Drumbeat: March 12, 2012
Posted by Leanan on March 12, 2012 - 10:00am
Gas Price Disparity Seems Here to Stay
Global energy markets determine the national trend for oil and gasoline prices, and those markets have been rattled by tensions with Iran. Yet energy markets are also resiliently local, as the patchwork quilt of gasoline prices illustrates. A flood of relatively cheap oil and gasoline is washing through parts of the American heartland, but it’s barely reaching consumers in the rest of the nation.“Energy is all about infrastructure and logistics,” said Edward L. Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international energy policy. “While energy markets are global,” he said, “if oil is just sitting in the ground — or if you can’t move it from Point A to Point B — it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good.”
In the United States, a combination of infrastructure constraints and legal impediments makes it very likely that regional price disparities will widen in coming weeks. This is probable even if the government decides to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down overall prices, interviews with industry experts suggest.
Oil Drops From One-Week High on Economic Growth Concern
Oil fell from the highest price in more than a week after exports grew more slowly than forecast in China, the world’s second-largest crude consumer, signaling an economic slowdown.
Gas prices up another 12 cents in past two weeks
Gas prices rose by an average 12.31 cents a gallon nationwide over the past two weeks, reflecting higher crude oil prices, but the rate of increase is slowing, according to a survey.
Facing pressure on gas prices, Obama touts cuts in oil imports
The Obama administration will release a report Monday that shows the United States cut foreign oil imports by 1 million barrels a day in 2011, a 10 percent reduction that the White House said illustrates progress toward achieving greater energy independence.The 19-page status report lays out steps that six federal agencies have taken to meet President Obama’s call for a “secure, affordable energy future” during a speech at Georgetown University in March 2011.
API ratchets up pressure on Obama
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The United States can shield itself against upheavals in the Middle East by tapping into domestic oil and natural gas reserves, a trade group said.Oil prices are hovering near 9-month highs in part because of unrest in the Middle East. Crude oil prices spiked when Iran announced it was stopping oil deliveries to some European countries and shipping services are wary of delivering Iranian crude because of European sanctions.
Fine balance sought at oil summit in Gulf
Oil producers and consumers meet tomorrow in Kuwait to discuss growing threats to supply, rising prices and an uncertain outlook for the global economy.
Alan Gaines on Oil Prices and the Oil & Gas Industry
Saudi royalty no doubt views that $90 level is a floor, and would likely, as they have in the recent past, act as swing producer to protect that price. And then, there is the question as to the validity and timing of global “peak oil” production. With continued advances in technology regarding oil shale and deepwater technology, the eventual peak oil date moves ever further into the future. My own personal opinion that we may well see peak oil take hold within five or ten years.
Oil demand shift: Asia takes over
America, Europe: Get in the back seat. Someone else wants to drive.The realization that oil prices aren’t about them anymore has been slow to dawn on Americans after a century of being the world’s swing consumers. But the fact is that the world’s developing economies have been outbidding the developed OECD countries for oil since 2005. Some time this year, non-OECD oil demand will overtake OECD demand, and they will stay in the driver’s seat for the remainder of oil’s reign as the lifeblood of the global economy.
SOCAR declares oil production cut in February
Azerbaijan’s oil production begins falling again.The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan reports that this February oil production by SOCAR reached 660,942 tons against 706,638 tons in January 2012 and 8.4 million tons for 2011 as a whole.
Kuwait targets 4 million barrels oil daily by 2020
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Kuwait's oil minister says the country aims to boost its crude production capacity to 4 million barrels a day by 2020, up from 3 million barrels now.Oil Minister Hani Hussein made the comments Monday at the start of an energy forum in the Gulf nation, according to a report by state news agency KUNA.
Protestors block entrance to Exxon's Cepu oilfield
(Reuters) - Protestors have blocked the main entrance to ExxonMobil's Cepu oilfield in a dispute against an engineering contractor, though the U.S. major said its production of 20,000 barrels per day of oil has not been affected so far.
Chesapeake CEO Seeks Cash Infusion From Asian Gas Markets
Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) Chief Executive Officer Aubrey McClendon is cultivating investors from Seoul to New Delhi eager to own natural gas that’s 85 percent cheaper than Middle East supplies because of a glut in the U.S.
Analysis: Chevron's Amazon-sized gamble on Latin America
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - George Buck, a slim, towering American who runs Chevron's operations in Brazil, is often flanked by lawyers these days.Since November, when the No. 2 U.S. oil company spilled at least 2,400 barrels of oil offshore Brazil, the local attorneys have helped Buck navigate the legal system, sometimes doubling as Portuguese translators and cultural consultants.
Lukoil unveils investment plans for Iraq
MOSCOW (UPI) -- Russian oil company Lukoil said it plans to invest billions of dollars in an oil field in southern Iraq after taking control of Statoil's minority stake.Lukoil aims to invest around $2 billion in the West Qurna-2 oil field in Iraq this year, Bloomberg News reports. A company spokesman told Bloomberg that $200 million was invested there in 2011.
Iraq Kurdish Oil Exports Sliding To 75,000 B/D On Payment Delay - Officials
KUWAIT CITY – Iraq's crude oil exports from the northern Kurdistan region have dropped to 75,000 barrels a day from the 175,000 barrels a day originally agreed between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, on payment issues, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said Monday.
As we saw last week with the electoral success of the Islamic leader Ali Khamenei, the future of the Islamic regime does not depend on oil prices. But the future of Obama clearly depends on the economy. Normally, under such circumstances, Saudi Arabia and its ability to lower oil prices thanks to its excess production capacity would be very helpful. But experts think that Saudi Arabia is already producing at a very high level and has therefore little spare capacity to replace Iranian crude oil in the market. Obama can always relax and loosen financial sanctions on Iran on the grounds that he wants to help the American economy. But this would give ammunition to his Republican rivals and Israel that he is mishandling the national security situation by appearing weak in the face of Iran. In short, there is no easy way out from the Iran paradox for the Obama administration. Sanctions will continue to hurt the American economy as much as they hurt Iran.
Pakistan ignores US threats and courts Iran
ISLAMABAD: As the US and Pakistan struggle to patch up frayed ties, plans for a Pakistani-Iranian natural gas pipeline further threaten the fragile partnership.Pakistan desperately needs new energy sources and has made it clear it plans to forge ahead with the pipeline to bring in natural gas from Iran, despite warnings from the US that Islamabad could be hit with economic sanctions.
Killings of civilians threaten Afghanistan mission
Allegations that an American servicemember went on a shooting spree that left at least 16 Afghan civilians dead have plunged relations between the two countries to a new low and threaten to test U.S. strategy to end the conflict.
Activists: Civilians 'massacred' in central Syria
BEIRUT (AP) – Syrian activists said Monday that pro-government gunmen have killed at least 16 people — including children — in a rebel stronghold recaptured by the government in the embattled central city of Homs.
Norway to cut oil money spending in 2013
JEVNAKER, Norway, March 11 (Reuters) - Norway is likely to slash the ratio of oil revenue it uses in the 2013 budget, its finance minister said on Sunday, as prospects for the Norwegian economy outshine Europe's and the country's currency reaches multi-year highs against the euro.Oil-rich Norway, largely sheltered from the global economic crisis, has a spending rule that recommends limiting oil-revenue spending in most years to 4 percent of the value of its $604-billion sovereign wealth fund.
Once you strip out commodity purchases, consumer consumption appears as if it has flatlined in the last two months, something evident from the tumble in the Consumer Price Index. February’s inflation came in at a stunningly low 3.2%, down from January’s 4.5%.
Enbridge faces writedown of New Brunswick investment
(Reuters) - Enbridge Inc said it is facing a potential writedown of a significant portion of the value of its C$460 million investment in Enbridge Gas New Brunswick, the New Brunswick gas distribution utility.
BP's Influence Peddling In Congress Bears Fruit Two Years After Gulf Spill
As millions of barrels of oil began pouring into the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, Democratic lawmakers began asking the question: what was the proper amount of money that the company responsible for the spill should have to pay?This wasn't some sort of philosophical exercise. Oil companies pay money into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to help cover the costs of major disasters. But under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, a company responsible for a spill is liable for only $75 million in economic damages, provided it didn't exhibit "gross negligence." The federal government picks up the next $1 billion.
Mass transit use rises as gas prices soar
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Ridership on the nation's trains and buses hit one of the highest levels in decades, with officials crediting high gas prices, a stronger economy and new technology that makes riding public transit easier.In 2011, Americans took 10.4 billion trips on mass transit -- which includes buses, trains, street cars and ferries, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Asian super grid targets Mongalian solar and wind power
Desert solar energy could be powering homes in Russia, Japan, and China under plans by Desertec and backed by the Japanese Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF).
Naomi Klein: Serious about climate? Throw out the free-market playbook
I don’t think climate change necessitates a social revolution. This idea is coming from the right-wing think tanks and not scientific organizations. They’re ideological organizations. Their core reason for being is to defend what they call free-market ideology. They feel that any government intervention leads us to serfdom and brings about a socialist world, so that’s what they have to fight off: a socialist world. Increase the power of the private sector and decrease the public sphere is their ideology.You can set up carbon markets, consumer markets, and just pretend, but if you want to get serious about climate change, really serious, in line with the science, and you want to meet targets like 80 percent emissions cuts by midcentury in the developed world, then you need to be intervening strongly in the economy, and you can’t do it all with carbon markets and offsetting. You have to really seriously regulate corporations and invest in the public sector. And we need to build public transport systems and light rail and affordable housing along transit lines to lower emissions. The market is not going to step up to this challenge. We must do more: rebuild levees and bridges and the public sphere, because we saw in Katrina what happens when weak infrastructure clashes with heavy weather — it’s catastrophe. These climate deniers aren’t crazy — their worldview is under threat. If you take climate change seriously, you do have to throw out the free-market playbook.
Asia needs $40B a year for ‘climate proofing’—ADB
BANGKOK—The Asia-Pacific region needs to spend about $40 billion a year to “climate proof” its economies against the impact of global warming, Asian Development Bank vice president Bindu Lohani said Monday.
If Cutting Carbon Emissions Isn’t Working, What’s Next?
What if it is too late to save the climate by cutting greenhouse gas emissions? What if the amount of carbon dioxide already added to the atmosphere by human activity is so great that it is going to produce big temperature changes no matter what, with big shifts in rainfall and in ocean chemistry?Options remain, according to a new book, “Suck It Up,” by Marc Gunther, a journalist, blogger and speaker who specializes in energy and climate issues.
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Regarding: Killings of civilians threaten Afghanistan mission, my oldest sister's son (US Marine lifer) landed in Afganistan 5 weeks ago, following a couple of years stateside. He did three tours in Iraq, and said in a letter last week that the state of mind of his fellow soldiers in Afganistan is very different from his Iraq experience. He's a very up-beat 'oorah' sort of guy, but he seems quite concerned that some of his buddies "don't have their minds right".
A little help here; why, again, are we there?? Oh wait...here it is!
Pakistan ignores US threats and courts Iran.
Ghung, I'm wondering the same thing. Yeah, to stop the Taliban - but can't the Taliban just go somewhere else? Meanwhile American lives and $100 billion a year down the sinkhole. Also - why do we still have so many soldiers in Europe?
I suppose your question is rhetorical, but my quick reply would be; Why do we have troops in 136 nations? Why did we just send combat troops into Somalia? Why are we using unmanned drones in Yemen? Why are we engaged in combat in Philipines, Thailand, Pakistan,Columbia, Afganistan etc, etc, ad infinitum (or absurdium) and the cost in lives is much higher and the cost in dollars is closer to 8-- billion.
Annual Costs of the War in Afghanistan:
There are long term costs associated with medical treatment of injured veterans. These will go on for decades, because these as lifelong injuries.
This doesn't include wholesale replacement of materiel being used up.
Good for business? I really don't know why exactly we are in Afghanistan. I guess we want a presence in that region? Part of it may be the copper and other metals/minerals that are in the ground there. Pipelines? Not sure, but this country sure likes war.
I don't know why either - but various people claim there are opium based reasons.
There had been speculation about Afghanistan being a world-class source of lithium, but apparently the reserves there aren't globally significant after all.
The military-industrial complex does need reasons to be at wars. If there are no wars production will almost stop. This is in the spirit of unfettered capitalism.
The Kony video might be an attempt to get that complex to have support to exist and be sent off in a new direction.
I hear Africa has things like oil.
Notice that the Kony 2012 video is on the corporate news. They want you to see it. The occupy movement was not shown for as long as possible. They did not want you to see it. The war protests were not shown. They want you to see Kony 2012. They want your children to see it. They want to gather support for sending in ground forces.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=kony+2012+pr...
Absolutely. I was explaining this to my daughter - it's a perfect example to illustrate the process. What's interesting about this one is that it started in the social media - that's where my daughter first brought it to my attention - before the traditional news/propaganda outlets. We've read the reports that psyops would be targeting social media, and while this is not the first it's a good example.
Nice hunting, Twilight and KD.
My suspicion has always been that these days, nothing "goes viral" by accident.
Pulling the thread on who might be behind the KONY video:
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/12/kony-2012-invisible-children.html
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2012/03/11/invisible-children-funded...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-deibert/invisible-children_b_13274...
They want to gather support for sending in ground forces.
The Kony "problem" could be "solved" with a drone or a .50 cal from a sniper.
But lets play 'what if?' What if *poof* Kony goes away? Does that solve or address the issues? Now you roll out ground troops - does THAT action solve/address the problem?
The short answer is that the Anglo-American culture has not rid itself of its peculiar disease, which is a belief that it can and should rule the entire world.
Other cultures, even historically, just want to have regional influence.
Why do we have troops in 136 nations?
So Ron Paul would have a talking point?
So the MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex) can spend money?
Why are we engaged in ...
Don't forget the every decade or so announcement of a rape in Japan of someone under 18.
FAILED STATES...,
The more time goes by, the more failed states we'll have to deal with....
If you're talking about US intervention in failing naiton-states, I have a mirror we need to check out....
FSOP: Failed states on purpose. More FSOPs and demand declines, it's the solution to the net-export dilemma.
Even if a country does not have energy resources it has demand for cars, air conditioners, diesel pumps and goods-transport. Ruin the country and all these things vanish and demand is then exportable ... to the US and elsewhere.
Underway in Greece and in the so-called 'poverty belt' in the USA. Coming to a town near you.
yeah I moved to one of those "resource colonies" in the US from a large coastal city.
really scary.
Just out of curiosity what/where is the poverty belt and what where is the resource colonies..I often wonder if we all sat down and had to draw out what 15-20 years from now the world would look like...what would be the story? I am amazed at how the current system continues to move on down the road...it feel that most people here have a good grasp on reality...my only fear is that maybe we are just genetically more inclined to be doomers and that we will miss something and maybe not enjoy this life that we do have. Would people here be dissapointed if they were wrong and we did swim out of this hole we are in? I understand a certain amount of skeptisism when it comes to new discoveries in oil and energy....but should there also be a certain amount of optimisim? After all isn't that how we evolved? Probably it took a little bit of both.
"I suppose your question is rhetorical, but my quick reply would be; Why do we have troops in 136 nations? Why did we just send combat troops into Somalia? Why are we using unmanned drones in Yemen? Why are we engaged in combat in Philipines, Thailand, Pakistan,Columbia, Afganistan etc, etc, ad infinitum (or absurdium) and the cost in lives is much higher and the cost in dollars is closer to 8-- billion."
Silly boy, so we can continue to hog more of the world's resources and maintain a much more profligate lifestyle than most of the world.
Probably not, or at least not and remain the Taliban. Keep in mind that unlike al-Qaeda, which is global in terms of both membership and goals, the Taliban is an organization of Afghans whose goal is to impose their particular version of Sharia law in Afghanistan (well,and possibly parts of Pakistan). At heart, the Taliban is a subset of Pashtun tribes whose ambition is to rule the rest of the Pashtun tribal areas as well.
Thanks for educating me. I lump them all together as "bad guys."
It's OK, Brad. They lump us all together as "bad guys" too :-0
You know, if you change some names in that sentence, you get;
Keep in mind that... ... the [American Political Party] is an organisation of [Americans] whose goal is to impose their particular version of [religious principles] in [America] (well, and possibly parts of [any muslim country]). At heart, the [Am. Pol. Party] is a subset of [Americans] whose ambition is to rule the rest of the [American and global] tribal areas as well.
Not much difference, really.
In fact, given that one of the objectives was to bring Democracy (American style) to Afghanistan, I'd say that has been achieved!
Let me help fill that in for you.....
I think you are confusing Al Queda and the Taliban. the Taliban are native and aren't going anywhere. Of course this sucks for all of the women and for anybody else who would like to modernize. The problem is that they want everyone in Afghan society to live under and by the Taliban's religious societal rules. Damn glad we don't have that problem.
But I think we do. Just listen to the Republican candidates. Listen to Santorum. Listen to America, in general, as the radical Christian right strives to run the country. After all "god speaks to me Bush" got us into two wars and, at least, one candidate believes he has been chosen by god. Our right wing terrorism surely does as much damage as any terroist organization in the world. Ask the rest of the globe how they like our drones, our troops in 130+ countries, the slaughter of civilians, the over throw of governments, etc, etc.
Amazingly the one candidate speaking sense about Afghanistan is Newt "we lack the ruthlessness to stay their, get out" or something to that effect.
Right, we won't notice Bill Clinton's policy of sanctions and bombing on Iraq, we won't notive Hillary Clinton pounding the Senate table calling for more troops, we won't notice John Kerry unable to decide if he's for or against the Iraq War, we won't notice Obama splattering children all over the hillsides of Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc.
Liberals don't kill anybody!
That's right, because with very rare exception (maybe a dozen) there are no liberals in national office. US "liberals" like the ones you cited are significantly to the right on a global policital map. You have to consider that when looking at geopolitics.
Who's talking about geopolitics? There was a specific assertion that the evil right-wing Christians, specifically George Bush, were responsible for America's love of killing. I pointed out 4 American liberals who are not right-wing Christians and noted they loved some killing themselves. The political spectrum of Denmark is irrelevant.
so the Iraq war wasn't geopolitics? OK. Got it.
I'm seeking to point out one simple point, those people you cited are not "liberal".
There are scant few "liberals" in US politics and almost no leftists.
We may like to call them "liberal" but in a complex global system of politics, they are neo-liberal (what we like to call conservative in the US).
So they're not social Judeo/Christian conservatives... that's not the point. They're conservatives (neo-liberals) who will wage war for resources and revenge.
Social issues are hyped up so our "liberal" politicians can posture and actually stake a liberal position on something. Meanwhile the bipartisan consensus on substantive issues grows larger and all-encompassing.
Case in point, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-beaver/hrc-goldman-sachs_b_1257465....
"Damn glad we don't have that problem."
I think we do have a simolar problem with a different name, Republican attacks on family planning, and other misogeny.
Geek and Seke,
Those were seven words of snark and I'm glad they got a reaction. Of course we have a problem with the religious right trying to run our lives. As an aside, does anybody remember blue laws, or going to the county line to buy beer? Now here in the petro metro you can buy beer on Sunday if you wait until afternoon and in OK you can buy real beer (5%) if you go to the liquor store. But don't go to Planned Parenthood. I've been fighting these a**hats all my life and I guess I'll just have to keep doing it until they put me in the ground.
It's interesting to see the way things are reported. This would be treated very differently if a rogue soldier had just murdered 16 civilians in Syria or Iran. I think there would have been widespread calls for Obama to step down by now and cease his brutal crackdown immediately. If we just change a couple of words here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17336560
Long forgotten, in the US that is, but not in Afghanistan, is that Mullah Omar offered to extradite Bin Laden, provided
the US made a case against him.
Forgotten, is that Omar put Bin Laden under virtual house arrest BEFORE 9/11, in an attempt to control him.
Forgotten, is that Bin Laden was funded and trained by the US, his operatives were Saudi, his issue was US presence
at the holy sites in KSA.
The US invaded Afghanistan for the pipeline route from Turkmenistan through Pakistan to India to send cheap nat gas to
an Enron Power Plant. Because the Taliban wouldn't play ball. This issue was made moot when China built a pipeline from China across Kazachstan to Turkmenistan to siphon the gas, and Iran did likewise. Now, the gas is spoken for.
