.
One idea would be some kind of a model of an oil well. Kids love to make models like that. Sometimes I have heard an oil reservoir as being like water in a sponge. It's easy to suck water out at first but then it stops, even though there's still a lot of water there.
So suppose you stuffed a sponge in a glass and put a straw in it, then poured in water. You'd be able to get water out at first but pretty soon it's all trapped in the sponge. The idea is that even though we have lots of oil underground, we may run out in terms of being able to get it out.
Here's another idea that would be a little more ambitious. Use a larger container like a baking dish and stuff it with the sponge (could use layers of paper towels just as well). Fill it with colored water to represent oil, put the straw at one end, and at first it produces plenty of oil but pretty soon there is no more coming out. Now flood the field with plain water at the other end, like water injection. The water will wash some "oil" out of the "rock" and you can get more coming out at the oil well end.
I'm not sure how you could rig up the suction though, so that people could see it. You don't really want your son sucking water and then spitting it into a cup. If you could get a small water pump that might work, it could go at the bottom of the "oil well" side.
Anyway I'll bet you could come up with some kind of model like this, it would be fun and would illustrate some of the principles of oil extraction. The idea again would be that even when there is a lot of oil in the rock, production levels could decrease.
As for suction, why not a simple hose/water tank that you lower, thus creating a siphon?
To show the 'amount of oil' in the sponge, use the weight of the sponge + oil. Water injected not at the bottom of the sponge would show poor field management.
She then wanted to talk about how to use less oil.
That's interesting, I say. Fewer deer kills. [For the benefit of you city folks, deer keep the body shops in business in many rural areas, and you can total-out a brand new $25,000 full-size truck if you hit a big buck head on at 65 m.p.h.] What else would happen? Sad face . . . no more water-skiing. But that is O.K. because we can always fish or swim instead. Happy face: School buses could not run and so I wouldn't have to go to school; mommy could teach me at home. Couldn't you ride your bike to school? Grandpa, it takes an hour on the bus, much to far to bike. Maybe Mommy could open a school in our house . . . .
Suburban granddaughter sees things differently. No money for gas . . . does the Repo man get the car? (She is almost eight and highly sophisticated, already reads on the sixth grade level and has "Paper Moon" as one of her favorite movies.) Maybe, I say. Well, then, we'll just have to ride our bikes to the Food Shelf, because we'll be too broke to buy food. But, says I gently, what if they are out at the Food Shelf. Budding anthropologist that she is, her response is simple: "Grandpa, we'd just move in with you, because that's what people always do when times get bad."
Out of the mouths of babes . . . .
Oh, and for science projects, starting a fire with a convex lens (cheap magnifying glass) and sunlight is as simple and fascinating as it gets. In terms of physics and astronomy, you can get a lot of mileage out of this demonstration.
Some ideas:
- Reduced voltage fluorescent lights
- Solar water heating
- Better use of sunlight instead of lighting
- Passive heating/cooling
- Hybrid, bio-fuel buses
- Vege garden for school lunch ingredients
- etc. etc.
He could start by doing a simple 'energy-audit' of the school's energy use, then try to find the 'low hanging fruit'.Please let us know how he gets on.
We need a kind of new "reformation" of our most cherished beliefs. In much the same way that Martin Luther saw the corruption in the Church of Rome and saw that it had to change or die. So, I think we need to reform our secular religion if we're going to find the answers to our problems.
Can the concept of Free Market Capitalism handle something so monumental as PO? I have thought about this for about three or four years. Now my background has been pretty much FMC all my working life, but I am beginning to 'doubt the pillars of my house'.
FMC has brought so much to us here in the west (2/3 rds of the world may object to that statement and possibly correctly) But FMC was mid-wifed and fed by cheap oil. FMC has not met a challenge like PO in its reign since 1945.
My take? (for what its worth). Simmons and others crying for a new 'Manhattan Project'.This Must imply thereby a war footing economy (the war being against energy depletion , not terror/Islam/other people.).
1)Conservation
2)Rationing, but not by price (how do the nurses get to work? or the cleaners/teachers/firemen/police/other essential workers?)
3)Education: Conspicuous consumption must elicit oprobrium and contempt
4) National planning for the common weal
Now all the above may smell of socialism, which, to the US may well be an anathema. But, if a society will not hang together, then its members will hang seperately.
On my travels in the US, I was always struck by the general level of neighborliness and the potential of the 'social glue' that binds communities together. If the truth regarding PO was put to the people of the US and a leader of sufficient vision was to propel the enormity of the problem into the minds of the American people, then they would rise to the challenge.
America was once described by one of our better leaders as 'The last, best hope of the human race'. Dont blow it.
Wasn't FMC embodied in the founding of the US? Granted the rise of the corporate form of organization probably paralleled the development of the petroleum infrastructure as massive amounts of capital were raised. (And there is one big problem with corporations - management not being held accountable by the shareholders as the shareholders become highly diverse - but that is another topic.) FMC should and I think will deal with Peak Oil but that does not mean that it will not be painful. Remember FMC rewards those that see the future clearly AND ACT ON IT. Personally I do not want the government to step in and try to do a better job than FMC, they alway f**k it up. Let the entrepreneurs and VCs deal with it. We keep wanting the government to help us so it won't hurt so bad. There is nothing we can do to make it not hurt bad. It will hurt bad. Face it. Prepare for it. If you prepare for it better than most you will be better off than most and you can help them if you choose. But the idea that government will help is very dangerous. Government's role is to protect liberty not access to oil or any other resource. Today it is taking away liberties to protect our access to oil.
