DrumBeat: September 22, 2006
Posted by threadbot on September 22, 2006 - 9:14am
Topic: Miscellaneous
A new oil discovery is great for the drillers - but may be bad for us....I happen to be reading Matthew Simmons's Twilight in the Desert, which describes how Saudi Arabia in particular and the world in general are running out of oil. This "peak theory" of oil (as in, the world has achieved peak production) would seem to be off base with the discovery of a 15 billion-barrel oilfield. And, as Nichols points out, oil alarmists have been sounding the same bell for decades.
But I'm not sure that we should be so quick to dismiss the peakists. At some point they will be right, and I believe it's important to act as if they already are. Pursuing petroleum at any cost overseas, and even domestically, exposes us to all sorts of risk and merely makes it easier to avoid the tough steps that could reduce our dependence on oil.
Surviving The Oil Crash: Leadership And Social Structure
What is most apparent is the larger problem that there is no leadership, no sense of organization, for dealing with peak-oil issues.One might consider as an analogy the Great Depression. During those ten years, everyone lived on his own little island, lost, alone, and afraid. It was a "shame" to be poor, so one could not even discuss it with one's neighbors. The press and the politicians largely denied that the Depression existed, so there was little help from them. In general, it was just each nuclear family on its own - for those who were lucky enough to have a family. Barry Broadfoot, in Ten Lost Years (p.353), records the memories of one Depression survivor:
"Every newspaper across Canada and in the United States always played up the silver lining. . . . There were no such things as starvation, hunger marches, store front windows being kicked in. Yes, they were reported, but always these were called incidents and incited by 'highly-paid professional agitators.'"
Opec production cutbacks likely to be just a question of time
Oil Companies are Split on Push by Nations for More Profits
Oil-producing nations demanding contract concessions or seeking outright expropriations have created a split in the petroleum industry, with some companies insisting a contract is a contract and others saying they are willing to renegotiate some terms to reflect higher oil prices.
Concerns Raised Over Natural Gas From Abroad: Critics say imported LNG burns hotter and pollutes more than the domestic product.
Army to test hydrogen fuel cell vehicle
Suits Say U.S. Impeded Audits for Oil Leases
Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.
US DOE Releases Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan
House panel embraces "25 by '25" energy goal
Congress could set a goal of deriving 25 percent of all U.S. energy from renewable sources -- biofuels and hydro, wind and solar power -- by 2025 under a resolution approved by the House of Representatives' Agriculture Committee on Thursday.
Michael T. Klare: Taking Oil Out Of The Equation
Mubarak says Egypt will develop nuclear energy
Fears grow over Russia undermining EU energy strategy
Italy has sounded the alarm over Russia's recent energy deal with Algeria, amid fears that the Kremlin is undermining the EU's strategy of seeking less energy dependency on Moscow.
Heatwaves, biofuel demand push up price of wheat; Irish bread prices to rise
Brazil, Bolivia to address energy crisis
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insisted Thursday he's taking a tough line in a major energy dispute with Bolivia, and said he'll meet with Bolivian leader Evo Morales to try solve the crisis after Brazil's Oct. 1 presidential elections.
Australia: Gas could cost more in State supply plan
Australia’s peak oil and gas lobby yesterday criticised the State Government’s plan to force gas companies to develop marginal gas fields as a condition of increased LNG sales overseas, claiming it could distort the gas market, hurt producers and hit consumers with higher bills.
EU Imported More Energy in 2005
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European Union imported more energy last year to plug a deficit after its own production of oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power fell, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday.
[Update by Leanan on 09/22/06 at 3:07 PM EDT]
Putting ethanol in the fast lane
Despite falling oil prices and a corresponding drop in the stock price of various ethanol companies, famed venture capitalist, Sun Microsystems co-founder and ethanol investor Vinod Khosla outlined four steps he said would help the country use more of the plant-derived fuel.
Clinton debuts $1B renewable-energy fund
NEW YORK - Former President Clinton announced the launch of an investment fund expected to raise more than $1 billion for renewable energy on Friday, the final day of his global issues conference.The Green Fund would focus on reducing dependence on fossil fuels, creating jobs, lessening pollution and helping to reduce global warming, all while making a profit, Clinton said.
http://www.aspo-usa.com/fall2006/
Limited time availability - rooms at special discount rate of $99 at Comfort Inn, 900 Morrissey Blvd, Boston MA 02122
Offer expires October 2, 2006.
You may reserve a room for the nights of October 25, 26, and 27 or any combination of those 3 nights.
To make a reservation, call (617) 287-9200. Be sure to mention ASPO-USA conference.
Rate is $99.00 plus 12.45% Massachusetts Room Tax.
Guests will be asked for a valid credit card to secure reservation when they call.
Check-in time is 3:00PM or later, check-out time is 12:00 noon or earlier.
All rates include complimentary deluxe continental breakfast offered from 6AM to 10AM daily.
Transportation to the Conference is by shuttle service to the subway (provided by the hotel) and then one change on the subway to the Conference at Boston University.