The whole strategy of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions was control of central asian energy / natural resources and encirclement of Iran to control those resources too.
It is unraveling. Bigtime.
I think the US will be thrown out of Afghanistan within the year, in a manner similar to the exit from nam. I major embarassment that. I think Iran will give ManPADs to the Taliban to make US use of airpower VERY EXPENSIVE, and AT weapons to make US use of armour VERY EXPENSIVE.
Note: Pakistan has kept the border closed. The US is insulting the Russians, soon they will close the Northern Route.
Iran soon will make it VERY clear to Azerbijan, assist the US and be dismembered, NATO or no NATO.
Russia after the olympics will politically topple the govt in Tiblisi. If not sooner.
Ukraine will find itself a paraiah state, not wanted by the EU, wanted by NATO, and manipulated by Russia into a corner.
INDY
Good analysis - nice to see others paying attention. I'm not sure what's going on with AfPak now. The pipeline rout justification is gone, but Obama said he would target Pakistan during his campaign, and he has. Why - what's the target? Simple regional domination or need to control a strategic location?
"It's interesting to see the way things are reported."
_____________________________
On the corporate media:
The representation of the number of people killed has been steadily dropping from 17 to, now, "over a dozen"... which sounds much better.
They have the soldier walking... an odd detail.
They are careful to announce that the soldier went in and "woke up the residents"... an odd detail.
They claim that the allegations are that a lone soldier...
The reporting is that the dead included "a few women and children"
The burning of the bodies is not mentioned or individual immolation is implied.
_____________________________
On the independent news:
The statement of the number of dead remains centered on 17.
The reporting is that many were shot as they slept.
The locals are reported as saying that a group of drunken soldiers was involved.
The dead are accounted as including nine children and three women.
They say the bodies were piled and burned.
_____________________________
One guy would be quite busy, after leaving a highly secured area, serially going from house to house, shooting people without alarming the neighbors, and then hauling and piling bodies while fending-off any intervention before calmly walking back towards the guard-towers at the base... all the while unmolested.
This is all for oil. It does not matter the individual current situations or gains accrued to any one player. The only non-religious reason we are there is for resources.
Blood and Oil: The Middle East in WWII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWIdX4Rm1I
History teaches that many of us here, including me, will be dead before we are told any truth of what happened.
OK, I'll bite; I don't have as big a problem with our presence in Afghanistan as other interventions of the recent past.
I'll start with the stuff you doubtless already know. The Taliban government of Afghanistan, such as it was, allowed Al Quaeda to train freely and sheltered Osama Bin Laden among others. We scattered the Taliban and are trying to establish a stable non-Taliban state.
But it isn't working despite some valiant attempts, mainly because it is rough terrain, far away, and there are a lot of Taliban, many of whom receive support from Pakistan, a country embroiled in literally day-to-day Central Asian realpolitik where they sometimes align with us and sometimes do not ('oh, you meant that Osama Bin Laden').
So we find ourselves (at least it's a multi-national mission...) in a penumbral state of strongly suspecting we haven't done enough but wondering if we have perhaps done all we can, which is corrosive to the motivation of our soldiers on the ground. It's a really tough time for your nephew to show up. He (and a core of others) will have to refocus the military effort on promoting stability of the current government, when many elements are focused on inflicting punishment on the Taliban to cover our ultimate departure. These objectives don't jive, and are probably causing confusion i.e., 'minds not right.'
We missed such an opportunity, after the brilliant route of the Taliban the US should have headed home with a firm promise to the new government that they will come and do the same again if required.
The presence of foreign troops has done nothing but help Taliban recruitment.
notadoomerwellmaybe,
I agree. Also, like your name - might apply to me as well. Anyway, even if the Taliban was wiped out in Afghanistan what's to prevent them from popping up elsewhere - and mad as hornets for having their butts kicked?
Brad
I read an article posted on another website and in it the author more or less said the only way you "win" in Afghanistan is to kill everyone.
Doesn't sound like a good plan to me. I think its time to get out of Dodge. Huge waste of money and resources. Think of the high speed train system we could have built in this country with just the money we stuck into that money pit? Oh well. I like walking.
TRIBAL wars that have been going on for over a millenia seem to be a very bad thing to jump in the middle of.
Nothing seems to bring two (or 3 or 5 or more) sides together better than someone they can all agree they hate.
On top of all this we already know another super power who aleady tried it, spent untold resoures and loss of life and in the end walked away with nothing.
I am waiting for the day a 30 year old U.S. made Stinger missile someone dug up, takes down a U.S. aircraft or helicopter. If it goes public maybe, just maybe the US will walk away.
I am waiting for the day a 30 year old U.S. made Stinger missile someone dug up, takes down a U.S. aircraft or helicopter. If it goes public maybe, just maybe the US will walk away.
Those stinger missiles have special batteries that expired a long time ago. You cannot fire them even if any of them are lying around.
You just made me feel a little better, was not aware of the battery issue. Thank You.
Good thing there are so many OTHER examples of Blow-back then, eh?
I'm sure we'll stop when it's no fun any more.
You might not have to wait long - the 16 dead + Quran burnings may make the land not worth the blood.
I suspect the 16 was some poor miltary shlock who just cracked under the pressure. Sort of a desperate cry that we can't continue this charade (continually recyling the same troops back). I suspect he may see his wish granted in an unanticiaped way.
Perhaps he/they was/were just following orders. If an event in America can plausibly be related to Afghan revenge, then the construction of the corporate police-state can accelerate. Were leaving anyway, so lets rile 'em good.
As someone said about Vietnam many decades ago, perhaps it it time to declare victory and go home.
Yep, what you said, in a sentence, that took me three paragraphs....
It's been posited that one reason the US is there is to be sure certain pipelines get built,,
...but now we have to stick around to be sure that certain pipelines don't. One wonders how much of our Afgan policy is to keep Iran and Pakistan apart. The Empire's relationship with either isn't going so well...
"HOUSTON - The Taliban must have had a ball in this Texas city when they came to visit the control tower of Planet Oil in the late 1990s to negotiate the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP). One can imagine Mullah Omar's finest, in full black-turbaned regalia, at the Houston Galleria."
"Unocal - which had put the CentGas Pipeline Consortium in place - hired Henry Kissinger as a consultant. Unocal also hired two very well-connected Afghans: Zalmay Khalilzad, a Pashtun with a PhD from the University of Chicago and former Paul Wolfowitz aide, and Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar."
We don't have allies, we only have interests.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE18Aa03.html
I also thought this might have something to do with it:
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
Among other things, one interesting tidbit:
And of course, why did the Soviets withdraw?
And China has won the bidding for the first two mineral leases that have been sold, both for large copper deposits. IIRC, in one of those leases, the Chinese bid included building a dam that would provide hydroelectric power for smelting the copper (with excess power to be fed into the Afghan grid), a rail spur to allow the smelted copper to reach a railroad in Pakistan that has access to both China and a seaport, and extensive local improvements (roads, schools, etc).
I doubt that any western countries will ever have a winning bid for these mineral leases. Western companies have to value the minerals in terms of the profits of a single company (or consortium) selling copper in open markets; China values the minerals in terms of jobs for workers in China, and doesn't have to care a whole lot about profits on the minerals themselves.
Ghungh, I saw the same thing in Vietnam that your nephew is seeing in Afghanistan. After a protacted war, many of the troops "don't have their minds right". While I never witnessed anything as atrocious as yesterday's massacre in Afghanistan I saw a number of incidents which were indicative of a breakdown of mental stability. In Vietnam, in additon to being an unwinnable war we were plagued with excessive drug use combined with violent racial conflicts between American servicemembers. Now in Afghanistan, after even more years than the Vietnam conflict, we are in an even less winnable war in a culture that is even more hostile to western ideals. The stress levels our troops are facing is about to reach a tipping point, beyond which only disastrous a outcome can occur.
"While I never witnessed anything as atrocious as yesterday's massacre in Afghanistan I saw a number of incidents which were indicative of a breakdown of mental stability."
I remember a village called "My Lai":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:My_Lai_massacre.jpg
Because, after we wined and dined them on their tour of the US, they rejected the empire's offer to become a client state and allow us to build whatever pipelines we wanted. That would have been cheaper and more advantageous for us than using the military, but no matter. However, we still have been unable to get those pipelines built - probably more due to other issues. Nonetheless, you say no to the dominant empire at your own risk.
It boosted W's approval ratings. It was "revenge" for 911. It struck a blow for continuing to use our huge military, rather than diplomacy. It showed we are still the commanders of the Middle East. But mainly, our economic system is addicted to huge and growing military expenditures, in order to counteract the effects of corporate automation and off-shoring of jobs. War is very good for business, and keeping the Islamicists stirred up is a great sales tactic for doing, and being ready to do, more war. It "justifies" the Pentagon's budgets. "Going after Osama" was a very easy sell in that direction.
The fact that military power is a very poor way of trying to destroy native political movements is actually another strong point, from the perspective of boosting the Pentagon and capitalism. If invasions actually worked well against indigenous movements, they would never devour the amount of resources they do. A hopeless slog is much better for the Pentagon budget than a quick, clean war.
The Taliban actually offered to help hunt for Bin Laden, before we invaded, btw.
You're not naive enough to believe this "offer" was genuine, do you? The Taliban --then and now-- is an extremist group trying to impose a very anti-Western and anti-democratic way of life on the Afghan people, and is particularly hostile to any notion of "civil rights" for women or non Muslims. I was against the Iraq War to the extent of participating in protests and political campaigns for anti-war candidates, something that put my own job at risk (my manager at the time was very pro-invasion). Yet even a liberal such as I was very much in favor of overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was not simple "revenge" for 9-11, it was truly *justified* by the former Taliban government providing real aid and comfort to actual bona fide terrorists, not to mention brutal treatment of their own citizens and utter contempt for human rights.
Now... is our *continued* military presence today in Afghanistan doing any good for anyone but military contractors and PR for Islamic terror groups? That's a very good question, and I'm as skeptical as the next guy. However, I have no moral qualms about using American military might to overthrow a brutal, authoritarian regime like the Taliban. Good riddance.
If you think we went there because we care in any way about what they were doing to their own people - or any of the reasons you listed - you are naive in the extreme. We are perfectly happy to cozy up to brutal, authoritarian regimes like the Taliban all over the world, and do, as long as it benefits us. It isn't about personal revenge or emotions, and the corruption of the MIC is only gravy - it is simply how we keep the 5% getting the 30%. It's what makes our world work, and when it stops so does our world. It's what you see when you peek around to the back side of the American Dream.
Yes, I understand how realpolitik works and the fact that the Bush Administration's motives for invading either country were far from pure. Even so, I'm glad the Taliban were overthrown, even though it was primarily accomplished by the U.S. military vs. a popular rebellion. In this particular case, the end result was a net positive regardless of the political motives of our MIC overlords. However, I freely concede that Afghanistan remaining free of the Taliban grip remains to be seen, and our continued military presence does not seem to be helping.
I sometimes despair if anybody here understands real politics. When I was taught politics my old professor said that when you learnt politics you studied where power lay in a society when you practised it you tried to control that power.Unfortunately the clowns in your government are idealistic and want to direct that power. I once read I don't know where that if you see two fish fighting in the Tigris there is an Englishman behind it. Why the Tigris it doesn't matter it could just as well have been the Ganges or the Nile. It is very simple when they are fighting among themselves they are not fighting you. This simple strategy allowed the Brits to control 25% of the worlds surface with an army not much bigger than Yugoslavia had. Afghanistan is tribal it would have been easy.I suppose there is nothing wrong with idealism, apart from the fact that it has cost you billions countless and soldiers lives, I despair.
@ym,
Look, to be clear, I did not at the time (and still do not) support the invasion of Iraq, or the false pretenses on which it was sold to the public. While the evidence has certainly fallen on the side of "bad idea" for Iraq, I'm not at all sure that was true for Afghanistan --at least not in terms of driving the murderous Taliban out of power. You have to understand that U.S. public opinion effectively *demanded* a military response to the perpetrators of 9-11. It would not have mattered if a right-wing Republican, centrist Democrat, or a bloody socialist (fat chance there) were in office at the time. Given the destruction and slaughter on U.S. soil, that President basically had to to hit Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. Revenge? Perhaps so, but also justified and well deserved IMO.
As others have pointed out, invading Afghanistan was never controversial domestically, and even had broad international support. Where the Bush Administration really went off the rails (and lost most of its international support) was in diverting the bulk of the war effort from overthrowing the Taliban and capturing/killing Bin Laden to invading Iraq.
Now, sadly, it's almost impossible to discuss the two wars/occupations separately, and people tend to conflate support for or opposition to one with the other.
Great Britain never had a presence in, and never wanted control of, Afghanistan, right? Tell us again how well that worked out for the Brits.
Tell us again how "the sun never sets on the British Empire". If the strategy is so simple, why did the British Empire cease to exist?
Indeed, the Brits were one of the earlier participants in Afghan politics all those years ago, and the Afghans take pride in a good 'home wins' record against foreign interests, us included.
Why did the Empire cease to exist? Now there is a big subject! As a country we went broke and it was clear from an early stage that we would never be able to maintain the status quo in all those countries. Better, in our eyes, to exit and attempt to leave some structures of democracy behind. Interestingly 'the Commonwealth' continues to exist as a community of former countries of the Empire - and it is easy to find plenty of arguments for and against its continued existence.
The empire ceased to exist because we fought every day (give or take a few days here and there at the start) of both world wars. We used every drop we had to fight tyranny and evil in WW2 and we traded our wealth and our empire to keep the fight going from mid 1940 until Operation Barbarossa in mid 1941 . . . and then Pearl Harbour of course and our cousins joined the fight. It was a high price but worth every penny!
What is the USA going to trade its empire for? That's a big, big question! Or is it currently trading it for the last days of the oil age right now?
I wonder what those residents of Hamburg and Dresden thought of your attempts at "fighting tyranny"?
The bombing campaigns of WW2 were simply atrocities, on both (every) sides. The post war analysis of the effectiveness of the bombing of Germany concluded they were a waste of energy and resources. Albert Speer, the German Minister of Armaments during the war said the same in his memoir. My view has been that the bombing was done because it could be done.
On a more conspiritorial note I've thought that perhaps Churchill used the bombing campaign as a way to pretend to be involved while letting the Communists and Fascists destroy each other.
Such things happen in every war. One way or another. That is why war shallnot be undertaken lightly.
Yes, indeed, our history is written in blood and our freedoms that we enjoy today were hard fought and many suffered. The list is long . . .
It wasn't just the Brits that bombed Dresden that February. The "Mighty Eighth" also dropped a lot of ordnance on Dresden.
I had the pleasure of seeing a B17 flying last year at a display - beautiful plane. Brave the boys that flew them . . . I thanked them all in my head that day for their efforts.
Seems like the root of this whole site again. Studying the movement of power, the path it's on. I think these things are ongoing and universal (War and Politics).. but they also, like the rest of nature, are only constant in their constancy of change.
"Neither you, Simon, nor the Fifty Thousand, nor the Romans nor the Jews... nor Judas, nor the twelve nor the Priests nor the Scribes, nor doomed Jerusalem itself - understand what Power is, under stand what Glory is.. understand at all." Jesus Christ Superstar
reagan with "freedom fighters" (when did one stop calling them that):
http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/08/18/questions-about-the-taliban-strug...
rumsfeld with his friend saddam:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
and i'm sure that all that was "truly justified", as always...
I don't get how being in favor of the Taliban's overthrow also puts me in bed with warmongers like Rumsfeld or nun-raping right-wing rebels. I never said there aren't other bad regimes out there that our government routinely backs, or that politicians never make morally questionable alliances. They do all the time. However, some wars are just (regardless of the true motives of the industrial/banking cartels) and some are even necessary. Afghanistan meets the criteria on both counts, and saying so doesn't automatically make one a neo-con.
Over 90% of the American public supported the invasion of Afghanistan in the days leading up to the actual event, including many of the people who now talk about the war like it's a giant government conspiracy and a mistake.
It's trendy now to be against it. But the reality is that an overwhelming majority of Americans approved of the idea. There was consensus on this issue of a strength not really seen in US politics any longer.
Unless they had attacked us how could our war against them have been just? Even if they had, would bombing their civilians have been just? The reality is that life for the average Afgan is much worse now than it was under the Taliban, and I find the rationalizing of that war of aggression to be revolting. If it was your wife or child being blown into goo by bombs and missiles, foreign soldiers knocking down your door, your fields covered with DU dust, would you still feel it was just? Who the heck gave us the right to decide what happens in Afghanistan? Maybe if empires would have left them alone for the last many decades they could have preserved some functioning society and the extremists would not have taken root there. Nonetheless this horribly impoverished country has no means to cause harm to the US, and never did.
I'm beginning to wonder if we aren't living in parallel worlds here. Did or didn't Al Qaeda, mainly operating from its bases in Afghanistan (with full support of the Taliban regime), plan, finance and direct the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that took place on September 11th, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 Americans?
I'll be the first to admit that the issue is not black-and-white, that the U.S. had armed and trained the Mujahadeen during the Soviet occupation, played both sides in many ME conflicts (infamously Iran-Contra), and that my country's hands are far from clean. Despite all that, we *were* attacked on 9-11, and this attack all but demanded a military response.
How many of the 9-11 attackers were Saudi? Where did they get their flight training? How did they get into the U.S? The fact that the barely functional Taliban government of Afghanistan didn't maintain a police state interested in or capable of regulating what folks got up to with their AK's in the countryside, is hardly an indictment, given that the U.S. and Germany were also central locations in the training, planning, and financing of Al Qaeda. The U.S. abandoned Afghanistan (with a bunch of U.S. funded and equipped warlords running around and all of the infrastructure in tatters) after spending billions keeping a grinding war of attrition from ending between 79-89. We used them as our proxy army against the Soviets and they paid a heavy price. Because of the eventual outcome of that war, they were one of the few Muslim parts of the world where public opinion was on the side of America, before we invaded them and subjected them to yet another decade of armed conflict.
Al Qaeda, mainly operating from its --cells in Florida, Minnesota and a few other states-- plan, finance and direct the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
Fixed that for you.
So why not go in and bomb Florida and the other good states that coddled these criminals? It would have made about as much sense.
Al Qaeda operatives RE: 9/11 operated out of Hamburg, were mostly Saudis. Connections have been made with Saudi government:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/12/headlines/former_senator_calls_on_...
How many other operatives were involved is unknown but none of the nineteen identified were able to fly an airliner or operate the flight control computers (from flight instructors).
It is impossible to say with any certainty what exactly took place on 9/11 but the likelihood is at least one intelligence service was involved. The question is whether it was Saudi, Israeli, Pakistani, US or all of the above?
Another unexplored issue is whether Syrian/Iranian assets were involved. Aircraft hijackings were specialties of groups associated with PFLP/Hezbollah and other groups in Damascus.
It is also likely that the Taliban had nothing to do with the attacks and did not find out about them until they were widely reported in the media.
Already bombed to ruins a few decades ago, maybe the immigrants did not hear about it and learned the lesson.
Yes, a parallel universe of propaganda and marketing. I don't know what happened on 9/11 and neither do you, I only know I'm not naive enough to buy the obvious absurdities that were trotted out as the official story, and that it has little to do with why the US is doing what it is doing around the world anyway (other than as an excuse). How does blowing up wedding parties in Afghanistan or or killing families in their homes in the night really keep us safe from the attacks of the poorest people in the world? How are these poor people who were barely able to survive at the time (and are now worse off) responsible, and how is a "military response" useful? Did we take out their air force so they can't hit us again? Did we use laser guided bombs to take out their arsenals of box cutters?
Do people just accept anything the TV tells them? Is there no limit, no matter how obvious and dumb it might be?
"Do people just accept anything the TV tells them? Is there no limit, no matter how obvious and dumb it might be?"
Yes, and yes.
Yes, most people accept anything the TV tells them even though there isn't any sort of standard or requirement for news to be truthful or accurate. I remember reading about a court case where a pair of news reporters were terminated for refusing to do a piece because they believed it to be false. They attempted to sue using a whistle blower law and the court tossed it out because there is no law forbidding false or deceptive news reports. News programs are held to the same standard as reality TV shows, it's self regulated and policed.
