500 killed by stranger who broke into home (300 of which killed by own gun)
It's more dangerous to be a fisherman or a convenience store clerk and
esp. a taxi driver than to be a police officer (a higher percentage get
killed). Somehow, tho, I don't see virtual
state funerals
for those poor Seven-Eleven guys...
A $1 change in Microsoft's stock price leads to a market capitalization
change of $6 billion since there are 5.2 billion shares plus almost
a billion employee options out there. Gross annual sales are
only $20 billion. A large amount of teacher pension funds are
invested in Microsoft. Bubble. Eeek. [written in 2000...]
From 1980 to 1999, the average CEO compensation went from 42
times the average worker in the company to over 400 times the average
worker--a yearly wage paid every day including weekends (it's even
more extreme now). Michael Eisner's bonus in 1999 was half a billion
dollars (again!). We need a maximum wage, not a minimum wage. Time to
'out-source' some of those over-priced CEO's. In the most recent figures
out in 1999, the ratio has risen once again, to 475. As Holly Sklar
has said, "How big a gap will we tolerate?"
Since 1990, more than 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower
than a decade ago. Average world per capita income has increased 3.0%
per year, but the great majority of this wealth increase was in already
rich countries. Increased free trade since 1990 has generated more
wealth for rich people and less for poor people. Time to change the
rules. Wealth doesn't trickle down by itself.
The UN Developing Nations Program reported that in 1998, the world's
225 richest people had a combined wealth of $1 trillion--equal to the
combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people.
That's not right (more stats
here).
According to Gallup polls, about 44 percent of Americans believe in a
strict biblical creationist view. But at the same time, genetically
engineered food has come to be considered harmful to pets:
"Even Iams Co., the Ohio-based pet food maker, recently told its grain
suppliers it would no longer accept genetically engineered corn for use
in its premium dog and cat chows unless the corn varieties were among
the few approved by the European Union." [Rick Weiss, WashPost]
-------------------
The irony is immense. Monsanto's molecular biologists, who have a
spectacularly intimate knowledge of the low level details of evolution,
are driven back by the the same suspicious public that believes in
creationism. Wrong reason, positive outcome.
Bill Gates now owns more wealth than the combined wealth of the
bottom 40% of the US population (and he probably doesn't believe
in creationism).
Two years ago, Disney's Michael Eisner made $575M, or $250,000
per hour.
Ralph Nader had a ticket to the first debate and was also invited by
several news organizations to appear on their broadcasts, but upon
arriving (via the Boston subway system, not a limo) he was met by a
representative of the Commission on Presidential Debates as well as the
state police. He was informed that despite his ticket and invitations,
the commission would not allow him on the premises. He was also
threatened with arrest by the state police on two occasions during the
evening for simply being there. Now that's democracy for you.
Whites in high school are seven times more likely than blacks to have
used cocaine, eight times more likely to have smoked crack, and there
are more white high schoolers who have used crystal methamphetamine
than black students who smoke cigarettes --Tim Wise, St Louis Post
Dispatch
If the whole world consumed oil as does America, the
Earth's oil reserves would be gone in 10 years.
America's farm animals consume roughly 10 times as much antibiotics as
the human population.
Microsoft donated about 5 million dollars to the last campaign cycle
to many people, such as Dianne Feinstein ($8,000), John Ashcroft ($9,000),
Edward Kennedy ($6,000), and Trent Lott ($5,000). That was cool.
The Internet was invented as a highly dependable, high-speed,
distributed, secure, and powerful network so that in the event of a
nuclear crisis, military officials would always have access to
pornography.
"Newly arrived in New York City, I puzzled, 'Where are the Americans?'
for I met only Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans." --John Ashcroft, our
Attorney General
"Negroes, Asians and Orientals (is Japan the exception?), Hispanics,
Latins and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never
had, and probably never will..." --John Ashcroft, our Attorney
General
The CIA knows that polygraphs don't work. Aldrich Ames sailed
through his tests, for example. Polygraph tests are used mainly
for intimidation.
If you get to an emergency room on foot (or by crawling), they have
to take you eventually, whereas an ambulance can be diverted, esp. if
you are poor. Reminds me of Chicago police policy in the 80's. If you
called 911 from the South Side saying you had been shot, they would send
a paddy wagon, not an ambulance-- and people died this way. To get an
ambulance, you needed to call the fire dept. Using a similar logic:
"Do you think you could you just drop me off about half a block away from
that emergency entrance, I think I should be able to crawl the rest of
the way..."
So-called "internet worms" and "email viruses" not named properly.
They are virtually all *Microsoft* bugs--poor, sloppy, insecure program
design.
Bush says: I had no relationship with that man, Mr. Lay before I
became governor in 1995. Tee hee.
"That's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken and he supported
my candidacy for -- and -- but this is what -- what anybody's going to find
if -- is that this Administration will fully investigate issues such as
the Enron bankruptcy".
"To the layman on the street, it will look like we recognized funds flow
of $800 million from merchant asset sales in 1999 by selling to a vehicle
(Condor) that we capitalized with a promise of Enron stock in later years.
Is that really funds flow or is it cash from equity issuance?" -- a
quote from an internal Enron memo as things began to collapse. Man on
the street, indeed!
"Enron was able to play fast and loose in a financial boom and Clintonian
moral climate" -- the Wall Street Journal.
So Enron is actually Clinton's fault! And you can't have unions in the
Justice Department because they represent a security risk. Class war,
man.
"Companies come and go. It's part of the genius of capitalism." --
secretary of the treasury, Paul O'Neill on Enron. The pension-less 10,000
must realize now realize they were lesser geniuses than the executives
who walked off with $1 billion.
Enron has 2,832 subsidiaries, of which 874 are registered in the Cayman
Islands or other tax and bank secrecy havens.
"How did Enron lose so much money? That question has dumbfounded
investors and experts in recent months. But the basic answer is now
apparent: Enron was a derivatives trading firm; it made billions trading
derivatives, but it lost billions on virtually everything else it
did, including projects in fiber-optic bandwidth, retail gas and power,
water systems, and even technology stocks. Enron used its expertise in
derivatives to hide these losses." --Frank Partnoy
What with all the talk about maybe we might have to resort to torture
in the homeland to protect the homeland (as opposed to torture out in
the marches to protect the homeland) (Dershowitz, etc), just think how
much stuff Kenny Boy would tell us if the Congress threatened to attach
electrodes to his privates. Some people had problems with us torturing
people here, so maybe we should send him to another country--say
Columbia--and have them do it. We spent enough cash training them,
eh?
"Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient
capital to form a corporation." --Clarence Darrow
Many years ago there was a TV show called the Prisoner where these guys
on a see-saw looked into monitors while a bald intelligence guy with
glasses intoned "orange alert" into a phone, and called up Rover to chase
down escapees. Today (3/12/02) we are on 'yellow alert' according to our
Home Security guy, Tom Rigid. Only one more notch to orange (!)
Microsoft Word dumps Windows runtime data structures directly to disk
with block writes -- which makes it virtually impossible to write a
program not on Windows that can *write* the format. Even Microsoft can't
do it! An operating system patch that affects runtime data structures
might end up getting written out to a Word file, making it unreadable
by an unpatched system that reads the Word file directly into memory.
It's easier for a secondo party program to *read* the format because you
can pick and choose from among the sewage in the file, and not crash.
This is the real Microsoft monopoly--disguised as bad programming
practice, 101.
"We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6 per cent
of its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object
of envy and resentment. Our real task is to maintain this position
of disparity without detriment to our national security. To do so,
we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming.
"We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as
human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.
The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight
power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better...." -- George F. Kennan, 1948.
CEO compensation rose 571% from 1990 to 2000. That's *108* times the
rate of gain for workers.
"The government took music out of the schools, and kids have no way
to learn an instrument or theory and harmony. So they have to resort
to sampling. If music were taught in the schools, kids would learn how
to create on their own" -- Rick James.
"At least the original Caesar could speak his own native language" -- Josef
Stromberg.
American, about 4% of the world's population, consume 50% of the
worlds illegal drugs.
[--------- chronological "Life at Home" blog entries follow ---------]
[Jul06'02] In 1990, the collective value of all homes was about $6.7
trillion. It increased to only $7.6 trillion by 1995, and then shot
up to $10 trillion by 1999 and now stands at more than $12 trillion.
In some real sense, it is clear that 2002 houses and property couldn't
possibly be worth twice what they were in just 1995. The deflation of the
dotcom bubble resulted in the loss of over $4-5 trillion in stock value.
The housing bubble--perhaps the largest bubble in human history--may be
in for a similar popping.
[Jul14'02] Guess crony capitalism's got the herd a'fearin'.
[Aug20'02] Attempts to make un-copy-able files/CDs/etc have not been that
successful. But even if better digital copy protection becomes available,
the high quality data still has to come out of a wire and go into a
speaker at some point so you can listen to it legally. There, it is
vulnerable to re-digitization. If Microsoft's Palladium (encrypting your
own files with a key that you don't get to see) is a clue, this suggests
that someone right now is trying to figure out how to take over the
speaker market with speakers that only accept encrypted inputs.
[Aug25'02] Have you heard about the new product that guarantees firmer
thighs while putting an end to war? It's called a protest march. --
Carol Schiffler
[Sep10'02] Well, it finally had to happen. We're at 'Orange Alert', like
the evil guy with glasses would say in 'The Prisoner'. I just hope that
'Rover' isn't soon on the way, too.
[Nov16'02] "With $345 million worth of U.S. Air Force contracts, MIT
received a larger amount of Air Force contracts than did IBM or General
Dynamics in 1999. And in 2000, MIT's $339 million worth of U.S. Air Force
contracts was a larger amount of Air Force contracts than either Rockwell,
Littleton, Carlyle or Textron received in 2000." -- Bob Feldman
[Dec20'02] When it costs 5% more to buy a share of a company than it did
yesterday, that is considered growth -- good economic news. When wages
rise 5% a year (as opposed to a 5% a day), that is considered inflation
-- bad for the economy. The only problem with this is that when people
have more money, they buy more things, which means that companies
can sell more things.
[Mar22'03] This February, the US budget deficit increased by 90 billion
dollars -- that is, a deficit *increase* equal to almost 1/6 of the yearly
federal budget in one month of spending. The stock market soars now.
But the human mind is an wondrous thing. You can implant the idea
that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis into half of the infantile brains
in this country, getting them mad enough to punch out a peacenik, but
then 6 months later, they turn on you in favor of someone whose smirk
is less disgusting.
[May18'03] Test animals cannot distinguish between the effects of cocaine
and Ritalin.
[Jul19'03] The federal deficit is currently estimated at 450 billion This
does *not* (!) include Iraq and Afghanistan and various other "black"
expenditures. If we include those, the deficit probably approaches the
size of the budget itself. Instead of worrying about that, the focus of
the White House is on how to placate the yahoos who suppported the war
and who are not happy now that we appear to be 'pulling our punches'
while one soldier a day gets killed. This reminds me of pro-war talk
during Vietnam where we 'pulled our punches' and still killed 2-3 million
civilians (I hate to think of what not pulling our punches would have
meant); likewise, we are killing a lot of non-Americans every day in Iraq
-- a lot more than one a day. The yahoos just want to nuke Iraq and they
don't really want to hear that the whole point of the war was to establish
a bases there, near the oil, and that we can't nuke the oil.
[Jul23'03] Yahoos are placated for this week (see above). Most observers
think it is unlikely to reduce the lethality of the daily attacks,
and in fact, two more Americans were killed today.
[Jul26'03] Basic facts about the re-distribution of wealth:
--US income tax from corporations: 1952, 1960, 1970, 1985 => 32%, 23%, 17%, 9%
--number of billionaires: 1983 - 1990: => 15, 12, 13, 26, 49, 68, 82, 99
--richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% (US record)
--next richest 9% also own more wealth than the bottom 90% (US record)
[Sep24'03] "Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of
Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an
environment in which Microsoft's programs interoperate efficiently only
with Internet viruses" [commenting on the virus-driven shutdown today
of government computers involved in issuing visas] -- Dan Geer [he was
fired/resigned from the Boston company he founded the next day]
[Sep25'03] The latest suggestion to deal with music file copying (see
Charles Haddad below) is to try to mimic the Monsanto 'terminator'
gene in seeds. With farm plants, the idea is to prevent plants from
generating fertile seeds. This is 'normally' done in the US [but not
Europe] by selling hybrids, whose main advantage is not imaginary 'hyrid
vigor', but the fact that they generate sterile seeds. This superseded
the practice of farmers over the millenia of saving a portion of their
crops as seed in order to sow it the next year. With songs, the idea
would be that you would have to repeatedly pay to download a song.
The license to listen to it would rapidly expire, making it worthless
to copy. Just think of the possibilities. Books could be printed
with disappearing ink, special vinyl- and mylar-eating bacteria and
mp3-ablating viruses could be released to deal with any pesky remaining
records, tapes, and computer files. Hey, maybe you should get your brain
erased ever so often! You never know what sort of revenue-denying stuff
might accumulate in there.
[Sep28'03] Whiny American yahoos make me sick. First they get whipped
into idiotic patriotic fervor by a bunch of transparent lies. Then the
lies get outed -- by the chimp, himself! (but the lies, amazingly, still
continue to gain in the polls after that). That leaves going over and
stealing/hording/securing/dog-in-the-manger-ing the oil and the land
around it as the only real reason for the war. Deep down, they know it:
people in the government government (or at least rich people worried
about their businesses' future) are trying to plan for the all-too-soon
future of scarce oil (while sopping up a ten billion here and a ten
billion there in tax receipts for a job not very well done). So why all
the sudden cold feet about it costing $1 billion a week? Grow up, guys!
Either stop complaining about the so far relatively moderate cost in money
and (American) lives of stealing the oil, or stop trying to steal it.
Stop your sobbing.
[Oct12'03] Listening to the CBS world (!) news yesterday (LA's KNX on AM).
The top headlines, in total, were: (1) Kobe Bryant's trial (this year's
Gary Condit), (2) the preparation for surgery to separate third-world
twins joined at the head (this year's third-world conjoined twins)
(3) a report that supposed letters from different troops saying how
well things were going turned out to all have the exact same wording,
and (4) a jokey tag story. Not even any sewage from Mark Knoller! And,
of course, nothing about 1,500 people having been ethnically cleaned out
of their homes this day in Rafah with (US-made-and-paid-for) helicopters
and bulldozers. It made me feel like I was an American.
[Oct27'03] "I knew it was wrong, but it was accepted practice"
-- that is, cutting off baby's heads to get jewelry, using
slaughtered women's scalps to decorate your rifle, etc. -- see
new report of Vietnam era atrocities by the 'Tiger Force'
here. However, this was hardly an isolated incident, as implied
by the authors of the report, given that two to three *million*
civilians were killed by the US in the American war on Vietnam -- it
was the *official* policy. Like the kid soldier said, "it was accepted
practice".
[Nov13'03] The brave American Congress decides to stand up to Israel and
demand that they move the exact position of some of its Wall so that that
only 97,000 people have to apply for permits to their own homes instead
of 100,000 people -- or else they will trim the 9 billion dollar 'loan'
package to 8.95 billion. Sometimes you just have to stand up for what
you believe. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing
to fear.
[Nov30'03] The unseen third party at the grocery store strike is Walmart.
Their *only* 'innovation' is that they pay their employees less and
they give them less health benefits, mainly because they have no unions.
As Walmart advances like a fast-growing cancer across the US with intent
to deeply penetrate food marketing, they want you to think that their
attempt to turn the US into a third-world country is inevitable and
good. We should play more like they do! The world is hurtling toward
a precipice as hydrocarbon resource extraction peaks, yet business
gallops on faster and faster without the slightest embarrassment.
So should we. Join a union, live a little, and position yourself better
for deglobalization. Party will soon be over, man.
[Dec04'03] Bush's poll numbers are starting to rise again in the wake of
him carrying a camera-ready turkey (not an edible one, it turns out).
I guess there is no way that you can ever really get around the turkey
brain that lies deep at the center of every American brain. Sometimes,
the turkey genes just win out, despite our best intentions.
[Dec10'03] In an average flu epidemic year, the flu virus kills 36,000
people. That's 100 people a day, mostly older people. This year may
be average. From the coverage, though, you'd think that the flu was
as common as a shark attack. 100 people a day in North America have
continued to die from non-treatable viral pneumonia (comparable to the
total number of people that died of SARS -- but every day). Luckily,
though, the threat of SARS has passed.
[Dec13'03] Current 'news' reporting is *so* dismal and ahistorical and
unobjective and ascientific that I've lost the will to even yell back.
If there ever was a unusally severe flu epidemic (like the one right
after WWI), the flu shots wouldn't work and the anchors would be soiling
their shorts on screen (which we would no doubt, have the opportunity to
view in close-up: "Peter, you seem to have water running down your leg...
are you OK?). Perhaps the reality of the situation is simply way over
the heads of concerned parents, since almost half of them don't even
believe in evolution (flu vaccines are made by infecting chickens months
in advance, using existing viruses, not the slightly mutated versions
of the virus that herald the start of the flu season; the reason they
work at all is that the mutations are *usually* small enough that the
antibodies that are generated still bind to the newly mutated virus
coat protein).
[Jan01'04] "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will
do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications
for you and the state of Minnesota." -- Dick Cheney to Paul Wellstone,
one month before Wellstone died in a plane crash.
[Jan09'04] The new Bush plans to put people back on the moon and possibly
on Mars -- in the year that oil may have peaked -- just goes to show
you how hard it is to predict the future.
[Jan14'04] Sadly, Bush is not the problem. Except for cosmetic differences
on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cells, the positions of Kerry are
barely distinguishable from those of Bush. After Kerry's unique input
(and that of his near-billionaire wife) have been filtered through
the power structures of US government and global finance, it is not
clear that 'anybody but Bush' will make a bit of practical difference
(he will sound less stupid, but that's not an advantage). Sure Kerry is
now sort of against the Iraq war (the one he voted for only a few months
back), but there is no way he will withdraw if he were to be elected.
Complaining about the pre-war intelligence is *totally* beside the point.
We didn't invade Iraq because of WMDs. We *knew* they had none (which was
why it was safe to invade!). When the first big oil shocks hit in a few
years, and we try to steal China's or Europe's or Japan's (not to mention,
Iraq's) oil, and the Iraqi resistance continues resisting, and we have
to send more troops, and the dollar collapses, and northern Europe starts
to glaciate again, Bush versus Kerry will sure seem like small potatoes.
Rome is starting to burn. Electing Kerry is just fiddling.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." --
Keynes.
Nature bats last [bumper sticker]
"There will be cars, they just won't be running" -- Jan Lundberg
[Industrial civilization] is a one shot affair.... there will be one
chance, and one chance only." -- cosmologist Fred Hoyle, in 1964, on
human evolution and course of energy use on Earth.
The vehicle you deserve: the Ford "Extinction" -- from Phil Rockstroh
[Mar17'04] "The chief problem with this movie wasn't so much the content,
but the title. It was too drab, too serious, too liturgical. So I spent
a long time trying to come up with alternatives. There was Bravechrist,
Die Really Hard, The Golgotha Chainsaw Massacre, Starsky and Christ...
-- Matt Taibbi
[Mar18'04] "No blood for oil" is a crock! Once the shortages hit, every
US-ian will line up obediently behind "lot's o' blood for oil" in a
split second.
[May28'04] 1 out of 75 US men are now in prison, a world record. The prison
population is disproportionately poor and non-white: 12% of black men in
their 20's are in jail versus 1.6% of young white men. There are twice
as many *male* victims of rape as there are female victims of rape in
the US because of the record male prison population.
