Open Thread 2
Posted by Prof. Goose on July 17, 2006 - 9:55pm
when we go over 300 comments, it's probably time for a new one.
one question I'll pose: what other quotes should we put up in the quote box that we don't have?
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…”
—Winston Churchill, November 1936
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
:)
at least one company takes a jab at oil companies, take a look
I like Westexas's quote: "We have to kill consumption before consumption kills us".
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, on CNBC this morning, said that world oil demand will exceed supply for at least one to two years.
Interestingly enough, by some odd coincidence he was pushing for a new Hydrocarbon Law in Iraq, so that US oil companies could start increasing Iraqi production.
Of course, the ignorant interviewer rather than asking if Bodman forsee's an ability for the world to increase production from current levels, she kept pressing him about what the 'price at the pump' would be - which he refused to forcast.
Texas and US Lower 48 oil production as a model for Saudi Arabia and the world
Jeffrey J. Brown & "Khebab", GraphOilogy
Based on the Hubbert Linearization (HL) method and based on our historical models, we believe that Saudi Arabia and the world are now on the verge of irreversible declines in conventional oil production. Published May 24, 2006
I cannot remember where I first heard that. ...
He was one very smart dude.
Bush needs to have his straight talk with the American public. The public hears CERA, SA, oil companies, etc. say there's no supply problem. Bush knows otherwise, and the only way he can come close to saving face is to own up to the fact, and lay it out there for Americans to hear.
Recognition of the Hirsch Report would be a great place to start.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/30/bodman.gasprices/index.html
One other thing ocurred to me today, and I find it a delicious irony. Richard Heinberg mentioned a CIA memo talking about Russian peak oil output, and wondered out loud whether or not the US tried to get Russia in an arms race to essentially bankrupt it, knowing that its energy resources would be running out. Good thing we had the Saudis on our side I guess.
But I was thinking, now that Russia has passed SA as the world's leading producer (or at least they are neck and neck), that the situation may have been turned around completely. Russia has lots of oil and gas, and doesn't use all that much (relatively speaking). That gives it a lot of leverage. The US, on the other hand, is looking increasingly vulnerable.
Had we taken that money wasted on "star wars" and spent it on windmills, electrified high speed rail, etc. the Soviets would have gotten the hint and we might well still have a CCCP to worry about. But that strategy is proving short-sighted becuse we are liable to follow suit and have a wrecked economy like Russia now.
My favorite Churchill quote:
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
"Americans are the world's worst guests but the world's best hosts".
Nothing to do with PO I know, but I kind of like it.
EIA's 87-mbd forecast for 2010 is now the most conservative of our 12 modelers for that year. Who'd a thunk it, eh.
Of course, in terms of current output growth, we do seem to be at a somewhat clear plateau for the last few months. And yes, this plateau has something to do with hurricanes, pipelines being blown up, politics, etc. - things which will never, ever occur in the future, I'm sure.
But then, I'm pretty sure with all those projects coming on-line in Texas by 1975, Texas oil production would be able to regain its old early 1970s peak. See how predicting the future is hard?
Has anyone noticed the proliferation of scooters and motorcycles? Some people own a car and a motorcycle, to use the latter in good weather to use less gas. A small minority go motorcycle-only becuse poverty outweighs foul weather deterrence.
One obvious symptom of PO down the road will be the proliferation of bicycles. Not yet, becuse of the traffic of cars being the deterrent. Right now, you have to be almost fearless to ride a bike in the street, no matter the actual statistics. As they proliferate however, bike use will require less of a daredevil mindset - aiding its proliferation.
The problems of bicycles are thus:
- they are too fast for the sidewalk, making a hazard for pedestrians. Plus, many states outlaw the practice for that reason.
- they are vunerable in traffic, as above.
The result is that except for intentional bike trails, they are a poor match anywhere - until they become the majority vehicle on the street. (think of pre-car China) At that time, driving a car will be too big a pain in the arse.So far, the traffic deterrent prevents bike use. But with gas in Chicago closing in on a buck a litre, time will tell when the switchover starts. Gas is $3.29/gallon now. When it hits $3.78/gallon, it'll reach the buck-a-litre milestone. Or is that kilometer-stone?
A couple of thoughts I've had over the past few years' about general animosity against cyclists from motorists.
I don't really want to get into a debate; I'm a lurker for good reasons :)
Anyway here goes nothing.
Since I first started studying Peak Oil in about 1999 after attending my first Critical Mass ride in Sydney (Aus); I've developed 4 opinions of the effect it will have on cycling in general.
Utopian
I first thought that when oil peaked and petrol was very expensive it would be a cyclist's dream, with everyone riding as they couldn't afford to drive.
Dire
I soon realised that this utopian dream was just that and that when petrol was to expensive so would most other things like food, shelter, health, etc. So cycling was pretty low on the agenda.
Period of bliss
I then hit upon the reality that the crash would probably (possibly) take a few years to really effect me (white, middle class, professional etc.) So during this period when "others" were having a hard time affording to drive and before my luck runs out and I loose my job etc riding would be much more common and accepted behaviour.
Between times
My latest thoughts have been that there will be a period of time of dislocation for many motorists; this is where I think we are now. This is a time where the average Joe who lives in a location where he must drive to is getting squeezed financially in all sorts of ways and is pretty angry and scared. A simple and easy outlet for this resentment is to direct it towards people who can't fight back and seem to be getting something for nothing - cyclists. In short I think we're in a dangerous time for cycling, but in a short time "Joe" will have had to cede his V8 SUV to cycle to the closest transit station to get to work. Moreover more and more of Joe's mates will be doing the same thing, so it will be us and us (not us and them).
Those were just a few thoughts of a generally happy bloke; it's not the end of the world.... But if you go down the road and around the bend you can see it :)
Cheers, Justin
I'll be lurking again now......
Since he lived 4 gallons from the old job, the distance was too great to allow bicycle use plus mass transit would be very difficult if not full-scale impossible. Each dislocated motorist will face a unique set of nasty choices.
I wouldn't be surprised if road rage worsens as people make that final approach to when they park their car for good. They will know the jig is up and their credit cards are maxed out and they realise they can no longer afford to drive.
The thing to do is watch and listen at your workplace as the long-range commuters get squeezed first. For a given salary, they become the first casualties of PO and the commuting mission. Of course, that's becuse the gas prices bite them first and hardest. You might have already had a coworker who is a PO casualty already.
Let me call you by your first name. In Central California that is definitely of note. Also, even a Harley motorbike gets 50mpg.
We had a splurge of the two-cycle little bikes with a motor about a year back, but now we are seeing more and more electric bikes/scooters
My anecdotal impression in recent months is that people who pass my bike driving a real guzzler tend to really "zoom" past me and ahead, far faster than the speed limit, as if to justify to themselves why they suffer with those gas bills.
Nevertheless, most drivers here in Vermont are not too dangerous to bicyclists, and the number of bicyclists has been rising, it seems.
Not many bikers in the winter though! And those electric cars (and PHEVs) some people here are promoting would have a hard time providing heat, too. Or even AC in the summer, which some consider essential...
Happens all the time when I'm riding the bike. A few weeks ago a Mustang gunned past me. I was on my way to work and was trying not to sweat, but I passed him sitting in line at the next light. He gunned it again, but I passed him at the next light. This went on for half a mile and he just got angrier and angrier. I finally eased into the left turn lane and passed him again before taking a left. He used a lot of gas for little effect.
I lived in NH for a few years, and I wonder if EVs would start on some of those brutally cold mornings. They say pedaling your Twike keeps you warm enough.
MadMaxout, I'm from Chicago and I grew up riding as described. It's different now.
I grew up in the suburbs and used to ride into the city just because city people had more to do with themselves than throw their beer bottles at cyclists. That put me into what I still think is the greatest city in the world.
OTOH I've been shot at probably half a dozen times for the crime of riding a bicycle. Actually took some shotgun pellets. Beaten by the Evanston police twice for riding a bike. Better than my retarded friend who was raped by the Evanston police for same. One of those times I was left unconscious in a snowbank when it was perhaps 10 degrees F. and I was saved by a black housemaid who in fact lost her job for going out to help me. I owe her.
It is very much better now. It's been 3 years since a car hit me. I do still know how to bounce rather than get run over. Probably 10 years since a motorist reached out the window to grab me and try to throw me down. I did have some moron last winter who dumped a 40 oz. Big Gulp on me when it was about 20 degrees.
The big difference is that there are vastly more cyclists than there used to be. The idiots have their hate-cyclist circuit overloaded and can't function.
In the years I was angry enough to contemplate such action, it helped that I could do 30 mph at will, and with anger 40 mph. On a racing bike still a little acceleration to play with at 40.
Maybe the speed earned a little respect, it definitely left them confused.
This is as good a spot as any to make a reply to something off a dead thread. Orwell did not fight for the "legitimate Nationalist" government, it was the Loyalist government. Meaning the elected Socialist-Popular Front government. I'm sure you recollect now that I've reminded you.
Legitimacy is a slippery notion. No matter the polls, legitimacy always evades the left. If we now put aside strict historical accuracy, IMHO by current definitions Franco was a patriot and a freedom fighter, the Loyalists were communists, and Orwell's POUM militia undoubtedly terrorists. Even back then the Loyakists were not comfortable with the support they had from the anarchists.
This started with you asking where are the journalists? The modern world doesn't want them. Orwell would be locked up or killed.
Your quick biblio tells me you've done some reading.
I wonder if you filled that shelf and left it before publication of CEJL? If you don't have it I'm sure you would enjoy the 4 volumes of Colleced Essays Journalism and Letters.
I don't think younger readers have much chance of understanding the political life reflected in Road to Wigan Pier or Homage. Easier to teach Beowulf.
Anybody watching the Tour de France? Will Landis catch up with Oscar Pereiro to take the Yellow Jersey?
Landis strikes me more as a NASCAR type than a bike racer. What he did today was phenomenal, we'll be talking about this one the rest of our lives
The only reason I've never written a biography of Blair/Orwell is that he asked in his Will explicitly that this never be done. I have respected his wishes. Others have not.
Wow, I haven't heard that word since I left California 19 years ago.
I've been riding the train to work ever since I moved to Germany. It's a very pleasant way to commute. My time is my own there, I can read or veg out and don't have to fight traffic or look for parking. I can enjoy the scenery, both inside and outside the train.
In spite of the availability of trains, busses, streetcars, there are plenty of people here who prefer the "freedom" of driving to work. If the price of doing that gets high enough, many of them will switch to riding the train. You can get a taste of what's to come on snowy winter days, when many people switch to the train. It fills up much faster, SRO well before it reaches the city. There goes the neighborhood....
Matt, you don't want to ride the busses in Portland ME yet, unless you're doing it for pure transit motives, but I'm glad the Callie (Bay Area) busses are looking up. I'm happily married, but seeing beautiful women, on mass-transit, no-less, is one of the joys of the world! It just does the heart good! (And on mass transit, you can actually start up a conversation, unlike the Hottie in the next lane at the Toll Plaza)
I doubt you will be able to lock it down to a 'start of switchover' - the process will not be that precise. There will be a gradual slide across in favour the bicycle as is currently happening in the UK.
In the UK the price of gasoline is hovering just below the psychologically important £1 per litre (= $1.83 per litre = $6.92 per US gallon) and in London we also have to pay a daily toll of £8 , soon to be raised to £10 ($18.30) to drive from the suburb to the centre of London and home again during working weekdays.
I imagine an $18 per day toll to drive to and from work in any American city would be as good an incentive to buy a bicycle as it has been in London.
It deters most everyone but the day traders, lawyers, any doctors and corporate kingpins. Yet, the streets are absolutely CLOGGED in Chicago's centre city. Of course, streets are clogged with cabbies, delivery trucks, messengers, buses, including accordion buses, and who knows what, spiced up with the bike messengers to get people to slam on brakes.
Now, if you add an $18/day congestion toll on top of the existing parking fees there is no guarentee. Not with only the good-6-figure income types remaining undeterred.
Here is a marker of gas prices for a Brit to consider: If a kilo is 2.2 pounds, then a "kilo"/litre gas price will do. (2.2 English Pounds/litre)
BTW, I thought of something today, while joking about the upcoming buck-a-litre gas. When gas prices get so high that gas pumps can't handle it, what will gas station owners do? Let's say that max setting is $10/gallon. Will they reduce the setting then flip the "gallons/liters" switch to litres?
$10/gal = $2.64/litre so the same gas pump can be used longer just by flipping the one switch, thus avoiding having to get new (and by then very expensive) pumps. Or will they merely take the money you give to pre-pay then set it to cut you off at half the amount?
For what it's worth my strategy is to ride bike trails where they exist, failing that roads with a bike lane, failing that wide or low traffic roads with no bike lane, ... when you get down to narrow and busy roads, then do get up on the sidewalk and slow down to near walking speed. Cars entering and exiting driveways won't see you if you are moving faster.
Would you like me to repeat them on this thread?
There are at least twenty good (and very short) ones, and it is hard to pick just one.
How about:
"Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."
(Team America)
-Janis Joplin
In the mean time, freedom is nearing a buck a litre.
"It takes five years for a willing person's mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo."
"Knowledge alone will not move nations: astonishing and unforeseen events will be required for humanity's education."
www.garretthardinsociety.org/info/quotes.html
Why? Given oil is finite and once it is consumed it is gone oil was inevitably going to run out oneday. Given the rate at which we are consuming it was inevitably going to run out at some point in our lifetimes. Given our inertia to change we were unlikely to do anything about it until it stares us in the face. We could have run out all at once while at maximum consumtion. I figure that a 2-3% per annum gradual depletion with a strong likelyhood that we will still be getting some oil in fifty years from today is a great way for it to happen. It means we have a year to find alternates and effeciencies of only 2-3% each year. It could be a lot worse than that.
The trick is how we manage the slow but maddening decline once we hit the peak if we havn't already. BTW, natural gas does come close to the "gas tank" scenario. That's becuse it's a gas and a gas obviously can seep around the nooks and crannies easally as compressed air instead of slowly seeping to the drill bit like a formation of crude does.
While an oil formation is (oversimplistically) like a sandbox saturated with motor oil and a water well, a natural gas well and formation is almost like if the drill bit drills into a giant cylinder of the gas. NG wells run out suddenly instead of little by little. Thus peak NG is a much bigger danger in the immediate future. But both are the biggest danger civilisation faces.
"I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're doing business and how we're operating. Over and above the just sort of normal - by-the-book - auditing arrangement." - Vice President Cheney, then chief executive of Halliburton, praising the Andersen audit company in a promotional video (1996)
--
I try not to daemonize people who think differently than I, because those are the only people I can learn from. - john gorka, musician
--
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Some men just don't get it. - Cool Hand Luke
--
"Everything you know is wrong" - Firesign Theater
--
If you were asked to name five leaders of impeccable integrity in the business community, you could not come up with them. - Arthur Leavitt on Charlie Rose
--
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." - Colin Powell, UN on Iraq, March 2003
cfm
I actually just recently watched the film last week for the first time ever. Wonderful movie about the human condition.
I don't know. And real-life evidence suggests these tasks are indeed possible, and historically, many people, if not most, get away with them.
We'll have to see what happens to Boone Picken's son to get recent anecdotal drama. Newman didn't fair so well. At least as a character. He makes a great spaghetti sauce in real life.
The human condition. Hmmm. One of my favorite films. I always just thought it was the best prison film. And I've seen it about 12 times. I'm such a dumbass. Thanks for that.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/15/putin-jab
A gent I ment once who's nickname was 'hacksaw'. Was a 'presidental schollar' (had a free ride at the college) till he took a hacksaw to a parking meter one night when drunk.
better than money will get you through times of no crude
to paraphrase Freewheelin' Freddie.
--Meadows et al, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
I drove a tractor.
My son drives an autotrack combine with ballast optimization, dual-beam ground speed radar sensor, 48 gpm hydraulic system, 18-speed transmission, gps field management system, and heated leather seats.
His son will drive a mule.
My grandfather swung around in the trees.
My dad walked the earth.
I drive a car.
My son will walk the earth.
My grandson will swing in the trees.
We evolved from an arboreal ape lookalike, and global warming could make Earth a jungle planet again. Guess where our descendants will find the citrus?
It could illustrate the steps of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as many of us have or are going through. It could illustrate, through this hypothetical family, the reactions of sceptical friends, family members and co-workers. It could display an example of an optomistic outcome with the theme of re-localization and down-sizing and the step-by-step lifestyle changes that these members of this family go through as they try to change their lifestyles. It could illustrate the very hard decisions that they would have to make, the resistance they experience from others and some flashbacks could show pessimistic scenarios for large urban areas like Los Angeles or other urban areas which fail to adjust properly or it could use techniques like news reports from across the world like population down-sizing and relocation. Just a thought.
The trick is to have your first priority be telling a good story, and only secondly educating.
The BBC have a department dedicated to reviewing scripts as they look for writing talent, however, we're both a bit busy to continue this project right now :( Besides, getting a TV show made is super hard.
"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."
Charles Darwin
History is not a schoolmistress . . . She is a prison matron who punishes for unlearned lessons.
. . . Russian Historian Vasily Klyutchevsky
and,
Old ideas are hard to kill. Niels Bohr once said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
--Karl Raimund Popper
That's a key point, and that organism may not be terribly well adapted at other moments in time. Were the creatures that survived the extinction events particularly fit or just lucky?
Happens all the time in society, as well. 600 years ago, in a time of lawlessness, weak leadership, and foreign domination, a teenage girl who saw visions and heard voices rallied a nation and threw out the invader. If she lived today, Joan of Arc would be put on therapy and psychoactive drugs. We need the fringe elements of society -- you never know who'll be the "fittest" if conditions should change dramatically.
Very true. I've achieved a small degree of notoriety from LATOC. Got my name in the Congressional record, pic in Fortune, and mug in a documentary. However, had I put the site up in 1998 or had published a book in 1988 about these issues I would just have been dismissed as some nut and been paid no attention. Same thing for this forum and others like it.
As Tainter points out, the "fringe" element(s) of society gain acceptance and even prominence once a society begins to collapse. (Joan of Arc = good example, Adolf Hitler = bad example)
Preadaptation describes a situation where an organism uses a preexisting anatomical structure inherited from an ancestor for a potentially unrelated purpose. One example of preadaptation is insect flight as insects were originally exclusively terrestrial, some with fanlike structures for cooling which were selected for until they were large and efficient enough to allow flight (Bickerton 2000, p.160). Another is the example of dinosaurs having used feathers for insulation and display before using them to fly.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/preadaptations
I think you can find numerous examples of "preadaptations" in today's human society that are now finding new advantages in the changing environment.
A lot of it is being at the right place at the right time with arsenal to take advantage of the situation, so their is an element of luck, but also of preparation.
http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/esmap/site.nsf/files/312-05+Biofuels+for_Web.pdf/$FILE/312-05+Biofuels +for_Web.pdf
I may post more on this later, but need time to digest it.
Another excellent study, which I posted before, from World Watch Institute and the German gov't (GTZ):
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4078
The extended summary is over 100 pages. It also includes some country case studies. Free with registration.
Following the discussion/disagreement on the previous thread, I did want to note for RR's benefit, that several studies noted in the World Bank report above point to mileage of 25-30% less for E85 than regular gasoline.
My position remains: Ethanol is an inferior fuel from a consumer perspective because of BTU deficiency. In Brazil ethanol needs to be priced at 30-35% less than gasoline (adjusted for content) to make up for this. However, ethanol does have advantages, when produced from sugar cane now, and maybe other technologies in the future. It is renewable up to a limit (10% of global vehicle fuel use?), has the potential for huge beneficial climate impacts, and can be done now. This is documented extensively in both studies.
http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/esmap/site.nsf/files/KES4_forWeb.pdf/$FILE/KES4_forWeb.pdf
The Dismal Theorem: "If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth."
The Utterly Dismal Theorem: "Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery."
The Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem: "If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous."
Realistically, what are those "something else"s that would enable stable prosperity? Efficiency is just a technical improvement (Jevon's Paradox).
"[W]e can make all of humanity successful through science's world-engulfing industrial evolution provided that we are not so foolish as to continue to exhaust in a split second of astronomical history the orderly energy savings of billions of years' energy conservation aboard our Spaceship Earth. These energy savings have been put into our Spaceship's life-regeneration-guaranteeing bank account for use only in self-starter functions." --Buckminster Fuller
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/17/212531/190
What a disgrace!
'I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be more beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if -if, in short, anything turns up'
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkins_Micawber
I saw that, Boone comes clear out of the closet!
"I'm a Peak Believer."
So he is calling the peak much lower than De Marjorie (spelling may not be right) the French Total head of exploration, and seems to be making the call in front of the Iranian minister who gave possibly 5 years....this makes the Texans, Pickens and Simmons the most pessimistic, along wiht Westexas...
Pickens belief in Canada Tar sand has to be either a "pump and dump" play, to get the price up and then his hedge fund bails, or, and this is an interesting possibility, he thinks he's seen technical developments that could massively reduce the natural gas consumption in getting it out.
If that were true, then Pickens could be sitting in the two spots that could keep us from catastrophic meltdown too fast to handle,
tar sand oil, and natural gas (compressed for transport)
he may be an old man, but he don't seem to be stupid!
Either way, localities, counties, utilities, critical services, and states should be being informed and lobbied to begin putting in full contigency plans NOW.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I think Bucky Fuller said that, but can't find an attribution. ...
I, with two more to help me, will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand may well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand at either hand and keep the bridge with me?'
Thomas Babbington Macauley
OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:--Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
from The Hollow Men
Or WB Yeats:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
From The Second Coming
Tip-o'-the-Hat to the fellow who can identify where this quote came from. :-)
My fav. quote:
"Having been brought up in a serf-owner's family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with free men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned, and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills."
Piotr Kropotkin, russian anarchist.
As for Civ IV's cultural imperialism feature -- it's ok, but it makes miltary conquest a bit harder.
And the nukes! They castrated nukes! :-(
John D. Rockefeller?