I suppose this is good because I would be uncomfortable with some central authority deciding what is true or not true but at the same time it requires a populous who can discern when they are being deceived.
I don't have details but apparently there is a law in Canada preventing the media from lying. Fox news tried to have it overthrown but failed & withdrew their application for a Canadian network.
Even if the story is not true it is still funny.
I still wonder who decides what is 'true'. For example this amusing headline
"Kitimat resident speaks in favour of northern gateway"
Did the Federal government ask CBC to do positive stories, and one of the reporters submitted this as a joke?
Bryan
HARM-
Are they much different from the Saudis? They seem to treat women pretty unfairly in that country.
Agreed, and I would not lose any sleep if that country's corrupt Wahabbi monarchy were overthrown.
Nobody knows how genuine the offer was, because it was never for a single second considered, let alone tested.
Meanwhile, to my eye, it doesn't look like we've actually overthrown the Taliban, unless we remain there forever blocking their return. Heck, given the deteriorating situation, they may make it back even with us still there shooting up their families.
By that standard, the US would be considered a legitimate target for invasion by half the countries in the world.
Scratch below the surface of almost any terrorist group or dictator and you'll find US "aid and comfort."
Yes.
No. This is the broken window fallacy.
That parable of the "broken window" is very interesting. I think that some see defense spending as good for business. Actually fighting a war, however, destroys both accumulated wealth and resources. Part of the problem is that war also may be used to change the relative distribution of resources, as in, fighting a war to capture access to oil and other minerals. Also, war might reduce the population(s) of other countries, which would tend to reduce their level of resource consumption. Since we now live in a world in which industrial production and consumption represents a large fraction of our economic activity, a war might appear to be a benefit to the local economy of the winner, while the overall result is a net negative. Perhaps that is another example of the (fatal?) flaw in the consumer based model which defines the functions of our Western World economic system. In any war, there will be losers and the country which starts the war may not win in the sense that the resources may still remain beyond their grasp, even if they "win" the military conflict.
Upon reading the link about "the Parable of the Broken Window", I noticed a link to another Wiki article describing another economic catch phrase Creative Destruction. More interesting reading for an economic novice...
E. Swanson
If, say, 4% of GDP is defense, then that means 4% less ordinary consumption and investments. This is, all else being equal, obviously bad for our standard of living. Only if that spending prevents someone going to war with us can it be good for business. And then, we could always ask ourself if the marginal spending is justified, i.e. if we cannot draw down our military spending a bit without us being invaded by Iran or Canada. (For simplicity, I say "us" even though I'm not an American.)
As far as I can tell, this has not been done in inter-state conflicts since Saddam invaded Kuwait. I'd say it's a thing of the past. And that's, arguably, a very tangible result of Pax Americana! However, resource access may still be a significant element in intra-state conflicts in Africa.
I would guess the net will be a long-term increase in population, since wars makes societies regress a bit, also to higher total fertility levels. But I'm not sure.
I think only a very limited intervention, such as the Libyan one, has any hope of being an economical winner. (Libya's economy might improve since they've lost some shackles, and that will benefit the overall world economy since we are all connected nowadays.)
Absolutely. That's a very important concept.
If, say, 4% of GDP is defense, then that means 4% less ordinary consumption and investments. This is, all else being equal, obviously bad for our standard of living.
That would only be true in an economy that was fully utilizing all its available labor and productive capacity. Ours is not close to being such an economy. In fact, left to its own devices, the private sector moves farther and farther from full employment, as it automates and off-shores jobs. Hence, war is good for business under the conditions that actually prevail.
This is Keynes 101, very simple stuff. It's a bit shocking some TODers don't seem to have encountered the idea, let alone understood the plain and obvious facts of the matter. If the Pentagon were bad for the private economy, it would be tiny, if it existed at all.
No, it's true in any economy: "However, mainstream economic discussions of full employment since the 1970s suggest that attempts to reduce the level of unemployment below the natural rate of unemployment will fail, resulting only in less output and more inflation.
This is also wrong. There may be some hysteresis involved when jobs are off-shored and people need to adjust to new lines of work, but the long-term NAIRU does not move. And that's precisely what we've been witnessing over the last couple of decades: the private sector can and will absorb people into new jobs. It's simply a matter of letting supply meet demand at a correct price.
This is nonsense. If we have a 4% natural unemployment and a war is waged with resources from 1% of the population, the resulting long-term unemployment is still 4% and not 3%. And even if this weren't so, the war is destructive and the more common ways of introducing government jobs are at least somewhat constructive (infrastructure projects and so on). There is also education, health. (They can't lower the long-term unemployment either, but they actually try to accomplish something of value.)
Yes, and it was refuted by real-world statistics in the 1970-ies, and new theories emerged due to that.
Obviously, at least 40 years has passed since you learned economy. I think it's very encouraging and enriching that even the very old participate here on TOD, but it would save us time if you used some of your time in retirement to glance at modern theory. You could also try to follow the Nobel prizes to keep up. Edmund Phelps, for instance, won the prize in 2006 for his work in this area.
He's right. Can you show how it's wrong? Industry continuously moves towards automation and lower cost labor. The economy must grow and find new areas to accommodate the laid off labor, that's why growth is so important. This has been debated endlessly here on TOD.
It's wrong precisely since the private sector finds these new areas to accommodate the laid off labor. Btw, manufacturing is now merely 10% of employment, so there is not much of a downside here. The transformation to a service economy is all but complete, and the percentage of employed to population has not taken a hit, overall. What more do you need?
That's exactly where the downside is. Manufacturing is now extremely concentrated, we are more vulnerable to supply chain disruptions than any other time in history. And large scale manufacturing depends not just on energy but access to capital. This makes it extremely vulnerable to any bank run.
And if you think services are not vulnerable to automation think again, think postal employees, milk vendors, supermarket delivery system etc. Even cab drivers are not safe now, when auto assist cars hit the streets they will have to look for jobs elsewhere.
What are you talking about? The employed to population ratio is now at early 1980's levels (precisely when outsourcing began). A service economy does not work for long.
Very small downside, then.
Can this be shown by some statistics of disruptions and their consequences?
The market has always coped, which your graph show. There is an unlimited number of worthwhile tasks and therefore an unlimited number of potential jobs. This means everybody can be employed if labor supply is allowed to meet labor demand at correct price points (wages). That we have a bit of unemployment is due to market inertia (transients), regulations and such.
So, at the employment minimum of a freak recession, we are still not worse off than when outsourcing began. This, if anything, should give rise to a a hypothesis that outsourcing is beneficial for employment. Don't you agree?
Tsunami in Japan (shortage of auto parts), floods in Thailand (hard drive prices skyrocketing), China ban on rare earth metals (chips becoming costlier) crop failure in Russia (wheat prices soaring) I can give more examples if you need. Market economies drive efficiency forcing producers to specialize at the cost of resilience. Sort of like the assembly line and with the same problems, if someone stops whole line stops.
It's backed up by math as well, in a chaotic system when you have lesser number of independent variables the extremes become more pronounced. If you don't have a problem with that fine, I can't argue about it but you can't say that there's no problem.
There are an unlimited number of worthwhile tasks?? Is that so, how many of them make economic sense? I guess I could take an axe and go to the forest and chop some wood but wouldn't get paid for it eh. If there were an unlimited number of tasks we would never have unemployment.
What makes you think it was a freak recession? The causes of this have been well analyzed for over four years now and yet you claim this was out of the blue. How long can an economy grow on debt when the underlying resource base dries up? Not for long. I really don't want to argue about the debt based economy and how it depends on infinite growth for it's survival since that topic has been done to death. You should know better about it though being on TOD.
Yea outsourcing is beneficial for employment but only for blokes like me living in a developing country, I guess it ain't so beneficial for the guys who got laid off. Again this is a subjective topic, if you think that outsourcing makes the world a better place by letting wealth flow from west to east I have nothing to argue about. But you must realize that this process won't stop till wages equalize across the globe.
Yes, those are examples of disruptions. But I was thinking about statistics that this has become worse over time.
But isn't that good then? I mean, if auto parts, hard drives, rare earth metals and wheat prices spike once in while, then some actors can speculate in that and build stocks or diversify capacity, and then cash in when the spikes occur. And to the extent they do not do that, we can also assume that the consumer is better off by the occasional spike than an overall higher price due to increased resilience.
Precisely as many as is required to employ all the seeks employment! Yes, I'm simplifying a bit - look at my previous comment for some more complexity and details.
Again, look at my previous comment for reasons we have employment in spite of this. The economy has went through at least two transformations, from agrarian to industrial to service, so more or less the whole economy has been automated twice and all workers being "laid off". But unemployment has always ranged between 0-15%, with the high ends being signified by extreme minimum wages or other stupidity. The market simply makes use of the resources at its disposal, since we've not yet seen any signs of saturation of living standards.
Sorry, me bad English. I simply wanted to say that it was fairly large.
Yes, I've repeatedly refuted that claim (that debt requires infinite growth) here on TOD and nobody has been able to put up a defense.
Actually it is. You may "lose big" when you get laid off, since you may find yourself in a lower paid job, but you win small so many times due to your increased real wage due to globalization providing lower prices on virtually all goods, that the net is positive. Of course you can try to have the cake and eat it, i.e. let everybody else work in a competitive environment but protect your own job by requesting tariffs. But that would lack in solidarity somewhat, wouldn't it.
Trade is inherently win-win, otherwise you don't trade. I agree that we will get a convergence among countries with reasonable economic policies, and that is a boon. We're already seeing some re-shoring to the US from China due to, among other things, rapidly increasing wages in China.
The market has always coped, which your graph show.
"the market" has had many booms/busts. Is that 'coping'?
Is the below quote "coping"?
“In a depression, all assets return to their rightful owners." Andy C.
As far as the "market" is concerned that is coping. The market simply does what it does, it does not value one outcome over the other. No different than blaming gravity because you fell down, its just the way things in our universe (physical or economic) work.
You do realise that unemployment, especially amongst the young is growing in many parts of the world right? In other words, you are precisely wrong, the private sector isn't finding new areas to accommodate the laid off labour. Why is the private sector being so slack in giving these people jobs? Could it be something to do with labour either needing an unutilised resource to have a useful function, or someone with the ability to pay to create the job?
You're so caught up in economic theory based on false assumptions you are missing the very obvious reality right in front of you.
Do you know what all these service economies have in common? They are all drowning in debt, because a service sector economy requires real money to pay for it. First they out grew the ability to be paid for from their own resource base and manufacturing income, then they out grew the ability to be paid for from increasing debt to make up the difference. Now we're finding out what happens when you try and operate a service economy using printed money, rainbows and unicorns.
It's not the private sectors fault that we don't have 100% employment. Government regulation is the problem. First, we need to get rid of minimum wage laws as a lot of useful work just isn't worth that much money. Next, we need to get rid of the social safety net, things like unemployment insurance and welfare as these just encourage people to be lazy. And finally, we need to resurrect Charles Dickens to write novels about our wonderful society!
On a more serious note, I think we have to rethink free trade and outsourcing. Economic theory tells us that free trade makes both parties wealthier and I fully agree with that. However, the problem is that the benefits of free trade are not evenly distributed. It's great if you have a well paid job but it is a net loss if you lost a well paid job and were forced into a much less lucrative career. Free trade has provided a huge benefit to workers in Asia but we have to acknowledge that this has been achieved at the expense of millions of workers in the developed countries. This also has a greater impact on young people who in many cases are being offered lower salaries and poorer pensions than older workers who have "grandfathered" salaries and benefits.
It's not the private sectors fault that we don't have 100% employment. Government regulation is the problem.
While government regulation is a problem, uneven enforcement is more of an issue.
It saddens me a bit when people are correct only when being sarcastic.
How do we know which is which?
Let me grant for the sake of the argument, that free(er) trade is a positive sum game, i.e. make trade free-er and the global economy is better off. A stronger form of that would have both national entities better off. But even in the weaker form, one could impose some sort of benefit redistribution to insure that all parties come out of the deal at least even. But, that requires have some entity like government to do the redistribution.
In some sense the transfer from rich country workers to poorer country workers is almost impossible to stop. Increasing globalization tends to level out the diferences (accounting for productivity variation). So trade barriers are really just a stopgap measure.
Especially among young, yes. Why, do you think? Could it be that demand curves really do slope downward?
Humans are golden. Very versatile creatures indeed. It would actually be more reasonable to say you can't sell all your stock of gold (at any price) than to say you can't sell your stock of human labor. "The ability to pay", or being allowed to pay (the market wage)?
The ability here to blame everything and his grandmother on debt never sieze to amaze me.
The ability to think debt/resource constraints/unfettered capitalism is irrelevant among some people never ceases to amaze me.
Do you understand the concept of a race to the bottom? You might get full employment once people are so desperate to work they will do so for a roof over their head and a bowl of gruel, but that is hardly maximising societal welfare, so what do you make your policy objective?
The thing about some of the free marketeers, is you like to point at people with cheap things bought from people working in sweatshops in third world countries, using debt that can never be be repaid outside of a default or massive inflation, and hold it as a glowing success for globalism and growth and everyone being happy for ever and ever amen. A couple of years ago you could point to people in Greece, say look at their big TVs, and low unemployment. There is no way this debt they are taking on to buy these things could possibly be a bad idea. You could do the same in the other PIIGS. You can say the same thing about the UK and the USA right now, but for some reason you don't see the writing on the wall pretty much everyone else on this website sees. It's bewildering.
I know all the free market arguments because I used to believe them until I actually had a look around the real world, realised infinite substitutability doesn't exist along with many other myths required to hold the models together.
Yes, of course. Kind of a prisoners' dilemma thing in regulatory competition. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work very well or rapidly.
Cutting regulation, taxes, minimum wage laws and public spending means people will be better off, having better access to goods and services and won't have to take as much deadweight losses. I don't what desperation has to do with it. Isn't it self-evident that you should support yourself if you're able?
How large a proportion of US citizens have debt that they can never repay? Yes, globalization is a glowing success.
I think there's yet a higher level of understanding out there for you, but I doubt you'll let it inside your brain.
These tired old memes just will not die, even for someone on The Oil Drum.
Let me create an example for you to demonstrate:
2 people live on an island. The world is essentially one big island, just with more people and a bigger resource base, so the illustration works well. 1 of the people owns everything. He owns the land, he owns machinery and he is completely self sustaining. The other person owns nothing. No land, no food, no water and has a mountain of debt due to borrowing to maintain his recent subsistence, but will soon die due to this lack of resources. He can't create himself a job in manufacturing since he has no resources. His only option is to hope person 1 employs him in the service sector, perhaps as a jester. The massive asymmetry in bargaining power means he will accept a wage equal to the cost of his cardboard box, the interest on his loans and a poor diet. He's essentially a debt slave. Brilliant.
What does this show us? It shows us that jobs require either a resource, or someone willing and able to pay for a service. And if they decide they no longer want your service, probably because there are a finite number of hours to enjoy services, and rapidly growing wealth inequality means more and more people pandering to fewer and fewer, well sucks to be you.
Are you going to try and tell me the average societal welfare is maximised in the above picture with no regulation, no taxes, no public spending and no minimum wage?
You really need to stop believing in infinite economic growth and infinite resources on a finite planet. Real world resource constraints are a fact, that's kind of the point of this website.
You mentioned gauging your replies based on the knowledge you assume people have, so could you answer a couple of final things for me? What do you see is the point of GDP growth, and is it your favoured goal?
Well, you constructed a scenario with a mean god and a human that depends on him for everything. Of course that won't be very nice. What this has to do with the real world, however, I fail to see. The very basis of our society is plurality, competition, and, actually, people helping each other without being forced to.
Who says I do? I'm just saying limits to growth are quite far off.
GDP growth is an essential part of a positive spiral of improved health, education, standards of living, less conflicts, more democracy and so on. This all means less suffering and more happiness. I'm not sure I have a specific goal, though, as I prefer people to have their own goals and be allowed to pursue them. I'm a libertarian both because I think its results are the best and because I think it's right. I'm not sure which has greater weight - but probably the utilitarian aspect.
I conducted a scenario that plays out in the real world when you remove all regulation, and let those controlling a resource, through use of asymmetrical bargaining power, increase their wealth at the expense of everyone else. Antitrust laws were created for a reason. To be honest, I don't see Goldman Sachs helping everyone else without being forced to. Unemployment is increasing because of resource constraints, and the remaining resources being controlled by a shrinking group of people. Either the wealthy/resource controllers employ everyone else, or people remain unemployed, and it seems the wealthy now have enough jesters.
If the wealthy/resource controllers then refuse to employ those people, as is happening since we see unemployment increasing, either we let them starve or we have to tax the wealthy to redistribute. This will lead to less suffering and more happiness. Don't get me wrong - I would rather resources were more equitably distributed so taxation wasn't required - but that would involve some kind of progressive wealth or asset tax and distribution policy.
Let's assume, for the time being, that we need anti-trust laws. There are other laws (many of them pro-trust) that we should remove before we need to think about whether to remove anti-trust-laws. (I'm not that interested in debating which extremes are possible, really.)
Strange. GS is a service company, AFAIK. It's their business to help.
No, that's not why unemployment is increasing. And your other statement requires proof.
Many a wealthy capitalist is at the mercy of teen whims and culture. Only those capitalists who manage to fulfill the desires of other consumers and businesses better than others can keep their positions. This means we are jesters to ourselves. Capitalists are just cogs in the machinery. Shiny cogs with a relatively important function, but still cogs. Their most important function may be to keep their companies rational, and, for instance, refuse to provide jobs as welfare.
Or we remove obstacles to employment, such as minimum wage laws, licensing requirements and so on, and leave whatever remains of real needs to private insurance and charity.
I think not. There are big problems with locking people out of the labor market and paying them trinkets to do nothing.
Yes because cutting regulations worked so brilliantly in case of the housing bubble isn't it. This regulation meme never dies jeez. I agree that there are too many laws but some regulations are just downright necessary. And you want to remove minimum wage laws, well good luck with that, let's bring back slavery as well while we are at it. Perhaps some of you 'let's remove minimum wage laws' guys need to come down to India and see the manual laborers who compete in a market with no minimum wages and an excess supply of labor. I challenge you to demand a better/higher wage based on your competency. Two weeks in this hell should give you a taste of reality.
The whole gist of the regulation versus libertarian approach is that coercive activity is bad. Libertarians assert that coercion from government is unmitigatedly bad, whilst coercion coming from the owners of capital is benign (or can simply be ignored). The reality as seen by the majority, who don't own enough capital to live off of, is that it requires some collective form of coercion, in the form of government, to keep in check coercion by wealthy individuals and organisations. All coercion is counter to freedom, but we can't eliminate it, we have to play the government form off against the non-governmental forms in order to minimze it.
Unfortunately, thanks to never before seen levels of wealth inequality, right now we have the worst of both worlds. Regulatory capture means in many cases the government is active in coercion on behalf of the owners of capital, and trying to intertwine religion with it too! Unions are another option for trying to keep the capital owners in check, however they have been very effectively neutered.
Note, with all of the above, it is not owning capital, nor religion, nor unions or even government that is the underlying problem. It is the consolidation of power that is then used to reduce societal well being.
You make bold assertions concerning how the economy works, and back them up with you being the 99% and as such you know these things? Color me not very impressed.
I'm happy with that. Let's start with what we agree on. Removing some unnecessary stuff and streamlining.
India has minimum wages, but as I have understood it, most people work in the informal sector, and likely some of those would work in the formal sector if it weren't for minimum wages. The informal sector, to some extent, work as a safety valve.
Why is there excess supply of labor? India is a shining example of bad, protectionist socialist policies. India has been politically free for more than twice the time that has passed since China abandoned hard-line communist policies and started to grow. Yet, China is now far ahead.
Except if you corrected for inflation those minimum wages have been falling, not rising. B
[Ok, its a ten year span, maybe inflation has only been 30% or so] But correlation does not mean causation. That requires a much greater amount of analysis. Do note that when Henry Ford started mass producing cars, he paid a high enough wage (and cheap enough product), so that his workers could afford his product. Otherwise his market would have been too small.