- is the 'free market' "free" per the works of Adam Smith
- Corporate form under FMC tend to be preditory (and not very Adam Smith transparent market with informed buyer/seller)
FMC was fueled by the land, wood, and minerals - those resources were will picked over in Europe.Government's role is to protect liberty not access to oil or any other resource.
What about the role of the regulated monopoly WRT electrical power? The idea that there is only so much copper, and to conserve that resource by only having one power provider per area.
Locke had a vision of a good society with abundance and good-natured people made that way by the rule of law. Hobbes had a dark vision of absolute government being the only alternative to complete anarchy, the war of each against all.
Interestingly enough, both Locke and Hobbes seem to have been about right: Where there is abundance (Sweden, U.K., Japan, Taiwan) life approximates what Locke envisioned. Where there is stark poverty and starvation, e.g. N. Korea, we have absolute government or, e.g. Zimbabwe or Nigeria, gangsterism plus anarchy and genocide always waiting in the wings.
Of course there are many in-between cases, but IMO both Locke and Hobbes deserve serious study.
"Leviathan" is a long book.
Did you know that Hobbes was one of the very few philosophers ever to go insane? Senile dementia.
The only other notable philosopher to go crazy was Nietsche, and that was due to general paresis (tertiary syphilis). I find the sanity of philosophers refreshing, except for some of the gloomy Germans (Kant was the last cheerful German philosopher--quite a fun guy and popular with his students.) and alcoholic Frenchmen such as John Paul Sartre or the weird Camus who claimed that only homosexual love could be of love of the highest quality.
Of recent philosophers, my favorites are the two cheerful and extraordinary long-lived popularizers, Will Durant and especially Mortimer Adler. Mortimer was a real character; once at Cragun's Resort in Brainerd, Minnesota, c. 1985, I had the room next to his and was waked up around four in the morning by the machine-gun speed of his manual typewriter. He dropped out of high school at age 16 and became a journalist--don't know where he learned to type so fast. He wrote every day, about three hours a day, six days a week--fantastic man. I used to be able to do about 95 words a minute on a manual typewriter (60 n.w.p.m. subtracting ten words off for each typo), and he was a lot faster at age eighty plus than I ever was.
Plato, for example evolved enormously as a thinker, from more or less a note-taker (though it was probably a slave who actually took the notes that Plato edited) of the sayings of Socrates to the middle-aged man of "The Republic" to the conservative wisdom of "The Laws."
BTW, all of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Best start with Plato, read it all in good translations (I like the Penguin and Hackett ones best, but there are other good ones. Avoid Jowett translation.) Also read Aristotle's "Ethics" and "Politics" (originally one book, because like his teacher Plato, Aristotle regarded ethics and politics as one ball of wax and would be dumbfounded by the modern separation of these areas of philosophy).
Funny thing, Locke hated Aristotle when he was in school (Locke studied to be a doctor and practiced as a physician and surgeon, especially to his patron--also did some spying and revolutionary work that nearly got himself killed.) but when you see the way Locke reasons, his common sense and empirical approach, you can see that he is very much working in the pragmatic tradition of Aristotle. It was the bad teachers that ruined Aristotle for thousands of students for hundreds of years.
Now if you are not a Christian (or other believer) you are going to have have a problem with Locke. He was a devout Christian and his whole philosophical system depends on a Christian type of God. Hobbes believed that religion was bunk and as a sort of proto-Marxist thought religion was invented by the powerful to protect their privileges.
Insofar as the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were influenced by Locke (and they were, enormously), the principles of our Constitutional government also assume a Christian God. Sorry if that offends you agnostics and atheists, but I believe there is a rather strong consensus of prominent historians on this point. Adam Smith also was a Christian, as is clearly shown in "Theory of Moral Sentiment," which can be seen as an answer to Hume--Hume who was a closet agnostic. (Probably he was not an atheist. Hume was raised a strict Scots Presbyterian, and in the ten weeks he lost his faith he gained sixty pounds--which he never lost. Indeed Hume was the fattest and probably most popular with women of any of the philosophers, a fascinating guy, as was his predecessor in British Empricism, Bishop Berkeley.)
Interesting position.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Tripoli.htm
Officially called the "Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary," most refer to it as simply the Treaty of Tripoli. In Article 11, it states:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
Of course the U.S. was not founded on Christianity. Of course it was not founded on slavery. Of course it was not founded on genocide. Of course it was not founded on denial of rights to women. Of course it was not founded to protect the property of the rich. Everybody knows that. Right?
Now we live in times of over population and resource scarcity. The pursuit of happiness is a tougher chase. Liberty is up to her knees in melted polar water and domestic espionage. The times they are a changing.
Finally we gave up and told them that we were electing representatives to Parliament, their's or ours, and we weren't interested in pleading for them to be reasonable anymore. Now we were just going to do what we wanted.
Too bad the war didn't last a few years longer. Both sides were liberating each other's slaves. Another few years and it wouldn't have been practical to round them all up.
Part of this is the lens of history. Much of what we are 'seeing' is what we want to see.
good-natured people made that way by the rule of law.
There is very little hope for America then, what with the maze of laws AND the selective enforcement.
Interesting observation about Hobbes WRT the founding fathers. Wonder if one could graph positive Hobes comments and the paperwork of present political class?