Morgan Strategy Session
:-)
Far across the ocean in the land of look and see
There once was a time for you and me
Where the winds blow sweetly and the easy seas flow still
And where the barefoot dream of life can laugh and cry its fill
Where slot machine confusion and the plastic universe
Are objects of amusement in the fiction of their curse
And where the crazy white man and his tear gas happiness
Lies dead and long since buried by his own fantastic mess
For I hate the white man in his plastic excuse
O I hate the white man, and the man who turned him loose
And the reins of coloured thunder of the stallion of the dawn
Ride the coal-fire morning on the beach where all is borne
Where the emperor of meaning is burning up his fort
And sits to warm his toes around a fire made up of useless thought
And when the children tempt him with the riddles of their trance
He flings the flames of solstice casting laughs into their dance
And where the crazy white man in the desert of his bones
Lies as bleached as the paradise he likes to think he owns
And I hate the white man in his evergreen excuse
O I hate the white man, and the man who turned him loose
And far across the reaches of the drifting yellow sands
The living carpet wilderness forever joins its hands
With heaven's hell's attainment in a surging crest of fire
Where more than all is thrown upon the everlasting pyre
And through the countless canticles of Jason's charcoal fleece
Are sung the songs of nothing in the timeless masterpiece
And there stood in the middle is the everlasting bust
Built by God's very own white man as he tries to rule the dust
And I hate the white man in his doctrinaire refuse
O I hate the white man, and the man who turned you all loose
And the bowels of his city have been locked into a safe
Where the spew stains on the sidewalks are defenders of the faith
While back inside his kitchen the bowler hatted long haired saint
Cleans with soap and water but it's really just white paint
While his gorgon-headed scandalsheet presents its daily bite
To give the righteous news believers drugs to keep them white
And outside in the whitewash where the guns are always always right
The shooting star has summoned death's dark angel from his night
And I hate the white man in his evergreen excuse
O I hate the white man and the man who turned him loose
... and the man who turned me loose
(as you might guess he don't like ol' JC much, nor Islam when it comes to that)
BEIJING (Dow Jones)--The crude oil output of Daqing field, China's largest oil field in terms of production volume, fell 2% in the first half of the year compared with January-to-June 2005, but gas output rose 7%, according to a
report by China Oilnews Monday.
Daqing's crude output dropped to 22.26 million metric tons, or equivalent to 901,469 barrels a day, said the paper.
Crude output in the first half of 2005 reached 22.66 million tons, or 917,667 b/d, according to a People's Daily report in July last year.
The field's gas output was at 1.32 billion cubic meters in the first half of this year, China Oilnews said, up 7% from 1.23 billion cubic meters in the
first half of 2005.
Daqing Oilfield Corp., the operator of the field, is targeting to produce 43.09 million tons of crude oil, or 865,342 b/d, and 2.6 billion cubic meters
of gas this year.
Daqing Oilfield Corp. is a unit of PetroChina Co. (PTR).
In 2005, Daqing produced 44.95 million tons of crude, or 902,694 b/d, a 3% decline from 2004. But natural gas output rose 20% to 2.443 billion cubic
meters.
PetroChina Co. (PTR), China's largest integrated oil firm by capacity, said Monday that its overall crude oil production in January-to-June rose 1.8% to
419.1 million barrels, or 2.32 million b/d, while its gas output rose a sharp 30.8% to 684.7 billion cubic feet, or 20.54 billion cubic meters.
Daqing is, of course, number four on our most favorite things list.
I'm going to try something here. I'm building an opensource database of the largest fields in the world. I was wondering if anybody had any current production numbers on these:
Kirkuk (Iraq)
Rumaila North (Iraq)
Zakum (UAE)
Or any other field information they want to volunteer. I'd like to work on fields above 200,000 bpd to start with, and will be publishing any results as soon as they come in. I figure that if we all pool our time, effort, and resources we could get a much better picture of the situation. We can also make clear what we know and what we do not know.
This effort is a direct rip-off of Kalpa's impromptu poll last week on attitudes (D-1-Y). He got me thinking. Thanks, Kalpa. How about another poll? Don't be a stranger.
As an initial template I combined a database Greyzone distrubuted a few months ago with a highly incomplete table in the back of 'Twilight.'
My goal is to catalogue the top 116 fields that appear at the top of Simmons' Pyramid. Once we get some decent data we can start to have fun with it.
I know that Chris Skrebowski has does some work in this respect. But I hit the site and it looks like it's pay-to-play. So I wouldn't know what his information is worth. I'd have to see it. I'm all about freedom of information. As in free. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's some kind of downloadable like the EIA has that I missed.
Anyway. We deserve some decent info here at TOD, so that's what I'd like to provide. I'll do the easy lifting. You guys each throw me a field. What would be great is if people would reserve slots. Pledge that you will research a certain field and we can stick a bookmark in it. Then others would not be duplicating efforts.
China prod=91.7m tonnes (+2.2% over last yr)
Daqing prod=22.6m tonnes (-2.0% over last yr)
Does that tell anyone anything about if China's peak is imminent?
Let me attempt to give you the paradox. Hubbert people couldn't tell you what is gonna be the month, next week - but they are almost always right. Nah, let me try again.
Khebab is probably the best. He completely understands each and every criticism. Yet in his heart of hearts he believes. Why? Because he actually works the numbers relentlessly. Few of us have been there. You need to stare at these numbers for hours. Until you feel like you are going blind. To which Khebab responds, "Nah, no big deal..."
Do you see Michael Lynch or Yergin giving explanations for their "theories" and "numbers"? I think not.
Still riding both sides of fence.
Hubbert accurately picked the approximate time frame for the Lower 48 peak.
HL is a simplified version of Hubbert's earlier work.
Using HL, Khebab predicted post-1970 cumulative Lower 48 production, using only production data through 1970. Actual production was 99% of what the HL method predicted. Note that Khebab had no agenda. He just did this as an experiment.
Deffeyes estimated that the world crossed the 50% of Qt mark in late 2005. The EIA says that world crude + condensate production is down 1% since December. . .
You appear to have totally ignored the actually mathematical work of both Stuart and Khebab in favor of the Halfin, who provided no data, no math, nothing but hot air.
If you want the spreadsheet with the data, send me an email (address in my info).
I'll be interested to see your database because I want to try and find out how much of the daily production comes from fields that could collapse like Yibal. Will you include what EOR techniques have been used at each field?
There isn't any sort of hard-fast universal rule that says it will apply to every situation. I expect that, if you add Yibal in with everything else, you'l find that the global production curve fits a gaussian peak and will linearize nicely. It's just that you're looking at one mickey-mouse-shaped blob here.
Yes, but what we are doing with modern EOR techniques is not natural. We are skewing the production curves so they no longer fit a gaussian. The only good gaussian fits I've seen here at TOD are for fields/regions that, for the greater part of their history, have not used advanced EOR. Either that or they have used EOR for the majority of the field/region's life (e.g. Norway's Stratfjord).
"I expect that, if you add Yibal in with everything else, you'l find that the global production curve fits a gaussian peak and will linearize nicely."
But a fair percentage of the daily oil production comes from a handfull of super-giant fields that have had advanced EOR used to maintain their pressure. If all of these (very old) super-giant fields are at the same point that Yibal was at in 1998, then we are going to see a significant drop-off of world production in the next 2 or 3 years.
Hopefully Oil CEO's database can help us quantify how many fields fit the Yibal profile.
But for some reason it doesn't seem to have made the discovery process much less random. I do see your point, and suspect there may be some expectation of a steeper downslope, but also a tapering-off phase as oil shale, tar, etc. are brought in... they won't make another 'peak' but will lengthen the 'tail'.
All I can point to is the inherent randomness of nature. If we simultaneously knew where all of it was a half century ago, and no new discoveries were made in the interim, then yeah, it's gonna be a steep decline.
Therefore wouldnt it be wise to draw the line at a smaller number than 116, also considering that one would probably still get a good percentage of the worlds total oil production.
And how to administrate? Should entries be examined and by whom? How could it be accessed via TOD?
Mostly questions Im afraid...
Maybe a starting point could be the text "oil fields and what they do (or might) produce and when". Did you see that?
I'm going to base it off an excel spreadsheet. Each field will have its own row. But we will want to easily convert to MS Access to run advanced queries(maybe) - plus that's no big deal.
Most important will be references. Each line will hopefully be linkable to a folder containing a Word file with synopsis and links to documentation, primarily on archived web-sites - we must incorporate the debate and alternate viewpoints and their corresponding production numbers within database itself, this is the difficult part.
I want to bundle the whole thing in one Zip-file for distribution. What are the best ways to achieve this? What are your recommendations, suggestions, and other ideas?
"History will prove me right and you wrong - because I'm going to write that history." - Churchill
"When the world ends, can I have all your Stuff?" - Jack
Subkommanader Dred
As far as plastics go, we can get a lot of our petrochemicals from coal. But also, we have GM plants that produce plastic according to this US government website:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml
I think healthcare will be one of THE VERY LAST PLACES that will be deprived of resources. We will sacrifice almost anything infront of healthcare.
But, given the complexity of modern USA style health care (or more accurately, disease care), and, beyond the use of petrochemicals and electricity, its utter dependence on a unbelievably complex maze of high technology and computers, and insurance payments, I'd expect the collapse of this system to be part and parcel of any future economic collapse.
I also suspect if/when this happens, no amount of effort or collective decision-making will be able to get these hospitals up and running in their present form.
To my thinking, in a scenario of major collapse, ala Soviet Union, many or most hospitals will survive, but in somewhat different form as they re-cobble themselves. I am quite certain we will still have chemo, anesthesia and surgery, for a very long time, at some level, for some people. But I would guess that the availability and scope of these things will be scaled down dramatically, and many of the related high-tech accoutrements will have fallen away.
Effectively we would then, like it or not, have to settle for a simplified, less widely available (at least for surgeries and other high-tech intervention) and less effective system, even as many older and chronically ill folk will die many years earlier than they might have. This situation if we see it could in fact be an unplanned aid to the population problem. Also, the healthy young would be relatively unaffected - in fact on average with this scenario they might have a better quality of life than otherwise, as relatively more resources and energy would be available to them.
To clarify - I'm not saying a collapse of the current USA health care system (or similar first world health care systems), on balance, is desirable - people like my dad would have long passed without modern health care, and at 75 he still has a reasonable level of health. Collapse or non-collapse of the system ultimately has very little to do with individual choices anyway, even choices of important people who are near the top of the modern health care / insurance system pyramid - let alone opinionated peons like me who are not part of the system at all.
In any case, bigger tragedies IMO are crises that result in widespread deep suffering and dislocation for the young among us, who have not yet lived out near their full potential lives; I don't think a collapse of modern health care would by itself result in that.
But the extreme treatments moves the borders for what is easy and do of course give additional happines times life lenght.
In my country we could get rid of a lot of administration with a small and probably positive impact on the production. If times turn realy hard it will start to unravel somewhere and if the ledership is good it wont be in the handling of staff and patients so that what can be done is done well.
Media and debate gives me the impression that USA have a problem with inefficiences due to your sueing culture, fix that and you free a lot of professional time and money.