The Hotel provides complementary shuttle service to and from Logan Airport.
Full registration at the Conference includes breakfast and lunch buffets on Thru and Friday and the receptions Wend. and Thru evenings.
Best Hopes,
Alan
This is getting to be a bit much. Reeks of desperation, IMHO.
Not desperation. We have about 250 people registered and would like to have about 500, with one month to go.
ASPO-USA has very little money.
There are about 6 people in total all volunteers organizing the Conference. The Organizer Dick Lawrence rides 30 miles to Boston University by bicycle to arrange things there.
They, and I are trying to help the situation, are you?
The Conference is primarily funded by the registration fees.
The organizers of the Conference are on the hook personally for the money it cost to put it on if it doesn't break even.
Would you do that even if you were able to?
What are you doing to help sole the Peak Oil problem beside complaining?
However, it does seem you post on this an awful lot. It seems in this case that you waited for the Drumbeat and rushed to stick in the first post. I don't think there is anything wrong with mentioning the event, but as I noted in my first comment, it is my opinion that the frequency is "getting to be a bit much". It is my right to make that observation and I stand by it.
Your defensive reply and particularly this point, do seem to reek of desperation.
Regardless, I hope the event is a success and you get your money back.
A Scholar Is Alive, Actually, and Hungry for Debate.
Nice try, Hugo.
This is GREAT stuff! This guy has cajones, that's for sure.
This may not be appropriate for this blog, but if some one would like to make a few Million before the SHTF, design a complete line of no spill coffeepots to replace the current pots supplied with Mr. Coffee and other makes. I am sure some one would like to cash in on this idea, and advertise it as the no spill replacement pot, however I have solved the problem for myself. Rip a half-inch strip of tape from a roll of duct tape and cut a 1-inch length and paste it below the lip of the pour spout so it extends beyond the spout about a 1/8th of an inch or more. Problem solved, of course my wife says, well now doesn't that look lovely, yes but look at all the spills I avoid, and the dishrags no longer turn brown. Now I am not a conspiracy advocate however I believe the paper towel Mfg.'s are subsidizing the coffee pot makers and some one is being paid off.
Good stuff. I'd give you 'Post of the Day,' but I think I already awarded it to Step Back. Runner-up.
i had an automatic coffee maker, but i have to say i prefer making it manually using a #4 paper filter.
i always wonder, what is more renewable - using water to rinse off the old filter, or using a new paper filter ?
as far as the paper towel - they come in very handy.
especially if you've run out of toilet paper 8-/
Bravo for Hugo Chavez !
Probably the most renewable thing is to compost coffee+filter.
The Bin Laden family are Royal kin-folk, and the Al Quida financing is Saudi, plus I think Osama is most likely in Saudi Arabia in one of his half-brother's homes, not in the hills of Pakistan with the Pathan tribe. Dialysis takes sophisticated medical equipment. The Neocons are protecting him.
The sulfur smell in the air isn't just from sour crude.
That's what Hugo Chavez said Wednesday at the UN, something like 'the devil was here yesterday', meaning W, and 'the smell of sulfur is still in the air'.
KSA already made its play: Decreasing demand will force production cuts across the board at OPEC. That's what they will say.
long time lurker and occasional amateur agitator, but not familiar with that one.
-PoP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia
Now it seems there's an alternative to the hobo life:
Anyone know where you sign up to be a professional agitator?
That comes as a surprise. I most sincerely doubt it.
Rat
PS When I was in school, they were called "outside agitators". I guess cuz we weren't smart enuf to agitate on our own. Which is probably why I am a Wharf Rat, and not a Maytag.
Jimmy Cliff
Though I was about to go cycling along the Moselle river on this sunny September afternoon in central Europe.
Now I'm glued to the flatscreen again ...
I wish I could have had a bike there.
Here is the Satellite picture
http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc/satshots/io0406sams.jpg
Here is the projected strength.
http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc/warnings/io0406.gif
both from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center
http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc.html
I think they should name it typhoon george. It just seem the appropriate thing to do.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?ArabianSea
Be warned, these are some big files.
They are from a nasa near real time site
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/
Yes, Yes, quite surprising. I thought I was the only one. My nephew brought me some new optical devices for my birthday. They are made in Germany by some American firms. Quite good. From my palace, I spotted something sinister. We decided to climb to the top of the Burj al-Arab Hotel to get a better look. Actually, we took the elevator.
You know it was me that decided to name it 'George.' My first choice was Muhammed. But that's so cliche. And it's not what you think. I had Democracy in mind. George Washington was the idea.
weather machine
But as a peak oil advocate, at least I can look forward to being tortured with green power. When the electrodes are clamped on my testicles, I will be secure in the knowlege that the amperage is provided by Gitmo's large, earth friendly wind turbines
Although I doubt that the insurance companies will be happy if you use a super tanker to play tag with a cyclone. I imagine that the sea's will be pretty rough, even outside the storm.
