DrumBeat: September 14, 2006
Posted by threadbot on September 14, 2006 - 9:13am
Topic: Miscellaneous
The Wall St. Journal weighs in on the recent Saudi pronouncements: Producers Move to Debunk Gloomy 'Peak Oil' Forecasts
Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau.That argument, known as the peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude's long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes--including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. "addicted to oil" and sparked a boom in interest in ethanol.
Some in the industry now are keen to fight the threat posed by such fears.
From EtopiaMedia: Roscoe Bartlett wants the U.S. to move on peak oil
Tom Whipple on Hyping Jack No. 2.
Gulf gusher shows inaction of Congress
The oil industry calls them "elephants" — world-changing discoveries capable of supplying petroleum to consumers for decades. California's Chevron Corp., along with its partners, thinks it has found one in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. If geologists are right, it's the largest U.S. discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay 40 years ago.Given the federal government's shameful failure to craft a responsible energy policy, the discovery is something of a triumph for U.S. consumers. For openers, it heaps more market reality upon the "peak oil" Chicken Littles who say the world is running out of petroleum, thus requiring fat taxpayer subsidies for alternative fuels to avert international chaos.
Byron King on Jack-2: There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
World has 10-year window to act on climate
A leading U.S. climate researcher said on Wednesday the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert a weather catastrophe.NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
Climate Change Poses Disaster Scenario for Miners
LONDON - Flooded railway lines and storms destroying open-pit mines are among the challenges mining firms will face in the future as climate change grips the planet.
Big oil firms tell consumers: use less fuel
China to reduce reliance on oil imports by basing energy supply on coal
Amazonian tribe protests at oil pollution: Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon are stepping up their campaign against oil companies.
U.K.: Mayor's 'cheap oil deal' slammed
Nigeria oil unions stage strike
A three-day strike by Nigerian oil workers has had some impact on production whilst queues are being reported at petrol stations.Union officials say thousands of oil workers have obeyed the order to stay away from work protesting at insecurity in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
Nigeria oil shortfall expected to last about six months
Nigeria is losing about 872,000 barrels per day in oil production due to unrest and most of the shortfall is expected to last about six months, the west African country's oil minister has said.
New Zealand: the "Alternative Technologies for Living Association" is offering Knowledge to Survive for Households, Small Business
“Developing do-it-yourself knowledge and sharing tools may be essential survival elements for life in New Zealand if serious societal disruption occurs following a ‘dangerous climate change’ event or the ‘peak oil’ impact creates strife” said Mr Paul Bruce, President of the Alternative Technologies for Living Association (ATLA).
Speaking of a Money Magazine artilce, over at: The Mess That Greenspan Made
I find that statement so sick and hilarious that I'm literally crying.
Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown
Now shut up and buy something
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/02/welcome_to_midd.html
John
His regular blogs on Peak Oil and the future destiny of society are moderate in tone, intellectually disciplined, and quite thoughtprovoking. I highly recommend his stuff, even though I don't share his pagan religious convictions.
The sad thing is, I fear he is correct.
The reason I see that as the most doomerish outcome possible is that it means we do not change our ways. Instead, we keep trying to do what we are doing, switching to ever poorer sources of energy. Until all resources and capital are converted to waste, and we simply cannot continue.
The result is a crash to a lower population level and level of complexity than existed before the complex society arose or arrived, because the environment is so poor that it cannot support anything else.
The good news? I probably won't have to worry about it, since it will take a hundred years or more. :-/
But I think he's right — we'll have a slow collapse in which our greed and hunger will allow us to consume every frickin' blade of grass.
A rapid collapse and depopulation wouldn't be much fun for us, but would leave our descendants, and the planet, better off a century or two from now.
Many here at TOD argue over whether wars are due to:
- competition for resources, or
- conflict of ideologies (religions).
They don't consider the possibility that #1 and #2 are subsumed by:3. empires of the elite bumping into each other.
Most of us are just pawns on a chessboard ruled by a short list of Kings. The Kings really don't care whether you suffer or not as you make the "ultimate sacrfice" for King and Country (but actually "Country" is redundant because it also means King as far as the King is concerned.)
Kings use religion as a means of controlling their pawns. In the USA the current religion is called The War on Terra. In other parts of the world the religion is called The War on Infidelism. All that is bullsh*t of course because the pawns are going to get a big fat zero in the end. It's all about the Kings and their greed, not about "our greed".
Bush did win his war on Iraq. He and his buddies got the oil they wanted, and the monies (oops, I mean "honorariums") that flow from it. The fact that so many pawns were sacrificed and continue to be sacrificed for the Noble's Cause is irrelevant. Who gives an eyebrow twinkle for the lower class "them"? They're doing as best as they can for themselves, Dearie --to requote Mamma Bushie's line about the refugees from Hurricane Katrina. Yeah right. "Our" greed.
While you might get some where arguing that a realist approach to politics should be adapted by some state or actor, that realism is the only motive is clearly not the case. "Kings" may use religion for all sorts of things, but it would be naive to think that the religious beliefs of these "kings" doesn't influence what they do.
I'm not sure why this "man behind the curtain" view of politics is so popular here (like the apparent belief by some that there's a group of shady characters who meet in a room somewhere and decide what the price of gas should be in order to get a certain member of their group elected), but, jeez, could we build a model of the world that isn't based on spy novel intrique levels of analysis? I may not agree with the materialist interpretations, but at least its an argument based on reason.
Do you honestly believe that persons capable of providing media 'friends' with the identity of intelligence agents are incapable of finding media 'friends' who would welcome talking points about a major oil "discovery", even when the discovery was 2 years old (Jack located the oil, Jack 2 brought some to the surface). Do you believe them incapable of simultaneously playing to the zionist crowd, while softening their stance vis-a-vis Iran, in order to defuse the geo-political premium affecting the price of oil?
Do you believe them incapable of abandoning Al-Anbar and other areas of Iraq in order to concentrate on the flow of export oil (as well as on providing 'security' in the few tiny parts of Iraq where the media has any presence and from where U.S. electoral opinion might be influenced).
And so we could go on. These are the people who from plans devised in the dark, turned an honorable Secretary of State into a public fool. These are the chicken hawks who turned true patriots and heroes into shirkers and friends of terrorists. These are the people who systematically work to keep opposition friendly voters from exercising their franchise.
Power is everything to them. They do not want windfall profit taxes on oil corporations. They do not want to lose power in KSA to an angry, cheated population. They do not want to pay the cost of confronting climate change. They will do what it takes to win, and in the US, they well know that the price of gasoline is about as significant an issue as any other. So they send out their emmissaries to decry peak oil, repetition and the baldness of the lie being key to its success. They exaggerate the supply response. They know the herd is made up of cows, not cats.
They do meet behind closed doors and connive to lower the price of gasoline. That's the nature of "making your own reality".
Got to fill that void somehow...
When the going gets tough
The tough goes shopping
To buy something a little nothing
To fill up the hole in his heart
To buy something a little nothing
To fill up the hole in his heart
Even if it were true that Jack would actually make one wit of difference in the reality of peak oil, it is obviously too much to expect these one dimensional business publications to consider other issues besides whether or not we will have enough gas for our easy motoring, planet destroying life style.
Google hits for "citizen": 164,000,000.
Ratio about 3.5 to 1.
Sad...
I never knew the meaning of Ostricism until I started "down sizing" my life 5 years ago.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/2006/08/01/8382230/index.htm
"The Edels' austerity exasperates some friends--a few colleagues think they're downright nuts--and it has at times strained their own relationship. And then there are the children:... "
I look forward to the day when we are in full swing back towards the Thrift end of the spectrum culturally, and away from this Gluttony end of the spectrum. I love talking to elderly Survivors of the Great Depression - the only people who seem to understand the concept of Thrift and are capable of distinguishing between Needs and Wants. They do Not turn hostile at the thought of Thriftful living and usually have GREAT stories to share that both uplift and prove practical.
Amen. Saltpeter for the mind (not all of it - lots of shades of grey, but man is that advertising stuff effective!).
And thank you oilmanbob, but I don't think I really qualify as a good example yet. Maybe a good example of a slo-mo car wreck ;)
(and thank you to all editors, secretaries etc for not pointing out my mispelling of ostracism - I think the current posture of almost everyone I know so resembles the bird I confused the spelling... "head in sand, ass in air, pants down - hmmm," says Mutha Nature).
And now we stoop to multiple custom made menus for each little cherub when they balk at "what's for supper." Multiple take outs, and so much ends up as worm food. But, as they say in poker - "The Worm will turn."
It sounds like most of our First World grandparents have a lot in common with many 2nd and 3rd world peoples now.
And with our kids and grandkids.
What would be the effect if everyone in the USA were driving 25 y/o diesel cars and 2-stroke mopeds as well as heating with wood, pumping out 5 kids, and paying almost no taxes?
Seems like they always follow the money, cuz they are bought and paid for by the corporations.
Just my opinion!
I find it interesting that our former US Sec is now leading the call to disarm Iranian nuclear ambitions. I think he's got a preminiton, but it's a little fuzzy. There will be war of the civilizations but I don't think it's going to be so much over Nukes.
Cycles of escalation.
(and ideas about breaking the cycle will be greatly appreciated)
This is an extremely old conflict and not one likely to be resolved by some politicians negotiating some agreement. Until neither side feels as though its very existence is threatened by the other, we are unlikely to see any progress. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the focal point of the problem - the western process of globalization has been so effective that it threatens to eliminate all other forms of social organization. This is not just a state v. state issue, but western forms of business, education, etc. are all supplanting the forms created by other cultures. The islamic world is experiencing it just as others are. The main difference is that the culture their is strong enough to provide ideas and institutions that "fight" back.
To say that "Wars are over natural resources. These are the start of the energy wars. It's all about the oil." is to accept that the current organization of society in the west is the only possible one. It accepts the values of the current society in the west.
No, wars are always over natural resources.
Provided or course you accept the notion that women are natural resources.
The greek preoccupation with war over women would seem to be some romanticized longing for older tribal customs in where women were "stolen" from a competing tribe. This rarely was connected with real violence, but a highly stylized way of bringing wives into the tribe from a different gene pool. Often the women were privy to the "kidnapping" prior to the event and were specifically targeted due to relations with a particular man. Remember, too, that in many of these cultures (talking prehistory Mediterranean and Europe) the further back you go, the more likely that they were matriarchal in organization (patrilocal in residence) and that these "kidnappings" would be organized before hand.
I'm too lazy to go dig it up right now, but I've heard that bride-napping has made a comeback in central Asia since the collapse of the S.U.
And if I'm hungry and/or I ain't getting laid, I'm going to come and f..king take yours, if she's not too ugly. I'll organize after I'm done. Or not.
On the up - you are correct in that I should have been more clear - the additive and reaction comment should have made it explicit that they were additive and reactive to the social organization that already exists.