In times like the present where capital has the advantage, with some regulation and enforcement, wages would soon be driven to subsistence levels. That (g)libertarian paradise, also isn't stable. Millions of desperate peasants with nothing to lose will become a violent revolutionary force.
The actual period of rising minimum wages (41%) is only 3-4 years in the graph, with perhaps 3% inflation in total.
Oh, come on! Anyone who believes that the labor market is a market influenced by the law of supply and demand should agree that it is particularly stupid - or evil - to raise the minimum wages during a deep recession.
This is myth. Or rather, I have no idea if Ford have said that and/or tried to act like that, but regardless the strategy simply doesn't work. If you pay a worker "extra" (out of you pocket or profits) only a small part of that money will return as new profits, even if he buys a car for all of it, which he won't. I.e. a net loss. Big time loss.
No, that's not true. (Even if we add the missing negation.) Wages would stay at healthy levels. It's no different from, say, different foods in a supermarket. Different foods have different prices according to the laws of supply and demand.
Jeppen! You're pulling your minimum wage numbers straight from the U.S. Department of Labor! It's not even adjusted for inflation!
A dollar in 2012 is worth roughly .78 of what a dollar in 2002 was worth, just using junk internet calculators based on the Consumer Price Index...
http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm
Anyway, even if your chart wasn't junk, you still wouldn't have proved that minimum wage has anything to do with unemployment, at least on the scale we're seeing now, or will be seeing shortly. Correlation does not prove causality.
There are trucks, tankers, and aircraft carriers driving through them the holes in your arguments. It's exhausting just listing them; there's one between almost every paragraph in most of your posts in this thread.
You seem like a really smart guy; I can't understand how you can be so blind to really basic errors in reasoning.
My chart was an example of a quite well-known fact - that minimum wage requirements and other labor regulation keeps the the lowest market value labor off-market. That's why the graph showed teen excess unemployment. That minimum wages has got something to do with unemployment is quite obvious. That it's not a complete explanation is also obvious.
I am smart, also, I'm the most humble person here! No, jokes aside, if there seems to be basic errors in my reasoning, it's probably because I don't explain thoroughly enough. This is since I'm not sure what knowledge gaps the readers have, and I don't have time to cover all bases, so I wait for indications on gaps before I fill them. I do know what I'm talking about on a fairly deep level, and virtually all objections I've seen here I've seen before. Actually, they're a smorgasbord of common misconceptions on economy. If I were to google it, someone probably have compiled them into a nice list.
Real(adjusted for inflation) wages have been declining since the end of 60's. Go to Bureau of Labor Statistics and see the numbers yourself.
You might want to take a look at WHERE increases in youth unemployment occurred, and what the STATE minimum wages in those states were before the increases in the federal minimum. You might be surprised. MOST of the population lives in areas that were completely unaffected by one or more of the increases. Oh, I'm confident the graph isn't from BLS, although the employment data is. Did you create the graph yourself???
This data should help your analysis.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/stateMinWageHis.htm
For once I agree with jeppen!
http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/
Bastiat? Really?
That "parable" only applies in a situation of full employment and capacity utilization. Neither prevail, and would not be tolerated, even if the system moved in that direction, which it does not.
In a situation where the private sector leaves large shares of labor and productive capacity idle, anything the state does to use some of the otherwise idle workers and factories is unadulteratedly good for business, if not, as with war, good for the human race.
As Keynes said, the state could hire half the unemployed to bury bottles in the woods and the other half to go find them. The point is that over time big businesses use fewer and fewer workers to produce the same quantity of output. Hence, the need for things like military spending.
The obvious proof of this point is World War II, which blew away the Great Depression. If Bastiat's parable were right, why didn't everybody starve to death then?
My lord, do you think these shenanigans are really done with the welfare of workers in mind.
MIC hoses hundreds of dollars into a few very influential pockets.
That's way we will continue to have wars for as long as there is a MIC to reap mountains of wealth from it.
Where did I say it was for the benefit of the workers? I said it benefits business, which means shareholders.
Meanwhile, it is you who are simply wrong. Closing down the Pentagon, in your worldview, would lead the private sector to swoop in and replace the demand with private investment. That's preposterous. Closing down the Pentagon without spending the money on something else would cause another Great Depression. Why do you think even Republicans never actually shrink government? They know they can't.
The problem is that the business overclass will not tolerate spending Pentagon-sized dollars on things that help poor people or compete with private-sector products. Hence, the army is one of the only outlets for the needed waste.
You really, really, need to read some economics. Google "crowding out" or something.
Crowding out doesn't happen when unemployment is high. The prescriptions for what work vary depending upon the state of the system.
And of course one could cut defense. If one counterbalances the lost stimulation by some combination of tax cuts, and other sorts of spending increases. What matters for stimulation (to zeroth order), is the size of the deficit.
It does, but perhaps not as much when cyclical unemployment is high, as otherwise, no. (Also, again, timing is difficult.) But the argument here seemed to be that even over cycles, we can't cut Pentagon. That's obviously false, and we seem to agree on that.
Again, you're simply wrong.
That something happened at the same time as something else once upon a time is NOT proof of causality.
Broken window fallacy.
you don't create value by destroying assets. You decrease your stock and therefore have to increase your flow to get the stock back where it was. Stock is asset value - a number we don't really look at on an aggregate level - and flow is GDP.
If destruction creates value I suggest you destroy your PC, ram your car into a wall and burn down your house. You will become very wealthy!
Rgds
WeekendPeak
You do create new business opportunities by destroying assets. Have you heard of Joseph Schumpeter? Your problem is that you can't think your way out of the micro level. There is a big difference between what works for individuals and what works in the macro economy. Again, this is 101-level reality here. The people who run the country know it all full well.
Are TOD people really this ignorant about economics? What happened here? Quite shocking.
Yes, it's 101-level, and you don't get it. It's getting embarrassing.
Ok then. what do you think would happen if everybody in the country goes home, destroys their computer, car, businesses, machines, trains, planes and research labs. Or, to speed things up a bit let's use the remaining nuclear bombs are do a bit of old fashioned carpet bombing, nuclear style. That should create a tremendous amount of value!
The reason why WWII lifted the US out of a recession/depression is because the production capacity in the ROW had been pretty much destroyed, but, because of the geograpical location of the US it escaped with virtually no harm done and all the productive capacity was still in tact. The ROW had virtually no choice but to buy their goods from the US - it was the only game in town. Add to that the Mashall plan where the US lent money on the condition that it was spent in the US and you had the ingredients for a multi-decade boom. And, obviously, most resources were not materially contraint yet from the supply side.
You may actually want to read Schumpeter's book as well as the work of Marx and Engels on which he his notion of creative destruction is based. What Schumpeter actually said (as did Marx and Engels) is that innovations can destroy existing industries because the new innovation is better. He does not say that destroying productive capacity, or existing goods meant for consumption somehow cause new, better production capacity to appear.
Yes, I have a number of Schumpter's books (and many other works on economics) and have actually read and understood them.
May I recommend that you, Michael, do the same.
Rgds
WeekendPeak
Rgds
WP
And do not forget all that sweet, sweet Texas Tea. Black Gold.
The war time oil production post war was a $2 a barrel stimulant.
WW2, did create a lot of efective savings (at least in the US). True a lot of the "goods" manufactured were blown up or sunk. But OTOH, people were forced to work hard, and couldn't buy much -for instance NO private automobiles were manufactured at all! It did effectively force full employment, by government edict. Don't worry about the deficits, just do your defense job, or join the army. There was just about a guaranteed market for those war materials, so industry wouldn't hold back for fear of overproduction.
There was less consumer consumption but government consumption (buying things to shoot with) went up dramatically. Although one can argue that one way of consuming (making tanks and such) are additive in the longer run (because they allow consumer consumption to resume at some point) is up for debate, what is less up for debate is that both government consumption as well as civilian consumption do not add to the productive capacity of a country. It does make for full employment though - and it actually was somewhat of a turning point of how women were viewed in the labor force. Pre WWII if a woman worked is was frequently socially viewed as a negative - if she were "normal" she'd be married, a homemaker while hubby was working. During WWII there was a shortage of labor and women were actively encouraged to enter the workforce and the stigma for a married woman to work was diminished significantly.
IMHO that is a good thing. Ovaries or testicles should not determine where you are in life from an employment point of view.
Rgds
WeekendPeak
All of the war spending wasn't directly on expendibles. We also built up immense productive capabilities in the form of factories, mines, scientific and engineering knowledge, and yes we made the employment of the female part of the workforce socially acceptable. Much of this added capability was turned to the civilian economy postwar.
Japan did this for 20+ years after their crash. They ran their national debt from ~50% of GDP to ~225%. Their economy never recovered.
But hey, religion isn't about facts, is it?
Japan did not do that. Not even close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unemployment_Rate_of_Japan_1953-2009.jpg
You might spare me the religion barbs, since it is you who is wildly uninformed.
Sorry to have to tell you this, but the chart supports his view, not yours. Debt goes up by four and half times (I notice you don't dispute that figure, nor should you), and unemployment does not go down (by your own graph). Keynes says that massive government spending will decrease unemployment. Didn't happen.
The Keynesian solution failed in Japan, and in the US as well. Apparently it does not work in a debt collapse, although it does seem work in the more common inventory mismatch recession. Those are a lot more common, and therefore easier to study. Debt collapses are much rarer. 1873, 1930, 2008; quite an interval between them.
Krugman wrote an article in his blog a few months ago that basically said the stimulus failed because it was too small. It should have been 4 times bigger, or about 3.2 trillion dollars. This is about $28,000 per household. This would have stimulated spending for sure!
Or would it? If the $400,000 McMansion is now worth $300,000, would throwing $30,000 into the short fall have made a difference? Especially since $300,000 was only a way-station to $200,000.
(Mish) Shedlock said at the beginning of this that Krugman would call for massive stimulus, and when it failed (and it would fail), that Krugman would claim it failed because it was too small. That call was dead on.
This doesn't imply that debt creation (in the Keynesian sense) doesn't reduce the amount of unemployement over what it would be otherwise. Financially induced collapses are quite bad, leading to a long period of depression without strong intervention. If all that intervention only keeps things to a recession, i.e. it doesn't restore things to the post-crash trajectory, that doesn't mean Keynsianism doesn't work, it means it can't restore the old economy. But, that old economy collapsed because it was non sustainable. An analogy would be rejecting the use of a parachute when jumping out of an airplane. The chute will not carry you back into the airplane, therefore it is useless!
War is not good for the economy. If it were, we could just build a bunch of weapons, ships, planes, etc., and sink them in the ocean.
The reason WWII was so good for the US economy is that we sold supplies to all sides until we got involved. Then after the war, our infrastructure was intact, while much of Europe's was not. So we became the manufacturer to the world. (Having lots of natural resources helped.)
Another way in which WWII differed from recent wars is that the civilian population had to make sacrifices. Production of many civilian goods such as automobiles was stopped for the duration of the war so that assembly lines could be retooled for production of military equipment. Gasoline, tires and food were rationed. People were encouraged to save money by buying war bonds.
Nowadays governments want to fight wars without asking the civilian population to sacrifice anything. On the contrary, tax cuts were provided at the same time that major expenditures were being made on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These wars have been financed entirely with borrowed money, much of it borrowed from foreigners.
We were pretty much the odd man out. Most of the destruction was to infrastructure, and civilan assets like houses, and industry, less so the cost of expended weaponry. The US has virtually no destroyed asets, the rest of the world lots and lots of it. And they owed us big time.
To my mind, technological progress had been great since the depression, but the economy was held back by stupid economic policies. Therefore, the potential GDP was much, much higher than actual GDP. US war preparations used that potential to create a productive (in tools of destruction) war-time economy, but consumer demand was still being kept back, as it had been essentially since 1929. Then, after the war, there was great industrial capacity, 16 years of great tech progress that had not really been utilized to satisfy consumers, so 16 years of pent up consumer demand. And a destroyed world trade that could recover. It's no wonder the decades thereafter went well.
That is the EXACT story of Sweden, Leanan.
If war is so good for the US economy, why don't you manufacture thousands of guns and tanks and planes, and toss them over a cliff? Oh, and kill and maim a few thousand of your young men as well.
No need to bother the rest of us.
Since OBL was based in Afghanistan during 9-11, it now is a "political" requirement to occupy the place. If any substantial attack happens, and the opposition can claim its because of the surrender monkets who abandoned AfPak, whomever was in the administration would get tarred with that brush. So it has become politically unthinkable, even while any sober analysis, says we should get it.
Best post on Afghanistan. O must display the cojones.
I think there are three issues here that doesn't require much cynicism. First a moral issue that is also important for the perception of US reliability: Should we really admit defeat and abandon the Afghanis who has worked with us?
Second an issue of costs and expected outcome: If the cost of failure is X billion, the chance of success (if staying to try to set up a stable Afghan government) Y% and the cost of staying is Z billion, then we should stay if X*Y > Z. I.e. if the average savings from staying exceeds the costs of staying.
Of course, there's a third issue that has everything to do with human nature: The sunk cost fallacy.
To secure basic and defendable real estate to allow oil+gas pipelines from Central Asia via Afghanistan through to the Gulf of Oman ... it was ever thus.
Fortunately for the world, America's great and good understand Peak Oil well, and they desperately want to ensure that Joe the Plumber in Podunk Indiana can drive the SUV for the next 50 years. What a kind and friendly government you have!
Taliban? Sounds a good name for a Vitamin E supplement.
Iraq is eyeing 2.25 MBPD oil exports in March, and 2.3 MBPD in April according to an official
http://ransquawk.com/headlines/209322
3Qs: A tankful of reasons for gas price surge
S - "The gas market has always been priced as “last in, first out.” This means gasoline is priced according to the cost of the last barrel of oil purchased. So if crude oil prices rise — even if you have a lot in surplus and in the pipelines — every gallon gets priced at the per-barrel cost you just paid".
This hasn't been my experience but I don't work directly on the retail level either. But when I sell a load of oil that price has nothing to do with what it cost me to produce that oil. Many times I've sold oil/Ng for less than it cost me to develop it. If I drill a marginal well and it ends up costing me $120 for every bbl I produce I can't force buyers to pay me that price if the current market price is.
I see the same dynamic with fuel retailers. A service station isn't going to pay a whole sale distributer more for the fuel then he thinks the public will pay. Granted there's a balance: selling less fuel at a higher price makes him more revenue. But he has to guess where that sweet spot is. If he overestimates how much and at what price the public will pay then he can loses money. Same issue for the whole seller/refiner: if the price they pay for oil is too high to make a profit from the price the retailers are willing to pay then they lose money. They also have to correctly predict that sweet spot between price and volume.
Perhaps I see it too simply but fuel is selling at current prices because the consumers are will to buy enough at that price to generate the margins the retailers/whole sellers/refiners. I folks suddenly started buying a lot less prices would drop because that would be the only way for the sellers to maintain acceptable cash flow: sell more for less. Same dynamic as to why prices have risen so much recently: sell less for more to generate the same acceptable cash flow. Like it or not that's how the free market system is suppose to work IMHO.
I haven't talked to one person yet who says they are willing to keep buying the same amount of fuel they have been for higher prices over concerns about the situation in Iran. They buy the maximum they can justify at current prices IMHO. And that's what appears to set the market price for fuel these days.
My limited reading on the subject suggests that the retail gas stations aren't really playing that kind of optimization game. The pump price appears to simply reflect the maximum of (a) what was paid for the current load of gas and (b) a guess at what will be paid for the next load of gas. When wholesale prices are climbing, or appear likely to climb, the pump price will anticipate those increases; when wholesale prices are falling, the pump price will lag behind those decreases.
Could be mc. OTOH just because a station owner raises his prices doesn't mean he'll sell enough volume to cover his overhead. There have been a few times when I've seen retailers sell for less than they paid. A profit would have been nice but the cash flow was more important. But that's the challenge isn't it: what do you pay for any commodity you play to resell requires you to correctly guess your future income. You might buy $500,000 worth of gasoline you anticipate selling for a price that gets you $600,000 that month. But at your higher price sales go down and you only sell $400,000 worth of fuel. On paper you lost $100,000. Of course you still have that left over inventory to sell next month. And if whole sale and retail prices drop next month? Now you're losing real money...not a paper loss
Forage, corn feed alternative for cattle may come from biodiesel industry
Pretty soon we'll be feeding them used oil filters.
ROFL.
And not long after that, we'll be told to start eating our automobiles.
Eat our automobiles. Too many carbs. Its more like we'll be told to eat our neighbors.
Sorry, I can't resist:
Only old cars have carbs, new ones have fuel injection
Yes. And I'm very comfortable letting Mr. McDonald (Ronald, by any chance?) eat the crap.
And I would be comfortable with this concept only as long as said beef was labelled as being fed with biodiesel byproducts, so that I can be sure to never buy it.
A far simpler solution is to just go back to having the cows eat the grass, as and where it grows. They process this raw feed better than any other animal yet invented.
I think you are missing the basic fact that the glycerin is a normal constituent in the source crop. Whether it be corn, cotton seed, canola, soybeans or some other oil crop that's added to animal feed, the glycerin is going to be part of the diet. So, using the glycerin after it is separated form the fatty acids would not be any different, IMHO. Your stated choice not to consume glycerin fed beef would also be applied to any animal fed any amount of those oil seed crops. Of course, grass fed beef would be a better choice, but that might cost you more in the supermarket...
E. Swanson
The basic fact is that the cattle should not be eating any of those seed grains or oils, they should be eating pasture.
Technically, you are correct that the glycerin should not be any different to that obtained from fatty acids - it all gets converted to glucose, being stored as fat - and, if the cow lives long enough to have a calf, potentially giving it diabetes.
BUt, there is one more complication here - the quality of the glycerin;
Feeding Glycerol to cows has limits
Hmm, potential for feeding cheap, methanol contaminated glycerin to cattle for fast weight gain - can you see the potential for problems?
My choice does indeed apply to any animal products I eat, and that is why I only eat pasture fed, hormone free meat, and (local) free run eggs. Pasture fed beef has the same ratio of Omega 3 to 6 fats as does salmon, grain fed beef has no Omega3's at all. So how beneficial is the "six month grain finishing period? It's just as well we kill the poor feedlot cattle for beef as otherwise they 'd die soon anyway...
Can't say this enough. There has been an immense change in the quality of our food.
You got that right.
Cattle that are meant to eat grass are fed grains that are loaded with antinutrients, resulting in unhealthy cattle and meat that is nutritionally inferior.
The healthy saturated fats of cows and pigs, that were rendered to make tallow and lard, are now devoid of the fat soluble vitamins, and full of artificial hormones and fat soluble medications and pesticides
The cows produce milk that is deficient in many vital enzymes, and those that remain are destroyed by pasteurisation.
Our fruits and vegetables have been progressively bred for two traits - "sweet" and "yield" - super sweet tomatoes, onions, pineapples, apples, you name it. The heirloom varieties taste much more "tart", and are loaded with antioxidants etc, and, of course, less sugar.
We have outsourced much of our food preparation to food processing companies, that use nutrient deficient ingredients, prepare them in ways that do not destroy the antinutrients (e.g. phytates, lectins, soy protein), and then load them up with sugar, wheat products and unhealthy polyunsaturated seed oils that we should never be eating.
Worst of all, the modern wheat varieties are far higher in gluten and lectin proteins - which are both intestinal irritants and addictive. These wheats, and the sheer amount of it we are eating, are causing the skyrocketing rates of celiac disease and gluten intolerance (these are not the same thing), not to mention diabetes, child ADHD and so on - and, of course, the obesity trends.
If you want an eye opening read on just how ubiquitous, and truly bad for your health, wheat is, I highly recommend Wheat Belly, by Dr William Davis - a good review of the book is here;
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/saturated-fat/wheat-belly/
So don't just look for organic stuff, look for (or grow) the heirloom stuff - the old varieties are part of what made our grandparents healthier than we are.
+100
Unless you were using oven dried corn to dewater ethyl alcohol to mix with hydroxide - that glycerine will have methyl alcohol.
Glycerine has economic value - 150F under a vacuum should get you a pure product that can be used for soaps et la.
Nope! The humble grasshopper does a much better job and is much more environmentally benign.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/07-want-to-help-the-environment-eat...
Grasshoppers are not always so environmentally benign.