"social responsibility and surviving the oil crash"
the following quote:
"The press and the politicians largely denied
that the Depression existed". I think we are seeing
a repeat of this concerning peak oil. The Iron
Triangle existed even in the 1930's.
The following is an exerpt from a speech FDR gave at Madison Square Garden in Oct. 1936. It was the last speech of his 2nd presidential campaign. There is no denial.
He also bucked every trend of his generation, Congress, the businessman, everyone. The media was almost as corporate controlled then as now, and everything else was ran by corprocrats. So, while FDR was working hard to change things, the spinmeisters were working hard to undermine him. That is the source behind all the newspaper articles etc, that were mentioned earlier.
Things were so bad back then that corporate farmers who couldn't sell their crops at a profit dumped kerosene on them and burned them, rather than letting starving people eat them. (BTW, a good ficitional account of these days is Steinback's The Grapes of Wrath.)
Can you imagine this rhetoric today??? And he carried 67% of the vote in 1936. Come to think of it... he does sound a bit like Fidel doesn't he? <bg>
"The Business Plot or the The Plot Against FDR was a conspiracy against President Franklin D. Roosevelt by a group of millionaire businessmen, led by the Du Pont and J. P. Morgan empires. Alarmed by the President's plan to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, they plotted to overthrow Roosevelt with a military coup and install a fascist government. The businessmen tried to recruit General Smedley Butler, promising him an army of 500,000, unlimited financial backing and generous media spin control. The plot was foiled when Butler reported it to Congress." Attempted Coup Against Franklin D. Roosevelt
And remember FDR was the only president to serve 4 terms. The laws were changed to a max of 2 terms after his presidency.
"Things were so bad back then that corporate farmers who couldn't sell their crops at a profit dumped kerosene on them and burned them..."
I recall that Carter said his father was ordered by govt planners to destroy some cotton crops and his father thought it was a sinful act but had to comply.
Carter also said the govt work programs were not effective in helping the unemployed. I was surprised to hear a former Dem president make such an admission.
When I finished the book I had the sense that what got most people through those difficult times was a strong sense of community and a level of personal responsibility that we rarely see today.
I have spoken with elderly relatives who grew up on farms and had a lifestyle very much like Carter's. I still smile when I think about one of these relatives telling me when the doctor made a house call he would leave with a live chicken as payment for his services and this was considered a very generous level of compensation.
I thank My lord and Personal saviour that "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering" are standing tall again.
The denial issue is really during 1930, 1931, and 1932. Of course there were the nasty aristocrats who privately thought the Depression was a good thing because it would starve the unworthy. There are a lot of Americans who think that way, perhaps now more than ever. Every person who professes hatred of FDR is professing utter indifference over the fate of the millions of Americans who went hungry under Hoover, no matter how much he hides behind the Gold Standard, the Founding Fathers, and that Austrian autistic Hayek. Maybe that's how superior humans think. In that case, I'm cheering for our extinction, because our evolution into libertarian humanoids is not worth the current suffering of most of us.
Peak Oil has forced me to look at the New Deal differently, though. Of course if Communists or right-wing fascists had taken over America instead we would still have burned up oil and polluted the land. There's no point faulting FDR for believing in infinite growth when gas was 10 cents a gallon. The capitalists of that time were so arrogant and violent (the National Guard was called out about twice a year to suppress strikers) that they had no choice but to promise a future of infinite growth to get their wage slaves to tolerate them. Anytime a country suffered a long downturn it ended up on the verge of revolution.
The problem is that the forced-growth Keynesian liberalism of FDR, later the official theology of Marshall Plan Europe and Japan, was so successful that it ensured the resource crises would start decades sooner. The alternatives to FDR would have given us more time thru sheer incompetence and meanness, but only until revolution broke out. So I am rather suspicious of people at this site who think we can return to medieval steady-state economics while smugly preserving the fantastic inequality found with private property.
I'm with you on most of your post but would rather make my original point over and stronger. Will started this by saying there was no Depression denial and then backed it up with "evidence" that was just meaningless, beside the point and thoughtless. tate423 gets in and says he thought everyone loved FDR.
There's leftist history and Marxist history and jingo history and Hollywood history and there's total bullshit.
Was there denial? Jesus Fucking H Christ there is always denial. Was there a time when everyone loved just one politician? Maybe if you believe the fantasies of Joe Stalin or Saddam Hussein. Or Karl Rove. My own grandfather, who lived through the Depression, at the absolute bottom of the lower middle class, relentlessly claimed that Hoover did no wrong, that FDR initiated the Depression in 1932. History at TOD is scarcely a hair better than what granpa talked. Few here have a concept what history is and everyone seems to believe that if you can supply a quote or a link you've established something. Wrong.
(Click to learn why 1984 is one of my favorite books. It did happen. It happened here. It happened to us. Only a few elders remain & remember.)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/19/business/rglover.php
From Singapore, where the IMF and World Bank are meeting.
Will we slow or tip into a recession?
Reasons: