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DrumBeat: March 19, 2008
Posted by threadbot on March 19, 2008 - 9:15am
Peak oil theorist goes mainstream in Cape Town
It takes a confident person to stand up in front of a hall packed with oil investors to talk peak oil theory. But it’s an indication of the extent to which peak oil has captured the public imagination that a proponent of the theory was invited to present his views to the Oil Africa conference in Cape Town.
EasyJet shares slump as oil surges
Low-cost carrier easyJet has become the latest victim of the turbulence in financial markets after warning that soaring oil prices will hit profits.
UAE oil pumping at full tilt of 2.5mbpd
Opec member the United Arab Emirates is pumping at full tilt at around 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude and is powerless to bring down record oil prices, the head of the state oil company said.
UAE plans mega projects to lift oil capacity
UAE is pushing ahead with mega projects to lift its oil capacity above five million barrels per day within six years and maintain its position as one of the world's top crude suppliers, an official report said on Tuesday.
(thanks SamuM for the above links)
Mexico Pemex CEO: Proven Hydrocarbon Reserves Fall 5.1% to 14.7B BOE
DOS BOCAS, Mexico (Dow Jones)--The chief executive of Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, Jesus Reyes Heroles, said Tuesday Mexico's proven hydrocarbon reserves fell 5.1% last year to 14.7 billion barrels of crude oil equivalent. Speaking at an event to mark the 70th anniversary of the expropriation of the Mexican oil industry, Reyes Heroles said Pemex replaced proven reserves at a rate of 50% last year, compared with 41% in 2006, but that it was still short of its goal of reaching 100% replacement.
Mexico's proven reserves as of Jan. 1, 2008 were equivalent to 9.2 years of crude production, and 8.2 years of natural gas production, Reyes Heroles said. Pemex produced an average of 3.1 million barrels a day of crude oil last year, and 6.058 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas.
An Early Thaw: Venezuela Beats Freeze in Court, No Appeal to Come
We have defeated Exxon," said Venezuela's Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez in a Tuesday television address after a U.K. court reversed the decision and lifted a $12 billion freeze on assets in the South American country.
"The injunction granted against the defendant, Petroleos de Venezuela, should be discharged," said Justice Paul Walker of the Royal Courts of Justice, lifting the freeze.
ExxonMobil moved to have the assets frozen in an international court in January when Venezuela chose to exercise its sovereignty and nationalize the oil and gas assets within its borders.
The court's decision is a "100% victory," said Ramirez.
Alan Jeffers, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil, told reporters Tuesday that Exxon has no plans for an appeal following the U.K. judge's ruling. Jeffers added that while Justice Walker's decision came down to jurisdiction, he did not question Exxon's "underlying claim," according to Dow Jones.
(thanks Will Stewart for the above links)
Shell will dig deeper for oil in tar sands
Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell said it plans to quintuple tar sands production. The company announced it will significantly increase its oil production in the controversial Canadian tar sands in an attempt to stop falling production, the Independent reported.
Refusal to drill impacts gas prices
With a unanimous vote the Santa Fe County Commission, with the governor's full support, laid down a moratorium of at least one year on the granting of any drilling permits in the Galisteo Basin. The 100 people in attendance stood and cheered the Commission's decision. It was another victory for "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) and energy obstruction groups who pretend to be solely concerned about environmental protection. The loser in this "victory" was you, the New Mexico taxpayer and America at large.
Kansan Stokes Energy Squabble With Coal Ruling
Rod Bremby doesn't have the star power of Al Gore or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but his decision to block a permit for two big coal-fired power plants in Kansas has put him at center stage in the national debate over energy and the environment.
(thanks JoulesBurn for the above links)
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We have had a cold snow winter here in the Great White North.
So What?
Arctic ice link below.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7303385.stm
I'm curious to see what our, campus, weather station summary says in a few days.
I found the winter - WIMPY. Skiing in the heart of winter wasn't as bad as the past 2 years - but not what I've come to expect for most of the past 40 years.
We had a late blast of snow - unusual but going fast with the rain today. I'm usually on my summer bike right now - but it'll be another week.
My judge of winter is how much the furnace runs. We never really hit any cold weather. It only dropped to about -20C; far from the -30C that I consider to be "cold". When the furnace is on 50% of the time and when it's coming on at night to keep the house at 14C then I consider it cold. We didn't hit either of those conditions this winter.
I see natural gas prices are going up.
A friend is moving from a gas furnace to geothermal. $28k to drill a handful of wells (ultrasonic) in the driveway or $21k to trench the yard into a mess. Sure there are $7k in government incentives; and I'm not sure how they expect an 8 year payback on an outlay of about $14k. Ok they're assuming that they'd otherwise have to spend about $5k replacing the furance/AC - so that's $9k to pay back. But saving almost $1k/yr is unimaginable. Heating my home is $350/yr in gas (and about $35 in electricity for the #@$#@$ energy gobbling furnace with A/C motors) and this friends home is 3x larger; but still ..... It'll be interesting to see what happens to their electricity bill. At my home the connection fee for natural gas is something like 30% of our total bill right now.
Don't know where you live, but here in the US Midwest it's been a long, cold winter. My last monthly gas bill was north of $300 for my 2500 square foot house.
It was a hard winter for heating oil users in the northeast too. Next winter could see a full-blown crisis where gas and oil are used for home heating.
Your heating costs are extremely cheap. Here in Texas, during the winter, I spend $300-$400 a month for natural gas to heat my home at
70 deg. F. Granted I have an old home but this is similar to what others pay in the area. In the summer, the electric bill can get up to
$600 for air conditioning.(78 deg. F. on the thermostat).
We pay 16.9 cents per kilowatt.
Here in Texas, during the winter, I spend $300-$400 a month for natural gas to heat my home at 70 deg.
70 huh? 45 degrees. All winter long.
(Why? Don't like sending money to the energy company)
Go read some historic documents about room temp. 70 would have been considered warm.
We spend about $2,500/yr on heating oil. I can ceratinly see how a $14,000 investment would pay itself back in 8 years. It would probably be even faster than that with oil as expensive as it is. I think the last oil bill we got was listed at $4.00/gallon. At 150+ gallons per delivery, that's over $600. We get 5-6 deliveries a year.
We've had a remarkably warm winter. Maximum NG bill has been $89 (heat and hot water). Electricity has been up to $95/month. I installed a new timer thermostat last year and have seen the energy usage drop (therms, less so on kWh). Overnight temp 65°F, daytime allowed to float down to 62°F on the days when I'm not home. Otherwise, occupied 67-68°F.
That combined with less hysteresis in the thermostat (old mercury bi-metal coil versus thermistor) has helped cutdown both the temperature swings when the furnace is running and the amount used in the off hours
My wife and I just put in a ground-sourced heat pump in our Michingan home. You are right in that the payoff is on the order of 20 or so years, which is true for us since we do not get a subsidy.
However, we put the unit in for two reasons. First I work on environmental issues and it is the most responsible thing to do. Second, I expect that energy prices will double and then triple within the next 5 to 10 years. Thus, the payoff time will decrease to well under 10 years if energy prices increase we expect.
Our unit has 4 wells 150 feet deep each (a four ton unit) and it cost us $23,000 total. Our heating bills decreased from a high of $225/month (with an old 65% efficient natural gas furnace) in mid-winter to $75/month today with this new system. I don't know what the savings would be for air conditioning since we did not have an air conditioner before.
Retsel
Well here in Oz we have had another summer that is the hottest on record according to the met bureau. It doesn't feel like it here near Sydney, it has been a cool wet summer. Thankfully the rain has brought the dams up to 2/3 full (up from 30%).
I read the BBC article on arctic ice. Astonishing. I would have thought that it would have substantially recovered this "cold" winter.
Jografy, Interesting link. I remember reading an article several decades ago (circa 1974-78) regarding observations by US submarines in the arctic. They used sonar to measure ice thickness so they would know if the ice was thin enough for the sub to break through. Their information indicated that Artic ice in the 40's-50's was mostly around 20 feet thick, but in the late 70's it was closer to 9 feet thick. I wondered at the time what the long term prognosis would be with that much thinning. I guess now we know.
First supersonic swingwing synthi-fuel flight tomorrow
Global capitalism teeters on the brink
All my previous reading of Homer Dixon has always shown some guarded optimism. I don't see any silver lining in this article.
It's difficult to be optimistic, even guardedly so, when the lights go out and we're left gropping around in the dark.
Re: The Soviet Union, 1980-1990.
That line is a reiteration of what JM Keynes said in the 1930's. He likened it to pushing on a piece of string. That's why he thought fiscal policy should take up the slack.
Why DC Metro Extension to Tyson's Corner and Dulles was killed
Several weeks ago I was upset at the abrupt cancellation of a project that took a decade to put together and will save 20,000 to 25,000 barrels/day once built out. Physical construction would have started last week, helping stimulate our economy. The Washington Post helps explain why.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/16/AR200803...
And the WaPo gives insight into where the Bush Administration finds expertise to deal with this nation's issues, such as our "addiction to oil".
Best Hopes for Leanan accepting the long quotes this time, the Washington Post article is 5 pages long,
Alan
"Friend of a friend of a friend...." Life goes on and we who have half a brain wonder where their brains are. Oh well, if you really like that kind of friend of a friend kind of stuff, Randy over at Economicrot.blogspot.com has food for thought on powers that be and "manipulation." Not too bad of a read for a Wednesday morning. John
Alan:
Sad story. This is why I think it is a mistake to place the operation of toll goods (which is what all public tranport systems inherently are) in the hands of EITHER the government or corporations. The corporations will just cream off the most profitable part of the business and leave the public to suffer. As for the government, your article illustrates exactly what ends up happening all too often - wrong decisions end up being made by incompetent and corrupt public officials.
What is the alternative? Public ownership need not mean the same thing as government ownership. Imagine a public authority, run by trustees that are elected directly by the people who live within its service district. Because they are ultimately answerable directly to the people, the incentives are there to run the system in a manner that will best serve THE PEOPLE. Those trustees that try to cater to their corporate pals could quickly see themselves booted out of office. Governments wouldn't be able to use these systems as milk cows or patronage tools. The problem of striking the right balance between low fees on the one hand and higher quality service on the other hand solves itself through the combined feedback mechanisms of ridership and elections.
What I describe is neither capitalism nor socialism, but something else which doesn't really even have a name yet. "Cooperativism", maybe? It hasn't really been tried anywhere. We've got to figure out some way of bringing this idea from the wilderness into the mainstream, though, and quickly. Otherwise, I am afraid that your sad story will continue to be the rule to how things are done, and that does not bode well for your EOT vision.
I tend to agree.
Many municipal transit agencies have their own taxing authority (usually sales taxes) and board members appointed by local mayors, etc.
Direct election of a majority (if not all) of the members would be a good thing.
Ed Tennyson has stated that an ideal board would have at least one seat restricted to Professional Engineers, another to CPAs, etc. with 6 year terms that rotate (1/3rd up every 2 years)
There is no doubt that governance can be improved !
Alan
There is no doubt that governance can be improved !
*clap* *clap* *clap*
George Carlin on Voting (YouTube)
You may substitute "American" for your country of choice, and it still largely applies.
The optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this may be true.
Is that not analogous to the (in theory) local school boards?
While I'd prefer the ascent (or more accurately, the return) of private rail, your approach may be workable too.
Currently, my region's transit system is run by a board that is made up of government officials from other elected offices... and it suffers IMO because of it. The layering and interconnectedness of it all appears to drive the system into making choices that are palatable to the political machine but doesn't always meet the real needs.
Case in point, I was speaking with a bus driver the other day - the drivers are contract drivers, the regional transit system contracts to a local company for bodies - who informed me that when some of the drivers wished to pass on suggestions for making changes in the system at a regular board meeting, they were told explicitly that the board didn't want to hear input from the drivers. Who else to give reasoned input on how to improve a system than those who operate it every day?
( Note that I was speaking with this driver as he was baby-sitting an empty bus, which was waiting (and causing all the wanting to board riders to be late) for its scheduled shift replacement driver to show up for work, who hadn't shown. )
If government bureaucracy is a millstone, then interlocking government bureaucracies are certainly the death of any innovation.
It does have a name - several. It could be a corporation chartered in the public interest - as the Blues were before they got privatized. Many towns are corporations. It could be a "community investment trust" or a muni. It depends on what is in the charter and the rules by which it has to play. The vanilla corporate charter is designed to suck out of the community; that is the engine of our own destruction. The charter for something like this has to be written to serve the community interest. Ownership has to stay local. Operations bounded. That sort of thing.
cfm in Gray, ME
Amen. Every time I see some down-on-its-luck community go to the mat over a proposed big box store, I want to say to these people, "Look you guys, if Maxi-Mart weren't expecting to get more out of this community than they plan to put into it, they wouldn't be knocking on the door."
Something of an over-simplification, yes, but not much of one.
Same way I feel about insurance companies. They've done all the research. On average, the insurance company is going to get more out of you than you will out of them. Add on to this that most of us don't want the event to happen that would cause the insurance company to pay out (e.g., an auto accident, house fire). So when you buy insurance you are essentially placing a bet that you don't want to win.
So when you buy insurance you are essentially placing a bet that you don't want to win.
Or the law requires it.
Indeed. Another superb argument for the "free market" - entire industries legislated into existence.
Rest assured that it will be labeled "socialism" or "communism" if it threatens the profits of a corporate special interest. Even publicly owned water companies are "communist" according to the Fox News set.
Reminds me of the work in community land trusts to protect ag land in the face of development pressure by having a non-governmental public interest board oversee long-term leases to farmers who can only live on the land as active farmers using certain methods and providing food to local communities. In the CSA model, the board is elected by the farm members who also eat the food.
I like your idea.
Where is an engineer and developer like William Wilgus today? Radical vision without public funding or disruption to daily commuter service.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grandcentral/program/
Manhattan Bans Steam Locomotives (12:24)
We need a new directive: America bans Internal Combustion Engines ... probably not gonna happen, though. Thanks for the link, cool story.
Alan, I worked on the Metro Rail system for seven years for a signals company. You now have an inkling of how convoluted the politics surrounding the building of the system is and has been...I know from first hand experience that it is a chaotic situation.
One of my responsibilites was to write reports for and attend the Council of Governments meetings to answer technical questions regarding signals/atc, track and way, comm., and power. No one on the council had a clue. Waste was rampant, major equipment was never installed but was signed for, large numbers of people were hired to work on the system and maintain it for political reasons...many were totally unqualified. As just one example when a S Korean leader was assinated, metro suddenly had an influx of S Korean workers that new nothing of hs rail and could not speak English. Anyone that was remotely qualified was promoted far beyond their abilities and little or no qualified support staff was provided for the newly promoted 'managers'. Most of the top managers hired by metro that I delt with were ex military and not from hs rail or railroad backgrounds...many of these 'managers' had postings at the Pentagon prior to military retirement, and, literally, did not know how to run a railroad.
In summation I will say that the metro system is a typical example of what passes for governance in and around DC at many levels.
Don't say that I didn't warn you, for I did some months ago.
One of my assumptions is that Americans will learn to operate with the speed and efficiency of French bureaucrats post-Peak Oil (or at least 80%). Many competent managers give public transit a wide berth today, unfortunately. With "economic contraction" that could well change.
The new WMATA (DC Metro) GM is getting "good marks" so far.
Best Hopes for semi-competent Management,
Alan
So many issues in the US seem to have this common theme, where private profit outweighs the common good; healthcare, daycare, building trains, etc. Maybe this is what Hillary Clinton meant when she tearfully uttered "I see us slipping"....
When the private equty co. sells investors pieces of the road to generate future returns, they will come up against peak oil: the number of toll-paying drivers will surely be slowly declining. These investments will lose money. More bad debt!! Not to mention that maintenance probably won't be a priority anymore, safety simply will be cast aside in favor of profits. So short-sighted. Sigh.
I understand Leanan is out for a week of spring training. Other TOD personnel have agreed to cover some days, but this is a day that didn't get covered. Maybe readers can help by posting stories of interest.
Gordon Brown has announced a National Security Strategy for the UK. Despite mentioning global warming and placing it on a par with terrorism, it misses entirely the area of energy security and the implications of reduced access to oil, gas, etc.
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15102.asp
Talk about elephant in the room...
God, can that man talk.
I suppose it comes under 'competition for natural resources' - about two thirds of the way down this dense text.
Lull your listeners to sleep and maybe they won't notice how dull you really are.
Note this line: "Climate change and competition for natural resources"
Blink and you miss it.
Maybe, but it could equally well be thinking of 'competition for water'.
Its not recognising that this is the prime threat to the UK, and the most important area for preparation and resilience. Its a bigger threat than climate change, orders of magnitude bigger than terrorism, and probably only challenged by lethal pandemic flu.
Recognition would mean a statement of "Oh sh....."
Note this statement made yesterday about today's report.
Reuters: PM sets out security strategy
The BBC were trailing that the speech would include a section on energy security. Looks like it was toned down to "natural resources" at the last moment.
Peak oil is not occurring in a vacuum. It's no coincidence that we are having multiple resource constraints arise or show themselves near as population rises and percentage of population undergoing industrialization rises dramatically.
They're aware of peak oil. They're also aware of all the other resource constraint issues that frequently get overlooked at this particular blog. And they have a strategy for dealing with these constraints. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world might not like that particular strategy.
"Peak oil is not occurring in a vacuum. It's no coincidence that we are having multiple resource constraints arise or show themselves near as population rises and percentage of population undergoing industrialization rises dramatically."
it's the result of underinvestment in commodities because the price of commodities fell between 1980 and 2001.
are you actually claiming that there aren't actual physical resource constraints that are affecting price?
john15,
At first your comments were kind of entertaining. The 'point and laugh at the village idiot' type entertaining.
But now they are just annoying. Could you show a little restraint?
How many 'doomers' do you see peppering individual Drumbeats with multiple posts of unadulterated doom? Do you think others would appreciate it if, for every other parent thread, one john666 inserted some single-sentence pronouncement stating "there's nothing we can do - 9 out of 10 will die premature and horrific deaths!", or "it is pointless to talk about technical solutions; overshoot correction is inevitable!"
Personally, john15, I think that this would be very annoying. (And I am a doomer who thinks the above statements have a probability of occurring.)
A couple of this type of posts a day, fine. You're completely entitled to your opinion, and have the right express that opinion whenever you wish. But I think most people would appreciate it if you showed a little restraint.
Note: Just to be totally clear, I'm referring specifically to posts in which you espouse one- or two-sentence long mantras, lacking any meaningful analysis, let alone evidence.
Are you talking US or UK?
As far as UK is concerned, I DON'T think they really understand the shape of the problem. In abstract terms they understand there is a potential threat issue and the ways in which they think it could be addressed. However they don't FEEL it and grasp the total system context. I could be wrong, but from the contact I've had I don't think there is a reserve of understanding the general audience is unaware of. I don't think its foremost in their minds, or they really know how it would play out.
As far as the US is concerned I'm less well placed. However I would suggest the same is true, but with different solution options at the fore.
In metaphor terms, they understand football is a game of two teams and 11 players each with a round ball and contact only via the feet. They don't feel the pride in the team, the way the game ebbs and flows as the clock nears half time, the benefits of a 4-4-2 system - how the team works in the context of a match and how the best technical team can still lose.
Of course if they assumed the worst and rationing will be needed for many things in a few years they'd be pressing hard for compulsory ID cards right now, announcing loads of new nukes and (clean?) coal-fired stations, setting high industry taxes which have the side-effect of preserving at least some oil in the North Sea and proposing windmills coming out of our ears. Oh wait a minute :-)
I think that under Gordon Brown there seem to be signs of the UK having at least some policy other than invade anyone with oil. Maybe just wishful thinking though.
I don't know what the net export number is for 2007.
http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/03/18/en_eco_art_venezuelan-oil-expo...
VENEZUELAN OIL EXPORTS DOWN 192,000 BPD IN 2007
WT, I am late on this story as it appeared on yesterday's DB. It appears that Lynch is saying that there is a strict division in the PO community, ie, those that believe in reserve constraints and those that believe in flow rate constraints.
At first blush this seems no more than an attempt to drive a divisive wedge into the PO community. I know from reading TOD over time that there are many posters that believe, as I do, that both flow rate and total reserves will effect PO.
Would you care to share your thoughts on Mr Lynch's reasons for writing such a article? I realize that your crystal ball might not provide a view into Mr. Lynch's motives...and, my crystal ball is currently out for repair...if the darn thing was working I would not have missed the $50 move on gold today!
http://www.energybulletin.net/41628.html Peak oil, uncommon ground
I am not WT but I will put in my two cents worth anyway. First, you are correct, there is no division in the PO community with regard to the actual peak. The whole crowd agrees that the peak will be when flows peak but we all try to look at reserves, and other factors, to try to ascertain when that peak will happen.
There are huge divisions, far more than two, as to the consequences of peak oil. They range between: "No hardship whatsoever, food and everything else will keep right on growing" of Stuart Staniford, and "slow decline but so slow hardly anyone will notice" of Leanan and a few others to the position of us doomers, "it will be the end of the world as we know it."
Mike Lynch, in my opinion, has no ulterior motives in his position. I have been following Mike for years and on occasion exchanged private emails with him. He actually believes the crap he spews! He is what Eric Hoffer would call "A True Believer".
This has become like a religion with Mike Lynch. He has so much invested in his position that he cannot possibly back down now. Like a Christian waiting for the second coming, Mike Keeps waiting for his predictions to come true. Late last year he was predicting $40 dollar oil in 2008. Now he has slipped a bit and predicting $80 oil in 2008 and $40 oil in 2009. If Jesus does not come down through the clouds this year it will be next year, or the next, or the next.....
Ron Patterson
Darwinian, by the way, thank you for the helpful post yesterday on Angola.
Thanks Moe. Every day I go to news.google and type in “Oil Production”, and I usually get some really revealing articles. Like: Venezuelan oil production down 9300 bpd in February
That is not really a very large drop. However the article contained a bit more information:
Now that is a significant drop. It shows that, for whatever reason, Venezuela is in decline.
Ron Patterson
The reason Venezuala is in decline is not due hitting a peak. It's because in the state oil company Chevaz has replaced competant oilmen with party hacks. Venezuala's tar sand reserves are vast but above groung factors are limiting production.
There are plenty of competent oilmen in Venezuela. For one thing, Total is still in there. And the stuff about the incompetence of brown people at extracting oil is just American propaganda designed to promote American IOCs and obfuscate the issue of production problems worldwide.
What stuff was that. Who said anything about brown people? The technocrats that Chevas replaced were brown as well. Brown people who knew the business gave way to brown people who's only qualification was loyalty to the big man.
Exactly. Essentially the same thing as Matt Simmons says in a February 2008 interview with EV World.
The Fading Twilight of Oil Part 1
The Fading Twilight of Oil Part 2
The interviewer asks Simmons about the assertion that falling production in Venezuela is due to the nationalization of their petroleum industry.
At one point (10 minutes into Part 1) the interviewer later notes, Simmons "quickly cut me off, saying that view was naive and superficial."
Venezuela produced 3,708,000 barrels per day in 1970. I do not have data before that date. When Chavez took power in 1999 they produced 2,826,000 barrels per day. Chavez actually managed to increase production in 2000 to 3,155,000 bp/d but that was still over half a million barrels per day below their peak. And as you can see they are currently producing below 2.4 mb/d.
But since Venezuela peaked and declined many years before Chavez, his policies cannot be blamed for that decline. Venezuela has declined over 1.3 mb/d since 1970. Some of that decline can be blamed on Chavez but not the lions share.
Venezuela peaked about the same time as the lower 48 stats and they have been declining every since. The Orinoco bitumen may, or may not stem some of that decline. But that does not change the fact that they peaked long ago and are now in decline, largely due to geological factors.
Ron Patterson
D, you're the real thing, a real numbers guy.
Chevaz has replaced competent oilmen with...
I keep hearing this but there are never any examples, like exactly who's been fired and which party members are doing what. For all we know this is b.s. Exxon-Mobile or State Department propaganda.
Logic suggests that Venezuela's production is down is because their political leadership has decided that oil in the ground is worth more than dollars in the bank. And given what we see going on at Wall Street, I think those lefties are on to something.
In the American dogma:
Competent = acts white, has photo of Ronald Reagan over jacuzzi, watches Fox News, supports death squads.
Incompetent = everybody else (95% of population).
Now given that in old Latin America only the white-acting folk were trusted by the US corporate overlords to be trained, it may well be the case now that these bastards have a monopoly on needed skills. White people in the US had a similar monopoly, and prying it away so that minorities could have a fair chance to compete has taken generations, with long to go based on per capita income. The Left will never get that opportunity in Latin America. The only way out of this trap is for an outside intervention from a country that has already escaped American domination to produce a tolerably-competent and loyal technical class. Time to phone PetroChina, Hugo?
Funny.
I had an argument with a poster at the Christian Science Monitor blog in '02/'03 as we prepared to go into Iraq, and I suggested it would all be an expensive disaster, while he tried to soothe my worries by likening this invasion with a 'Nice, Clean Attendant-Boy at the Spa, cleaning the Scum out of the pool for us'. It's interesting how many cultural assumptions come out in our language..
It's what I get for arguing with Posters, I guess.
.. including the premise that it's OUR pool to clean in the first place.
Wow, it's like poetry. So much wrongness packed in that one phrase. It's like 'white man's burden' -- come to think of it that meme is pretty much unchanged for the last 150 years and more.
I just remembered.. he said 'Cabana Boy' .. not a term out of my daily life.
We saw a similar decline in Texas production after a group of Midland based West Texas Communists seized control of the state in 1972 and split from the union. The party hacks put in charge of production have caused a 4% per year long term annual decline rate in production.
More recently, in the North Sea, after a splinter group of radical Vegan environmentalists seized control of North Sea oil production facilities in 1999, North Sea production has fallen at 4.5% per year.
Midland based West Texas Communists
Jeffrey.
I could buy (barely) your plans to raise unicorns with the help of elves and fairies, but NOW you have gone over the top !
Midland based West Texas Communists !!
snort
No such thing !
Alan
Good Lord Alan, could you not detect the sarcasm in Jeffery's post? I have often thought that sarcasm was lost in me because I so often missed it. But this was obvious even to me. What does that say about you?
But perhaps I missed again. Perhaps you are just being sarcastic also.
Damn! I am a two time loser. ;-)
Ron Patterson
Obviously the radical Vegan enviromentalists must all hail from Findhorn, Scotland.
http://www.findhorn.org/whatwedo/ecovillage/ecovillage.php
One of them may be from Toronto, Canada.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=P8tfuBIutLI
Best hopes for keeping a sense of humour in these troubling times.
Cheers,
Paul
Thanks for that too. It's this constant chipping away.
Don, thanks for the info on Mike Lynch. I had heard of him but thats about all...
I posted this late last night on yesterdays DB. In the hope of getting more responses (thanks for Jokuhl's response), I repost it here:
Since I have not been able to convince anyone around me to take action for the post PO readiness, I am trying to reach out here: is here anyone interested in the possibility of forming a partnership of some sort to share the cost and effort in setting up a post PO ready camp somewhere - here in the US or overseas? Does anyone know such communities in existence and accepting new members?
Look up Transition Towns. Rob Hopkins is moving in this direction in the UK and has some great momentum.
Thanks! Does anyone know if there are similar programs here in the US?
Going forward, I would stay far away from "transition camps".
This is much more appropriate IMO.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2008/01/letter_re_retreat_group_recrui.html
My advice is to interact with your neighbours and build social networks in all kinds of directions that works with your source of income, relatives and personal interests. This usually also makes life more enjoyable if the shit does not hit the fan. If you plan for the very worst case you might end up living your life alone in a cellar.
Myself I have prioritized municipiality politics and after some years I got a chance to work in a supportive role for my party on the Swedish national level where I work with environmental issues and ecourage sensible policies that might make a real difference in a few years. I have heard that large parts of the USA has a very active local democracy and lots of US states are ahead of the federal level. Knowledge and hard work ought to give fair odds for a career where you can do good things and get lots of friends and perhaps even make a small difference for millions of people.
And since I hate being idle when something can be done I joined the home guard where I am a nobody that often makes a little better then average in supportive roles, I am not skilled in guns and military discipline.
If the shit hits the fan in any way my plan is to become a small part of our government. Our government is our best friend in hard times and will be a focal point for solving problems. No other entity has the same level of resources and trust to draw on while solving problems.
Meanwhile I try to figure out how to make the local society more environmental friendly and prosperous and if this goes realy well we wont get any major emergencies and we will get more resources to trade with and thus help other countries.
The realy cool thing with this kind of thinking is that I think it scales from a personal level and up to global trade.
Hallelujia.
I think this has been my conclusion as well, tho' I didn't mention it last night.
My wife and I are working to encourage the Community Gardens and CSA's around our city, being engaged in City and State Policy issues around food and transportation.. (as well as Social Support networks and Mental Health programs), and having an eye on what to do to keep everyone involved (employed) and productive, both in the present-day availability of jobs and healthy businesses, and the kinds of work we could give to each other if the shoe dropped.. jobs both to keep people from being idle and increasingly frustrated, and to of course be addressing the various issues that keep any of our communities from being truly resilient to energy, food, cashflow and other supply interruptions..
The shorthand for me is to 'Create Some Contingency Structures'.. even if you aren't calling them that. One of my projects is to try getting 'educational' alt energy systems on our public schools, to have the 'additional benefits' of moderating the variability in the schools' energy budgets, to use as local 'Community Education and Incentive' equipment.. and finally (ahem!..), to allow the schools to serve as local emergency centers, with 'some' energy autonomy and the ability to be communication links to the other School-Emergency Centers in the City/State/Region.. sort of a parallel to FEMA, perhaps, but really community run and managed.
Bob
Bob - I like your strategy, especially the community garden part. I've been putting some energy toward getting a community garden in our town, but the local gov't is controlled by upscale commuter types who think "community" means a fireworks show (we must have 8 or more a year).
Any suggestions, links, contacts, etc. on getting a community garden started?
Hi Shaman;
Ours in Portland Maine is part of the city's Parks and Rec department.
Found something at the Univ of Maine site..
http://www.umext.maine.edu/onlinepubs/htmpubs/4300.htm
"Food for ME
A Citizen Action Fact Sheet for Community Food Recovery"
..with ideas on setting them up.. didn't read it through, but it looks helpful.
There is an advocacy Meetup group for Portland ( http://commgardens.meetup.com/cities/us/me/portland/ ) , also for nearby Scarborough, ME, and probably many more, and here is the link to the City's Comm.Gardens site.. http://www.portlandmaine.gov/rec/rec.asp .. well, didn't see it linked there. It's like, one woman who coordinates maybe 4 to 6 gardens around the city, maybe more. Ours is a block away, and my Mom has been in her plot there for 10 years, we started ours last year.. after a neighboring house blew up in a March gas explosion and was bulldozed over the top of our garden by the Fire Dept. Kind of a late start in '07.
Finally, we did our CSA through a group called 'Cultivating Community', which teaches teens (maybe troubled youth, not sure) how to garden, and pays them a small hourly to work both at an Intown garden, and at a small farm ~5 miles from town. Synergy! Great Program! We have a good 5-10 CSA's available to pick from, maybe more.
Best,
Bob
Jokuhl - thank you very much for the info and links. I really need to move getting these established to the top of my priority list.
David
Hi solardoc,
The transition towns are not camps, see http://www.transitiontowns.org/
They are existing communities asking the question, for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to:
* significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil)
* drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)?
So they are not preparing for a worst case scenario but planning to avoid it.
In the UK there are very few guns compared to the US and in fact it is an offence to posses one apart from a few exceptions. Of course this does not stop criminals from having and using guns.
Thanks Tony,
It was a slip. I meant "Transition Towns" instead of "camps".
I had similar ideas a year ago last Easter but on crunching the latest EIA numbers at the time, I realized, like Hirsch, that it was too late for significant mitigation at the national level. I then moved toward DEFCON 1 and mitigation at the family and small community levels.
After working extensively with civil defense measures and war scenarios through the cold war, I have found that the most helpful exposition on what a worst case scenario would look and feel like is Jim Rawles' "Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse".
Please note that Rawles was an army intelligence officer. His father was a physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in Berkely. The book is not pie-in-the-sky but rather a practical guide dressed as a novel.
Todd, further down on the "wheat thread", has also recommended this book on several recent occasions.
Switzerland and the U.S. seem to be the last strongholds for civilian firearms traditions.
Check out the second post here for a perspective from the U.K.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2006/08/more_poll_responses_re_best_pl.html
The "Patriots" book is here:
http://www.survivalblog.com/writings.html#Patriots
Best wishes for practical preps.
www.relocalize.net
They are supporting the group I helped begin
www.willitseconomiclocalization.org
You can talk to Liam in our office if you want a human to help you get oriented in this. We have learned a great deal about what does and doesn't work, pitfalls to look out for, and some strategies that seem effective.
Jason,
I'm setting something up in Oregon, and just wanted to thank you and your crew for all the work you've done.
If you google 'intentional communities' you'll come up with a lot of attempts. I've seen a few that list the objectives, rules, mission statements, and member lists (adults = 0, children = 0), so not much progress but good intentions. A town close to me, Red Wing, MN, is really pushing local; jobs, shopping, food, CSAs, community gardens, etc. With a bit more effort, they could build a great PO community as they are right on the Mississippi, have railway through town, hardwood forests, and fantastic cropland. A few individuals have this vision...I hope it will catch on.
As do I. It's nice to see a community near me attempting such things (I'm in the Twin Cities, Saint Louis Park).
Fortunately the Twin Cities still has a pretty good rail network. And the river. With a ocean outlet not too far away (via Duluth or even Milwaukee [formerly the largest inland sea port in the world]).
I even been looking into land near Duluth... (farmland)
By the way, as I mentioned briefly in that email, consider the Pro-social orgs out there, both for great contacts, great HUMAN contact, and the development of communication, community, survival and leadership skills that will be a linchpin in any of the futures that might be in store for you.
I worked at the Chewonki Foundation, in Wiscasset Maine, which works in Environmental Education, Community and Leadership Skills, Wilderness Trips, Energy Alternatives, etc
http://www.chewonki.org/?gclid=CJW7qtaOmpICFQQIFQod7H-q7A
NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School http://www.nols.edu/
(They have a branch called the WMI Wilderness Medicine Institute)
Outward Bound
Habitat for Humanity
Big Brother, Big Sister
.. as I said, there are other very significant ways to discover what America has to offer than to sit (presumably in a car) in the Target or Wallmart Parking Lot, and try to see what our People are made of by watching these ones walk in and out of an automatic door. Apologies to whomever suggested that the other day, but I found it more than a little bit lacking in depth..
Best,
Bob Fiske
Have you tried to infiltrate an Amish community?
Aha! Now I remember the thought of moving to an Amish country did occur to me a few years ago. I dunno if living close to them is equivalent to infiltrate their community, though.
Thanks everybody above for the very informative responses.
Increasing Insolvency in Ordinary Families
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/mar/18/mortgages.debt
This one is a few days out of date, but I didn't see it posted here when it came out - wheat supplies could be in bigger trouble than expected:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7293326.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Blade_of_Grass
Sharon:
What do you think about this idea of growing your own wheat? I have spent some time in my life living right next to a wheat field, so I know something about it and think I could do it by hand if I really had to. But there is no way that I could possibly spare enough land to grow more than enough for a couple of loaves of bread, and that hardly seems worth it. That is the problem with wheat, it does take so much space to produce a crop that provides a whole year's worth of supply, and it is pretty hard work to do it all by hand. I am inclined to think that this is one crop that most people would be better off leaving to the farmers with the acreage and equipment, and to just buy in bulk (having one's own grain mill might make more sense).
and to just buy in bulk (having one's own grain mill might make more sense).
Having ones own grain mill makes more sense.
CS Bell makes a No 60 and you can get an attachment for a kitchenaid mixmaster. Build yourself a gravity sorter (Screen on an incline - flour out one side, bran out the other)
If the fecal matter impacts the rotating cooling device, the time honored position of Miller will be yours.
Hi Observer - Wheat is a space-intensive crop, but it has some advantages for the home gardener - it produces an enormous amount of carbonaceous material good for growing building humus, and thus is truly a dual-purpose crop. Biointensive gardening makes major use of wheat and other grains - primarily as a compost crop, but also for the seeds.
The space required to produce a bushel is 10x109 feet, according to Gene Logsdon's _Small Scale Grain Raising_ - nor is it that hard to grow, although there's some work at the end as you note. I'm not really sure it is that much more time consuming than, say, shelling peas though. That is, I think the effort is as much psychological as anything else - grains just seem so easy to leave to the farmer ;-).
I generally think that Roots, Corn and Amaranth are probably the staple crops best suited to home cultivation, but wheat could be added to the mix. And leaving it to the farmer works great - as long as we can afford to buy it, and it is available in stores. That may be forever - or not. I think it helps, if we're not going to grow wheat, to think about adapting our diets to what is grown on a small scale locally, just in case.
More on Wheat Diseases:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317091046.htm
Sharon
Sharon and WNC - thanks for these comments. They strike at the heart of the difficulty of growing one's own food. The estimate of @1000 sq. ft. per bushel is a start, but how many bushel's provide a reasonable diet?
Grains are a difficult task master. They are the foundation that all civilizations have been built on, save one. There are even those who suggest that the differences between civilizations are traceable to the difference in the way each civilization's base grain crop is produced. Prior to civilization, larger aggregations of people (towns) only arose where there were significant stands of wild grains (Jericho being a noteworthy exception). (The Japanese archipelago also seems to be an exception, though some would call the Jomon culture a proto-civilization based on fish rather than grain.)
Ok, I'll get to the point. I'm a back yard gardener and in good years provide perhaps 10% of our produce. If I were to stop working and expand by garden I can imagine pushing that up to well over 50% or more. But I'm still only counting against produce. I can envision filling much of my families protein needs from poultry-keeping, fishing and hunting/trapping. But I just have a hard time imagining where that carb component of the diet comes from. So-called neolithic cultures that we have knowledge of typically used far more land/space per person to provide carbs than we have available to us today. So, how do we provide this component of our diet in the absence of large scale agriculture (read civilization)?
Potatoes
Potatoes are truly amazing and versatile. And, unfortunately subject to a variety of diseases when produced in a monoculture. Would be important to know if multiple varieties of potatoes could have avoided the disasters in Ireland and Brittany.
Has anyone ever tried to grow potatoes aeroponically?
The Sarpo varieties, developed in Hungary, are maincrop potatoes with a startling resistance to blight
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2001/sep/18/foodtech.uknews
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/suttonelms/sarpo.html
Two varieties are available for gardeners in the UK
http://potatoes.thompson-morgan.com/product/zww5119/1
http://potatoes.thompson-morgan.com/product/zww5116/1
I tried Sarpo Mira last year. No blight but not much crop either, more to do with my poor gardening skills than anything else. Early potatoes were fine, but tomatoes were destroyed by blight - the worst I have known.
Thanks for the link will keep these in mind if we make it to next year!
Already have the seed potatoes for this years crop and ready to plant. I'm over in the East of England and blight as you say was terrible last year. Still managed a fair potato crop that lasted us 5 months and a few tomatoes, while keeping the blight at bay, which made some good sauce.
I'm in East Anglia and all my food production is totally chemical free - usually very successful - but last year was the worst/most difficult for at least 40 years but I'm still not sure why - I still had good yields though, I just had to have lots of attention to detail.
The changing climate may be starting to have complex effects on your local ecosystem, by changing the breeding, gestation, and development of local species that impact your crops.
Right on Will about potatoes and to go a bit further parsnips.
The only reason I can see for growing wheat is that it is stores well.
That would be the one non-grain crop that a civilization was built on. Certainly have a great nutritional value. The biggest problem for most locales is storage. They just don't have the storage life of grains.
But that aside, are you suggesting that potatoes can be done at a density level that is superior to grains? I've grown them once or twice with only marginal success (damn Florida sand), but if the calorie per sq ft. was high enough I'd put more energy into learning how to grow them right.
You are in sweet potato territory. You can do yams too. Neither tolerates cold weather or cold soil and both store well. Google a bit, wikipedia has a decent entry.
Field peas might work in your cool season.
Chipmunks!
Tubers.
http://www.annecollins.com/dietary-carbs/carbs-potatoes.htm
The BBC have provided this handy "how to grow wheat" article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7284011.stm
From what I can gather, threshing the stuff is the hard part. ANd listening to people who have just tried growing a small patch, there seems to be problems with birds taking a lot of it (presumably not noticeable on a large scale),
Peter.
I love growing wheat, barely and rye in my backyard. I know how to thresh and winnow it by hand, but it isn't easy to get the seed as clean as I'd like for my own bread...but I could get used to a bit of chaff if I had to.
But it is true that my wheat harvest is fairly insignificant for my own consumption. I tend to not worry about eating it myself, but feed it to my chickens, who also eat my food scraps and provide eggs. In this way I am not wasting any food, and the straw from the wheat is bedding for the hens and then goes into compost piles to build the soil. Small grains plus legumes should be the basic cover crop for back yard gardens and why not make them edible (e.g., lentils are good cover crops too)?
As far as area required to grow your own food, broken up into food classes, I have done some work on this and it can be found on my blog:
http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1492
That's the last of a 4 part series on the topic and you can backtrack from there for more info.
A couple of things on wheat:
1. Some areas of the US are not suitable for wheat for climatic reasons.
2. Anyone who is serious about wheat needs to do some test plots for a few years comparing spring and winter wheat along with different varieties. I've been playing with wheat for about 9 years (In fact, I've been developing my own strain of ww.) For me, spring wheat is a real loser and I stopped playing with it a few years ago.
3. Wheat needs adequate phosphorous to head out. This is one reason I started work on Terra Preta since it is indicated to hold P better. My initial idea was to grow wheat on wheat with different levels of charcoal until it stopped heading out (no additional P was added during the test period). I had to stop this year because I had to rotate my potatoes into the wheat bed because of wire worms in the potatoes so, unfortunately, I'll never know about the P.
I use a Leaf Eater to thresh the wheat. A LE is essentially a weed whip in a tub. I modified it to make the exit ports much smaller so that the wheat would be fully threshed. It is extremely fast. A person could easily do hundreds of pounds a day. It also fits into my survival strategy since I can run it on the PV system.
I winnow the old fashioned way; the wind. I screen out any big stem hunks first. I tried fans but the wind was better.
BTW, Gene Logsdon has excellent plans for a home-sized thresher in Small-Scale Grain Raising.
Todd
This is great Todd. I still have no idea who you are except that you live in the Laytonville area but with no last name I can't ever look you up. Would love to meet and talk to you about this stuff. Right on about wheat and P (too much N causes lodging) and I am keen on threshing methods you describe. Want to see how you make the charcoal soil amendment!
Please contact me.
This is why I keep saying http://sharonastyk.com/2007/08/07/eat-local-real-local/ (among others) that we are going to have to change our diets. It isn't a matter of one size fits all - some places will be able to rely on wheat or potatoes, and some won't. For example, Jason mentioned the problem of storage - I don't know this is true, but I would bet the reason I can store pototatoes until June and he can't is that we're a good bit colder.
Diet is regional - it was before peak oil, it will be again. That means figuring out what your region produces well and comparatively easily and learning to eat that.
Thanks for the suggestion on the LE.
Sharon
Cajun cuisine is based on what can be raised, gathered or caught within sight of the home (except coffee). Creole cuisine is based on what can be raised or caught locally (within 50 or so miles), barged down the river or brought by sailing ship.
Cajun is the rural cuisine, Creole the urban cuisine of New Orleans, Creole uses oysters, wheat, dairy, bananas and a wider variety of spices and Cajun generally does not. Both are IMO sustainable, and *FAR* better than standard American cuisine.
Best Hopes for Fine Dining Locally :-)
And Coffee,
Alan
Regional cuisine is the link between locally grown/growable foodstuffs and recipes. It is the reason why foods within a cuisine "go together" the way they do.
We've gotten spoiled with this idea of cosmopolitan diversity, being able to enjoy foods and recipes from a wide variety of cuisines. Variety may be the spice of life, but we may have to settle for less variety in the future.
As far as the US goes, we do have a number of regional cuisines. These only had a couple hundred years to evolve, unlike traditional cuisines in other parts of the world, so they are not yet as well developed. They have furthermore been submerged and partly forgotten between homogenized, corporatized McFoods on the one hand and that cosmopolitan hyper-variety on the other. Nevertheless, those authentic regional cuisines are still there, beneath the surface, partly out of sight. Alan has mentioned two that are still visible. There are several more around the country. Reclaiming these, updating them, and making them our own living traditions is another important project.
Jason - Thank you for the link and the work you put into those charts. I'm still a little in the dark on where your yield estimates come from, but I'm not too concerned as I already know that yields vary from location to location. So irregardless of the source, these are a good starting point.
While I don't have the room to support my family at this point, my belief is that as people leave our area for the city proper, I will be able to assume use of a lot more space. We also have a lot of open areas that in our town where I have been working to introduce fruit trees and other useful plants. (I live in a small town that grew into a suburb). I've been counting on the return of agriculture to the area, but grains have never been grown in this area to the best of my knowledge. The pre-contact natives had a very high fish content in their diet, but I wouldn't eat the fish from most of our areas lakes now.
Not sure about Mendocino, but I'm pretty sure that the population of the county I live in is well over carrying capacity. But it also doesn't have any significant urban centers, so I expect it to decline in population as the commuter lifestyle becomes less tenable. The question will be can those of us who remain reclaim the old small town life ways. We still have the old rail tracks that linked the old farms (asparagus was real big here until California stole all the business) to the county seat and then to the rest of the rail structure.
I have easily grown small dry-land wheat plots by hand with good yields. The caveat however, is that harvesting is exceedingly labor intensive and difficult.
My strategy has been to take advantage of the specialization of labor and buy several tons of whole wheat from local wheat farmers. If kept dry and free from rodents, hard red winter and spring wheat has a very long storage life. Wheat stored outside in galvanized containers and subject to yearly extremes of temperature for 20 years still makes fine bread here and sprouts readily.
Stock up on hand grinders. Buy several back-ups for charity. Hand grinding is labor intensive so also get a heavy duty electric grinder for your off-grid power system. Hand scythes and special equipment are still available from Lehmans, I think.
I've been experimenting with Amaranth in my home garden for two years and will continue to do so on a slightly wider scale this year. I am "borrowing" a neighbor's big(ger) back yard for more serious garden space.
I am also enlisting a friend in a "guerrilla gardening" project. I'm going to take a couple of pounds of Amaranth seed and scatter it all over the nearby local county park. I will focus on the unmowed fringe areas. If it takes I'll have an extended sources of summer greens (Amaranth leaves are good!) as well as the hope of seeing this high protein food crop establish "in the wild."
BK
PS I suggest others try my guerrilla gardening strategy. I'm sure there are other edible plants that would love to be liberated in this way.
BK - I've been a guerrilla gardener for years (in the past for cash crops ;-)), now I concentrate on utility. While it is sometime possible to establish stands of some domesticated species (e.g. bananas if you're far enough south), generally these need to be "wild" species. Most of the domestic plants in our gardens won't make it in the wild. I've had some success establishing "wild rocket," but you can also look to less specialized, but edible plants like dandelion or common purslane. Also consider fruit trees, medicinals, entheogens and other utility plants.
I suggest others try my guerrilla gardening strategy...
ARRAGHHH.
Introducing non-native plants is NOT A GOOD IDEA. You can destroy the habitats of animals, disrupt the food web, alter soil values.
Kentucky bluegrass is a non-native species where I live, yet 300,000 people have planted it around their houses.
???
300,000 lawn mowers keep it short
150 pounds/acre of syn-fert to keep it green
8 pounds/acre of 'cides to keep it pretty
water
I've got news for you - the number of habitats in North America that are in a "native" state is probably close to zero outside the arctic zones. And that's assuming there is such a thing as a "native" state. That's not to say we shouldn't be careful in introducing plants into an ecosystem. But the notion of a pristine, unchanging ecosystem is naive, especially when you consider what climate change is going to do over the next few decades.
I've got news for you...
Yes and I've got news for you: I wasn't born yesterday.
But deciding to go off and plant stuff without even beginning to understand the ramifications is STUPID. As in Kudzu Stupid.
Suppose it turns out that crows really like amaranth. What then? Do you sacrifice every small bird in the park and many of the small mammals? So that guerrilla gardener can experiment with amaranth? Who made him the local deity?
The poster who used Kentucky Bluegrass as his harmless example extends my point. The mowing equipment, the gas to run it, the synthetic fertilizers, the pesticides, the herbicides, the water... these are huge energy and petrochemical inputs. To hell with pristine... let's discuss intelligence.
I definitely agree with you that we don't want to go out and casually alter ecosystems. But your comment on Kudzu stupid is less insightful than you may believe. Kudzu was intentionally introduced into the U.S. and planting not only encouraged by the government, but undertaken by the CCC. It was decidedly not the actions of a guerrilla gardener. Likewise with the Bluegrass example (here in FL it's St. Augustine).
It is far too late to talk about protecting native ecosystems in North America. That battle was probably lost when European colonists started introducing "old world" fauna into the "new world."
And given the impending changes we are going to see over the next few decades, staunchly defending existing ecosystems is possibly just as "Kudzu stupid" as introducing a new species.
As for BK's original plan to introduce amaranth at a local park; I doubt that any domesticated amaranth will thrive in the "wild," but likely their are already amaranth varieties there that are called weeds. In addition, he was talking about a park, so likely it is already an unnatural area, mowed, fertilized, etc.
As for who made the guerrilla gardener the local diety? It was the complexity of his brain. Animals impact their environment. More intelligent animals impact it to a greater extent. There is no way around that. The point of intelligence in interacting with the environment is to learn to live within it rather than attempting to control it. But calls to have no impact are just nonsense.
But calls to have no impact are just nonsense.
I never said no impact. I said introducing non-native species was risky. And I stand by that philosophy, particularly when it's an amateur gardener going "guerilla".
As for who made the guerrilla gardener the local diety? It was the complexity of his brain.
??? Or the presumption of wisdom.
oh no you don't Will. Intelligence does not equal wisdom.
I think we are generally on the same side. We're mostly talking about scale. I'm not worried about BK's guerrilla gardening. Any impact he will have will be insignificant and localized.
Now, if you want to get me "up in arms" about stupid "introductions" - check out this link on gm; http://www.counterpunch.org/weissman03192008.html
It's not an especially brilliant article, but its a decent summary and recent. Now, in comparison to what BK wants to do, or even in comparison to the introduction of Kudzu, this is simply foolish, beyond stupid.
Agree, but there are plenty of native plants that would be good to plant. For example, in my part of the country there are plenty of woodland margins along streets and public lands that would be perfect for blackcap raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries -- all native to our area. Planting these where they are missing restores natural biodiveristy and balance, as well as providing foraging oportunities both for people and wildlife.
You can grow an adequate but quite spartan diet in a backyard garden for a couple of people centered on potatoes (or sweet potatoes in a warm climate). That's where you will need to get most of your calories. You can grow grains on a small scale by hand, I do it. As Sharon pointed out they are also valuable for compost material. But you would need a very large area to provide most of your calories and doing it by hand would be an unbelievable task. You get a lot more calories per square foot from potatoes than you do from any other crop.
I get new potatoes in August, but by the time March rolls around the ones in storage are getting old and soft and sprouty, so I only rely on potatoes for half the year.
Agree with the calories per acre advice, but storage is more problematic with potatoes.
According to this article dated March 19, 2008; Oregon farmers were considering growing wheat as it was selling for $10.00 a bushel due to crop failures and farmers switching to corn for ethanol.
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=...
It was possible to grow wheat on areas once used for corn. Irrigated wheat yields were usually higher than non-irrigated wheat yields. High prices for wheat might increase expenses for the ethanol distillers.
I mash and freeze most, 1 cup per ziploc freezer bag serves two. They last a year in the freezer.
Then definitely check out John Jeavons at Bountiful Gardens.
He used to be a systems guy so his books contain lots of data, charts and graphs so if you like that stuff here at TOD you'll be staying up at night reading them.
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/products.asp?dept=4
While in Washington DC area, I attended a lecture by Amory Lovins (a once a month "Energy Conversation" across the street from the Pentagon). He mentioned a fault of nuclear power that I was unfamiliar with.
He started that during a NorthEast blackout, 9 nukes were scrammed (emergency shutdown). According to him (and my memory), scramming creates a number of neutron poisons (xenon and samarium were mentioned) that prevent a quick restart.
My uncertain memory of the stats quoted by him was that the 9 nukes scrammed took 5 days to return to 50% power and two weeks to reach 100% power.
Nine nukes is large enough to be statistically significant, and these results point to a potential problem with a large % nuke grid, and the ability to recover from a widespread blackout.
Any comments ?
Best Hopes for Stable Grids,
Alan
BTW: I asked a question, stated my name and afterwards was approached about speaking in this lecture series. I appear to be getting SOME traction.
One need not be a nuclear scientist to realize that there is some wisdom in the old advice to not put all your eggs in one basket.
Nuclear is part of the mix, and will continue to be so for many decades to come. As you point out, though, there are special risks and vulnerabilities that come from relying exclusively (or almost so) from that one power source. I wonder if the French have thought about that?
To my way of thinking, a diversified, distributed system is the way to go - many eggs spread across many baskets. We need solar AND wind AND geothermal AND oceanic AND hydro AND biogas . . . AND, at least for a while longer, SOME nukes.
The French have been heavily dependent on nuclear for their electricity for 25 years so I imagine they have worked out how to cope. They are also making a big push in wind generation and have now surpassed the UK in installed capacity
http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/mailing/windmap-08g.pdf
Taken together with their hydroelectricity they have nearly completely carbon free electricity generation. I would rather be in their position than ours in the UK (over a third of electricity from gas, similar from coal, nuclear in decline, and several reactors shut down at the moment because of faults)
Hi Alan,
In the black out of Nov 1965 southern Ontario was back up effectivly in a few hours although NY and the north east on your side of the line took many hours more. Back then Ontario depended mostly upon hydro and some coal.
In Aug. 2003 we were effectivly down for 24 to 36 hours and that only because we were able to import a lot short term. Then, as now most of our base load was nuke from Candu reactors and these took days to restart after they scrammed. OPG had the misfortune of closing the last reactor into the bus fifteen minutes before the failure. Twenty minutes on the other side and they would have had another 700MW available for quicker start up. Also there was a major problem at our largest coal fired plant although I am not sure that was cased by the emergency shut down or it had other causes. As well, in august there is low flow in most of our rivers so only the Niagara and St. Lawrence stations (a couple of gigawatts) could be considered meaningful to help out. In Ontario we depend upon 7 to 10 gigs of base out of a total of about 14 GW baseload although that day we were peaking at about 27 GW. We must expect the same slow recovery if it happens again.
A little crypt humor follows. Alan mentions SCRAMming. "He started that during a NorthEast blackout, 9 nukes were scrammed (emergency shutdown)."
The Navy defines SCRAM as this: Self Contained Reactor Axeman. Evidently one man was sent in with an axe to cut the cables that held rods up out of the core. I don't think I want that job.
The term predates the Navy. You do have the right idea though. The idea was that the Axeman would cut a cable holding the control rods up if the reactor started to melt down. That was back when nuclear reactors were just getting into the test phase. Of course, meltdowns happen a whole lot faster than any human can drop an axe.
Not exactly. It depends on the delayed neutron component. In fast neutron reactors the delayed neutron lifetime is measured in miliseconds or less, but in thermal reactors its often minutes, which is why thermal reactors are considered safer from a control perspective... if the criticality starts to rise abnormally the reactor can be scrammed... even by a man with an axe.
Cutting back to house turbine running is an automated standard procedure for the Swedish nuclear powerplants but it dont allways succeed. The success rate has become better over the decades but I guess it is something you simulate and dont practice but debug when it fails after an odd grid failure.
Alan,
Wikipedia has a nice article covering the quick-restart thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_poison
It seems the mix of neutron absorbers varies quite a bit with how "hot" the reactor is run, how long it has been shut down, and whether it was pre-seeded with a "burnable" neutron poison such as Boron. The article does mention Xenon and Samarium isotopes as causes for concern. They are not created by the shutdown, but are present in the core all along (the leftovers from splitting Uranium).
Apparently when the reactor is running, the poisons are in a steady-state where they absorb some neutrons, slowing the chain reaction, but fail to put out the fire. They are converted to less-worrisome isotopes by absorbing neutrons, and are destroyed at the same rate they appear.
After shutdown these isotopes present a barrier to startup. You don't want to try to start up too fast, or you'll go way beyond criticality as soon as the effect of the neutron poison is overcome.
The crunch bites deeper in the US
Analysis By Stephanie Flanders
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7302140.stm
Diesel is now $4 in Ft Smith.
Ft Smith is a major trading/price hub for the region.
If diesel's $4 in Ft Smith, it'll be $4 from Amarillo to Memphis.
http://gasprices.mapquest.com/searchresults.jsp?search=true&city=FORT%20...
It's been $4 here in West Virginia for a couple weeks. The station near my house actually *dropped* it a dime this week...from $4.15 to $4.05.
Thank you.
With this info it now becomes clear that ethanol is the only thing keeping
gasoline from $4.
Expect truckers to be shutting down.
Did you see this, mcgowanmc: http://www.reuters.com/article/GlobalAgricultureandBiofuels08/idUSN14429...
Your posts on this have been very helpful to me, mcgowanmc.
I paid 4.28 gal last week, Vestal, New York
It's about $9-10 in the UK and still way too cheap.
