T. Boone Pickens was on CNBC this morning. It was the first time he has been there since January when oil was just a tad above $50. He said his collar was a little tight then because he had earlier predicted that oil would hit $70 before $50. It never closed below $50 but did have an interday low below that number.

He said the only spare capacity OPEC had was heavy, high sulfur, crude. And he said Saudi Arabia was porducing every barrel they could possibly produce and they were drilling like crazy just to stay where they are. (Or words to that effect as I do not remember his exact words.) He said 85 million barrels was the max we would produce. He never used the word "peak".

And his latest prediction: $75 before $55.

Pickens' video on CNBC is now available on their web site:
http://www.cnbc.com/

Ron Patterson

Considering the politicians are (rightly) apprehensive about Nukes for northern Alberta... and Natural Gas from McKenzie seems to be in some doubt.

How the heck is that production going to work if, by 2010, Domestic NG supplies are going to be in serious decline.

One LNG terminal in Kitimat, BC isn't going to do it.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/02648wu132m07804/
New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize
Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity
Journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology
Publisher Springer New York
ISSN 0090-4341 (Print) 1432-0703 (Online)
DOI 10.1007/s00244-006-0149-5
SpringerLink Date Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Abstract: Health risk assessment of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) cultivated for food or feed is under debate throughout the
world, and very little data have been published on mid- or long-term
toxicological studies with mammals. One of these studies performed
under the responsibility of Monsanto Company with a transgenic corn
MON863 has been subjected to questions from regulatory reviewers in
Europe, where it was finally approved in 2005. This necessitated a
new assessment of kidney pathological findings, and the results
remained controversial. An Appeal Court action in Germany (Munster)
allowed public access in June 2005 to all the crude data from this
90-day rat-feeding study. We independently re-analyzed these data.
Appropriate statistics were added, such as a multivariate analysis of
the growth curves, and for biochemical parameters comparisons between
GMO-treated rats and the controls fed with an equivalent normal diet,
and separately with six reference diets with different compositions.
We observed that after the consumption of MON863, rats showed slight
but dose-related significant variations in growth for both sexes,
resulting in 3.3% decrease in weight for males and 3.7% increase for
females. Chemistry measurements reveal signs of hepatorenal toxicity,
marked also by differential sensitivities in males and females.
Triglycerides increased by 24.0% in females (either at week 14, dose
11% or at week 5, dose 33%, respectively); urine phosphorus and
sodium excretions diminished in males by 31.5% (week 14, dose 33%)
for the most important results significantly linked to the treatment
in comparison to seven diets tested. Longer experiments are essential
in order to indicate the real nature and extent of the possible
pathology; with the present data it cannot be concluded that GM corn
MON863 is a safe product.

The Death of Real Estate

I sell investment real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. Have been for 25 years. It's a nice business. I've enjoyed it, and I value my clients.
My pappy's a realtor. My grandpappy was a realtor. My uncle's a realtor; so is my brother. Heck, some of my best friends are realtors (and it takes a big man to admit that).

That's why it pains me to give you the bad news, to wit: Real estate in America is officially dead. But only for a generation or so.
In other words, it is time to sell all of your real estate, save for possibly your home. If you don't, you will likely regret it. You will gradually watch all of your equity disappear into thin air. And then, unless you have little debt against it, you will likely lose your property to foreclosure. It's as simple as that.

The far better strategy is to sell now, even if you are disappointed with the selling price, take your equity (less any capital gains taxes you must pay) and put it into safe, interest-bearing cash-equivalents for a while. Do not put it into the stock market. Do not fiddle with bonds. Don't buy gold (for now, anyway). Stay away from the other metals. Just sit there. Don't be cute. Stop annoying your brother. And try not to be smug. Exercise that virtue known to Job as patience.

Eventually you will be able to buy all the real estate you want, probably including the stuff I'm happy to sell for you now, for literally nickels on the dollar.

The fact is, we have officially entered the frightening, post-NASDAQ-bubble, post-subsequent-real estate-double-bubble, credit-contracting, asset-deflationary portion of the 75 year cycle. So buckle-up for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, people, because there is no looking back at this point. Mark my words, it's going to be nauseating.

2,100,000 households in America were said to be in default as of year-end, 2006. Teaser loan payments are rising, home values are falling, and "greater fools" are no longer stepping into the breech to save anyone's financial day.

Eventually, everyone will come to the realization that 1) just like when the NASDAQ bubble burst back in 2000, real estate values are going down, down, down, then 2) that this time it's not a "normal real estate cycle" but instead a relentless, post-bubble and post-bubble-bubble real estate deflation that we expect will have no historical rival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html?ei=5065&en=f30aed8...

March 29, 2007
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.

“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness,” Professor Saez said. “It can have important political consequences.”

Last year, according to data from other sources, incomes for average Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because those at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for their income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now, Professor Saez said.

He noted that the analysis was based on preliminary data and that the highest-income Americans were more likely than others to file their returns late, so his data might understate the growth in inequality.

The disparities may be even greater for another reason. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that it is able to accurately tax 99 percent of wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business and investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals, because not everybody accurately reports such figures.

The Bush administration argued that its tax policies, despite cuts that benefited those at the top more than others, had not added to the widening gap but “made the tax code more progressive, not less.” Brookly McLaughlin, the chief Treasury Department spokeswoman, said that this year “the share of income taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers will be lower than it would have been without the tax relief, while the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher.”

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., she noted, has acknowledged that income disparities have increased, but, along with a “solid consensus” of experts, attributed that shift largely to “the rapid pace of technological change has been a major driver in the decades-long widening of the income gap in the United States."

Others argued that public policies had played a role in the shift. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor, said that the data understates the widening disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country.

He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending.

“The nation faces some very tough choices in coming years,” he said. “That such a large share of the income gains are going to the very top, at a minimum, raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money” to provide health insurance to 47 million Americans and cutting education benefits.

A major issue likely to be debated in Congress in the year ahead is whether reversing the Bush tax cuts would slow investment and, if so, how much that would cost the economy.

Mr. Greenstein’s organization will release a report today showing that for Americans in the middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.

Because the incomes of those at the top have grown so much more than those below them, their share of total income tax revenue has risen despite the reduced rates.

The analysis by the two professors showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5 percent of all reported income in 2005.

That is an increase of more than 2 percentage points over the previous year and up from roughly 33 percent in the late 1970s. The peak for this group was 49.3 percent in 1928.

The top 1 percent received 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005, up significantly from 19.8 percent the year before and more than double their share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent reported 23.9 percent of all income.

The top tenth of a percent and top one-hundredth of a percent recorded even bigger gains in 2005 over the previous year. Their incomes soared by about a fifth in one year, largely because of the rising stock market and increased business profits.

The top tenth of a percent reported an average income of $5.6 million, up $908,000, while the top one-hundredth of a percent had an average income of $25.7 million, up nearly $4.4 million in one year.

Good day all.

I was just reading yesterdays' db and to my surprise not a single comment referred to the piece in de Arizona Star.

"Next year we will fall off the oil-supply cliff, with an average daily production of less than 78 million barrels"

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/175542

Sounds shocking. Can anyone support this number?

This falls in line with the MSNBC article on flex-fuel vehicles being used to meet federal fuel economy standards:

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/03/flex-fuel-fraud.asp

Ford received a 2003 fleet rating of 43 MPG for its flex-fuel vehicles, when in fact they only got 26 MPG.

This is the usual greenwashing done by the domestic motor companies to meet fuel economy standards. If fuel economy standards are raised for passenger vehicles, all the domestic 3 will do is turn them into flex-fuel vehicles in order to meet regulations. It's a scam just like hy(pe)drogen.

Limits of Technology

One theme that interests me is whether technological innovation will continue at the rate seen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Personally, I have my doubts, and this makes me more concerned that we'll have difficulty transitioning after PO.

Contrary to what one often hears in the popular press, I believe we are running up against significant technological barriers even in the field of medicine. Three significant finding have been in the popular press recently:

1) It was recently shown that the highly technical and expensive stents ($10k to $20k per procedure) placed in coronary arteries do not improve outcomes in persons with narrowed blood vessels any more than medication does. It takes years to train a cardiologist to do these, and despite the fact that they are routine today, heart stenting is one of the most advanced technologies developped recently. Yet it does not appear to be better than cheap meds that have been on the market for decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/health/27stent.html?ref=health

2) One of the most promising drugs in the pipeline, torcetrapib, will never come to market. It was a whole new class designed to raise HDL, or the good cholesterol. First, it raised blood pressure leading to an increased risk of heart attack and death, and a recent study has shown it didn't even shrink cholesterol plaques as expected. The hoopla surrounding this medication has been huge, so the degree of disappointment here is enormous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/health/27drug.html

3) MRI for detection of breast cancer was in the news as a new promising treatment. A study showed that 3% of early tumors not detected by mammography can be found with MRI in women at high risk for the disease. So we'll find one more cancer early for every 33 high risk women who have an MRI. Keep in mind a few of these women will have a very aggressive tumor and they'll die anyway, even with early detection by MRI. Many of these women will have slow growing tumors that would have been detected by mammorgraphy a year later even without the MRI, and at that point they'll still be easily curable. And many, many women will have needless biopsies due to high false positive rate of MRI's. So how many women need to have a $1000 to $2000 MRI, and how many women will be scared to death awaiting biopsy results to find one woman who actually benefits from it? this is a case of diminishing returns. Sure it adds a little bit to our success in treating breat cancer, but there's very little bang for our buck.

Shell cancels offshore Louisiana LNG port

"Market conditions" per local morning TV news.

Alan

I posted the following comment last night but inadvertently posted it into the March 27 Drumbeat instead of the current one. I am now posting it here since the 27th went stale and it was on the bottom of the heap.

It contains three subject:
Soil
A farmers question on the future
Honeybees

************************************************************
Soils(land):

For those who might be interested in moving to a sustainable lifestyle you will surely be most interested in securing a site that has good soil. I submit the following website as a good place to learn about soil as well as help in locating it.

http://soils.usda.gov

From this portal you can travel on to NRCS where you can locate geophysically ,different regions of the US and the soil classifications there. Both sites are easy to use and contain a tremendous amount of useful information to those not knowledgeable about soils.

If you wish to grow food then you must have an understanding of various soils and which are good or bad or inbetween.

As for myself I live on a type known as 'loess' and within that a classification of Loring Silt Loam. A very very good soil IMO but somewhat acidic and that being the only drawback and means lime must be used to amend its ph.

Now on another topic. A question I usually pose to ones locally who I communicate about PO and when they do understand the possibilities I ask the following question to understand how committed they are.

The question posed thusly.

You are at your permanent location. Say the front porch of your farm house. The energy crises has occurred and with its full hard crashing impact. The cities are full of the dead and dying. The farmers are circling the wagons to protect the foodstores they have and own and their own assets they need in order to survive. They are armed of course.

From the vantage of your porch you see a smallish ragtag mob/group approaching up the road/lane leading to your house. One appears to be in front and maybe armed. In fact all could be armed but hiding the weapons. They are not waving a flag but are just steadily coming ahead.

Now the question is what do you do? What must you do? At what point must you take action? If you prefer your survival and life over that of others who might take it and you observe the group approaching just what actions do you take?

Considering all the while that if they reach rifle range they might shoot you dead. If you hide they might just surround and flush you out. They are drawing closer. It now appears that only one has a firearm.

What do you do?

The answer IMO shows your level of committment to others, those who may be with you , and to yourself.

Most answers I receive are "shoot them dead". This is from farmers or those who have land and live on it. They are not cornucopians necessarily but they are hopefuly optomistic somewhat about the future but understand more than their city kinfolk how serious it can be or can get. Their crops depend very much on petrochemical products and they use very large quatities of it. They know they are sitting on the top of the food control chain. Animals on the hoof and grain in the fields and bins.

Some say we are a cooperative race. Some say we are savages.
Some are not sure what we are or will become.

I read the book "The Road". My answer is close to what some of the scenarios are in the book. The book helped me make up my mind on this subject.(this book was what prompted me to ask the above questions to some landowners nearby)

Remembering that one of the prime freedoms we enjoy is the rights of property ownership. You are not required to give away your property to anyone. In fact you can use whatever force is necessary to defend it. That said I believe we will become a nation of squatters. You can have the unimproved land to squat on if the owners are dead but you have no right to what I have improved on my own and belongs to me.

There is bad news about honeybees regarding the Colony Collapse Disorder. Yesterday I surveyed my fruit trees and saw no activity as yet. I then checked the holly bush near the house and saw it was swarming with honeybees. Most were immature with a few adults thrown it. I therefore am optimistic on the wild populations out in the nearby woods.
I haven't checked with local beekeepers but the main one just passed away so I think he is out of business. He was the only local beekeeper in the county AFAIK so the wild hives are of supreme importance. If they were gone it would be disastrous.