[May31'04] 33% of homeless men are veterans. I'm sure that 'war work' had
nothing to do with this, and this is why it's not worth mentioning on
Memorial Day. Or if it is, then the PC solution is to hire counselors
to help feel their pain. That's what the problem is: not enough military
social workers!
[Jun05'04] Walmart's warehouse on wheels must be quaking in its enormous
boots as the increased cost of oil starts to draw blood. However, I
worry that those are the same trucks that bring me my food. Luckily,
Reagan's death today provides a kernel around which our fine 'liberal'
press has already built a huge, valium-filled pacifier for Americans to
suck on for the next month (seasoned lightly with an armored bulldozer
rampage, except that it slightly reminds one of a certain squished
American who went up against an armored bulldozer with a megaphone).
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Pope religously told George Bush to get out
of Iraq while George's minions were guarding the nuclear 'football' --
the briefcase containing the codes required to destroy the non-US world
-- in a Vatican antechamber. This shows why we're better than animals:
because language gives us the ability to commit such ineffable situations
to the page.
[Jun06'04] Next weekend, there is a first-400-in-get-free-beer dance party
on the USS Midway for San Diego postdocs funded by Invitrogen, Fisher
Scientific, as well as Scripps, the Salk Institute, and UCSD. I hear they
know some cool party games, so bring your hood and dress sexy!
[Jun09'04] "In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch
FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest
of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect
viciousness" .... "Spending time watching Sean Hannity is enough for your
average American white male to feel less cowardly than he really is.
The left won't accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast
that they believe they can fix 'if only the people knew the Truth.'" --
Mark Ames
[Jun13'04] There are reports that the Abu Ghraib scandal is about to blow
up again this week. I sure didn't expect that! The 'immune system'
of world business seems to have turned on Bush as 'non-self'.
[Jun18'04] Well, the reports mentioned in the UK press didn't materialize,
Iraq's oil is now completely turned off this week, the new US-appointed
'coalition' government is about to declare marshall law (it's a natural
step on the way to democracy), Iran denies reports that it's massing
troops on the Iraq border (shades of the faked photos used to get Saudi
to approve and pay for the first Iraq war), the UN/IAEA says time is
running out again for Iranian compliance (compliance sure helped Iraq,
didn't it...). Sheesh, it's like a re-run, and I don't even watch the
damn TV.
[Jun20'04] We've spent $200 billion in Iraq in the past year mainly to
get military bases around the oil, and maybe $500 billion/year on
the military and the black budget agencies. During the same time,
we've spent a teeny, tiny fraction of that total on alternative energy
source research (much less alternative energy source developement).
On Easter Island, when all the trees got cut down (their only energy
source since they were 1000 miles away from any other speck of land),
the end came so fast that there were stone axes dropped in place around
partly finished statues). It's kinda creepy watching the huge lumbering
social organism of all of us market-savvy humans Easter-islanding our
whole damn selves in slo mo.
[Jun25'04] The amount of oil needed to *make* a new car is about equivalent
to the amount it will use during the lifetime of the car. Thus, from
the perspective of running the oil down and adding to greenhouse gases,
it's probably worse to get rid of a currently running, less-fuel-efficient
car (provided it's not a super-size SUV), and replace it with a hybrid,
than it is to just drive your less efficient car into the ground.
[Jul01'04] We walked by the carrier Midway parked in SD harbor last week to
get dinner. It's so big that it looks like a computer-generated animation
as you walk past it. There was a party on board with a live band --
including horns -- playing "She's a Brick House". This is the ship
that among other things, launched some of the planes that lead to 2 to
3 million civilian deaths during our 1963-1973 war on Southeast Asia.
Party on, dude, at our very own floating holocaust museum! Sick.
Of course, the whole decade of our half-a-holocaust of atrocities can
be explained by 'the fog of war'. That's some pretty nasty fog.
[Jul03'04] Only 16 months late, the LA Times comes through with a report about the
faked/psyop
'civilians toppling the statue of Saddam' operation.
A little late guys, esp. given that
this info was available *at the time* of the fake toppling.
Also, the new report came straight out of an internal Army report --
true bravery in reporting! If this is a 'liberal' media, I'd sure hate
to see what a 'convervative' one would look like. Few people will read
this 'retraction' of the press participation in psyops, and just like the
faked psyops 'incubator massacre' story which solidified public support
at a key point for the first Gulf war/massacre, most people will still
believe it years later. Shame on the press for 'getting in bed the with
fascist insect' -- *esp.* now when finding out what really happened is
easier than before.
[Jul11'04] The yearly world oil usage is about 1 cubic mile. This is easier
to remember than 30 gigabarrels.
[Jul20'04] A car is a 100,000 watt device (1 horsepower is about 1,000
watts). When you press the accelerator, it is the same as turning on
a *1,000* hundred watt light bulbs. Cruising smoothly uses less energy
(e.g., 20,000 watts). For comparison, a 1000 sq foot roof covered with
photocells generates about 1000 watts (about 1 horsepower). Powering one
modern car for an hour, including stop and go driving would approximately
require an hour of bright sun on 50 such roofs, or a fifty hours of sun
on one such roof (one hour of driving equals 5 days of sunlight on your
house photocells), and that's assuming no transmission or storage losses.
For reference, converting electricity to hydrogen and back involves a
loss of more than 50% of the energy.
[Jul24'04] Current (2002) US inputs and outputs (http://eed.llnl.gov.flow)
give some idea of what level of losses (well over half of energy input) are
currently achievable by the US. The number are in quads (10^15 BTU's).
Since the total input is 97 quads, the numbers are also close to percent
of total energy inputs.
Inputs: (97 quads):
-- imported oil and liquid-gas (24.3)
-- US coal (22.6)
-- US oil and liquid-gas (14.9)
-- US natural gas (19.6)
-- US nuclear (8.1)
-- imported natural gas (3.6)
-- US wood/waste/alcohols/geothermal/solar/wind (3.2)
-- US hydro (2.6)
Outputs, lost energy: (56.2 quads)
-- electrical system losses (26.3) (power plant efficiency less than 40%)
-- transportation losses (21.2)
-- residential losses (4.9)
-- industrial losses (3.8)
Outputs, useful energy (35.2 quads):
-- industrial (15.2)
-- residential (14.7)
-- transportation (5.3)
[Jul26'04] "You want an American Empire -- the safety, anyway, of being
able to impose our will on any possible opponents? Then don't be upset
when the old goals invoke the old means, but modernized: with drugs and
electrodes and sexual humiliation replacing the crudities of whip and
cross." -- Richard Erlich. Our fine ABB
Kerry knows about Project Phoenix first hand, and wants to send
40,000 more troops to Iraq.
[Jul28'04] Be careful of what you ask for, ABB's: do we really want to have
a kinder-gentler-Bush-Democrat in office (probably with a Republican
congress) if the economy contracts sharply in 2005? Home mortgage
debt for Americans has risen almost 100% since 1997. This rate of debt
growth is not sustainable. The rate of increase in housing prices has
increased in the last year, looking ominously like the NASDAQ before
the pop. When the rate of new debt acquisition slows, the effects of
less spending will ripple powerfully through the world economy with
unpredictable effects, and an almost certain change in the party in
office at that time. Strategically, it might be better to wait until
after the pop, when a real non-Bush-like candidate might be competitive.
This would be risky, too, though depending on the size of the pop.
People make poor choices under extreme, sustained economic stress
(cf. 20th century European history).
[Aug09'04] Ann Veneman, the current Secretary of Agriculture came from the
board of directors of Calgene, a part of Monsanto, which is the world's
largest GM seed producer. No doubt, she has our interests in a safe food
supply near the top of her list. Besides, "safety" and profitability
are, no doubt, the same thing. African food aid is being tied to the
acceptance of GM crops. This shows that "concern for the less fortunate"
and profitability are the same thing. It would seem that promoting
expensive, energy-intensive GM foods is a very poor way to plan for
less energy-intensive food production likely to be necessary when the
"great economic contraction" sets in permanently in a decade or two,
as we run down our finite fossil fuel energy supply to virtually nothing
(which is the way it will stay for all future generations) in the next
30 years. This in turn will make it impossible to drive long distances
to buy food and stuff, and more importantly, to grow that food and make
that stuff on the other side of the globe and transport it all the way
back here, but hey, who asked me. I'm just hoping that "starvation"
and profitability don't turn out to be the same thing.
[Aug11'04] "[Kansas] watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the
coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for
revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers
when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange
a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams
for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling
place -- and Kansas cuts those rock stars taxes" -- Thomas Frank
[Aug21'04] The brains of more than half of all American continue to believe
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them
before the United States invaded last year. This is a stupefying fact.
Modern society is about using some of the most complex and rarified fruits
of human thought -- mathematics, physics, and engineering of computers,
broadcasting, receiving, internet, displays; art, design, writing,
and acting of media content -- to stuff a hundred million brains, each
several orders of magnitude more powerful than the best computer, straight
down the toilet. What's so great about 'natural computation', emotion,
and human language? Sometimes, the object of study seems beautiful;
sometimes it positively disgusts me.
[Aug23'04] Insider energy investors warn us that alternative energy sources
are still years away from being commercially viable (NYT, yesterday).
These insider investors are showing us the genius of the market --
wait until we are well on the downward slope of oil extraction before
even bothering to start research and development of alternative energy
sources (hydrogen is not an energy *source*). Genius! The market is
smarter than geology and physics combined because it takes not only
them but also the stinky butt cracks of moneybag investors optimally
into consideration. Over the past two years, the worldwide market value
of companies developing renewable energy technology dropped from $13
billion to $10.7 billion. Genius!
[Aug30'04] Recent raw oil production numbers for 1995 to 2003 in
this pdf
(from Petroleum Review, based on numbers originally from British Petroleum
that were converted to thousands of barrels per day) show that the US
still produces a lot of oil -- almost as much as Saudi Arabia -- even
though the US peaked in 1970 and has began steadily dropping every year
after 1985. There was an unusual spike in world production this year
(+3.6%) compared to the previous rate of increase (actually, there was
a small drop last year from 2 years ago). Given that a little over
1/3 of the total production this year came from countries that are
already in permanent decline (past their peak and past the start of
an every-year decline like the US), it meant that countries that are
still increasing had to increase even more than they were already
increasing in order to achieve this. The increases were remarkable
in the Mideast, where Iran, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and
Saudi Arabia all increased their production from 10-20% in one year.
Obviously, this can't be sustained. In fact, it may have already
stopped; Saudi production appears to have leveled off this quarter.
The other big-producer increasers were Russia (+10%, but it's already
past its peak, on a small secondary bump that won't reach the 1980 peak;
the secondary peak was caused by the recovery from Yeltsin, not from
recovery of oil out of the granitic basement rocks, a la Joe Vialls),
Libya (+8%), and Mexico (+5.7%). These 10% year-to-year increases aren't
going to hold for very long. A real danger is that when the inevitable
dropoffs come in Mexico, the Mideast, and Russia, they may be much more
catastrophic than the nice smooth US dropoff (1-2% per year), because
of the different technologies involved. In the US, "primary production"
(first let it ooze out and then just pump) was allowed to run its course
before progressing to "secondary production" (pump water or nitrogen or
natural gas down to rejuvenate wellhead pressure, drill horizontal holes,
etc). In both Mexico and the Mideast, they are doing simultaneous primary
and secondary production to maximize output now. This can result in a
more sudden decline when peak production is reached (unexpected 5-10%
drops in a year; 50% drops in 10 years; cf. the North Sea). This may
very well happen to some of the big remaining increasers in the context
of the whole rest of the world permanently on the downslope. But why
conserve now? That might cause market 'distortion' and deprivation of
incentive, right? We will probably only get one chance at an advanced
civilization on this planet. Too bad it just might flame out with a huge
loss of life later this century because of the fleeting (in terms of the
100,000 year history of modern humans) political and social dominance
of a short-term-greed-based economic system that plans no more than 6
months into the future. I think we blew it.
[Sep13'04] Kerry is wobbling downward right now near the 270 electoral
votes needed to win (see
pollkatz,
who runs the polls through the winner-take-all-by-state electoral college
-- why don't the idiotic media just do this routinely? If the overall
popular vote isn't the thing that legally determines the outcome, why
report *only* that? Sheesh.). Bush's numbers on his handling of the war
are going up, in the midst of the deadliest battles of the entire war!
Could Kerry's dismal numbers be because of Kerry's positions? -- (1)
he voted for the Iraq war, (2) he said he would have voted for it even
if he had known in advance there were no WMDs there, (3) he initially
said he planned to commit *even more* troops to Iraq, for 4 more years,
but then recently talked about reductions during his 'first term' (tchya,
right), (4) he plans to try to involve the UN and a world coalition in
Iraq, despite the fact that everybody knows neither would touch Iraq
with a ten foot pole now, (5) he voted for, and even wrote (!) part of
the Patriot Act, (6) he has no plans to substantially increase taxes on
rich people like himself and his billionaire wife (how could any sane
person *not* regard being very rich coupled with the ability to set tax
policy on rich people as a conflict of interest?), (7) he plans to end
our dependence on foreign oil by finding more here (one tiny problem with
this plan: US oil production peaked in 1970 and has been dropping ever
since and geology always wins over campaign promises). Nah, that can't
be why he's flailing. It must be because of the way his face and hair
look, which is, admittedly, something that distinguishes him from Bush.
The bootlicking spaniel press -- who dutifully stopped reporting on the
war in Iraq when Bush told them that it was really over now that Iraqis
were 'sovereign' -- should be added to the list above.
[Sep15'04] There is something darkly humorous about the oil price gyrations
this week (down, after back up, after drop from record highs [though
not record yet when inflation factored in]). At the current moment,
the oil markets are actually somewhat *over*-supplied because OPEC has
jacked up its output to record levels (2 million b/d more than their
official limit of 26 million b/d). Despite all this, the stinky butt
cracks of the oil moneybag people got sweaty earlier in the week because
of bombed Iraqi pipelines and a big hurricane. But then, the price went
*down* again, because the shutdown of refineries (also caused by the
hurricane) reduced demand for oil. Genius. The bombed Iraqi pipelines
will continue to be bombed (no change, that is), and the hurricane'd
rigs and pipelines and terminals will be quickly repaired (unlike Iraq).
What can't be easily fixed, and what still, sadly, is having virtually no
effect on the market compared to these idiotic day-to-day gyrations is the
long term (well, if you think of one decade as 'long term'...) picture.
Amazingly, almost 3/4 of the total oil on our planet will have been
used up during the span of my life. I guess I just don't feel that
the lives of us boomers are so much more valuable than the lives of all
future humans on this planet.
[Sep23'04] Two tons of 'oil sands' must be dug and processed (using a lot of
water) to get one barrel of oil (that is, the oilsand-to-oil weight-ratio
is 14:1). Because of this, the energy required to get the oil out of
the sands is pretty close to the amount of energy you get from burning
the oil. The daily US gulp of oil would therefore require about one
hundred thousand *tons* of these sands (200 million pounds) to be
processed be *per day*.
[Oct04'04] Unintentional black humor: "I think we need to get off this
planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it." -- Washington
State physicist Kelvin Lynn, who works on storing antimatter for the
defense department so that they can make extra super-duper-powerful
'clean' matter-antimatter bombs (which just emit gamma rays, allowing
soldiers to storm immediately into obliterated target zones) -- but it
could also possibly be useful for space propulsion.
[Oct07'04] US oil production went down to 5 million barrels a day this week.
The US peak production happened in 1970 (10 million barrels a day).
Since 1970, US production has declined gradually to about 7 million
barrels a day last year (this is still a lot -- almost as much as Saudi
Arabia, which produces about 10 million barrels a day). Only about 10%
of US production normally comes out of the Gulf of Mexico (the hurricanes
caused a drop of 30% in that 10% which is only 3% of total US production).
The storms also caused Mexico's oil production (usually 1.7 million
barrels a day) to drop 25%. However, together, these drops are small
compared to the world production of about 80 million barrels a day.
Therefore, the recent price spikes sugggests that the world oil market
is quite tight -- surplus production production capacity is essentially
gone. This can lead to extreme price spikes since the demand for oil
is pretty inelastic. Of course, a situation like this is also the
perfect breeding ground for parasitic businesses like Enron, and no
doubt, part of the recent run-up in prices ($53 a barrel today -- high,
but still below inflation-adjusted $80 peak in the 1970s) reflects the
careful efforts of Enron's bold successors. But just because there are
Enron-like bedbugs feeding on our carcass doesn't mean we won't run out
of oil. The fact that oil companies are going to get very rich off of
peak oil -- aided by the hordes of oil company businessmen that infest
our government and regulatory agencies -- is unfortunate. Left-ish peak
oil doomsayers like Michael Ruppert are getting moderately rich, too.
But even if we were able to impose more sensible limits on oil profits,
it wouldn't save us from the ugliness coming our way on the downslope,
and it won't cause depleted oil fields to refill with 'abiotic oil'.
"Peak oil" is a scam -- and, unfortunately, it's also true.
[Oct08'04] Kerry says we will wean ourselves from reliance on Saudi oil
in ten years. He's right -- in ten years we will all be on the roller
coaster that always goes down.
[Oct11'04] Commenting on the reduction in spending over the past 5 years by
the world's biggest for new oil exploration, Robert Plummer, a corporate
analyst at Wood Mackenzie said: "a number of constraints will continue
to act on exploration performance, the most important of which is being
access to material opportunities". This takes a little explaining.
The background is that the results of recent exploration have not
been profitable. Twice as much was spent exploring for new oil as
the value of the new oil that was found. This means that oil would
have to be over $100 dollars a barrel for any new oil exploration to
be profitable. There *is* a place where exploration is profitable --
that is what is referred to as "material opportunities" -- namely, the
Mideast and Venezuela. The only fly in the ointment is "access".
Got blood?
[Oct15'04] "Taking a leaf from his record on sustainable energy, John Kerry
now wants to make the war in Iraq sustainable" -- Greg Bates.
[Oct16'04] Jon Stewart's performance on Crossfire (wmv below) was amazingly
masterful. It gives me a ray of, what do call it, hope?
[Oct31'04] Many conspiracy sites were mistakenly expecting a more expensive,
elaborate, and splashy 'October surprise'. They (and I) failed to notice
that since the election has remained nearly a tie, only a small well-timed
nudge would be needed. The video may be just the ticket, esp. if the
spaniel media spins the terror side of it (how could they fail to rise
to the occasion...). Once again, I bow to the genius of Rove (even
*Cronkite* fingered him!). And if a resuscitated Osama doesn't work,
a few lost ballots and hacked machines here, a few blacks blocked from
voting by 'faulty' lists there, will.
[Nov03'04] The day after the election. Eeesh. Two days before the election,
the price of oil started to drop, in expectation of a Kerry victory.
Then, ominously, at the start of election day, and continuing even
after the exit polls began showing Kerry ahead, oil started to rise
again. Somehow the oil-money-heads figured it out before it happened.
As Stalin said: "it's not who votes that counts, but who counts the
votes". The impossible-to-audit nature of the partial electronic vote
will make a challenge virtually impossible. Situation looks bleak,
but remember that only *one year* after Nixon won every state but
Massachusetts (against McGovern in 1972), he was booted out of there
to quickly become a bad memory. And then his temp replacement, Ford,
even lost the following (1976) election.
