Former Tory strategist Allan Gregg rips Harper Cons' 'systematic attack' on facts and reason

_{Rabble.ca By David J. Climenhaga, April 30, 2013}

Long-time Tory pollster and strategist Allan Gregg ripped into the Harper Government on Saturday for what he termed its "systematic attack on evidence-based research."

--- snip ---

Gregg cited a long list of evidence-based government activities that have been gutted by the Harper Government -- often saving only insignificant amounts of money -- since 2010.

The rampage, he noted, began with the notorious abandonment of the mandatory long-form census. "Why would anyone forsake these valuable insights and the chance to make good public policy, rather than bad public policy, under the pretense that rights were being violated when no one ever voiced concern? Was this a crazy one-off move … or was there something larger going on?"

It was pretty quickly clear to Gregg -- as it was to many of the rest of us -- that there was indeed something larger going on.

The demise of the long-form census was followed by the destruction of the national long-gun registry, despite the pleas of virtually every police chief in Canada that it be saved. After that, under cover of an austerity budget, there were massive cuts to Statistics Canada, Library and Archives Canada, science and social science activities at Parks Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office, the CBC, the Roundtable on the Environment, the Experimental Lakes Area, the Canadian Foundation for Climate Science and so on.

Bill Chameides on his thoughts of his recent testimony at a House Subcommittee on the Environment meeting.

House Hears About Climate

_{by Bill Chameides, The Green Grok, April 29th, 2013}

Is last week’s hearing on climate the start of a thaw?

The word in the hallways of the Rayburn Building last week was that the Republican Party wants to rehabilitate its image on science — to show a willingness to engage with scientists on the basis of the evidence rather than ideology. Perhaps that’s what motivated the House Subcommittee on Environment to hold a hearing on climate science last Thursday — a rare event since the Republicans took control of the House in 2010.

The stated purpose of the “Policy Relevant Climate Issues in Context” hearing was to understand and explore uncertainties in climate science. The Republican agenda seemed pretty clear to me — to portray climate science as too uncertain to justify action. But, even so, I think the hearing represents progress.

What are the Republicans going to do when the consequences of climate change become so obvious that even the vast willfully ignorant electorate starts to think of them as fools?

Link up top: Approaching 'peak oil'? is basically a 25 minute video from Aljazeera but the peak oil part is only the first 11 minutes or so. They talk about the methane hydrates Japan is trying to develop and say it will be at least 6 more years before they are successful. The rest of the peak oil part is an interview with David Robson, Executive Chairman of Tethys Petroleum.

He does a pretty good job, in my opinion anyway. He doesn't make any claims on the mantra of "abundant oil" that has dominated the MSM for the last year or so. He also says that if the US does ever obtain energy independence it will be but a blip and soon they will be back on the world market buying oil because those new fields will very soon peak and then decline.

The most interesting part was in the text however:

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), more than 95 percent of all oil in the world has already been discovered, and half of those total reserves of 2.5 trillion barrels have already been consumed. That's because we, as an entire planet, consume 85 million barrels of oil every day.

But the IEA also sends a word of caution, that the world should not consume more than a third of fossil fuel reserves before the year 2050, so as to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change.

Okay, let's do the math. Half of 2.5 trillion comes to 1.25 trillion, that's what we have left. And we have 38 years left until 2050. If consumption stays absolutely flat at 85 million barrels per day, then we would consume 1,303,942,500,000 barrels between now, or from January 1st 2013 and 2050. But a third of what's left would be only 417 billion barrels. Divide that by 42 and we get 9.92 billion barrels per year or 27,161,218 barrels per day. That is what the IEA says need to cut down to in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. (I am using 365.25 days per year times 85 to get barrels per year)

Currently consuming bp/year	31,046,250,000
That times 42 years	     1,303,942,500,000
Oil Left in Ground	     1,250,000,000,000
One Third That	               416,666,666,667
Divided by 42 years left	 9,920,634,921
Barrels per day left to
use to avoid disaster.              27,161,218	                              

That is 57 million barrels per day less than we are using today.

