DrumBeat: September 19, 2007
Posted by Leanan on September 19, 2007 - 9:09am
Dawn in the Desert - Saudi High Tech Paying Off at Ghawar Oil Field
By any measure, Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar, the world’s largest oil field with roughly 5 million barrels of daily output, holds an unparalleled significance to the future of global oil supplies. The Haradh area constitutes the southernmost portion of the giant Ghawar complex, and what makes Haradh uniquely interesting is its role as a launching pad for a new era in reservoir management – technology-intensive, smart, and real-time.Against a backdrop of many international upstream projects straining to achieve their target production levels and intended plateaus, Haradh III reached its planned production capacity of 300,000 barrels per day well ahead of schedule, and the field’s performance more than 18 months since its start-up exceeds virtually all pre-project goals.
Oil at new records for 7th straight day
Oil prices reached record highs for the seventh straight session Wednesday after refineries in California and Texas said they had new outages and the government reported surprisingly large declines in oil inventories.
Oil will hit $100 but probably not in 2007: Pickens
Oil will continue to trend higher after hitting fresh highs over $82 a barrel but is unlikely to puncture the $100 level this year, Texas oilman and investor T. Boone Pickens said on Wednesday."You'll hit $100 -- I don't think you'll hit $100 this year unless you have some kind of geopolitical event that causes that to happen, but you're going to get to $100 at some point," Pickens told Reuters in New York.
Oil-rich Gulf states follow U.S. interest rate cut
Oil-rich Arab states in the Persian Gulf followed the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate cut Wednesday, raising concerns about rising inflation in the region that pumps a fifth of the world's crude.
Magellan Midstream Partners LP announced $85 million in expansion projects Tuesday that will increase its terminal storage capacity by 1.4 million barrels.
Gazprom ready for dialogue on EU energy supply reliability
Gazprom is ready for constructive discussions on Russia's reliability as an energy supplier to Europe, the Russian gas giant's press secretary said Wednesday.Sergei Kupriyanov's comments follow the European Union's announcement earlier this week that Gazprom and other companies outside the EU would face restrictions in buying up energy assets in the 27-nation bloc. The state-controlled giant currently supplies 25% of Europe's gas, and has purchased stakes in EU energy companies.
Seattle neighborhood excited to ride the SLUT
Officially, it’s the South Lake Union Streetcar. But in the neighborhood where the new line runs, it’s called the South Lake Union Trolley — or, the SLUT.The $50.5 million project should be completed with streetcars running in December. Underlying the lighthearted opposition, however, is resentment over changes in the old working-class neighborhood.
“There was a meeting with representatives from the city several years ago,” Johnson recalled.
“They asked us, ‘What we could do for you?’ Most people raised their hands and said, ‘Affordable housing,”’ he said. “Then the people from the city huddled together — ‘whisper, whisper, whisper’ — and they said, ‘How about a trolley?”’
Former Pdvsa CEO shows concern about production level
Luis Giusti, former CEO of Venezuelan state-run oil firm Pdvsa, said the statements made by the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan about the Venezuelan oil industry confirm his view that Pdvsa oil production has collapsed."The industry is faced with a process of drastic deterioration. I wish people only thought what the collapse of Venezuelan production means. This is dramatic. Pdvsa has dropped 2 million bpd," said Giusti.
Journalist Paul Syvret on politics, peak oil and mitigation (podcast)
Paul Syvret, assistant editor and columnist for the Courier Mail newspaper in Australia, talks to GPM's Andi Hazelwood about the forthcoming report on "Queensland's Vulnerability to Rising Oil Prices." Syvret also discusses his coverage of peak oil in the Courier Mail and other News Corp. publications and his own thoughts on peak oil and mitigation strategies.
Curbing consumption: the price of oil and gas supply gaps
As long as energy prices remain affordable for the general public, who needs to be concerned about depleting oil and natural gas reserves? That's a dangerous attitude to have in today's energy environment, suggests the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO)-USA.
Problematic power grid plagues Iraqis
Mohammed Ismail spotted trouble earlier this year inside one of Iraq's biggest power plants: soot was building up inside a generator.Ismail, a contractor who manages a repair project at Baghdad's Dora power plant, says he urged Iraqi officials to shut the generator and clean it. But the Ministry of Electricity refused, he said, because it didn't want to turn off a generator that supplies enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes.
The generator caught fire in April and was closed for repairs that took nearly four months, becoming yet another example of the woes plaguing Iraq's electric grid. Despite nearly $4.7 billion spent by U.S. taxpayers since 2003 on fixing the system, insufficient maintenance, sabotage and other problems mean that residents of Baghdad get an average of just eight hours of power per day.
Gore highlights world population fears
The ballooning world population and the dizzying pace of technological change have helped turn mankind into an environmental "bull in a china shop", says climate crusader Al Gore.The former US vice-president said the world population has quadrupled in 100 years.
Foreign company to operate Mexico oil pipeline
The handing over of the Mexican Oil Pipeline (PEMEX) network to a foreign private enterprise is closer today and depending on when that right will be granted this year.
Tesco Slaps 3P On Fuel If You Give City A Miss
Supermarket giant Tesco was last night accused of cashing-in on rural communities by charging a premium for petrol at its new store in the north-east.Customers filling up at the Tesco pumps at Ellon, Aberdeenshire, yesterday paid 94.9p a litre for petrol while prices at the chain's main store in Aberdeen - just 16 miles away - were 3p cheaper at 91.9p.
When it comes to renewable energy, Australia is losing some of its best researchers and ideas.
Irish energy minister says oil rationing “common sense” (podcast)
Ireland’s Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has claimed that some form of energy rationing system would be a “common sense approach” to the twin challenges of peak oil and transport carbon emissions. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference held by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Cork, Eamon Ryan argued that it would be politically difficult to raise carbon taxes high enough to cut booming oil demand in Ireland, and confirmed that his government is investigating the possibility of introducing some kind of energy rationing scheme, perhaps starting with transport. Ryan, whose Green Party formed a coalition with Fianna Fail in July, is one of the first Western energy ministers to publicly acknowledge peak oil. In a lengthy interview with Lastoilshock.com, Ryan went on to discuss Ireland’s particular energy vulnerability, and plans to transform the country’s transport system.
Why oil prices are at a record high
Real and threatened disruptions to crude oil supplies, constraints at refineries in consuming countries, resilient demand and a flow of investor money into oil have fuelled the rally from a dip below $50 at the start of the year.
Peak Coal? Analyst Sees Demand Outpacing Supply
The 25 million-ton surplus of coal will be erased, and replaced with a 103 million-ton deficit by 2020, according to a forecast of Asia-Pacific coal demand by UBS Investment Research Associates and written about in Business World.
POLL - Asia thermal coal price to set new record in '08
Contract prices for thermal coal between Australian producers and Japanese utilities are seen rising by more than 15 percent in 2008, due to reduced Chinese supplies and Australia's port constraints, a Reuters poll showed.Prices for Asian thermal coal may jump to a record high of $64 a tonne in the 2008 Japanese fiscal year, versus this year's agreed price of $55.65, the median forecast of 10 analysts found. Estimates ranged from $59 to $70 a tonne.
Yemen: On rising gas prices and greedy vendors
For the past couple weeks, propane gas has been prohibitively expensive and to make matters worse, propane vendors have been hoarding their supplies like pack rats, waiting for prices to rise even higher. Their assumption is that the public will be so hungry two or three weeks from now that we’ll be willing to write gas vendors into our wills of inheritance for a tank or two.So, now, many people are facing threateningly low supplies of propane gas to cook their meals with — during Ramadan, no less — when coming home to an empty tank of propane could drive a person over the edge. How can the government expect civil obedience when citizens can hardly find or afford cooking fuel?
Petrol shortage cripples Sikkim
About 30,000 taxi vehicles in Sikkim are running short of fuel for the last few days due to the restriction on heavy vehicles to drive on the NH, 31A road from Gangtok to Sevoke.However, 50 per cent of Gangtok taxis have reportedly stopped plying on the road due to the crisis, which has caused chaos in the state. All the heavy vehicles, including petrol tankers, are stranded on either side at the 27th Mile, Lepcha Jhora near Chittrey and Tarkhola, which were not allowed to enter Sikkim due to the overload as several cracks appeared on the NH, 31A road made by incessant rain.
Monks on march again in restive Myanmar city
Nearly 1,000 Buddhist monks marched through the Myanmar city of Sittwe on Wednesday, a day after soldiers fired tear gas and warning shots to scatter a similar protest against the ruling generals, a witness said.Urging thousands of bystanders not to join in, they staged a sit-in outside the local government offices to demand the release of two men sentenced to two years in jail for giving water to monks protesting against soaring fuel prices last month.
Iraq fuels shortage threatens fishermen
Fishermen in south Basra warn Iraq’s growing fuel shortage is threatening their ability to work, an impending crisis that will exacerbate unemployment.“The fisherman are about to quit their jobs due to the scarcity of fuel necessary to operate the fishing boats,” Badran Issa, head of the al-Sindbad fishing association in al-Fao told the Voices of Iraq news agency.
“Some 6,000 fishermen have lost hope of getting the fuel they need in order to set sails for fishing, particularly after the fuel ration they receive was cut as of May 1, 2007,” he said, adding his colleagues are forced to the black market to buy fuel at $100 per barrel.
UK: “Hold off October fuel duty increase to help retailers”, pleads RMI Petrol Retailers Association
“With both oil prices and interest rates on the rise, the Government must postpone the fuel duty increase scheduled for 1 October, or risk putting undue financial strain on motorists and petrol retailers alike,” according to Ray Holloway, director of the RMI Petrol Retailers Association.
Fuel prices may push ferry fares higher
For each $1 increase in the price of a barrel of oil, there is a corresponding $96,000 per year increase in fuel costs for the Steamship Authority, according to the agency's treasurer Robert Davis. Yesterday the price of oil topped $81 a barrel for the first time. The difference could add almost $1 million to the projected $74.5 million 2008 operating budget.
How Russia is Nationalized: The Oil Sector
The processes of nationalization in the oil sector are more visible than others and filled with more drama. Still, the state’s desire to capture an ever larger slice of the industy’s income seems logical. But often the methods and appetite of the state companies contradict this logic.
Iran government withdraws $4.7b from Oil Stabilization Fund
Iran's government withdrew 42.054 trillion rials ($4.7 billion) from the Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF) in the first four months of the current Iranian year (started March 21), the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance reported here on Wednesday.The figure shows a 37 percent fall when compared to that of the same period in previous year which was 66.88 trillion rials ($7.2 billion).
Lukoil, PDVSA to construct refinery
Russian oil producer Lukoil plans to build a refinery in Venezuela with the South American country's state company to process heavy oil from the Faja de Orinoco region.
Trouble anew in southern Sudan
Khartoum's unwillingness to budge over oil fields in southern Sudan, despite the 2005 peace deal, is causing concerns of a possible renewed north-south war that could also doom Darfur.
India to Double Ethanol in Gasoline
India will double the requirement for ethanol-blend gasoline and lift a ban on direct production of the biofuel from sugarcane _ measures intended to reduce the country's sugar stocks and address rising fuel demand.
China cuts back on ethanol expansion
As Beijing balks at using grain crops for its local ethanol production, one of China's largest biofuel producers, China Agri-Industries Holdings Ltd. has decided to put on hold plans to build three of its five proposed ethanol plants in the country.
Where's the water to grow biofuels?
The fact is that there is now almost equal global concern over water as there is over energy. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has just completed a five-year study of the global water scenario. According to the study, both India and China are in the danger zone when it comes to water; they are using 60 per cent of their entire potential usable water for human purposes. They are approaching 75 per cent, which is the threshold for being considered to be facing water scarcity. It has been estimated that by 2030 Indian cereal demand will go up by 60 per cent from present levels, requiring 84,000 billion litres of water. By then it will require 9 billion litres of ethanol to meet 10 per cent of the country’s petrol needs, adding 22,000 billion litres or about an additional 26 per cent to the country’s water needs. Do we have that much or water?
Kicking Your Head to Get Rid of a Headache: Palm Oil and the Imminent Extinction of the Orangutan
The orangutan, the largest tree-living mammal on the planet, is in crisis. Once a mighty orange army of 300,000 that swung through the dense forests of South East Asia, conservationists say the population has dwindled to fewer than 25,000 concentrated on the two Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. There, they cling precariously to existence on government-protected nature reserves under siege by developers of one of the world’s most lucrative commodities: palm oil.
BP pulls non-essential crew from US Gulf on storm
BP said Wednesday it was evacuating nonessential workers from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico due to the threat of a storm.
Shell Starts Evacuating Gulf of Mexico Staff as Storm Looms
Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it has started evacuating non-essential staff from its offshore Gulf of Mexico facilities."Precautionary evacuation" of 300 workers happened on Tuesday, based on the "potential development of (a) tropical disturbance", Shell said. "We are planning to evacuate approximately 400 more (today)," it said.
The evacuation has no impact on the site's oil and gas production, it added.
On Tuesday, the US National Hurricane Center was closely monitoring two storm systems, one just east of Florida and the other in the central Atlantic.
The Oil Scam Driving Crude Over $80
The truth is that 257M barrels of oil for October delivery were bought AND sold on the NYMEX, which started the day with 197,270,000 barrels yet, strangely, suspiciously even, at the end of the day orders for oil to be delivered in October dropped to 171,442,000 barrels. How can the price of something go up while the demand for it goes down? COLLUSION. Collusion is "a secret understanding, esp. for a fraudulent purpose." Yep, that pretty much describes it in a nutshell.
Shell goes on Gulf oil spending spree
Oil major Royal Dutch Shell has gone on a buying spree for Dubai crude this month, pushing up prices for the benchmark Middle East grade, which traders say will hurt Asian refiners already burdened with record costs.
Analysis: Iraq, oil and Greenspan's Gospel
History and reality cap the fallout from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s one-liner in his new book that the war in Iraq is “largely about oil.”The mere 20 words in the 500-plus page memoir elicited much media hype and a prompt defense from the Bush administration. Greenspan used the media circuit to qualify -- though not contradict -- what he originally wrote.
Oil-industry execs to hold town hall on energy here
Oil-industry executives will field questions on future energy demands at a UA-area town hall this evening, the second such visit by oil companies to Tucson this summer.The ConocoPhillips visit comes less than a month after Shell Oil's president spoke at the University of Arizona about the United States' future energy demands and the need to invest in more renewable-energy sources.
The US and the world are in a deepening energy crisis. Easily accessible oil and natural gas are getting hard to find even as the demand for and competition over energy throughout the world accelerates. There is agreement among those who study this issue that we are either right at or very soon will be at “peak oil,” a point where as much oil that is in the ground will have been found and used as there is oil still remaining. And the big problem is that those remaining reserves are getting harder and more expensive to bring out of the ground.There is a common sense solution to this dilemma. Instead of war in Iraq escalating into war with Iran and who knows where else, the US could lead the world by using its technological know-how and resources to advance a worldwide clean energy revolution. We could rapidly undercut the appeal of Al-Qaeda by withdrawing our troops from the Middle East and promoting, instead, huge solar energy farms in this sun-drenched region of the world. We could help the formerly colonized countries of the Global South who are currently developing their economies by using greenhouse gas emitting coal or dangerous nuclear power. We could help them shift to renewable energy technology to obtain energy via solar panels, wind turbines, the tides or the earth (geo-thermal).