I have determined, after a small amount of inspection, that while the grid operations organizations are necessary for capacity planning and stability, they are also a loathsome AT&T in 1983 style monopoly.
Best hopes for solid state ammonia synthesis(SSAS) freeing stranded resources ... both from distance and grasping, flabby monopolies.
You keep going on about SSAS, so I finally had to search for it. Cool idea, you'd think someone would have thought of it before.
The ammonia still stinks, but I always thought of it as quite energy-expensive, like aluminum. More expensive (now) than gasoline, but you've got a liquid fuel you can make without any FF input.
Good luck on all that...
Florida Might get Two More Nukes
Read Here
OK - now exactly who is paying for these?
In (unreferenced) related articles there is an additional two year approval process for the state (NIMBY time) followed by another three years for the Feds. THEN they build - with customer money. One reactor to come online in 2018 and the other in 2020.
What do you suppose crude will cost in 2018?
So...any other proposed nukes further along in the USA?
Pete
I know there have been initial filings for a couple in NC, and I think in several other states as well. Here's the link to the NRC's new reactors applications. It looks like most of the applications so far are for additional units at existing sites. I'm wondering if some of these are to replace units soon to be decommissioned, rather than net capacity additions?
Thank you! I see the two that I referenced at Turkey Point which has two already in operation (along with two FF plants).
Turkey Point
These could be replacements of the existing - old - Westinghouse 760MWe units 3 and 4 but that is not clear to me. They came online in 1972 and 1973 respectively so they must be close to design life - certainly by 2018 - in spite of several major overhauls.
I see two clearly new ones for Progress Energy in Levy County Florioda somewhat further along.
Florida Power and Light - often referred to as Florida Flicker and Flash - and Progress Energy probably make up 90+% of power generation in Florida.
I fear too little perhaps too late but we'll probably run out of "naturally derived" potable water before these are built.
Pete
AFAIK, all new nukes will be new capacity.
Most nukes are getting life extensions to 60 years. And new nukes are larger (up to 1.7 GW, likely retiring nukes in near future are 0.7 GW and smaller).
Existing nuke sites are preferred for several reasons.
1) Geology has already been OK'ed for nukes
2) Less NIMBY issues (adding new nukes to existing nukes that have been there 30+ years is an easy sell)
3) Transmission already exists from site and can be upgraded more easily than all new transmission lines
4) Future operations will benefit from economies of scale
A site with closed nukes has some of these advantages, and I see several sites with already shut-down nukes listed.
Bellefonte is two nukes cancelled by TVA (80% & 60% complete) after being told that quality would not allow an operating permit to be issued. Containment will be reused but the rest will be new build there (I was told by industry insider). AP1000 reactor evolved from Westinghouse design partially built there.
Best Hopes for 8 new nukes by 2018,
Alan
Can anyone comment on the threat posed by the proximity of existing and planned nuclear power plants to coastlines. This will presumably be of increasing importance as sea levels rise over the coming 50 to 100 years. Sellafield in the UK is very close to the coast, for example. This would seem to make it a poor location for future power plants.
Another major concern seems to be access to water. I think back to the European 'heatwave' in 2006, which was fairly mild in my opinion and that year alone several power plants were forced to either reduce or halt electricity generation in Spain, Germany and France. The special permits for dumping hot water into rivers referred to in this article certainly highlight our priorities - we are willing to threaten the health of waterways at short notice in order to continue electricity production. Will these newer reactors use less water and create less 'waste heat'?
And what of Japan's Kashiwazaki and Kariwa power plants?
CERA: 'Oil Has Become the New Gold'
Boy, if that doesn't illustrate our Short-term thinking.
Value, once based on a durable Metal that doesn't corrode or deteriorate, exchanged for a liquid that we can't seem to burn-off fast enough..
Hello Jokuhl,
I might add the same goes for NPK [See posting downthread].
Farmland without I/O-NPK replenishment is like a SUV without gasoline.
When fiat currencies start collapsing from FF-depletion: IMO, the grab for the remaining biosolar mission-critical 'real assets' will be simply breath-taking.
EDIT: I = industrial fertilizer, O = organic fertilizer [guanos & manures, plant residues, etc]
My thoughts exactly. Gold's great virtue is that it's nearly impossible to destroy. Oil is entirely too easy to destroy.
Doomsday scenario for oil
Chris Skrebowski, a researcher for the Energy Institute in Britain, told delegates that the oil supply will peak in 2011 or 2012 at around 93 million barrels a day, that oil supply in international trade will peak earlier than the oil production peak, and he forecast: "There will be supply shortfalls in winter before peak."
Skrebowski said that latest BP statistics showed that peak is already happening in some regions. "OECD production peaked in 1997 and has now declined by 2.2 million barrels a day (10.4 percent)," he said.
Is Skrebowski talking about the all liquid peak? 93 million barrels a day makes a fair amount of sense for that at 2012.
I keep thinking about the Limits to Growth graph for the standard run of the World3 model. 2012-ish is the year in which per capita industrial production and per capita food peaks and goes into irreversible decline.
US Oil Inventory Report
U.S. crude oil imports averaged about 9.5 million barrels per day last week,
down nearly 1.1 million barrels per day from the previous week. Over the last
four weeks, crude oil imports have averaged nearly 9.9 million barrels per day,
209,000 barrels per day above the same four-week period last year. Total motor
gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending
components) last week averaged 901,000 barrels per day. Distillate fuel imports
averaged 294,000 barrels per day last week.
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve) rose by 0.2 million barrels compared to the previous week.
At 311.8 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are in the middle of the
average range for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased
by 3.5 million barrels last week, and are above the upper limit of the average
range. Both finished gasoline inventories and gasoline blending components
inventories decreased last week. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 2.9
million barrels, and are in the lower half of the average range for this time
of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 0.3 million barrels last
week. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 2.9 million barrels
last week, and are in the upper half of the average range for this time of year.
cough, crack spread, cough.
And the expectation was:
"The EIA was expected to say that U.S. crude oil inventories rose 2.3 million barrels last week, according to a survey of analysts by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.
Gasoline stocks were projected to fall 200,000 barrels. Inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, were expected to drop 1.6 million barrels."
This is the first YoY decline in gas demand that I've seen in these reports.
from EIA report y-o-y for the week
Finished Motor Gasoline .-0.1%
Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel ...-0.2%
Distillate Fuel Oil ..............-5.4%
Residual Fuel Oil .............-28.8%
Propane/Propylene ............-2.8%
Other Oils .............................-3.6%
Heating is still a significant part of demand for propane & fuel oil. My GUESS is homeowners are going to go through summer with empty fuel tanks. Both plastics and trucking are impacted by a slowing economy.
-0.1% for gasoline is statistical noise. -0.2% is almost noise.
BIG drop is residual fuel oil. Is this a drying up in demand for asphalt (which can be derived from residual), or industrial production, electrical (mainly Hawaii & Puerto Rico) or shipping ?
Natural gas can substitute for many industrial residual fuel oil uses. That is my guess for why residual fuel oil use is down so much.
Alan
Just got another propane tank refill, price down to $2.59/gal from $2.69 in Jan.
Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending March 14, 2008
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_pe...
Good Article on Aviation Planning with $110 Oil
http://www.aviationplanning.com/asrc1.htm
Left unstated (but writer assumes readers know) is that RJs (regional jets) get poor fuel economy/seat compared to larger a/c.
Alan
Tax cuts for the airline industry - that's the solution proposed by Maine legislature. Good things will trickle down.
cfm in Gray, ME
If they are losing money they are not paying taxes. Which taxes are they talking about?
Everytime you get on a plane, you pay taxes for the privilege. This is regardless of whether the airline makes money. There are also taxes on fuel. Again, the tax is paid regardless of the airline making money. I guess that Maine is hoping that by lowering the non-income based taxes more people will fly which will increase the profit for the airlines.
RJ's may get a lower fuel economy per passenger compared to a larger plane, but that's assuming you can fill the larger plane. I see a reduction in flights across the board, be it Airbus or RJ. The chance of having a direct flight to your destination will be reduced, your layover in the hub city will be longer, and you're going to pay a lot more for that ticket.
Starting next month I'm reducing my flying by 1/4, and it's due to cost constraints. Once it's cheaper for me to stay over the weekend and pay for a rental car than it is to fly, the pressure is on for me to stay the weekend. I see this trend continuing to where I'm only home for 1/2 of the weekends in a month instead of every weekend or 3/4 weekends.
Of course, if they reduce the flights in/out of smaller cities to just one a day, only going to hub cities, then the likelihood of them moving from RJ's to big jets is pretty good.
Best hopes for light composite aircraft with low fuel consumption. (Or better yet, fast rail!)
Less flights?!? The FAA would think you are crazy.
http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=8336
How 'bout some happy flying to go with the happy motoring?
This is a general problem in America....everyone is planning for "biggerness" in everything. Bigger freeways, bigger hospitals, bigger water treatment systems to handle the ever biggering population. The folks I know involved in public infrastructure and decision making are fried by this. Not enough money, higher and higher standards, incredibly complex regulations, etc.
Privately, some are almost wishing for an economic meltdown so everyone can work on having realistic expectations. Then they think about it more and get a bit scared. Real mixed feelings, cognitive dissonance and general anxiety in the local ether.
Given that Maine's energy plan is entirely free market fundamentalism, this amounts to giving away everything to the corporations - read "persons" in this legislation. Any "investor owned" generator gets emminent domain.
Every solution proposed by the piranha class (bipartisan support) makes matters worse. I wonder if that's why they held the public hearing yesterday - faster than it could have been scheduled and without even posting notice.
cfm in Gray, ME
Did you get to this?
Any more on the State's posturing on the PanAm rails?
Bob
No. I was watching the bill to see when it came up, but they decided to hear it without notice. The usual lobbyists, of course, got notice.
Posturing - you got that right.
cfm in Gray, ME
OPEC Needs to Meet Less of Oil Demand Growth By 2012, Firm Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=akfsYVQDCpPY&refer=e...
???
http://www.dothetest.co.uk/
"Transport for London (TfL) has launched a new campaign designed to increase driver awareness of pedestrians and cyclists—an important factor in any case, but especially in London, given the increasing emphasis TfL is putting on altering the transportation modal mix in an attempt to reduce GHG emissions.
One of the first elements of the campaign is a video test."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4&eurl=http://www.greencarcongr...
I saw that linked from elsewhere. It's great!!
"Future of Capitalism: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community with Stephen Marglin."
http://fora.tv/2008/02/14/Stephen_Marglin_on_the_Future_of_Capitalism
Join us for the third annual Robert Heilbroner Memorial Lecture. Heilbroner wrote, "Capitalism's uniqueness in history lies in its continuously self-generated change, but it is this very dynamism that is the system's chief enemy." In recognition of what Heilbroner identified as "the deep human need to be situated with respect to the future," The New School is sponsoring a lecture series in his memory that focuses on capitalism's future. This year, we will host Stephen Marglin, Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and author of The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community - New School
The dynamism that is the "system's chief enemy" is off to a cheery start this morning.
Markets sluggish at the start today.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/wei.html
Oil is also down a bit.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html
Any bets on how long yesterday's gains hold up?
Hi Zadok. Regarding bear markets:
Methods of a Wall Street Master by Vic Sperandeo
Thanks Moe,
Anyone who watches these things long enough are better able to spot trends straight away. Perhaps this is a good thing: saves knee-jerk gitters by interested third-party and novice bystanders like myself and others.
As an sidenote, I am responsihle in an indirect way for small investment portfolios. An occupational hazard, so to speak. For years I didn't pay much attention. Like many others, I figured the experts knew what they were doing and I trusted their expertise.
What has me spooked is that I no longer trust that anyone has a clear handle anymore on what they are doing with other people's money. My wife calls me "Polyanna" but there is a dark doomer side that peeks (peaks??) out. One of many reasons why I am hooked on this site.
The world may be going to hell in a handbasket. I'm not about to run to the hills (practically there anyway!) and I will probably continue to default on the side of sunny optimism. I have a good friend and colleague who goes in the opposite direction: always look on the worst possible scenario and be pleasantly surprised when it turns out differently.
Scary part is that this approach is starting to make a lot of sense to me.
End of my ramblings for today. Must get back to gainful employment (it does help to pay the bills). Cheers!
The gang at Automatic Earth seem to think the intoxication is now wearing off only 72 hours after one of these Fed scams. I wonder if it was like this in 1929-30, when the most self-deluded of the nation's tycoons lined up to throw their fortunes into the hole in an attempt to restart the markets, to less and less effect. At least they weren't inflating away my savings like the Fed is.
"I wonder if it was like this in 1929-30"
it's like the last 3 or 4 bailouts. it's absorbed and done with in a few days. we had big rate cuts that are forgotten. then we had the SIV bailout that never happened. then we had hope now. then we had the $150 billion dollar stimulus that we haven't gotten yet but hasn't helped.
pushing on a string.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the stimulus package will go straight to families' gas tanks:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/03/13/rebate-checks-straight-to-the-...
“Fascism is capitalism in decay.” - Vladimir Lenin
Capitalism's demise can explained to a 10 year old, and they grasp it immediately. One cannot expand indefinitely in a finite system. With survival traits that evolution has supplied us (short term heuristic thinking) and a intact robust environment to exploit, capitalism has been resilient and successful.
All that has changed.
"All that has changed."
no it hasn't. resources have ALWAYS been constrained. do you have some magic sort of economic system that's better than capitalism? state control? that doesn't work.
John: Now you have (I think it started today) the taxpayer subsidizing the operations of boiler rooms like Lehman Brothers. No oversight, no control on behaviour. The USA guv is taking good money and throwing it after bad, like a desperate gambler at the dog track. I understand the desperation, but in reality all Bernanke can do is trash the US dollar-without DRAMATIC across-the-board wage increases, it is literally impossible to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat much longer. I don't see anyone even proposing such, so Americans are looking at a real mess (long term).
At the end of the presentation Marglin asks;
"What does the economy economize on?"
Answers;
"Love, as if it were a commodity that should be saved and used later." Wrong
Make LOVE not MONEY
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aISjQAaDtAmE&refer=e...
I was having a debate recently with a friend regarding the prospects for nuclear energy to act as the significant answer to power generation demand in the future. During the heyday (such as it were) for nuclear in the US was it a heavily govt. (i.e. taxpayer) subsidized enterprise ?
If so would it be logical to conclude that any move toward increased nuclear capacity in the future would also require significant public funding ?
Thanks for any insight you might be able to provide...
The nuclear industry was tied to the military at birth. The Atomic Energy Commission was simply a branch of the military dressed in civilian clothing to prove that we were "different" than the Commies. Too bad Hiram Rickover wasn't put in charge of the civilian show. Maybe our nuclear Navy will one day be asked to put into port in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Long Beach and San Francisco, and tie into the local grids for good.