Airdale -

P.S. I also recently viewed the movie "Shooter". Oil was spoken of repeatedly but never connected to much that I could see. Very good action movie though.

The Saudis are hopping mad with the US over Iraq

Saudi King Abdullah said on Wednesday at the opening of the Arab League meetings, "“In beloved Iraq, blood is shed among our brothers while there is an illegitimate foreign occupation and a hateful sectarianism that is threatening to develop into a civil war . . .”

King Abdullah followed up on these harsh criticisms of the US by cancelling his planned appearance at a White House dinner in April. The Saudi royal family is fit to be tied that Bush gave Iraq away to fundamentalist Shiite parties that have close ties to Iran.

Although the Saudi statement is remarkable for its brutal frankness and coldness toward the United States, its real significance is its slam of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Abdullah has not only said that the US presence is an illegal occupation, he has said that the al-Maliki government is nothing more than Shiite sectarian hegemony. The Saudis are known for their behind the scenes diplomacy and their public discretion. King Abdullah is hopping mad, to talk this way. It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations. Abdullah is also angry that Bush is letting the Palestine issue fester and that he pushed for open Palestinian elections but then cut off the Hamas government once it was elected. Abdullah thinks Bush is pursuing irrational policies, the effect of which is to destabilize the Middle East.

Saudi willingness to manage oil reserves in the interests of the USA is, one imagines, somewhat compromised as a result.

I was surprised to see this in CNN Money:

Nabors, the world's biggest land-based oil and gas driller, said Thursday its first-quarter earnings would miss Wall Street estimates because of weaker-than-expected rig activity in the United States and Canada.

I knew rig activity was down for Canadian gas, but I had assumed that they were all moving south to the US for gas drilling. Does anyone have insight as to what is happening? Is this a temporary phenomenon?

Peter Huber just came out with a rare column in Forbes.

Follow the Money (Peter Huber, Forbes 9 April 2007, free registration required)

Cutting to the chase, Huber calls for a fuel tax near the end of his column. But he makes a number of other points along the way.

• Huber is a huge fan of electricity, which he views as key. One reason is that because it can be generated in so many different ways, it is a good arbiter between fuel sources and end uses.
• Electrical generation plants consume 40% of all raw fuel, with another 30% going to transportation (with half of that for cars) and the remaining 30% used to create raw heat. I assume this is for the U.S., but Huber doesn't say.
• Electricity continues to gain market share relative to fuel used for transportation and heat. Every year it gains a bit and the others lose a bit.

Huber's policy prescriptions are as follows:

• From a general policy standpoint, don't tinker with technology (i.e. attempt to pick winners and losers). Instead, concentrate on the economics.
• Deregulate price at the power plant, i.e. don't dictate the price utilities must pay, for say, wind power.
• De-average the price of the grid, i.e. allow dynamic time-of-use and load-dependent pricing. He says this would be great for uranium, pretty good for coal and wind, and bad for solar.
• Let the consumer choose the fuel. If someone wants to buy solar, let them buy it at the market price.
• Institute a flat fuel tax on the raw fuel used to deliver energy, i.e. scrap the 10% surcharge on the retail electric bill, which taxes both fuel and capital costs. A source-fuel-only tax would a) not tax capital, and b) not tax free fuel sources such as wind and solar. He includes corn as a taxable fuel.

I admit I'm a Huber fan. I don't always agree with him, for example his silly belief that "the more oil we produce, the more we'll find," but he gets a lot right in The Bottomless Well. He totally nails Jevon's Paradox, which he calls the Paradox of Efficiency. He is a proponent of the "silicon car," which includes plug-in electric technologies as well as a lot of power semiconductors. And the charts and graphics in the book are exceptional.

Fed Powerless to Fix Part of Inflation Puzzle

John M. Berry

March 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve has an inflation problem that it is almost powerless to attack: rising rents.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke acknowledged the problem yesterday in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Core inflation, Bernanke said, "remains uncomfortably high. For example, core CPI inflation over the 12 months ended in February was 2.7 percent, up from 2.1 percent a year earlier."