Instant insight: A bright future
Andy Benniston at Newcastle University, UK, explains how photocatalysts could provide the answer to the planet's energy crisis, and reduce CO2 emissions while they're at it.
Oil prices are likely to hit US$100 a barrel by the end of next year as soaring rates of domestic oil consumption in the world's leading oil producing nations cuts into their export capacity, forecasts the chief economist at CIBC World Markets.Speaking at the 6th Annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas conference in Cork, Ireland, CIBC World Markets chief economist, Jeff Rubin told delegates that the export capacity of OPEC, Russia and Mexico will drop by 2.5 million barrels per day by the end of the decade. "Domestic demand growth of as much as five per cent per year in key oil producing countries is already beginning to cannibalize exports and will increasingly do so in the future as production plateaus or declines in many of these countries," says Mr. Rubin. "OPEC members together with independent producers Russia and Mexico consume over 12 million barrels per day, surpassing Western Europe to become the second largest oil market in the world.
"At current rates of domestic consumption the future export capacity of OPEC, Russia and Mexico must be increasingly called into question. These trends are likely to result in a sharp escalation in world oil prices over the next few years."
Kirkuk pipeline attack sets Iraq oil back
The international oil market will still have to rely on Basra to supply Iraq’s oil exports as an apparent attack shuts down the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline again.The pipeline is key to increasing Iraq exports, providing the capacity to increased production. The Bush administration, during benchmark stump speeches last week, held up the newly reopened pipeline as a success story.
Oil Exec: Coherent Energy Policy Needed
Lack of a coherent U.S. energy policy threatens to feed into a sense of "energy insecurity" in this country, the president of Shell Oil Company said Tuesday. John Hofmeister told local business leaders it doesn't have to be that way."We have seen our country pass, in my opinion, the tipping point of energy supply keeping up with energy demand in ways that secure our future," he said.
The next few days, the world will be holding its breath as the U.S. is drumming up support for highly controversial sanctions against Iran. The implications of such a move could be potentially disastrous and it's likely we'll see a showdown of who holds what kind of power and where on the planet. In a bizarre twist of fate, a UK consortium that is involved in developing the Iran Oil Bourse (IOB), might stand to benefit from sanctions.
Canadian panel calls for major hike in Alberta's oil sands royalties
A government-appointed panel reviewing Alberta's energy royalties called Tuesday for the oil-rich Canadian province to increase its total take from the energy industry by 20 percent a year, or roughly $2 billion Canadian (US $1.97 billion; €1.42 billion).The report by the provincial panel targets Alberta's oil sands projects in particular and says royalties have not kept pace with world energy markets.
Basra oil fuels fight to control Iraq's economic might
The province sits on as much as 20 percent of the Middle East's oil reserves.
Big oil’s waiting game over Iraq’s reserves
In Iraq, oil companies face a dilemma. They can wait for the central government in Baghdad to agree a new oil law that will give them a legal framework in which they can operate, and for the security situation to become manageable.Or they can press ahead and sign agreements with the Kurdistan Regional Government, the authority in the autonomous north of Iraq, at the risk of souring relations with Baghdad and shutting themselves out of deals in the rest of the country.
It is a decision that has so far divided the smaller operators from the majors.
Renewable energy and clean technology stocks hit a peak in mid-July after a stellar first half of 2007 saw the Nex index of clean energy shares gain 30.9 per cent in the first six months of the year, against increases of 6.0 per cent for the S&P 500 and 7.8 per cent for Nasdaq.
EU sets up 50 million euro fund for poor nations to fight global warming
The European Commission on Tuesday announced the creation of a fund to help developing nations battle climate change, putting in 50 million euros (69 million dollars) itself to kick it off.
Scientist warns of climate change impact
Climate change could mean higher temperatures, less winter precipitation and less spring runoff for the Southwest, a climatologist says.
Ban urges countries on global warming
The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday.Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late."
SEC Pressed to Require Climate-Risk Disclosures
One of the industries considered most vulnerable to climate change is the insurance industry, with shifting weather patterns threatening property in the nation's most hurricane-prone areas.Yet in its 345-page annual financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this year, Allstate, which insures one out of every eight homes in the United States, did not mention climate change, global warming
Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier sounds climate change alarm
The chaotic cavalcade of blueish ice tumbling into the sea from the world's fastest-moving glacier is sounding a daily climate change alarm, say scientists ahead of International Polar Day on Friday.The Jakobshavn Glacier, on Greenland's west coast, is melting twice as fast as 10 years ago and advancing toward the sea at 12 kilometres (seven miles) per year, compared with six kilometres (three and a half miles) before.
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LET's abandon these bio-stunts once and for all - shall we ?
FIRSTLY – absolutely an impressive analysis, but why make it hard when you can make the case obvious and easy – I’m not getting these insane bio-stunts anymore – to me this case is so very closed … and here is why ..
…. its time to sober up and do some REVERSE ENGINEERING on these bio-stunts happening “all over the place”
– this bio-fuel future is incredible easy to scrap (!) if you ask me, how ..?
well, in having a fast peek at World Grain Production – from that link containing this chart
In reading this essay we learn that 2000 million tons of various grains are produced annualy in resent few years ….
This amounts to 2 000 000 000 000 kilograms (or about 300 kg pr capita/person/world)
Now … anyone remember “That Cubic Mile …?” , heavily discussed here at TOD in February this year.
Short : this post revealed that world annual crude extraction was totally round and about ONE cubic mile.
And that ONE Cubic Mile (1 mile = 1609 m), converted into metrics renders (1600m * 1600m * 1600m) = 4 096 000 000 m^3 ……. (And for ease I’ll keep 1 liter of crude ~ 1 kg, spawning m^3 = 1000 kg)
One Cubic Mile of crude oil then comes to: 4 096 000 000 000 kg
ALREADY here we see clearly without doing any advanced thinking to the issues in question that –
Any more to add here (?)
-I mean those 2 Giga tons of of grains ( wheat, corn , rice, sorghum ..) ARE Eaten Every Year these Years – as the World Grain Reserves ARE GOING DOWN - FAR DOWN, they are in the vicinity of 50-60 days only, and going further down.... chill
Keep in mind – my fast calculator-trick here never even addressed the realities of EROEI or any other ifs or buts . In a future of dwindling fossils THE wrooooom ICE is dead – buried and not missed, hey its only converting 15 % of its contained energy into propulsion .. does anyone actually believe that we in a few decades will continnue this ICE/biofuel wastefullness ?
How slim will you accept to become, I mean before you give up your car ?
A bio-jezz, thats what we have
I agree with some of what you say but much of the world grain production is used to feed livestock which could do just fine on a grazing diet although weight gain would be slower. For cattle and other livestock this produces a more heathful product (apologies to vegans) with less impact to the land due to a grass cover vs the production of grain and all of the environmental problems (chemical use, soil loss) that go with it.
The West is becoming a desert now thanx to livestock overgrazing.
There is no more grass to feed except on a "seed corn"
one off basis.
And cows are limited in what grains they can eat.
Pigs can eat junk food though. Saw an article somewhere.
And 3/4 of the world live on a vegan diet, BTW. ;}
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Just quibbling - but I don't know of any vegan population the world except in recent times. Much of the world is vegetarian or nearly so (Chinese according to the China Study eat on average 1/10 the animal protein we do - so they're not close to being strict vegetarians like some Indians I know).
As an interesting aside my family was looking into organic / local beef just before going vegetarian. We're vegetarian primarily for the planet; but also for our health and lastly for ethical reasons. When peak oil hits all bets are off! Some land is best grazed; but the world has too many people and it would be best if we in the "first" world started having a one-child policy and not taking in immigrants. We're the biggest energy users and it's time we lead by controlling our own bloated population and also by reducing our energy use by 1/4 per person or much more.
Right now I'm kind of miffed that I upgraded our failing natural gas water heater with a 19 gal. electric one and it's cheaper to keep the tank hot and it's cheaper to run and it was 1/3 the cost to install; except it's about 15% higher in terms of CO2 emissions (yea our electricity is provided by a green company - Bullfrog - but dirty energy was used to put up those windmills ....).
praetzel, are you saying the CO2 from windmill construction, amortized over the life of the turbine, is greater per kWh than the CO2 from burning nat gas (and the nat gas plant construction CO2)? I find that unbelievable.
btu, as in British Thermal Units I presume
-I’m taking a wide-angle & zoomed out snapshot of “the bio-fuels” live or let die here, I’m not counting a calorie here and two there ..
* National Farmers' Union, May 11, 2007
Straight to the Source
SASKATOON, Sask.-Today, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its first projections of world grain supply and demand for the coming crop year: 2007/08. USDA predicts supplies will plunge to a 53-day equivalent-their lowest level in the 47-year period for which data exists.
"The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," said NFU Director of Research Darrin Qualman .
Most important, 2007/08 will mark the seventh year out of the past eight in which global grain production has fallen short of demand. This consistent shortfall has cut supplies in half-down from a 115-day supply in 1999/00 to the current level of 53 days.
Australia dropping to 15 million tons while
Russia, Ukraine, China stop exports, while India,
Pakistan import puts the current level below 50 days.
Below MOL.
See the Great Grain Robbery 1973 for a preview
of coming attractions.
Wheat at $15!?
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Paal, that's true on a global basis. But that's not how the world works.
Consider Argentina or Brazil, two big soybeans exporters with fuel consumption per capita much lower than in the US. If they turn all their soybean oil into biodiesel, possibly diverting some of the land today growing e.g. wheat to soybeans as well, they will be able to run THEIR economies more or less like they are today. Why wouldn't they?
So, people depending today on agricultural exports from other countries will have a serious problem.
Hi Beach Boy.
My post is of philosophical value only at this stage – because the world is not doing what I say it should do (damn this naughty world..:-))) – but to get the gist to my post you must be able to zoom all the worlds problems/challenges down into your own backyard – then study and see if your claims still work out..
example-
Imagine yourself confined inside a small house – You have “20 kg of corn for fuel” and “10 kg of corn for food”, and you are told you have to stay there for “a long time” …. When do you start to produce your bio-fuel… Beach Boy ? Before or after you finished your "corn for food" ....because there is actually a scooter outside, on which you are allowed to circle around the house as you please …
Paal, you're being reactionary and doom-focused again, as you were with the windmill/transport truck comparison.
First, a few flaws in your approximations and assumptions:
Incomplete information, a limited worldview, and calculations based on sketchy numbers trotted out as proof - just as before.
Alternatives like switchgrass grow well in arid or inhospitable regions, where grain cannot be grown, and produce quite acceptable quantities of ethanol for the effort entailed in their groth.
Proof for this please? In the form of links showing plants that are running making industrial quantities.
How about plants that make industrial quantities year over year? Because any biomass scheme that fails to return to the soil what it extracts is doomed to failure as well.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Right. Apparently there are huge yield differences between growing alternatives like switchgrass on agricultural land with plenty of water and natural gas based fertilizer from what you would get in arid regions without fertilizer. However, the former conditions have used in most estimates of switchgrass production. Also you need to consider how growing it on marginal lands, year after year, without added nutrients would deplete the already poor soil.
Thousands of years of tallgrass prairie formed some of the richest soils in the world, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota for example. To say that copious amounts of switchgass or any other warm season grass will be produced on degraded soils is BS, but once established, the soil will get more fertile even with an annual harvest of the biomass. This is more the case with a diverse prairie planting than a monoculture.
"...the soil will get more fertile even with an annual harvest of the biomass."
No. You would have to graze and burn it/prairie circa
1865 to get that.
You're taking and not giving back.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Hi Darkstorme, you say ...
(good golly miss molly)
Yeah Darkstorm - I’m using the sketchy numbers from EIA, IAE and USDA, what numbers are you running ?
You demand a lot and don’t read too much into my post Darkstorme, please – my post is NOT any EU , US gvt or UN report – its just my little private observation , not more BUT not less either
If being realistic is being doomish, so be it. When you again read me as a doomer I see that as your problem, not mine. I’m just putting up a couple of numbers, which seem to freak you out….. which is good, but my intent was to freak you out, the other way around..
You seem to brand me as a doomer, because I’m not a cornucopian like yourself, so lets meet in the middle and agree that some realistic measures has to be urged today – before some stupid mistakes are made on a too large scale, shall we ?
In following the global energy situation -from my neck of the woods - AND the corresponding and upcoming squeeze for the same – I see a power down scenario alongside conservations – What do you see Darkstorme?
How have high energy prices affected the consumer directly? Read below. (I thought those boxes and packages were gettting smaller and more expensive at the local grocery store!!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCCJtUPikaL4&refer=home
General Mills Net Rises 8.2% on Prices, New Cereals
-snip-
-snip-
Thank God. I hope they kill the lime flavored potato chips and raspberry-white tea enhanced water soon.
As long as they leave the heart healthy snacks alone we'll get through this.
Will
Lime flavored potato chips are a Frito-Lay product, and, unfortunately for my waistline, I love 'em.
Bob Ebersole
Lime potato chips are the food of the gods. Can't get 'em here, Lay's chips here seem to have gone to 100% sunflower oil instead of the old hydrogenated stuff though. That's what makes them dangerous - we never allowed trans-fats into the house, but now that reasonable oil is used, if I saw lime chips at the store I'd buy a bag. I always snag one when I visit texas.
I don't need enhanced water though. I just strain the chunks out of what comes out of the tap.
I have noticed the smaller packages. Or rather, less in the same sized packages.
I sometimes buy pretzels. The kind that come in individual serving sized bags, for packing in lunches and such. There were ten bags to a box, so one box would be enough for two weeks' worth of brown bag lunches.
I started running short. I thought someone was snacking on them at home. But no, I finally looked closer at the box, and now there's only 8 bags per box. Same sized box, less in it.
I've noticed that Zone Perfect meal replacement bars have shrunk to less than 2/3 the size they were just 6 or 7 months ago. The price is still the same, and my fuzzy memory seems to recall the calories per serving have remained the same. I wonder what carcinogen they've substituted in place of steadily inflating corn derivatives...
My guess...dog food gravy from China.
What is the caloric content of lead?
Nice to see Jeff Rubin's comments. There was a time when I'd bet the other way on anything he said, but he seems to be a lot more up to date on the oil situation now. It has been hard for many financial analysts to go from the 'awash in oil' situation of 1997 to the current geological constraints without at least considering that the tide might turn once more.
His faith in the Oilsands being a future huge producer aren't shared by me. The current water intensive methods are peaking in their own way, so unless we come up with different methods, the production will hit the wall which it is currently leaning against. Toe heel air injection looks promising for the more deeply buried stuff but that's going to be a while before it hits the bigtime.
Maybe someone needs to tell him about the water. Speaking of which, the Jakobshavn glacier.....
I attended the New Orleans speech by John Hofmeister, President of Shell USA. I was the second person that he glad handed before the speech. I had an interesting two or three minutes with him, VERY briefly outlined my ideas, mentioned the Millennium Institute model that I will be working on in DC and got his business card.
The speech was as outlined in the AP article but it was hardly a call to arms. Snippets supported greater "energy efficiency" and "demand side measures" but he REALLY wants to drill more in the USA. Some right words inserted, wrong tone.
Shell sold silicon solar PV so they could work on thin film solar PV.
More Shell owned wind.
Told story that Shell had last 300,000 barrels of product a week after Rita to insert into Colonial & Plantation pipelines but no electricity to get them out (all others out). Called up Secretary of Energy Bodman at wedding rehearsal dinner @7 PM Friday night and told him that *IF* Shell did not get electricity to pump product, US East Coast would face panic buying and massive shortages. Monday Bush would have to call for a National Day of Meditation and not work.
In response to my question, (I mentioned supporting non-oil transportation from electrified RRs to Urban Rail (pointed to streetcar running underneath room we were in) and the "secret weapon of the Dutch" bicycles (I overheard him chat with other Shell employee about wet bicycle rides in Amsterdam).
He agreed in principle and mentioned when he was in charge of new HQ in Amsterdam. They had more bicycle parking spots than auto and Shell was only allowed 1 car parking spot for 4 employees.
I forgot to (others did :-) thank him for the outstanding work Shell has done for New Orleans.
I took the bus to the WTC where he spoke and back. A TOD lurker and Shell employee is transferring back to New Orleans from Houston because he can get by without a car here and prefers the quality of life.
Best Hopes,
Alan
No one can describe what's happening off Ft Meyers, FL.
Except that it's moving West.
And I remember The MS Power Crew being diverted to get the electricity up for that pipeline.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Daytona Beach Florida...9 inches of rain in last 4 days and it is pouring out right now.
They are calling it "an area of disturbed weather" that could become a hurricane over the next few days, once it's over the Gulf.
My first thought was that it won't have time to become very powerful. Then I remembered Humberto, which became a hurricane overnight and surprised everyone. Lesson: the Gulf is very, very hot right now, and that kind of energy can pump up storms quickly.
It's not exactly the same, but Katrina had a sort of similar path the one they are predicting for this one.
P.S. In addition to Shell and BP, Exxon and Chevron have also announced they have begun evacuating their platforms.
the Gulf is very, very hot right now, and that kind of energy can pump up storms quickly
Bob Breck, the best weatherman in New Orleans IMO (and better than NWS people) had two scenarios if things do develop (good chance that they may not).
80% is a curve close to coast and Mississippi impact. Water not so hot right next to the coast, New Orleans is on the "good side".
20% is straighter, further south, over hotter water and impact somewhere around Barataria. New Orleans on the bad side of a stronger hurricane and water will be forced into Lake Pontchartrain.
Best Hopes,
Alan
*MASSIVE* uncertainity ATM. Know much more tomorrow.
Alan,
Is the Shell Building (on Poydras I think, white, maybe it's called One Shell Plaza?) still closed? When I was last there (Christmas) it was fenced off and looked abandoned.
No, One Shell Square is quite active and Shell brought back ALL of their employees (and saved JazzFest). They are cleaning the outside (it has taken months) and fenced off the area underneath to reduce risk.
One Shell Square is the world's tallest (and arguably largest, one in France is about as many sq ft) light rail TOD. It is located between the tracks of the St. Charles Streetcar Line.
In the PM there are marble steps to sit on waiting for the streetcar. Used to be hard to get a seat after passing One Shell Square.
GWB promised specifically to restore the St. Charles Streetcar Line in his Jackson Square speech. One mile of seven is back in service with one streetcar for token service. Secretary of Transportation came down to "celebrate" the "promise fulfilled".
Alan
Great Job Alan!
Hofmeister is the big oil CEO that gets it-our only real hope is switching to renewables and changing from internal combustion engine personal transportation to electric transportation. He's using the big oil cash flows to change Royal Dutch Shell into a company positioned right for the future, contrasted with XOM with their huge stock buy backs holding up stock prices to justify gigantic bonuses for the executives and board.
The simple truth is that we are horribly vulnerable in the USA to an embargo, and your Electrification of Rail program is the only plan that can save us quickly.
I'm really looking forward to your presentation at the ASPO-USA Conference in Houston October 17th-20th. Bob Ebersole
Told story that Shell had last 300,000 barrels of product a week after Rita to insert into Colonial & Plantation pipelines but no electricity to get them out (all others out). Called up Secretary of Energy Bodman at wedding rehearsal dinner @7 PM Friday night and told him that *IF* Shell did not get electricity to pump product, US East Coast would face panic buying and massive shortages. Monday Bush would have to call for a National Day of Meditation and not work.
Ahhh the promise of Just In Time product....
Quiet news day (so far)...markets seem oblivous anyways on thier FED induced sugar binge.
One thing that has caught my eye in the last few weeks is the severity of the global food crisis - either induced by drought or floods.
Kenya: Canning Factory Hit By Shortage of Tomatoes
http://allafrica.com/stories/200709190125.html
Poor grain crop drives up food price
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/poor-grain-crop-drives-up-food-pr...
Food shortage hits Udaypur
http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=26903
Rukwa region now experiencing food shortage
http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2007/09/18/98623.html
Food shortage looms in Ghana's flooded areas
http://www.afriquenligne.fr/news/daily-news/food-shortage-looms-in-ghana's-flooded-areas-200709178788/
The Food Shortage Reality
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4258.2489.0.0
N. Korea faces food shortage of over 400,000 tons this year
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/230325.html
Uzbekistan is facing a crisis fomented by food shortage
http://enews.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=2110
Food shortage in Manchioneal
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070824/lead/lead5.html
Aussies help fight Timor food shortage
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Aussies-help-fight-Timor-food-sho...
Shanghai's CPI grows 3.9% on food prices
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200709/20070919/article_331...
Zimbabwe faces food-shortage crisis
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__...
Not a defintive list, by any means...but it is big...crop losses 50-70% due to drought, floods and disease (pigs in china).
(Sorry Leanan if this post is too long)
Hi Peak TO, your food-trouble-list is very impressive or rather disturbing, and the trouble to all this is that “they are in full swing” of making bio-fuels from those staples … see today’s first post for more 'brain-flexings' on the subject.
This list makes the problem look serious, which I believe it is.
But, for perspective, do we have any feeling for how long or serious this list would have been 1, 2, or 5 years ago?
Just current news links...hard to say about the past without research.
Currently, there is a lot of food shortages...that is all I can say.
I wonder about the data fro Greenland melt for this year. The NSIDC prints the arctic ice pack extent and Cryosphrere today handles the ice pack are butthey only publish at this time of year. The melt for last year for Greenland was 239 KM³ which is like triple that of 10 years ago. With all thehigh drama this year I was wondering if once they get some measurements out by microwave satellite imaging or so that it will be say 500 KM³. 1 mm per year rise is ca. 393 KM³ melt as I calculated. 3930 KM³ or maybe 16.44 x 2006 melt rate would be 1 cm rsie in oceans globally. I was wondering about this tipping point and how fast we can expect ice melt increase to progress exponentially or linearly.
From today's
EIA report
YTD (256 days):
CNN/Money headline:
Oil touches new intraday record, then turns lower, after weak crude inventories and gasoline increase.
Oil hits new record on inventory report
And here's what they were expecting:
Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending September 14, 2007
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_pe...
Utilization 89.4%
Gasoline up 400Kbarrels - effectively negative given the 100Kbpd demand reduction.
Crude down 3.8 Million barrels
Demand - 9.5 MMBPD (still up 0.5% over 2006)
Propane and fuel oil have a long build ahead of them to get to 2006 levels for the winter season.
The declining utilization number is interesting. I discussed the topic in this article regarding net oil exports and crude oil inventories:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/brown/2007/0914.html
IMO, refiners in importing countries are increasingly going to be forced to reduce their utilization number--in order to keep inventories on hand from reaching critically low levels--as exported crude oil volumes decline.
Ultimately, less efficient refineries in importing countries are going to start closing down--especially those refiners in importing countries that are unable to bid the crude oil price up enough to keep the refinery running.
WT: It seems like only yesterday that the party line was "the problem is that there is not enough refining capacity in the USA". It appears that overcapacity in refining has occurred faster than anyone expected (with the exception of yourself).
Down the thread, I trotted out the Titanic analogy for the nth time, but in Cameron's movie, do you remember the point in the movie when the tempo of the music picked up and the ship started sinking faster?
I think that we are at or very close to that point, with events--and "revelations" about declining export capacity--coming fast and furious.
Khebab and I have finished a preview of the Net Export article for ASPO-USA, and the graphs are pretty much done for the top five net exporters, for the October meeting. As expected, it's not a pretty picture. (BTW, Khebab--as usual--is doing some incredible work.)
Several months ago, I told the ASPO guys that, IMO, events would be moving so fast that declining net exports would not be news by October, and I increasingly think that our presentation will be somewhat anticlimactic, although there will be considerable discussions of "why" and how fast that world oil exports are declining.
But the absolutely critical point for everyone to keep in mind is that the ELM and recent case histories indicate that the decline in net exports will accelerate with time.
OPEC would discuss output hike if $80 oil lasts
This is going to get entertaining fast. Where will all this 'additional' oil come if OPEC truly has no spare capacity and this one time upping of 500k was simply the result of KSAs investments paying off this year?
Get back to me when OPEC actually produces that 500K then we'll see who produced it... instead of being a troll like yourself who assumes that the 500K is already being produced and produced by KSA as well.
In other words, once again you present no data, just a deliberately inflammatory comment with a chip on your shoulder trying to spark a flame fest. It is my sincere hope that Leanan and other TOD staff are growing rapidly weary of your antics.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
WTF? Party Guy posted a link and his opinion. He didn't insult anyone and you call him a troll? So if his opinion doesn't tow the doomer party line then he's an auto troll? Give me a break.
GreyZone reacted that way because of PartyGuy's history of trollish behavior.
No, he reacted that way because there is something wrong in GreyZone's head. I have discerned this from GreyZone's history of absurd comments.
Blaming GreyZone's idiocy on PartyGuy is beyond stupid. If GreyZone really thought PartyGuy is just a troll, what should he have done?
Given that demand destruction is about to kick in and sketchy bridges are going to be closed to vehicle traffic you guys should have no trouble getting a smokin' deal on a proper clubhouse big enough to hold you all.
And to head off the inevitable "I know you are, but what am I nyah nyah nyah", yes, I will run for club president, but I think my meta-trolling is eclipsed by the skills and popularity of those putting in the work on the regular.
Let's see - you do not discuss the topic at hand and instead claim I have "something wrong" in my head, that I make "absurd" comments, and that I am guilty of "idiocy" as well. Not a fact in your post anywhere but lots of opinion.
Pot meet kettle.
Now why don't we get back to discussing OPEC's announced but not yet actual production increases. I'll pay attention to your professional (*snicker*) psychoanalysis when I decide to pay you for it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
The topic at hand at this point is the issue of banning people and people like you calling for others to be banned. See my other comment where I responded to you, not to Leanan.
Point #1: There has been ZERO increase in production yet.
Point #2: Who makes that production increase remains to be seen.
Point #3: PartyGuy has a long history of making one-line inflammatory comments in an effort to start flame wars. This one seems to fall exactly in line with that process, which is the very definition of internet trolling.
I made no reference to any "doomer party line". You did this. I simply said he could get back to me when the increase actually happens and we could THEN discuss who actually increased production and by how much (and whether OPEC even manages to increase total production). You should read Dave Cohen's latest piece over at ASPO: Living On The Edge: OPEC's Spare Capacity. It appears that the commodity market is saying that they don't believe OPEC either. Thus I get back to PartyGuy's comments, which go DIRECTLY against the current greater public sentiments about OPEC spare capacity and the fact that he simply assumes the announced increase is already history so that he can taunt others here with that information.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Point #4: OPEC would have to increase their liquids production by probably at least 500,000 bpd, just to offset the one year increase in consumption by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the top five net exporters, without even taking into account consumption increases elsewhere in the world.
Note that Rembrandt put the first half of 2007 increase in Saudi consumption, relative to the first half of 2006, at over 9%.
You're points are irrelevant and show that what you read in PartyGuy's comment came from you, not from his words. Read it again.
He said it will get entertaining fast - do you disagree? Here OPEC says it'll consider further increases if the price stays high. I'm guessing the price will stay high. Finding out if they are blowing smoke or that they really can increase production will be very interesting.
Wondering where all the additional oil will come from when they supposedly have no spare capacity is a VERY GOOD QUESTION. One I'm wondering myself.
Oh dear god! Oh noes, someone is not in-line with greater public sentiment?!! Wait, ALMOST NONE OF US ON THIS SITE ARE. You should be patting him on the back.
He taunted no one. Your inner demons are showing.
Bullshit. You strongly implied Leanan ought to ban him. It's shameful.
Hang on - am I the ONLY other person apart from GZ that has read PartyGuy's trollish comments Drumbeat after Drumbeat recently...
So, perhaps this MAY be argued as a slight overreaction this time - but it isn't like PG doesn't have a history here...
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
I've been reading his comments too. I haven't found anything particularly inflammatory in them. I've seen people way over-react to them time after time, just like this. And here he is making a very reasonable comment, and he gets jumped on for his history? So the guy just can't win and we're all justified in calling for him to be banned no matter what he says?
I see a clear agenda in PG's comments, which is not in itself a problem, but I have found his tone to be particularly arrogant and disrespectful of others - and that is. I've had some SERIOUS disagreements with others on this board in he past, but I find common ground with some of the same people in other areas. Because we kept it more-or-less under control no bridges were burned. In other cases people were too obnoxious to deal with - most of them were only here a short time and left - thankfully.
Sometimes people learn to fit in after a bad start and drop the attitude, sometimes not. But after repeated bad behavior, you cannot be surprised if others have no tolerance anymore.
How much of that "fitting in" is "toeing the party line"?
Most of the time I see someone accused of being a troll or being disrespectful, they're disagreeing with the peak-is-now majority opinion. Posters whose actions are no better but who parrot the peak-is-now view, however, are almost never called out on their behaviour.
The quality of an opinion shouldn't depend on whether we agree with it.
"How much of that "fitting in" is "toeing the party line"?"
IMO, zero. But show up late to the party and, with reflection, feel free to explain it all.
I would love to discuss this further, but let me just state you've made three incorrect statements.
Maybe we'll catch up in the future. Looking forward to further discussions...
All the calls for banning people for expressing differing opinions is getting extremely tiresome. The ease with which people fall into such a poisonous and exclusionary mindset reminds me why many human beings are likely to suffer horribly and unnecessarily in the future.
It's not the differing opinions. It's the WAY those opinions are expressed. We have banned people before, and they were from across the spectrum - doomer, cornucopian, moderate. Not for their opinions, but the way they expressed them.
Again I call bull. The exact same words written by PartyGuy could have been written by memmel and you would have interpreted them entirely differently. He didn't say anything other that that it would be entertaining, and I completely agree with him. It WILL be entertaining.
You and the people on this site are really starting piss me off. The words "circle jerk" come to mind to describe y'all.
Then why come here? There's a ton of other web sites out there. Or start your own. Blogger will even let you do it for free. (That's how TOD started.)
Cause I'm not that quick to throw the baby out with the bath-water.
Call bull all you want, but it's true. We have all sorts of opinions here, and no one is banned because of them. Rarely, someone is banned for personal attacks, name-calling, sheer abrasive assholishness, and other such trollishness. I would suggest that you are skating close to the edge.
There are a lot of scientifically savvy people here in many fields, and just because we might not burble with optimism at every crackpot perpetual motion scam that comes down the pike, or every pie in the sky prediction of bountiful new sources of petroleum, etc., doesn't mean we don't entertain a diversity of opinion.