[Nov04'04] Gay marriage became the Nader of 2004. Now all the week-kneed
SUV-driving Kerrycrat security moms and dads in NY and SF are wringing
their hands about Kerry not having been rightwing enough (et tu, Juan
Cole?!), and how we *must* fix that next time. Why couldn't Kerry have
campaigned on nuking Mecca? Why didn't the Dems nominate Jeb instead
of Kerry? (Jeb would have played better in the South since he's from
from a good suthern family, right? -- not!). But why all the sobbing,
you cowardly right-o-phile 'Dems'? You should be *thanking* all the
Red State trash that we got Bush back because he *is* rightwing enough.
If you can't stand up and be counted like Robert Byrd (!), then just
step and fetch it. The 'Dems' lost the election more clearly than last
time despite (1) a 50% presidential disapproval rating, (2) massive jobs
losses, (3) massive debt increases, (4) unprecedented oil price increase,
(5) continuing disaster in Iraq, (6) a win in all three debates, (7) and
a billion campaign dollars to spend (what a waste!). What do these guys
need? The loser 'Dem' strategy of out-righting the right is hereby fired.
[Nov05'04] Many people have worried about the effects of higher oil prices on
the economy. However, it seems more likely that rising oil prices will
initially be coupled with strong economic *growth*. And oil is still
not that expensive at all, even at $50/barrel -- the cost of housing has
tripled over the past thirty years but the cost of domestically produced
US oil has stayed the same (at about $30/barrel) until just this year.
All good things must come to an end, and the expected spurt in economic
growth and oil usage accompanying $80-$100/barrel oil will deplete oil
reserves even more rapidly, eventually leading to an even steeper decline
when geology finally rises up and grinds the market under its stony heel.
Then you will tell your kids: "no one told us it was going to happen,
so it's not our fault that we used 75% of the world's energy and fresh
water reserves in the span of one boomer (human?) lifetime".
[Nov05'04] Policing who you have sex with in private is an American "moral
value". Slaughtering 100,000 humans in Iraq in order to establish
military bases in order steal Mideastern oil on the basis of obvious
lies is a war crime, but hopefully not immoral, right?
[Nov06'04 -- commentary submitted to NPR Morning Edition and rejected because
'mailbox full' -- presumably because I had sent one previous commentary,
which was not run] "On Saturday morning (Nov 6, 2004), there was a report
by Anne Garrels about the impending assault on the 50,000 to 100,000
people that remain in Fallujah after 200,000 women and children were
allowed to flee the daily US bombing. Most of these are men, since all
men under 45 were not allowed to leave. Having reporters embedded with
our storm troopers doesn't give NPR listeners a full picture of what
is going on. Garrels carefully explains how the US troops are going
to have a difficult time because they are being extremely careful not
to kill civilians. Without context, you would hardly know that the
last time we tried to subdue Fallujah, we were forced to withdraw
when the rest of the world responded with outrage to the criminal
slaughter of more than 500 civilians there -- 20% as many civilians
as died in 9-11. A short internet scan is sufficient to reveal the
extremely biased nature of these kinds of reports. For example, on
the same day, the BBC reported that a Fallujah hospital was razed
to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids yet on Fallujah
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3988433.stm). There were no
reports whether or not people were inside. Likely there were, given that
the BBC and many other more objective news outlets have reported daily
civilian casualties from months of continuous bombardment. Even if the
Harvard-educated Garrels knew about the US having demolished a hospital
(a war crime by standard definitions), her embedded status would have
prevented her from reporting it. NPR manages a facade of objectivity
-- worrying, for example, whether it should be associated with Slate
since most of Slate's staff said they supported Kerry -- yet it serves
as a propaganda mouthpiece for the war crimes of the administration.
The press was braver during Vietnam. I think history will not look
kindly upon media outlets such as yourselves who serve as cheerleaders
of imperial war." -- Martin Sereno
[Nov18'04] In the past two years, we have tossed an *additional* $250
billion into our already amazingly huge military so it could trash an
essentially defenseless Iraq (I hate to think of what a war against a
worthy foe would cost). That $250 billion should have been put toward a
crash research, development, and manufacturing program for photovoltaic
cells and solar heat concentrating devices instead of trying to site
military bases around somebody else's oil. The current best guess is
that peak extraction of oil will happen within 5 years, natural gas in
about 10 years, and coal (which is responsible for all that mercury in
fish) in about 15 or 20 years. The downside of those curves is likely
to be very rough, with disruptions of world trade, Walmart (yeah!),
food production, car transportation, suburbs, and with the probability
of (more!) resource wars. It takes a lot of energy to make factories
where solar-energy-generating devices are manufactured, a lot of energy
to make the devices themselves, and a lot of energy to distribute and
install the devices. *All* of that needed energy will have to come
in the near future from fossil fuels (current solar energy provides a
tiny fraction of 1% of our energy). Instead of trying to exert even a
tiny bit of rational control over the slavering, greed-based market,
we worship it. The wonderful intelligence of greed has led to a 30%
*reduction* of investment in alternative energy in the past few years!
And our gropinator governor just floated a proposal this week to tax gas
by miles driven instead of by the gallon, because more fuel-efficient
vehicles will reduce gasoline usage and gas tax revenues. This will
remove part of the economic incentive to buy fuel-efficient vehicles.
There are other more subtle problems with the impending fossil fuel peaks.
It is little mentioned that helium is a byproduct of oil and gas wells,
that it escapes into space when exhausted into the atmosphere, that it
cannot be manufactured, and that it is currently required for things like
MRI machines and magnetic containment coils for fusion reactors. Bummer.
Because, as Richard Heinberg has said, peak oil will finally put some
real teeth into that namby-pamby, green-washed word, "sustainability".
Also, don't forget that our military is about 70% hydrocarbon fuel
by weight, when it's out and about, doing its dirty deeds.
[Nov19'04] The Pentagon reports that it is now spending $5.8 billion a
month in Iraq (not counting Afghanistan). That's a burn rate of $70
billion dollars per year up from $48 billion a year. At that rate,
we're spending more money each year destroying Iraqi cities and people
(so that the survivors will be able to vote, of course) than we spend
on all scientific research in this country. That's so insane that even
the *market* would do better of allocating this money :-}
[Nov23'04] Each *day*, the US imports $2.6 billion in cash -- 80% of the
world's savings -- while the dollar is falling. This finances our current
account deficit with the world. The scene where Slim Pickens rides
the bomb down comes to mind. But, who knows -- as a lefty doomsayer,
I always seem to be crying wolf and nothing happens. Maybe this will
just be inflated away slowly without any catastrophic effects because
there is no other credible place for savings to go to. Maybe.
[Nov26'04] The tremendous irony of the election follies is that the
red states as a whole actually get *more* tax dollars back from the
Federal government (up to 2 times the amount that they collect) than
blue states, which, by contrast, actually subsidize the red states.
Meanwhile, the red states complain about taxes, which if they were all
ended, would actually result in a net dollar *loss* for the reddies.
The red states are actually the 'welfare queens'. This is by design and
supported by blue-ies (summary
here
). Most of the paid-out money is redistribution of wealth from the
blue states to not-the-lowest-income strata of the red states, by
way of social security to old people, education, science, technology,
and transportation, military bases, medicare to old people, interest
payments on the debt. Only about 15% of the total redistribution goes
to poor people in the red states (so you red-state yahoos who want to
kill the poor should know that we blue-ies are doing our best...).
When I'm feeling esp. misanthropic, I look forward to the collision
of peak oil with "our lifestyle is not negotiable". Our lifestyle is
not only negotiable, it's going to be dictated. But it's not clear if
the reddies or the blue-ies are going to come out worse here in the US.
The reddies rely heavily on oil, which is going to go up and up. However,
the blue-ies rely heavily on oil, too, for, among other things, food.
Hard to say which way people of both colors will be running when the s***
hits the fan.
[Dec03'04] Tar sand oil production accounted for 1.2% of world oil production
this year (about 1 million barrels/day). Tar sand supporters predict
that they should be able to double that to 2 million barrels/day by 2010.
The world oil production (usage) is currently 83 million barrels a day.
Go, tar sands. Just think where they could get to by 2030 (maybe 4%
of daily world usage). Tar sands won't save us. The best always comes
first. This is the rising part of the tar sands production curve. Then
there's the falling part -- when the EROEI (energy return on investment)
gets close to 1.0 (that is, it takes the same amount of energy to get
the oil out that you get back out of it when you burn it).
[Dec03'04] "Be studious, stay in school, and stay away from the military. I
mean it." -- an Iraqi marine's advice to his son, shortly before he was
killed last month.
[Dec06,04] Coal and gas prices (the other red meats) have tripled in the last
year and a half. Oil actually increased the least. Peak coal and peak
gas are supposed to be a little further out than peak oil (about 20 years)
so it's probably just the genius of the market causing the increases.
If we start replacing oil with coal and gas, however, it might bring the
coal and gas peaks closer to the oil one. That will probably make for
a particularly nasty 'triple witching hour' -- one that lasts forever.
For some interesting background on peak oilers (that however does not
refute the basic discovery vs. production facts), see this 2003 article ,
by the late sociologist Walt Contreras Sheasby who died of West Nile
virus in June 2004.
[Dec08'04] Veterans of the second Iraq war are already arriving at homeless
shelters. A majority of homeless are war veterans (almost half of the
homeless are Vietnam veterans). Yups pass them thinking "get a job".
The appropriate response is, "you and *your* kids should fight your own
damn wars".
[Dec08'04] Before the election was decided, Alex Pelosi caught a slightly
drunk Peter
King on film saying: "It's already over. The Election's over. We
Won." Nancy Pelosi asks, "How do you know that?" King replies, "It's all
over but the counting. And we'll take care of the counting."
[Dec09'04] The return of veterans from Vietnam in the late 1960's and early
1970's was associated with an all time peak in the murder rate in the US
(and a recession).
[Dec11'04] "We shouldn't be here. There was no reason for invading this
country in the first place... I don't enjoy killing women and children.
It's not my thing." -- marine infantryman to the Christian Science
Monitor. Probably wasn't their thing either. Probably wouldn't be
the thing of a hypothetical Iraqi soldier machine-gunning your sister
or mother in their car or your home. That this can be printed without
comment shows that Iraqis are un-people -- it's at most a bit inconvenient
to have to casually slaughter them. People in the US think they are
the master-race. Do onto others, man, because sooner or later, they
are going to do onto you.
[Dec13'04] Oil is amazingly localized. Today, the world produces 82.5
million barrels of oil a day. A full 11% of that comes from just 4
oil fields: Ghawar (Saudi), Cantarell (Mexico), Burgan (Kuwait), and
Da Qing (China). Oil is not localized because people haven't looked in
enough places. It's just localized. 'The market' isn't going to make
it less so because it's running out. First, it will just get more and
more expensive. That will of course help stimulate increased exploration
for the remaining needles in a haystack. But then a critical rubicon
will be crossed at more and more oil fields, where it takes a lot more
energy to get it out than you get back out of it by burning it. This can
happen, for example, when the level of the 'water table' being injected
underneath the remaining oil (to keep up the wellhead pressure up so
production doesn't slow down) reaches the extraction pipes, and suddenly,
you are just pumping out the water you pumped in. When the water hits
the pipes at Ghawar, no amount of economic mumbo jumbo will turn the
remaining oil in that field back into an energy *source*. When the first
huge oil price spike finally arrives (it hasn't happened yet -- oil at
$50/barrel is still well under its all-time inflation-adjusted peak of
$80/barrel, hit in the 70's), it will hopefully cause people to step back
and begin to think about 'negotiating our lifestyle'. And perhaps it
will put a spike into the number of operating Abrams tanks (gas mileage:
0.5 miles/gallon). I suppose another possibility would be for our fine
body politic to demand that we gas up the tanks and dust off the nukes and
eliminate all 'lesser races' because they're using up 'our' oil too fast.
This is probably why the 'lesser races' want their own nukes.
[Dec16'04] Michael Neumann says it right. 'Collateral damage' is
expected, not accidental. If you shoot at your cheating wife at a party
and accidentally kill a bystander, it's still murder, because you were
shooting at a party. Collateral damage is purposeful, pre-meditated
killing of civilians. Just because we tear off the skin of children
using remote-control bombs doesn't make it different from tearing off
the skin of a child tied down to a torture table. It just makes it
easier on the torturer.
[Dec18'04] Don't fight a rich man's war; they'd never fight one for
you.
[Dec21'04] In the 'free election' about to take place in Iraq -- which
has cost US taxpayers a mere $200 billion (at $2.5 billion, our recent
election/whatever was a steal!) -- only candidates'
feet and torsos
are shown in campaign ads, for fear they will be identified. Why can't
we have that kind of respect for candidates here?
[Dec21'04] So it looks like Rumsfart is going to get booted -- not
for slaughtering 100,000 civilians, but instead, he will fall down
the Earl-Butz/James-Watt toilet chute because he rubber stamped US
soldier death condolences instead of signing them. He should be strung
up for ordering the flaying of kids, the burning of mothers, and the
disemboweling of aunties with high-tech people-shredders -- as well as
for the much smaller number of equally horrible casualties among the
attacking US soldiers. But good Americans *approve* of all that, while
being horrified by the rubber stamps. What is wrong with you people?
Of course, everything is dual purpose, and perhaps the flesh-eating
ghouls running our fine country want him booted because he didn't agree
to shred *enough* low-value people. He probably had an illegal nanny,
too, omigod.
[Dec26'04] "And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind
of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul,
or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked
the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania
and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on
television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is
just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people
be something other than that which they want to be." -- Donald Rumsfeld,
Iraq visit speech, Dec 24. Who shot down what plane where??!
[Dec26'04] "US soldiers took my fingerprints and checked my eyes, and then
asked for more than one document". Welcome to newly democratic Fallujah.
I'm glad our tax dollars are being put to good use for iris scanners
in Fallujah. Probably, if we invested instead in alternative energy,
it would only distort the genius of the market.
[Dec30'04] With all the breathless disaster porn on the teevee, they never
give you key numbers (whatreallyhappened.com): the US will generously
send $35 million to help the survivors of the tsunami that killed 125,000
people (about how many civilians we killed in Iraq war II). This compares
unfavorably with the $45 million that is being spent for the inaugural
of our chimp, and even more unfavorably with the $177 million we spend
*each day* to keep up the Iraq war. What an expert performance, with
your flying logos and empathic shots of non-white women with pierced
noses, you media types. May you rot in hell, etc.
[Dec30'04] Unintended humor dept: while searching for information on
the web about lemur brains, I got to a site that had auto-inserted some
"Ads by Google", which presented me with a helpful link entitled "Discount
Spider Monkeys". More specifically, "New & used Spider Monkeys -- Check
out the huge selection now!" at eBay. I suppose it will be a loss when
AI finally does semantics.
[Jan03'05] So now, perhaps out of embarrassment, the US is upping its
diaster relief to $350 million -- about what we spend in Iraq *two days*
($177 million/day). Also, they will be taking up a collection of private
donations. Fine. But why don't they take up a frigging collection for
the whole damn war? That way, the reddies could give till it hurts.
Put your money where your yellow ribbons are. The problem is not the
bat guano Congress (can't be fixed -- it's bat guano by definition),
but the fact that the war has no immediate effect on the great majority
of people; they can't see blown-off limbs and squished babies, there is
no draft, and the bad economic effects are delayed. There needs to be
a more immediate emotional and financial cost (just like the economists
always say!).
[Jan06'05] Reinventing doctors. According to Dr. David Mengele, I mean,
Tornberg, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs,
when a doctor participates in interrogation, "he's not functioning as a
physician," and the Hippocratic ethic of commitment to patient welfare
does not apply (from today's New England Journal of Medicine). Kewl.
I suppose there will be a lot of other professions that need to be
reinvented, too.
[Jan11'05] "Imagine a world where such ferocious attacks [like those on
Fallujah's hospitals and water supply] become common [they left out the
implied "here"]. Imagine the Puget Sound region's hospitals and clinics
as targets, our water supply fouled. Imagine our outrage. Let's not
walk any farther down that path." -- Jim McDermott, M.D., and Richard
Rapport, M.D.
[Jan17'05] It's been *months* since the last story on conjoined
third-world twins. C'mon media guys, get to work! They're not paying
you to sit around! Shouldn't you guys at least *check* if Michael
Jackson had a conjoined twin over for tea?
[Jan18'05] The US peak in natural gas production was 1994, at 55
Bcfd (billion cubic feet per day). Today, production is at 50 Bcfd.
Because gas is hard to transport (it must be liquified for long-distance
transport), gas prices have spiked to triple the average of the 1990's,
despite the fact that many other gas producers have not yet peaked.
We use gas for electricity, heating, and making fertilizer.
[Jan18'05] My peak oil/energy presentation is now online in both
powerpoint
and
pdf
format.
[Jan23'05]
World oil production/usage increased by 2.5 million barrels
a day from Dec03 to Dec04 (over 3%). This *increase* is more than the
current output of Iraq (1.5 million barrels a day, which as a result of
sabotage and infrastructure decay is substantially less than Iraq's peak
output of 3.5 million barrels a day in the early 80's). This didn't
make the evening Matrix-news for American putty-brains. Even if you
know nothing about geology, you probably have a sneaking suspicion
that we're not finding an Iraq's worth of new oil production each year.
Party on, dude.
link
[Jan26'05] "This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers,
stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later
by the prisoners who were freed were not, as some assumed, inflicted
methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards,
their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."
-- Rudolf Hoess, SS Kommandant, Auschwitz
[Jan27'05]
What *really* worries me is the possibility of a peak-oil/global-warming
double-whammy exacerbated, paradoxically, by the peak-energy-caused end
of particulates. The atmospheric heating effects of increased CO2 seem
to have been partly offset by increased particulates in the atmosphere,
mostly as a result of increased fossil fuel (esp. coal) use. Last year,
for example, there was an unusual 'darkness at noon' from particulate
fog across all of China, which shut down flights across the country. When
fossil fuel (and wood!) use finally winds down, however, the particulates
will precipitate (cf. the Pinatubo eruption -- which cleared in a few
years). The extra CO2, however will take 50 to 100 years to clear.
So then, right in the middle of chaotic energy/food shortages, we may
also have to endure a really nasty heating session like the one at the
end of the Permian, when life almost ended. 90-95% of all species went
extinct and the oceans were almost sterilized. Hopefully, a few initial
scares (the end of Ghawar, a big Antarctic melt) will bang some long-term
sense into people before then. Currently, we're running around like a
bunch of economists in an airtight room -- "breathe harder guys! -- the
genius of the market can't work unless we increase demand..." link
[Jan31'05]
The survey of 112,003 high school students finds that 36% believe
newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing;
51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Kewl. Government censors rawk. I wonder what they think about blogs?
link
[Feb01'05]
Quote of the day: "We now are told, according to my sources, that the
administration has been reaching out to Mr. Chalabi, to offer him
expressions of cooperation and support and according to one report
he was even offered a chance to be an interior minister in the new
government." -- Judith Miller from the NYT explaining how the US makes
appointments in the new government just elected by the Iraqi people.
There were a few "wake up! time for your insurgent ass to be electrified
in Abu Ghraib, oh, I mean sorry lady, time to vote!" and "vote or we
cut off your food rations", but overall, it was a smashing success,
which included daily bombing of Iraqi cities like Ramadi, and their
not-worth-counting, low-market-value untermenschen.
[Feb14'05]
The value of the oil in the ground discovered by the major oil
companies was *exceeded* by the costs of exploration for the past 3
years, because the finds were smaller, and harder to find and verify.
Economists are correct that this is 'merely' a problem of oil prices,
which are not high enough yet (at $50/barrel, which is still under
the late 70's inflation-adjusted alltime peak of $80). This is an ROI
(return on investment) ratio of less than 1.0 -- more money spent on
exploration than money expected for the sale of the entire discovery.