I agree that the biggest tragedy is (young) people who cant get their free lives to start to build their own happiness. Here I dont think it matters much wich level you start on but that you can work and year by year make life better for yourself and others you like.
Same goes for fueling the weapons of war and making sure there is a 'continunity of government'
See Serbia, Iraq, Lebanon for suggestions. Power stations are among the first things the F-16's go for these days (it's not 'terrorism' as long as you do it with an F-16).
I know a man who lost his leg on the winter march back from Stalingrad to Berlin. There were no more drugs in the Med Units, and the doctors advised his wife to leave the maggots on the wound, since they would only eat dead tissue, and would be his best hedge against gangrene. I knew him in the late 1980's, and you could hardly see the limp. They were farming in upstate NY and had a cow with an infected udder, and applied the same wisdom, allowing nature to take it's course. She was doing fine with three remaining udders. Not saying that infection won't get you, but that there is some old knowledge that would be extremely useful for med professionals to get in some kind of 'Survivor' course. That, and supplying clinics with some supplies that are washable/reusable, which have generally been replaced by disposables, should be part of their SOP.
I wonder what of the Diagnostic tools can be reviewed as far as energy consumption is concerned. If the 'no expense spared' attitude is consistent, I'm sure there can be drastic improvements made in the power req's of many tools..
The best is to combine this old treatment with antibiotics. This is one of the kind of infections you would like to save antibiotics for. Its mad to use them to only get a slight increase in production while making them useless for disease treatment due to bacterias becomming resistant.
-- Edward Abbey
"Too much proximity to folly tends to make it seem normal..."
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Dr. Albert Bartlett
Douglas Adams
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
:)
"Predictions are very hard to make, especially when they involve the future"
(Liberally taken from Yogi bear)
"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody's crazy" -Charles Manson
This second open thread at 63-comments+ shows that there is pent-up demand(is pent a word and did I spell it right?)
You guys went from 7,000 hits to 10,000 very quickly. I'm not sure why, and don't really care. I suspect it has something to do with price, but also notoriety. Regardless, the traffic is there. You need to deal with it.
When you guys first floated the idea of a daily open thread at a given time, I was sure that it would be a magnet for nutbags. I was wrong on that point. However I also raised the issue that the one thread at 9am favored people in certain times zones.
I notice a certain lull in the action between 4 and 9pm EST. I suggest a second daily open-thread somewhere in that time slot. I believe this would also relieve pressure on the 1st thread at exactly the right time if it were initiated around 5pm.
Just a suggestion. I'm happy either way. Or any other way for that matter.
"Some day this war is gonna end." - Kilgore
Bucky Fuller; Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth(Chapt 4); entire book on line ...
http://www.futurehi.net/docs/OperatingManual.html#4
(The rest of that quote)
It takes approximately four and one third years for light to get to us from the next nearest energy supply ship star. That is the kind of space-distanced pattern we are flying. Our little Spaceship Earth is right now travelling at sixty thousand miles an hour around the around the sun and is also spinning axially, which, at the latitude of Washington, D. C., adds approximately one thousand miles per hour to our motion. Each minute we both spin at one hundred miles and zip in orbit at one thousand miles. That is a whole lot of spin and zip. When we launch our rocketed space capsules at fifteen thousand miles an hour, that additional acceleration speed we give the rocket to attain its own orbit around our speeding Spaceship Earth is only one-fourth greater than the speed of our big planetary spaceship.
Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we have to obtain our biological life-regenerating energy from another spaceship the sun.
Our sun is flying in company with us, within the vast reaches of the Galactic system, at just the right distance to give us enough radiation to keep us alive, yet not close enough to burn us up. And the whole scheme of Spaceship Earth and its live passengers is so superbly designed that the Van Allen belts, which we didn't even know we had until yesterday, filter the sun and other star radiation which as it impinges upon our spherical ramparts is so concentrated that if we went nakedly outside the Van Allen belts it would kill us. Our Spaceship Earth's designed infusion of that radiant energy of the stars is processed in such a way that you and I can carry on safely. You and I can go out and take a sunbath, but are unable to take in enough energy through our skins to keep alive. So part of the invention of the Spaceship Earth and its biological life-sustaining is that the vegetation on the land and the algae in the sea, employing photosynthesis, are designed to impound the life-regenerating energy for us to adequate amount."
I imagine at least one will be streaming this.
Rat
By: KVMR
Published: Jul 14, 2006 at 09:41
A unique, first-of-its-kind regional "Town Hall Meeting" will bring listeners of five northern California community radio stations -- including Nevada City's KVMR (89.5 FM) -- into a common dialogue on what the stations are calling the burgeoning "localization" movement when they simulcast together this Wednesday night (July 19) from 7 to 9 p.m.
"There have been many network radio broadcasts," says KVMR Program Director Steve Baker, "but there have been very few where five stations actually talk and listen to each other."
The Seven Rivers Radio Network received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to bring together north coast stations in Mendocino County, Garberville, Arcata's Humboldt State University public radio affilatiate and an Indian reservation-based station in Hoopa for special election and public affairs programming. The network invited KVMR to participate to widen the geographic scope and dialogue for the project.
"We felt our broadcast area added at least five more major rivers," quips Baker, "but we're delighted to add to the dialogue however we can."
The topic at hand of Wednesday's broadcast will be the efforts of a number of northern California communities to become more self-reliant as global oil supplies decline relative to demand. This "peak oil" hypothesis has led to formation of "localization" groups in such places as Laytonville, Willits, Garberville and western Nevada County. Issues explored by these groups include expanding local food production, developing sustainable building material and improving energy sources not derived from petroleum. Guests at each participating radio station will describe activities going on in their communities.