"Increases in rents -- both market rent and owner's equivalent rent -- account for a substantial part of the increase in core inflation over the past year," he added.

As Bernanke said yesterday, "The acceleration in rents may have resulted in part from a shift in demand toward rental housing as families found homeownership less financially attractive."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aBvuIZ6dy2BM&refer=home

Yeah, yeah, I know, "OT remove it!" :-) Groceries are already shooting up and now I expect to get hammered by rising rent. At least I only drive my 180,000 mile Buick on weekends so the rising gas prices don't hit me that hard.

As I did on yesterday's thread, I would like to take this opportunity to again thank Fidel Castro for his opposition to ethanol. The ethanol industry could not ask for a better opponent. A man who has put Cuba in hardship for 47 years has little to recommend his expertise. So many thanks Fidel.

You could have converted some the the mountains of sugar sitting in your warehouses into ethanol and kept your '50's vintage Chevy's and Buick's running, but you didn't. You sold at the world price which is even below the US subsidized price. Now you want to put the rest of the world in the same situation? You must be getting more senile than I thought. The US ethanol industry and Iowa's corn farmers thank you again. You are just priceless.

My Peak Oil Dilemma

Hello fellow TODers! I have seen a lot of discussion lately based on facts and numbers relevant to PO. This type of discussion is great for learning the when, where, why, how of PO, and I am grateful for it, but I would really like to see more discussion on the human reaction to PO, i.e. how is PO affecting my fellow TODers today? What are they doing to prepare for tomorrow? It's not enough to understand the facts and numbers, we need to be able to understand each other if we want to be able to figure how to live with each other in an energy-scarce future.

I want to start with my PO dilemma...

I am an Iowa native. I am a 24 year old sys admin in SoCal. I come from a very small town(200 people) so I am still suffering from a little culture shock. I moved to SoCal last September to get this great new job paying so well. The plan was to get things together and get a lil place and move my girlfriend and my daughter out here and be a happy family. So far, I have only been able to get my girlfriend out here and we both sleep on my friends couch in his lil apartment which he also shares with a roommate. I make 40000 a year, which feels like poverty level here in SoCal. My girlfriend and I have decided we don't want our daughter to grow up here, and that we will probably never be able to afford to have our own place on my income only. My girlfriend is going back to Iowa this weekend to be with our daughter for good. They won't be coming back out here. I will probably stay til the end of the year, unless TSHTF and I am forced to flee this ticking time-bomb known as SoCal sooner.

That's just my story, not my dilemma. The dilemma is that we once decided that we would have only 2 children, but I have changed my mind. We are both PO-aware and we do what we can to spread the good word. After she came to accept PO, I mentioned that having another child would be a huge mistake and that we should be done with having children. This is not going well with her. She tells me she is going to have another child, no matter what I say or think about it. No amount of logic I throw at this woman is enough to make her change her mind! She just doesn't seem to care how much more of a strain another child would put on us. Just how strong is the female urge to reproduce???

I believe this is going to cause me a lot of headaches into the future...

Fellow TODers, please share your thoughts and/or dilemmas!

PS OFFTOPIC!!!11!one!!! ;-D

The most interesting chart in the GAO report is on page 13. It shows estimates of the timing of peak oil, according to 21 studies reviewed by GAO.

Ten of the 21 studies say that peak oil will be reached before 2020, and no later. Four additional studies say that peak oil may be reached before 2020, or sometime later. Seven of the 21 studies say peak oil will be reached after 2020.

How come Castro is smarter at 80 than any of our guys are at 50?

Guess who met Robert Hirsch and Colin Campbell today? :)

I followed up on the Antarctica news byte listed today.

Here is the official (i.e., not news-agency digested) statement:
http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/rels/032807.html
which includes this:

Current understanding is too limited to know whether, when, or how rapidly this might happen, but discussions at the meeting included the possibility of several feet of sea-level rise over a few centuries from changes in this region.

[emphasis mine.]

It is because of caveats such as the one above that I put GW farther down the list on my personal list of things to worry about, than I do peak fossile fuel. In my lifetime GW is unlikely to make serious changes (though probably measurable ones.) However, my life today is affected by high energy prices, and that will only get worse, even if PO is 10 years away.

Not to say the Antarctic is not worth studying - very interesting subject. The background to the story and its participants can be found here:
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/agasea/
along with interesting maps from earlier data sets:
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/agasea/agasea_results.htm?PHP...