TOD is not in any sense a "circle jerk", and it's absurd and obnoxious for you to suggest it. Sorry if this forum pisses you off, but you are free to go away. Unless you're one of those assclowns that wants to be explicitly banned so you can whinge on some other site that "the doomers on TOD banned me because I disagreed with them".
Feh.
Of course I'm free to go away. I've free to leave the country too. Love it or leave it, right? Damn, both you and Leanan came up with that one very quickly. Funny how easily that mentality is adopted.
Well, just one more absurdity added to the pile. No, I don't want to be banned - I thought I've been clear that what I want is for folks to stop calling for people like PartyGuy to be banned. Look at what PartyGuy said at the top of this thread and tell me it deserved the response GreyZone gave it.
Except we don't even pretend to be a democracy. You are a guest here. We ask that our guests abide by a certain standard of conduct. I don't think that's asking too much.
I'm quite aware this is your website and not a democracy. However, that doesn't stop me voicing my opinion about how you run it, and offering this criticism. I believe my criticism is valid, and I believe that banning people like PartyGuy based on what I do not know is harmful to the quality of this website. That your reaction to this criticism is to point out that it's your site and I can leave anytime I want does nothing to improve my opinion of you or the site.
Besides, what is this standard of conduct? According to you it has nothing to do with rudeness or content, so what is it?
http://www.theoildrum.com/special/guidelines
Got it. In the future I will simply report GZ's disrespectful behavior rather than point it out publicly.
Oh hey...that's nice...didn't know we had that.
A web forum is not a country, and the consequences of leaving one have nothing to do with the consequences of leaving the other. You are really being overly dramatic, as well as not making sense.
"Damn, both you and Leanan came up with that one very quickly. Funny how easily that mentality is adopted."
What "mentality"? That if you don't like a particular web forum you are free to leave? Do you find that ominous and conspiratorial? You are getting too excited.
Consider the whole thread, sgage. Did PartyGuy say something to deserve GreyZone suggesting he be banned? So I speak up for PartyGuy, and find that Leanan, the site editor, supports GreyZone in this. Now I'm being told I can leave anytime. That is neither helpful nor very mature. Call me over-dramatic if you like, I find the calls to ban ban ban people far more so. And more worrisome than my reaction to it.
"Now I'm being told I can leave anytime. That is neither helpful nor very mature. Call me over-dramatic if you like, I find the calls to ban ban ban people far more so. And more worrisome than my reaction to it."
How is it not very mature? How is it not helpful? What is it that we are we supposed to be trying to help? What is your problem?
This is a web forum. There are thousands of them, catering to all sorts. This one happens to be very tolerant of a rather large diversity of opinion, but with a premium placed upon civility and debate backed by evidence. But, like all forums, there are standards of discourse.
There are NOT calls to "ban ban ban" people (to suggest so is a totally absurd straw man), and you ARE being overly dramatic. People are hardly ever banned here, and when they are it is after some provocation and richly deserved.
How is it worrisome? You are coming across as rather overwrought.
I have seen plenty of calls to ban people. I've seen plenty of people get banned. You may think nothing of it, but I disagree. Your reply ignored the main question, so I repeat it:
"Consider the whole thread, sgage. Did PartyGuy say something to deserve GreyZone suggesting he be banned?"
No, but it does have a certain amount of groupthink.
Witness, for example, how warmly SS's "nosedive towards the desert" articles were received and compare that to the sterner questioning of EM's articles presenting a dissenting view on the same topic.
Or how much flak RR and EM got for their efforts at analyzing the reliability of HL.
Or how GtA's article on THAI was derided as industry propaganda, while a day or two later a pure-opinion article from a peak-is-now friend of hers was greeted with open arms.
Many of the articles are quite good, but if you think there is not a substantial degree of resistance to non-pessimistic ideas here, you're kidding yourself.
I agree with speek. When I first read partyguy's post I thought, ummm, sounds like he's coming around in his views. Then, after reading greyzone's retort I thought what's that all about. And, fwiw, I think leanan, as editor, is sounding more like the establishment - a vested interested that sounds too vested and less interesting (edit -in regards to monitoring)
edited to correct reference to greyzone. (sorry eric)
Expect that to continue. This site is growing by leaps and bounds, and I expect the current oil price spike to increase that. That means we can't be quite as laid back as we used to be.
And we aren't going to let it get as bad as it did before the last housecleaning.
Leanan - Yous want I should rough him up a bit for yas?
Signed, Big Uguly Tod Troll
Hey now...put that Taser down, Boy!
May I ask for server side per poster filter feature (i.e. filter by poster name, personal for each logged in user).
It would help a lot. I know the Firefox Greasemonkey script that exists, but it doesn't seem to be prevailing.
Discussions would splinter, but I think they are already doing that.
Unfortunately, any server-side solution probably isn't going to happen any time soon. SuperG is overwhelmed, and his requests for help haven't turned up anyone with the skills and time to help him.
Eventually, we will probably be going to some sort of comment rating system, like Slashdot and dKos use. I know, it's not ideal. But it's the only real solution for a very active site, which we are fast becoming.
"circle jerk"
Had to Google it.
I learn a lot of stuff here...not all of it is stuff I want to know.
Google again and add the qualifier "pivot man". Once you've completed your reading you can come back here and nominate one of the involved parties for this most important command and control role in the process.
comon' TODers ..
The TOD needs many more ”Party Guy’s” ..Definitely! PartyGuy represents Joe Sixpack and most of the western cornucopias !
The thing is when PartyGuy and his equals are onboard there is a shift in the right direction, and "as long as he is in here" we will all be able to follow PartyGuys “developments” ,,hehe
I agree he’s not the best to provide links and so forth, but when did we last see GW Bush provide a link? ... or maybe GWB was not a good resemblence, as he sees links "all over the places.."
I admire speek who stands up for PartyGuy here- and for doing that he obviously has to take some negative sentiments – for no reason – as I see it. The sole idea of starting the talk of banning Speek/ PartyGuy is utterly silly …(as far as I’ve read their opinions and ideas.. particularly the initial posting from PG up thread… meaningless) .. the much of this thread is just consisting of alot of WSHHTF (wrong shit having hit the fan :-))
Long live TOD – and its diversity !
Hi,
Can you all explain to me why OPEC would continue to send signals that it can increase production over the short-term if in fact it can’t? If they really can’t increase production, then why don’t they obfuscate by saying something like this: “Higher oil prices are necessary to support exploration/production growth to meet anticipated demand because the easiest to access oil is already being tapped.” Alternatively, they could just remain silent for as long as possible about it. But why advertise the ability to increase production if they can’t?
If OPEC can't increase production then they can't control prices, and if they can't control prices then they have no reason to exist. So I think they say what they say in the interest of perpetuating OPEC as a meaningful institution.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2767
Net Oil Exports and the "Iron Triangle"
Posted by Khebab on July 13, 2007 - 8:00am
This is a post by Jeffrey J. Brown, an independent petroleum geologist in the Dallas, Texas area
Findrbob, it is not that cut and dried. Some OPEC members may be able to increase production a little but some obviously cannot. Algeria, Indonesia, Nigeria, the UAE and Venezuela cannot increase production at all. They are either in a steady decline, or peaked out. (Except Nigeria who has other problems.) That is one half the OPEC 10 who are subject to quotas.
Indonesia and Venezuela are in a steady decline while the UAE is at an all time peak. Algeria and Qatar are very near their all time peaks. Nigeria has rebel problems. Iran appears to be producing flat out and so does Libya who has recently increased production to pre-quota levels.
That only leaves Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of the OPEC 10 who may be able to increase production somewhat. So look for some increase in production in November but I would bet big bucks it will not be anywhere near half a million barrels per day.
Why are they behaving as they are? Hell, who knows? Why is Saudi Arabia claiming to have 264 billion barrels of reserves with another 200 billion "yet to be discovered"? We all know that is a joke yet Saudi officials keep repeating it. Why? We know that Kuwait has about 25 billion barrels of reserves yet they keep saying they have 100 billion. Why?
It is best not try to devine the why behind every OPEC members mind and just follow the facts.
Ron Patterson
Perhaps what you "know" is not actually true.
Good - a testable hypothesis. Mine is, "OPEC production will fulfill the promised increase (within 10%) unless oil prices retreat below $65".
Feel free to collect bragging rights in February when the November and December production numbers are out.
The problem is, though, why would OPEC announce a 0.5m production increase - which is, recall, a 1.4m quota increase - if they couldn't fulfill it? What better way is there to destroy their credibility than to announce an increase and then fail to meet it? Why would they prefer that to a slow erosion of their credibility over many more months of "the market is well supplied"?
Moreover, remember that prices have surged up only recently. EIA price data shows that the OPEC basket's price has been - adjusted for inflation and the decline of the US$ - about 5% cheaper (cumulatively) this year than during the same period last year. Given that, OPEC had very little motivation to increase production up until a month ago or so, and that's when they finally relented to calls allow an increase.
So it's possible you're right, but OPEC's behaviour makes much more sense if you're not.
How about you explain to me OPEC's repeated statements that they would increase production after Katrina/Rita yet they did not? OPEC is famous for "jawboning", amongst other things.
As for why continue to make those statements? Look at yourself - neither you nor anyone else called them on their own failure during the Katrina/Rita period so why shouldn't they play the same game again against gullible Westerners?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
That's an interesting question. I thought the problem after Katrina wrt energy was not so much oil supply but rather a reduction in refinery capacity. The SPR certainly didn't run dry. Am I mistaken? If not, would OPEC have been able to help much about reduced refinery capacity?
We lost over 1 million barrels per day of production right after Katrina/Rita. We did NOT lose 1 million barrels per day of refinery capacity. If the problem has been refined product then the price of the refined product would have risen but instead crude shot upwards drastically.
You are ignoring the actual history of the event. Crude prices rose because the US lost over 1 mbpd production for several months (and 300Kbpd of that remains offline and permanently gone even today). There was lost refinery capacity but the lost crude hurt worse and the price spike of crude itself proves that.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
We did NOT lose 1 million barrels per day of refinery capacity
We lost two refineries in Chalmette for months, Shell Norco for about a month to Katrina and more to Rita.
Alan
Ironically, so are you.
OPEC did raise production, by 300kb/d in Sept05. (EIA)
The price of OPEC oil barely moved, increasing by $2.41 the week after Katrina, falling to just $0.27 higher in week two, and then below the pre-Katrina price for the rest of Sept05. (EIA)
So the EIA's data shows that OPEC raised production and didn't find buyers, which was more-or-less what OPEC was "jawboning" about at the time.
They said they would increase their production IF people wanted to buy it. The US did not. Instead the US chose to draw down its own SPR and import more oil from Europe. Why did we do this? it would take 40-60 days to get 'new' oil supplies from the Middle East. It took only 1 day to get it from our own SPR and 10 days to get it from Europe. Timing is everything. We needed the oil NOW, not in 2 months. BTW, the draw down has yet to be repaid, unfortunately.
The US used less than one day's demand from the SPR. The SPR was not even a factor in the months of high prices after the twin hurricane events. The total US SPR response to Katrina/Rita was 20.8 million barrels.
Further, if you look at that same web page you discover the evidence of what I said to findrbob - that refinery capacity was not the primary issue, but rather that crude oil was.
Now how much crude went off the market because of Rita/Katrina from the time of the first storm for the time period 8/26/2005 through 6/1/2006? Mineral Management Service tells us that 162 million barrels were lost over this time period due to the impact of the storm. Further, it identifies 228Kbpd as permanently lost in oil production. (And then there is the lost natural gas production and the permanently lost natural gas production.)
And your facts about the SPR drawdown are incomplete. Again if you reference the document I first linked you will see that the loans made were 9.8 million barrels and that 8.6 million barrels had already been repaid at the time of that document, and that the remaining 1.7 million barrels (the government's way of charging interest, apparently) were due to be repaid this last spring. The remaining oil missing from the SPR was deliberately sold and the shortfall there has to be made up by either taking royalty payments in kind or by buying on the market.
And yet despite these tiny acts from the SPR, there remained a huge shortfall in crude that resulted in a months long price spike. In short, your assessment is completely wrong and not based in fact whatsoever. The SPR was irrelevant except for the few days immediately after the storms and had no impact on subsequent price rises which lasted months AND which OPEC could have filled at any time if they were even as good as their word.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
I guess you didn't bother to actually read what I typed in, only to pounce on me. I said specifically that we didn't call on KSA to pump more oil because it would take too much time for us to get it. We needed an immediate infusion of oil, which we took from the SPR, followed by increased imports from Europe, which took 10 days or so to get ramped up. Thats where our supply came from...
You have been here on TOD more than a few weeks. You surely understand that oil is fungible. If we were taking it from Europe, then somewhere else in the world was hurting, which caused the price spike. OPEC's offer was simply to put more oil on the market, NOT specifically to the US, to hold the price of oil down. Yet they did not do that, either immediately after the storm or for months and months afterwards. In fact, instead we get further along to where KSA starts its famous downward production trend, which has been debated here extensively.
So yes I read what you had to say and you still have it completely wrong. OPEC neither responded to the market in the days immediately after the storm, nor did they respond either to the US or to the market in months after that. Clearly, since prices INCREASED people wanted to buy oil! Just what you said! Imagine that! Yet KSA did not do what they claimed they would do. Instead they flat out lied, and allowed the price to spike to over $70 per barrel on the back of the Katrina/Rita tragedy.
Now tell me again why I should believe any OPEC or KSA statement until they actually produce real results? Like I said to you in the very first response, get back to me if and when they are producing that extra 500 Kbpd and let's see who is actually producing it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Again your ignoreing the time factor. It takes upwards of 30 days to bring a field online to full tilt. It takes another 30-40 days to ship that oil from KSA to the US. If you just had 1 million bpd of production shut off, what do you do between day 1 and day 60-70? You open your SPR, and import oil from your allies that are MUCH closer and have MUCH better reserves at the moment.
Bringing up the fungibility of oil ignores the fact that by the time KSA could have brought the oil to the market, the need for it was virtually gone.
And as for the 'downward trend', that is going to stop dramatically in about 6 weeks, as KSA goes back to increasing their production and fulfilling the roll as the 'swing producer'. A feat that is supposedly impossible if you believe everything some people on this site say.
PG...I was just going to make a similar comment. How long will OPEC wait with oil over $80 before they "come to the rescue" again?
Another test for them, I guess.
OPEC says "15-20 days" but we've already had a few like that so the remainder is less, unless we use OPEC accounting rules, then we can't really be sure how many days are left on that ticking clock, can we? ;)
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Yes...time and space are somewhat different in "OPEC-World"!!
Definitions of barrels fluctuate over time.
Definitions of reserves as well.
Promises made in the past magically morph into different meanings in the future.
...and, of course, camels fly at night.
That's rich. PartyGuy says it, you say ban him. Dragonfly41 says he would have said it too, you give him a real response.
Look, Mr. "Circle Jerk"...
PartyGuy has a history of making deliberately inflammatory comments and deserves to be treated as he has treated others repeatedly. Dragonfly41, on the other hand, has not done that. There's that wee bit of difference between the troll and Dragonfly41, no?