Grasshopper Plague of 1874
LOL! grasshoppers eating wooden tool handles?! Must be some mighty grasshoppers there. Methinks that's a bit of an exaggeration at the very least. Not to minimize the consequences of a plague of grasshoppers...
But Yeah, imagine the environmental consequences if it was a plague of Bison, or even worse, humans?!
Anyways if those people had harvested and eaten the grasshoppers things might have been very different. Native Americans knew this and there is plenty of documented evidence for them collecting and eating grasshoppers.
To say that a plague of anything, is less than environmentally benign kinda misses the point.
The Rocky Mountain Locusts probably wiped out half the grain crop of the United States in 1875, and did quite a lot to reduce the Bison population as well. It followed on the heels of a severe drought, and droughts encourage grasshoppers to change into locusts, with nasty consequences for the plant species who are their food and the animal species, notably Bison, that are competing with them for food.
You seem to be quite naive about how the natural environment works. Under natural conditions some species wipe out other species - it's survival of the fittest at its best. Human beings don't necessarily have to encourage the process of extermination of vulnerable species. Many other species will destroy all the competing species and food species if they get the chance.
Rocky, a couple of points: when I made my original post on this topic I was talking about the controlled environment of insect farms not plagues in the wild.
Considering the fact that I majored in Biology perhaps I'm not quite as naive about how the natural environment works as you seem to think.
Minor quibble on that one: Locusts are the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae.
No offense Rocky, I'm sure you are a great geologist but based on that statement I think it is you that is a bit naive as to how the natural environment works and especially the impact of humans on the biosphere during the last 100,000 or so years.
Be my guest and go ahead and please list the species that have had a comparable effect to humans, in causing species extinction during the last couple of Millenia.
I'm sorry I called you naive. I was a bit grouchy at that point in time because I had been running comparisons of Pakistan's population against its food resources. It's enough to make anyone depressed.
However, I grew up on a farm, so I know what grasshoppers can do to crops. They usually appear toward the end of a drought cycle and eat up whatever grain manages to grow, so it's a double-whammy for farmers. The idea of raising them for food struck me as counterproductive because they eat the crops that are intended for human consumption. It's more efficient for people to eat the grains themselves.
I've also been reading Locust: The Devastating Rise And Mysterious Disappearance Of The Insect That Shaped The American Frontier by Jeffrey A. Lockwood. The Rocky Mountain Locust was a considerably worse plague than any of the locust plagues in the Bible, so it had a devastating effect on the settlers of the American and Canadian Wests.
The RM Locust also contributed considerably toward the decline of the American Bison, which suffered the double-whammy of the locust wiping out its food supply, and human beings shooting the survivors. Fortunately the RM Locust apparently is extinct now, for unknown reasons. There are still lots of American Bison left, but the vast majority of them are on bison ranches, being raised for meat.
It's difficult to find a species that has had a comparable effect to humans since no other species has been as successful since, I don't know, the dinosaurs, which were pretty good at keeping us mammals small and frightened. It was only after the meteor wiped out the dinosaurs that we mammals had a chance.
Locally, here in the southern Canadian Rockies, we have a problem in that the wolves reduced the numbers of woodland caribou considerably, and then a big avalanche wiped out the last surviving herd. The wildlife people are thinking of bringing in new herds of caribou, but that would require suppressing the wolf population or they would take down all the new caribou.
It's a bit of a balancing act keeping the local species from wiping each other out - wolves being a major culprit. Human beings, OTOH, haven't wiped out any significant local species here in the last 10,000 years - the Rocky Mountain Locust excepted.
LOL! Not to worry! I've been called much worse at times and probably justifiably so... and that particular comparison makes me quite depresed as well.
This is more along the lines of what I was referring to: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03670240701805074
Well, actually that is somewhat debatable. I could cite hundreds of papers on this topic that conclude otherwise.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534705001291
I confess I was a little selective in my dates. I said that "Human beings haven't wiped out any significant local species here in the last 10,000 years" because about 80% of the large herbivores went extinct around 11,500 years to 10,000 years ago, right around the time the first humans appeared on this continent. So, you can assume that the survivors (basically all immigrants from Asia) were very capable of surviving human predation. The extinct species, not so much.
The only large herbivore originating in North America which survived the North American Quaternary Extinction Event is the Pronghorn Antelope, which has the useful survival features that it is extremely fast (the second fastest land animal after the cheetah), and doesn't have very much meat on its bones. IOW, not worth chasing down. The rest of the survivors are basically Eurasian immigrants.
However, in this area, nothing has gone extinct since then. IOW the arrival of Europeans didn't cause an extinction event.
Its been a bit of a mystery why the American locust has not emerged since. One theory is that plowing destroys the insects egg burrows (they spend more than a decade in the ground). Did, we wipe out the species, or does it live on in small numbers waiting for the conditions to change?
Apparently the Rocky Mountain Locust is extinct, but it is not clear how we accomplished their extinction. There are various theories, but for the most part it seems to have been an accident.
Americans are so powerful, they wiped out one of the plagues of the Bible. Rocky Mountain Locust RIP
Montana cattle rancher goes vegetarian.
http://www.eatveg.com/Journey_To_Redemption.htm
I was a vegetarian for several years until I dreamed of eating a roast beef sandwich. A balanced diet is better. If you want to be vegetarian, be vegetarian. I'll remain an omnivore.
Watch the documentary 'Forks Over Knives'.
My wife was a vegetarian for 25 years before I met her and cooked her the first decent steak, pork, chicken, and salmon barbecues she'd ever eaten. Since then it's been straight downhill into carnivore country for her. The fact that I volunteer to do the cooking any time she's tired is a big bonus for her.
Fortunately, I also do some wicked salads, so she's also gotten her veggies since we married. She just has to fill in with some potatoes or yams and life is gustatory heaven for her.
I wish I'd know about this when I was a teenager. I could have had my pick of cheerleaders or any other girl in school I wanted.
More trans fat consumption linked to greater aggression
Indonesia attempts to stop steep decline in oil production
The actual decline in Indonesian oil production 2011, according to the EIA, was about 6 percent. That was the case for both C+C and all liquids. So their efforts have actually cut their natural decline rate in half, so far anyway. But as you can see from the chart below their efforts were more successful, beginning early in 2007 and kept production up until late in 2010. Then the decline began to accelerate.
But I found it interesting to look at the EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook and see what they were predicting for the next two years. Below is the what the EIA says Indonesia's actual all liquids production was along with their prediction for the next two years.
The data is in thousands of barrels per day with the last data point for production November 2011 at 931,000 bp/d. The first data point in their prediction is also November 2011 at 970 kb/d. (???)
Ron P.
Indonesia Versus Saudi Arabia, a Tale of Two Founding Members of OPEC
It would appear that Indonesia's final production peak was in 1991, at 1.67 mbpd (Total Petroleum Liquids, BP). Note that their Consumption to Production Ratio (C/P) increased from 42% in 1991 to 52% in 1994. If we extrapolate this rate of increase, they would hit the 100% mark in 2003. The 100% C/P line denotes the boundary line between net exporter status, below 100%, and net importer status, above 100%.
The actual data for Indonesia show a C/P ratio of 94% in 2002 and 105% in 2003 (in 2010, they were at 132%).
The same BP data base shows that the Saudi C/P ratio increased from 18% in 2005 to (I estimate) between 28% and 29% in 2011. Using 28%, Saudi Arabia would approach the 100% mark around 2028. Incidentally, this projection implies that Saudi Arabia has already shipped about 46% of their post-2005 Cumulative Net Exports of oil (CNE).
I'm not sure if it gives anyone else that niggling feeling, but I seem to see lots of the more recently peaked field having a base decline rate of [doubledigit%] rates. The usual phrase is then "reduced to [singledigit%] rate by ...".
Thing that gets me is those methods tend to have very definite endpoints. Once you hit those endpoints, the decline rate is massively greater. Basically it ends up being 100% - the field is closed down.
And the final piece, those attempts to extend the field are not uncorrelated. Not only do you have technology developments being created and deployed in a correlated fashion, the viability of a method is tied to the oil price (witness fracking viability).
So what we end up with is staving off decline in the present to only create higher decline rates in future, that occur in a semi-correlated fashion around the world. Then mix in the various resource allocation inequality factors (the 'land effects) and the individual man in the street sees decline rate well into [doubledigits] at some point.
No civilisation that's dependent on oil survives that rate of change. To avoid crunch we need low decline rates, giving us time - but using capitalist "extract it now and as fast as possible" we end up creating exactly the situations that enforce collapse.
Sort of like putting more straws to suck out the last bit of soda - more flow, quicker decline.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Oil industry warns of declining North Sea production
Ron P.
The decline in British North Sea oil production is starting to get very steep - reminiscent of the sharp decline in Mexican production that occurred recently.
This has very serious implications for the British economy in the Peak Oil era, but the UK government doesn't seem to have a practical strategy developed to deal with it. It really needs to have one, because otherwise the British population is going to get hammered by rising oil prices.
I'd take that 18% decline rate with some caution. Firstly it is a forecast by 'analysts', with a heavy dose of 'industry lobbying against recent tax sentiment' for flavour. Secondly there are extraordinary shutdowns reflecting recent industry safety concerns and mandated upgrades. None-the-less, when you look at the official government stats (somebody else will have to do the graphing if you need a picture) on this website the picture is not that pretty:
https://www.og.decc.gov.uk/pprs/full_production.htm
(Toggle the options at the bottom of the window - 'Monthly Oil Production' gives the classic TOD decline curve for the North Sea updated to the end of 2011.)
Based on 35+ years experience in the oil industry, if I was working for an oil company that had a similar decline curve to what I see in the North Sea, I would be polishing up my resume, putting it out on the street, and paying off my mortgage ASAP. Having worked for oil several companies that no longer exist, I would say that the future for British oil production does not look good.
If I was a Brit, I might be checking out the job opportunities in Australia and Canada. Things are probably going to be pretty good in both of them in the post-peak oil era, and both of them are looking for immigrants.
Fair comments! However, many of the companies operating out of the UK are either large independents or multinationals/NOC representations so the UK is only one part of their portfolios. And, can't think why, but it seems like a lot of those international types prefer to keep an office base in expensive London as opposed to moving their bases closer to the 'coal' face. Or at least that is what the staff prefer. :-)
As a result even as the production fades away, there are still more jobs based here than are justified by the proximity of the North Sea. Keeping the CV fresh is still essential though!
Actually, one of my nephews is working for one of the aforementioned multinationals with an office base in expensive London. This is fine if you have a master's degree in petroleum engineering and lots of experience working internationally like he does. I've consulted for multinational companies in London myself. There are certain advantages to operating out of it for companies, not least of which is the good airline connections to the Middle East and Africa.
However, for the average British citizen, it is not going to be so good because future oil is going to come from elsewhere at higher prices. The government is going to have to raise taxes to compensate for the lower oil revenues, and take other steps to restrain consumption because oil imports will negatively effect the balance of trade.
The past few decades of high oil production and low imports have been a better time for most Brits than it has historically been. Now that most of their oil is gone, there is likely to be a return to the austerity conditions that preceded the North Sea oil discoveries.
As an inmate of Down Under, I would wish to advise against such a rosy future for This Wide Brown Land. We are highly dependent on cheap energy, and we are already a net oil importer (about 50%). We have lots of natural gas, and of course, vast reserves of nasty coal. But we have critical water issues, farmland losses on a mammoth scale (caused by both erosion and salination, mostly, as part of over-use), and poor nutrient quality.
And as for looking for immigrants, there are quite respectable arguments that state that we are already well beyond the long-term carrying capacity of the place. Sure - The Lucky Country has many good things going for it (low unemployment, high wages, reasonable social cohesion, a comprehensive social safety net, very low government debt, and much else), but in the big picture, it is a fragile place that requires careful stewardship, in every region. Peak oil will lead to degradation very quickly, I expect.
Come now RockyMtnGuy, the UK Government has been very clear about their way of dealing with the problem, and it almost can't fail according to certain economists.
They're trying to privatise anything left in public hands, because the ownership class doesn't quite own everything yet, and they do such a good job with reinvesting to maintain and improve service. US medical care is so universally loved we're trying to follow in its footsteps by trying to privatise the NHS. They tried to sell off all the forests - yes the same Tory government that uses a tree as its logo.
They're making huge austerity cuts in the usual ways, from no public sector pay rises while increasing the pension contributions, to layoffs, all the while printing money through quantitative easing to reduce the little people's money. This will of course be met by the private sector employing all those out of work people, which should kick in any day now. Because unemployment isn't a problem that's getting worse anywhere else implementing austerity measures, such as Greece, or Spain, or the US, or anywhere else right Jeppen?
All the growth these brilliant measures will create will allow us to buy as much oil on the world market as we need.
I do believe in cyclical unemployment, you know. It's also clear that there is some inertia in the market: If people are laid off, the market needs some time to recalculate where these resources should go. Thus we have a problem when huge government debt/deficits meets deep recessions. There is really no fast and easy way out of that.
(This all, by the way, hints of a practical argument against keynesian tactics: Even if they were theoretically sound, timing is difficult and politicians seem unable to execute according to plan.)
oil and gas is only about 21bn out of 589 in revenue. The UK is the home of several of the large integrated oil companies and their (increasing?) revenue may very well offset reduced income from direct O+G sales.
Rgds
WP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom
UK oil production peaked in 1999 at 2.7 million barrels per day. At current Brent prices of $126 USD per barrel that would be worth $125 billion or £80 billion per year.
With production currently running at less than 1 Mbpd and falling, that represents a net loss of income to the UK economy of roughly $78 billion per year, or £50 billion per year.
Since the UK has a population of 62 million, the production decline represents a loss to the British economy of $1,258 or £806 per person per year. It's not an inconsiderable amount.
However, I think the bigger problem is, "What is the UK going to replace this domestic oil and gas with?" It's not completely obvious that it will be possible to find the oil and gas that is needed to keep the economy running. Replacing the natural gas for home heating and electricity generation will be particularly difficult.
It won't be pretty, but I am only half joking. Are not the Isles that make up the UK basically made out of coal?
Britain used up most of its economically mineable coal long ago. British coal production peaked and started to decline about 100 years ago, and now the country is a large importer of coal. The United States, Russia and China each have several hundred times as much remaining coal reserves as Britain.
I don't think Britain can go back to coal. It needs a better strategy for the future.
British coal became economically uncompetitive as cheaper, larger coal deposits became available on the market. We still have coal assets but I don't know what the price threshold would need to be to make them viable again. One of the problems was/is that extraction was labour intensive and dangerous - something that is understandably unpopular in a modern, 'health & safety' compliant workforce. Interestingly one of our old mines (copper zinc etc) in Cornwall is about to reopen as it is now deemed viable again with the higher prices.
We will have to pay for imported energy - as does most of Europe. We will also need to develop alternative energy options to contribute. Wind and nuclear options are discussed in numerous other TOD forums. I am interested to see what is made of tidal energy which have a good potential for. I know of one project in the UK Channel Islands that is moving closer to becoming 'real' system.
I don't know how the sector number are calculated, but there is no doubt that as their net export situation gets worse, both in BTUs as well as in pounds (or dollars for that matter) the lifestyle for the average brit is more likely to get worse than better.
Rgds
WeekendPeak
Backdated discovery curves fit to a model which extrapolates future discoveries seems to work like a charm in predicting every one of these declines. If I don't have the extrapolation I underestimate the production levels, but with the model extrapolation it is right on.
Every human being alive owes this man a debt of gratitude ...
Nobel scientist who warned of thinning ozone dies
Yes, we do indeed owe Rowland a debt of gratitude.
I'd like to add that we owe James Hansen a debt of gratitude as well. Except that we have ignored the science he presented and so will have nothing to be grateful for.
Hansen gave a TED talk recently (probably been mentioned) that Climate Progress covered and has a link to Hansen's TED talk.
It's worth watching Hansen's TED talk for many reasons.
He points out in his talk what the consequences are when you dare upset the status quo with science.
Anybody know of another planet we can migrate too?
But if we simply migrate to another planet, won't we just bring the same selfish mindset, religious ideologies, tribal/culture warfare, and myopic cargo cult mentality to that new planet? Perhaps humanity would be better served in learning how to not be combative, ignorant locusts before migrating elsewhere.
Perhaps we could convince a large part of the population to migrate somewhere where they know how "to serve man".
LOL! I wonder if most people under 30 get the reference.
I'm sure they don't, unless their local TV runs The Twilight Zone in syndication. I once told a young work acquaintence that my religion was Branch Davidian. He had no clue that I was pulling his leg.
When I went to University, one of the questions on the application form was "Religion". I put down "Druid" because "NOYFB" was not one of the options. Apparently, many of the other students did as well, and when the Administration discovered that "Druid" was the most popular religion on campus, they dropped the question from the form the next year. University administrators are slow but they do eventually catch on.
I can recall, answering the race question with "Martian".
Perhaps more than we think, as they did a version of this on the Simpsons ...
We need to rash this planet.That will teach our grandchilden not to repeat our mistakes.
then you should hope for a wide scale nuclear exchange started by a first strike on iran, which is something no sane person should. But it's getting to become a distinct possibility if iran is attacked it's alies, russia, china, and Pakistan might respond in kind.
still on the more pragmatic side, i applaud hanson for trying to get the word out. I just think it's too late to do anything the momentum of the system will carry us over the cliff at this point. They should of heeded his words in the 80's.
My words (I missed the 't' in 'trash') is the result of giving up. When you can't convince people that what they do will end badly, you are left with the only option to let them go, and find out for them self.
Depends on who migrates. Europe lost many of its most religious people to the US. That created a polarization that made Europe less religious, which is something we have been benefiting from to this day. Since religiosity is partly genetically determined, the US has difficulty freeing itself.
I suspect genetic sorting America versus Europe isn't a very large factor. I can believe the early immigrants during the 17th century had some sorting on the tendency towards reliogiosty. But since then, its mainly been economic immigrants. And these later immigrants were far more numerous.
Personally I am grateful as I live in one of the worst ozone hole affected areas. If only the other world issues were as simple.
The northern ozone hole showed a very large and unexpected increase last year.
I'm wondering if we'll see another this year.
This is the bullet we dodged ...
New simulation shows consequences of a world without Earth's natural sunscreen
And what happens to the Ozone if there is a move to a Hydrogen economy?
Hydrogen Effects on Climate, Stratospheric Ozone, and Air Pollution
In hindsight, we would have been better off had we missed the Ozone thing for several more years. We could have used a real case of getting the crap scared out of us. Probably the only way our species can learn collective lessons.
Folks: The ozone hole is not getting smaller. I have no idea why this is such a common misconception. The numbers are clear:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
My hunch is that the limits we put on CFCs worked for many years, but there's a lot still being used illegally, and there's also an inverse relationship between stratospheric and tropospheric temperatures, troposphere is warming due AFW, troposphere cools, ozone holes increase in size, minimum ozone decreases, etc. blah, blah, blah...
And great time lags in clearing out the CFCs, they are long lived (decades), so the response time of the system is long. Partly too AGW cools the upeer atmosphere, where the Ozone lives, tiny ice crystals seem to be involved with ozone destruction. The reason its mainly been an Antarctic Ozone hole is its much colder there. Nore cooling upper atmosphere doesn't negate AGW, it is in fact predicted, the upper atmosphere has more IR opacity with which to radiate out its heat.
Then and now: The 2011 Japan tsunami
One wonders: Where did they put all of the stuff. Billions of tons of (some of it toxic) debris just went 'away'?
Funny. As I was looking at the photos, this popped up on the TV news: www.recoveryinjapan.go.jp .
Here's some of it......
Could...as in: "I could hurt myself if I fell out of a tenth floor window."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/11/japan-tsunami-plastic-debris-to...
U.S. report: Oil imports down, domestic production highest since 2003
Good Graphic: What's Behind These High Gas Prices?
More accurate headlines... US oil consumption dropped by 880 K BPD last year.
Coal Power Drops Below 40% of U.S. Electricity, Lowest in 33 Years
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/12/442461/coal-power-drops-below-4...
Wharf Rat,
That's a positive. Maybe we can be weaned off oil gradually - and still have some growth. Americans are the oil hogs of the world, and hence, have the most room for improvement. I believe that 23% of the oil use is in the USA. Per-capita that's even larger.
