Cuban President Fidel Castro asserted the lack of fuel in the world and its current price will worsen the problem of food.

Grain and cereal productions are increasingly targeting the production of alcohol to be used as fuel for automobiles, stated Fidel Castro in his address to the Cuban People´s Power National Assembly (parliament) seventh period of sessions.

That means automobiles are competing with food and humankind is not prepared to cope with the current energy crisis, noted the leader of the Cuban Revolution.

And in Hawaii:

'Energy plantation' would require water guarantees

Alexander & Baldwin has long said that the future of HC&S cannot continue to be in sugar as a commodity. The 37,000-acre farm must become an "energy plantation."

In concept, at least, this fits in with the state's energy policy, which calls for 20 percent of inputs from renewable sources by 2020.

Whether it also fits with state water policy is a question.

Steve Holaday, general manager of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, said money is being spent on solving technical problems and preliminary engineering designs.

"Our hang-up," he said, "is we don't have long-term access to irrigation water," which biomass electricity must have.

The idea here seem to be to burn sugar cane leaves for electricity, not to make ethanol.  Still, it requires water which they may not be able to get.

When the price of oil will hurt the economy in EEUU for a real demand destruction?

At what price?

(P.D. I´m spanish, sorry by errors.)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state oil firm Rosneft is hoping to raise around $10 billion (5.4 billion pounds) in its initial public offering, a source familiar with the IPO said as the share issue was launched on Monday.

The offering, which will be one of the world's biggest ever IPOs, will give a chance for investors to buy into Russian oil and for Russia's most leveraged firm to pay off a $7.5 billion debt.

The main goal of the IPO is to pay $7.5 billion back to four banks who lent the sum to the Kremlin last year, enabling Russia to buy a controlling stake in gas firm Gazprom.

In debt before you start

The average college senior graduated this year with more than $19,000 in debt. That's a problem Joe Palazzolo would love to have.

Palazzolo, 25, graduated on Mother's Day from Rutgers University with a master's degree in public policy and student loans exceeding $116,000. His payments will average about $800 a month. It could have been worse: Because of his top grades, Rutgers paid Palazzolo's tuition for his final year of graduate school.

At a time when his friends are thinking about buying their first homes, he's looking for roommates to share a three-bedroom house so he can limit his rent to $600 a month. "I feel like I've done everything I was supposed to do, and at the end of the day, I've got this huge debt," Palazzolo says. "What did I do wrong?"

After years of rising college costs and shrinking financial aid, it's come to this: Some graduates are now leaving college with student-loan debt in the six figures.

Graduates with more than $100,000 in debt still account for a small subset of borrowers. But their numbers are rising. And the proportion who are leaving college with some level of unmanageable debt -- debt they can't repay without significant hardship -- is swelling.

There's less government aid than there used to be, and more pressure for advanced degrees. Students are taking out the loans because in the long term, having a degree has paid off.  But it can take many years  for that to happen.  

Especially hard-hit are people in fields that require degrees but don't pay well, such as education.

    KABUL, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Unknown militants set on fire a U.S. base-bound oil tanker in the southern Ghazni province on Monday, a senior police official said.

    "The incident occurred in Andar district leaving the tanker's driver dead and injured its conductor," Asil Khan told Xinhua.

Not a good way to start off the week.

-C.

Suburbia's Worst Enemy

Since the 1994 release of The Geography of Nowhere, author James Howard Kunstler has been among the most acerbic critics of North American urban design. Kunstler has argued that suburban sprawl has left citizens almost entirely dependent on cars, just as the world nears the historic peak of oil production. What happens after we pass that fossil fuel "tipping point"? That's the subject of Kunstler's latest book, The Long Emergency, in which the author describes the massive changes that Americans -- and their neighbours -- will experience as the age of cheap oil drips to a close. In what The Guardian describes as "a 300-page dirge to the doom that awaits us," Kunstler predicts the end of cheap aviation, the withering of the American southwest, the collapse of global trade and a shallow grave for suburbia, among other horrors.

Daily we see topics about alternatives; we receive rave reviews of the latest reactor design; possible gas fields and the list keeps going. I hope members can openly debate this "Building or Bust" concept since at least to me it is about to become the largest issue we will face or run from.

My contention is that we can't build public works projects nor can we build affordable housing. The main reason that we will stop building is peak oil. Things will taper off and the poor will vanish to yet unknown locations.