But I guess you cannot see that. I could tell you how to fix that particular problem but then you'd accuse me of personal attacks. (And that in itself is amusing, since you've already attacked me over and over in multiple posts above here.)
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
I see you are talking constructively with mr PartyGuy - I'm glad to see it. Maybe I have had some positive effect after all?
If you define someone as a troll, then is everything they say trolling? And if so, why would you respond to it at all?
As for PartyGuy's history, I don't see it the same as you, and I'm not alone. Don't take it upon yourself to go around getting people banned.
Nothing that I say will change Leanan's or Professor Goose's decision to ban or not ban someone. If you think that I have that power, you are greatly mistaken. Further, I said that I was very tired of his antics. I did NOT call for a ban but simply left it as an open question as to how the TOD staff ultimately responds to PG.
Talking civilly to him? He's again trumpeting a particular agenda and then, when presented with clear facts to the contrary, he dismisses the facts and stands there arguing the same useless position. This rather proves my point - there is no use arguing with someone who consistently makes deliberately false one line inflammatory comments and then ignores all data to the contrary. Instead such a person ought to be considered a disruptive influence and dealt with in some manner. Perhaps that means a ban, either temporary or permanent. Perhaps that means an email requesting the poster be more responsible in their postings. But whatever that response ends up being, it will not be because of anything that you or I said about PartyGuy. It will strictly be because of PartyGuy's own inflammatory comments, which Leanan has already noted that the TOD staff itself sees in a similar light.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
It is clear you found his initial post to be inflammatory. I do not see how you could possibly have seen it that way. Your subsequent disagreement seems to be just that - a disagreement. Why not leave it at that?
I am not the one who went off on a massive threadjacking tangent arguing about this. YOU were. You might consider taking your own medicine.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
The difference is I HAVE made it clear what was inflammatory about your post.
you've kept this bickering up for dozens of postings and then ask "why not leave it at that"... seriously?
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
"leave it at that" means not taking a meta-stance such as "you should leave or be banned because of what you're saying". It means not attacking someone as a "troll" while having that argument. I did not mean GZ should stop the debate about the actual issue, I meant he should leave it as a debate about the issue.
Also, one drumbeat's worth of discussion about this from me shouldn't faze you so much. I'm not taking it beyond this one story.
I'm a little confused here GZ. For the most part I just post links that I find interesting and comment on tid-bits of data that catch my eye on the drum beats. I don't recall ever formulating an agenda, much less engaging in insane arguments to discovers whose 'e-peen' is bigger on the blog. Is there a reason why you are so obsessed with me?
I would like file a FORMAL complain for GZs unnecessary and derogatory 'circle jerk' comment. And they say that I am the one who is inflammatory.
It wasn't GZ that did that if you read back it was SPEEK that used this obscene reference while defending you.
Greyzone was a bit terse to you - but as posted elsewhere you may want to try to work on how you communicate with the forum if you want a better response profile.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Well now, I should enjoy eating my own foot! It looks like he was refering to him as Mr. 'circle jerk'. Perhaps bat boy can give me some tips :P
Track record of behaviour.
That's all.
Who knows, perhaps Party Guy has learned to discuss things in a more grown up manner than the past and will be taken more seriously as a result... but it'll take time before people warm to him after his nonsense.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Yes, I've seen how rudely PartyGuy gets treated around here. Oh, you mean PartyGuy's behavior? I don't really see what your complaint is.
Then you are being deliberately blind.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
So, PartyGuy... Obviously this provoked a bunch of chatter below...
I don't know if you ARE deliberately picking fights in your recent postings, or if you are actually going for something different - a counterweight opinion - a little contrarianism - allied to a sort of wry humorous style...
if it's the latter and you do enjoy being on here and being in the debate for what it's worth i'd just humbly remind you that people from a lot of different places backgrounds and personalities come on here and tone of voice never comes through in text... so it's easy to be misunderstood and after offending people repeatedly for a while they'll tend to lose patience with you and your presence will become little more than an annoying disruption... we've all probably participated in fora that descended in this way...
i picked a needless cranky fight on here early on with someone whose postings i actually have a lot of time for... it's easily done... i didn't change my mind on the issue, but i did feel dumb for needlessly pissing him off and tried not to do so so much going forward
a bit of mutual respect - even with those whose thoughts you think are not even close to being right - makes it a lot easier all around... you'll find people will grow more accepting
just 2c
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
I admit that I'm pretty much at a loss for words on where GZ is coming from. Frankly I don't really see that I did anything wrong with the link I posted. After all, I was simply brining a news worthy story to the attention of the posters on the drumbeat... Even Dragonfly41 stated he was going to bring up the same post before I did it!
Perhaps GZ woke up on the wrong side of the bed :(
And yes I generally try to inject a healthy amount of humor into my posts. A sort of wittiness that doesn't translate easily into text. Perhaps I should start using the 'sarconal' tag more often...
Just might help a bit
And this is a community of smart people all of whom share concerns - so it helps to mend fences sometimes when you offend someone
And GZ wasn't the one that made the circle-jerk statement if you look - it was Speek
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Taking the slow news day to add to the fertilizer notes.
It was very new for me and I think it will be for you too:
I have bees on my plot (only one hive, more in the future, btw you can, too) and I attended a lecture by some bee researcher from the university and he mentioned (as a side note) that a single beehive produces about 60kg of bees (apis mel. carnica in eastern part of Austria) and as much is spread on the nearby area as high value fertilizer because they only live ca. 40 days during summer (50-70k hive population). He mentioned the dead bees removed from the hive only, but I found an article regarding the bee dung that possibly adds even more to their fertilizer value:
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2007/april/yellowrain.htm
FERTILIZER -> POTASH
Interesting Bloomberg story providing a view from outside the US, about a German investor who first ditched all US investments, and now all investments in companies that rely too much on sales to the US. If taking investment money out of the US becomes a large scale trend, we can all figure out what will be the result.
And Bob Shaw's potash comments are spot on.
When the Fed gives savers the finger and bails out it's corrupt kind, it follows that savers really should give them the finger right back and remove all liquid assets from the US.
How else can one deal with a cancer other then to deprive it food?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7000991.stm
The No-Impact man is a bit of an old story by now, nice but..... As a friend of mine said this morning: He'll get a big book deal and buy a Hummer.
Sharon Astyk's 52-week austerity program is far more interesting, I think, if only because she does intend to make the changes permanent.
She's now in Week 21.
Thanks ilargi for the link to Sharon's site.
I too want to make these kinds of permanent changes too but it is very difficult when you have friends and family that grew up in this culture of Consumer Hedonism and who know of no other way of life ("no one else is doing this, why should we ?!?!?").
They essentially want to continue living the current culture until they are forced to do otherwise.
The austerity is great, but by having 4 children she negates it all. Over the next decades her family will have outconsumed all but the most decadent.
Thanks for posting, I was going to but you beat me to it.
Where this really relates to PO? The day might come when most urban dwellers are going to have to live a lifestyle that looks a lot like this experiment.
It looks to me that they are making things a little harder for themselves than they really need to.
I'd be interested in hearing how they do this winter. They might find that it is pretty slim pickings at that farmer's market then, and that they will have wished that they had done more stocking up during the summer.
Good points WNC. They may very well be making it harder on themselves than necessary right now but I think you are right that most urban dwellers in most US cities will be forced to adapt similar lifestyles in the not-too-distant future.
And like you say, it will be very interesting to see how they do in the winter when locally grown farmer's market foods becomes scarce or unavailable. Without our grandparent's habits and know-how for food storage, they may be force to abandon their experiment.
But at least by trying this now they will learn the limitations of their approach and may have time to remedy or adapt to those limitaions. Unlike the vast majority of people who will have no experience with such a way of life, and who will likely have to try to adapt under far more stressful and far less forgiving conditions.
Think of them as beta testers for our future.
I would appreciate it if people would read and comment on my story Living On the Edge: OPEC Spare Capacity now published at ASPO-USA. I think it ought to be required reading, not just here, but for anyone with a stake in the world's oil supply. Which is just about everyone. Then again, I wrote it ... so you'll excuse my lack of humility. Of course, I am not famous for that particular personality trait.
Anyway, you will notice perhaps a more urgent tone than I have used heretofore. I do not see things going well in the near-term... Some may not like the article because it does not adopt the "Ghawar is crashing, all is lost" hypothesis. Sorry about that.
Have a good one,
Dave
From the ASPO article:
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/04/elp-plan-economize-localize-prod...
Monday, April 02, 2007
The ELP Plan: Economize; Localize & Produce
By: Jeffrey J. Brown
From the point of view of importing countries, I think that it is hard to argue that we are not already past Peak Exports. Even if Saudi Arabia is able to show a fourth quarter increase in production, there is virtually no scenario in which they will not show an increase in their net export decline rate, from 2006 to 2007, versus 2005 to 2006. This is consistent with the mathematical model and with recent case histories.
In any case, whether the Titanic is sinking quickly or slowly, I think that we agree that it is sinking.
We may agree, but few of the passengers do. To wit: the astonishing (and ignorant) exuberance of Wall Street, and the MSM, after Ben Bernanke's bone yesterday. People actually believe--and are not troubled by--the concept that the economy sways on the whims of a roomful of suits. OF course, the Wall Street bonuses depend on the dollar value of shares, devaluation notwithstanding.
When water is rushing into the cabins, people will just call the porter and complain of a leak. And where is my breakfast.
Yes I was thinking of that David Farragut quote "Damn the torpedoes Full speed ahead". (The 'topedoes' were actually a minefield in the battle of Mobile Bay)
Plunged into a fresh experimental round of Minesweeper with Vice Admiral Bernanke at the helm is no less perilous.
What happens when the (freshly stoked) economic juggernaut slams into the concrete reality of 84 Mbpd worldwide crude production with everyone on board screaming for more breakfast from their flood filling cabins is the ongoing spectacle we are surely going to witness.
And BTW I agree with WT. The music is beginning to play faster.....
I would appreciate it if people would read and comment on my story...
My take-away was...
a) Spare capacity is improperly measured.
b) The "new" oil to be produced is sour stock... which explains why NYMEX immediately ignored the move.
For me... the urgency issue (at the moment) is downstream from M.E. production. We are potentially one hurricane from a MOL situation. Our strategic crude reserve won't mean bupkis if we have refineries sitting in water.
Dave, I loved the article. It was right on the mark. Sure you did not adopt the "Ghawar is crashing, all is lost" hypothesis, but you came pretty close. At least you are a lot closer to that hypothesis than you were a year ago. But you are getting there, and I am confident you will get there eventually. ;-)
Ron Patterson
Whether Dave adopts the "Ghawar is crashing" hypothesis or not, we are seeing a convergence of opinions amongst knowledgeable people. I strongly suspect that May 2005 will be seen as the historic monthly peak in C&C production.
I think that Dave Cohen, Robert Rapier, Euan Mearns, and others are being cautious, and from their positions, this may be fully justified. But I do think that, barring some great miracle very soon, that we will all end up acknowledging May 2005 as the C&C peak (and maybe July 2006 as the all-liquids peak). It's just a matter of how far along we are before that consensus gets stronger. Decline appears to be steady and continuing, and the Skrebowski mega-projects have not yet brought forth any of the supposed fruit that was predicted.
At some point, if 2008, 2009, or 2010 is a mega-project "bust" for additional production, just as 2006 and 2007 have been so far, then people simply have to accept that there is no additional growth coming. Now we may yet get Skrebowski's predicted growth to the 88-90 mbpd range. I don't think that myself but I do understand why some people are hesitant to call peak right this instant. And yet despite that hesitance, we are seeing convergence of opinion anyway. Interesting, no?
The key point that people are still missing is the clarion call that Hirsch made about needing years in advance to prepare for the onset of peak. If we are indeed either immediately post-peak or immediately pre-peak, then it is too late and we will very likely suffer at least Hirsch's harsh economic collapse scenario, if not worse.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Yeah, I've noticed that, too.
And the movement has been generally toward the pessimistic end of the spectrum. As Deffeyes so charmingly puts it, the "Cornucopian Cemetery" is filling up.
I do hope there is a freshly dug grave with an engraved "Yergin" on its tombstone. Needs to be pretty wide for that head to fit in.
The Hirsch report was one of the first articles I read on PO. I was astonished and it hasn’t gotten easier to assimilate all that and everything else I’ve learned along the way – mostly here on TOD. It astounds me every day. I think people have no idea what to do, because they haven’t been told WHAT to do… different. I’ve brought the subject up many times and, like many here, get the range of responses. ‘Let’s change the subject.’ ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ ‘Don’t bring me down.’ And, from my partner, who just took a management job with a big international firm that got us back to the Austin area from San Francisco - ‘I know, I know… but can we just not talk about it now?’ Not now??? When then? I want to put up solar panels and he wants to tile the bathtub. Guess which one gets done first.
He now flies most weeks and is gone 2-4 days/wk. He’s a sales manager and goals are not being met consistently as in the past. When I ask if anyone brings up the economy, the world affairs and the bigger picture, he responds with the kind of No that suggest he doesn’t want to talk about … you know, oil and all that. He has done very well in the business and, in many ways, is experiencing what I believe must be part-n-parcel during... ummm peak everything. And that being there are many who are doing very well at this moment. It’s a challenge to deliver a message that basically says ‘yeah, well, time to come off that peak now.’ The products his company sells are high-end cosmeceuticals – dermatologist, plastic surgeons, high-end spas and the like. Truly, everything they sell, their clients CAN live without. I got a bad feeling ‘bout this.
Not that I’m doing all the right things, either. Both mortgages on the rentals are interest only, due in 2009. Oh my. One house has retired, social security dependent tenants – the husband works a job up to the limit allowed by Social Security and the wife substitute teaches (both in their 70’s); the other couple is a master painter who is really a drummer and his wife who is starting a photography business. While younger, neither could get a loan to save his/her life and they want to buy the house from me. Meanwhile I walk a thin line between optimism and alcoholism. My portfolio would pay off one of them. Mind you these are not expensive houses.
I meet with the tile guy this weekend.
My ex wife and your partner sound like twins. She was about to go under in the great ARM scam and then her mother passed, which has set her up to go into early retirement. I asked ... nicely ... and she won't even consider 1% of the principal being turned into a few acres near here ... and we've got two little kids.
Most of my friends are a little nutty and they listen, but about half get to the light coming on, and then they have the "too awful to contemplate" look and change the subject.
Coworkers at a previous company were too deeply invested in technocracy / libertarianism to comprehend any form of resource depletion.
Coworkers at my current company seem to "get it" completely, but don't seem too interested in permaculture et al. I clumsily raise fruit trees and a vegetable garden, which so far has been pretty lame, but it's more than anyone else I know will do.
My family understands but doesn't care. If I tell them that in 20 years, none of us will drive personal automobiles, they don't disagree but they also don't think of it as something to plan for, either.
SA has indeed cut shipments to asia, reflected in routinely higher tapis price. It is not so clear that these cuts are mostly heavy sour. And, the steady decline (as opposed to abrupt) from 9.6 to 8.6 imo looks like geology rather than a problem with refiners. Consider; if they could refine the stuff a year ago, why would they be unable to refine it now?
It may still be possible that they have a heavy sour source that they were unable to bring on stream as production of the lighter stuff (presumably N ghawar) declined on account of asian and other refineries being unable to handle so much heavy sour, and in fact I remember an article where china reduced heavy sour from sa around 100k/d on this account. One would think china would on this basis be rapidly enhancing their ability to process heavy sour...