One can create two currencies, dollars and gasoline/diesel coupons with a floating exchange rate between them in a transistion period. But once a stable exchange rate is set up (One gallon of gas costs $5 at the pump + a coupon worth $3.35 on the open market), one might as well issue a $100 bill each month instead a ration of 30 gallons. And tax gasoline an extra $3.33/gallon.
Please note that the two competitive alternative energy sources to arise since 1973 did so without the help of gov't R&D. Wind came from Denmark and the wind turbines in use today owe almost nothing to the billions spent by Gov't R&D. Likewise geothermal generation (although gov't owned utilities did the real world problem solving on the first ones).
Whatever the cause, this was a lousy year for ice-fishing...
Another bright spot: Today I saw several species of finches in my feeder: Never before have finches come before the Ides of March, and usually they come later. Also, to my astonishment, about a week ago I saw a bald eagle dive on prey from my window, and I have never before ever seen an eagle anywhere near this early in spring.
Always watch the birds. The canary in the mineshaft is not only a metaphor . . . .
Perhaps a sign of the Gulf Stream beginning to fail and now affect the weather?
But to get through Peak Oil aren't we going to need a bit of discipline? The question is where is this discipline going to come from? Is it something we'll find inside us? Will we voluntarilly take control of our own individual lives and society and exercise self-dicipline? Or will dicipline be imposed upon us by external factors, harshly, even brutally? Will we in common devolve power and find solutions to our problems, or will a strong, centralised state impose discipline on us for our own good?
Unfortunately, this is all completely wrong. It is one of the most common economic fallacies, noting what you get and ignoring what you would have gotten instead. A fundamental maxim of economics is "the cost of anything is the foregone alternative," and what that means is that when you get something, you give up something else.
In Cobb's case, the point is that if all those things were so good, we'd have them anyway. If people wanted efficient mass transport, they would be willing to pay for it. But almost every bus and rail line in the country runs at a loss. People are simply not willing to pay what it costs to run a high quality mass transit system. That means that these systems do not make economic sense. They are very expensive to operate, which is why they need subsidies.
We see the mass transit, but we don't see what we could have had if that money had been available to spend on something else. The foregone alternative is hidden, and you need imagination to see it. And I can't say what exactly that alternative would be - probably lots of small things that would make people's lives better or more pleasant in small ways. They gave up all that in order to have their mass transit, but they aren't necessarily aware of it. Still it is a real cost.
Likewise with his other suggestions. Surely readers here are aware of how expensive this non-polluting, "green" energy is! It is one of the most common arguments of the Peak Oil doomster, that renewable energy won't be able to fill in the gaps. We've all heard it. Switching to renewable energy on a large scale will be one of the most expensive projects in history. We will all have to sacrifice to achieve it, and again that means that we are giving up things that could have made our lives better. (Again, recall that we are discussing Cobb's point that these measures would make sense even if peak oil never happens!)
As far as locally grown food and self-sufficient communities, this ignores the fact that trade, the division of labor, and specialization has probably been responsible for more human progress than any other economic measure. At one time, yes, communities were self-sufficient and everyone was a jack of all trades. But such a system is terribly inefficient, because most people just aren't good at most things, and communities are not all equally well suited to produce all goods. Why should I labor with my non-green thumb to try to grow a garden, when I can make a far greater contribution to the world with my intellectual skills and training? Why should some gifted gardener have to fix their own electrical equipment when I could do it for them far more easily?
The division of labor, at first via barter and then later via an economic system, allows each person to specialize in what he is best at. This greatly increases overall average productivity, which means more wealth and more goods for everyone. Going back to a system based on self-sufficiency and growing your own food as Cobb suggests would mean an enormous sacrifice in terms of what we have available in our lives, as well as a great decrease in quality.
Frankly, I feel almost embarrassed to mention these points, as they should be so obvious. It is sad that some have forgotten the very basic fundamentals that have made the Western free market system the economic engine of the world.
Cobb's claim that making these changes would lead to improved lives even if nothing happens with peak oil could not be more wrong. It may be that we will be forced to take these and similar measures in the face of a peak oil threat, but if so it will be because we have no choice. The world Cobb describes will be harsh, poor and uncomfortable compared to what we are all used to. The notion that we should welcome this transformation and seek to bring it about even without peak oil looming is one of the worst ideas I have read on the topic.
As to Cobb's surmise that all this would be good even if peak oil is wrong, that's just simply nonsense because the presupposition that peak oil may not happen is false and powering down is going to be painful no matter what.
The inevitable transition will be either 1) mildly painful, 2) moderately painful or 3) extremely painful. So it's kind of weird. He says we should make these transitions even is peak oil does not happen--which will cause pain in the range of #1 to #3 above but on the other hand, since peak oil is almost certainly correct, we will suffer pain in the range #1 to #3 anyway.
When you say
I could not agree more. If I believed that mankind could go on like this indefinitely, I wouldn't want to make any changes either. I like it when I flip the switch and the light goes on. I like it when I can put gas in my old car and it runs. I like it when the internet is available to me every day and the power grid is still on. I like it when I can heat my house when it gets really cold outside. The pain and suffering, however, are inevitable in my view so it goes back, as usual, to the "Hirsch Gap" and the mitigating steps we need to take to muddle through this crisis somehow.But reality can't be ignored here. Cobb may be confused here but as far as powering down goes, that's gonna happen. But I certainly won't pretend that it's going to be better world after the fact. But, as I posted above in this thread, I think Cobb's argument is weak anyway since he does not see fit to consider the data that leads us at TOD to conclude that peak oil is either here or very close out in the future. But Cobb is speaking from church, as I said earlier on this thread. Confusion reigns.
