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.

(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.

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.

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."

Excellent!  I am soooo glad you opened up this topic, because it relates DIRECTLY to the energy situation, and even more so to alternatives.

First, Moore's Law was around long before Moore!  He simply systemized and named it, but it is the exact phenomenon that got us the fossil fuel era in the first place.

To read the history of the birth of the electric motor, or of the early days of the automobile is a poetic expression of this  (by the way, does ANYBODY read or study the history of technology these days?  It is a poetic story, surprising and beautiful...it ranks right up there with the liberal arts as a mind expanding study, try it!)

Take electric motors.  In the old days of industry (the birthing period 1830-1875), textile mills were the idealized  version of modernism.  They had moved quickly from water wheel power (some are still museums on our own East coast), to steam.  But how to distribute the power?  In the first years, it was done by "line shaft", with the steam engine driving a driveline that ran down the ceiling of the work area.  pulleys and belts were used to transmit the power from the main line shaft to the individual machines used to do the work.  This was dangerous, as people could (and did) get tangled into the belts and pully arrangement, and dismembered or killed.  It was also high maintenence, as the belts had to be constantly maintained and or replaced to make sure they were tight and not going "slack" (our name "slackers" has an industrial basis).  

Then the revolution.  Based on the work of such people as Clark Maxwell, Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry, it became obvious that electric motors and generators would work (circa 1831)  But it would be the better part of 60 more years before they became a large contributor to industry.  A young Albert Einstein's father, Hermann, ran an electrical technology business, giving Albert an early introduction to the power of science.  What he did was sold electric motors in the late 1800's.  But it was a hard sell, and Hermann Einstein was always on the edge of bankruptcy.  Most industrialists said of their tried and true steam plant and line shaft that you only needed one steam engine, one engine to care for and fuel.  What the electric industry was asking was that a plant buy a motor for each machine!!  It was sheer lunacy to think that such a scheme would work!  And not only that, the plant would have to convert the machanical power of steam to electricity through this strange contraption, a "generator" to power the machines, and then convert it BACK to mechanical power!  The loses in such conversions must use up the power put into the machines, it could never work, it made no thermodynamic sense!  Electric motors were still expensive, new fangled and untried.  Why risk anything on technology like that?  Never mind the complexity of switches, controllers, ballests, transformers...what a hair brained scheme!  And the "electrons" could not even be seen!   How could you know if it was working right?  Albert Einstein himself, upon toying with his fathers parts and magnets was overcome by the magic of what he called "action at a distance", the forces of magnetism and electronic forces....it would lead him on one of the greatest quests in history.

The rest as they say is history.  A fun game is to count the number of electric motors on your property right now....fan motors, refridgerator, washng machine, and even tiny ones in electric shavers, VCR's, electric toothbrushes, disc drives in computers, DVD's and CD's...but wait, don't leave out your car.....power window motors, starter motors, electric antenna, alternator (from Nikola Tesla's GREAT breakthrough, alternating current), electric seat motors, more heater fans, windshield wipers, CD player...a modern car can have more than a dozen electric motors on one vehicle!

 Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry could not have imagined that their motors, once considered complex, expensive, and almost magical, would one day be so common that mankind has left them on the moon and on Mars!
It would be as much science fiction to them as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" is to us.  Just think of the scales achieved...there are electric motors that are two or three stories tall....and now through nano technology, some as small as the head of a pin, that can be swallowed by a human as easily as an aspirin.
How is this possible?  Moore's law.  
And make no mistake, Moore's law is coming to electic solar cells, to high density batteries, to fuel cells and windmills.  They could someday be built in the hundreds of millions (there are certainly more electric motors in the U.S. that there are people) and ranging in size from that of an insect to bigger than Hoover dam.  Imagine a factory building hundreds of thousands of tiny windmills that will fasten to the top of telephone and electric poles so cheaply that they are a marginal cost, but keep current in the wire whether or not current is coming from the base generating plant....solar cells buried in translucent paint on cars, or worn in jackets to provide communication and information power....a fuel cell under the floor of a motorhome that silently keeps it air conditioned and electrified....batteries so powerful, small and cheap that they can power a plug hybrid car, with the only fossil fuel onboard being a small cartridge about the size of text book that you plug in and exchange to refuel, filled with hydrogen, propane, on natural gas, butane, or (??) and you don't have to change it more than six to twelve times a year...about as often as you know pay a shop to change your oil!

Technically, it can be done.  The question is, do we want to see it done?

The modern age is far from over.  Unless, we want to see it over.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

Oil on the other hand is being limited by geology and no "breakthroughs" are likely there.

The other factor to consider is that speeds don't peak, they plateau .... assuming no breakthroughs top speeds for Intel-class chips are still likely to be around the 3.5/4ghz mark, not lower.

AMD is handling this better than Intel because they have a 64-bit processor and they have historically run much lower clock speeds.  I have an Athlon-64 3200+ which runs at 2.0 Ghz and consumes 13 Watts at idle.  In comparison some of the 3.0+ GHz Pentiums, which actually have less processing power, consume 80+ Watts.  Intel may just turn their more efficient laptop processor into a desktop (if they haven't already).  

Rather than try to increase processor speed any further both companies have stopped and are starting to add more arithmetic and logic units to their machines, to give them more parallel processing capacity.  

One of the stars of AAR is Thom Hartmann, who wrote a great book called "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight".

Eesh.

"And Iran is now China's third-largest oil supplier."

China has invested nearly $100 billion in developing Iranian oil/gas fields. By some estimates, Iran will provide China with over 250 million tons of natural gas and 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day over the next 30 years.

" Russia has already built a $1 billion nuclear reactor for Iran at Bushehr, and Tehran has expressed interest in two to three more reactors. Actually, it's considering building more than 100 nuclear reactors in the years ahead. Russia unquestionably wants a cut of that fat action . . ."
" Iran and India, along with Pakistan, have agreed to build a $7 billion pipeline to move Iranian natural gas to India via Pakistan."
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed013006b.cfm

 "Iran primarily exports oil to Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Europe."
" Japan, Iran's biggest oil customer, has become the first country to reduce its imports of Iranian oil because of Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West. Nippon Oil, Japan's largest refiner, will cut its purchases of Iranian crude oil by 15% this year, Fumiaki Watari, Nippon's chairman, said last month."
_________________
So why do we (meaning the U.S.) care?
Qatar, 60 miles across the Persian Gulf from Iran
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/images/ibc_map_qatar_en.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Persian_Gulf_map.png

See the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which two thirds of the worlds oil passes...look to the left and see the big peninsula sticking out into the Gulf, that's Qatar, home of the 3rd largest natural gas reserves in the world, only 800.000 citizens and the staunchest U.S. allies in the Middle East, and to the largest military machine ever assembled in one place, U.S. Central Command, the base of operations in Iraq.
Qatar LNG development
http://www.shell-me.com/english/apr06/news-me1.htm#menews1

It's your money...
Thursday, 15 December 2005
The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) has approved today a loan guarantee of up to $403.5 million to support the export of U.S. equipment and services to Qatar Liquefied Gas Company 3 Ltd. (Qatargas 3) to build a natural gas liquefaction plant and related facilities in Qatar. 
http://www.usrom.com/Countries/qatar.htm

And that is only the beginning.  The investment in Qatar natural gas will be HUGE. It must be, for the U.S. to remain a world power.  The commitment by President Bush to LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) and the potential for gas to liquids in the creation of synthetic Diesel and propane makes natural gas a strategic asset.

If the Iranians are going after the atomic bomb, or if the Americans believe that Iran is going after the atomic bomb (whether it is true or not, that won't matter, we will act as if it is true)...the question becomes:
Will America tolerate having CentCom (Central Command) and our only real quality and quantity supplier of LNG sitting under an Iranian nuclear gun?

I frankly feel that if you accept the above terms, that an attack on Iran is almost certain.  The timing would probably be before the November off year elections, because given President Bush's political problems, I don't think he can risk losing the Republican majority in the Congress (which seems very possible if not outright likely) before going to war.  There is one caveat:
It is possible that Bush would use the off year elections to measure his party's strenth.  If the majority holds, he can see it as a "mandate" and then go after Iran, knowing that he would be gone before his party had to face another Congressional race.  If he lost Congress, he would then simply try to sue for peace....or hope the Europeans could apply enough pressure...but given the earlier statements above, that would essentially marginalize American power in the Persian Gulf and come back to haunt us in an even bigger way later.
It is a very dangerous situation indeed.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

You are not the only one.
http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/839133.shtml

sigh