The other day in this debate the Halliburton Camps in the USA were brought up. And I threw the question out there, "Who will be sent to these camps?" I expressed concern over just the possibility. I thought. "Why tempt fate?"

There appear to be many who are willing to tempt fate and I want to hear how and why they are so trusting when it comes to our ruling class?

I hope members can share what they know about denial, power, control and groupthink.
 

The first given is that a collapse will strike hardest at Third World nations. This seems counterintuitive as many cultures still do not have fertilized, mechanized agricultural systems. They seem less exposed to the collapse of modernity. However, in any crisis, the poor fall first, while the rich continue to take the lion's share of resources. During the Irish Potato Famine, Ireland was a net exporter of food even as a million and a half Irish died of starvation and several million more emigrated. First World nations will likely use their greater wealth and military power to keep themselves fed and in relatively better position than the poorer nations of the world.

Similarly First World cities will place enormous pressure on underpopulated, but food-producing regions of their own countries. Unless and until governments completely collapse, the city-dwellers will likely receive at least enough food to survive. During the artificially-induced famines in the Soviet Union and China in the 1930s and 1950s, respectively, food-producing rural areas starved before the cities.

The other advantage that cities will have is that most of the major cities are located on rivers, bays, or other waterways, a relic of the days when water was used to move the majority of goods. Cities such as New York, Seattle, New Orleans, and hundreds of smaller towns and cities will continue to enjoy these strategic locations long after a complete petroleum collapse. They may not be able to support millions of people, but they will still maintain relative power and prestige vis a vis the hinterland.

The exception will be thoroughly modern cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Not only will they be too hot to function for large portions of the year without cheap electricity to power air conditioning, but they are water poor. Las Vegas, especially, is dependent upon modern, cheap-fuel tourism. In a collapse it would become a ghost town. If the collapse is sudden enough, virtually everyone in the city would either die or become a desperate refugee elsewhere.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1795824,00.html

Peanut-gallery please make supporting and opposing arguments. Okay... ready, set, GO!

No really, I don't understand--all these cornucopian-skewed articles say

1. Tar Sands [doesn't scale]
   
2. Still more oil out there, still finding lots of oil [hasn't global discovery peaked long ago?]
   
3. and then there is always the contention .. ah fuck it...

Hurricane warning issued for Florida as Alberto strenthens

National Hurricane Center issues hurricane warning for Florida's Gulf Coast from Longboat Key to the Ochlockonee River, The Associated Press reports.

US 'planning to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years'

From the article:

America plans to retain a garrison of 50,000 troops, one tenth of its entire army, in Iraq for years to come, according to US media reports.

The revelation came as George W Bush summoned his top political, military and intelligence aides to a summit on Iraq's future today at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

. . .

Mr Bush said the meeting would decide "how to best deploy America's resources in Iraq and achieve our shared goal of an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself".

But despite fierce domestic pressure to reduce troop levels before November's critical mid-term elections, there were growing signals that Gen George Casey, America's Iraq commander, may raise troop levels in the short-term.

. . .

American commanders are also worried by the situation in the Sunni areas at the heart of the insurgency, where American units have complained of a shortage of men.

Mr Maliki pledged in a Washington Post article to confront the Shia militia, but his plan to "re-establish a state monopoly on weapons" could well generate a confrontation between ultra-religious gunmen and the fledgling Iraq security forces.

America's military would be drawn into any defining battle over who rules Iraq.

Gen Casey has already summoned his main reserve unit, a 3,500-man armoured brigade based in Kuwait and has alerted a Germany-based brigade that it may be needed soon.

. . .

Military planners have begun to assess the costs of keeping a 50,000-man force in Iraq for a protracted period of time. At present the total number of serving American troops is about 500,000.

The plan has not yet received presidential approval. But it would fit with the administration's belief that while troops numbers will fall, American forces will have to remain in Iraq beyond Mr Bush's departure from the White House in early 2009.

Military analysts have noted that significant American spending is already being committed to permanent bases in Iraq. They say Iraq's military may soon be able to fight by itself, but it cannot feed or supply itself and it has no air force to speak of.

And who will be attending this strategy coven?

The Camp David meeting will be attended by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, Gen Michael Hayden, the CIA director and Gen Peter Pace, America's top soldier.

The usual suspects.