Proponents of nuke power argue that if it weren't for the damn gov't (NRC) getting into the act and regulating everything that nuke power might be a profitable business. But all that gov't regulation makes it unprofitable and hence they need subsidies.
But here's the problem: Nuke energy is one of those areas where free markets fail. Why? Answer: Do you want the lowest bidder building the reactor containment structure? How about the lowest bidder building the reactor safety controls?
So the gov't (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission =NRC) has to get involved and regulate everything. That makes building and running a nuke power plant expensive. An above unity $RO$I gets iffy. The bankers want a sure profit and thus refuse to fund the venture unless they get gov't subsidies. But then again all utilities are monopolies that get gov't subsidies visa vi being monopolies and getting rates set to guarantee a profit.
And you thought you live in a free markets world. Ha.
Water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink.
The reprinted anonymous comments are quite revealing.
Area leaders could have done better on drought
The continuing commoditization of that which is essential to life. Water is mentioned in the same asset class as oil and gold.
Investors warm to water as shortages mount
Santa Monica's water problems are a long-term complex consequence of losing groundwater wells to MTBE contamination, a gasoline additive. Suggesting that our need for oil unintentionally supersedes our need for water.
Drought forces MWD to raise water rates
Potential water shortages in Israel don't bode well for international stability.
Officials: Israel suffering worst drought in decade
Adelaide, the capital and 5th largest city in South Australia, has seen little more than 20% of the normal rainfall this year.
Adelaide's water supply at 'critical' level
Having been here through the 2002 drought AND this past one (2007-2008), the 2002 drought was serious but di not reach the levels we've seen coming into this winter. What was fortunate about 2002 was that it finally started raining AND kept raining every couple of days for weeks.
With few exceptions most of central NC's water resource management entities looked at the dropping lake levels and the water usage and assummed that by October everything would be fine (one remnant of a hurricane or tropical storm would take care of the problem). When that did not happen, life suddenly got very interesting.
Some of the municiplaities have eased up on water restrictions because of recent rains. Ours just imposed even greater restrictions and surcharges (we were up to 58.9% capacity as of March 19 or about 315 days supply). But we nevre went off water restrictions after 2002, so we were better off than the surrounding municipal systems.
We hear complaints from nursery growers that they can't seel plants to places where people can't water AND people who complain about how "brown" stuff has gotten and will continue to be if wateruing is not allowed. I wonder how they will feel about green lawns and no water to drink?
Peak everything? Perhaps.
Yeah - before last hurricane season some water manglement clown in Florida suggested all Lake Okeechobee needed was a hurricane or two.
I guess they forgot about the utter devastation from hurricanes in the not-too-distant past.
The 2008 season is just around the corner though...
Pete
Iran and Iraq, between them, produces over 6 million barrels a day of crude oil per day. Imagine what would happen if a major war pulled most of that oil off the market. That could happen. I expect all hell to break loose next year no matter who is elected president. But it will happen sooner or later regardless. The Sunnis have been fighting the Shiites for over twelve hundred years and until one of them gets an Iron grip on Iraq, they will continue killing each other.
Meanwhile the Democrats want to pull out while the Republican candidate wants to “win the war.” Who the hell does he mean will “win”, the Sunnis or the Shiites? Hell he doesn’t even know the difference between the two.
McCain Mixes Up Iraqi Groups
Ron Patterson
America's religion doesn't recognize "Sunni" or "Shia". It only recognizes "obey" and "disobey". We've been trying for 5 years to find a gang of Iraqi quislings who will obey us even after our troops leave, so we can put it in power. So we must pay Sunni "obeyers" to murder Shia "disobeyers", and Shia "obeyers" to murder Sunni "disobeyers". But they tend to lie to us, and we always hide our demands for obediance behind code words that don't mean the same things to them, so we're stuck in an alliance with the Supreme Council, which is willing to lie to both Iran and the US and take all their money at the same time. In the interim, we must keep the country in a state of anarchy so that a government of "disobeyers" does not form and kick us out, like holding open a wound with our dirty fingers.
Obviously, the things we really want them to obey us about are oil-related. If our secret plan is to partition the country into Saudi- and Iran-controlled puppet states, the only logical reason would be to plunge those two countries into war with each other along that boundary. But does the US get more oil that way? If those countries really could pump more, it makes sense they would try to finance the war that way, and global prices might fall. But they also would target each other's oil facilities, so global prices would rise. Also, the Saudis could finance the war by panic-selling all their US real estate, and that would be bad. All we'd get is an alliance of frightened Sunni tyrants, at war with Iran but soon in danger from their own war-weary masses.
Since the leading Republican candidate is brain dead he is a shoe in to replace that icon of Republicans, Regan. All he needs to pull a last minute upset of the Democrats is another black swan or a little vote rigging or some last minute revelations about the Democratic candidate's pasts...Or, some combination of all the above.
TPTB seem certain that once we leave the ME our access to oil from that region is suspect. I grudgingly agree with that view because our economy and foreign policy are so weak I don't think we can compete with the rest of the first world for FFs in a bidding war, and our position to back Israel at all costs has not made us any friends in the ME oil producing nations.
Through overall mismanagement of our economy and foreign policy since WW2 we are now nearly bound to a military strategy. Not a good position to be in. America's weakening economy can only add to the problems of the next president.
How many good options remain for a new president, whether Dem or Rep?
A complete change in direction (towards conservation, renewable energy, electrified rail, walkable communities, bicycling) would have the best long term results and MIGHT even be salable politically.
Best Hopes,
Alan
A complete change in direction (towards conservation, renewable energy, electrified rail, walkable communities, bicycling) would have the best long term results and MIGHT even be salable politically.
For God's sake what would the military-industrial complex and Big Oil do? Enough of that talk.
Sell trains, signalling systems, bicycles with carbon fibre frames, district cooling systems and services?
Lufkin Industries, the maker of the large majority of the non-Russian pumpjacks (a pumpjack is the TOD logo, no doubt made in Lufkin Texas) ALSO makes the majority of the small geothermal gearboxes. I saw their name again and again in equipment descriptions of 0.5 to 4 MW geothermal systems at recent WIREC conference.
Best Hopes for Dual Use Technology,
Alan
The last Boeing Light Rail Vehicle is about to retire in Boston
The Danish Energy Minister liked my quote from our first Secretary of Energy "America has only two modes of energy policy, complacency and panic". She said "Not only America, I can use that back home".
I'm looking forward to seeing how much a bicycle built by the military-industrial complex will cost.
Probably tens of thousands, at least. I would definitely think, though, that the addition of heat-seaking rockets that one can fire up the tailpipe of rude/reckless motorists would be a valuable addition worth the extra price.
Re: brain dead...a shoe in to replace...Reagan.
I'm 65 and McCain is 71 if I'm not mistaken and will be 72 when he takes office if "elected". I my opinion anyone who wants to be president at our ages is certifiably brain dead. That he is even running at his age shows that he is delusional as is Ralph Nader by the way. His first wife whom he dumped after she got short and fat after a car accident, says that he acted like a 25 year old when he was 40. IMO the guy still does not act his age. His mind is going as evidenced by the Shia-Al Qaeda flap. If one puts that together with his Bomb Bomb Iran rendition of Bar Barbara Ann and his comments about perpetual war for 100's of years in Iraq no other conclusion can reached. Senility has set in.
His mother is long lived (95) but both his father and grandfather were dead at his age. My grandmother lived to be 99 but her sons lived to be only 59 and 83. I do not expect Sen. McCain to make it though his first term if elected president. His life has been one of turmoil and stress. He does not have Reagan's laid back personality. He appears to be a combative type A personality to me. Men pay for that in the end.
That senility and likely mortality are what make him valuable to the neocons. Dick Cheney needs a new host body - a McCain running mate who will continue McCain's blind obediance to the Project for a New American Century criminals. At age 72 (or at Huckabee's level of ignorance) it's convenient to have your foreign policy prefabricated.
Here's a little sample of the Delusional Ralph Nader, from yesterday.
"New York Governor Eliot Spitzer gets caught with a hooker.
The Republicans call for his impeachment.
Spitzer resigns within a week.
Bush engages the country in a criminal war in Iraq.
More than a million Iraqis are killed.
Almost 4,000 Americans are killed.
Tens of thousands are seriously injured.
Five years go by.
Obama/Clinton/McCain take impeachment off the table.
Bush and Cheney go free.
http://www.votenader.org/index.html
.. I don't know who I'll vote for, but this guy is still saying things I don't have to wince to listen to.
Q: What do you think is the most important environmental issue we face after climate and energy?
A: It's all about solar, in all its manifestations -- from passive solar to active, including photovoltaics, solar thermal, and efficient biomass [plant life fed by sunlight]. Wind is also a form of solar energy, because the sun creates the earth's climate, including the winds within it. Solar is the greatest universal solvent for environmental hazards.
Q: What do you think of Al Gore's climate activism? Has he been an effective agent of change?
A: At last. Where was he when he was vice president? We couldn't get him to make a speech on solar energy. But now, like Martin Luther King Jr. said, he's "free at last, free at last," and he's made a major contribution.
http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/03/19/nader/
.. and in all fairness, he does speak hopefully of Cellulosic's Possibilities, but he trashed Corn EtOH..
Bob
Iran and Iraq, between them, produces over 6 million barrels a day of crude oil per day. Imagine what would happen if a major war pulled most of that oil off the market. That could happen.
I would say it may happen in the next 6 weeks. I think Israel is going to do it(Hit Iran) by early May.
I've seen it talked about that Israel would somehow attack Iran. I don't see how they could. Iran is over 600 miles away from Israel at the closest point. As far as I know Israel does not have long range bombers, and they certainly do not have fighters to escort any they do have that far. I'm also somewhat skeptical as to the idea of Iraq (which Israel would have to overfly) going along with the idea of Israeli aircract using their airspace for an attack. I could see Syria being a target, but not Iran. Israel just doesn't have the legs to get that far.
Hmmm. I seem to remember something about Israeli planes flying to Entebbe, Uganda to rescue hostages. And I think that's about 2000 miles away.
And as for Iraq not wanting Israeli aircraft in their airspace... come on, get real. Who do you think controls Iraqi airspace? And even if they knew about it and objected, exactly what airforce are they going to send up to interdict the Israeli planes?
That's not to say I believe it will happen, but I don't think their ability is in question.
Folks have been breathlessly predicting imminent war with Iran for at least 4 years now.
Yes, TOD's Iran war forecasts make Yergin look like a genius!
Show me where the contributors to the blog have made such a prediction. Not the commenters because anyone, including even you, can obviously comment. So validate your claim. I'm calling you out here and now. If the contributors and editors of TOD made this prediction you should have it bookmarked somewhere.
Where is it? Show us the proof of your claim.
I have never claimed that an editor or contributor made the claim and you know that full well. Commenters are a part of TOD and long dialogues predicting an imminent attack on Iran is a regular theme here. You know that too.
It is a fact that the Iran war claim has occupied a large portion of the threads and it is a fact that the predictions have all been wrong. Very wrong in fact.
Do you deny that there have been hundreds of posts going back over one year suggesting that every movement by US ships is presaging an Iran attack? Have you not frequently stirred this pot yourself? Have these forecasts all been wrong?
Rather than trying to trap me up on a silly technicality, you should have the courage to be an adult and admit you have been wrong.
I think Yergin should admit he has been wrong too.
I will admit that I have been wrong in some of my early comments on EROEI, gold, and other topics. See it wasn’t that hard.
Nobody made the claim except me. If we get to May 20th and nothing happened, I will indeed make a post saying I was wrong.
Otherwise just forget it. Here's to hoping that I am able to make a post on May 20th as above.
I don't want to belabor this and I appreciate your point. However, it is not true that "Nobody made the claim except me".
As I noted above:
There has been a near obsession with this issue at times, in my opinion. So, it seems fair to ask that those propagating the theory be held to the same standards as comments on other TOD topics.
I'd have thought there were more obvious and influential folks obsessing about attacking Iran. One George W Bush comes to mind. And let's not forget McCain's "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran." Maybe you could write to them and point out the error of their ways?
I'd say the biggest fear within the "neo-con" community is that the Shiites would win. Would not that at least increase the chance that Iran could take control of the reserves. IMO, the Democrats are just giving lip service to their base. I can't imagine them pulling out anything but a small fraction of the troops as token gesture. I think most people on this board would agree on the importance of stability of the oil market on the world economy and especially huge importers like the US. Drawing down a large number of troops most likely would cause some serious volatility and uncertainty.
Agreed..... LBJ was a Democrat.
Like the Liberals in Canada the Dems talk from the left and govern from the right.
The problem with Iraq is Iraqis. About two million have left the country and maybe a million have died in the ensuing mayhem. That means that there are still around 24 million left in the country. And they all need to go.
Estimates for the cost are hitting around three trillion bucks (according to a recent study). That works out to around one million bucks per displaced or dead Iraqi. At that rate, to either get them out of the country or kill them, it will cost an additional twenty-four trillion dollars.
What we needed was a faster, cheaper way to achieve our goal (grab the oil). I think a good example of an effective, low cost, environmentally-friendly extermination program was put in place in Rwanda. The Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis in three months, using little more than machetes. I think that just about every Iraqi in the country would have booked if they had been confronted with the sight of 150,000 GI's going "Hutu".
We could have saved even more money by out-soucing the machetes to China. Heck, we could have skipped hiring American private contractors, and remobilized the Hutus.
Mr Cheney, you out there?... whadda ya think?
No need to violate any international laws.
For a million dollars a head we could rather buy everyone a Hybrid Lexus rx400h, a house, a year's worth of food and some vouchers for the movie theater and some popcorn.
And still send people to Mars. The hard, fast way.
What a waste. These idiots wasted the country.
An Export in Solid Supply
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19coal.html
With China poised to become a net coal importer, India expanding its coal-fired generating capacity, supply constraints doubling the price of coal over the past few years, and coal and conservation the only real games in town for peak oil mitigation, I've come to believe that coal is as big a story as oil. Coal powers the world's manufacturing, and oil moves the world's goods.
Granted we get back much of our exported coal in the form of higher global C02 levels and particulate matter floating eastward over the Pacific, but I wonder if we shouldn't be holding onto it.
IMO this represents a significant step in the 'third-worldization' of the US, that is, significant exports of raw resources. Peabody Coal will end up doing to the whole country what it has done to the Southern Appalachians and is doing to Wyoming.
Oil prices and stocks falling together again today (as of 12:30). This was a very rare combination up until a week or two ago. I think we have really reached a turning point here. The Fed has just about finished bailing out the financial sector, will probably turn back to their mandate of fighting inflation at this point. The rising dollar reflects this sentiment. That 75 basis point cut yesterday wasn't exactly a Weimar moment. Time to get some inflation-fighting credibility back. Commodities across the board will suffer.
Finished bailing out!??!! My friend, they're not even finished warming up the bailout machine yet.
You ain't seen nothing yet !!!!
whaleoil, redcoltken,
What if the event you are describing isn't destined to occur this year but a decade from now? I don't disagree with your sentiments, I just think you are jumping the gun. This is the appetizer, not the main course. When the time comes, I'll be the first to strip off all my clothes and run down the hall yelling, "The 'Age of Borrowed Prosperity' is over!" I just don't think we're there yet. The federal government still has too much space to take on additional debt. You think 10 trillion is a lot? I bet we get to 20 or even 30 within a decade. That's when they'll start printing money.
I would not be hasty in assuming that the Fed is through bailing out the financial sector. We are only 1/3 through the home mortgage re-sets, arms, refis, etc...the end of the mortgage problems could last till 09 into 2010...which means there are lots of shoes to drop... lots more deflation as these mortgage instruments destroy paper wealth as they disappear. Home prices must drop to the historic norms of the past (1/4-1/3 income) or some new method of getting buyers into homes on the market must be devised.
As long as the Fed perceives large bank failures to be a greater threat than inflation, they will opt for inflation. Only when/if the Fed perceives the battle to save banks is lost, or won, will they turn to raising interest rates and braking inflation.
Peloton Funds decided the Fed was done bailing out in January. Peloton Funds no longer exists. I can cite other funds that have made the same tactical error and also no longer exist. You are free to believe that the Fed is done but don't expect the rest of us to go along with that sentiment when more than 2/3rds of the mortgage resets are remaining to occur, when mark to market is destroying financial credibility across Wall Street, and when the Fed has expended a large fraction of its own resources and still not stopped this freight train.
Neither was it a Volcker moment. Fed Talk is cheap, taking real action is priceless. If the Fed was serious about fighting inflation, they would have raised rates instead of cutting them. The Fed is far from finishing its bailout. In fact the credit crunch is bound to get much worse. Look at the short term Treasury rates. Investors are turning into investment refugees, fleeing everything but gov't debt. They are running scared an that means many more margin calls and defaults are coming to a financial business near you.
Commodities fell today because of fear of global recession. While a global recession would cause less consumption, I doubt demand for food and energy would decline significantly. Since OPEC now firmly controls the price of oil, they will simple cut production if the price of oil falls. Even talking about cutting OPEC production would send the price higher. If the prices falls into the low nineties OPEC will begin discussing production cuts.
In This article, found at Ilargi's blog it states the estimated size of the derivative market is $516 trillion. Does anyone know the estimated worth of the worlds resources?
Well with 1 trillion barrels of oil at $100 per barrel, thats $100 trillion. Natural gas would be even more and coal even more.
But the vast majority of those derivatives are offsetting (I am short oil futures - someone else is long - each time this happens the worlds derivative tally goes up $200,000. One of us will make money while the other will lose. The risk is that when one of us loses bigtime that we can't pony up what we owe in time, leading to failure.
Todays commodity bubble is bursting due to just that - more stringent margin requirements at prime brokerages and the perception of SEC mandated reduced leverage rules are causing the 'longs' in popular markets to liquidate. Energy, metals and grains have been the hot markets so are going south. Quarter end is the end of next week - I expect it to be volatile and there will be lots of hedge funds getting redemptions at quarter end.
Link more stringent margin requirements ?
Also oil stocks (PBR, APA, STO) are going down out of proportion to crude. I was wondering if some shares are being dumped to meet margin calls. Any thoughts ?
Thank,
Alan
well the prime brokers are requiring more collateral - no link - just phone calls.
The SEC rule is just a rumor - but people are trading on it which is why gold and oil are down so much. But it makes sense to me that this rumor would be true - less ability to make money but less ability to blow up the system if everyone caught leaning one way. I really believe that 5 years from now only producers will be able to trade oil and gas - I know it sounds farfetched but we can't handle an Amaranth times 10. At a minimum they shouldnt let off balance sheet derivatives on Intercontinental Exchange at 100 to 1 leverage on oil or whatever the number it is there. Look for NYMEX to again raise their margin requirements. The push against this will be from speculators and brokerage houses that want to swing for fences and make more commission - both are dampened when max leverage is 5:1 instead of 20:1...etc.
As soon as I find a link to that margin requirement story I will post it - right now its just friends calling me about it.
I can't find anyone who has an accurate chart posted on current margin requirements, because the changes are too recent, but I can tell you for sure they just went up on at least the energy and grain contracts. For example, CL (crude oil) is now $9214 for the initial margin requirement (up from $7763) and $6825 for the maintenance margin (up from $5750).
That's a standard kind of increase due to increased volatility.
There was definitely a bit of froth at the top recently in oil prices--four up days in a row is usually a sign things are a bit too frenzied. But I see this as a rather ordinary consolidation, at least in oil, rather than the popping of a "bubble." In oil there is really not any bubble because prices are pretty much in line with supply and demand. Not sure about the other commodities.
We'll consolidate here for a bit with a typical trading range, and then it's up to the $120s for a pause there.
I posted a couple of weeks ago that we'd soon have a day where the deflationistas would be crowing. This is that day. It's time to start watching for a buy signal in oil. The charts for the stock market, however, look very ugly.
I think it has more to do with expectations. A lot of people are expecting a commodities correction and are getting of of energy stocks in advance. Given the state of the world economy, it is hard to see how energy stocks will go up 20 or 30% this year, but it is easy to see how they could fall that far if the economy crashes and energy prices follow it down
Thanks Nate
And while someone is at it, please explain a deriviative to me?
I see the explanations at AE, but must be denser than I think.
Pete
They are something that derive their value from some other asset. Stocks are not derivatives but options on stocks are. Futures are derivatives because they derive their value from the underlying commodity. They are unlike equities because equities are similar to a deed, they signify part ownership in the company. A futures contract does not signify ownership but simply the right to buy or sell the underlying commodity at a given price sometime in the future.
Ron Patterson
Thank you. As I thought more about what was writen at AE it occurred to me that an index might be a derivative as well - although likely not of the type that is feared as a (future) WMD (credit to W. Buffett).
Pete
Yes, an index is a derivative. So are oil futures, currency futures and all sorts of very simple, basic financial products that are essential for the operations of a modern economy. It is silly to think that derivatives are bad, or that they will go away.
It is highly complex and leveraged products combined with incentives to take on enerous risk that has caused the problem. This will probably sort itself out once the smoke clears as people will be less likely to buy things they can't understand or lend to people who are doing so.
Well that's like asking what's the value of all gold in Ft. Knox. It might be worth 138 billion in today's prices but they could never sell all at that price. The derivaterives aren't worth anything close to that if cashed in today or even over a longer period, nor have the world's remaining resource any value related to today's prices.
That which is scarce has an infinite price, but the buyers may not have infinite money to buy them. Economists must realize that, although peak resources vs. demand destruction caused by economic recession will obey the law of price vs. demand, supply on the otherhand is now limited by laws of physics and won't flex much with either price or demand.
in a round about way, exactly. What the hell is the usd worth? I'm in way over my head in this conversation. good luck to you
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/commodity-prices-wonkish/
If I understand correctly, with respect to oil, that since it can be stored buyers price up oil in the short term to sell it for more in the long term. So speculators could feed off each other bidding up the price of oil: is this CERA's argument? CERA must be thinking in terms of storage for the "new gold". But unlike gold, where it can be easily stored, the amount of stored oil isn't much compared to how quickly it's devoured. So it may make some people rich, but doesn't have *that* much of an affect, overall.
How much can oil storage affect the price? 5-10%? And could there be some sort of housing style bubble for oil?
In my opinion, I don't see anything other the fact that people seem to pay the price until they can't. Something that is never the case for anything other than food.
One conservative's take:
"The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.
When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.
I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt “superpower” will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19556.htm
And I think that if there is one thing that would be guaranteed to provoke a military coup d'etat in the USA, that would be it.
29 Year Old Investment Bankers Do Not Sell Their Maseratis In Wake Of Wall Street Bail Out.
Instead, they drive them to private planes and depart for exotic locations, according to Jim Rogers from Singapore on Bloomberg this morning.
Jim said the top five firms on Wall Street recently paid out $35 billion in bonuses.
Crocodile tears not required.
Rather, think of Zurich, strolling along the Lemat and watching the swans while on the way to an appointment with your private banker.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av/
By and large, the American public is uninterested in the looting of the Treasury-they are more interested in who their politicians are screwing (other than the general public).
Ah, but the foreign investors are interested in the looting of the US Treasury...and, the purposefull debasing of the dollar. The foreigners are beginning to 'just say no' to Treasury auctions.
Why does this matter? Because much of the 8 Trillion Dollar US deficit is financed by these Treasury sales.
The foreign buyers are, in effect, vetoing the Feds dollar debasing strategy. The 'rocks' and 'hard places' that Mr Bernanke faces have suddenly become much harder and stonier.
What to do? What to do? Should I continue to cut rates and debase the dollar causing a loss of foreign currency inflow?...Or, should I hike rates and kill my pals on Wall St? I know what I would do.
Foreign investors veto Fed rescue
Telegraph (UK) ^ | March 17, 2008 | By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1986909/posts
'As feared, foreign bond holders have begun to exercise a collective vote of no confidence in the devaluation policies of the US government. The Federal Reserve faces a potential veto of its rescue measures.
Asian, Mid East and European investors stood aside at last week's auction of 10-year US Treasury notes. "It was a disaster," said Ray Attrill from 4castweb. "We may be close to the point where the uglier consequences of benign neglect towards the currency are revealed."
The share of foreign buyers ("indirect bidders") plummeted to 5.8pc, from an average 25pc over the last eight weeks. On the Richter Scale of unfolding dramas, this matches the death of Bear Stearns.
Rightly or wrongly, a view has taken hold that Washington is cynically debasing the coinage, hoping to export its day of reckoning through beggar-thy-neighbour policies.'
If the foreigners are saying no to US treasuries then Why The F**k are rates on short term treasuries so low?
The largest holders of US treasuries:
Japan, China, United Kingdom, Brazil, Oil Exporters ,
Carib Bnkng Ctrs, Luxembourg
Carribean banking centers and Luxembourg,, are you kidding me?
Does anyone really believe the Fed isn't creating money to buy US TBills to finance gov't spending?
Hyperinflation anyone?
http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
Considering no one is providing any evidence for this speculate conspiracy theory, why should they?
Your treasury link shows that the portion held by Caribean banking groups has risen from 3% to 4.5% of total. That doesn't seem to mean much. And why should we beleiev that the fed is actibg through the caribean baks. It could be China, ME, Russia, private money, etc.
Nothing there.
If you read the link you will see that the bidding was/is for 10 year notes.
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t889...
'Asian, Mid East and European investors stood aside at last week's auction of 10-year US Treasury notes. "It was a disaster," said Ray Attrill from 4castweb. "We may be close to the point where the uglier consequences of benign neglect towards the currency are revealed.'
Somebody wants 3 month treasuries and wants them bad. The yield on 3 month treasuries fell to an astonishing 0.61% today (briefing.com, yahoo!finance) - the lowest yield in 50 years.
Right you are ChemE. And somebody wants 3 month CDs as well. Check the rates on FDIC insured CDs. If you belong to a credit union you can still get 5%...Way below inflation but better return than a can in the back yard...
30 days Crestmark Bank 3.50% 3.50% 25K
30 days 1st National Bank Arizona 3.44% 3.50% 1K
30 days 1st National Bank of Nevada 3.44% 3.50% 2.5K
30 days Centennial Bank 3.20% 3.25% 10K
30 days Astoria Federal Savings 3.00% 3.08% 100K
30 days Presidential Bank 2.96% 3.00% 1K
30 days Beal Bank 2.47% 2.50% 1K
30 days Umbrella Bank 2.47% 2.50%
Your comment is backed by what I have seen on Bloomberg TV recently...interviews with foreign (i.e., non-US) investors basically saying they are amazed that the Fed would trash the world's reserve currency and that they are basically going to give up on the dollar.
How many of the notes went unsold?
Did you read the link? Here it is again...
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t889...
'The share of foreign buyers ("indirect bidders") plummeted to 5.8pc, from an average 25pc over the last eight weeks. On the Richter Scale of unfolding dramas, this matches the death of Bear Stearns.'
Actually, yes I did. But, I read it again because of your comment. What I see is a lot of hyperbole, but still no mention of whether or not any notes went unsold.
While I do see the concern if certain past buyers stop buying, as long as the gov't is still able to sell debt, then it can continue to fund its operations. Now, should the US govt be unable to raise money through the issuance of debt - that would be news!
Some developments today.
"In Asia this evening, three month US Bills are trading at 0.55% - about at Japanese levels. People are piling into safe Treasuries and leaving comercial paper.
The TED Spread is now north of 200 basis points which is serious in my view and is up about 30 bp from this morning NY time."
Hello TODers,
More evidence of I-NPK rising faster than FFs? Don't forget the export tariffs either.
http://www.engl.fis.ru/news/?nid=24790
----------------------------------------
19.03.08 BKK Continues Raising Potash Fertilizers Prices
MINSK, March 19. /FIS/ Byelorussian Potash Company CJSC, the supplier of potash fertilizers to foreign markets raised potassium chloride prices to USD600-610 per ton for Brazil. Note that over the last few months contract prices under brazil deals have doubled. From February 1, 2008 prices for Brazil grew to USD450 from USD400 and from March 1 they grew again by USD50. In April-May 2008, a serious price rise is expected for China and India. A month ago BKK management announced the plan to increase prices for China at least by USD100 per ton.
-------------------------------------------
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/80352415-FC1B-4051-8F17-5D60391A4...
----------------------------
Nauru: Paradise Lost
Nauru hopes ride on second chance
"Trust is gone," says landowner Doneke Kepae.
"That's probably one of our biggest problems at the moment. We no longer trust the government, the people doing the mining. We've just lost all trust."
---------------------------
Yep, my sentiments exactly: the average Naurun will be lucky to see a dime, especially since corrupt outsiders probably now totally control the island economy:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/europe-vs-the-superrich-790863....
----------------------
...Mike Warburton, senior tax partner at Grant Thornton accountants, commented yesterday that, while he and his firm condemned tax evasion, which is illegal, "tax avoidance is the second oldest profession in the world, and just as difficult to control. The tax havens will survive. There are stacks of money out there."