I suppose if venezuela carries out their threats to sell to the chinese, then their citgo refineries could process more h/s from sa...
Cuts to Asia have been heavier, sour crude grades—the oil news reports have made this clear for the last year, I even cited one for reference— and I did not even address why Saudi Arabia cut production since September, 2005. I simply noted that they did so. I believe that Asian refining capacity is more or less the same now as it was a few years ago, a reasonable assumption. Upgrades are going on, but refining is expensive and changes happen slowly. Therefore, Saudi Arabia can re-sell what they had sold before, but no more. This is exactly the position we were in in the fall of 2005. Little has changed except the oil price, which is now over $80 per barrel and rising.
Otherwise, I can not understand your remarks.
Dave, I think it's an excellent article - as are all of yours. Great information and analysis, good sources, measured speculation. And critical information for all.
If you could clarify for me, I am not sure why you are so up in arms about Stuart's Ghawar posts. They also seem to me as thorough as is possible given limited data, and he states his assumptions and conclusions. His conclusions might be wrong due to the other unknowns, but seem reasonably possible, certainly serious enough to merit thoughtful consideration. Do you have specific disagreements with him on the data, has he misrepresented something? Or are you primarily concerned about being especially cautious due to the "cry wolf" issue?
I am not "up in arms" about Stuart's take on things. The main difference between me and him is that I rely for my interpretations of things on well-established facts and he does not.
Housing starts, permits at 12-year low
Double-digit home price drops coming
That actually seems optimistic.
If one loses 20% after making 300%+ it's not that much of a deal.
if you triple your house price and take most of it out as a home equity loan then a 20% fall may be a VERY big hurt
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
The article from SeekingAlpha, The Oil Scam Driving Crude Over $80, looks like a crock to me. See the comments following the story - it appears the author has failed to grasp how a commodity futures market works.
Or perhaps the misunderstanding is mine - in which case, please correct me.
CNN is reporting that anti-Syrian parliament member Antoine Ghanem was killed in a car bombing in Beirut.
The Lebanese parliament has to elect a new President by November, with the process starting September 25 (next week). The ruling coalition, which could be considered anti-Syrian, once had a majority of 4, but three anti-Syrian parliament members have been assassinated recently, reducing the majority to 1.
Speaking of the Middle East, Larry Kudlow just described a conversation that he had with Bush. Kudlow asked about oil prices and Iran. Kudlow, quoting Bush: "All options are on the table. Markets will have to adjust to US policies regarding Iran."
About the above link The Oil Scam Driving Crude Over $80, the author is a blooming idiot. He writes:
The answer is simple for anyone who knows beans about the futures market, and it is obvious that this idiot knows nothing about the futures market. Each contract has two sides, the trader who is long the contract and the trader who holds the short side of the contract. If more of the shorts wish to close their contracts than longs, this will drive prices up as the shorts buy back their open contracts. This is so simple it is pathetic. And if the shorts panic and all try to close their short contracts at the same time, this could drive up the contract price dramatically. This often happens in the commodity futures markets. The price rises dramatically while at the same time the number of open contracts drop.
And contracts are "closed", not "cancelled", which is the term this guy uses. It is impossible to "cancel" a contract. A contract is "opened" when one trader goes "long" and another trader goes "short" the same contract. That is "one" contract that is added to the "open interest." Neither of the traders can now simply back out by "cancelling" his contract. He must buy it back if he is short or sell it if he is long, at the best price he can get.
And of course the vast majority of traders never intend to accept delivery. That is the case with all commodities. Less than one percent of all contracts ever traded eventually end in delivery. If this guy thinks because most open contracts never result in delivery of oil means there is a fraud going on, then he must make the same case with every other commodity on the market. But whether it is wheat, oil or pork bellies, the price is driven by supply and demand. True, the futures markets do cause short term swings in the price of all commodities, but in the final analysis, that is in the long term, it is always the fundamentals that drive the price.
Right now we have a shortage of wheat in the world and that is what is driving prices sky high, not treacherous activity by wheat futures traders. And the same thing goes for the price of oil.
Ron Patterson
During the past several weeks I remember there being several links in the Drumbeat to oil people saying that there was no good reason for oil to be as high as they are. There have been at least a few suggesting that speculation was responsible. Last night Sean Penn at Agonist endorsed a posting by tjfxh that
"The ease in liquidity does not imply that money will flow into the questionable paper that is at the foundation of the problem. Most probably it will not, other than at deep discount. Rather, it will likely flow toward the next bubble in the making, which looks to be commodities. If this materializes, it will be the last such bubble in the chain of this expansion."
(http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20070918/excuse_the_foul_language_but).
Since you make clear that Philip Davis is confused, how does one go about gaming the commodities markets? Are those who suggest that part of the increase has to do with speculation just flat out wrong? Is a commodities "bubble" impossible?
I don't see a connection betwee Davis and "gaming" the commodities market. At any rate you pick a commodity and place your bet. The exact same way you would do in Las Vegas.
Sudden market exuberance can always cause any particular commodity to rise in price just as sudden panic can make it drop in price. But these are always short term effects. YES if anyone says that speculation can cause a long term increase in commodity prices then they are just flat out wrong.
A short term bubble in any commodity is possible but there is no such thing as a long term bubble. Commodities are not like the housing market. Low interest rates and loan sharks can cause a housing bubble that lasts for years but houses are not corn or oil futures.
Also every commodity is different. Sugar can hit rock bottom while corn hits new highs and so on. Commodities do not usually move together except in related commodities like live hogs and pork bellies.
Mike Lynch was saying, three years ago, that the hedge funds were responsible for the high price of oil. Some people are still making the same dumb-ass claim. No, neither hedge funds nor speculators are responsible for the current high price of oil. It is a tightness of supply. How hard is that to understand?
Ron Patterson
Ron,
We don't have to read Don Sailorman's uninformed economic opinions here anymore, thank g-d, and it's time that you tone it down too. You have ended up with your foot in your mouth a few times too many to allow you to call anyone but yourself a blooming idiot on this forum, and besides, that kind of language does not belong here no matter what.
Ilargi, just name one time where I have put my foot in my mouth. You are just making up crap in order to sound sanctimonious.
But this time it is you who have put your foot in your mouth. I called no one on this list a blooming idiot. Read the post before you to open your mouth and put your foot in it. The blooming idiot was Philip Davis, author of the piece: "The Oil Scam Driving Crude Over $80". The man calls speculators traitors. I am a trader and a speculator. If he is entitled to call me a traitor then by god I am entitled to call him an idiot. After all, which is worse?
And if you are making the claim that we are not allowed to call anyone an idiot, then that rule needs to be stated. After all, I hear Bush, Yergin, Chaney and others called worse every day on this list.
And I repeat that charge, the man is a blooming idiot! Read the piece and then argue with my assesment.
One more point. Your kind of put-down, without reading or understanding who or what I was talking about says something very profound about you. It means you open your mouth without reading either my post or the article I was referring to.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/47541-the-oil-scam-driving-crude-over-80
Try not to make that mistake again. Anyway, what tripped your trigger. Your name wouldn't be Philip Davis would it?
Ron Patterson
I have to side with Ron on this one. I think Ron deserves criticism as "blooming idiot" is a compliment for Mr Davis.
Ron is going too easy on him.
Here is a little tidbit to support Ron's points.
There are many varieties of oil that trade only on the spot market. There are no futures contracts and there are no speculators. And quite often they move differently than LSC on Nymex and have no fixed differential to LSC on NYMEX. ALL of those are up.
here,
http://www.upstreamonline.com/market_data/?id=markets_crude
As far as the rest of his comments..well there are a log higher speculators in the stock market than in the commodities market, I guess DOW jones should be at 1000 by the same logic.
And BTW the #%#% dodo should see what happened last friday with the Commitment of traders report before shooting is retarded mouth off. Speculators increased their net short poistions by 10,000 contracts as crude rose from 74 to 78.
Hehehe, thanks Fireangel, I do appreciate the support. But I have a question, is there a problem with calling "blooming idiots" blooming idiots? After all, I am guilty of doing that. I have called George W. Bush a blooming idiot many times. Should I lighten up? Should I drop the "blooming" and just call him an idiot? Or perhaps I should call him "Mr. President" instead and say "Right or wrong, he is my president and I support him?"
Ehhhh, I don't think so, but opposing opinions are welcome.
Ron Patterson
Blooming idiot is too light. As you might agree we are in deep doo-doo. People like Phil davis continue to make it harder to get the word out and are wasting our valuable time.
Just a few days back I read something on bloomberg where Michael lybch after being wrong for 5 years straight continued to insist "There is NO demand at these prices"
Thats what he said "NO DEMAND". I guess he walked his fat #$$ to work that day.
Ron,
Your knowledge of economics leaves lots to be desired, and overshouting what's missing with big ugly words doesn't make it any better. You have posted lots of stuff on the Fed and various other subjects that make sufficiently clear that you are not an expert on the topic. That alone should keep you from calling people names.
I never said you called anyone on this list anything, you get too excited to even read well, but apart from that, my point is that these terms don't belong here for anyone from anyone. TOD is not a shouting match, and you, as a valued contributor, should be among those who give the good example. If you use this language, all kinds of adolescent problem areas feel free to do likewise, and that does not make this a better forum.
I hope the fact that a 12-year old calling Bush some kind of name doesn't really make you feel free to do the same to everone you meet, though you come close to saying just that. You need to tone it down, in more way than one.
Your reaction to my comment says plenty on how insecure you are, you can't process negative responses very well, and so you start shouting and using bolded text, but, and I have said this before, it would still be far better for all, you included, if you would limit yourself to what you do know something about. Economics is not among those topics. But Saudi Arabia is, for instance.
I'll leave it at that. I don't mind people talking about things they know little about, so much, but I do mind the abusive language they think is necessary to get their weak points across. Ironically, you don't address that. More ironically, there is a skewed relation between knowledge and abusive terms used. But maybe that should not be a surprise. If you cannot make your point without resorting to name calling, you have no point to make.
An example please! Anyone can make such a statement but it becomes nothing but hot air unless you can prove your accusation. The post had nothing to do with economics; it was all about commodity futures, oil futures in particular.
Philip Davis wrote:
That is the dumbest thing I have ever read. No barrels were ordered! Of course traders have no intention of having the oil delivered. The oil had not already been paid for, nothing was scheduled to be delivered, and nothing was dumped. Traders do not order oil, they trade contracts! And he is too stupid to realize that shorts, closing out their contracts, can cause the price to rise.The man is a blooming idiot!
So Mr. Ilargi, please stick to the subject. I called the man a blooming idiot, and others obviously agree with me, saying I was too easy on the man. But you say I know nothing about economics, as if this has anything to do with the debate.
Anyone who knows squat about futures trading can recognize in an instant what a stupid article this man wrote. But you seem to think he is some kind of a genius.
Again, that article is the dumbest thing I have ever read. And the very fact that you defend it speaks volumes about your knowledge of the futures market. And don't demean my knowledge of economics or anything else unless you can give an example. That is nothing but a cheap retorical trick and you know damn well it is.
Ron Patterson
The article in question: I invite anyone to read it and tell me the man knows what he is talking about.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/47541-the-oil-scam-driving-crude-over-80
Ron,
If that is the dumbest thing you have read I suggest you see some of his previous "masterpieces". I think you may change your mind.
What happened to Don Sailorman?
Medical problems. Read closer,
he discusses it often, though
slightly coded.
Don Sailorman was challenged on various economic issues. He replied in exactly the fashion predicted by Jay Hanson, with circular arguments and appeals to authority. Never once did we enter the discussion in terms of science regardless of how many times I and others tried to steer it that way. He also dismissed any stats he dislikes via appeals to authority, and ignored all clearly documented alterations to US government economic stats over the last 30 years, again via appeals to authority without examining even one of those changes rationally. Ultimately Don wanted to place a bet that 4th quarter GDP would be positive, based upon those same altered government stats, when some of us pointed out that the exact same data, processed via the 1970s government methodologies would show clear economic contractions (compared to the 1970s). It was at that point that he appeared to vanish.
I like Don a great deal. He is a very polite and nice guy but he has completely invested himself in the current koolaid and refuses to even consider that any of his assumptions might be wrong. Don reminds me of the joke about three starving scientists on a desert island when a case of canned food washes ashore. The physicist says "I can open these cans by climbing that tree and dropping rocks on them!" The chemist says, "No, I can open these cans by creating a corrosive solution from salt water and immersing the can in that!" Then the economists speaks up and says, "Gentlemen! Why all the hard work? First we assume we have a can opener..."
Truly Don is a great guy and I suspect that he will show up again soon. But his firm belief in economics, as currently constituted, even after directly admitting to WebHubbleTelescope that economics is completely unlike any other real science and does not proceed from observed data and falsifiable hypothesis, does not mean we should take his positions as gospel.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
I don't know what happened with Don Sailorman, but on the economy, I see no reason for foot in mouth desease. He is so far more correct than anyone else - witness Benny and the Feds round 1 yesterday. He called it closer than anyone else that the fed will inflate us out of this crises rather than let a depression win out.
However, in general, those on this site who participate more are apt to make more predictions, and therefore are likely to be wrong more often. That goes with the territory. Those who say nothing or predict nothing can stay on the sidelines and get to point fingers.
-Don
"We don't have to read Don Sailorman's uninformed economic opinions here anymore, thank g-d, and it's time that you tone it down too. You have ended up with your foot in your mouth a few times too many to allow you to call anyone but yourself a blooming idiot on this forum"
Please give examples or argue for/against points (i.e. make an argument for your case), especially if you are going to imply someone is being foolish, otherwise you are just making ad Hominem attacks.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
or just everyone stop using such inflammatory comments about others... don't mean to sound all group-hug here but it's been a bit testy round these parts today
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/steve_bell/2007/09/1...
I just had a slightly disappointing experience. One of the NPR stations here in the San Francisco Bay Area where I am at the moment had Naomi Wolf on to talk about her book that's been discussed here.
A lot about the fact that there is this big power grab - as has often be discussed on here.
So I called in and asked Why Now? Why is it this power grab is suddenly so urgent for these people. And I asked with Oil Production having peaked or being just about to peak, and the likely disruption to society that this would lead to - given that fascists and totalitarians look to take power in turbulent times - whether she felt Peak Oil played into this. I suggested this may be why all this stuff is coming to a head now.
But the answer was that it was all about corporate profits and building a society for corporate profits. The lack of an enemy for the arms industry meant manufacturing other ways to create a profitable society.
I understand this sort of argument but I think it shows that even those inclined to look at some of the tough questions just don't take that one step deeper - to look at what the causes behind some of this turbulence is... I dunno - I felt the answer to be a bit disappointing.
But still, afterwards the presenter mentioned that they are putting together a show on Peak Oil on KALW so at least the same forum is looking to raise awareness of this issue. That's promising.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Thanks for the post.
I assume "the answer" above was Naomi Klein speaking-and it is Klein, not Wolf.
It reinforces my thoughts on her Harper's article, that the inclusion of oil was not about peak, shortages or control of energy.
No, Naomi Wolf, though they kept mistakenly calling her Naomi Klein.