50,000 troops is a large number. Approximately three divisions with support elements. That's not counting elements stationed in the Gulf, Turkey, and Diego Garcia. By comparison, there are some 37,000 in South Korea, 58,000 in Japan, while some 70,000 are in Germany (though some are in rotation in Iraq).

I think that TOD needs, either a Wiki, or a regular forum. Let's reserve the posts in the main page for commentaries on TOD posters and kill the drumbeats/open posts.

TOD generates high quality discussion, very good contents, but this valuable info loses its value if you can't readily find it.

With a Wiki or a well structured forum, information would be easily found, and also good threads can continue without being buried in a 200+ page comment.

My experience at Crisis Energética tells me that the forum is the way to go, especially if your audience is not very technically minded, Wikis are perhaps more difficult to get.

In two years and a half, our forums have had 25k+ messages vs 1400 main page stories, the mainpage serves the purpose of focusing the issues and building an editorial style for the site, but the real meat of the discussion (often highly technical), is in the forums.

Just my two cents...

The timing of peak oil is certainly the most important event of our time.  And how the global civilization deals with the fallout will determine whether a hundred years from now people are reading about these events on the internet, or merely herd goats through the ruins.  

The timing of the Great Event is still uncertain, with one camp following Ken Deffeyes and Matt Simmons and saying peak is right now; with others following Colin Campbell and concluding that a spurt of deep sea drilling will more than offset depletion for another three or four years.

Being involved with the Oil Drum is having a front row while watching history. Especially when Stuart's outstanding "close but no cigar" graphs come out, and we can get a real time picture of the shape of the curve.

Offshore developments have a tough current to fight against: 8% depletion, political unrest, and the exhaustion of the three biggest oil fields.

These threads make my day. I'm currently finishing work on a paper adobe greenhouse, and these threads provide food for thought as I work.

Thanks for the ride.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/aa447f34-f973-11da-8ced-0000779e2340.html

In a rare public intervention, Big Blue's chairman and chief executive writes in today's Financial Times that traditional multinational companies need to abandon their almost colonial approach to operations outside their home country.

Do they sense something?

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.  

Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman's Union in the process.  The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation's most modern highway straight into the heart of America.  The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new "SENTRI" system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.  

As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year.  Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush.  The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming "North American Union" that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?print=yes&id=15497

Two missions that could have helped us to understand, and plan for, global warming have been cut. Beth Daley writes in the Boston Globe that more than $200 million in future funding has been eliminated for satellite projects called The Deep Space Climate Observatory and The Global Precipitation Measurement mission, despite the fact that the Deep Space satellite has already been built, at a cost of $100 million. These projects would have warned us about the degree of global warming by sending back a continuous picture of the sunlit surface of the earth, as well as measurements of soil moisture and such things as solar radiation, ozone, clouds and water vapor. As well as helping us understand the impact of global warming, this data would also help us predict future droughts and floods.

Read about it here:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/06/09/nasa_shelves_climate_satellites/

Climate Change: The View From the Patio
Published: June 4, 2006

SCIENTISTS had some sobering news last week about the potential impact of climate change, and it didn't come from the foot of a shrinking glacier in Alaska or the shores of a tropical resort where the rising ocean is threatening the beachfront bar.

It came from a North Carolina forest, at an experimental plot where scientists can precisely control the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air. Duke researchers discovered that when exposed to higher levels of CO2, the greenhouse gas released in ever-increasing quantities from human activity, poison ivy goes haywire.

The researchers found that the weedlike plant grew much faster under CO2 conditions similar to those projected for the middle of the century. The plant also produced a more noxious form of its rash-causing chemical: a more poisonous poison ivy.

"We were surprised to find it," said William H. Schlesinger, a Duke professor who took part in the study.

While much of the discussion of climate change focuses on the big picture of rising sea levels and increasing global air and ocean temperatures, the Duke finding helps explain the smaller picture. Climate change may be a real nuisance in the backyard.

Poison ivy is only the latest entry on a growing list of pests, both plant and animal, that may be nurtured. Japanese beetles, a voracious eater of turf and trees, live longer under higher levels of carbon dioxide. The ranges of other invasive insects, like fire ants, are expected to increase as the planet warms. Disease-carrying ticks have already been shown to have moved northward in Sweden. Mosquitoes could fly farther, too.