We are sailing into a hurricane.
Batten down the hatches.
1st Law--Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy in the universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.
2nd Law--In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state. This is also known as the law of entropy.
3rd Law--It is impossible to cool a body to absolute zero by any finite process. This is actually more of a postulate than a law. In any case, it has little application to our discussion and is presented here merely for thoroughness.
nothing more.
history channel reported several days ago that in the past a coal miner could mine about 2.4 tons of coal per day.
history channel reported that now a coal miner can produce over 50 tons per day.
is this bad or good?
See Detroit (aka Motor City & Capital of the Auto Industry). A decayed, stinking inner "city" dead zone surrounded by suburbs & exurbs in less than robust health. Bad traffic, very few walkable neighborhoods, not attractive at all to new industry.
The same would have happened to most of the District of Columbia were it not for WMATA subway system (which could run at a profit via higher fares, but the social negatives of that are so great that it is better socially to operate at lower fares with a subsidy).
The alternatives to subsidizing mass transit is NOT as you suppose "something nice", but social & economic isolation for all those who cannot afford to drive or cannot drive, the transformation of cities to serve the auto above all else (with sprawl, high per capita gasoline use), massive amounts of time spent commuting, high death & disability rates, pollution, and other the other things "Detroit" sells.
I am currently in Phoenix and what a dysfunctional city. I cannot wait to return to my Disaster Zone ! A broken New Orleans is a far better place for humans to live than Phoenix. But cars MUCH prefer this sprawling suburban "city".
Your entire thesis rests on the assumption that what we are doing as a civilization is ecologically and even morally right. But the market is incapable of deciding whether something is ecologically right, let alone morally right. The market (globally) still supports slavery, drug trade, extortion, and even murder. The market was incapable of caring about the ecology in the US until the laws were passed that forced the market to do so.
So your paean to the market doesn't impress me. The market is nothing more than the short term wants (not needs) of whomever can afford to play in the marketplace at a given time. Humans have demonstrated a penchant for failing to plan forward and the market is the ultimate expression of this inability to plan forward for anything except self-gratification of whomever is participating. This is demonstrated in the horrors inflicted on the Nigerian environment by the IOCs. You can argue what you want about the Nigerian government but those companies did not have to act that way, yet they did. They absolutely did, in order to make their short term bottom line as big as possible.
So I reject your argument that the foregone alternative is better and thus represents a loss of some sort. I reject your notion that the market is the ultimate wise arbiter of human activity. I reject your claims that just because a madman places a bet (in the market) that his opinion instantly becomes more credible than someone else who has not placed such a bet.
Further, your assumptions always rest on the notion that the market makes the best decisions. This itself assumes that the market always has the best and most accurate information available to it, and in the case of oil specifically we've already seen that the quality of data, especially provided by OPEC countries, is horrible. We've even got cases where it's deliberately massaged, and once that is revealed the market even failed to react to these lies. This suggests that the market doesn't even give a damn about information but again, only about short term gratification. And focusing on short term gratification is going to have tremendous consequences. We know that the market is manipulated because organizations like OPEC exist precisely for that purpose. And we know that OPEC has been able to have impacts in the past thus the fear of OPEC's strength factors into the short term gratification calculations of every player in the market currently.
The market has its uses but every time an unbridled market has been allowed to do what it wants, we've had serious ecological impacts. And the short term gratification effect persists, as jobs and factories move from nations that have implemented laws to protect environment to nations where such laws do not exist or are weakly enforced. This is the behavior that you hold up as good???? This is the behavior that you claim knows better than anyone else what our future course should be as we facec disastrous consequences for runaway growth?
Excuse me while I go laugh.
Could you just remind the rest of us where Halfin claimed that a madman who places a bet instantly becomes more credible than someone else who has not placed a bet? I can't seem to find it.
I know that people have complained about my posting betting market results, but frankly I don't think you can find a better or more objective estimate of the odds of future events than those markets. In the case of an attack on Iran, intrade.com has run a market on that topic for many months. You can not only see current odds, you can see how they have varied over time to get an idea of whether the situation is getting better or worse.
It's easy to say stuff like "face it, it's gonna happen," or "no way, they wouldn't dare," but that's just talk. People in these markets are backing up their opinions with real money. That automatically gives them more credibility. And the market averages everyone's opinion to come up with an overall consensus, which is another thing that's hard to get just by reading different people's opinions.
Specifically, he claims:
- that the market is the most objective barometer of future events
- that anything else is "just talk"
- that anyone backing their opinion with money is more credible than anyone who is not.
We know that the market has its share of fools, crazies, racists, or anything else, but Halfin simply ignores that and instead focuses on whether they've put money into the market or not. I used hyperbole to make a point - Halfin fails to take into account exactly such nonsense and instead counts such nonsense as a blessing. In fact, Halfin's prescription for believing in the god-like market is an invitation to manipulate the market, which has actually occurred in the past.Finally, you fail to address my other points to Halfin about the failure of the market to account for ecological damage, the failure of the market to account for morality, and the tendency of the market to actually simply be a barometer of gratification, rather than anything else. Instead you attempt to focus on that one statement of hyperbole in an effort to discredit me without addressing my other points. But the market has no corner of correctness, no magical crystal ball, and has been frequently wrong in the past. The market has not stopped ecological devastation and participants in the market actively seek to avoid any attempts to force the market to consider ecological costs. Why the market continues to be elevated to some deity-like position as far as seeing the future escapes me especially when the future consequences are all ecologically related.
One reason is that those that predict better "win" and get to place larger bets next time. Those that guess wrong, get smaller bets next time.
Those that are out of touch with reality quickly stop betting due to their losses.
One can make predictions with nothing to gain or lose but a little ego. The market requires that one place real bets (not so good when one is betting other peoples money, better when betting your own. Although those that lose "other people's money soon have no monies to bet with).
Clearly, betting real money will create more highly motivated research than those driven merely by ego. (One would have lost tons of $$ listening to Kunstler, driven only my ego. He may have the direction right, but his timing is TERRIBLE !)
Warren Buffett has been right far more than wrong for a half century. He gets a BIG pile to bet with AND people pay attention to his decisions.
I call that a punt.
If you are talking about spot vs. near-month, those two prices are actually pegged. WTI/spot is basically pegged on the Nymex Futures.
In order for both prices to be "right" (and for the market to hold true intelligence), we have to take the tautology as our exit: Both prices were "perfect" and conditions just changed.
The problem with such tautological logic is that it can a) it can never be disproved, and b) it isn't really very helpful.
But 5 years ago would have been 2001. So in 2001, 2006 Futures would have been $20-30. Today(2006), 2011 futures are about $60. You can check www.nymex.com for by the month out to 2012, I believe. The $20-30 price, however was the case back into at least the 1990's.
The prices are right. If you want to make a contract for oil delivery in 2012, it will cost you $60 a barrel. Whether the party you contract with can meet that obligation is another story, but that is the case with anything. But that is a real price, not some abstract. Whether it is a future, a forward, or some other financial derivative, it is real.
Any "intelligence" that the market brings is as much due to how the players involved use the tools they have as it is to the information the market provides.
If you contract for oil now for 2012 at $60, you may or may not be overpaying. You won't know until 2012. But the "future" is the tool you have to hedge.
Enron was in the Weather Futures business at the end. I have a Financial textbook which includes a chapter prefaced with Enron's pioneering in this field.
I believe Halfin is telling us that we should "believe the market" each time, at 20-30, and at 60-65.
This is different from the obvious use of futures by oil consumers for hedging, time averaging, etc.
I don't have to address any of your other points to Halfin. Why? Because, I have in fact discredited you by focusing on that one statement.
Maybe I would feel more like addressing your points if I knew that what you were arguing against wasn't created by you in the first place.
LOL.
You still ignore the ecological costs that the market has attempted to ignore and never ever considered until they were rammed down the throat of players in the market by government implementing laws. You still ignore the inability of the market to make any type of moral choice.
I'll take that from you as a concession that I am correct. Thank you very much for agreeing with me. Have a nice day!
Please confirm that this is the position that you are supporting, which is what Halfin has claimed as I showed by quoting him directly. And if you disagree, then how do you separate the valid (and now "more" credible) opinions in the market from those that are not valid and not deserving of credibility? (Of course, if you disagree, you already disagree with Halfin's position.) Please explain. This should be really interesting.
Finally you are the one manufacturing fantasy here. I never claimed he stated what I said. I never put his comment in quotes or said that he literally said that. I extrapolated from his position and made an exaggerated statement to make a point, as I said previously. So quit saying that I claimed Halfin said that. I made no such claim, ever, anywhere. YOU DID. I simply used Halfin's logic to construct that statement as an illustration of the absurdity of his position.
Look at that, everybody is worried about dieting, and I get to chow down.
As part of this campaign I did my Sunday morning walk ... 5 or 6 miles out and around the neighborhood, stopping at a burger joint (gotta get those 2900 calories), for a coffee (should cut down on the caffiene), and at the market (carrying home a few pounds of food is also "natural").
Now, you paint it that all those doughy people zooming past me in the proverbial SUVs "want" to do that, so that makes them "happier."
Are you sure they have it right?
Oh, BTW, I maintain a stable weight at about 4,000 calories a day, but the problem is that if I'm around irresitible food I yield to temptation and in my youthful follies would sometimes eat 10,000+ calories per day. I've never been very fat, just plump and in good shape. IMO fighting temptation is fighting Mother Nature, and so I try to avoid temptation . . . but am not good at that. I am convinced that if you fight Mother Nature you will lose.
Back on topic, industrial society gives us lots of choices, but I think it is important to remember that our genetic tendency toward laziness was balanced in the Pleistocene with a good amount of necessary labor.
When we talk (as Halfin does) about the outcome of modern market economies, it might be that our tendency toward laziness is reinforced a little too much by the oil supplies that move us around every day.
The car is great for when you've got to go 20 miles in a hurry, but it could be a mistake when you only have to go a shorter distance, or more slowly.
But of course it is totally wrong for somebody else to tell what the others want... we've seen that movie too. IMHO if you inform people about the ongoing or future problems and give them enough support and incetitives to solve them, they will. If you play your own selfish games, or if you want to play God you'll lose in the end.
The interesting question is when to foreclose options, to enforce a narrowing of choices. We don't, as an easy example, rely on the market to regulate the speed of traffic. We (in amazing agreement across the world's cultures) agree that a "speed limit" is a useful infringement on personal freedom.
Now, I think where Halfin is headed is that we should not infringe for the pruposes of energy efficiency or environment. Obviously the world's societies disagree, as they inact their their measured steps in that direction.
The Producers were stunned at an audience of nearly 400 of which more than one third stayed after to participate in a Q&A session with them, David Room of Post Carbon Institue, Matt Savinar, and a representative of CrudeAwakening, an Austin-based oil awareness group. This was a far larger audience than had been anticipated.
The film will screen twice more this coming week in Austin. Look for the reviews.
http://community.livejournal.com/peak_oil/330126.html
On March 20 the Iran Bourse will formally open and allow countries to break to US monopoly on oil purchases in petrodollars. The central banks across Europe and Asia will trade in part of their stockpiles of greenbacks for euros, and dollars will come flooding back to the homeland. $3 trillion of American cash and securities are owned by people or institutions outside of the United States. If just a small portion of them pour back into the US, Depression will follow.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=10793
I don't think anyone in the top of the US government thinks that $1 trillion yearly current account deficits can be sustained forever. However, hand in hand with Peak Oil, the neagtive effects can be postponed and/or minimized by mainatining the US military/dollar empire as long as possible.
About the bourse, I submit this article from another blog. Do note, and I have seen this elsewhere, and it is prudent advice, Iranian money is leaving Iran with this current crisis now coming to a head. If we see that things will play out in 2-3 weeks time, it may come in right at the time of the Israeli election!
One item that strikes me is that in my research, and it is typical in military and political thinking, there is not a uniform thread of thought. Like our thread here at TOD, it has several different points of view, though with a dominate one that surfaces (most of the time). The Iranian military over the last few months has proponents who want to strike the USA military assets before we/Israel does, to those who want to stand down from this confrontation. If the nuclear powered aircraft carrier RONALD REAGAN (currently in the Persian Gulf) was attacked, and god forbid, hit by a Silkworm missile fired by Iran just before we launched an air assault on her nuke sites, how would America react?
Is Iran in the "most" seismic active region of the world? It is one of the most, but I do not think it is the most active.
Below is the article:
Iran Sleepwalking Into War?
Amir Taheri, Arab News:
With attention focused on the international row over the Islamic republic's alleged attempt at building an atomic bomb, the average observer might not notice the domestic side of the debate.
The new radical administration in Tehran, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is doing all it can to make this an "us vs. them" issue, whipping up xenophobic sentiments and diverting attention from the country's real problems.
Nevertheless, Iran may be heading for its deepest crisis since the 1970s.
This crisis, related to the nuclear issue, has two aspects.
The first, and probably the most significant, is a moral one. There is a growing awareness that the regime may have played the game of "kitman" (dissimulation) on the nuclear issue. "Have we been given the full picture?" demanded the Tehran daily newspaper Sharq.
Suspicions that the regime might have lied not only to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but also to the Islamic Majlis (Parliament) have received a boost with the circulation in Tehran and some provincial capitals of a document entitled "The final report" in samizdat form.
The document claims to be a summary of a talk given on Feb. 12 by Hassan Rouhani to the High Council for Islamic Cultural Revolution (HCICR), a body set up in 1979 to purge the country's universities of "un-Islamic" ideas.
It is not clear why Rouhani, a junior mulla who headed Iran's nuclear negotiations with the European Union trio for three years, should have spoken to the HCICR. His friends suggest that he wanted to counter Ahmadinjead's charge that Rouhani and his then boss President Muhammad Khatami had "sold out" to the Europeans.
"From the first day to the last, the Europeans danced to our tune," Rouhani is quoted in the document. "They were desperate to trust, and we encouraged them....Not for one moment did we slow down (work on the nuclear project) to satisfy the Europeans."
But the most damning revelation by Rouhani is that even the Council of Ministers, then chaired by Khatami, and the Majlis were never told the whole truth about Iran's nuclear program.
Whether or not the Rouhani document is genuine is hard to tell. In any case he has not denied its content. And several members of the Majlis have taken it seriously enough to demand a full briefing on the subject.
"There is a feeling that the nation is being led toward war on an issue about which only a handful of men were informed," says Ahmad Shirzad, a former member of the Majlis. "If we are being taken to the edge of the precipice we should at least be told the truth."
The feeling that a handful of "tasmimgran" (decision makers) may have deceived not only the gullible Europeans but also the Iranian people has been strengthened by two other events.
The first is the decision by President Ahmadinejad to suppress a report by the Tehran University's seismographic center calling for "broader studies" in the choice of locations for projected nuclear power stations. The report warns that Iran, located on the world's most active earthquake zone, may not be the best place for building nuclear stations which, with existing technology, might not resist tremors of over 7 on the Richter scale.
The report, parts of which have been leaked, caused concern in the Gulf province of Bushehr, where Iran's first nuclear station is located, and in Khuzestan where a second one is to be built by 2010.
The Tehran University report has been seized upon by those who argue that Iran, the owner of the world's second largest gas reserves, and with enough oil to cover its needs for at least 250 years, might have no need of costly and potentially dangerous nuclear energy.
The second event is the release of another report, almost certainly leaked by the entourage of former President Khatami, that shows Iran's uranium reserves will cover the needs of the Bushehr power station for fuel for no more than seven years.
But the same reserves, when processed and enriched, could help the Islamic republic build some 200 atomic bombs.
The report's message is clear: Iran cannot have a nuclear power industry without secure supplies of imported uranium. Thus the current enrichment program, using locally mined uranium, could be aimed at only one thing: Producing enough ingredients for bombs.
The second aspect of the crisis provoked by the nuclear issue inside Iran is political. Ahmadinejad has just presented his first annual national budget to the Islamic Majlis. By any standards, this looks very much like a war budget, increasing expenditure on security and defense by a whopping 17 percent.
It would be unfair to blame Ahmadinejad for a budget that reflects policies shaped at least a year before he was elected. The assumption behind those policies is that Iran may soon find itself involved in a military clash with the United States in Iraq and the Gulf. Many of the so-called "defense preparation" projects under way were launched in 2004 before Ahmadinejad took over, to be completed under his watch.
According to Ibrahim Yazdi, foreign minister under the late Ayatollah Khomeini, Ahmadinejad may be "sleepwalking toward war."
The new budget envisages effective cuts in government expenditure on social welfare, education, and health -- contrary to promised by Ahmadinejad made in his election campaign last summer. Needless to say the cuts will hit the poorest sections of society -- precisely those that voted for Ahmadinejad.
To make matters worse, talk of United Nations sanctions, and possibly even war, has led to the biggest outflow of capital that the Islamic republic has experienced since 1979. Many businessmen are preparing for a "free fall" of the Iranian currency, the rial, if and when international sanctions are imposed. The "war talk" has led to an economic slowdown that has already destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in the private sector and brought many commercial transactions to a halt.
All this may be translated into a political backlash that Ahmadinejad, despite his talent for appealing to emotions might not be able to counter, especially at a time that his enemies in the regime are sharpening their knives in the dark.
Notwithstanding Ahmadinejad's braggadocio, Iran is entering this new phase of its confrontation with the outside world over the nuclear issue from a position of weakness.
The Europeans no longer seem keen to be deceived.
The Americans may have begun understanding a fact that they had shunned for a quarter of a century: The trouble with Iran is not its behavior but the nature of its regime.
In the previous rounds, the Islamic republic could rely on some understanding, if not actual support, from its Gulf neighbors plus Russia and China. But they, too, are unlikely to be pleased by the increasing revelation that the Islamic republic has been lying to them, and to everyone else, all the time.
Last but not least, the domestic popular support that was undoubtedly there over the nuclear issue until recently, is fast evaporating. The reason is that the Iranian people feel that they have not been told the truth -- at least not the whole truth.
I'd say asset price inflation. The money would arrive to buy whatever has value and then ship it out of the country.
Meanwhile, the oil from other places would become more expensive.
Quite the squeeze play for Americans.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002157326
John Burns, Back from Baghdad: U.S. Effort In Iraq Will Likely Fail
By E&P Staff
Published: March 10, 2006 12:15 AM ET
NEW YORK A day after returning to the U.S., after another long term as bureau chief in Baghdad, John F. Burns of The New York Times said on Bill Maher's live Friday night HBO program that he now feels, for the first time, that the American effort in Iraq will likely "fail."
Asked if a civil war was developing there, Burns said, "It's always been a civil war," adding that it's just a matter of extent. He said the current U.S. leaders there--military and diplomatic--were doing their best but sectarian differences would "probably" doom the enterprise.
Burns said that he and others underestimated this problem, feeling for a long time that toppling Saddam Hussein would almost inevitably lead to something much better. He called the Abu Ghraib abuse the worst of many mistakes the U.S. made but said that even without so many mistakes the sectarian conflict would have gotten out of hand.
He also pointed to a key period coming up, as the top American generals decide over the next two weeks whether to go ahead with the planned "draw down" of U.S. troops starting this spring which, as it turns out, coincides with deteriorating conditions on the ground. The problem is, he said, U.S. withdrawals could lead to chaos there, with the Iraqi military not ready to take over; but not bringing troops home would prove to be a political disaster for the White House here.
Speaking from Cambridge, Mass., Burns observed that he had been on the ground for 24 hours and, of all the people he had interacted with so far, "no one supports this war."
His most recent article from Baghdad appeared in The Times on March 5. He said he was heading to California next.
Burns, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the few Americans journalists who stayed in Baghdad during the U.S. attack on Iraq in March 2003, and has spent most of his time there since.
If you go to Google News and search under "declining Russian oil production" the first article that pops up is the story that Khebab and I did that was published on the Energy Bulletin.
Henceforth, I can just cite myself as a source regarding arguments over Russian oil production :)
I'm glad Google indexes the Energy Bulletin. TOD posts show up there all the time. By the way, I read that article you guys wrote. I liked it a lot.
PEAK OIL IS COMING!
THE BIOSPHERE IS COLLAPSING!!
LIFE ON EARTH IS GOING TO END!!!!!!
Why should I care? I am going to die some day and since we are all datanomics fans, we know we don´t have a soul. In fact this whole darn experience of life seems so utterly futile anti logical that I really do wonder why any of us give a damn about the fate of the earth, the future of society, relationships, habits, lifestyles, housing fads, stock market crashes. I mean it seems to me that most of us have the greatest contempt for the utter folly of humanity, especially todays crop of homo saps, so why not just let it run its inevitalble course and pay attention to the world baseball classic, or to celebrity poker, drink budweiser, and sleep our way to the grave?
Yes, I was being slightly ironic, but I also hoped to raise an important issue, the anti-thetical arguments proposed by many members of the OilDrum Community.