Ron P.

My hypothetical formula for peak oil calculation:

Multiply the average of all the world's oil producers by that number. You will get a graph that is simply roughly the left half of a scaled up curve of the oil depletion curve of an average single-exporter region that has since gone in decline.

Put a smiley at the bottom right-hand corner of your graph to enhance your image of professionalism and present it with aplomb to the rep of the CEO of World Leaders, Inc.^tm, pointing, as you do so, to the top of curve, with the comment, as you look into their eyes; "It's right here. I just scaled up the US curve.". Don't be snarky and say, "You are here.". That's not going to wash with the suit-and-tie crowd.

As embellishment and in your best, professional, milquetoast tone-of-voice (®Milquetone), you may add, if you wish, the comment, "Because we are talking global, because of its scale, the peak is going to be one long-drawn-out affair and to feel more like a plateau.".

Looks like things are going to hell in a hand basket in Venezuela.

Outlook Grim in Venezuela's Essential Oil Industry

Mejicano used to travel around Venezuela buying gold jewelry that she resold in Moron, her hometown. Now, she says, she's amazed by the deterioration of the quality of life. She can't travel anymore for fear of being robbed.

"You can't get anything here. Here women have to wait in line four, five even six hours for a stick of butter," she said. "I've always worked hard but now one's afraid to even travel. Things are really ugly here."

Ron P.

"For example: The 260 billion stock tank barrel reserves estimate reported by Saudi Arabia is mainly “proven reserves” that was calculated based on minimum uncertainty using advanced reserves estimate and simulation tools."

How many years has Saudi Arabia been producing oil and had 260 billion left? /sarc

Can Facebook lead to psychosis? One study says so:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57582893-71/can-facebook-lead-to-psych...

I have a feeling that what is now described as psychotic and delusional will soon be seen as the normal state of human affairs.

One of my theories is that most people are going crazy, just at different rates, except for me of course; I am totally sane.

Call to action by Solar Industry & Video of the "Even counting votes too Scientific for North Carolina."as mentioned in Yesterdays DB. http://www.seia.org/act-now/dirty-tricks
"A bill that would gut North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard passed a Senate committee this week over shouted objections after State Senator Bill Rabon refused to count votes with a show of hands."

Also WSJ Article behind paywall Search -> Solar-Regulation Tiffs Flare Across States

" NRG's chief executive, David Crane, recently called the traditional U.S. power business "an industry of Neanderthals" and said it has been "the least innovative industry in America, maybe the world, in history." "

David vs. Goliath? Watch Neanderthal Utilities slaughter pesky villagers with their PV Panels? Coming soon to a channel near you. /bloody nosarc

VW XL1

As the XL1 gets closer to release the auto magazines are beginning to get their hands on it and some numbers are starting to leak out.

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/1306_2013_volkswagen_xl1...

on the official European combined driving cycle, the XL1 is rated at 261 mpg. European and American fuel-consumption tests are quite different, but VW engineers say an equivalent combined EPA city/highway number would be about 20 percent lower -- say, 209 mpg.

I'm most interested in its electrical consumption because I have a lot of hand-waving and projections about possible efficiency I'd like to have vindicated. There are two items pointing to it:

Press a button, and the XL1 will stay in pure EV mode for up to 30 miles, courtesy of a 5.5-kW-hr lithium-ion battery pack allowing emissions-free running in city areas.

and

in finding the 1001 efficiency tweaks so that it needs just 8.3 hp to travel at a constant 62 mph

The first set of numbers is a little troublesome because it suggests:
5,500Wh/30mi = 183 Wh/mi
A little higher consumption than I'd hoped to see, but it does still have an ICE with attendant cooling system(drag), etc and it is a side by side and not tandem. It's also possible that the 5.5kWh battery is the full size and not the utilized size. Which brings the next set of numbers.