Not only is oil @ $66 but gold is at $666. Ten to one it's just a coincidence.

UK oil and gas production for January was published today here and here.

The fall of natural gas production continues to accelerate. In the 3 months to January, production was down an amazing 17.5% on the same period a year earlier.

On the oil side, production is also well down on the previous year. The Buzzard oil field began producing in January, but doesn't seem to have made much difference yet, although it may do so in the next few months when production increases.

From Whipple's article:

... this week, we look at wind-generated electricity.
... The US currently has about 11,600 megawatts installed. As each megawatt can supply 300-350 homes, the US has the capacity to supply over 3 million homes. The problem, of course, is that the wind does not blow all the time, so the actual power generated will be much lower than theoretical production.

- hmmm, I thought that the "350 homes" was computed after adjusting the 11,600 MW for a capacity factor of about 1/3, i.e. accounting for the fact that the wind does not blow all the time. Moreover, the standard of 1 KW per home will have to change as we adopt the "serious conservation" that he says will be necessary. (FWIW, my household use is about 1/4 of that, but I heat space and water and food on something other then electricity.) (And before I get yelled at again by those who cannot stand anybody talking about watts instead of watt-hours, yes I meant that I use about 250 watts average instantaneous power, which is about the same as 200 KWH per month.)

Researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories recently announced they and an industrial partner have developed a significantly-improved wind turbine blade. This blade is designed to generate electricity in low-wind-speed regions such as the Midwestern US. If the tests of this new design prove successful, it will increase by 20-fold the land in the US on which it would be economically feasible to install wind generators.

- a much easier way to make 20x more land (the land with less than the strongest winds) "economically feasible" for wind power is to raise the price of electricity from other sources. I think that will happen on its own.

IMO there is growing evidence that iranian leaders, concerned by their lack of popularity, really want to be attacked.

Carter lost popularity and his re-election over the Iranian hostage crisis. It is less likely that Bush will lose popularity because he does too little re: the brit hostages, for whom he may actually feel some level of responsibility. One possible response would be to take out their defenses, do the best possible re: the nuke sites, and 'de-militarize' the iranian side of hormuz, all from the air and avoiding the use of ground troops, followed by an embargo of iranian 2mb/d gasoline imports until iran agrees to give up reprocessing and accepts permanent inspections. True, Iran might refuse to export crude, but the overall loss to markets is 'only' 2mb/d.

Thinking of who might then benefit; all exporting countries save iran, including russia, iraq and sa, along with the us oil patch, all solid bush backers. Also benefiting would be toders, who would soon get to see just how much reserve capacity sa has.

Many iranians would rally to the leadership, but many might conclude that their leaders had done little over the past 1/4 century to improve their lives.

Cellulosic ethanol is a hot topic right now, with switchgrass being a
crop of interest. Today I ran across this article:

which provides a brief analysis of the results of a large scale
switchgrass evaluation project. The short of it is that switchgrass is
not producing anywhere near as much biomass per acre as has been
projected.

Most of the analysis is about what it would take to make ethanol at a
competitive price. Personally, I think that replacing all our gasoline
with alcohol is like installing an extra-large home photovoltaic
system to run a house full of incandescent lightbulbs.

Below are some excerpts from the article:

Farmers in four southern Iowa counties have been growing switchgrass
as part of the Chariton Valley Biomass Project,

cellulose ethanol and synthetic biofuel producers would face feedstock
costs of between US$115 and US$120, more than three times those of corn.

Low yields are to blame for the unfavorable economics. Switchgrass
yields in the Iowa project have averaged about 3 tons per acre (7.4
tons per hectare)

In Brazil, in 2005, the average sugarcane yield was 80 tons/ha; many
plantations easily yield 120 tons/ha. [over ten times the yeild in the
switchgrass trial]

from a purely economic point of view, producing biomass and biofuels
in the (sub)tropics makes much more sense than attempting it in the North.

The biomass feedstock cost is the single most important factor
determining the viability of biofuels projects.

Unfortunately, the first large-scale [switchgrass] trials now prove
that indeed, much of the enthusiasm was not based on realistic
assessments [of switchgrass biomass yield].

if congress cuts off funding for the search for wmd, i wonder if bush will seek the source of funding his daddy did, sell some missles to iran ?