It bothers me that there is an underlying thought process within this community which depicts most of humanity as genetic robots, acting out the algorthims of genes that want to survive.(why they want to survive is never ever mentioned) The argument goes that we are ignorant of the consequences of materialism, elect corrupt leaders whose vested interest is in themselves rather then the overall good. We are very selfish, and decieve both ourselves and the others around us, pretending to care, be moral, not eat meat, love the trees, gaia. It´s all an elaborate trick, to procreate procreate procreate.
Yet for me, humanity represents a clean break from the Darwinian order; to sentence our species to death on animalistic behavioral grounds is short sighted and at odds with empirical, social reality.
Many of us are self hating modernists, rational to the core, and peak oil promises to remedy this situation and the medicine will be bitter!!(global melt down, sharing a car with your teenager, and everything in between armageddon and breaking down the barriers of a lonely society)
So why the posts? What motivates us to care so deeply about this subject? If we truly believe in the Darwinian way then we are doomed. If we think humans represent a break from Darwinian evolution, then what can we do to survive. Do we hope to affect the outcome, direct the masses. Is this forum a vent for a deep seated anxiety about the future. Are we empowered. I really am curious to know our communities motivations, for spending hours gathering data, and caring about the subject of peak oil.
Cheer up! It does not matter how long you live; it matters how you live. That was the emphatic message of the ancient Greek philosophers--and I think they were right.
They believed without irony that those whom are most loved by the gods die young. Achilles is an example; despite some character flaws (jealousy over Agamemnon claiming dibs on a slave girl rightfully his and then pouting in his tent while his good friend and lover Patroclos puts on the famous hero's armor and then gets himself killed--which then forces Achilles to gain vengeance by killing in turn Hector, the finest of all the heroes . . .) but take a look at philosophers such as Democritos--who was criticized for laughing too much. (Allegedly he lived to be 100 years old, and when his granddaughter was sitting by him as he was about to die, he asked her why she was not going to the festival. She said the family members were all prepared to go into mourning for his imminent death and nobody was going to the party. Democritus said words to the effect: "This will not do! By all means, go to the festival . . . So bake fresh bread by my bed for the three days of the festival, and the aroma will keep alive until the party is over." She did, he did, and the family got to party before the funeral.)
Epictetus had his legs broken by torture when he was a slave. He was cheerful throughout his life, though lame and in pain. When he was rather old (for those days), maybe around sixty, one of his students said to him: Hey, Epictetus, you keep telling us to do our duty, but you have never married and had children. Isn't that being hypocritical? So what does the old and lame man do? He goes to the north side of one of the mountains on which the Greeks exposed newborns to achieve infanticide, adopted an infant and hired a wet nurse for her. (It is assumed that the child was a girl, but nobody knows.) He believed in living up to his ideals, even when it went against his inclinations. Nobody knows how long he lived, though there is a story that in extreme old age the young Marcus Aurelius came to visit him and indeed was inspired by him. I find this story probably too good to be true, but you never know.
Marcus Aurelius was a gloomy man, but that may have been mostly because he had to spend most of his adult life fighting Germans instead of talking with philosophers. Fighting Germans in the swamps of the Danube for most of your life is not a recipe for happiness; also his wife Faustina cheated on him with a gladiator. Both Marcus and Epictetus realized it did not matter much whether one was a slave or an emperor or lame or healthy: God (or Logos, not a Christian god) casts the play, but you get to say your own lines and act your role to the best of your ability.
There is a certain element that inhabits TOD that believes Man is finally getting his due, and they seem to be happy that such is in the works. It's really a form of self-hatred. Well, we are NOT all that stupid, and there are elements among us who want to and WILL make it work. We may succeed or fail, but we are not going to go quietly into the night!
And as far as Socrates is concerned, in my opinion those who are always citing HIm (and you know who you are) seem to be stuck in some sort of academic philosophy class. I think it's rather pathetic to have to go back to ancient Greece to find someone who knows what the f*@%k they're talking about. I guess we are supposed to believe that there have been no smart people since the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle?
Speaking of Aristotle, he is one of the reasons why it took so long for true science to flourish in Europe. For many centuries, pedagogues would mindlessly teach Aristotle's crackpot ideas about astronomy and the physics of moving bodies to eager classes of elite student, who would in turn do the same to the next generation of students. It is absolutely astounding to me that it took about 2,000 yeras for someone (such as Gallileo) to actually DO an experiment designed to prove or disprove the teachings of Aristotle on the subject of moving bodies. Now, to be fair, it wasn't Aristotle's fault, Lord knows the man was one of the major pillars of Western though; but it's the pedagogues that ruined it all, by preventing informed inquiry. It seemed that no one wanted to get his hands dirty by doing a simple actual experiment.
So, the lesson is: don't believe what you hear - check it out for yourself.
The 'Ancient Ones' don't know jack, or at least don't know jack any more than you probably do.
This little rant is intended to get as many people pissed off as possible.
I am looking for ways of making things better, perhaps only slightly, perhaps (long odds) significantly. A little intellectual pleasure along the way is nice as well, but is not my driving force.
I chose to strive and struggle, work and think, argue, debate and persuade.
I do not think that the future is immutable, I believe that change can be made "within limits". So I chose to work and think towards that change, whatever the limits are.
Alan_Drake@Juno.com
We are here because our ancestors were able to survive and reproduce. Who will be here a hundred years from now, and who will be their ancestors from 2005 may be an interesting speculation. Survival of the fittest?