This imbalance would normally have the effect of increasing oil prices or
reducing oil exploration. Currently, both oil prices *and* exploration
seem to be increasing (probably because oil companies realize that oil
prices will soon go much higher). At some point in the not-too-distant
future (probably around 2025), however, the EROEI (amount of *energy*,
at whatever cost -- cost is immaterial -- returned on *energy* investment)
will go below 1.0. No increase in the price of oil can fix an EROEI ratio
below 1.0. It will no longer make sense to extract oil for the purpose
of providing energy, period. That doesn't mean that drilling will stop.
For example, some rich slob hiding on a South Sea island might want to
to pay for his own private oil supply (probably along with a private
army from DynCorp to protect it). But when that point comes, humans as
a whole will begin to stop using oil as an energy *source*. link
[Feb15'05]
The problem with outsourced US jobs is annoyingly obvious. With no
controls on capital movement and lots of controls on low-income people
movement, it's trivial to see that the best business strategy is to
move capital overseas where wages are less. Duh. The only way to
stop this is to raise the minimum wage in poorer countries by threat
of capital control, or by threats of a multi-country strike. This was
obvious to many workers in 1910! (IWW, etc). Instead, the carefully
curried knee jerk reaction among the reddies now is the fervent
desire to completely seal the borders to people while at the same
time removing any small remaining contraints on the flow of capital --
exactly what multinational corporations need to make their operations
even more lucrative. We have massively regressed, maybe because iPod
is a better religion than religion itself. This basic analysis is
now utterly beyond today's working Americans. On the positive side, I
suppose it shows that human nature really is nice and trusting at heart,
very much *unlike* what evolutionary psychologists say! (you're trusting
the wrong guys, people...).link
[Feb16'05] While reading an article about tasers for the home (which
worried in a peecee way about 'off label' use of tasers for child
discipline, whatever) -- it dawned on me that tasers are going to
become the perfect politically-correct gun! No self-respecting pwog
house will soon be without one! Of course, they'll be of little use in
keeping the barbarian hordes out of the organic victory garden when the
SHTF....
[Feb17'05] Maureen Dowd quote: "I was rejected for a White House press
pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias,
a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the
"Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second
term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?"
[Feb17'05] James Howard Kunstler quote: "Globalism was never an 'ism,'
by the way. It was not a belief system. It was a manifestation of the
20-year-final-blowout of cheap oil. Like all economic distortions, it
produced economic perversions. It allowed gigantic, predatory organisms
like WalMart to spawn and reproduce at the expense of more cellular
fine-grained economic communities.
[Feb17'05] Akeel quote (Christian Parenti's Baghdad translator): "Ah,
the freedom. Look, we have the gas-line freedom, the looting freedom,
the killing freedom, the rape freedom, the hash-smoking freedom. I don't
know what to do with all this freedom."
[Feb18'05] "Radio frequency identification (RFID) and satellite tags
allowed the Department of Defense (DoD) to transform its patchy,
paper-based logistics system -- in which troops were forced to go
"container diving" through thousands of unlabeled "mystery containers"
-- to one where they had total asset visibility of every item in every
container as it moved across the world to Iraq." -- William Eggers
in Public CIO explaining how the attack on Iraq went so fast.
Seems like RFID is ready to go domestically. It will surely be a great
impediment to terrorism when every citizen and employee is protected by
"total asset visibility". RFID only works at very short distances. But I
wonder what those "satellite tags" are? They sound kinda longer range.
Probably tags will be needed for both assets and liabilites. Just think
of it like Santa, who knows whether you've been bad or good.
[Feb19'05] 5 years ago, a
survey of what was floating in the North Pacific Gyre found that
the mass of small floating plastic fragments was *6* times the mass of
floating plankton there. Plankton are probably comparably weighty to
plastic elsewhere, however, since the ocean currents probably concentrate
the 'plas-ton' there, and plankton productivity is higher elsewhere.
[Feb21'05] "I feel like [Fallujah] was the pinnacle of my existence --
that nothing I will ever do will be like what I have done," says the
religious marine from Spotsylvania, Virginia. "I'm pretty sure there
will be times just as good ... just as awesome -- and I'll appreciate
it in a different way". -- Cpl. Christopher DeBlanc to Scott Peterson
of the Christian Science Monitor. Dude, that's a pretty scary religion
you've got there. It's awfully hard on the women and children.
[Feb22'05]
There was an interesting and detailed comment in Monday Feb 21's
urbansurvival.com -- purportedly from an oil exploration company
executive. After whining about not enough rigs and personnel because
of the heartbreak and fear of a repeat of 1980's low oil prices
(it's just the genius of the market, man -- stop your sobbing; plus,
there's no danger of that any more, as you yourself say!), and then
whining about not being able to make the east and west coast shoreline
both look like Gulf of Mexico (be patient, my friend), he makes a
key point about the economics of drilling as oil prices increase.
At first, you might think higher oil prices would drive more drilling.
But as oil prices rise, they drive up the prices of a lot of the things
required for oil drilling, including plastics, steel, transportation,
and chemicals. Thus, fields that have been bypassed previously as
uneconomic to drill because the traps are too small may remain that
way forever, even as oil prices increase to astronomical levels.
I'm glad to see that the more fundamental EROEI (energy return on
energy investment) ratio is seeping into the subconscious of the
focus-only-on-money crowd. Extracting hard-to-get oil is expensive
precisely because it takes more and more energy to do it. This oil guy
expects the s*** will hit the fan in less than ten years. He concludes:
"Just wanted to get that off my chest. I have been maligned and spit on
by too many people who drive cars and use electricity, and then bitch
about prices or claim some kind of 'Big Oil Conspiracy'. I can tell
you that the collective consensus within my business will be 'let the
bastards freeze in the dark' when the big wail arises." Or as another
anonymous petroleum geologist said upon seeing recent 3D seismic data
from Ghawar: "It's over! Kiss your lifestyle goodbye!". link
[Feb28,05] Whatever you think about what should be done with/to the
'feeding tube woman', the idea of killing a brain-damaged person by
removing the tube so that the person dies slowly over several weeks
from dehydration does seem pretty sick. According to hospice nurses
and doctors, non-brain-damaged patients who have lived through it
(well until the last bit) report that death by dehydration/starvation
is actually less unpleasant than it sounds (though note that this
is compared to whatever horrible disease was actually killing them,
and probably, this was assessed by them while they were on an opiate
drip...). Such conscious terminally ill patients often refuse food
and water on their own, except to keep their mucous membranes wet,
because they say that they actually feel more comfortable (note
here that opiates can induce nausea). In any case, it is common
enough of a practice that there are many hospice-supplied descriptions).
What irks me is that if euthanasia by removal of a feeding tube is
allowed, why not also allow a sensible overdose of Nembutal? For
reference, you wouldn't generally be allowed to kill an unanesthetized
animal by dehydration/starvation for a research project, even if it
had a severely damaged neocortex. It's important to keep in mind that
there are rare but well documented and terrifying cases of 'locked in'
syndrome, the result of damage to the lower brainstem interrupting spinal
motor output pathways but leaving the thalamus, midbrain, and forebrain
intact, where patients have reported awakening from a coma but finding
themselves paralyzed (except for eye movements), but fully conscious.
Patients sometimes recover to some extent, but many remain paralyzed
and conscious for many years, like Julia Tavalaro. It seems extremely
unlikely that this is the case here, given the massive cortical damage
sustained (apparently after cardiac arrest apparently brought on by a
potassium imbalance possibly triggered by chronic bulimia), and lack of
paralysis. At any one time, there are perhaps 35,000 people in a similar
vegetative state after massive cortical damage in the US, so there is
quite of bit of medical experience out there. It's also good to remember
that ideas about what is 'natural' and 'moral' have changed markedly
over the years. For example, in the 19th century, some doctors argued
against painkillers and anesthesia, because it used to be thought that
deep wounds couldn't heal properly without the experience of severe pain.
Anesthesia by isoflurane is not any more 'natural' than driving a car is,
but I doubt anybody wants to go back to 'natural' (unanesthetized) surgery
(we will eventually have to give up driving cars, though :-} ). Also,
before the infection process was well understood, there was the medical
idea that the (formerly inevitable) infection that accompanied a deep
wound was actually good; it used to be called 'laudatory pus'!
[Mar01,05] "One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning
was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars
I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my
confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom
if we are afraid to follow our conscience?" -- Camilo Meija, imprisoned
for refusing to return to Iraq.
[Mar14'05]
In the year 2004, total world discovery of oil was 7 Gb (3 months
world supply). 2 Gb of that was deep-water finds for which the cost
of exploration (*not* including development and production!) exceeded
the value, at current prices, of the oil found. The world consumed
around 30 Gb of oil in 2004, a 2.5% increase over 2003. This was
caused by an all-around demand increase (e.g., US petroleum demand
grew at its strongest rate in five years). ANWR is optimistically
estimated to contain a total of 10 Gb, somewhat more than a year of
US usage, though a more realistic estimate of practically recoverable
oil is more like 4 Gb (about 6 months US usage). Note, however, that
oil can only be pumped out of an oil field at a finite rate. Thus,
at top speed, ANWR might be able to provide 1 million barrels a day
(0.37 Gb/year), which is only 5% of current US usage. For comparison,
the top producing field in the world produces 5 million barrels a
day (Ghawar, Saudi), and the second produces 2 million barrels a day
(Cantarell, Mexico). Both of these fields are much bigger than ANWR.
The unreality of the idiotic discussion about 'the market' somehow
'fixing' these frightening facts reminds me of a quote from the Feral
Metallurgist: "Economics is the game of tiddly-winks that we can afford
to play only in the midst of easy, abundant energy." We are currently
spending about $2.5 billion a week on the Iraq occupation. The current
value of Iraq's total current oil output (1.5 million barrels/day * 7 days
* $55/barrel) is $0.58 billion a week. Just to recoup our 'investment'
without any profit, (assuming we eventually end up stealing Iraq's entire
output), oil 'only' has to go up to $240/barrel. It will probably get
there sooner than anyone is expecting. Of course, the part about stealing
all their oil is still going to take some 'work'. As one of the soldiers
whose heavy-metal Iraqi snuff videos turned out to be a bit shocking to
their wives said: "This isn't some jolly freakin' peacekeeping mission."
link
[Mar18,05] "The bottom line is were were very concerned about the
*perceptions* that somehow we were doing this to steal the oil"
[my emphasis] -- Amy Jaffee, James Baker Institute, interviewed
by Greg Palast, commenting on why big oil companies opposed
selling off Iraq's oil (to big oil companies, but maybe not
US big oil). (quote from BBC Newsnight video linked on this
page). Palast seems to imply that if we had just taken over the oil
fields like the neocons wanted, oil prices could have been kept down,
but that oil companies stopped the neocons. Aside from the fact that
they hardly seem 'stopped', I don't see how running Iraq back up to
its maximum ever output of 3.5 million barrels a day from its current
1.5 million barrels a day (which would have taken years anyway) would
have dealt with year after year increases of world consumption of 2.5
million barrels a day. True, it might have worked for 6 months. Do the
numbers, man. The other thing is, do you, Palast, have the slightest
idea where the proceeds of Iraq's oil (currently, $0.58 billion a week)
are actually going today? Who are you going to ask?
[Mar20,05] The Fed and the commercial banks have great jobs. When banks
come to the Fed's "discount window" for a loan, computers create money
out of nothing, and the banks pay the Fed interest for the newly created
money using already existing money (previously created in similar fashion;
when the banks pay back the loan, the money disappears into the same
hole from which it was created). Then the banks that have borrowed
this money into existence (now called "cash reserves") can lend out 10
times the amount that they have borrowed/created, in effect, creating
even more money. This means if a bank gets $1,000 of created money
from the Fed, they can actually lend out $10,000 ($1,000 + $9,000).
Another way of looking at it is that out of the $1,000, they only need
to keep $100 as true "reserves", and so $900 is "excess reserves". Now,
the key part. When anyone deposits money into the bank, the same thing
happens to it (only 10% of it needs to be kept as reserves). After many
cycles of converting 90% of each deposit into "excess reserves", 9x as
much money has been generated as was originally 'injected' into the bank
by the Fed. This 'second generation' money (beyond the initial creation
by the Fed) is much more interesting to banks than the standard kind of
money they get from deposits, because they don't have to pay interest on
it like they do with deposits (or borrowings from the Fed). Also, banks
typically loan out the created money at a higher rate of interest than
the Fed (compare the Fed's interest rate to the interest on a mortgage).
Cool 'jobs' these guys do, eh? And you thought post-modern critical
theory was a hard job?
[Mar21,05] GM market capitalization (value of all its stock) is now
$16 billion, after a loss this week of around $3 billion. Its debt is
$300 billion. Its main money making business is loans, not cars (how
Enron-y). If it goes bankrupt, its bondholders will own a company worth
much less than $300 billion. That would be a loss bigger than than the
losses of Enron, Global Crossing, Long Term Capital Management, K-Mart,
and the Iraq war put together. Hey, that's getting close to the size
of the yearly military budget. Eeeeeww. Definitely time for the plunge
protection people!
[Mar22,05] The wealth of the world's billionaires reached $2.2 trillion,
which was a 57% increase over 2 years ago. At that rate, the entire
world will be owned by billionaires in a few decades (world GDP is about
$40 trillion). Meanwhile, 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a
day (this is almost half of all humans alive today), and the bottom
1 billion of those live on less than $1 a day. This polarizing trend
is not due to a sudden increase in the intelligence of billionaires,
or a sudden decrease in the intelligence of poor people, but is largely
the result of legislative trends in the past two decades of reducing
taxes on rich people, increasing burdens on poor people, and allowing
rich people to skim off the often tax-supported efforts of scientists
and artists and hide away offshore, without paying anything back
to the society that helped create that knowledge and art. It's all
a matter of boundary conditions. We can set them however we want.
As industrial society reaches peak energy and begins to head down the
'slope that always goes down' over the next 30 years or so, perhaps
this discussion will be seriously opened. Right now, it's completely
off the table. We are buzzing along like yeast cells reaching their
peak population in a fermenting vat -- just before the resources start
to run out and everybody starts getting killed off by waste products.
But we're intelligent yeasts, right? In theory, that means that we have
brains that can figure out how to stop self-destructive greedy behavior
in time. Hopefully, reining in greed will be on the table 10 years from
now.
[Apr02,05] The continuing religious faith that the 'the market' will
somehow trump oil geology and physics and save our behinds continues to
amaze me. The discovery of oil is basically uncoupled from market forces.
The peak in world discovery occurred in the 1960's. Sure there was demand
back then. But there's a lot more now, and the supply is shorter. The
world discovery peak occurred back then because that was when we finished
finding the easier-to-find stuff. After that, despite spending *a lot*
more time and more energy and using more tech, we've found a little less
each few years for the past 40 years. The insanity of thinking that
'the market' will somehow change this is like believing in creationism
and your cell phone at the same time. The second physical/geological
fact that the market can't fix is the rate at which oil can be pumped
out of small holes drilled several miles down into the earth. It doesn't
matter if demand spikes relative to supply. The oil has to be pumped out
through those tiny holes and it's time-consuming and energy intensive to
drill them (imagine drilling a 3 mile deep hole in solid rock by hand)
and to pump them. Demand all you want, suckers. The third false tenet
of economic faith is that higher oil prices will directly lead scientists
to discover new or more efficient forms of energy. Maybe, maybe not.
No matter how much 'the market' wails, it's not going to change Maxwell's
equations or the energy density of sunlight. Hopefully, scientists will
come up with a efficient, easier-to-fabricate photovoltaic cells that
don't use as much silver (according to one calculation, the world's silver
would be entirely consumed if we made enough current-model photovoltaic
cells to replace just 1/3 of the world's electric power). I'll relax
when someone actually demos a photovoltaic-cell-powered photovoltaic
cell manufacturing plant. We've still got a good 20 years to do this.
Not like it's an emergency or anything.
[Apr06,05] Norman Church makes the point that the just-in-time, globalized
features of modern living have only existed for a few decades. Virtually
every aspect of our life and food and water is now highly dependent on
long-distance, oil-powered transport lines and the fossil-fueled internet
and computers on which we type and bank. This modern system has not
yet been tested as to its robustness to perturbation. As oil peaks in
the next decade or so, the system is going to be strongly perturbed.
As Norman Church says, "The division of labor is at risk. It means our
civilization is at risk". There is little historical precedent as to
what might happen. In a few decades, globalization may end up being
generally seen as a much greater evil and much more fundamental failure
of human society than WWII, communism, or capitalism. Scientists,
engineers, and businessmen have a lot of experience making individual
system components (disk drives, power plants, satellites) that perform
robustly. The problem is that in every case, these system components
rely on immediate (seconds, minutes, days) external inputs completely
beyond local control (the electrical grid, the internet, phone lines,
long-distance trucking and rail and shipping, food production, water
pumping and distribution). And many of these 'outside' systems rely on
each other. If one of those 'outside' systems fails, as they very well
might in the event of an interruption in our daily gulp of fossil fuels
-- even if it was (initially) an interruption of just a week or two --
it is quite possible that it could lead to a rapid, cascading failure of
industrial society analogous to the one that recently brought down the
Eastern US grid. Such a breakdown would have to be rapidly repaired to
prevent further permanent damage (dehydration, looting, nobody showing
up to work). Industrial civilization is becoming more and more like
an enormous integrated living organism. This in itself is not a new
phenomenon. All human cultures have these qualities. Like individual
cells in a multicellular organism, individual humans have always relied
on each other. And this is not just a human feature; individual dogs in
dog packs are similar. A female dog will risk her life for the offspring
of another dog that is genetically unrelated to her (this doesn't occur
in non-human primates). The main new thing about globalized industrial
civilization is the scale of this integration, and ever-increasing
speed of the long-distance interconnections. In a tightly integrated
multi-cellular organism like a mammal, the system that runs the heart
can *never* 'crash' for the entire life of the organism. If the heart
goes down for even a minute or two, irreparable damage to the brain and
heart occurs. Major body systems are permanently damaged after a few
more minutes of stoppage, and the rest of the body then begins to die.
Animal bodies are as reliable as they are because they have been tested
trillions of times by natural selection. This is our very first run of
the networked world organism. It's too complicated to model. Could be
a rough ride.
[Apr08,05] Custer Battles (yep, that's the name -- the two last names
of the founders of a security company with contracts in Iraq) has been
accused of setting up a shell company in the Cayman islands to bill
US taxpayers during the time of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The company and the Bush admin argue that since CPA was an 'international
organization', US fraud laws don't apply. This is just a little spatter
of slop out of the huge trough in which our 'captains of industry' are
feeding. It's simple business logic. First the US government collects
a small donation from each taxpayer (say $20 a week). Together, our
donations add up into a giant gushing money pipe ($2.5 billion a week).
The pipe ends up in Iraq, where the fraud laws (and water and sewage and
electricity and hospitals and security) have all been going downhill
since Saddam (who could have known Saddam was a tough act to follow,
eh?). Even small taps into this high pressure money pipeline siphon
off lots of loot in no time. Meanwhile, back at home, we're removing
evolution from textbooks (and from the standardized tests our more and
more de-skilled students constantly take). Mad Max 'business ethics'
for those in the know, while the rubes watch what's left of the Pope
(and Michael Jackson's nose) on teevee (don't you think we need more
closeups on what feeding tubes actually look like?). The problem with
history is that it moves just slowly enough that people don't notice if
they're not paying close attention.
[Apr20'05] Well, after a respite of a few days, the "bull market" in
oil is back. I could rail on about the complete lunacy of calling the
beginning of the end of high industrial civilization a "bull market in
commodities", but whatever. I am afraid it's only a few years until we
get to the "s***-in-your-pants market" for commodities (perhaps after
a brief world recession, which will temporarily moderate demand), when
businessmen with their fine quarterly (3 month) look-ahead finally get
their first good glimpse of the roller-coaster drop off ahead. Using the
fruits of our fine human brains -- human language, human civilization,
and human science -- it is trivial to step back and look at the whole
damn roller coaster track at once. But the chimps are in control now,
and these chimps command a pretty mean military machine. If you know
anything about common chimpanzees, you'd probably would think twice
before putting one in charge of 12 aircraft carriers. Who knows what
they might do to the chimpanzee troop the next valley over.
[Apr27'05] The supposed 'liberal press' doesn't even utter one
peep about the fact that Gannon checked in but he didn't check
out, or that he was there on press conference videotapes, but
hadn't checked in. He could have stayed overnight multiple
times at the White House. Somebody there probably knows in
which room. Instead of investigating the possibility that a
high class male prostitute may have stayed overnight in the White
House, the 'liberal press' says things like "Sometimes the [checkout]
machine doesn't go beep, and you leave anyway" (that doesn't explain
being at a press conference without having checked in), and "The
most plausible thing is that these aren't complete records" (both,
Dana Milbank). You can say that again, Dana. We want webcams and
stained cloth. And who actually does (normally) stay in the White House
overnight anyway? ...
[May01'05] The US now has 7 times as many people per
capita in jail as Russia and China do -- an all-time
high that is approaching 1% of the population (much higher rate
for poor people). The US incarceration rate per 100,000 population
is 726, compared to 142 for Britain, 118 for China, 91 for France,
and 58 for Japan (at that rate, why can't they dump Phil Spector's a**
in there, too). The new bankruptcy legislation doesn't yet include jail
time for being poor, but Republicans can always hope. Just think how
much safer the streets would be! It *would* make it more difficult
for Matthew Perry, who just purchased a $2.5 million 2 BR condo in
Hollywood with "a service entrance" (according to the LA Times real
estate section).
[May10'05] It appears that, even with all the news about having a larger
reserve than last year (the largest in 20 years, though still well
under a year of US oil usage), oil is still flopping around, and can't
manage to stay under $50. But this is all just the market j*rking off.
Today, for example, oil prices leaped $3 to $53 because of a problem
with a *refinery* (something that takes oil as *input*; that makes a
lot of market sense, right?). In the next recession, the price of oil
may even crash for a year or two. Then we will have to grit our teeth
as the 2-week-look-ahead press waahhh-s about how the "bear market in
commodities" is leading us to ruin, and how we should all save GM's butt
by patriotically buying more we're-not-going-to-negotiate-our-lifestyle
SUV's again. None of this market self-pleasuring is going to change
the basic facts. Oil discovery peaked in the 1960's and there is
no obvious replacement on the horizon, except for a temporary spurt
of coal synfuels. If we hit synfuels hard in a decade or two when
the final oil crisis kicks in (it *will* happen -- the market will
demand it!), we will generate an even bigger belch of greenhouse gas,
because the coal-to-liquid-fuel process is very energy-inefficient.
Then, as industrial civilization begins to wind down because somebody
(who us?) yanked the power cord, there will be a great many earnest
prayers from cargo cult economists for 'scientists to please come up
with something', and then our grandchildren and their kids (and a lot
of other species) will begin to fry as big-time global warming hits.
Serves 'em right, those profligate generation Z losers, because they
forgot to deposit oil into their individual retirement accounts to run
full-city air conditioners. Capitalism would be a great system if we
had an extra backup planet or two. Since we don't, it will probably
turn out to be the biggest disaster in all of human history.
[May10'05] "It just doesn't look good to the public" said Seattle's
Sgt. Donald Davis, of the case where a Seattle police officer tasered an
8 months pregnant women in the thigh, neck, and arm, leaving electrical
burn marks, while trying to drag her out of her car after she refused to
sign a traffic ticket. She was rushing her son to school at the time when
she was caught speeding. But Sgt. Davis also worried about *not* being
able to taser pregnant women, kids, and old people in the future: "If in
your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you
have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation."
Great, sarge. Wonder what you'd say if someone tasered *your* granny,
your pregnant wife, or your little 'Jessica'. There was another story
last week about police coming into a class room and handcuffing a grade
school girl for crying and acting up. I'm getting that creeping police
state, boiling frog kind of feeling. It happens slowly enough that people
don't notice how big the changes are from year to year. They just agree,
'well, I guess it's OK as long as you had to do it to keep us safe'
(from pregnant women and grade school kids).
[May12'05] Today, Larry Flynt outs Bolton with allegations that Bolton
forced his former wife to engage in group sex at Plato's retreat.
I guess Bolton could argue that it was all part of his job at the
State department (vetting new interrogation techniques?). In the end,
I agree with one of the commentatators, Wonkster, at rawstory.com:
"Bolton's ex wife, Larry Flynt and sex stories, another Bush pr*ck lies,
SO THE F WHAT? Where's the outrage over Peak Oil?" :-}
[May15'05] With 55% of the public disapproving of Bush's handling of the
Iraq crisis, the planaria-like 'Democrats' can't bring themselves to utter
even a timorous little peep against the war. What disgusting cowards.
Meanwhile on so-called pwog radio, Al Franken is still fighting Nader!
(last week on the Oy Oy Oy show). His antiwar comments about the American
invasion and occupation of Iraq are about as enlighting as those of
Kerry, who "would have done *eveything* different" -- by using even more
troops, equipment, and bombs. And don't forget, the biggest problem is
our cultural sensitivity. Kerry and Franken would no doubt make sure
that home invasion, strip searches, and firing randomly into passenger
cars were carried out in a more culturally sensitive way. This is what
now passes for left?? Oy! And Air America filters out all calls asking
that the US withdraw from Iraq. During the US invasion of South Vietnam,
I would often hear, "how can we possibly withdraw from Vietnam *now*?".
Back then, the correct answer was: "with ships and planes." Works great
today, too.
[May16'05] Yesterday, Condoleeza Rice showed that like Laura, she can
do comedy too, when she told the Iraqi government that US forces would
remain until Iraq can defend itself. I can see that the Iraqis *have*
been getting better at defending themselves. The dust-up about flushing
holy books is its own dark comedy. Slaughtering 100,000 civilians
and torturing mostly innocent civilians swept up in Gestapo-style home
invasions doesn't rate a comment on the nightly news or cause changes in
policy, but now Newsweek is forced into piously eating its own words --
which were nothing more than a re-tread/re-publication of something that
originally came out last year! Of course, talking about getting more
peecee with books takes the focus off of the daily torture and slaughter.
The idiotic, vicious unreality of it all almost makes me want to see us
stupid humans get banged over the head by the reality of energy depletion.
It's the same urge that drives you to pinch a denervated patch of skin
in order to get *some* kind of sensation out of it.
[May17'05] According the the US Treasury dept, international investments
in U.S. securities dropped to $46 billion/month in March from $84
billion/month in February, a larger drop than expected. About 75% of the
US economy's borrowing is met by foreign central banks buying dollars.
If this keeps up for a few months, a guy could get a little nervous
(phrasing from "How to Speak Minnesotan" -- I was raised in Illinois).
On a much more positive note, George Galloway's performance in the US
Congress today blasting lickspittle Norm Coleman who replaced Paul
Wellstone when Wellstone was killed in a suspicious plane accident)
*totally* rocked! (see link below). I only found out that Galloway had
also used the fine English word, "lickspittle", himself when I read the
apathetic account of the Senate hearing in the LA Times :-}
[May20'05] Rob Kirby (Pirates reprise below), alerted by Willem
Middelkoop, has noticed that the Treasury Dept silently altered their
months records of the total holdings of US Treasury bills by (in order of
holdings) Japan, China, Caribbean Banking Centers (natch!), and the UK,
by 20 to 60 billion each (which sounds like awfully big errors -- around
10% -- for presumably well-monitored transactions...). The new figures
suggest that China and Japan suddenly stopped accumulating US debt since
the beginning of the year. This would seem like big financial news,
but it isn't.
[Jun03'05] In the story below by Mitchell E. Potts, a religious, now
antiwar, Iraq war I Navy veteran, are reports of his conversations with
currently deployed injured teenagers outside Walter Reed hospital.
One of them described how he felt bad about raiding schools (because
that's where insurgents hide -- e.g., the US military still occupies
all the schools in Fallujah, and any classes taking place there now
happen in tents). The same veteran said he felt the worst about the US
military "routinely round[ing] up the kids [to] use them as human shields"
because "the Muslims would not shoot their own children". Most people,
illogically to my mind, find this more repugnant than dispensing high
tech death to children from a safe distance in a plane, helicopter,
navy ship, or artillery piece, without seeing the resulting little blown
up bodies. At least the human shields thing has a personal touch --
and the number of kids killed and injured this way is no doubt *much*
smaller than the number shredded by our electronic Darth Vader weaponry.
Furthemore, it has an evolutionary foundation! Of course, that argument
won't mean much to most of the country. A NYT poll last year showed
that the 55% of Americans believed that "God created us in our present
form," while 13% believed that "we evolved from less-advanced life-forms
over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process"
(referenced in Matt Taibbi article below). But piffles aside, monkeys
with certain social structures (e.g., baboons), where male-male agression
is common under circumstances where infants are present will routinely
grab infants to use them as a 'baboon shields'. It works well; the
attacker will typically back down, and the infants are rarely injured.
I certainly don't like high tech soldiers grabbing kids and strapping them
to humvees to save their own butts but if I had to rank things, I think
tearing up children's bodies with electronically guided antipersonnel
bomblets launched from from a safe distance is worse.
[Jun09'05] "Wow. You guys are breeding yourselves
some *good* Good Germans over there."
Comment by Derek in response to previous comments about police in
Taserland (for now, esp. Florida -- 17 Taser fatalities there since
2000, kids tasered in ER's, female bartenders who called police for
help tasered instead, etc). I agree with Lanya at Banality of Evil
-- it pretty much ruined my day. Welcome to tortureland (pace Daniel
Hopsicker). Also remember that policing isn't even close to being the
most dangerous profession. Maybe I need to get a taser for stopping
students from from using cell phones, mouthing off, and of course,
sleeping in my classes...
[Jun10'05] Here are the latest confidence ratings for different
professions: the military (74%), police (63%), organized religion (53%),
Preznit (44%), US Supreme Court (41%), newspapers (28%), TV news (28%),
Congress (22%), big business (22%), HMO's (17%).
[Jun14'05] Here is something both the left and the right don't like to
acknowledge: the Iraqi resistance, through daily bombings against US
military convoys using whatever they had lying around, has forced the
American public (including red state guys) to begin to favor pulling out
of Iraq. The reason is that it shows that the most powerful, high tech,
and expensive army in the world (by a long shot), is still not able
to completely dominate another country -- and even one weakened by a
previous war in which its power generation, electric grid, and sewage
facilities were heavily damaged, which was then followed by a decade
of sanctions and more bombings, following by another high tech war
against which they had even less defense. All that, and we still are
not decisively winning. A hard pill to swallow, which is why both the
left and the right can barely utter the words. I suppose there is even a
little dread about whether Americans would be able to similary rise the
the challenge of a similarly technologically dominant foreign invader.
The US losing world military dominance certainly can't happen overnight,
but remember: the US military on the move is 70% fossil fuel by weight,
and there will never be battery-operated tanks, aircraft carriers,
or fighter jets.
[Jun22'05] The popularity of Bush continues to
plummet, now approaching the lowest-ever numbers which were
reached before the election during the first disastrous invasion
of Fallujah in April 2004. The war in Iraq is also more
unpopular than ever, much lower than in April 2004. Even the
"Freedom Fries" guy recanted! The number of troops killed by
IED attacks reached an all-time high this June (700 IED attacks
in June). Meanwhile, the trade deficit continues to balloon at a record
rate, and the Fed continues to pump huge amounts on cash into M3, even
while continuing to raise interest rates. All told, this seems like
a very dangerous time for the Bush administration, and therefore, for
you and me. They will stop at nothing to retain power. One blogger
has suggested that Bush will change tack and begin to continously
announce an Iraq pull-out for the next two years, but not actually
pull out (shades of the Gaza 'pullout' that is always about to happen,
but somehow never does). This will allow another neo-con-controlled
Republican drone to take over. The polyp-like Democrats -- who have just
about screwed up their enormous courage to the sticking point of starting
to think about getting ready to make a few feeble whispers under their
breath about the general concept of a pullout (did they say pullout? I
think they meant reconfiguration and right-sizing and doing *everything*
completely different...) -- will be deprived of their main issue, even
before they manage to utter a single word about it out loud. Maybe.
But things could continue to go downhill in Iraq -- and in Afghanistan,
where the per capita troop fatalities have been higher than in Iraq this
year. Continuing deterioration of the Iraq and Afghanistan situations
during two years of withdrawal talk may fight its way through an expected
media black-out, forcing more drastic action by the Bushies -- which is
frightening to contemplate.
[Jun24'05] I wrote a letter to Boxer and
Feinstein against the new war on Iran.
[Jun30'05] The US has shown no sign of intent to abandon the
huge permanent military bases Halliburton is constructing in Iraq.
The insurgency will therefore continue. My guess is that -- barring
some kind of terror stunt in an American city -- things will go as they
have, with another 1,000 American deaths and maybe another 25,000 Iraqi
deaths by this month next year, and an escalation of the US war on Iran.
The beginning of the Iran war will probably pump Bush's popularity back
to 50% for a year and probably reduce the number of people (now over 40%)
that agree that Bush should be impeached "if it can be shown that he
lied about the reasons for the Iraq war" (you gotta give these pollsters
credit for for their hallucinatory questions). However, we will be one
year closer to Peak Oil (probably in 2008). Because Americans have
such finely tuned minds, they will take all this in stride, and then
elect Frist to 'stay the course'. That will allow us to stay in Iraq
and Iran for another several thousand American deaths and another hundred
thousand Iraqi and Iranian deaths. Peak oil will hit in the first year
of Preznit Frist's term. Just then, it might be 'head for the hills'
time in an old jalopy (well, maybe a 1989 Honda Civic :-} ).
[Jul03'05] I just saw a remarkable graph on urbansurvival.com showing
the percentage of program trading on the NYSE. In 1999 and 2000, it
was running around 20%, if you exclude spikes. From 2000 to 2005, it
increased to about to about 60% of all trades (with spikes, like last
week, at over 75%!) -- a slightly more than linear rate of increase.
At this rate, trading will be entirely done by computer programs in a
few years.
[Jul07'05] The Plame case has turned out strangely indeed. One idea is
that Judith Miller (who previously was responsible for a long series of
NYT scare articles that built support for the war using information now
uniformly shown to be faked or false) actually told the administration
about Plame, not the other way around. Then Rove told Novak, the one who
actually released the information to the public, and who has strangely
somehow avoided any fallout.
[Jul11'05] Well great, Supersize-Me Morgan Spurlock has been serialized
and now has a show in which he does other things for 30 days, like going
off the grid. How lame. Living off the grid is going to be more like
a plot where you have to live in a house with Gary Coleman, Ron Jeremy,
and Tammy Faye for 30 years, and there are no cameras...
[Jul12'05] I've posted my (oversize) response to comments on my energy
presentation here . The main point is
that the reason why renewable energy is expensive, is that it takes a
lot of energy to make renewable energy-generating devices because they
include things like steel, high quality silicon crystals, rare metals,
glass, precise machining, transporting heavy things over long distances,
and so on. Economists often say that increasing fossil fuel prices
will help renewables, because then renewables will become more price
competitive. This ignores the fundamental fact that renewable energy
devices are currently made exclusively using oil, gas, and coal energy
as inputs! As fossil fuel prices increase, the price of renewables is
likely to increase in parallel with them. Of course, if it is actually
possible to make a solar-cell-powered solar-cell-manufacturing plant
(including the steel and silicon furnaces, the machine tools, the
silver mining, etc), then the day is saved. This is not to deny that
actually constructing such a plant would depend on getting a sufficient
return on money investment, or a government subsidy, or both. I'm not
against money. But whether it is ultimately worth making solar cells
depends more fundamentally on *energy* return on *energy* investment.
If it takes more *energy* to make a solar cells (counting everything
needed including getting the raw input materials) than you can get out
of the resulting photocells over a reasonable period of time, then no
amount of money/price or greed or self-interest or altruism or fear
will make such energy a *renewable source* -- it will instead just
be another way of spending non-renewable oil, gas, and coal energy.
I hope the answer to this question is "yes".
[Jul13'05] Economists, unfortunately, find the concept of EROEI as
"meaningless" as "mass return on mass invested" (econobrowser, today).
As one poster quipped, there is no reason economists shouldn't also rev
up their perpetual motion machines while they're at it...
[Jul25'05] The US
defies a judge's order to release torture pictures because "they
could result in harm to individuals" tortured in the pictures (girls
and boys who were raped and sodomized in front of other prisoners
to coerce them, etc, as leaked almost a year back by Seymour Hersh).
Sounds more like protection for our "boys" who did the sodomizing (and
the administrators who ordered them to do it). 2,000 vets have
called for the release of the information.
[Jul30'05] [rant follows] Just returned from an excellent talk in SD
by Dahr Jamail. He, along with David Enders, is one of the two total
currently unembedded US reporters in Iraq. All the rest stay inside the
Green Zone, never leave their hotels in Baghdad (not sure I would be brave
enough to venture out myself), or go on patrols with the US military and
submit censored reports. Even at a left/peace meeting, though, it was
hard to put the two main points on the table. First, the only reason
there is *any* public opinion against the war is because the Iraqis have
fought back. If we had been able to invade their oil patch and set up
our 14 permanent military bases along with the largest US embassy in the
world, and the locals just got McDonald-ified without a whimper, even
at more than $100 billion in tax money a year, good Americans wouldn't
be 50-50 against the war now. The peace movement (of which I am a part)
has had virtually no responsibility for this change of opinion, and the
'peace movement' basically collapsed to 'regulars' immediately after the
start of the war. And we *are* building the bases and embassy anyway.
Second, at the current moment, 95% of the population has not even heard
of peak oil, sitting right here on the peak! It was the main reason for
the occupation of Iraq. Instead, oil demand in the US so far this year,
even with the higher prices, even before the middle of the travel season,
is already *up* 2.5% (0.5 additional million barrels a day on top of
the usual 20 million barrels a day of US demand compared to last year).
When the population finally does hear of and understand just how dire the
situation with respect to energy is, it will only take a small event to
bring most of them back into line, to goosestep our way into Iran. Just
because the US bases, even in the south ('mortaritaville'), are mortared
every day, and the US supply lines are often cut, forcing helicopter
supply, and US forces are a long way from the coast doesn't mean that
the US can't bomb and partly invade Iran. An Iran bombing/invasion
would be a self-tightening noose that will bring out a patriotic burst.
So party on, dudes. Burn through the last of the easy oil. Plan to burn
through twice as much coal as now when the oil runs out and inefficient
synfuel production (cf. Germany in WWII) begins in earnest.
Roast the whole damn planet while you're at it -- you're worth it.
And your grandkids can build character by rising from the ash heap at
the end of the century.
[Aug01'05] Apologies for ranting. Over the weekend, I began getting spam
about oil. At this rate, by fall, there will be an oil reality show.