Poplars and birch trees are flowering earlier in New England, and some global warming forecasts predict that the region's sugar maples will eventually disappear. Elevated carbon dioxide has been shown to cause ragweed and certain pine trees to produce more pollen. "It's not a pretty picture," said Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

While there is still disagreement over the extent of global warming and its potential to reshape the environment, Dr. Epstein noted that many of the changes that he and other scientists are tracking fall outside that debate. "They're just a result of carbon dioxide stimulation, something that no one disputes is rising," he said.

Poison ivy isn't the only plant whose growth is encouraged by additional carbon dioxide. In the Duke experiments, Dr. Schlesinger said, the trees themselves show an increase in growth under carbon dioxide concentrations roughly 50 percent higher than current conditions. "If you're a timber products company, you look at that favorably," he said.

Dr. Epstein, who has studied ragweed growth under increased carbon dioxide, said, "There are some side effects for public health as well as ecology." More cases of hay fever are likely to result from the additional pollen from ragweed and pine cones; a study at the same Duke forest showed that both plants produced more pollen under higher levels of CO2.

Increases in asthma have already been detected, Dr. Epstein said, as pollen and other airborne allergens combine with particles from truck and bus exhaust to reach deep into the lungs.

Jonathan Patz, of the Nelson Institute and the department of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, summed up the situation. "The bottom line is that there are many major health outcomes that are highly sensitive to climate change," he said.

But climate change, Dr. Patz said, involves more than just temperature. Extreme weather -- harsher droughts on one end, and heavier rainfalls on the other -- is expected to become more common.

That could lead to more outbreaks of disease. Dr. Patz led a study of episodes of waterborne disease in the United States in the second half of the 20th century and found that most of them followed periods of very heavy rainfall. One of the worst cases was an outbreak of parasitic infections in 1993 that sickened 400,000 people in Milwaukee. This was preceded by the heaviest rainfall month in the city in 50 years.

More intense rainfall "is something that water managers are going to have to take seriously," Dr. Patz said.

Extreme dry conditions can lead to disease as well. Dr. Epstein said that the 1999 outbreak in New York of West Nile virus coincided with a severe drought. The mosquito that transmits the virus between animals and humans finds partly evaporated, filthy pools of water more suitable for breeding.

Other insects flourish in the seesawing between extreme wet and extreme dry conditions, Dr. Epstein said. "That's exactly what the bugs love," he said. "They like it dried out, and then rain that floods an area" and creates pools of standing water for breeding. "In the Northeast, that's what gives you outbreaks of equine encephalitis," he said, referring to another mosquito-borne disease.

Mosquitoes are pests, of course, as are Japanese beetles, ticks and poison ivy, for that matter. "It's not at all surprising that pests get pestier" because of changing environmental conditions, said May R. Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was involved in the Japanese beetle studies. "They have this opportunistic life history."

Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the Heinz Center, a Washington research group on environmental policy, said: "When you're sending ripples through the ecosystem, I think what you do is tilt the balance a bit in favor of the pests. It begins to sound sort of biblical."

Mr. Lovejoy said that the increase in nuisance species, and the potential disappearance of other, much-prized species, may help raise awareness of climate change.

"The really strong reaction in the New England states about the prospect of losing the sugar maple is a great example of that," he said.

"Part of that is that it is a fall tourist magnet, and it gives us a little bit of syrup in the spring. But the reaction also is, 'Hey, this is part of where I live, and it won't be there.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/weekinreview/04fountain.html?ex=1307073600&en=1e06f666627ecd0a &ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Sorry about the long post, but as NYTimes articles sometimes go behind a paywall after a short bit, it was a way to preserve the content for posterity.

WASHINGTON - Remember the Department of Homeland Security's "no-fly'' lists that erratically flagged 3-year-old children and dozens of men named David Nelson as terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes?
Well, now privacy experts are warning America to prepare for the "no-work'' list."
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3925947

And we here in the states slip a little further towards statism.
http://www.schneier.com/essay-052.html

a scientist and one of these deranged libertarian right-wing anti-environmentalist science deniers go out for a drive...

a) Your production costs are $15 per barrel, and the global price of oil is $30.

or

b) Your production costs are triple that at $45 per barrel, and the global price of oil is $70.

My motorcycle accident was also from a car turning left into my path, but I wore a helmet, leather jacket and gloves. I see people riding scooters in t-shirts and tank tops, though. Road rash is not attractive. Brain damage is even less appealing.