62 miles/hr yields 62 miles after one hour (of course), it takes 8.3 horsepower or (747W/hp*8.3hp) = 6,200Watts to keep that speed - after 1 hour this would be 6,200Wh. So we get:

6,200Wh/62mi = 100 Watt-hours/mile !

Amazeballs.

Working backwards this would yield 30*100 = 3,000 Wh of battery being used or (3,000/5,500) = 56%. Which would be a little low but still within reason if you were reserving some range at the top and the bottom of the battery to prolong its life. It's more likely that the 8.3 horsepower is at the wheels and not at the crankshaft. Which probably means an additional 20% loss through the drive-line. Yielding:

(6,200*1.2)/62 = 120 Watt-hours/mile

This would bring the battery utilization rate to 65% which sounds more reasonable. If you used the battery from a Leaf it would give the XL1 a 175 mile range at 62 mph.

Hugo Chávez may have been oppressive

...but at least he wasn't a lapdog for Washington like so many other heads of state. The world would be a much more free and decentralized place with more anti-imperialist "rogue" nations. And it is important to put his depredations in perspective. Bush, Obama, Blair, Hollande, etc., have caused more death and suffering in the world than Chávez ever did. And this should be no surprise. It is often the less authoritarian states that afflict more humans more seriously, even if those afflicted the worst happen to be foreigners. That is because the most "free" countries are also often the most imperialistic. This is what Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls the "paradox of imperialism." States that allow more domestic freedom have more wealth to tap to fund more conquests and interventions.

Considering the chaos, terror, and wanton murderous destruction perpetrated on a daily basis by the West upon its recipients of "liberation," the evil of Chávez is dwarfed by that of the governments of the "free world."

The generalized resource curse

There is a regularity here, an order. We find ourselves on the inside of social phenomena that we have seen before, that we can understand. The global economy is succumbing to a technologically-driven resource curse, coalescing into groups of insiders and outsiders and people fighting at the margins not to be left behind. Our governments are transforming themselves from mediators among widely dispersed and interdependent interests to organizations that maintain and police the boundaries between the civilized and the marginal, who put down the insurgencies and manage the pathologies of the latter so that they do not very much impinge upon the lives of the former. Our financial systems are mechanisms by which legitimacy is conferred upon facially absurd distributions of aggregate wealth, by virtue of processes that claim to be “voluntary”, “private-sector” and “market-disciplined”, but which are none of those things in any meaningful way.

Interesting insight here. The author thinks that automation and financial services industry is akin to a generalized resource curse. I would agree. As technology has been commoditized paradoxically it has become less accessible for common folks because of increase in complexity. But I see the current DIY/maker movement as a counter to that.

There's some commentary here

http://hipcrime.blogspot.in/2013/05/automation-and-resource-curse.html

I am wondering if someone can help me. A few weeks ago someone here made reference to an influential economist who seriously argues that we will never run out of copper or other elements because we will be able to turn other elements into them. But I can't spend 5 hours looking through old drumbeats to find the comment. Does anyone have reference to this fellow?

NYT: Syria Blames Israel for Fiery Attack in Damascus

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government publicly condemned Israel for a powerful air assault on military targets near Damascus early Sunday, saying it “opened the door to all possibilities,” as fear spread throughout the region that the country’s civil war could expand beyond its borders. The attack, which sent brightly lighted columns of smoke and ash high into the night sky above the Syrian capital, struck several critical military facilities in some of the country’s most tightly secured and strategic areas, killing dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace, a high-ranking Syrian military official said in an interview.

Israel refused to confirm the attacks, the second in three days, and Israeli analysts said it was unlikely that Israel was seeking to intervene in the Syrian conflict. They said the attacks in all likelihood expanded and continued Israel’s campaign to prevent the Syrian government from transferring weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party in neighboring Lebanon that is one of Israel’s most dangerous foes.

Rebels, opposition activists and residents said the strikes hit bases of the elite Republican Guard and storehouses of long-range missiles, in addition to a military research center that American officials have called the country’s main chemical weapons facility.