"If we can pull off the challenge of technological wizardry that it is," says Baker, "it's what community radio was meant to be."
KVMR's contributors include activist Renette Senum from APPLE (Alliance for a Post Petroleum Local Economy) and organic farmer Daniel Macon, executive director of the Nevada County Land Trust. KVMR News Director Mike Thornton is coordinating the station's local participation.
An array of guests will be gauging the impact of the issues on their local economies, from professors and community organizers to a smalltown general store manager.
The Wednesday broadcast also features a dialogue among guests at the five stations and a call-in for listeners via KHSU in Arcata, 800/640-5911. Other participating stations include KZYX, Philo; KMUD, Garberville; and KIDE, Hoopa.
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_38934.shtml
Daqing oil production down 2%
Charles Darwin
You know, what makes our economy grow is energy. And, Americans are used to going to the gas tank and when they put that hose in their tank and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on. And, I don't want somebody to tell me I've gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it. And, if we're going to improve our standard of living, you have to consume more energy.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa
"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true."
Francis Bacon
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."
John Kenneth Galbraith
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. -- Alice Walker
"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised."
George Will
"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln
The future ain't what it used to be. -Yogi Berra
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (American historian)
-- George Bernard Shaw
(Might not be PO-specific enough)
H.L. Mencken
The article can be found here
The Oil Frontier
"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
- Kenneth Boulding, economist
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
- Native American proverb
People aren't satisfied, only they don't seem to know why they're not. The only chance of satisfaction we can imagine is getting more of what we've got now. But it's what we've got now that makes everybody dissatisfied. So what will more of it do - make us more satisfied, or more dissatisfied?
- Anonymous British Pensioner (1978)
There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed, Gandhi said.
you know something about it."
- Lord Kelvin
"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place." - Albert Einstein
I also like Matthew Simmons' "My worst case scenario is so bad that you don't want to go there."
"We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction ''If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.''"
"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
(According to some, he's one to talk)
There's one I was looking for, but couldn't find; something about 'Deriving energy from burning fuels is like spending off your capital, instead of deriving interest'
Again, of course, he's one to talk, considering the amount of capital he spent.. but much of it was Westinghouse's, not his own, at least.
- that he was a genius
- that Edison stole his stuff
- that he himself was suffering from worsening mental illness as he aged. This last fact bugged him no end, as did #2. Truly, Tesla was a tragic hero.
Here is another quote from some old Greek or other:"That which we love will destroy us."
"Whom the gods wish to destroy, first the gods drive them mad."
'That which will not kill us, will only make us stronger'
and did Friederich Wilhelm ('Froderick') also give us..
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women" ??
or was that Sonny Bono?
-Genghis Khan
That's taken from Genghis Khan ...
'That which will not kill us, will only make us stranger'
Tom Waits
"I wonder if old Jimmy's gonna hear it When I tell him that his logic wasn't sound. They'll dose him up on lots of evil spirits When they take him to the psychiatric grounds. Yes, me, I've got a bottle in front of me, And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy. Just different ways to kill the pain the same. But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, Than have to have a frontal lobotomy. I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane. I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane!"
(Randy Hanzlick)
Written by an Atlanta physician named Dr. Randy Hanzlick--who writes songs as a hobby--notice how the familiar chiastic reversal shows up in sounds of words. This is a perfect example of what can only be called phonetic chiasmus.
By the way, Dr. Hanzlick told me the inspiration for his song was a piece of graffiti he found scrawled on a bathroom wall in a VA hospital in the early 1970's. It said, "I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy." Hanzlick played around with the saying until he came up with his version. The saying is sometimes attributed to Tom Waits, but Hanzlick is the man who wrote the song.
http://www.chiasmus.com/typesofchiasmus/phonetic.shtml
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
I like to have one martini/Two at the very most/After three I'm under the table/After four I'm under the host.
She runs the gamut of emotions, from A to B.
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.
Life is a wonderful cycle of song/A medley of extemporanea/And love is a thing that can never go wrong/And I am Marie of Romania.
Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Bertrand Russell
(Remember Reagan's Star War plans?)
Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, 6/1860
- Harman Daly
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."" -- Robert Heinlein
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." -- Robert Heinlein
"The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed." -- Robert Heinlein
And just for Don Sailorman...
"Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell." -- Robert Heinlein
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"
-Ben Franklin
"The people of England regards itself as free; but it is
grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762)
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1847)
"The most noble, pure and true love of mankind is the love of oneself. I want to be free! I
hope to be happy! I want to appreciate all the beauties of the world. But my freedom is
secured only when all other people around me are free. I can only be happy when all
other people around me are happy. I can only be joyful when all the people I see and
meet look at the world with joy-filled eyes. And only then can I eat my fill with pure
enjoyment when I have the secure knowledge that other people, too, can eat their fill as I
do."
-Ret Marut
"when we think about co-operation. . . we tend to associate the concept with fuzzy-minded
idealism. . . This may result from confusing co-operation with altruism. . . Structural cooperation
defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy. It sets things up so that by helping
you I am helping myself at the same time. Even if my motive initially may have been
selfish, our fates now are linked. We sink or swim together. Co-operation is a shrewd and
highly successful strategy - a pragmatic choice that gets things done at work and at
school even more effectively than competition does."
- Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition)
"Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy more and be happy."
- THX 1138
Robert Costanza
From http://www.paecon.net/ (there are more quotes about economy).
Thanks!
I have a larger version of that image. The filename is opec_production_stack_feb06.jpg but searching for opec_production_stack_mar06.jpg etc. was not fruitful.