This is beginning to remind me of an old science fiction story I read
in high school about an advanced culture that had lost the ability
to do actually do anything but rather just vicariously experienced
other people doing violent and sexy things (but they never said what
their energy sources would be then... :-} ). Things *have* turned
out a bit blade-runnery. My guitar effects processor imitates the
distorted sound of a Marshall tube amp head, and then that output put
through a particular speaker cabinet, and finally, the transformation
due to having a dynamic microphone put in front of the speaker --
either centered or off-center (which goes to the big PA). Sounds
pretty good (1 guitar track, direct to disk), and I didn't even turn it
up to 11.
[Aug10'05] Hundreds of truckers have blocked the road in South Florida
today to protest high gas prices. I'm sure this will help cause all
those depleted oil fields to begin refilling. A similar, but more
concerted blockade in the UK in 2000 brought the economy to a virtual halt
for a few days. Unfortunately, it had little effect on North Sea wells,
which peaked in 1999.
[Aug11'05] Oil spiked to $66 a barrel today, and once again, the media
explained this as partly due to outages in *refineries*. Refineries
take oil as *input*. I fail to understand why a slowdown in a business
that *buys* oil would cause oil price to go up. Whatever. I suppose
it makes about as much sense as Google hiding Cindy Sheehan's comments
behind a 'only for adults' shield (probably because she made a mention
of Israel). Swift-boaters are no doubt soon on the way.
[Aug12'05] James Hamilton, here at UCSD, argues that Peak Oil people are
naive about how demand affects price. He thinks that as oil depletes,
prices will rise, causing oil usage to be restrained (since "demand"
is defined as equivalent to what is supplied). This will delay the
peak and give more time (e.g., than the Hirsch study has suggested)
for alternatives to be researched, engineered, and implemented. I hope
he's right. I see four main outstanding problems. First, oil prices
are quite volatile, as he himself admits. Right now, oil prices may be
in a bit of a speculative bubble (broke $67 today). But there may very
well come a dip, and then people/businessmen/gov't will be lulled again.
Second, the alternatives all take time to ramp up. Even well-understood
ones like nuclear fission won't be back for at least a decade. Third,
the alternatives to liquid fuel for transport (fission for electrical
generation is not currently a viable replacement for transport) all seem
like they might have considerably worse EROEI ratios (these are hard to
determine and controversial, but almost certainly much worse than late
s`20th century oil). Finally, as the cost of fossil fuel inflates, it will
likely *raise* the cost of renewables, since they are all currently made
exclusively using non-renewable fossil fuel energy sources. Hopefully,
as non-renewables start to come online, they may be able to counteract
this trend. Hopefully.
[Aug15'05] An AP-AOL News
poll on public attitudes about rising gasoline prices showed that
the public thought the following things were responsible, in order: too
much oil company profit (30%), foreign countries (22%), politicians (21%),
environmentalists (9%), SUV owners (7%), other (3%). That the demand for
oil might be running up against limited geological resources didn't make
the named list! And environmentalists are thought worse bad guys than
SUV owners. We do live in a flat-earth country, just like Thomas Friedman
says; and unfortunately, we're about to fall off its edge. Meanwhile,
Cindy has Bush hunkered down on his latest, record-breaking vacation. He
had to take a
helicopter to a little league game 20 miles away from Crawford
to avoid her. His handlers are terrified of what he might say in an
unscripted encounter. The swift-boaters haven't been able to take her
out yet because she's turning into a Natalee Holloway. Google put her
comments behind an 'adult' shield, probably because she took a certain
country's name in vain. Meanwhile, sensing the mood of the country,
top Democratic lawmakers demanded that *more* troops be sent to Iraq
(Biden and McCain). Like Kerry in 2004, they no doubt "would have
done *everthing* different in Iraq". Too bad they can't both go
over there themselves and help out -- I think they're short of help.
We should be OK here, though, thanks to eagle-eyed, large-brained
airport security people who are busy protecting us from terr'ist
babies! I think the proper word is "de-skilling" -- the turning off
of whatever small amount of brain was still independently functioning in
order to more closely follow instructions. I'm sure not looking foward
to the time when these automatons get issued the latest, new and improved
tasers ... Could take a bite out of the travel business ("We decided
not to fly after grandma messed her pants after being tasered for mouthing
off to the security guard who was feeling her up...").
[Aug17'05] Just for scale, a medium-sized oil tanker holds around a
million barrels of oil. That means that our daily gulp of oil here in the
US (about 20 million barrels a day) sucks 20 such oil tankers dry every
single day. The strategic petroleum reserve holds enough oil for about
a month, or around 600 oil tanker's worth.
[Aug18'05] "I am not a hero. Guys like me are just a necessary part
of things. To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this,
you need psychos like us to go and drop a bomb on somebody's house." --
the response of a marine who just returned from Iraq to a request to
speak to a wealthy community, as told to Evan Wright. On a completely
different, sad note, I just read that Michael Brecker is very sick
with bone marrow cancer. He is looking for a bone marrow donor of a
rare type, not matched by his brother or other family, and has had to
stop performing. And yet different again, the Aug 17 San Diego City
Beat published my
response to a clueless July 27 column on Iraq by MsBeak.
[Aug20'05] Lately, I've been watching daily oil prices on theoildrum
and 321energy. For something as tangible and slowly changing as oil
production and global oil usage, the wild flopping around in price
amuses me. Somebody farts in a refinery causing the secretaries to
leave early for lunch, and the price shoots up, despite the fact that
refineries *use* oil, meaning that refinery problems should *reduce*
demand. A few hours later, some dufus who knows nothing about geology
writes a bumbling puff piece about 'reserves building up' and the price
plummets. The last upward jump came after three small, inaccurate
rockets missed a US warship and hit a taxi (the occupants survived).
I don't look forward to what a bunch of self-pleasuring 'geniuses of the
market' will do to oil prices when they finally wake up and realize the
true gravity of the situation. They should be forced to go to college
and learn something. It's embarrassing -- like football players that
supposedly got a degree but never went to class. Meanwhile the price of
photoelectric (solar) cells has been *increasing*. This was explained
in a NYT article by Chris Dixon as a textbook supply/demand curve
(more people buying them, leading to a shortage of silicon crystals),
but it is more complicated. Photoelectric cells currently use waste
silicon crystals from the semiconductor industry. As demand sops up the
throwaways, the price will go up permanently, because the throwaways are
being sold for less than they cost to make. They are expensive because
it requires a lot of energy to make them. The energy comes from fossil
fuels. As fossil fuel prices rise, it is likely that photoelectric
cell prices will increase even more. The Onion had an article about
"Intelligent falling" -- a new religious theory of gravity. Sometimes,
the way economists talk about oil, energy, and the markets makes them
sound awfully religious. They're like the priests on Easter Island who
said, "don't worry, nothing bad will happen if you cut down all the trees
-- the guys with the doomsday scenarios are only tree huggers who don't
know anything about the genius of the moai..." They act like "Intelligent
energy" can detect that we need it, and so will therefore virtually
invent itself into existence. There *are* some positive developments
on the horizon. Solar heat-concentrating devices are probably better
long-term solutions than photoelectric cells, at least for sunny places.
They don't work at all when it's cloudy. And there is a lot of research
and development going on with thin film copper/indium/gallium/selenium
photoelectric cells. These may be cheaper to manufacture than current
silicon crystal cells.
[Aug24'05] For better or worse, I posted several times in response to
an amazingly clueless article by one of the Freakonomics authors in
his blog. My posts in that endless discussion are here: (
post1 ,
post2 ,
post3 ).
[Aug25'05] The
credit derivatives market more than doubled last year to $8.4
trillion dollars (yep, that's about the same size as the GDP of the
US, and this is just a particular subset of derivatives). Kewl rate of
growth. Thank god the "The Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group"
is in control. These are the people that helped 'fix' the 4 billion
dollar mistake made in 1998 by Long Term Capital Management, a company
run partly by the Nobel laureate who invented a derivative pricing
equation, and which, somewhat counter to its name, made huge short
bets that went bad when things went the 'wrong' way with the ruble,
of all things. They got a $4 billion dollar bail out and nobody went
to jail. The only punishment was that a few people lost their jobs
(I wonder where they doing their genius thing, now?). Bankruptcy no
problem, as long as you're down more than a billion. The "Counterparty"
guys have 'explained' that now "urgent effort is needed to tackle the
serious accumulation of trade confirmations". If you can understand
what this means, then maybe you could tell me whether I should take what
little money I have out of the bank now :-}
[Aug28'05] Bye-bye LA Times. With opposition to the war approaching the
levels only seen late in the Vietnam war, Doyle McManus' front page column
today explains, "War critics have backing but not much of a following".
The Opinion section has been bizarrely modified and neutered, with its
front page containing an article by Leila Beckwith explaining why the
State legislature needs to add an amendment prohibiting professors
from supporting the Palestinians. Probably needs to also have a rider
prohibiting discussion of how huge amount of our taxes were first used
to bulldoze houses and illegally settle people, and then huge additional
amounts of aid is then sent to remove them ($2 billion in new aid for
the removal alone). Bush's numbers have fallen to scary, stunt-inducing
levels. Besides the war, part of the reason for his low ratings is the
high price of oil. Americans are in a pissy mood. The war is going
badly, they know deep down it was in part about oil, but oil price is
waaay up, anyway. They're mad, but they can't really come out and say
why -- it's because the Iraqis are successfully fighting off our Death
Star Darth Vader empire. They intuitively know that this looks bad to
the rest of the world (the people who were getting their oil from Iraq
before we blew in there). The rest of the world has not been weakened
by two wars, ten years of sanctions, and thousands of tons of 'depleted'
nuclear waste. The US would have a much less easy time taking on the
rest of the world than destroying Iraq. This is a sensitive point
in history. With respect to oil, things will probably get much worse
on Monday, when the enormous category 5 hurricane, Katrina, slams into
New Orleans, some Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and oil terminals, and
the Port of South Louisiana. This will likely cause a spike in oil
prices and disrupt manufactured imports and exports, all bad for
Bush (and us!). But all the breathless CNN babe coverage will greatly
help Bush, taking the focus off the war. Bad weather is a little like
a terrorist event, and it may temporarily decrease the chance of him
doing something extremely destabilizing. I'm not looking forward to
the aftermath, though, in late September, when the situation is likely
to get critical again.
[Aug30'05] Eeesh, things look bad in New Orleans. The entire city is
being evacuated. Floating dead bodies are being ignored as they try to
rescue many people who are still trapped. There are thousands of dead,
maybe even 10,000. Bad timing for Bush to have sent 4,000 Louisiana
National Guard people to Iraq, and to have instituted the
steepest cut ever in funding for levee strengthening and repair in
Feb 05 in order to spend it on the Iraq disaster instead. There are
reports that a recent Iraq line item was $75 million to try to bribe
Sunnis to sign their new Constitution (written in English!); it didn't
work. There is widespread looting but not enough National Guard to shoot
looters because they're too busy shooting Iraqis. MSM won't touch these
things yet ("confirmed dead now over 50"), of course, except to bemoan
the fact that not enough looters have been shot -- if we could only
have shot more looters, that would have fixed things, right? All of
New Orleans is slowly flooding now, long after the hurricane has passed.
If the levee breaches can be repaired, this will just stop the rise in the
water level. It still all has to be pumped out. That will take months.
This hurricane essentially created 1 million US refugees (a little more
than the original 1948 Palestinian diaspora). They're not going to be
going home for a long time, if ever. It looks like the biggest natural
disaster in US history, yet the media feel like they are getting ready
to move on to the next Scott Peterson; they just don't quite know what
to do with a story that is 100,000 times as big as Aruba. The latest
Pew poll of our populace shows that 42% believe that "living things
have existed in their present form since the beginning of time", 38%
think that creationism should be taught instead of evolution in school,
and 64% are open to teaching both creationism and evolution. I wonder
if half of these lemmings also think that God is punishing the South
for voting for Bush? (Trent Lott's house was knocked down). I think
that people who believe in creationism should have their cell phones
confiscated, their teevees darkened, their internet pr0n disconnected,
and their OnStar service cancelled, because the Maxwell equations are not
consistent with the Bible, either. Put your money where your mouth is.
The cowardly, doddering Todd Gitlin warns antiwar protestors to be civil.
Thanks for all your help, Todd.
[Sep01'05] $250,000 of US tax receipts for each 'settler' to leave their
stolen land last month, but black Americans in New Orleans don't deserve
anything because they didn't have the 'personal responsibility' (e.g.,
cars) to run away. Red state libertarian whiteys should watch their
backs, though, because the blue state whiteys that are subsidizing them
could decide at some point to demand even more 'personal responsibility'
(e.g., when the power goes out in Phoenix and Phoenix starts to feel like
a holiday in Fallujah). Louisiana was a red state in 2000 and 2004, but
they're still getting screwed by Mr. Red. For *1.5 days* worth of Iraq
tax receipt spending (a quarter of a billion dollars), the levees could
have been strengthened and most of the damage averted. Ethnicity and
its interaction with and exploitation by the media is a complete disaster
for humans. And you can bet, we're going to see a lot more race-baiting
(whites 'finding', blacks 'looting'), which is basically 'poor-baiting'
as the long emergency starts to slowly get underway.
[Sep02'05] Hearing some of the voices of 'the people' is sure scary, eh?
I'll put words into the people's mouths, if I may. San Diego gets
around 10% of its water from local sources. When people nearer the
source of the other 90% decide they need more of it, stupid San Diegans
will probably riot. Shoot 'em. Big earthquake in San Fransicso has
people looting sushi restaurants? Stupid for living there -- shoot
'em. Fossil water from the giant Ogallala aquifer in the middle of the
country is being pumped at many times its replenishment rate. Illinois
is now having the worst drought in 50 years. Stupid midwesterners --
they couldn't think ahead, even with all those agricultural subsidies.
When a 200 year drought comes, they may not be too happy. Shoot 'em
if they get out of hand. New Yorkers have a lot of buildings that
are virtually uninhabitable without air conditioning in the summer.
There may be grid problems again in a few years, and they may last for
more than a day this time. Tough luck, stupid New Yorkers. Shoot 'em if
they misbehave. Tornados are more common in the middle of the country.
Only stupid people live near tornados. Serves 'em right (no need to
shoot 'em). The reason poor people and old people don't have cars is
that they are stupid and lazy. Because of this, they can't get away,
and therefore, they shouldn't be helped if they get into trouble,
and they should be shot if they straggle into your town. This isn't
the 'reptilian brain' -- a total crock perpetrated by Paul MacLean and
popularized by Carl Sagan -- but rather the characteristically linguistic
human brain running with only teevee input (it's all about language
and naming and culture, which turtles and snakes distinctly lack!).
There are already a chunk of people in this country who think that what
we really need is to have a national quick response police force that can
immediately step in anywhere and shoot people as soon as trouble breaks
out (Wired has an article today about how the military is taking sound
weapons to LA for testing on poor people, oh I mean, to help broadcast
'instructions' over long distances). It's hard to know what percentage
currently harbors these fascist sentiments, which predictably bubble
up in times of crisis, because pollsters are too 'civil' to ask real
questions (political polling is like s*x research in this respect).
This is similar to the support for the Iraq war -- people have no trouble
'supporting' having other people's teenagers kill other people's kids.
Well, at least September is "National Preparedness Month".
[Sep04'05] Yesterday, the Red Cross was stopped by
'Homeland Security' from bringing food and water into New Orleans. Bush
must be so desperate to avoid Labor Day pictures of even one of the 10,000
(or even 30,000) dead, that he is willing to kill more low-market-value
people. Katrina will have a death toll *at least* several times that of
9-11, but because the dead are mostly poor and black (old ladies trapped
in their apartment blocks knocking on the ceiling until the water went
to the next higher floor), they hardly count. The official propaganda
death toll for New Orleans is 59. This is completely ridiculous (compare
9-11 when the initial estimates were 5,000 dead). There won't be a
months-long nightly empathetic story about a personal tragedy because
the victims have the wrong skin color for empathy. Not that swat teams
are clearing everybody out that is not dead or dying, we may never know
the real death toll. The federal government gets most of the $5 billion
in yearly royalties from oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico, but it
couldn't even cough up a 1/20 of that for one year to fix the levees.
Instead, the disgusting puke mainstream media subtly whips up race hatred
with a shrouded comment about looting and shooting -- Katrina's 'incubator
babies' -- at the end of every crucial initial report on the disaster.
Then, later, they 'correct' the record (e.g., yesterday and today's
LA Times, with multiple admissions that initial reports of lawlessness
were exaggerated). Too late, media scumbags. Your swill is permanently
installed in the brain puppets of good Americans. Everyone will remember
black looting and no one will remember the actual gist of what happened:
like 30 poor black old people drowned in their beds in an unevacuated
old folks home -- times a thousand.
[Sep05'05] Dianne Foster makes an interesting point (in Xymphora
comments) on putting people in the Superdome. I thought about this
at the time, but forgot the uncertainty after events played out.
When people were being put into the Superdome, the storm was still
Category 5 with some remaining uncertainty in landfall longitude.
If it hadn't weakened as much as it did, or if it had hit a mere
50 miles to the west so that the characteristically stronger east
side of the eyewall had hit NO (instead of the west side), or both,
then the Superdome may well have collapsed on all those people.
The decision was taken anyway (versus emergency bussing). The jamming
of various emergency frequencies as well as Citizens Band (CB)
continues around New Orleans (heard by truckers on Interstate 10 --
update: NOAA claims solar X-ray flare may have been disrupting Gulf
emergency communications). Aaron Broussard's well-publicized
interview told that FEMA cut emergency telephone lines to
his community after denying him the food and water he requested
for the peole still there. Broussard had the lines hooked back
up and he posted an armed guard to stop FEMA from doing it again.
Mayor Nagin (Bush-contributor, lifelong Republican until just
before his election in Democratic N.O.) has sent away the local
police. The hapless remaining peole say they are being treated
like Al Queda, hearded out of their non-flooded homes, and
stripped of their possessions. Imagine doing that to white New
Yorker professors after 9-11. Wouldn't fly.
[Sep06'05] The US is slowly turning into a third world country --
a banana police state, as some have quipped. If the current trends
in manufacturing/engineering/software outsourcing, loss of health
insurance, wealth inequality, debt, and homeland militarization
continue unabated -- even assuming an unlimited supply of oil --
in another 20 years, the place will be a complete wreck. Add in a
long-term peak-oil-caused contraction and it *really* looks ugly.
This is fine for the estate tax crowd (this week, Bush is working on
making sure this top 1% get 95% of this latest giveaway). The richies
can move their booty somewhere else and find another host to parasitize,
or come back and buy cheap after a collapse. Not such a good outlook
for the great majority of us, though. It's slow-motion class war.
Don't get fooled by the slow part. As Michael Ruppert has
warned , all the reasonable calls to expand and un-gut the disaster
relief part of FEMA (and get rid of the incompentent patronage-appointed
director who was fired from his previous decade-long job as, uhh, head
lawyer for the International Arabian Horse [show] Association!) will
result not in better disaster relief (what reasonable people want),
but rather better Continuity of Government (COG) operations -- that is,
SWAT teams to cut emergency lines, shoot starving looters, drive around
in armored personnel carriers, crowd-control you with microwave and
sonic weapons, cancel the Bill of Rights, stick you in temporary prison
camps without trial, and of course, rescue pets -- when the next big bad
something happens. I think what most reasonable people want instead is
a government response analogous to what Cuba delivered last year when
it evacuated a million and a half people from the path of a Category 5
landfall hurricane (Hugo) with virtually no loss of life (but without
other repressive parts of the Cuban government). All the yahoo sheep
who were calling for black blood last week may have a surprise in store
one day when they run into the wrong side of the Continuity of Government
police in their home town.
