Friday Open Thread
Posted by Admin on May 12, 2006 - 10:45pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]
Thread away.
[editor's note, by Yankee] You know it can't be good when you find out about something because of a blog post entitled "I could feel Yankee's head exploding as I watched it". Tonight, 20/20 had a "special" called "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity" (brought to us by that paragon of journalistic integrity, John Stossel). Myth #10 is "Are we really running out of oil or are we just lazy in our gathering methods?". If you have it in you, you can watch the webcast.
I was hanging out at the Barefoot Coffee Roastery or some damn name, in San Jose (which means probably Santa Clara) and it's next to a Bed Bath & Beyond, (f*ck yeah!) and the impatient SUV mommas going in and out and having near-misses with each other made for a pretty hilarious show.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7003538016
a "bicycle". I'm gonna get around to trademarking that name
someday. And unlike that 8,000 mpg hat-box, the bicycle will
travel uphill as well.
I'd love to see the 8,000 mpg vehicle survive a snowy winter
and a blazing hot summer. No AC or heat, cramped up in a tiny
box. Good luck.
We need a new mindset, not an unpleasant little box in which to
squeeze our bodies. Take that cage and shove it.
We shouldn't have to license a canoe. (at least in my state)
You get the picture.
any exhaust controls spewing tons of blue/black smoke into
the atmosphere. I like controls on what motorized vehicles
can be driven on a road.
I have to agree though that a human powered vehicle, such
as a canoe, should not require a license.
Yeah, I don't see a paradox - more like short-sighted planning that ended up being penny-wise and pound foolish.
And one can only hope that 'rural' land becomes far cheaper.
Like $500 and acre VS $7000 an acre for the same land.
(These explosions seem to be occurring a little more frequently than I'd like to admit of late...snicker)
it was a video on bicycle commuting, companies offering bicycle commuting rewards ($100/month, that buys a nice bike), and cities getting on board.
it think it's a win that this was on cable news, and even more that they thought it was a high-value teaser.
The housing/auto/finance industries want to keep selling and financing large homes and autos.
The MSM wants to keep selling advertising for large homes/autos/loans.
(Some) major oil companies, major exporters and energy analysts provide the intellectual ammunition--in support of the concept of infinite growth against a finite resource base.
BTW, did you notice that whenever the cornucopians talk about the tar sands, they talk about reserves, and not production rates. It's a good bet that there will be a lot of MSM references to the Stossel segment.
So, who do Americans prefer to listen to--Peter Huber, who says go ahead and buy the SUV and large home and continue with your commute, or people that tell Americans to cut back, live below their means, and live very simply?
Instead of covering the speech, the Dallas Morning News the next morning had excerpts of an interview the former chief economist for ExxonMobil, who professed "amazement" that oil prices were still so high. She opined that it was just a matter of time until oil prices fell sharply.
On some level, one actually has to have some sympathy for Americans' outrage over gasoline prices. If we have infinite oil reserves, then high gasoline prices must be the result of a conspiracy.
I don't see much of a difference between most of the MSM (regarding Peak Oil) and Enron executives (regarding their business plan). In both cases, their business model is and was dependent on deceiving the American people regarding the truth.
May 3, 2006
Energy tycoon Pickens says to expect $4 a gallon soon
Don Mecoy
The Daily Oklahoman
May 3--Boone Pickens, who has made millions predicting energy prices, said American consumers shouldn't expect to see cheaper gasoline anytime soon, and shortly could be paying quite a bit more.
"We're going to see $4 gasoline this summer," Pickens said. And motorists likely never will pay less than $2 for a gallon of gasoline, the Texas energy investor said.
Pickens, an Oklahoma native who founded Mesa Petroleum in 1956 and now runs energy investment funds, appeared at a luncheon Tuesday before business leaders to discuss the energy industry's support of fine arts.
Strife in several oil-producing nations could constrict supplies and send prices soaring, Pickens said. Meanwhile, there is little that could boost supplies and cut prices, he said.
"The Mexican President Vicente Fox said that the populism in Latin America is "one of the big obstacles to growth and development", offering people "false" hopes of escaping poverty.
"And the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that "we are a Europe against populist tendencies."
"Behind the scenes diplomats were working to try to defuse the crisis over energy in Latin Amercia, where European firms including British Gas, British Petroleum and Spain's Repsol have massive investments.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article364641.ece
How do y'all see this playing out? I can't see the G7 letting this stand, tho' I'm not against it personally..