Nauru, a Pacific micro-state best known for its guano, saw some $70bn (£35bn) of Russian money turn up over the past few years, for reasons easily guessed.
"What are they going to do – send the tanks in?".....
--------------------------
Have you hugged your bag of NPK today?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hello TODers,
What happens when NPK's ERoEI > FF's ERoEI?
Given proper weather and climate during the growing season: one pound of NPK can easily produce 10 pounds or more of food, and understandably, food has a higher energy quality than electricity or transportation. But they sure are intermingled; it may be impossible to determine when this ratio above really asserts itself.
But continuing this postPeak thought experiment, if there is insufficient buildout of PV/CSP/WT/etc infrastructure: could we see postPeak govts [or warlords] forcibly confiscating homeowners' PV panels worldwide to power the P & K mines to continue to retrieve this Elemental photosynthesis punch for farmlands and gardens?
This would be much more effective than repeating the earlier mining process of 'pick & shovel humans', especially 3300 ft underground in Saskatchewan, or in the blazing Moroccon desert heat. Recall my earlier posting of thousands of slave-units of 'Mom and the kids' frantically pedaling through a howling Canadian blizzard so the men-slaves mining and wheelbarrowing potassium ores far underground don't suffocate on their exhausting CO2, or the mining dust they generate.
Or does global revolution, machete' moshpits, and the full-on ICBM nuclear/bioweapon gift exchange happen first on the march back to Olduvai?
I have no idea how to statistically analyze this. :(
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
A little more thinking:
After water, I contend the most valuable resources on the planet are the P & K mines and the other trace mineral sources to leverage agriculture. Then, O-NPK products, as even the P & K mines will eventually deplete.
Recall that job specialization is only possible with food surpluses. Even the ancient Eygptians were able to build chariots and pyramids by this method, or the Easter Islanders their statues.
If we don't have future food surpluses provided by I/O-NPK: oil drillers won't drill, bicycle repairmen won't repair, electricians won't be able to keep your lights on, and lots of other bad effects.
When NPK ERoEI > FF ERoEI: will that giant sucking sound be virtually every buck$, ruble, yen, yuan, pound, etc rushing to buy I-NPK for the constant 10:1 or more photosynthesis bang?
EDIT: would you rather hoard gold [no ERoEI AT ALL!] or future-oriented, positive ERoEI I-NPK? Are we ever going to start my suggested 'Federal Reserves Banks of I-NPK' to complement our SPR?
EDIT2: I will even accept giant pyramids of I-NPK, or giant stoneheads of I-NPK if it will help move this process along!
Cargo Ship with Kites: First Trans-Atlantic Trip a Success!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/beluga-skysails-cargo-ship-kites...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7304142.stm
Oil shares down, oil down, gold down... all with the market fear of a real recession in the US cutting back commodity consumption.
My Peak Oil Prediction:
Economic recession in the US, the largest consumer of oil in the world, will cause demand destruction just enough to hide the real oil peak. Oil going down will delay the realization of the situation, delay any mitigation and hamper the implementation of any alternative solutions (alt-energy, electrification, rail etc.)
Any takers?
PS: ah! this is so like Tainter with the economic induced collapse of Rome!
In your scenario, how does a deep recession in the USA lead to a strong US dollar?
Ofcourse my prediction has nothing directly to do with today's markets - they just made me think...
My scenario is an application of Tainter's Roman scenario to the US economy. As it is in deep debt to the world and to its future generations with resources running scarce it has few options:
1. Go to war (acquisition of preliminary capital through conquest)
2. Print money (inflation)
3. Raise taxes (hidden taxation)
In today's world, option no 1. doesn't necessarily work any more, certainly not in the long term. Resources gained through war rarely cover the cost of that war, even though war industry does invigorate the economy in the short term (at the expense of more debt). I think the US has exercised this option near its limits already for the past five years.
Option no.2 has already been exercised in the form of trading oil with dollars and having a huge trade imbalance and the ever raising consumption of oil and continuing growth of trade have just hidden all this hot air until now. As these dissipate so will the value of the dollar. Ultimately the government is forced to print even more money in order to stay liquid. Hyperinflation has been the ultimate fate of all fiat money systems in the world.
Option no.3 is the suicide option. Taxation, hidden or otherwise, is poison to the economy in a recession. Cripple your population so they cannot continue to produce products or services to an economy nor consume them.
The collapse thus induced is slow, gradual, and at no point does it directly implicate scarce resources as the real cause for the situation because demand destruction will keep commodities available. However their price is the original and final reason for the collapse and the economic collapse is just the process. An economy in recession cannot be developed with new industries and infrastucture. Ones you are forces to start eating the roof of your house to stay alive you are doomed to an eventual collapse.
Your assessment of option #1 that war no longer works (for US) is based on the performance of the new-fangled "high Tech" type warfare which has failed in Afganistan and Iraq. Continued chaos in Afganistan creates a suitable barrier between Iran and Asia, but the Iraq situation is quite different.
The aim of the Iraq war was to gain control of all ME oilfields. The "shock and awe/hearts and minds" claptrap has proven a complete washout. The super high-tech war had its one and only success in the first Gulf war when shrub's daddy was in control. To achieve control in Iraq now requires old-fashioned warfare. The needed steps are:
1. Draft 5 - 10 million yobs and slobs from the lowest levels of US society.
2. 3 - 6 weeks weapons training.
3. Ship trainees to Iraq by every possible means.
4. Issue trainees with pink/purple striped uniform, rifle, 100 rounds ammo, 10 grenades, and give orders for trainees to shoot everyone not in pink/purple uniform.
5. Appoint CEO of Blackwater as president of Iraq.
6. Appoint CEO of Exxon mobil as manager of Iraqi oil production.
This would quickly establish the US as the only effective power in the ME. Nice-guy type wars are now as effective as the duels of honour in France between upset Aristos before the revolution. Down-to-earth usage of Mme Guillotine was much more effective in achieving a practical result.
Quite frankly, I don't fancy the US as a world power, but the ability to be one still exists. With the present fixation of the US sheeple with Paris Hilton and other sexual titilants, I doubt that more than a tiny minority of the population would even know that a change in tactics had occured should my (tongue in cheek) suggestion be followed.
Cheers
Merv
One day after stocks gained big, they took a serious tumble. You have to love the explanation for the fall in gold prices...
'Gold plunged $59 an ounce, the most ever. Futures for April delivery fell 5.9 percent to $945.30 an ounce after the Fed's rate cut was less than investors expected, reducing the appeal of the precious metal as a hedge against inflation.'
Let me see...last Thursday investors were expecting a 1/2 to 3/4% rate cut by the Fed. with an outside chance of a 1% cut. The Fed cut 1/4% Sunday night and another 3/4% yesterday = 1%. Duh...This cut was at the upper range of expectations!
I believe Nate Hagens...Rumors of changes in margin requirements make a lot more sense than the above explanation.
'Energy shares in the S&P 500 fell the most since August 2002, losing 5.4 percent as a group, after crude dropped almost $5 a barrel.'
'Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company, dropped $4.23, or 4.9 percent, to $81.89 and ConocoPhillips, the No. 3 energy company, slid $4.66, or 6 percent, to $73.61. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest, lost $4.04 to $84.43. Crude fell the most since August, slipping 4.5 percent to $104.48 a barrel in New York, after the Energy Department said oil supplies rose by 133,000 barrels to 311.8 million, the ninth gain in 10 weeks, as imports fell.'
And it seems Lehman Bros is far from out of the woods...
'Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which surged 46 percent yesterday after posting earnings that topped estimates, tumbled $4.26 to $42.23 today. The fourth-largest U.S. securities firm may have more writedowns in future quarters until ``troubled assets'' of $87 billion are removed from the firm's balance sheet, analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. said.
``There are still major uncertainties and risks,'' Jean- Marie Eveillard, who runs the $21.3 billion First Eagle Global Fund in New York, said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. ``The Federal Reserve is pedaling as fast as possible to keep the bicycle out of the ditch.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0wzK3PNIFZ4&refer=home
Strange day on the markets.
Canadian economic fundamentals are sound - that's what the professionals say - high growth, low debt, more conservative banking practices, etc., yet one day after the Fed sprinkles pixy dust, hell breaks loose north of the border:
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/03/19/markets.html
And elsewhere:
The British Pound, with a less favourable footing, gets sideswiped yet again:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7304582.stm
Even the Euro-US currency exchange remained unchanged today with the Euro closing the day exactly where it began: 1.5622
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=EUR&to=USD&amt=1&t=1d
Yes, "the Federal Reserve is pedaling as fast as possible to keep the bicycle out of the ditch." But that ditch is mighty wide and the American dream team is playing havoc with everyone else on the road.
Will the European and North American markets be closed for Good Friday? If so, the Asian markets may be peddling wildly by the time Easter is over.
I would suspect that there will be many hoping for a Easter Bunny delivery of a golden egg. Oh right, it seems the gold cyclist is biking erratically, too.
Yikes, a duplication. Ignore.
Hey River Always enjoy your posts.
Got a minor clarification. http://www.the-privateer.com/rates.html
The Fed funds rate (rate for banks lending to each other) is at 2 1/4%
and was indeed dropped by 3/4% yesterday and not at all on Sunday.
The discount (window) rate for lenders to borrow from the Federal reserve itself has been narrowed to 2 1/2% (in a series of recent rapid steps) just a quarter of a percent above the Fed funds rate which has historically 2003
been tracking 1% above in order to not encourage banks to come to the window until all other sources have been exhausted.
This move could be seen as even more of the emergengy kind because this 'window' is used pretty much when things are dire at the bank(s) and is used pretty rarely in total $$ terms. I think Lehman had to go a couple of times, anyway it perks our ears up when it's necessary IMVHO. The FOMC is gearing it up as being needed and pumping it in as needed at as low a spread to the Fed funds as they can really get it in this environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_funds_rate
This stuff has sure peaked my interest. OMG that one was bad :-)
xburb, thanks for the reply. Yep, my bad on the Fed Sunday action. I still don't think a 3/4% cut instead of a 1% cut was the cause of the gold sell off...do you? Here is an interesting article by Kevin DePew at Minyanville. He has been right many times and is always interesting to read. The charts at the site are worth a look...
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=16331
Kevin Depew's daily Five Things You Need to Know to stay ahead of the pack on Wall Street:
1. The Point of Recognition
'The good news is that we may be about two-thirds of the way through this bear market. No, not the bear market that supposedly began in October, but the big one, the structural one, the one that began eight years ago. The bad news is we have not yet reached the most dangerous part of the bear market, the point of recognition. That is when asset prices suffer the full impact of a deflationary credit unwind.
Denial remains the most powerful force operating in financial markets today. It is so pervasive, bullish sentiment so deeply entrenched, many are simply refusing to accept, and in some cases not bothering to even notice, the sheer magnitude and severity of this debt crisis.'
Ironically, the growing furor on Main Street over the declining dollar and the destruction of purchasing power is the epitome of a "Careful What You Wish For" scenario. When the dollar stops going down, the real point of recognition will arrive. Days like today, gold and silver down 5% to 7%, bonds higher, stocks down, commodities down, that is what a deflationary credit unwind looks and feels like. The dollar will again have its day, and when it does the myth of the bull market will be exposed for the fraud it really was.'
River hey thank you, really enjoy your fresh take.
Yeah the pervasive bullish sentiment is truly borne of the most obscene hubrus. In this instance it continues Enron-like because it can. And like we're seeing by so many innovations our government is enabling that sentiment.
As for gold and other commodities and the deflationary spiral. What I believe is that whatever liquidity there is and whatever value or measure you give it those commodities will now pull that value to them to the detriment of all other asset (inflated ) classes of SIV. CDO, SUV or any other.
The move today was maybe the tightening of derivitives rules (have not seen those yet but it seems reasonable) or it could have been profit taking to cover short buying. There have been some huge losses in Asia in the last few those investors may have needed balance. I don't believe we will really see gold go to the 7's and I think oil will consolidate around here like you say because most don't see that these prices do represent the new supply/demand picture. Japan for instance I don't think can hold the peg because they are 100% bidding for the same oil.
The dollar. Too many bubbles of fake wealth like this last one. (there's little real production but if we loan lot's of money to people who don't really have it and get bailed out eventually anyway we've suceeded) Too much debt. Too big a spread on interest rates with the rest of the world. Yeah it's sure going to be hard to sell those treasuries and garner investment here again. Probably a lot of what's out there is coming back to buy up the cheap houses.
The Saudi's are ratcheting up the WTI numbers. It'll be wheat for oil, cheaper labor lower cost manufacturing for Toyotas, and everthing you got to get the tank and the belly filled. So yeah I think the dollar inflation has to go forward if Wall Street still plans on blowing any new Fantasy Finance bubbles because they ultimately prove to be so worthless compared to what people really need to survive.
The link is interesting. I'll read it more now. I think for just a day or so the commodity markets figured we were going to pull a (420 point) rabbit out and paused. Too bad it was just another old stinky sock. Dress it up...hey what's my bid??
Can anyone direct me to information about natural gas hydrates? The reserves are many orders of magnitude greater than natural gas from conventional reservoirs but if it's been discussed here - I've missed it.
Many thanks to all who dedicate time to these discussions!
sarconal warning
but This discovery, looks like something we can count on in the years to come
Hello Twhewett,
I am guessing you are talking about undersea methane clathrates. Googling this can get you alot more info, but here is a Wiki for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
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Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate or methane ice, is a solid form of water that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure (a clathrate hydrate).
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Hope this helps your search!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Black Swan prediction: The current economic situation to become far far far worse than we can begin to imagine even at this stage.
And as a consequence, "Peak Oil" will disappear for a decade, as demand drops 10 mb/d or more.
And as for food production, well that had better stay up, no matter what the circumstances! Although demand for biofuels might evaporate...
Hello TheMagus,
Well, regarding Black Swans and Food Production:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8NRAN03xC3LCmRcuETmKrlxOW8w
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Some of China's grain reserves are empty: report
BEIJING (AFP) — Corrupt Chinese officials may be fabricating reports of bulging granaries to get ahold of subsidies, meaning Beijing has an inflated idea about the size of its grain reserves, state media said Wednesday.
Yuan Longping, a top rice scientist and a member of a body that advises the Chinese government, said some local grain reserves are actually empty, the Beijing Times said.
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I don't know if this is actually true, but it could be explosively bad news for China, and for global grain prices.
queuing up
The queue cometh back...
Some of my friends in Shanghai mentioned that rationing is occuring there as well.