[Sep07'05] In the days before Katrina hit, I was assuming (stupidly
as usual) that the disaster would result in a big uptick in popularity
for Bush and would take the focus off Iraq. I think he somehow flubbed
this 'opportunity'. After leaving Crawford to come to San Diego af few
days after the disaster (where his tottering public appearance
forced the cancellation of a raft of chemotherapy patients'
treatment, but then he was too unsteady to actually appear at the place
where the treatment cancellation occurred), Bush got into high gear.
He went to New Orleans, where his appearance forced the suspension of
all ongoing aquatic and aerial rescues. His Goebbels team set up a
fake levee-fixing scene and a fake food distribution center. Both were
disassembled as soon as he left, and then real rescue operations could
resume. Given the
many stories of apparently premeditated interference with
rescue teams, it seems like the plan was to respond slowly or even
hinder the first responders, let things get out of hand, whip up some
always-dependable race hatred, bring in troops and seal things off,
evacuate everybody at gunpoint, and then when all the locals were gone,
give all the reconstruction contracts to out-of-town Halliburton buddies
in order to reconstruct a New Orleans Lite, with a jazz theme, but a lot
less black people (no right of return for Americans, if they have the
wrong ethnicity). Most of this seems to have gone through, but a good
chunk of the general public seems to have become a little bit revolted by
the spectacle (after their race hatred ebbed a little), and the complete
control of the media seems to have suffered a temporary lapse. Also,
Mayor Nagin's (remember: a 'Democratic' Bush contributor) recent order
to forcibly evict all the remaining residents (maybe 10,000) is being
disobeyed by people in the army, esp. those from the region. However,
I've been wrong so many times about how things look to the 'common man',
that I will wait until I see the real numbers on pollkatz next month. It
it still possible that despite disapproving of Bush's handling of Katrina,
they may not increase their disapproval of him. If there is a big dip,
then I might get worried, seeing as there was this weird early August
firing of U.S. Army General Kevin P. Byrnes, just before his retirement,
over an extra-marital affair (?!) (his divorce has now gone through),
with many different speculations as to what the real reason was, including
something about a middle August Northcom nuclear terror exercise based
in Charleston, S.C. that may or may not have been cancelled.
[Sep14'05] Things grind depressingly along. Bush's poll numbers
are down a little, but not that big of a drop. Despite all the
blowhard press on this, not one of those endless, breathless,
useless reports *ever* shows you a decent graph like
pollkatz , even for their own polls. How can you possibly
understand what polls mean without looking at them this way? Shame
on you 'reporters'. If businessmen can understand a powerpoint
graph of one variable as a function of time, then so can the
unwashed masses. In Houston, Katrina evacuees are being serviced
by a huge amount of volunteer work. I don't know about you, but I
would *sure* like to see Cheney 'volunteering' (at gunpoint would
work) to clean toilets and disimpact a few bowels. Bush allows
'Brownie' to 'resign' instead of firing him. Privatized Blackwater
mercenaries blow into New Orleans to eject people from their homes
(where are the damn libertarians when you need them...). FEMA
outsources the body cleanup and counting for about $1 million/week
to an 'outstanding' firm, SCI, one of whose subsidiaries was recently
convicted of piling up hundreds bodies in sheds and in the woods in
instead of cremating them (SCI settled by paying the relatives $100
million). But you can't photograph the bodies, or the 82nd airborne will
stomp your camera, a**hole. The libertarian yahoos started squealing at
the idea of a windfall oil profits tax (like the one announced in France
that immediately dropped fuel prices a notch there). They should put
their whiny money where their whiny mouths are and not only privative
all our trains and busses but all our roads and road repair and traffic
lights, too -- get our highways off our backs and off the dole, right?
(actually, it would probably reduce the amount of driving we do --
a good thing). And finally, the 'Brownie' replacement is the pathetic
'duct tape' guy! In Iraq, most reconstruction projects (e.g., electrical,
water and sanitation) have been shut down and the money diverted to
private security companies who are guarding the people who are no
longer doing these projects. We're still spending almost $2 billion
a week in Iraq and Afghanistan -- money which we should obviously
be spending on renewable energy, instead of trying to hopelessly
encircle the paltry 20 or so years worth of oil that remains there.
The don't-talk-about-the-elephant-in-the-room aspect of it leaves
me speechless and depressed. It's all part of our one shot at high
civilization on this planet courtesy of fossil fuels -- the product of
solar energy collected over hundreds of millions of years and turned
into highly-energy-dense oil, gas, and coal, and which is about half
used up now. The second half will be mostly gone before the midpoint
of the century, leaving us to stew in our global-warming-heated juices.
The University just repaved all the still-in-good-condition roads around
my office and built three new buildings, all with fossil fuels. Tons and
tons of the stuff was used. Elixir of the gods. Makes me proud to have
the power of language and be a human, I suppose.
[Sep15'05] Dang. Karl Rover is now in charge of a $200 billion dollar
fund for reconstruction. I'm sure he will use this discretion wisely.
This is class war, plain and simple. It's time for the villagers to
turn off Big Brother, get out the torches, and smoke out the Frankenstein
monster. It's alive and gaining power every day.
[Sep17'05] Are Americans truly 'getting it'? As a result of higher
gasoline prices, SUV's have been depreciating more rapidly (as discounts
on new ones are offered), and car shoppers have elevated fuel efficiency
all the way up to 23rd-most-important factor in what kind of car they will
buy (the usual position of fuel efficiency is about 35th-most-important).
Who knows, in a decade or two, fuel efficiency might make it into the
top three -- right around the time the grid starts to get intermittent
as result of chronic natural gas shortages...
[Sep21'05] Rita has ballooned up to a category 5, and more intense (though
currently slightly smaller) than Katrina -- Rita is currently the 3rd
most intense recorded hurricane in American history (behind Gilbert,
1988 and Labor Day, 1935). Unfortunately the predicted path runs way
close to my sister's house near Houston. Perhaps God is talking to
Bush and Cheney in the only language they understand -- oil and money.
As searchers recover bodies from Katrina, they are finding mostly old
people and children. Though our putrid scumbag media will never say it,
shooting more looters wouldn't have helped old people and kids to leave
when they had no means to do so, and when no one came to help them.
[Sep25'05]
Yesterday I went marching with the about 2,000 people -- the largest
antiwar demo in two and a half years -- through the deserted streets of
downtown San Diego, ending in Balboa Park. There were 2 or 3 pro-war
protestors. We didn't even know they were there until KSWB gave one
of them equal time to our 2,000 on the nightly newspeak. Whatever.
Today, Phoney Tony Bliar officially withdrew from global warming
treaties by putting his faith in "science and technology". The price
of oil has continued to drop as self-pleasuring oil traders wrap their
you-know-what's in dollar bills and get themselves off. The price drop
is presumably because some refineries have been temporarily disabled,
temporarily lowering demand for oil. The idea that something like this
should radically change the price of oil seems insane to me. A barrel of
oil contains 42 gallons. It can be made into about 20 gallons of gasoline
(more or less -- this varies a little depending on the grade of the oil).
A gallon of gasoline contains about 36 kW-hours of chemical energy.
An internal combustion engine turns about 9 kW-hours of this energy into
useful work (the rest is lost as heat). One horsepower is equivalent to
about 3/4 of a kW. However, a human working hard continuously can only
put out about 1/10 to 1/5 of a kilowatt (compare the power output of a
human to a one-horsepower horse). So, the 20 gallons of gasoline from one
barrel of oil contains about 180 useful kilowatt-hours, divided by say,
1/8 of a kilowatt per person, which gives about 1400 hours of hard human
work. Divide this by 6 hours of continuous hard work per day (no breaks),
and you get about 230 days, or approximately one year of 5-days-a-week
hard labor by a human. This boils down conveniently to: ONE BARREL of oil
= ONE YEAR of hard human work. This makes sense when comparing digging a
foundation or grading a road by hand (Roman-style) to doing the same thing
with an oil-powered bulldozer and a backhoe. A barrel of oil currently
costs $64. Clearly, this price *waaaay* underestimates its true worth
to us humans (how much do you have to pay a human to do one year of hard
labor?). I could give two hoots what the economists say about how money
is more important. I look forward to discussions about the true worth
of oil while doing hard labor alongside an economist when scientists
fail to come up with a replacement. Watching the newspeak people read
their teleprompters had gotten me depressed (I don't normally watch
teevee), but then I got back on the web and came across this
gem . As many as 36 trained Navy dolphins may have been freed
by hurricane Katrina. The Navy has trained dolphins for many years to
attack divers (humans in wetsuits) using small electrodes implanted under
the skin for reinforcement. This works because dolphins are naturally
aggressive. But the recently freed/escaped dolphins are apparently armed
with 'toxic dart' gun harnesses. You divers and windsurfers in the Gulf
and Caribbean should watch out, because a bunch of 007 Flippers are coming
to getcha. No details/confirmation are available because, natch, they're
classified. There is not too much to see or eat down there, however,
since there are huge dead zones where fertilizer-laden runoff has led to
anaerobic conditions, killing virtually everything in huge swaths of the
Gulf coast (John Coleman, retired to San Diego 'weather' teevee, has even
suggested that the dead zones might partly explain why Rita weakened
just before landfall). So the 'Flippers' will probably head out to
resort islands in the south Atlantic in search of fish and enemy divers.
Perhaps the yacht-people and their concubines will match close enough...
link
[Sep26'05] It would seem to be the case that higher gas prices will soon
be on the way, given that 100% (!) of Gulf of Mexico oil production is
currently "shut in" (1.5 million barrels a day, with average total US
consumption around 20 million barrels a day), up from about 60% shut in
from Katrina, just before Rita hit. US Natural gas consumption is about
62 billion cubic feet per day, and maybe 10-15% is currently shut in as
well (since the Henry hub where a lot of the pipelines come together may
have been damaged). High gasoline and gas prices will make Bush much more
unpopular than the disaster in Iraq. The ironic thing is that it's not
really Bush's fault that oil demand finally starting to bump up against
all-out production capacity this year (well, other than not preparing
for the inevitable). Rather, it's just the predictable consequences
of industrial civilization. No matter how mad the people get, the
remaining oil in the ground isn't going to listen; it won't come out
of well bores any faster because people are mad. Let the anger of the
people increase and seethe. Meanwhile, the Fed has been creating money
this year at the rate of about $20 billion dollars a week, and credit
(which is created from the money that the fed creates, and which works
just like money, and which comes in too many varieties for me to remember)
is being created at an even faster rate (fractional reserve banking
eventually multiplies fed-created money by a factor of at least 10).
Other currencies somehow even seem to be inflating in tandem with the
dollar (?). In this light, who could bother about a mere 2 billion a week
down Halliburton's maw in Iraq and Afghanistan? It doesn't seem possible
that this rampant creation of money can continue forever; but it's worth
nothing that it's been running like this non-stop since 1996. I really
don't understand how it works well enough to guess what will happen
next. At least Bush and Chertoff are back from their scary
visit the past few days to Peterson Air Force Base (underground
nuclear war central -- headquarters of US Northern Command) in Colorado
Springs. They went there just before Rita hit the coast/oil.
[Sep27'05] The story below says that Rita damaged more oil rigs than any
previous storm in history. You would think that would be a bad thing
(AKA "bullish for oil" by the money people). Also, it appears that
virtually all oil from the Gulf of Mexico remains "shut in", along with
much of the natural gas (the Henry Hub may have sustained some damage).
Again "bullish". In the past, oil prices have shot up even after a
small refinery fire. Here, with production equal to 7% (!) of total
US oil consumption turned off, prices are going down or just wavering.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
[Oct03'05] Imagine the media firestorm that would have erupted if Al
Sharpton hypothetically suggested aborting every white baby or every
Jewish baby. By contrast, Bennett's genocidal suggestion however
hypothetical that aborting every black baby would cut crime sadly won't
even slightly bite into that swine's opulent speaker fees. The objective
scientific reality of races -- that 80% of the variation within the
average human gene is *within* 'races' as opposed to *between* 'races'
(or the fact that Israelis and Palestinians in the mideast are genetically
indistinguishable) -- are irrelevant. This is about a *socially*
defined concept of race, AKA class war. On *completely* different
note, a small car efficiently tooling down the interstate burns about 1
gallon of gasoline per hour, while a large jet plane burns about 1 gallon
kerosine per second at takeoff and about 1/3 gallon per sec when cruising.
However, the plane goes a lot faster and carries a lot more people,
and this basically cancels this difference. The fact that planes and
cars are roughly equally efficient demonstrates how fundamental liquid
fuels are to modern life. The main outlier is rail, which is a major win
over cars and planes -- 5 to 10 times as efficient -- for long distance
because of the markedly lower friction and wind resistance (wheel flexing
and drag in cars/trucks, large aerodynamic drag in fast flying planes).
Find out here
how trains go around curves (on a good day) without a differential.
However, largely as a result of our current pavement/airport subsidy
structure, long distance rail is currently *more* expensive to the
enduser than planes and cars. On the positive side, people have been
buying a lot more bicycles recently, which is excellent news.
[Oct06'05] Reading the lastest Gulf of
Mexico oil/gas DOE situation report (
pdf ) while looking at a picture of rigs and
hurricane paths, and then looking at the price of oil continue to
*drop* really emphasizes just how short the outlook of the markets is.
On page 2 of the report you can see that the cumulative shut-in loss
("bbls" confusingly means "barrels") over the last month and a half
has been 48 million barrels of oil. This should be compared to our
daily gulp of 20 million barrels as well as the 5 month cumulative
loss from Ivan of 44 million barrels. Since Katria+Rita was *much*
more severe than Ivan (111 oil platforms destroyed vs. only 7 by Ivan),
the total loss from Katrina and Rita may approach several percent of
our yearly usage. The fact that oil prices remain low reflects demand
reduction, Saudi selling oil to us below world price, refineries using
less because they're still broken, backed up tankers because ports
are broken, European donations, and strategic reserves withdrawals.
From a three-day point of view, given those facts, it is logical that oil
should drop. But *someone* should be talking about the longer picture,
because it could mean life and death. The mainstream media yammers on
in a drug-induced haze. It is as if a person jumped out a window and
then half way down, noted that things so far were going quite well.
Think about conducting other parts of life -- e.g., agriculture --
with a 3 day look-ahead. Agriculture is not possible with a 3 day
look-ahead. We shouldn't worship such extreme short-sightedness.
It's going to be extremely dangerous to our health. Meanwhile
scientists have reconstructed viable, approximate copies ( pdf ) of
the original 1918 flu virus that killed 50 million people worldwide in
1918 (more than WWI, and the worst pandemic in human history), and have
killed mice with it, showing that it is much more virulent than current
flu strains. This same week, Bush announces that martial law will be
imposed if there is a flu outbreak. Given that the anthrax mailed to
Senator Leahy was a strain developed in US biowarfare labs, a guy could
get a little nervous, and hope that it was a joke instead of the real
thing in a Biosafety Level 3 lab in Georgia.
[Oct09'05] The Senate unanimously approved a defense spending bill
containing another $50 billion for part of the coming year in Iraq and
Afghanistan. For scale, this is more that we spend on all biomedical
research every year. And all to kill extremely low-tech poor Iraqis
and make a complete shambles of their country and government, halfway
around the globe.
[Oct11'05] Gulf of Mexico oil production is recovering slowly. Currently,
about 1 million barrels a day is shut-in (about 70% of total). From Sept
26 to now, the cumulative shut-in is 55 million barrels, or about 1% of
total yearly US usage. The total loss may end up around 2% of yearly US
usage (0.5% of global usage). Projected percentage loss of natural gas
is similar. This is significant, but so far, we may just miss actual
shortages and pipeline shutdowns this winter, in part because of other
other countries helping us out. I don't know if this will be enough of
a stimulus to get the general public to face up to the long continuous
downslope that we will be facing in the next decade.
[Oct16'05] In Alex Cockburn's Counterpunch diary today,
among other things, he proposes that global warming is not CO2-caused but
rather 'natural variation', that ethanol would be a plausible replacement
for oil, and that anyway, peak oil is not true because oil is abiotic.
What a howling non-sequitur that last one is! Even if oil was abiotic,
which it's not (Ghawar, for example, is almost pure plankton dung,
and plankton never lived underground the last time I checked), how
would that help with observed depletion? Alex is a cultured writer who
effortlessly draws on many historical references, doesn't like too many
commas, and writes in a refreshing, fun-to-read style. Fine. But it's
pretty weak writing and thinking to ignore the views of the overwhelming
majority of climate scientists and geologists without giving any reason.
That's worse, even, than, say, using way, way too many commas. Alex
would get equally upset if someone completely mangled recent history.
I have nothing against a contrarian. But many times, science has found
reasonably good answers were before here were arguments and uncertainty.
Then we have to move on, and the contrarians concede; you can't go
back to the old way of thinking (unless, I suppose, we first run out
of oil...).
[Oct18'05] Recent spygate revelations that Cheney aide Hannah will
snitch, and rumors that Cheney might be replaced with Condi suggest that
the administration is in desperate straits. This may push forward the
upcoming war with Iran. It makes sense (from their perspective) to act
now to avoid a Republican wipe-out in the midterm Congressional elections.
I fear we are getting close to a turning point. You would hardly know
anything was amiss from the mainstream media (see, for example, Google
news). And what a continuing disaster for industrial civilization this
will be! Right now, we should be intensely planning and testing and
designing and manufacturing and optimizing alternative energy sources
and alternative transportation and manufacturing methods to cushion the
great contraction. Intead, we are flushing ourselves and our children
and grandchildren right down the toilet. What a shame. Sometimes,
I feel I should be more sad about it. Probably, when the fourth reich
gets really cranked up, I will regret not having done more to stop it.
As the avian flu scare gets cranked up on the eve of the war on Iran,
I think back to the SARS pneumonia scare, which occurred right after
the start of the second US invasion of Iraq in early 2003 (aided and
abetted by none other than Judith Miller). Every year, 36,000 North
Americans die of regular pneumonia (about 100 a day). And every year,
another 40,000 North Americans die of the regular flu (mostly older and
immune-compromised people). So far, less than 100 people have died of
avian flu *across the planet* -- that is, a whole year of the dreaded
avian flu (or SARS) is less than one *day* of regular flu or regular
pneumonia in North America. What a strange and fishy replay of SARS.
Why aren't we worried about SARS or Ebola now? Where did *they* go?
What will the Asians come up with next? Why do we need martial law for
avian flu but not SARS? It is true that I am a little worried about the
possibility that the recently reconstructed and reconstituted *1918*
flu could get out -- no doubt during a 'well-meaning' attempt to make
a vaccine to it.
[Oct21'05] Economists often claim that we can deal with oil shocks
better now because we have gotten more efficient with fuel use since
the 1970's oil shock, and remain so, even with SUV's. However, to
deal with another oil shock, we will have to replace current vehicles
with even more efficient ones. There are about 130 million cars and
80 million light trucks on the road in the US (210 million vehicles).
The US produces about 5 million cars and 7 million trucks annually (12
million vehicles, about 6% to total on the road). From these numbers, it
is not obvious that we (or the rest of the world) will be able to respond
quickly enough to an oil shock, esp. when you consider that it takes a
lot of energy to manufacture a car (a substantial portion of the energy
it uses in its lifetime). Finally, you can't wring more efficiency out
of a standard 80,000 pound payload truck without reducing its payload.