(The "8th G" would be Russia, right?)
The third world dictatorship (any one of the last three hundred or so) sells a national resource or bond issue to a European fence, usually a bank.
Step 2
The third world dictatorship steals the money and deposits it in a European bank. At first British, then Swiss or Luxemburg or Liechtenstein, now a colony like the Cayman Islands.
Step 3
A new government takes over and nationalises the resource or defaults on the bonds, and the US makes getting more "foreign aid" or "military assistance" contingent on repayment of the bonds or privitisation of the resource, or attacks the third world country.
But now the US is broke and out of troops. Bolivia is not going to repay the bond issue and is going to nationalise the resource. It won't be the last third world country to do this.
Bah. This from a leader who has escaped exactly the same populist movements by virtue of being able to allow 10-12 million workers to head north into the US. Remittances from workers in the US to Mexico now exceed the revenue that Mexico recieves for its oil exports to the US.
oy vey! comment on this stuff?....well i did find some stuff on ethanol-corn, if we haven't beaten this topic to death.. in business week online is an article on ethanol production boosting corn prices in th u.s., in which i found this tidbit
....o.k. that's interesting...but how much does that 2.15 billion bushels represent?..so i found this info on the daily futures.com website:
....so, we're using ~20% of the corn crop already to produce ethanol, and we're growing usage at 34% a year. and of course we're only using the most marginal land to do it,not!... now that's scarier than john stossel.
In my Macroeconomics class senior year of high school, the teacher played a recorded special episode of 20/20 by Stossel along the lines of Greed is Good (I would like to mention, btw, that this teacher, who'd spoke of his support of IP, broke several IP laws by doing this.) Stossel rants on and on about how greed drives the economy towards innovation, growth, etc, which is for the most part true, but he fell completely to the "growth is eternal" mindset and forgot the endgame, which is unlimited competition for the Earth's very limited resources. In forgetting this, he completely ignored the Tragedy of the Commons, which is for me basis of my resistance to pursuing greed as a good human virtue. I'm also willing to admit, however, that in very heated competition, I'd want to secure the most resources as I could for myself and my family.
Anyway, yea.. Stossel is very agitating.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Insurance/story?id=94181
Via
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF8&q=John+Stossel+flood+insurance
you get
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/millionaire_welfare_queen_stossel.html
"Editor's note: John Stossel? The corporate PR flak masquerading as a journalist?! That was my first reaction when a reader sent us this article as a suggested "editor's pick." After reading it, we've got to credit Stossel for openly admitting his participation in one of our country's lesser-known tax scams."
It has been widely noted that the energy return on corn is negative while that of sugar cane is positive unfortunalty the climate of the United States is not e to the growth of sugar cane a solution is to burn the large amounts of coal reserves until the climate becomes semi-tropical in most of the US thus allowing the growth of sugar cane within the us.
And alternative would be to tie the US deeply to our South American neigbhors notatable brazil to create a huge self sufficient economy.
Unifiying Brazil and the US makes for a increadibly dynamic and intresting 21'th century country.
Win-Win!
Here in NZ, Channel Three ran a poll of 1000 people. 45% said they planned to change their driving habits because of high petrol prices. The story was framed by a couple who gave up their car and took the bus or walked or rode everywhere. A number of statistics were brandished, some of them quite encouraging. Looks like the people are starting to get it.
BUT...
The government, which funds roading (road building, expansion, and maintenance) from petrol taxes, is planning to shift funds from the current budget to cover the shortfall in roading projects because of decreased driving.
So, no matter whether people use the roads, the government will continue to fund them.
RR
If TSHTF how possible will it be to maintain the internet, and for how long?
The internet seems to me to be one of the greatest achievements of this era and allows me to learn about peak oil here in Japan and is an amazing resource for learning about sustainability, composting, organic farming, natural medicine and pretty much everything else. The internet seems to me like something that would become even more valuable as we face some sort of power down.
Unfortunately the Internet relies on huge telcos for it's existence and a massive infrastructure, not to mention large amounts of electricity. On a local scale we can do a lot to mitigate the likely consequences of peak oil - another poster mentioned ELP, Economise, localise, produce. But can anything be done to maintain our connections to the outside World or will we be thrust back to the dark ages and ignorance of the what goes on outside of our local areas?