She has a book out comparing the parallels between 20's Italy, 30's Germany, Stalinist USSR and the US today.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Naomi Wolf's new book is: "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot"
I've heard of the book and kept mixing it up with the author of No Logo too :-), but her new book is the Shock Doctrine.
Let's make a rule - only one lefty Naomi publishing at a time please :)
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Thanks for the correction. "her book that's been discussed here" and Naomi had me assuming too much.
Agree with the rule, or we should stick to last names and titles.
Just a couple of observations. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of crude. Refinery gains not withstanding, if you could convert it all to gasoline, at no cost, at $82 a barrel that comes to $1.95 per gallon. How would you explain the present incredibly low wholesale price of gasoline? Can you really refine it , and deliver it to a buyer for about a dime?
Rubin would be more journalistically honest if he gave Jeff Brown his due in raising awareness of Export land theory.
When TSHTF do you think gold will go for a short ballistic ride before people realize you can not eat it?
but you get a lot of other product out of that same barrel as well as the Gasoline right?
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
People do not buy gold for the day a society collapses. They buy gold for the day after that.
What I mean is that people who buy gold do so because they believe there will be a rebuilding, a re-establishment of some form of civilization, even if you have the kind of collapse that Rome saw. Gold buyers believe that someday after the collapse there will again be monetary systems and thus that gold will be useful in that context. They may not even realize it consciously but that is what a decision to buy gold means.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
"Gold buyers believe that someday after the collapse there will again be monetary systems and thus that gold will be useful in that context"
I have since three years ago made preps for this possibel "collapse". One of the preps was to figure out what to do with the savings left after the practical preps. One thing i ruled out was to keep them in fiat(paper)money, because of obvious reasons.
Then what should the savings be placed in?? Something tangible should do i thought. Well you could buy for example a lot of handtools or something similar, which you could use for barter.
But if there won´t be a collapse of the monetary systems, then what do you do with the hammers and spades??
My personal take is that gold should be useful either in a collapse scenario or not. If the monetary systems don´t break, then you could make big economical gains.
If the monetary systems break down(as they are today), gold
could propably be useful as barter anyway, as the metal has been for thousands of years around the globe. And besides gold takes very little space, and can easily be hidden and transported.
So i went for the gold hoarding solution. But that´s me.
My bet - basic pharmaceuticals.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
Hi Re,
What are you thinking about and/or doing? Don't most have a shelf life?
My hope is to get people to invest in a more fuel efficient car, insulating their house better and changing to pellet/solar/heatpump/district heating and to buy shares and bonds in new railways, nuclear powerplants, biofuel plants, technology companies with efficincy solutions and so on.
Private efficiency investments are doing fairly ok in Sweden. The rest have not yet reached a large scale.
If this is done in a large scale we will avoid a local "collapse" and get a gradual change instead where people change habits and consumtions patterns while being happy. Then we will still have our nice democratic culture after the post peak oil changes.
Hello Treeman,
Your Quote:"When TSHTF do you think gold will go for a short ballistic ride before people realize you can not eat it?"
My imagination immediately pictured the guards at Ft. Knox moving the gold outside to build [very shiny & bright] machine gun bunkers so they could protect the guano, NPK, and heirloom seeds being moved inside the fortress.
Sadly, the topdogs want-it-all: the gold will stay inside Ft. Knox, but Yucca Mountain, Nevada will hold a lot of the biosolar goodies, not nuclear wastes. I first suggested this years ago.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Boone Pickens interview:
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/09/boone-pickens-last-comments-on-o...
Here's an article on a device that supposedly halves heating bills. Sounds a bit like a perpetual motion machine, but apparently it has been vetted by a skeptical third party, who verified it works, even though it's a mystery how it works.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.htm...
Very interesting Arclite. Wonder if there would be anyway to use this device for transportation purposes? Perhaps ships could use cold water from the ocean to increase their efficiencies?
Hmmm. Jim Lyons, one of the "skeptical third parties," has a business degree. The other third party, Saffa Riffat, does have an engineering degree, but he just says they're still checking.
This thing has red flags all over it. They won't say how it works. It uses a "secret catalyst."
Dollars to donuts, it's a perpetual motion machine.
Remember Steorn? Their perpetual motion machine would have worked, except they had some problems with friction. :-D
"Dollars to donuts..."
Mmmm...donuts.
"Remember Steorn?..."
I'd say it's more Blacklight Power-y than Steorn.
deja vu. isn't this the gizmo we made fun of several days ago?
In the article linked on top about Basra, Iraq:
"Some 6,000 fishermen have lost hope of getting the fuel they need in order to set sails for fishing"
- there seems to be some irony in their choice of words.
Jim Jubak on MSN Money has a good article posted yesterday, highlighting the runaway domestic oil consumption in the exporting countries:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/OPECDrivesU...
So the U.S. bombs Iran, and if we don't get every single asset they've got pretty much instantly that North Korean built nuke they've got will be in the air on it way to Tel Aviv. Hussein tried to trigger the Arab dog pile on Israel to distract from the first gulf war. We're weak now and I suspect given the inflammation in the region it might work this time, even if the Persians throw the first punch.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/19/iran.israel.ap/index.html
Condi Rice bravely (read: stupidly) stands against world opinion on how to handle Iran.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7002371.stm
The Pope won't see Condi Rice about the ME. There is a procedural reason but it is also suspected that they're put out by the U.S. government's refusal to see their embassy prior to the Iraq invasion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7002988.stm
The Iranians have noted that the French neocons are as laughable as ours here in the United States.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6998602.stm
Israel continues to be amazed that starving Palestinians shoot rockets at them. Democracy in Palestine produces a government that wants to represent the peoples' interest by booting the Israel intruders out of their lands.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7002576.stm
And no one wants to talk about the Israel incursion into Syrian airspace
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7000717.stm
But the Syrian make a move in response to the recent Israeli bombing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7003191.stm
The almost entirely useless Iraqi national government is apparently in possession of the collective spine the U.S. Democrats are lacking and they boot Blackwater right out of their country. A symbolic move, to be sure,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6998788.stm
The Syrians appear to be quite sick of getting 3,000 refugees a day from Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6988828.stm
Its an open top barrel of medium volatility hydrocarbons and the Bush administration is try to deal with dust motes floating on top of the mix by flicking lit matches at it, hoping to burn off just the top layer. Their breath taking lack of understanding of cause and effect is going to get us $200/bbl oil prices before we factor in the decline of the dollar.
A gallon of gas is going to cost just as much as a gallon of good whiskey and we're going to have George W. Bush to thank for it.
Happy Happy Joy Joy SacredCowTipper.
And yet CNN keeps O.J. Simpson's arrest front and center.
I've never own a TV and I generally don't watch the stuff. O.J. was acquitted before I knew Johnny Cochran was black. Our media is a totally, completely useless distraction ranking lower in my estimation than TOD domestic disputes between various under bridge dwellers.
I thought I'd try to give a positive media example
www.democracynow.org. Pretty good, most of the time. I don't know they they "get it" on energy, though. But you could always write to them...
The Pope won't see Condi Rice about the ME. There is a procedural reason but it is also suspected that they're put out by the U.S. government's refusal to see their embassy prior to the Iraq invasion.
Lets not forget how diplomatic relations were broken off over the assassination of Lincoln and only re-established under Reagan
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=7#more-7
Best viewed listening to Cohen.
Best viewed listening to Cohen.
Leonard or Dave? :)
Hello TODers,
I certainly don't have the economic and statistical expertise of our Stuart Staniford, Dave Cohen, or Ace, so please take the following and enhance or refute as desired.
As I believe that the majority of us will be relocalized permaculturists someday: I am trying to figure out the relative human-slave vs energy-slave costs as we head to postPeak lifestyles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano
http://ecogardensupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16220&cat=274&pag...
------------------------------------------
Jamaican Bat Guano (2.2 lbs.)
Pure, high-phosphorus Jamaican Bat Guano (1-10-0.2) offers consistency and an excellent trace element foundation. Harvested from centuries-old, organically-rich deposits in Jamaican caves. Excellent customer satisfaction and eco-friendly harvesting. $8.95/2.2 lb. bag
----------------------------------------
Now I could be entirely wrong, but I am assuming this guano is strictly mined by hand-shoveling and wheelbarrows, not FF-powered energy-slave equipment [Recall eco-friendly harvesting]. This works out $8,136/ton retail. More bird & bat guano choices in this link:
http://homeharvest.com/guano.htm
For comparative purposes, I picked a similar retail non-organic fertilizer linked below. Obviously, there are NPK, and other mineral differences, but it seems the relative ratios are roughly approximate? Hell, I don't know: if someone knows how to price correct for elemental differences and the embedded energy in the packaging difference, I would appreciate the expert response.
I am also roughly assuming the energy-transport is equivalent: Jamaica to Phx [organic] = Saskatchewan to Phx [synthetic]. Thus, I am assuming the synthetic fertilizer is entirely FF-powered, plus huge capital investment; an energy-slave process.
http://shop.summerwindsgc.com/s/shop/item.asp?eid=5362_28914__miraclegro
------------------------------------------
Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster (3.75-lb Pail) $9.99
Special 10-52-10 formula gives bigger blooms and more blossoms
-----------------------------------------
This synthetic fertilizer is $5,328/ton. Because the transport physics are fixed for either fertilizer: is it correct to roughly say that the human-slave/energy slave ratio is 8,136/5,328 = 1.53? Rephrased as FF's net energy depletes, and we have to do nearly everything by human power [especially topsoil maintenance the ancient way]: are we already that close to requiring multi-billions to entirely abandon FF-use for the mining, beneficiation, and transport for photosynthesis?
If this Jamaican guano was mined strictly by human-power, transported by wheelbarrow to a wooden sailing ship, then sailed around South America to California, then transported to my house by a person pedaling a bicycle: would the organic human-slave price = synthetic energy-slave price; a 1:1 ratio?
Conversely: if the Saskatchewan mines operated without modern equipment and energy, but strictly used human slaves powering picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows 3300 ft underground in 5,000 miles of tunnels, then wooden sailing ships and bicycles to distribute the product-- would the price ratio go to 1:10?
My conclusion: I wish our Govt would massively fund the building of guano shelters everywhere before it is too late. Recall my earlier link of the old photograph showing the huge and local annual guano harvest piled high on a horse-drawn wagon. It is my opinion that an expert bat-biologist should earn more than Rex Tillerson as we go postpeak. Okay TODers: have at it please, but remember: there are no substitutes in the periodic table of elements for photosynthesis.
As mentioned many times before: I will gladly sit in the natural darkness nightly in exchange for minimal food & clean water. Is the rest of America ready for this relocalized permaculture mindset, or is our last dance the machete moshpit?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Urban moshpit, rural return to our roots (he says, fingers crossed).
Not that I wish harm on city dwellers, its just laid out like that.
SCT, where are you from? Your writing style is -- uh, interesting.
Ok. Just read below. Looks like rural Iowa. Beautiful country. I drove the 2 highway, I think it was the 2 anyway, across the Southern part of Iowa years ago when I lived in Lincoln, NE. (Lived there one year. Winter was too cold and I high-tailed it back the California.)
Somewhat rambling, but hopefully interesting post of mine on dovecotes, which are a historical, decentralized means of gathering fertilizer...
I think that guano, today, tends to come from a few highly centralized sources because only in these few lucky locations are guano deposits large enough to allow industrial harvesting that makes it semi-competitive with other industrialized fertilizer sources under modern economic and pricing schemes. Post-peak, to the extent that we'll be generally looking to local sources for resources, we'll also need to establish local sources of fertilizer. Dovecotes, bat boxes, bee hives all seem to qualify...
This happens naturally all over in this part of the world - any abandoned building open enough to let pigeons in has a guano deposit on the floor. I don't know how we're fixed for pigeon predators around here - we certainly have some weasels, but they're just not a creature you see no matter what time of day or night you go walking.
Another aspect of life here I'll have to go explore. Bees, bats, pigeons, and barn cats ... I'm going to become the commander of the menagerie.
Try sitting quietly. When their prey (chipmunks, birds etc.) quit singing all of a sudden, you might just see one. They're not shy but exceedingly quick.
You may have noticed that organic and synthetic retail prices are not that far off from the 2007 inflation adjusted price of $10,500/ton of 1914 fertilizer, then $500/ton.
http://www.awrr.com/sfdiesels.html
----------------------------------
During WWI, the U.S. was forced to get what potash it could from expensive sources, such as brine lakes, distillery wastes, flue dust and seaweeds. The price soared from $35/ton to almost $500/ton.
-----------------------------------
If this $500/ton was the 1914 WHOLESALE PRICE, then the 2007 inflation adjusted RETAIL PRICE would have been much higher for family gardeners back in 1914.
When our Overshoot, and FF & topsoil depletion is taken into full effect: Could we soon see $50,000/ton retail prices for those trying to move to relocalized permaculture?
Armored guards for the Home Depot delivery truck full of NPK fertilizers and guano products? Machine gun equipped Humvees to protect a truckload of yummy, vine-ripened beefsteak tomatoes? Bought your wheelbarrow and garden tools yet?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob from Phx Ah, now you know why we are going into the organic fertilizer business. Grown without fossil fuels and primarilly nitrogen, we will be producing about 20 tons per day in about 6 months.
Bob,
Do you have any information on regional bat density? Here in the wilds of Iowa we have about 20% of our farmsteads abandoned. I'm basing this estimate on my practice of snapping a few shots of each place I see and then geotagging the images in Flickr. I found an article indicating 89% of the locations have bats in them:
http://www.iowabarnfoundation.org/magazine/bats_and_barns.htm
It will be interesting to see what happens as peak oil effects come on - these places are abandoned as farms consolidate and as energy prices go up presumably more of them will be left empty ... but if we get a sudden influx of refugees that situation may change dramatically. They've been knocked down in the past but that requires a bulldozer and that may become uneconomical. Oh, and they're nice, dry, standing fuel, so there is that aspect, too.
I haven't dug into the situation very far but we've got a prefab hog building maker based here in town as well as a metal fab place. If we're going to have refugees they'll do better in prefab 400' square cottages with small wind generators built right here than they would squatting in abandoned farm houses. There will be plenty of fresh alternators available for harvest into small scale wind solutions as vehicles become sagging oddities from a dying age. They require some attention to be usable in 8.0m/s wind areas but that is a nice cottage industry for someone ...
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind_alternators.html
Anyway, I digress ... please drop me a note at gwbush@dumbfuck.org ... would like to talk with you in more detail than is appropriate here.
deleted
Hello SacredCowTipper,
Sorry for the delay: Nope, no info on regional bat densities.
If anyone's seen the bridge in Austin at dusk with the millions of bats... shows you can attract and build a colony with good planning... wonder if you could sling something underneath the bridge to catch the guano.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
I think we're going to have to get a whole lot wiser about layout of such things. I'm envisioning something like this for gardening.
5' x 10' raised beds - cultivate once, don't walk on 'em ever again, and it greatly reduces energy required. The bed shape is calculated to allow you to reach everything just by leaning a little and you place the plants at the right distance to shade the weeds. This is a dramatic improvement over the FF-centric row crop layout that often got reproduced in gardens.
If bat guano is good bat guano you don't have to fiddle with is even better. Stick a large pole in the ground in the middle of your garden, mount your bat box, and the droppings mostly end up where you want them without any intervention. I'm not sure how well bats take to nesting in a high traffic area so maybe this is nonsense ... more reading required to verify this approach.