Brad
so whats behind these gas high prices ? 1.38 per litre at 3.854 lt to US gallon. current exchange rate 0.64 = $8.31 and your paying $3.79 meh ! (0,63p per ltr - UK gallon 4.55 = 2.87 / 6.28 )
and whats behind UK high gas prices ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15462923
about 80.4 pence in tax - I wonder what you could do with that revenue stream.....
Forbin
United States reduced net imports of crude oil last year by 10%, or 1 million barrels a day. The U.S. now imports 45% of its petroleum, down from 57% in 2008, and is on track to meet Obama’s long-term goal, the administration maintains.
Very funny.
According to the EIA database, in 2011 the US produced 5.67 million barrels per day of crude oil and imported 8.87 Mb/d of crude oil, (net of crude oil exports), for a total consumption of 14.54 Mb/d. That means imports were 61% of total crude oil use not 45%, and domestic production was 39%, not 55%.
Back in 2008, using the same database, the US imported 9.75 Mb/d of crude oil and produced 4.95 Mb/d, meaning imports were 66% of use and domestic production was 34%. So there has been progress made in the last 3 years, just not as much as the White House would have you believe.
I'm not sure exactly how the White House arrived at its numbers, but apparently there was a lot of creative accounting involved. This is not unusual where politicians are concerned. I think they are probably switching their definitions back and forth between crude oil and crude oil+products+ngl+ethanol as suits their needs in the calculations, but implying it is all crude oil.
Here's the report from the White House.
The Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future
The report does state that: "net imports as a share of total consumption declined from 57% in 2008 to 45% in 2011%". The report does note that US oil production in 2011 was 5.6 mbbls per day and that the US became a net exporter of product. They also note that the US imported 8.4 mbbls per day "at the end of last year", which would give an import fraction of 60%. Since the product imports and exports are almost equal, one is curious as to their math. Going back to the weekly petroleum data for 5 Jan 2012 and looking at the cumulative previous year data, we see that production averaged 5.645 mbbls/d, net imports of crude were 8.831 and net product exports were 61 mbbls/d. One suspects that the data is the result of adding in natural gas plant liquids, refinery gains and ethanol production, as dividing 8.4 by 0.45 gives 18.67 mbbls/d, which is roughly what the total of product supplied. Bad math from a scientific point of view, but it's good math from a political point of view...
E. Swanson
One of the interesting items in that report is that more than 1,000,000 homes of low-income Americans have been weatherized since Oct 2009 using part of the $5B in stimulus funds set aside for that purpose. That's more than 4X as fast as under the previous administration. The average annual savings for each household is more than $400. The positive externalities are significantly larger.
Rocky - It amazes me that the administration goes anywhere near the subject of changing import volumes regardless of what the actual numbers might be. It would be very difficult IMHO to not attribute most of the decline to the recession generated unemployment and decreased purchasing power of the US consumer due to the higher prices. Is that what the administration wants to take credit for? They can always say they enacted other policies that caused a decrease in imports but what exactly can they point to? The avg. MPG hasn't changed much in the last 3 years. Some improvements in weatherizing homes but again minor. You could keep going down the list of minor improvements but it wouldn't come close to accounting for the decrease. They might get some credit for pointing out beginning of some good trends but not great benefit yet.
All I can assume is that all the politicians on both sides just take it for granted that the public is so ignorant of the realities that they can toss out any BS and it will stick to the wall. And, unfortunately, so far they seem correct.
Yes, it is true that politicians do take a certain amount of liberty with the definitions of words when trying to make the situation look good. It's like Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". I could be more specific about what not having sex with Monica involved, but it got too graphic for posting here.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that the politicians are not much more aware of the realities than the average person, and so they don't spot obvious bloopers posted by staffers on their own Web sites. Neither are the staffers. Nobody really knows anything, but they keep up a good front regardless.
It looks like the light at the end of the tunnel is really a freight train coming the other direction, and if people don't have a place to hide when it arrives, it's going to be a bad experience for them.
Rocky - On the one hand I can be somewhat sympathetic towards President Obama. It's just a matter of the luck of the draw which politician was in the White House when it begins to hit the fan. He seems to be trying to stay in the middle of the road: we can't do anything about the price of energy but we're doing all we can to make it better but there's no quick fix but if you reelect me I can make things better than the other guy but the president is really limited in what difference he can make but etc, etc, etc. Eventually some politician is going to be forced to lay the truth out squarely to the public because there just won't be any cover left to hide behind. We all know what eventually happens if you linger in the middle of the road too long.....splat!
That is a decent graphic. One nit picky question though. It shows over 20% of domestic production coming from the Eastern GOM, but less than 1% (if I'm reading the colors correctly) coming from the Central and Western GOM. Isn't that backward?
SOCAR declares production per day remains constant.
General F.Y.I. And I know, just like syphilis, corruption is a disease that can be contracted by Dem's as well.....
http://dccc.org/index.php/corrupt
End Of Oil - Paul Roberts - 2004
Just skimmed through this. Remarkable foresight. Oil was $30 in 2004. Where will the price be 5 years from now?
His latest book is "End of Food."
Now this is scaring. Here where I live in a small province in France (750,000 inhabitants) there were 6000 firms operating in food production in year 2000. Now there are only 1500 firms remaining and many survive on government aids, perhaps meat and dairy industry. Here I'm working in food processing and distribution and what we see is "everything collapsing". Anyway, we're still alive, but we had some 700 farmers committing suicide in 2011 in France... More than 6000 officially suicided since year 2000.
Very interesting cicerone, but if you could provide a little more information. What kinds of food production is going out of business? Why are the farmers offing themselves?
Worldwide we rely on mass production for so many food products we take for granted. For example a bread manuf. might make 250 thousand loaves a day or a milk co. might process millions of gallons of milk products a day. Without them how do 7 billion people get fed cheaply enough? This in my opinion will be the leading edge of the age of oil ending, food that is too high priced to feed the masses.
In Mexico a few years back the price of tortillas went up dramatically, the people rioted, the price went back down to appease the people and the riots stopped. But for how long can the price of tortillas be subsidised in a country with dwindling oil supply? I am sure there are many similar stories to be told from around the world.
Peak Earl,
IMO one of the biggest crimes that the market system has perpetrated on the world is the commercialization of food markets, it's actually a double edged sword which has encouraged competitive prices and technologies but at the same time destroyed the resilience of the local farmer. The markets are so tight nowadays that the boom and bust cycles typical to stock markets are nowadays seen in food markets.
In my country when the prices of a particular crop doubled in 2008 all the farmers thought that they could make a quick buck by planting that crop, next year the market was flooded with that grain and to complement that export demand also dropped due to the recession. This resulted in prices dropping like a brick, bankrupting many farmers. Then there's the fertilizer cycle, oil price cycle and to top it all the unpredictability of central govt policies, all of them have made farming a deadly business.
I truly believe that the average farmer is both braver and stronger than your average soldier.
cicerone
Thanks for the update. Here I was thinking that farmer suicides happened only in India. Goes to show how deep the rot in our food system is.
There was a commentary in the Christian Science Monitor a couple of days ago, which was re-posted on MSNBC. I didn't see it posted on DrumBeat, so here it is:
Inside the Keystone pipeline: How much would it really help US consumers?
The author points out that the oil which might be pumped thru the pipeline would enter the market place and likely be sold to the highest bidder, which might thus result in increased prices for Americans, especially those in the mid-west.
E. Swanson
Or more accurately, incrementally higher prices in the Midwest, since the WTI crack spread this morning is $32, versus $13 for Brent, a spread of $19, which curiously enough is the current spread between WTI and Brent crude oil prices. In other words, refiners who are buying crude oil based on the WTI price index tend to charge product prices which are linked to global prices.
The gap between Midwest and West Coast gasoline prices in December, 2010 (when WTI and Brent were pretty close to each other) was 22¢. Currently it is about 45¢:
http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
Or let me put it this way:
The weekly WTI spot crude oil price in the first week of March, 2008 was $103, and the average Midwest gasoline retail price was $3.15.
The weekly WTI spot crude oil price in the first week of March, 2012 was $108, and the average Midwest gasoline retail price was $3.82.
So, an increase of 12¢ per gallon of WTI crude corresponded to an increase of 67¢ per gallon of gasoline.
Note that from the first week of March, 2008 to the first week of March, 2012, the price of Brent increased from $102 to $125, an increase of 55¢ per gallon of crude.
So, are product prices in the Midwest (check out those crack spreads) more closely following WTI or Brent crude oil prices?
westexas wrote:
As I write today, the spot price of Light Louisiana Sweet Crude is currently at $126.15 a barrel, down $0.50. From that, I would say that the US gasoline prices are following the Louisiana price, which is slightly higher than Brent. Also, I recall that the Saudis price their crude based on the Louisiana price as well. Just another example of the fact that oil is traded in a market spanning the globe...
E. Swanson
Dog - And for those that missed it before: you don't have to be producing in La. to get that LLS price. My Texas production is barged to La. and gets LLS less a transport deduct. My production is mostly 50 gravity condensate. Gulf Coast refiners just love that stuff.
This is me sticking my tongue out at you.
Still trying to get my oil barged out of West Central Texas.
Here's to getting a good return on your energy investment. Kunstler mentions this in his weekly ramble:
With the warm winter, we came out ahead this year. I used less than 5 gallons of fuel and a bit of oil to get this winter's firewood cut and split (the log splitter's 3.5 gallon tank is still almost half full), and it looks like we'll have a big surplus left for next winter. With only a couple of cords of wood and solar, we didn't use any other energy sources this winter for heat and hot water other than the mentioned fuel, excepting a few gallons of propane for cooking and an occasional generator run to equalize the batteries.
The transportation thing is another issue, though we've made progress there by cutting our miles driven dramatically. Best hopes for a small, solar-charged EV.
One can of course get firewood with using gasoline. I used to use cheap carpentry saws for my then roughly 3cords per year. I've seen discovered that there are good old fashioned lumberjack saws, that are very efficient (at least with muscular athletes weilding them). And you could use electric saws and splitters once you get the logs home.
I've always said I would save my last tablespoon of gas for my chain saw. Put it in a chainsaw, it cuts a quarter of a cord of wood. Put it in a car, it will take you down the block.
Remember you've used your last drop of fuel in the chainsaw therefore the car is on empty so you'll have to take that firewood home in a wheelbarrow.
I think of firewood as a biofuel but lower tech than ethanol. We always assume petro-fuels will be there to do the heavy lifting so the biofuel seems like a bonus. When oil is gone we'll have to run farm machinery on ethanol and chainsaws on wood.
Not to mention having to start making things out of wood again too.
believe it or not, there are some quite capable electric chainsaws available, like the Sthil MSE 220
I have seen a smaller electric Stihl (the 180) in operation and it is OK, this one would be better, and is probably the equivalent of a 30-35cc saw. Not good enough for serious lumberjacks, to be sure, but just fine for cutting firewood.
And I expect that we'll see some higher power versions out in the near future. If this thing was coupled with a capacitor augmented mains power supply, you could easily have a higher power version.
And, you can always take a larger 2stroke chainsaw and do your own conversion.
There are also hydraulic powered chainsaws available too, for use from tractors and utility vehicles.
An invention that useful is not going away just because oil does!
Long ago I noticed that my chain saw was putting out way more energy in those flying chips than it was using to make them fly. The obvious next step was to take that good little stirling engine, put it on a robot that followed me around in the woods and ate wood chips by way of the stirling, which dried out the chips with its exhaust before having them for a snack.
Of course the power generated by the stirling goes to a small battery that is aiding the chain saw far more furiously in its brief spurts of effort than the steady state power of the engine alone.
What? you can't buy one at the local hardware? Amazing! Well, not so amazing when I think about it. The development effort required to get this little jewel on the market somehow got diverted to a nuclear attack submarine. Dang, foiled again.
Homemade Stirling Engine
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/672465444/low-cost-sterling-engine
http://volodesigns-sterlingproject.blogspot.com/
The europeans are way ahead of us on real stirlings
http://www.bdrthermea.com/page/news/bdr-thermea-and-viessmann-increa.html
You are aware, wimbi, but most here don't know that Sweden manufactures their own submarines and they are Stirling powered. Virtually as quiet as nuclear but FAR cheaper.
Yep. We could easily take out a carrier fleet all by our self. Half a dozen of those mini-subs, and we fear no fleet. I feel so safe.
I wrote and self published 'Hot Air Engine Primer' back in 1978. There is no trick to replicating a working Stirling cycle engine --- how to make an efficient small engine becomes rather more complicated. I have a half dozen working models next to me on my desk. A thermally efficient $100 engine that actually does sufficient work seems a stretch IMHO.
The art of stirling design is well known, and has been for a long time.
Problem is that if people are satisfied with a dirt cheap IC engine with mediocre efficiency and very short life, then they have no room for a small efficient long lived stirling. Sneaky little baltic submarines are obviously no place for an IC engine, so there, we get a stirling.
But, the times they are a-changing, and CHP is starting to look good, and CHP is a good place for stirling, so it's going there, too.
I looked at the source - it looks like they have electric leaf blowers!
In my urban neighborhood, they'd be a blessing.
A Frightening Statistic
This is an in-bred habit for far too many Americans. Cars are their legs !
I got this from a pdf "Walking, Cycling, and Obesity Rates
in Europe, North America, and Australia" which has a number of interesting statistics.
Abstract at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19164816
Not sure where I downloaded the entire paper from.
However, they were referencing "Schafer A. Regularities in travel demand: an international perspective. J Transp Stat. 2000;December:1–31"
Alan
On my drive to work do you know how many cars I pass sitting at the end of the driveway while parent and child wait for the bus? It would be nice to think that after the bus left then the parent drove off to work, but from what I have observed usually the parent drives back up the driveway to the house. They drive their child to the end of the driveway and back!
I've seen this many times on my way to work and the engine is normally running as well, the exhaust is visibly rising up behind the large truck or SUV.
And how are those children being indoctrinated ?
We learn so much else from our parents. Many food preferences are based on Mom's cooking. "Faith of our fathers" in an old hymn expresses a reality that religion is often passed down from generation to generation.
Fortunately, politics seems to be more independent from generation to generation.
None-the-less, it is "normal" for such children to view "cars as legs". A world without cars - including their own personal car, is unimaginable !
{sigh}
Alan
How true. Our earliest experiences create potent norms. Durably carried through life via the availability heuristic.
But I'm not sure that the necessary alternatives are "...unimaginable" so much as unfamiliar.
Might seem like an academic difference, probably is. But if the barrier here is actually a lack of familiarity, then we've got some leverage: we can change what is familiar to people. We can do this even in the absence of their having direct experience, via pre-familiarization.
To pick just one of many ways: our modeling, through conspicuous conservation, re-skilling and durable living, might slowly change some local norms. And, then, imagine what a little hands-on direct experience might reap.
Do they have really long front lawns?
Alan,
How about all the Americans in big SUVs? Usually, a total waste. And, if the crash into you - a massacre. Americans = oil wastrels. Americans need a stiffer gasoline tax, I think.
Brad
There was a budget subcommittee on Energy hearing last week that was on CSPAN this morning, and the R- Rep from Colorado was just badgering Dr. Chu about whether 'Supply Increases would, in fact, lower Gas Prices' ..
I'm afraid Chu is not the right guy to be playing ball with these snarky High-school level bozos.. He's just taunting him with "The President is quoted as saying he WANTS to raise the cost of Gas!"...
Americans were -- to make an intended pun -- railroaded into cars-first living by the corporate overclass. Basic transportation policy is never publicly debated. It is a non-issue in the upcoming electoral farce, once again. And the auto-industrial complex has always busted its butt, from the very earliest days, making sure they got the roads they wanted, no questions asked.
Meanwhile, what we really need is a movement to demand real, modern, public transportation and intercity rail, plus reconstruction of towns to encourage walking and cycling and smaller houses.
If McKibben were truly radical, he'd be organizing people to get arrested for that. Instead, he twiddles about over the pipeline side issue.
Well, in view of the pun, let's not forget the sizable chunk of the public that despised/despises the railroads for what they did, especially in their lavishly subsidized (with free land and much else) heyday. Especially west of the Mississippi where many farmers saw themselves as getting, well, a royal railroading. IOW folks like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Henry Huntington are often less than well-loved. The memories they and others left behind don't fade easily, and said memories make the politics a touch more complicated than simplistic movies depicting evil moguls in Detroit pulling the strings of mindless marionettes and causing them to grasp for things they never wanted.
Oh - and about the magic wands: nobody's got the money any more (if they ever did) for knocking down whole towns and cities and building them over again, not within any time frame that matters all that much. So one way or another, they're mainly going to be working with what they have for quite a long while yet, longer than many current TOD posters need to care about directly. Nor will more than an insignifcant minority be getting tram stops near both where they live and where they need to go, such as work, any time soon. Nor would more than an insignifcant minority get those stops even if a (politically problematic to say the least) French-style construction program were undertaken and completed. With all the rules and regulations nowadays, it's just too bloody expensive, looking at the whole population and not just places like Manhattan, to build enough of that stuff to cover a significant proportion of trips.
It's more likely that the huge amounts of oil and coal in the US have been responsible for making people reliant on it. It's so attractive to start down the fossil fuel path----once cars were "discovered" the debate over whether to use gasoline or renewable biofuels was very short (it did exist though) and the cheaper gasoline won easily. There are always poorer people willing to become dependent on something that won't last---they have no choice.
People are on a long slow slide where they use what they have and then use it up.
So if you choose a country that has few fossil fuel resources you'll see the kind of transportation that encourages walking a lot. Many there would also dearly love to all have what Americans have only it's impossible.....
It's more likely that the huge amounts of oil and coal in the US have been responsible for making people reliant on it. It's so attractive to start down the fossil fuel path----once cars were "discovered" the debate over whether to use gasoline or renewable biofuels was very short (it did exist though) and the cheaper gasoline won easily. There are always poorer people willing to become dependent on something that won't last---they have no choice.
People are on a long slow slide where they use what they have and then use it up.
So if you choose a country that has few fossil fuel resources you'll see the kind of transportation that encourages walking a lot. Many there would also dearly love to all have what Americans have only it's impossible.....
Stranger danger.
If you walk, a serial killer will get you!
I joke, but this seems to really be what's going on in most parent's minds these days....
Well, considering that at least one parent was charged with child abuse for making her child walk to school alone, for precisely that reason, you can't really blame them.
Not that I in any way support child abuse charges in that instance, but that was a LONG walk, in the context of walks to school.
If I remember correctly, transport stats say that a majority of children living more than 1/4th of a mile from school are now driven in light vehicles. This was not normal when I was in grade school in the 80's. Almost everyone who didn't take the bus, walked or rode a bike.
But it wasn't the length of the walk that was the issue. It was the threat of abduction. Which can happen no matter the length of the walk.
Those charges were very recent - they didn't create this atmosphere of paranoia. The case appears to be a symptom of this irrational fear.
On the other hand, maybe there's something we don't know about - for instance, some personal injury lawsuits get ridiculed in the press, when the details actually make sense when you know them.
For most SUV drivers, the gas price story just got to the point where it can't be ignored. (In my Opinion)
So, per gasBudy.com, the average price for the cheap stuff is now about $3.76/per gal.
The average SUV has a 25 gal. tank. And, I think most people probably fill-up when they get down to a quarter tank. Most people use a credit card which puts a $75 limit on a single gas purchase (the pump shuts off).
So, we have $75 / $3.76 = 19.95 gal. before the pump shuts off. That's about 80% of a tank. You now have two choices. Pay a lot of attention to the gas gauge, and pump early. Or, swipe your card twice.
Either way, you are forced to think about it more than before.
Jeez... I'm back to "here's a twenty on #4, Thanks!" ...about once a week.
Wish I could say "here's a $20" but the tank on my old 4x4 is 40 gallons and gas was $4.34 in town on Saturday. Fortunately, the truck is mostly a ranch truck rather than a daily driver. In any case, it still adds up because there are times when I have to haul stuff and only a truck will do. And, when it snows here in the mountains, you'd better have a 4x4 and chains or you might be staying home for a while (actually, we have been snowed in for as long as 3 weeks even with a 4x4 and chains).
Todd
I have a flex-fuel vehicle called a bicycle, it's gets about 7 miles per slice of pizza.
Heck with my Prius, its now heres $25.
My tank is 45 litres - about 11.5 gallons. Costs me about $103 to fill up, but I only need to do it about once every 700 miles.
$8.30 for last tank in my Honda 250 Rebel. Commute to work 6-7 days a week (11 miles) and get roughly 75mpg. One tank per 5-day week. Of course when it snows... back to the Camry (ouch).
China railway workers repair 'collapsed' new line
Photo's from a Chinese site here. At least they didn't derail a train at high speed. Check out the little rating icons at the top of the comments section. "Beating our heads against a wall" seems to be the top rating :-0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFMmJMNRv-Q&feature=related
I-75 southbound into Knoxville is singing the Slip-slidin'Away Highway Blues -- again.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/mar/12/i-75-crossovers-should-be-compl...
Looks like this isn't going to be a quick fix.
As Ghung has said, we don't need more super-highways in these here hills -- got enough troubles as it is.
...and there are no good alternate routes along that heavily traveled stretch of I-75 (been there, done that). From your link:
When they have to divert traffic off of the interstate it beats the crap out of the secondary roads. That said, the stretch of I-75 from Chattanooga into Kentucky is one of my favorites; beautiful topography and a lot of interesting geology, especially where they've cut through the layers of shale and limestone springs farther north. One can see why they make such great whiskey ;-)
I-75 Tennessee Drive-Time Blues: AGAIN! MORE!
Couple of hours ago -- big wreck on northbound lanes of I-75 heading towards Kentucky. Northbound totally blocked until at least 6:30 p.m., says TN HWY Patrols. All northbound traffic rerouted onto U.S. 25W at Caryville exit. Traffic is now (5:46 p.m.) backed up all the way down to Lake City, not far from where I live just north of Knoxville.
UPDATE on southbound lanes: It will be about 10 days before the crossover lanes are ready to help out with southbound traffic.
Poor U.S. 25W. Poor LaFollette. Now hosting both the northbound AND southbound I-75 traffic. I-75 is a busy highway, too.
Ghung, I've driven from Knox. to Chatt. hundreds of times and never get tired of it. Even more enjoy all that way from Knoxville to Lexington, which I've also done many times. ONCE I had to sit for 3 hours just south of that Caryville exit, on the northbound, because a BIG chunk of northbound road had just slid down the side of Jellico Mountain. And yes, eventually we were allowed to move and got off on that U.S. 25W exit. I took a little bit longer work-around that put me on that Cumberland Parkway or something like that -- came back out on I-75 up around London, KY. Scenery was great! Lizzie
No quick end seen to deep Canadian oil discounts
http://www.xe.com/news/2012/03/12/2534857.htm?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=...
Insect Experts Issue 'Urgent' Warning On Using Biotech Seeds
also Dow and Monsanto's Plan to Increase the Toxic Pesticides Sprayed in America's Heartland
and Researcher tracks agricultural overuse of bug-killing technology
Monsanto is developing plants that are resitant to pesticides in order to corner the market and force farmers to buy their stuff. Not in order to solve the actuall problem. This is not long term thinking. Expect more problems.
Planned obsolescence. Good for business.
Following on from some discussion last week about "supply management" (i.e. limited production by quotas) in the Canadian dairy, egg, and poultry industries, there is a piece on this in today's Globe and mail;
Why protecting dairy, poultry farmers is no sacred cow for Harper
I find it amazing that Canada still has this system that legislates a limit to the amount of food that can be produced locally (and by whom). The result of this is that Canada is a net importer of dairy products - this country is unable to feed itself in this very important food area.
We are told that we should continue to accept this situation because it is "good for farmers", when in reality is has been barely good for farmers and amazingly good for the large dairy companies (Big Cheese?).
These same rules also prevent the dairy, egg and poultry industries from ever becoming net exporting industries - they cannot increase this country's wealth, only decrease it
I am not sure what other benefits may come of this free trade agreement, but if it means the end of supply management and allows for an increase in domestic food production, and eventually a profitable export industry, then I am all for it.
Thankfully, this archaic system has never been applied to the Canadian grain industry, otherwise it would not be the $5.3bn (and rising) export industry that it is.
Meanwhile, New Zealand, a country with only fraction of the farmeable area of Canada, deregulated its dairy industry decades ago, and it is now an export industry worth $13bn per year.
A government rule that rations the number of home grown egg and cheese sandwiches we can eat - we can;t get rid of this soon enough for my taste!
Thankfully, this archaic system has never been applied to the Canadian grain industry, otherwise it would not be the $5.3bn (and rising) export industry that it is.
... otherwise it would not be the $5.3bn (and rising) export industry. I guess the Canadian Wheat Board worked pretty well. Too bad it got in the way of ideology.
Paul, I'll agree that there are issues that need tweaking. But you are suggesting that the baby should be thrown out with the bath water. And that is not sensible.
When crude oil used to fuel the transport of goods from New Zealand, Australia, etcetera, costs $320 a barrel, do you really think that anyone will be shipping milk and eggs any great distance?
The Cdn wheat board was ideology getting in the way. We had a Federal law that said farmers in any part of the country, except the prairie provinces, were free to grow and export wheat as they please, but those in the prairie province can only export through the CWB. so the wheat grower in southern Alberta can;t sell his wheat to the feedlot five miles away in Montana, but a grower in Ontario or (of course) Quebec can. Some provinces are more equal than others...
Are Canadian farmers better served by being able to export their wheat to the customer of their choice, or only through a government operated monopoly?
Australia de-monopolised its wheat board in 2000. Wheat exports are about to hit an all time high of 22m tons this year, (now outranking Canada) so has this move been a failure?
I don;t quite see where you get the baby/bathwater analogy from. What is wrong, really, with allowing more people to produce more food, more locally, and backing out exports at the same time? If BC wants to expand its diary industry (BC is a net importer of dairy) it has to buy out someone from Quebec to do so. That is the baby that needs throwing out (if not Quebec itself, but that's another story altogether)
When oil is that expensive, you can bet that dairy will be about the last food product being shipped. In the 6000 year human history of cheese, it has been the most transportable, energy dense food their is. It was transported by sail, rail, horse camel, donkey, yak, goat and people, and as long as there is oil, it will still get transported by oil. The major difference is that the cows likely will be back to eating grass instead of mechanically grown and harvested grain.
From NZ to BC is a 7075 mile trip. Ships get 1000 ton-miles per gallon, so that trip used 7gal for a ton of cheese. Even at $330/bbl, the oil cost is only 7c per kg. Incidentally, to move the same ton of cheese from Montreal to Vancouver, a 2800 mile rail trip, at 400 ton-mpg, needs 7.1 gallons - and the cheese isn;t as good!
I don;t want to send farmers broke, and clearly deregulated the NZ ones aren't, but I am yet to see a credible argument as to why we should cap production on things we can do so well, that have so much potential? there is no shortage of appetite in the world for cheese, only a shortage of Cdn exports to satisfy it.
The Spymaster: Meir Dagan on Iran's threat
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57394904/the-spymaster-meir-dagan-...
I watched that clip last evening. Strikes me that Meir Dagan may be spreading a bit of disinformation to lull the the American people (and perhaps, the Iranians) into thinking that everything is OK for now. As a friend of mind noted the other day, about 12 hours after Israel finds that the Iranians are making highly enriched uranium, the bombs will fall...
E. Swanson
Israel needs to receive their order of stealthy F-35's before bombing Iran otherwise their F-15's and F-16's may become prey for Iranian surface-to-air missiles.
It was really rich.. last week I heard the Israeli Ambassador to the US talking about how disingenuous it was for the Iranians not to be forthcoming about their Nuclear Weapons Program.
"I just HATE it when OTHER people are Hypocrites!.." (not a real quote.)
He's really doing a lot to make Israel shine, huh? (It's more of a Green Glow, actually..)
This is why Asia can bid oil up over $300 barrel!
Yeah it's quite a contrast compared with a single occupant in a Ford Excursion. I wonder what the energy efficiency difference per passenger is?
Where one passenger vehicles carry eight. From the land where eight passenger vehicle carry one.
I saw that there were some reviews of the "Doomsday Preppers" shows on the previous DB, but I didn't see the NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/arts/television/doomsday-preppers-and-...
I haven't seen the shows myself, but I kind of want to now.
There is an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail at
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/konrad-yakabuski/rising-gas-pr...
What is really appalling is the foolishness displayed in a substantial portion of the comments.
Well, other than Newt Gingrich's claim that "You can’t put a gun rack in a Volt," which is obviously incorrect because people have put gun racks in Volts, what is so foolish about the comments?
Is quite valid. I don't think Obama realized where gasoline prices were going when he delayed the pipeline. With rapidly rising consumer prices, the optics of blocking imports of cheap refinery feedstock are looking very bad.
We are living in the Peak Oil era, and politicians will have to pay attention to what is happening or suffer the consequences of it.
Delaying Trans Canada's Keystone XL pipeline from northern US border to SE Texas/west LA was only a bad political decision.
Gas prices from Texas to Kansas to North Dakota (last month drove this route twice) are about $0.50 less than on the east and west coast of US. Once Keystone is built this disparity will dissappear and raise gas prices for those of us in the central US.
After more tar sands oil goes to the Gulf, the refineries processing that crude will have higher profit margins as will Suncor and others shipping oil out of Alberta.
Where is the benefit to the US consumer and indirectly to Obama for approving Keystone XL?
BTW I do contract work for a supplier to the Bakken oil producers.
Actually, the gas prices would level out across the US if sufficient pipeline capacity was built to take oil where it needed to go.
Keep in mind that the state which has the lowest prices is Wyoming, which is the 50th most populous state. The states with the highest prices are California and New York, which are the first and third most populous states, and they are the ones that would see the largest price drops. On average, Americans would benefit from an evening out in oil prices, but that is because a lot more of them live in California and New York than Wyoming.
The Rocky Mountain and Midwest refineries would have lower profit margins, but margins in the much bigger refineries on the Gulf Coast would improve - the Gulf Coast has half the refining capacity in the US.
If you could get some of that cheap oil into the Northeast, maybe fewer refineries would shut down there. As it is, the Northeast is going to see half of its refining capacity close this year, and consumer prices are going to skyrocket there. Things are already very difficult in oil markets and it is only going to get worse as we move further into the Peak Oil era.
As you know, Crude oil price is not the only factor in gas price differential, and levelizing crude prices geographically will not levelize gasoline prices. Different tax levels are a big part of this (many states exempt gasoline from sales tax, others don't and excise tax levels differ). That's why fuel in Ehrenberg costs so much less than fuel in Blythe. Retail outlet cost structure also plays a role. Real estate in high-property value areas costs more (there's a tautology for you). Gasoline formulation also plays a role.
Wyoming charges $0.14/gal in fuel tax on gasoline. California charges $0.412/gal. New York charges $0.258/gal plus petroleum and sales taxes.
WY can afford to charge low fuel taxes because the majority of their tax revenue is paid by folks out of state (not literally, but in terms of incidence). About 2/3rds of state revenues are from mineral extraction.
Quite a few of the posters are making comments that suggest that they think the US is awash in oil e.g., "Do some reading, Cdns. And beyond the blinded Cdn Press. The US has all the oil she needs right now. Why in the hell would she pay more for dirty oil?".
Admittedly, the media reporting on oil production issues in the media has been generally bad. Paradoxically, one of the worst publications in this respect has been the Globe and Mail, traditionally considered one of the more sober Canadian news sources.
U.S. oil production vs. oil imports
This is from the Los Angeles Times. Doing the math this comes out to 5.67 mb/d of production and 11.37 mb/d of imports. That works out to be just right for US C+C production but way off for imports. US C+C imports are currently running about 9 mb/d and have been for at least a year now.
Ron P.
I think they show "U.S. Imports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products":
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mttimus2&f=m
Of course, net imports are what counts:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTNTUS2&f=M
Yes you are correct and it should show net imports of crude + petroleum products. The import and exports of petroleum products is about a wash, or pretty close anyway. So to be as accurate as possible they should just list crude imports only. The EIA's listing ofcrude imports includes condensate.
Ron P.
U.S. asks Saudis to raise oil output from July
And another official said:
And he got that right. Those expecting Saudi, or any other OPEC nation, to step up to the plate and increase production by the amount of Iranian decline will be sadly mistaken. OPEC, in my opinion, has no spare capacity.
Either the US backs down from enforcing any kind of blockade, or the price of oil spikes to near $200 a barrel. This in turn would likely plunge the World into another very deep recession. Then of course, oil prices would drop.
Ron P.
Ron,
I agree with you about OPEC spare capacity. However, it is difficult to find the truth with so much misinformation from the Saudis, etc. The whole oil picture is full of unknowns. There also appears to be purposeful misinformation from various news organizations about how everything is honky-dory.
Brad
It's very interesting really - It would be foolish to think that US and KSA don't both already know whether it is possible for KSA to honor this "request". What are they really asking, and what is the purpose of asking it publicly? How much oil does KSA send to China now? If they cannot produce more, then perhaps they can re-allocate their supplies to their customers......
Then color me foolish. Sure Saudi knows what they can produce but most politicians in Washington haven't a clue. I think it is foolish to believe that they do.
Edit: Thinking about this a little deeper it seems that many on this list are "conspiracy minded". That is they assume politicians and news organizations know a lot more about world oil production capabilities than I believe they really do, and are just lying about it. I don't believe for one minute that they have the slightest clue as to what is really going on. You folks seem to believe that government officials, columnists and the heads of news organizations a lot smarter than I believe they really are.
Someone posted earlier that some guest on MSNBC said that the US is now producing more oil than at any point in history. And neither of the hosts on MSNBC spoke a word to correct them. People, these folks are really that dumb, they really are.
Ron P.
OK, if the shoe fits...
Yes, many of them are that dumb, and also not in the loop. If the article was about congressmen grandstanding or stupid things some particular politician said I'd agree. This article does not say who specifically was "pressing Saudi Arabia to boost oil output", but the gist I get is that this is an official request from the administration (more information would be nice). Do you really think that people at that level are ignorant of one of the most important issues facing/driving US policy - whether KSA can increase oil production?
Golly gee we're too virtuous to issue veiled threats, that would be a conspiracy (gasp!), it must be because the government of the world's major empire and military power is too stupid to know the status of its most important energy resource supplier.
Yes. It is a Saudi state secret but they want you to believe it is not a secret at all. They broadcast to the world how much they could produce "if necessary". Hell, the officials in Washington don't even know it is a Saudi state secret. Really Twilight, there is no conspiracy by our government to hide what they really know about Saudi's ability to increase production. They just believe what Saudi Arabia's highest officials are telling them. Why shouldn't they?
Anyway what they know, or what they think they know, is what the EIA and the IEA tells them. And we know what that is from the IEA's Highlights of the latest OMR
But they produce no production data from individual fields. They do not give the decline rate of individual fields. They, in 2006, said that with massive infield drilling, they had gotten the decline rate of their giant fields down from 8 percent per year down to near 2 percent. (They put more straws in the barrel.) But nothing since then.
Ron P.
They just believe what Saudi Arabia's highest officials are telling them. Why shouldn't they?
And yet Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA contact within the Saudi oil industry as I remember.
If my memory is correct, why did the CIA need someone in Saudi Arabia if what the kingdom says is considered truth?
Well that was Michael C. Ruppert's theory. But there is no evidence that this was the case. And searching the net I can find no evidence that Valerie Plane was ever in Saudi Arabia. She simply worked for an agency, under cover of course, that had dealings with Aramco and other Middle Eastern oil companies.
Valerie Plame Wasn't Under Non-Official Cover
Ron P.
Must be true. Here it is in black and white from our local TV reporter.
Brad, thanks for the reply. However I don't think the news organizations are doing it on purpose, they really don't know any better. There are many columnists and bloggers out there who, like Bjorn Borg and the late Julian Simon, who really believe we have enough oil to to last for hundreds of years. And since most people desperately want to believe that their children will inherit a better world than they did, they swallow the whole thing.
There are "experts" on both sides of the debate so people simply pick the "expert" that tells them what they desire to believe.
You are correct that the truth is always elusive, but I don't think it is as difficult to glean from the facts that we do have as you seem to think. It is quite obvious that now all OPEC nations are producing at full capacity with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi is a little more difficult. We know that Saudi's old fields have a very high decline rate. The question is: Has production from new fields been able to completely offset, or more than offset, that decline. I really don't think so but as the article states, we will know in July.
Ron P.
"...I really don't think so but as the article states, we will know in July."
A lack of liquidity may head off any oil crunch before July:
It may be a case of chicken or egg, but we could see an oil price spike followed by a crash, ala 2008, as another round of demand destruction gets underway. It looks to be an interesting summer. Throw in another year of record high temps (cooling degree days), more drought forecasted, less vacation travel (and less money spent on discretionary items), seasonal employment down.... how's that garden going?
...meanwhile, the whole doomsday thing continues to go mainstream...
My doomsday tab: $130K on bunkers, guns and more
...so there's hope for the economy yet ;-/
Brad - Just one more perspective re: KSA production capabilities. Obviously it would be nice to have some level of confidence about the numbers they put out. OTHO consider the possibility that the KSA does have as much current extra capacity as they say and maybe even more in the future. But what can expectation of production rate can we take for granted? Even if they could put an extra 2 million bopd into the market there's no guarantee they will. And what if higher prices cause economic contraction and demand goes down even more: is there any certainty that the KSA won't reduce delivery? They should know better than anyone else what proven reserves they have left. If they see the decline rate as some suspect in their future it would be reasonable for them to limit production in the face of a price collapse to not only increase the value per bbl of their current production and preserve more reserves for future cash flow requirements as well as internal consumption. In that scenario it won't matter much what their capability to increase production if they chose not to do it. That could end up being more of a control factor then their actual production capability.
In recent news, price at the pump hit a new all time high here in Sweden, with 15:65 Kronor/litre. This just a few weeks after breaching the 15 kronor mark for the first time. I expect a new economic european slow down during this summer.
That works out to 8.72 US$/gallon, more than double the average US gasoline price. I'm sure the Swedes are cutting back on their driving resulting in packed transit systems. Here in Vancouver I've noticed a steady increase in passengers on our transit system even though our prices are only about $1.40/liter = $5.35/gallon.
More "active" weather :-
Rains soak, flood southern Louisiana
"CNN) -- Record floodwaters inundated parts of southern Louisiana early Tuesday after intense rains caused flash flooding and prompted hundreds of rescues.
Estimates by the National Weather Service put total rainfall at 12 to 18 inches across the region, with possible amounts of 20 or more inches in some areas. A flood warning has been issued until late Tuesday."
(mis-posted to March 10th)
University team says Canadian Oil Sands Mining plans Don’t Include Damage to Peatlands
In A New Book, an MIT Urban Planner Rethinks the Mundane, Ubiquitous Parking Lot
A recent housing (re)development proposal near my home shows the a line of thinking that is not atypical in UK urban planning. The buildings in situ (some about 100 years old) would be replaced by a complex of flats above ground level shops. The plan submitted outlined 97 flats (mostly 1 and 2 bedroom) and provided for 17 resident car parking spaces in total. It is adjacent to the railway station though, so 6 trains an hour to London plus local buses, including every 30 minutes throughout the small hours of the night.
Health insurance premiums will surpass median household income in 2033: study
Then I guess that sometime well before mid-century, "we" will have to decide how much medical "care" is enough. Save some popcorn for that show, since the moralizing and chest-thumping should prove to be most entertaining.
Kinda sounds like the premise to the movie 'In Time'.
'We' will probably see significant economic emigration if 'we' haven't gotten America's healthcare system improved to the efficiency level of the OECD average long before then.
Obama to announce rare earth trade case against China
China defends rare earth export restrictions
London 2012: Olympics missile sites considered for Blackheath and Shooters Hill
Hopefully they won't target the javelin and shot put.....
I can save you a lot of money - just give the prone rifle competitors a couple of extra boxes of ammunition.
There is one thing that bothers me about this plan. If they are going to shoot things down, where exactly is down?
NAOM
Anywhere that isn't actually hosting an olympic event.
Like towns, schools, factories etc.
NAOM
Seen those WWII photage of air dogfights? Planes flying aroundlike crazy, spraying the air with lead. Below are targets for bomb planes, usualy cities. I often wonder where tose lead bullets landed?
Beside papermaking, another 'civilization-making' skill that is vanishing ... ink-making ...
The Social Life of Ink
also http://www.folio.ualberta.ca/45/05/05.html
and http://www.efs.ualberta.ca/en/English%20and%20Film%20Studies%20Events/20...
Nitrate in drinking water poses health risks for rural Californians
Michael Klare, Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay
Natural gas down 3 percent after hits 10-year low
Global Warming wreaks havoc on natural gas futures!
Sort of funny when you think about it. Chesapeake Energy may join harlequin frogs on the list of species that became extinct because of Global Warming.
aws - Yep. Just yesterday I killed another NG drilling prospect I had budgeted for this year. Even with our success rate there comes a point when it's better to just keep the capex in the bank. Even though we're getting great prices (usually La. Light Sweet) for condensate the bulk of the production is NG. But it's an old cycle that won't be denied. It will take a few years for the production drop to show up after this price collapse. Given how much of the current NG market is from shale plays with high decline rates the fall off in production may be much great than some anticipate.
Now would be an excellent time for the U.S. to form a Strategic Natural Gas Reserve and shut in about 10% of production.
Ben - In one sense we already have a SNGR. Currently there is almost 2.5 trillion cu ft of NG in privately owned NG storage facilities. These storage sites were built decades ago to deal with the swing demand for NG: during high demand periods (winter) neither the wells nor the pipeline system can deliver sufficient volume to meet consumption. After winter time depletion the storage is refilled during summer months when demand is lower as are typically NG prices. A month ago Bloomingberg predicted that if demand and supply remained unchanged that all the NG storage facilities would be maxed out by July. IOW the only NG sold in late summer would be going directly to consumers. Consumers who burn much less NG during the summer. Thus their prediction that NG prices could fall to $2/mcf or less in the next several months.
NG storage facilities are some of the most expensive projects in the oil patch. The best sites were developed decades ago. In addition to the mechanical infrastructure a lot of capex goes into filling the storage. A significant downside is that many of the existing potential storage reservoirs will not give back all the NG initially injected. Once the reservoir is filled with NG you cannot not recover all you've injected. You will leave a significant amount (perhaps as much as 20%) behind. Thus the preferred storage is a cavern in a salt dome. But even in that case you can't eventually recover every cubic foot. Also, it matters not how much money you could make in the next year or so with a NG storage failites: they can can take
Financing NG storage is also difficult. You can calculate how much it will cost to build the storage but you can't guarantee what profit you'll make. You may pay an average of $3/mcf when you inject but if the market is soft when you sell and get only $2.80/mcf you lose money. So you don't sell any NG when prices are low, right? But you still have overhead to pay and, more importantly, loan payments on the monies you've borrowed to build the facility. I have seen more than one company who sold the store NG at a loss because they needed the cash flow.
Of course, the govt could fund the entire operation as they've done with the SPR. They don't have to worry about periods when they are losing money...it's not their money. LOL. I can't offer even a WAG but the oil in our SPR has cost a great deal. The govt spent $billions on the storage sites and hundreds of $millions maintaining them. So even if the govt sells 30 million bbls of oil at $100+ per bbl it doesn't necessarily mean it hasn't cost the tax payers even more for that oil. But the SPR wasn't designed to be a money maker but to allow some level of economic/strategic security.
If you have someone with a few hundred $million I can get them into NG storage roght now. They might make a fortune in the long run. Or lose their ass. And it will take several years to find out. That's just the nature of playing in the commodities market.
I know a little about gas storage. My company used to own quite a bit. We sold it with our gas-fired powerplants. I also provide power to compressors at many storage sites here in SoCal. Because they are large loads I typically see the whole electrical single line.
From a gas consumer standpoint, the amount of storage appears inadequate to the original purpose of seasonal and geographic demand smoothing. The amount of storage as a fraction of consumption has decreased as consumption has increased (although the seasonality of demand has been somewhat reduced as well).
Enough storage or shut-in supply to smooth slow supply response is nowhere on the radar. Gas is more valuable than what we are currently paying for it. If the government bought and shut-in supply, or required private parties to curtail production, as under the TRRC, the price would increase, reducing wasteful demand and smoothing the sharp reduction in drilling. We'd then have that shut-in production to turn to if the price were to spike again or significant supply interruptions occurred.
Rage grows over mortgage deal
Mysterious Hog Farm Explosions Stump Scientists
Maybe they're eating too much glycerin [see above]?
Or maybe we've unintentionally bred a new community of micro-organisms, that eats the stuff and produces pigwaste foam?
Europe's water resources 'under pressure'
How far will you go in supporting stopping Climate Change?
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-engineering-th...
How about ideas like this?
http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.pdf
NNSA conducts radiation medical training in Kuwait
Probably just a coincidence that Kuwait is downwind to Iran
I see that the Brent Oil Futures Chain trends down for the foreseeable future, starting now. If I ever really knew, I have forgotten, is this normal? Are people just betting down the future price because they think this price will entice more oil to show up on the market, or do they think we will slow down and need less of it?
Yes, they probably think that due to higher fuel prices the economy will contract, the stock market will correct and oil prices will dump back down to a lower price something akin to what occurred in 08, albeit probably not as dramatically.
However, it would seem that oil futures and today's activity on the stock market are in conflict. A view of contraction to come (oil futures), vs. a view to expansion (stocks). There's always a delayed effect to higher fuel prices, so I would expect the economy will start to slow, unemployment rise, markets correct and the price of oil to drop, but it will take some more time to occur.
IMHO it's baked in because the oil companies want higher fuel prices to help elect an R that will keep their subsidies in place. The R's will cheer on higher fuel prices like cheerleaders jumping for their home team and who knows maybe some right wing group like the Koch Bros. will dump a lot of money into gasoline futures to force the issue.
http://www.oil-price.net/ gasoline went up today to, 3.36g.
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI# Dow up close to 218 to solidly break thru 13000 (dangerous investing territory if you ask me in light of oil futures)
eastex,
I was wondering about the Futures Chain myself. For NG, the reverse is true. NG for 2021 is $9, almost quadruple the current price of $2.32 (see below)
I wonder what the Brent Oil Futures chain was at the recent bottom, when oil was $36?
I'd wager oil prices will continue to march upwards - providing no global recession/depression.
Symbol Name Last Trade Change
NGJ12.NYM Natural Gas Apr 12 2.32 6:41PM EDT 0.03 (1.09%)
NGK12.NYM Natural Gas May 12 2.43 6:41PM EDT 0.03 (1.08%)
NGM12.NYM Natural Gas Jun 12 2.54 5:18PM EDT 0.06 (2.55%)
NGN12.NYM Natural Gas Jul 12 2.63 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (2.45%)
NGQ12.NYM Natural Gas Aug 12 2.68 5:13PM EDT 0.06 (2.37%)
NGU12.NYM Natural Gas Sep 12 2.70 5:18PM EDT 0.07 (2.50%)
NGV12.NYM Natural Gas Oct 12 2.77 6:36PM EDT 0.03 (1.09%)
NGX12.NYM Natural Gas Nov 12 2.97 5:10PM EDT 0.07 (2.49%)
NGZ12.NYM Natural Gas Dec 12 3.29 5:23PM EDT 0.07 (2.24%)
NGF13.NYM Natural Gas Jan 13 3.43 5:16PM EDT 0.08 (2.24%)
NGG13.NYM Natural Gas Feb 13 3.44 5:14PM EDT 0.08 (2.32%)
NGH13.NYM Natural Gas Mar 13 3.42 5:14PM EDT 0.08 (2.36%)
NGJ13.NYM Natural Gas Apr 13 3.38 5:10PM EDT 0.07 (1.99%)
NGK13.NYM Natural Gas May 13 3.43 5:21PM EDT 0.07 (2.03%)
NGM13.NYM Natural Gas Jun 13 3.41 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.12%)
NGN13.NYM Natural Gas Jul 13 3.51 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (1.68%)
NGQ13.NYM Natural Gas Aug 13 3.52 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.41%)
NGU13.NYM Natural Gas Sep 13 3.50 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.92%)
NGV13.NYM Natural Gas Oct 13 3.58 5:11PM EDT 0.08 (2.28%)
NGX13.NYM Natural Gas Nov 13 3.69 5:10PM EDT 0.07 (2.05%)
NGZ13.NYM Natural Gas Dec 13 3.89 5:10PM EDT 0.07 (1.83%)
NGF14.NYM Natural Gas Jan 14 4.01 5:11PM EDT 0.08 (2.04%)
NGG14.NYM Natural Gas Feb 14 4.01 5:10PM EDT 0.10 (2.42%)
NGH14.NYM Natural Gas Mar 14 3.86 5:10PM EDT 0.01 (0.26%)
NGJ14.NYM Natural Gas Apr 14 3.81 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (1.55%)
NGK14.NYM Natural Gas May 14 3.81 5:10PM EDT 0.04 (1.09%)
NGM14.NYM Natural Gas Jun 14 3.85 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.29%)
NGN14.NYM Natural Gas Jul 14 3.88 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.23%)
NGQ14.NYM Natural Gas Aug 14 3.90 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.20%)
NGU14.NYM Natural Gas Sep 14 3.90 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.25%)
NGV14.NYM Natural Gas Oct 14 3.88 5:32PM EDT 0.01 (0.21%)
NGX14.NYM Natural Gas Nov 14 4.02 5:10PM EDT 0.04 (1.08%)
NGZ14.NYM Natural Gas Dec 14 4.14 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.70%)
NGF15.NYM Natural Gas Jan 15 4.30 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.75%)
NGG15.NYM Natural Gas Feb 15 4.22 5:10PM EDT 0.02 (0.49%)
NGH15.NYM Natural Gas Mar 15 4.22 5:10PM EDT 0.04 (1.05%)
NGJ15.NYM Natural Gas Apr 15 3.99 5:10PM EDT 0.04 (1.02%)
NGK15.NYM Natural Gas May 15 3.96 5:10PM EDT 0.08 (2.08%)
NGM15.NYM Natural Gas Jun 15 4.06 5:10PM EDT 0.01 (0.25%)
NGN15.NYM Natural Gas Jul 15 4.02 5:10PM EDT 0.09 (2.07%)
NGQ15.NYM Natural Gas Aug 15 4.17 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.24%)
NGU15.NYM Natural Gas Sep 15 4.04 5:10PM EDT 0.09 (2.16%)
NGV15.NYM Natural Gas Oct 15 4.13 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.70%)
NGX15.NYM Natural Gas Nov 15 4.17 5:10PM EDT 0.08 (1.79%)
NGZ15.NYM Natural Gas Dec 15 4.50 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (1.35%)
NGF16.NYM Natural Gas Jan 16 4.49 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.10%)
NGG16.NYM Natural Gas Feb 16 4.56 5:10PM EDT 0.05 (1.13%)
NGH16.NYM Natural Gas Mar 16 4.37 5:10PM EDT 0.07 (1.64%)
NGJ16.NYM Natural Gas Apr 16 4.25 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.72%)
NGK16.NYM Natural Gas May 16 4.27 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.58%)
NGM16.NYM Natural Gas Jun 16 4.29 5:10PM EDT 0.03 (0.69%)
NGN16.NYM Natural Gas Jul 16 4.28 5:10PM EDT 0.08 (1.79%)
NGQ16.NYM Natural Gas Aug 16 4.55 5:10PM EDT 0.17 (3.98%)
NGU16.NYM Natural Gas Sep 16 4.30 5:10PM EDT 0.08 (1.89%)
NGV16.NYM Natural Gas Oct 16 4.60 5:10PM EDT 0.19 (4.21%)
NGX16.NYM Natural Gas Nov 16 4.39 5:10PM EDT 0.11 (2.47%)
NGZ16.NYM Natural Gas Dec 16 4.79 5:10PM EDT 0.10 (2.07%)
NGF17.NYM Natural Gas Jan 17 4.73 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (1.23%)
NGG17.NYM Natural Gas Feb 17 5.00 5:10PM EDT 0.24 (5.00%)
NGH17.NYM Natural Gas Mar 17 4.59 5:10PM EDT 0.10 (2.07%)
NGJ17.NYM Natural Gas Apr 17 4.73 5:10PM EDT 0.22 (4.83%)
NGK17.NYM Natural Gas May 17 4.75 5:10PM EDT 0.23 (5.04%)
NGM17.NYM Natural Gas Jun 17 4.80 5:10PM EDT 0.25 (5.56%)
NGN17.NYM Natural Gas Jul 17 5.60 5:10PM EDT 1.02 (22.22%)
NGQ17.NYM Natural Gas Aug 17 5.62 5:10PM EDT 1.01 (22.01%)
NGU17.NYM Natural Gas Sep 17 5.63 5:10PM EDT 1.02 (22.07%)
NGV17.NYM Natural Gas Oct 17 5.66 5:10PM EDT 1.01 (21.75%)
NGX17.NYM Natural Gas Nov 17 5.74 5:10PM EDT 1.00 (20.99%)
NGZ17.NYM Natural Gas Dec 17 5.20 5:10PM EDT 0.26 (5.28%)
NGF18.NYM Natural Gas Jan 18 5.10 5:10PM EDT 0.06 (1.21%)
NGG18.NYM Natural Gas Feb 18 6.06 5:10PM EDT 1.05 (20.91%)
NGH18.NYM Natural Gas Mar 18 6.11 5:10PM EDT 1.17 (23.76%)
NGJ18.NYM Natural Gas Apr 18 5.76 5:10PM EDT 1.02 (21.60%)
NGK18.NYM Natural Gas May 18 4.77 5:10PM EDT 0.02 (0.48%)
NGM18.NYM Natural Gas Jun 18 5.80 5:10PM EDT 1.03 (21.54%)
NGN18.NYM Natural Gas Jul 18 5.61 5:10PM EDT 0.80 (16.70%)
NGQ18.NYM Natural Gas Aug 18 5.79 5:10PM EDT 0.96 (19.85%)
NGU18.NYM Natural Gas Sep 18 5.80 5:10PM EDT 0.96 (19.86%)
NGV18.NYM Natural Gas Oct 18 5.69 5:10PM EDT 0.81 (16.67%)
NGX18.NYM Natural Gas Nov 18 5.98 5:10PM EDT 1.00 (20.10%)
NGZ18.NYM Natural Gas Dec 18 5.52 5:10PM EDT 0.34 (6.57%)
NGF19.NYM Natural Gas Jan 19 7.27 5:10PM EDT 1.99 (37.60%)
NGG19.NYM Natural Gas Feb 19 7.24 5:10PM EDT 1.98 (37.74%)
NGH19.NYM Natural Gas Mar 19 7.15 5:10PM EDT 1.97 (38.02%)
NGJ19.NYM Natural Gas Apr 19 6.83 5:10PM EDT 1.87 (37.69%)
NGK19.NYM Natural Gas May 19 6.82 5:10PM EDT 1.85 (37.22%)
NGM19.NYM Natural Gas Jun 19 5.57 5:10PM EDT 0.57 (11.49%)
NGN19.NYM Natural Gas Jul 19 6.89 5:10PM EDT 1.86 (36.97%)
NGQ19.NYM Natural Gas Aug 19 6.10 5:10PM EDT 1.04 (20.65%)
NGU19.NYM Natural Gas Sep 19 6.95 5:10PM EDT 1.88 (37.15%)
NGV19.NYM Natural Gas Oct 19 5.07 5:10PM EDT 0.04 (0.78%)
NGX19.NYM Natural Gas Nov 19 5.98 5:10PM EDT 0.76 (14.46%)
NGZ19.NYM Natural Gas Dec 19 7.39 5:10PM EDT 1.97 (36.23%)
NGF20.NYM Natural Gas Jan 20 6.96 5:10PM EDT 1.43 (25.73%)
NGG20.NYM Natural Gas Feb 20 8.80 5:10PM EDT 3.28 (59.54%)
NGH20.NYM Natural Gas Mar 20 8.57 5:10PM EDT 3.13 (57.51%)
NGJ20.NYM Natural Gas Apr 20 5.31 5:10PM EDT 0.11 (2.14%)
NGK20.NYM Natural Gas May 20 7.84 5:10PM EDT 2.63 (50.45%)
NGM20.NYM Natural Gas Jun 20 7.91 5:10PM EDT 2.68 (51.17%)
NGN20.NYM Natural Gas Jul 20 8.00 5:10PM EDT 2.73 (51.87%)
NGQ20.NYM Natural Gas Aug 20 8.05 5:10PM EDT 2.75 (51.95%)
NGU20.NYM Natural Gas Sep 20 8.07 5:10PM EDT 2.76 (51.99%)
NGV20.NYM Natural Gas Oct 20 8.16 5:10PM EDT 2.80 (52.16%)
NGX20.NYM Natural Gas Nov 20 8.46 5:10PM EDT 2.98 (54.36%)
NGZ20.NYM Natural Gas Dec 20 8.81 5:10PM EDT 3.11 (54.64%)
NGF21.NYM Natural Gas Jan 21 9.04 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGG21.NYM Natural Gas Feb 21 9.03 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGH21.NYM Natural Gas Mar 21 8.79 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGJ21.NYM Natural Gas Apr 21 8.10 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGK21.NYM Natural Gas May 21 8.05 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGM21.NYM Natural Gas Jun 21 8.12 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGN21.NYM Natural Gas Jul 21 8.21 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGQ21.NYM Natural Gas Aug 21 8.26 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGU21.NYM Natural Gas Sep 21 8.27 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGV21.NYM Natural Gas Oct 21 8.36 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGX21.NYM Natural Gas Nov 21 8.67 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGZ21.NYM Natural Gas Dec 21 9.04 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGF22.NYM Natural Gas Jan 22 9.27 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGG22.NYM Natural Gas Feb 22 9.26 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
NGH22.NYM Natural Gas Mar 22 9.02 5:10PM EDT 0.00 (0.00%)
I was looking at that amazing chart for 10 years gold price. Almost an unbroken exponential growth curve, except for 2008, AND NOW!
Fire at Nuclear Plant Called Serious Threat
also Federal regulators say Nebraska nuclear plant fire represented serious safety threat
TOD was on the case http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8052#comment-813980
From NRC site: The Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska is in an extended shutdown with significant performance issues and is currently under our special oversight program [0305] distinct from the normal performance levels. Therefore, the plant did not receive an annual assessment letter.
... safe as a chocolate factory*
* Just one month after The Economist, a British magazine, had declared in its lead article that the technology was "as safe as a chocolate factory" (1986), there followed a catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl. http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/kyotonuc.htm
Alas, I wouldn't know anything about the safety of chocolate factories. Hershey moved our local chocolate factory to Mexico!
Not to mention http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8043#comment-813894
But I did say not to mention it :-)
With characteristic impeccable timing. A few years later the economist predicted $5 a barrel oil for the foreseable future, just as the price began its relentless increase.
I was at the Hobart Cadbury plant & while there witnessed a massive chocolate spill - it would have taken me several weeks to eat it all, even considering I was on a cycle tour. I hope the radioactive stuff is in slightly sturdier pipes.
Bryan
Naomi Klein: "Serious about climate change? Throw out the free-market playbook." You could take this theme and really run with it. Of course governments and their citizens will eventually do exactly that, when it is too late to make any difference. Serious about population growth? Throw out your freedom to breed whenever you like. Serious about resource depletion? Throw out your freedom to buy and use any oil swilling product that you choose. Serious about industrial agriculture? Grow turnips in your backyard. Should we make responsible decisions about our behavior before a crisis develops? Nah. Pathetic, futile, last-ditch panic efforts are so much more satisfying!
Absolutely correct! BAU at any cost for just as long as possible, no matter how much chaos may ensue in the final moments prior to the end of the oil age. Isn't it fun to be part of a world community in complete denial about where this path leads.
Seems a remarkable case of hubris ... I would think $40b is hardly nearly enough to meet the needs of millions of people in SE Asia (and especially the Pacific) - relative to climate change and sea-level issues. Great if they can do it for so little.
They are tlking about walling in the majoreconomic centras. The rice farmerscan just move uphill. Right?