Bats are good for night insects. Chickens are good during the day. Screen the raised beds and let the poultry run. Fertilizer ends up near where you want it, bugs easily cross the barriers and end up in reach of the intended consumers.
Raccoons, bunnies, and deer are an issue here. All three are edible. Raccoons are trappable and if they volunteer for fertilizer duty so be it. Bunnies are easily discouraged with a handful of underfed barn cats. The deer are more problematic ... so maybe its time for a small, noisy dog with its only water source a pan in the garden???
Little puzzles to be solved ... my own collection of silver BBs, so to speak.
Perhaps you could locate a bat box over the compost heap. And if you take a look at a book called "Square Foot Gardening", the author discusses the possibility of constructing a wire mesh cover over each small (he suggests 4' x 4' max) garden grid to keep out deer & other critters that want a share of the harvest.
Perhaps, in light of what appears to be an accelerating pace towards TSHTF, now might be a good time to lay in a supply of heirloom vegetable seeds ....
Ishtar
Does anyone think the Saudis will unpeg soon?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/19/bcnsau...
We could be at a $ 100.00 dpb sooner than Mr. Pickens thinks.
Whoa.
Hello Leanan,
Whoa is correct for us TODers, but the rest of America is riveted by OJ Simpson, sports, and what celeb, without underwear, is climbing from a car. Such is life.
EDIT: for dangling participle.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
No kidding! At work, where I'm kind of an oddball because I don't even have a tv, two guys were trying to discuss Iraq. One of the major problems they identified was secretarian violence.
The article on China linked from "Fears of Dollar Collapse" is also frightening.
Funny things start to move so soon. I posted one or two comments that match the significant points of this article either here or on the Canada side earlier or yesterday.
People around the world are not going to sit still while being robbed even if most Americans are.
Musahi: The apathy of the USA public re the devaluation of the dollar is fairly widespread. On another site, a poster was commenting on an amount in Canadian dollars and he guesstimated that the Cdn dollar was valued at roughly 60 cents American dollar. IMO, most Americans are unaware of the dollar/Euro exchange rate or dollar/Yen. As Americans are raised to regard the USA as the center of the universe, naturally the US currency is regarded as a constant that all variables move around. It does make things more convenient for the Fed.
I know.
Sometimes I get in trouble with friends other then the closest ones by letting slip what I'm really thinking about almost any subject or just by being very direct.
While I served for over 20 years, the great majority of the time was overseas and the way I look at things isn't what one would call mainstream. LOL.
It's fu**ing amazing when one can live for years in foreign countries and have conversations with total strangers and find it totally impossible to communicate in anything other then psychobabble at home.
Maybe that's why they sell so many keyboards.
In the land of the blind,
the one-eyed man is ....
called 'psychologically challenged'.
Kind of funny how a barrel of oil, of a specified quality, has the same BTU content in 2007 that it had in 1907. Can't the same thing about the dollar, i.e., a 2007 dollar is not the same thing as a 1907 dollar--which is a point that Hubbert made decades ago.
Calories are the first immutable, BTUs the second, and precious metals come in a distant third in terms of survival as they're a symbol of productivity(money) that actually has some utility, too.
I have not clearly elucidated but I think some measure of calories, BTUs, and CO2 makes much more sense than that perennial favorite of the asset inflation crowd, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
No wonder they where keen to get the deal with BAE :p
Would changing the oil currency effectivly reduce the price to non US purchasers, or is the world economies so closly tied that a dollar collapse would trigger a world wide economic wobble.
Does anyone know Al Gore thoughts on peak oil? I assume he knows a lot about it but doesnt say much, is that close?
This is very disconcerting.
Re: "Dawn in the Desert"
At the 2005 to 2006 rate of consumption that Saudi Arabia showed (5.7%/year), Saudi consumption will have increased by 1.6 mbpd in 10 years. Note that Rembrandt puts the current rate of increase in consumption in the 9% range.
As noted up the thread, the combined increase in consumption by the top five net exporters from 2006 to 2007 is probably pushing 500,000 bpd.
BTW, no reference to the production decline at North Ghawar.
Is it just me or does the book cover for Dawn in the Dessert look a whole lot like Mathew Simmons' book. Perhaps Saudi Aramco wants to confuse people over the books and hopefully someone will mistakenly buy this load of BS instead of Simmons' book.
I do not think that Dawn in the Desert is actually a book. I cannot find any real reference to it, either in the article, or generally on the internet, or on Amazon. I think that either is the Twilight in the Desert cover, used with artwork modifications, or made to look as deliberately close to the cover as possible as part of this article, which is fairly blatant counter propaganda to Simmons book.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
I agree - Dawn in the Desert is blatant counter propaganda to Simmons book.
Nansen Saleri, the author of the article
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=627
presented to Matt Simmons and others on Feb 2004 at CSIS, Washington so the counter propaganda has some twisted logic.
Here is Saleri's new company Quantum Reservoir Impact (QRI)
http://www.quantumreservoirimpact.com/
The QRI difference will solve all your problems as QRI has "unique strengths and abilities previously unforeseen in the upstream arena" - Saleri has a healthy ego!
http://www.quantumreservoirimpact.com/difference/
IEA forecast:
by 2009, domestic consumption will grow by 1 Haradh III (300,000 bpd). Saudi Arabia has to come up with one new Haradh III every 3 years just to meet domestic demand and maintain exports flat and I'm not even talking about depletion in aging fields!
Your cold, hard numbers and meaningful graphs strike home harder than the thousands of words of verbal "analysis" and banter that appear here every day IMO. Thanks for adding value.
Someone just post these links over at PeakOil.com. Peak oil poster from the DOE:
Peak Oil - The Turning Point (PDF)
(Educational Posters on Oil and Natural Gas)
Dunno when it came out. I haven't seen it before.
Thanks for that screen full of LOLs. Looks to be two or three years old. Fairly typical government
propagandainformation.If you download the pdf then check document properties you'll see it was created one year ago (Sept 13 2006 2:14 pm) by a jaye.pruett.
Quick search shows a Jay A. Pruett, Environmental
Services Director, American Electric Power, formerly with Central and South West Corporation. Perhaps his copy of Adobe was used to create the pdf...perhaps he created the document.
Then there's a Jay Pruett, Director of Conservation (918-293-2917) for the Oklahoma chapter of the Nature Conservancy (no peak oil stuff there).
Is everyone having a bad week?
Things seem a bit testy on here today...
The news over the past couple of weeks has been pretty disturbing. I'm not really surprised.
Seems like Midol all around might have been indicated earlier today. Lots of crankiness ... you'd think people who are about to see some of their pet theories tested (and likely proven) would be pleased with some concrete results.
Not that I have been testy...
But, other than academically, WHO WANTS TO BE RIGHT ABOUT THIS STUFF?
It is a nightmare...unfolding before our eyes.
A deadly combination of unlabeled sarcasm and autistic literalism has laid low another unwary TOD poster. Gotcha!
But seriously ... I want another Katrina sized whack and I want it to land such that the bruise is a long time in healing. Then we might have time, as a society, to get some remediation in place before it gets truly ugly.
Collapse is not an event, its a process built on many small components. We will not avoid collapse but we have many choices still open to us at this time. If we choose wisely things unwind to 1940 ... and if we choose badly perhaps its more like 940.
I'm afraid it's begun to get rather personal, for a lot of folks. Bound to happen eventually, and the sense of urgency has been ratcheting up quite fast.
Time for me to buy more flowerpots.
It seems that the last couple of weeks there has been one disturbing story after another.
It appears the predictions are beginning to ring true but even stranger is the way the MSM completely glosses over the fact that oil is at an all time high, the dollar is close to an all time low and gold is through the roof among other things like climate change etc....keep on spending and nothing to see here attitude...
These events are not happening in a vacuum or on another planet. Our leadership is sleepwalking into disaster. It's mind boggling.
In the moment after the inconceivable happens, it becomes the new normal. I wish I understood why.
Yes, today has seemed like a test run for when TS really hits the fan. Is this how it will be when dealing with our neighbors with differing viewpoints. People will be heated, stressed and panicked.
Are we going to get in each other's face?
Will we take up arms?
Will we try to calm people down and be rational?
Are we basically good or evil?
It seems like the daily strains are starting to bleed over even here in our comfortable, little, jabberwocky...TOD.
I'm not really judging who is right or wrong in the comments today because I can see both sides. I'm just curious how it will be when the confrontation is directly in front of me instead of on an anonymous blog.
I think the waiting and the uncertainty provide tons of food for pissiness. In some ways, the acknowledgement of a crisis may bring a lot of people closer. Tho' it was a brief and limited event, I guess, NYC after 9/11 was a place that was reminded that all we have is each other. (All 6 billion of us..) I saw countless examples of this reaction.. that we have a choice now.. do we let this tear us apart, or do we insist on pulling together in any way we can. I'm not saying it was universal, unconditional love-festing across the boroughs, but I saw a lot of support and awareness of one-another.
Different places will have different reactions, and different survival rates, I have to believe. New Yorkers are at least used to a lot of contact with other people. There are serious vulnerabilities.. but also strengths.
But yeah, there's something in the air. My wife and daughter and I are all wacked out today, just roiling somehow. I mean the lies and the abuse of this republic have just been so blatant in the last 6 years.. you know something's gotta give, and in the meantime, you just get worn out from it.
Best,
Bob
What do you see in the mainstream media?
Dopey Chris Matthews being all confrontational and interrupting his guests. Eevn dopier Bill O'Reilly pulling the same crap. We have been trained to get in each other's faces.
Will we take up arms? I bet you can see three dozen murders on TV for every instance of a plant going into the soil on the garden channel. Yeah, Cats In A Sack(tm), coming soon to a metro area near you ...
Calming people down does not produce ratings for the mainstream media. We'll see the same talking heads, the same post Rodney King verdict L.A. helicopter coverage, and that will be that. The internet will be full of people like me, pointing out what the dire next step will be, so we'll be in lockstep with the MSM for once, even though the methods will be different.
We are ... not that many generations away from hunter/gatherer bands ... not in the past, and perhaps not that far away from that lifestyle in the future, if the fast crash realists truly are realists. Before you can ponder good or evil you have to have enough calories in your system to allow the leisure time to do so. I think we'll all be hungry to one degree or another, and people have many reactions to hunger.
I love a good ad hominem pie fight as much as the next old time Usenet poster, but I'm at a loss to understand today's exchange. I recognize Party Guy's name and some of the others that have come up as fairly relentless one liner posters but why is that such a big deal? Do the people complaining not have the ability to simply mentally filter things they don't want to read?
One of the inspirations for the Judge Dredd comic was a series of experiments on overcrowding in rats.
(from http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Judge%20Dredd)
Junk science.
Rat
Got some links to back up that claim?
Hear that whooshing sound?
Thats the joke flying over your head.
Nope. Google Hans Selye + General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS]
All species are genetically wired to go nuts under extreme stress; Nature's way of leveraging from Overshoot to Dieoff to forcing numbers under habitat carrying-capacity; it is the re-equilibration process.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The EIA addresses Peak Oil in 20 slides.
Ron Patterson
Ah, more LOLs from the crack team at the EIA, that shining center of
politics and guessworkanalytical excellence. This one's from 2000.Watch out, their "High Oil Price Case" projection on slide 13 predicts oil prices will be up to $28.04 per barrel by 2020! But that's okay, because at the peak in 2037 the world will be producing 146 million barrels per day, according to slide 20.
Does this inspire confidence in you, too?
I would just like to point out to everyone concerning the recent academic like posts on the current finical crisis.
If things do get as bad as some people here think, then it would literally be a death sentence to the many millions of people in the united states and in other developed nations world wide who need prescription drugs to either stay alive(diabetics, thyroid issues etc) or need them to stay functional.
just a reminder there will be a huge human cost, the issue of which should not be ignored.
I don't know if it comes through in my postings but this is never far from my mind. I may seem uncaring or inflammatory but I just want to see people start moving on this problem before we get collectively run down by it.
I think those who have medical conditions that are expensive to treat are going to have a very painful awakening as the dollar unwinds and oil gets scarce. I think this is true even if we get single payer health care. That will fix the current health insurance grifter problem but it doesn't unbankrupt our government and if we get a 30% savings in health care costs by taking out the middle man ... and suffer a 60% drop in what is available due to inflation/devaluation/etc what will have changed?
The twin devils of obesity and smoking are going to fall to this change. One can't eat to excess when food is scarce - I think the average Cuban lost twenty pounds when our policies changed towards their government a generation ago. Smoking is a nasty addiction but it isn't like alcohol or other drugs that put people on to skid row ... when the choices are food or cigarettes the decision doesn't take long. And the land currently devoted to tobacco will get switched to food production anyway ...
There is going to be a lot of triage.
Who here thinks sub-Saharan Africa is going to adapt well to having the fertilizer rug yanked out from under them? Aid currently flowing there will be seen as a bandaid on a sucking chest wound and the industrialized world will tacitly agree to contain the chaos. The exception will be around locations supporting extractive processes we depend on - oil and copper will continue to flow.
I don't think the calculus here will be much different. An adult with lung cancer who smoked ... or regular ol' doctor's care for five hundred healthy children? Which do you choose when the economic input only exists for one of the two? Bad choices and bad genetics are no longer going to qualify for heroic efforts and a decade at the end of life being propped up by what is possible in 2007 isn't going to be an expectation for people even five years from now.
Grim? Perhaps ... but even with those changes we here in the industrialized world still have a better life than 99% of all human who have ever lived.
POWs starving in Japan would trade food in their erratic Red Cross packages for the cigarettes in same. As a former POW that survived (half did not) said "Smoking Kills".
I expect a high level of distress, a massive increase in suicides, multi-year drops in life expectancy (perhaps approaching a decade). a massive "Flight from Suburbia", disruptions in the paths of peoples lives, etc.
But since I live that every day anyway, it is not such a big deal to me.
I am taking my actions for post-Peak Oil, stealing time and effort away from my true passion. I am trying to present a coherent, well thought out choice to our society. I cannot force that choice on anyone.
So, Again,
Best Hopes,
Alan
OpEd
I'm very disappointed about many of the postings today by both the chosen ones and some of the new people alike.
I'm glad that when I first started reading TOD, there were not many postings that weren't informed, technical, or just plain inquisitive. Now it's endless name calling supported by defensive cliques.
Having the admin password does not make you right. And for those of you who immediately check the user duration to determine issue relevance, well, I just don't see the connection.
I knew by 10/11 that things would be back to the same in six months. I also think that when a group of people, who basically are in substantial agreement with regards to Peak Oil, get entangled in fits of ad hominem debate, well let's just say it makes me want to commute in my motorhome with both the AC and the heater running.
May I suggest that when reading a comment, you take with you that which you find useful and leave what disagree with for the next reader. Perhaps that next reader will see something in the initial post that provokes an idea for a future post in which you will again find something useful to take away.
And when you're wrong, promptly admit it.
Everyone have a good evening and maybe things will go better tomorrow.
Great new graph in the right sidebar, by the way. I'm glad you found one that fits.
The Sound of the Other Shoe Dropping:
Dollar hits new low against euro
Predicted by yours truly here
Ya...and Bush to talk to the people today at 10:45 ET...coincidence?