Trucks got about 5 miles per gallon in 1970. Trucks get about 5 miles
per gallon today. Suggestions that the auto makers are withholding 100
or 200 mile per gallon cars are utter cargo cult fantasies -- if by a
'car', you mean something that encloses at least 4 people sitting upright
plus some of their stuff and that can cruise at 65 miles per hour. Now,
if a 'car' includes something about 2 feet off the ground that you lie
down in, with thin bicycle tires pumped up to 120 psi, that cruises at
30 miles an hour, then 150 miles per gallon is no prob.
[Oct22'05] "It does no good to ask the weakling's pointless question,
'Is America a fascist state?' We must ask instead, in a major rather
than a minor key, 'Can we make America the best damned fascist state
the world has ever seen'". -- Lewis H. Lapham.
[Oct23'05] From all the saber-rattling accompanying the lapdog UN
report on the Hariri assassination, it is looking more like the US
may attack Syria first, instead of Iran. Hersh and Ritter originally
suggested Iran in June 2005. By the end of August, Tarpley was still
suggesting
Iran on Nov 1 or Dec 1, which is still vaguely possible. However, the
hurricanes and the momentum of the bizarro leak investigation were not
predictable in early or mid-2005, and this may have somewhat interfered
with war planning. Hersh's and Ritter's articles -- possibly motivated
by leaks from military people opposed to another invasion -- also may
have slowed things down (or they may have merely been smokescreens).
It is worth noting that Syria is a much weaker target than Iran. The US
military is only confident of attacking extremely weak opponents such as
Iraq, which had been economically starved and bombed for over a decade,
and which was known before the attack to have no air defenses, no air
force, virtually no helicopters, and of course, no WMDs. It has been
suggested that perhaps the US will use small nuclear bombs on Iran and
then just run away, but that would likely have very negative impacts
on US troops who only remain in Iraq largely on the good graces of the
Iran-sympathetic Shi'ites. If the entirety of Iraq was united against
the US occupation, US troop concentrations, which are in bases a long
distance from the southern ports, could be starved of fuel and supplies
and seriously endangered. Of course, the US could 'win' by carpet-bombing
or even nuclear bombing Iraqi cities. At first I was going to write
that this would be impractical because of world opinion, but maybe
that's wrong. Look what the US did to Fallujah without any significant
reprisals from any other country. It is not clear that a small nuclear
bomb would have been worse. But I think the most likely scenario is
not an invasion of Iran, but rather a half a year of partial invasions
and provocations of Syria (already begun), which will continue to
be studiously ignored by the mainstream media, and then an outright
confrontation only be mid-2006. We are now where we were with respect
to Iraq in mid 2002. I distinctly remember thinking then "it sure looks
like they are planning a war, but I don't see how they will be able to
drag everyone along". It took about 9 months of continuous propaganda
to whip the American mind into shape. Also, average Americans never
get mad when they have been fooled/taken/chumped.
[Oct24'05] The US prison population has continued its inexorable
growth -- up almost 2%, which is in line with a 3.2% annual
growth rate over the past decade. We now have 1 out of 128 people in
prison (2.3 million people). This compares with China's 1 out of 866
(1.5 million people). We have more total people in prison than China
because we imprison almost 7 times as many people in jail per capita.
But there is still room for growth. If we work hard, we can make
this the best damn prison country in the world! In a recent
poll , a majority of Americans rejected the theory of evolution
(just 15% believe in God-free evolution). They should also poll
people on quantum mechanics, which people understand about as well
as evolutionary biology. I wonder what the response would be to:
"Do you believe that measurements taken at a distance can be correlated
without the invention of God?" Also, they should probably find out how
many people think it would be OK to put people who believe in evolution
in jail. Hopefully still under 10-15% of the 80-85% of people who
think that God is responsible for evolution.
[Oct27'05] While the synthetic bird flu scare continues, 106,000 people
died of adverse drug reactions and 115,000 people died this year from
*bedsores*. Bedsores and drug reactions are not as good for scaring
our non-numerate populace -- but they kill a quarter of a million
North Americans *a year*. How many US-ians killed so far by bird flu?
None.
[Oct28'05] Just like the case of Nixon getting booted for a
two-bit burglary instead of for killing 1-2 million South East
Asian civilians, the press is now slavering over the outing of an
already-outed-by-Aldrich-Ames (!) spy instead of over the lies that led
our bin Laden'd populace to war and the killing of 100,00 to 200,000
civilians. For shame, guys, since you damn well know better -- just as
you knew better when Clinton's support of the Iraq sanctions that killed
a lot more Iraqis than Bush so far did.
[Oct31'05] The current hot topic on the UCSD campus is whether the
student-run television station piped into dorms should be allowed
to air pr0n, home-grown or otherwise. This fine example of student
activism comes courtesy the right-wing Koala student newspaper.
There is not a peep from the left about the war (or energy) on campus.
Complete silence. I admit I am a little disconcerted by the thought of
pr0n free speech coming to my classroom. So far, my students have only
been getting upset if the lectures aren't delivered on PowerPoint...
(yes, they specifically want Microsoft, whose profits rose 30% this one
year, keeping pace with those of oil companies).
[Nov11'05] Finally, the odd softness in oil and gasoline prices is
explained! Petroleum imports have increased 60% (YTD) over last year (!).
Demand (a ridiculous name for actual usage) has recovered from the effects
of the hurricanes and is now up once again. But the enormous increase
in imports has increased the supply even more, leading to lower prices.
The huge import increase has already started to tail off. It will take a
while for that bolus to work its way through the digestive tract. I will
be surprised if oil prices don't resume their upward trend in another
few months once it does. The latest data from the UK and Norway suggests
that production is down almost 20% from last year (ouch!). Before long,
we will be in the situation were we are in Prudoe Bay (US 1980's Alaska
oil) where the 'whatever reserves' keep increasing (see Prudoe graph in
my oil presentation
) but the actual oil production and water cut keep getting worse
(so much water gets pumped down in depleting fields like Prudoe that
the water-to-oil ratio coming back up can be as high as 10 or 20-to-1).
Oil fields never recover from downslopes like those; rather, more oil
is found elsewhere. But at some point, there is not enough elsewhere.
When Alaska/Prudoe was found, it helped US oil production to not decline
faster; it *didn't* reverse the decline that started in 1970.
[Nov18'05] Recent reports suggest that the US has
snatched with no trial or public charge
83,000 people , transporting some of them in unmarked planes
to secret detention and torture centers in other countries and possibly
in the US itself. That's a lot of people. 108 of those snatched
are known to have died in US custody, some probably tortured to
death about the location of non-existent WMD's. Although Cheney knew
there weren't any, the torturers probably didn't know. I've worried
about getting on the Kafkesque always-search or no-fly lists because
nothing you can do will get you off of them (there was a baby on
one of the lists, and the airport drones dutifully searched it).
But this other list is much worse. Good Americans should be wary of
the creeping police state they are implicitly approving. Many
approve of torture: 15% say it is often justified, 31% say
sometimes, 17% say rarely, and only 32% unconditionally oppose it.
This is worrisome, esp. since the going hasn't gotten tough yet --
such as an energy shortage, another synthetic terror event, a housing
bubble burst, a dollar crisis, another war or two, and so on. On a wry
positive note, it is a bit fun to watch the Sony PR dept scrambling
to disassociate in consumers little minds the following two things:
(1) the recent Sony rootkit DRM (that came on 2 million movies Sony
disks sold this year), the 'fix' for which opens up people's computers
to cloaked viruses courtesy of the DRM cloaking functions, and, (2)
the unclean spyware and viruses themselves. Also Sony got caught
using freeware (LAME) in their distros without attribution. At least
the freeware they stole ran without bugs while Sony's dufus rootkit
used a few percent of a 3 GHz CPU continuously. Sheesh, programming
standards sure have fallen. For another laugh, check out this
GE ad from a few months back with sexy models mining coal (!?) in
tank tops flexing their glistening muscles in almost non-existent US shaft
mines (virtually all US coal is strip mined). You can't make this stuff
up. Meanwhile, in China where they still *do* have dangerous shaft mines,
4000 people have so far died mining coal this year.
[Nov28'05] After 3 years in secret detention with no charges, Padilla
is finally indicted for conspiring "to commit at any place outside the
United States acts that would constitute murder". No scary dirty bomb,
but just that he conspired to try to kill an unspecified person in an
unspecified place? I suppose that's still pretty scary, boys and girls.
If they told us any more, they'd have to kill us.
[Dec05'05] Maybe Rumsfart and his ghoul generals should go back and read
Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published in 1486 and written
by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger (go here
or
here for extracts). They could brush up on technique (e.g., the
one where you repeatedly break a woman's shin bone using a special metal
boot). Works almost every time (well except when the woman dies on you
before you get a chance to burn her). One small problem that emerged
was that there weren't any witches. Estimates of the female death toll
range into the millions. *Lots* of women confessed to being witches,
and were then burned to death if the torture hadn't already killed them
(though 'kinder gentler' executioners would often strangle them before
the flames rose up). Given that only 32% of Americans unconditionally
oppose torture now, a guy could could get a little nervous that one of
the new Ayatollah Asscroft a**holes they've been hiring lately might
have a new 'Hammer' up his sleeve. This will come to tears and worse
at home if you don't run 'em out now, Good Americans.
[Dec12'05] A recent USDA report ERS-ERR-11 "Household Food Security
in the United States 2004" reports that hunger increased almost 15%
in one year (2004) in the US, during the 'recovery' from a recession.
13.5 million households are currently "food insecure". That's a pretty
hefty growth rate. Meanwhile, about the torture thing again (just
saw Syriana). Torture has always been a part of US foreign policy, and
people who piously say how torture is ruining our image need to read a
little history. The difference is that before, we used to officially say
that torture was bad, while still using/funding/teaching it. Now, at a
time when we are probably torturing less people than we did in Vietnam,
we are starting to say it's OK (e.g., 82 percent of FOX News Channel
viewers said torture is acceptable in "a wide range" of situations).
That's an ominous development given that things have yet to get really
tight with respect to energy. The recent execution of Alpizar was almost
a carbon copy of the tube execution in London with respect to brainwashing
the populace. The 'I have a bomb' disinfo planted after agents shot
Alpizar dead after he was surrounded in the jetway is collapsing (report
in Time!), but as usual, it already did its job. The story is being
reported as showing that homeland security works -- because an innocent
person was gunned down (!). No passenger confirmed the bomb story
despite hours of prodding, after having to sit terrorized in their
seats with their hands over their heads at gunpoint for an hour while
they cleaned up the blood in the jetway. Instead, passengers reported
that Alpizar's wife had run after him saying "My husband's sick. He's
sick. He's bipolar. He didn't take his medicine. It was my fault. I made
him get on the plane. You know, we just came from a medical mission. Oh,
my God! They've killed my husband!â" (quote from Orlando architect
Jorge Borrelli). Soon after the fact, we had the execrable 'Lionel' on
supposedly left Air America (not!) riffing on how Alpizar sounds like a
Muslim name. How cute. But maybe you should get a little skin bleach the
next time you fly, Li, eh? Sheep Americans, you shouldn't keep your heads
down and go along with this! Sheep eventually get slaughtered.
[Dec14'05] "How can you support the troops and not support the war?
What is it that the troops were doing, except waging that war?! Those
soldiers who should be supported are those who are resisting -- or seeking
the means to resist -- the war." -- Bob Avakian, on Vietnam. Right now,
the US military is escalating bombing raids across Iraq, and the press
has barely reported it. This an escalation from about 2 *million* 500
pound bombs dropped last year (Hersh). This has been killing mainly
civilians (see the Lancet study). I don't support that order or the
people carrying it out. The arguments about 'supporting the troops'
are carbon copies of the arguments about Vietnam. We killed perhaps
2 million southeast asian civilians and perhaps 2 million soldiers in
our lost war on Vietnam (both numbers plus or minus 1 million). It was
more than half a Holocaust. It was a horrible wrong against humanity.
It happened because people supported our troops and the troops followed
their orders. It only stopped when our troops *stopped* following orders
and the military hierarchy started losing control of the army (e.g.,
'fragging' -- killing of superior officers by troops). The mental toll
on the troops that survived was substantial -- as many committed suicide
after the war as were killed in the war (about 60,000). It is likely
that the Iraq war will continue until something similar to the late
stages of Vietnam occurs. Democratic hawk Murtha's recent turn against
the war suggests to me that this may be a little closer than most people
think. That probably explains why the US is escalating the bombing now.
As Dahr Jamail has commented, it is interesting to see that the military
propaganda machine (sorry, the mainstream media) hasn't highlighted
this latest 'shock and awe' campaign. The whole war is now completely
politically radioactive. It surprised me that Bush's poll numbers
popped back up to 40% this week. Perhaps lower gas prices and various
republican scandals have temporarily focussed people's attention away from
the war. Meanwhile, after their huge success in gunning down a panicked
bipolar missionary (!) off his meds, Air Marshals are being deployed to "counter potential
criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation". Sheesh.
'Running while Brazilian' is now a capital crime in London, but at least
I'm not Brazilian (well, I'm part Portuguese). But at this rate, it won't
be too long before 'running while looking like someone not from a red
state' becomes a capital crime here. I may soon have to curtail my own
'running around campus' habits. Then I'll be really tardy marty.
[Dec15'05] With all the discussion lately of hypothetical scenarios about
whether it's nobler to torture an about-to-be terrorist who might have
information about a ticking nuclear fission bomb capable of killing,
say 100,000 people in New York, than to not do it, how about let's
consider for a change things that actually happened. About 100,000
civilians similarly innocent to those in a hypothetical New York attack
actually *were* killed in Iraq (Lancet study) after an invasion which
the Bush and Blair administrations orchestrated on the basis of lies.
Let't forget about the primary reason (oil) and just admit that 100,000
people were killed in a pre-meditated way for a lie. Shock and awe and
cluster bombs and laser guided bombs and artillery shells are known to
kill mostly civilians, whether or not the high-tech attacking country
deigns to count the shredded and burned dead people. Given that many
people in the US knew before the start of the war that there was a
possibility that Bush and Blair might be planning to kill 100,000 people,
and that they were probably lying, it looks a lot like a ticking time
bomb scenario to me. Hypothetically, could we could have prevented
the loss of those 100,000 innocent lives by torturing Bush and Blair?
Probably no need to rip out fingernails. Merely enhanced interrogation --
in Syria, for example.
[Dec16'05] As the public begins to turn against the Iraq
war, but still without a conscious realization of the
original reason for it -- namely, oil, staring them right
in the face -- it's blackly hilarious to read stuff like
this or this from the
supposed 'left', carefully dancing around the elephant in the room.
With our half-a-trillion dollar a year military sitting right on top of
the Iraqi oil patch and awfully close to the Saudi and Iran oil patches
(which are actually all part of the largest oil-producing region in the
world), how on earth could oil *not* rate a mention? Shameful. This is
the kind of stuff historians dig up years later to ogle at.
[Dec18'05] As mentioned above in several posts, the 'only' reason we are
losing the war in Iraq is that we haven't actually pulled out the big
guns -- like indiscriminate carpet bombing of cities, neutron fission
bombs, chemical weapons, or even hydrogen bombs. I have often heard
hawks bemoaning the fact that it's not politically correct to simply do
the modern version of Carthage on 'them' (cf. Gary Brecher). My worry
is that the only thing that has so far stopped the General Turgidsons
from doing a country-sized Carthage -- a 10x Vietnam -- is that the US's
dominant position has not previously been at risk. However, as a result
of the ongoing Iraq disaster, there is a new $100 billion/year drain on
the economy, and we still don't have a stranglehold on their oil. Some of
this giant firehose of tax money is of course being recycled into the
maws of the principal shareholders of the Halliburtons and siphoned off
to the Caymans. But much of it is just being spent. As this flesh wound
continues to drain blood, the organism will eventually have to bandage it
(and not because the populace demands it -- e.g., the most recent NBC
poll just after Bush's speeches showed that only 27% of USians were in
favor of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq). A weaker and slightly dizzy
US is a much more dangerous US. If the situation deteriorates further,
the restraints on the General Turgidsons will gradually be loosened.
Then the mindless hawks may get what they've been lusting after all
these years. And unfortunately for more humane humans, it will probably
initially 'work'. Several small mini-nuke fission bombs exploded in
a ciy of dark-skinned people will not be horrible enough to make the
entire world immediately rise up against us. A small fission bomb
(we now have mini-nukes much smaller than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs) might kill 'only' a 500 or 1,000 people -- many less than
the 100,000 we've killed using conventional explosives and bullets
(and cluster bombs and phosphorus and land mines and depleted uranium
rounds, etc etc) in just the past few years of the current Iraq war.
And even the 100,000 was only perhaps 1/5 the number killed by the
pre-war Iraq sanctions, which were approved year after year by the UN!
A small fission bomb would only destroy a portion of a medium-sized city
(a city like LA could 'laugh off' a small fission bomb). But once the
'gloves come off' of a weakened, slightly staggered US, a worldwide
reaction would eventually develop (uhh, continue to develop). If the
rest of the world decides to economically cut us off, bombing them
probably won't make them start trading with us again. And our piddly
army is way too small to 'invade the world'. But though we have only
moderate amounts of natural gas and even less oil left, we still have
a lot of coal and iron, and the best farmland in the world and lots
water, so even hated and cut off from the rest of the world, we will
make a pretty good Gilligan's island (probably more like 'KKK island')
for a while, until the battery runs down. As Jorge Hirsch recommends,
we should discuss these things -- unpalatable as they may be -- more
frankly, out in the open. Do we want to live on KKK Island or do we want
to behave like grownups? Though there is a certain black pleasure in
imagining the desparate yahoos here clamoring to find somebody who still
actually knows something to help them pick of the pieces of industrial
civilization after a partial collapse, I would rather have it not collapse
in the first place. And anyway, the yahoos won't just be "clamoring"
-- they'll have us all at gunpoint. Here's hoping we can get through
March 2006 without a nuclear attack by the US.
[Dec24'05] In just two days this week (Tues and Wed), the Fed
Repo-injected a total of $38 billion dollars into the US money
'supply'. That's about as much as we spend in 5 months in Iraq or
more than the entire NIH budget for a year -- or in other words,
a lot of money creation in just 2 days (I know, probably not the
units that normal people use to judge amounts of money). Those are
close to 9-11-sized injections. M3 (of which repos are just a part)
normally grows at a rate of 'only' $1.4 billion a day. Hopefully,
it was just a temporary cash-flow problem and not a sign of something
bad about to happen. Meanwhile, the average USian mind appears
to be not worrying (see the always amazing-to-me graph at pollkatz);
a few utterly generic propaganda speeches to hand-picked audiences about
how we will actually eventually win the war in Iraq and the approval
polls jump discontinuously upward like clockwork -- and this during the
week that Iranian fundamentalists won the Iraq elections. Almost 60%
of USians now think we are *already* winning. Utterly depressing how
propaganda just works. On the positive side, by stopping the continuous
approval decline, the need for more extraordinary measures is perhaps
temporarily postponed.
[Jan02'06] Here is where
we are importing our oil from these days (in Gb, where yearly US
usage is a little over 7 Gb, with over half imported): Canada--1.6,
Mexico--1.5, Saudi--1.4, Venezuela--1.3, Nigeria--1.0, Iraq--0.5,
Angola--0.4 (note that we don't really get any oil from Iran; China
is a main buyer of Iranian oil). Thus, we get about 7% of our yearly
oil from Iraq (this constitutes around 1/3 of Iraq's total output).
Embezzeler Chalabi was just made permanent oil minister of Iraq a
few days ago, ousting the existing minister, who had balked at rapid
IMF-mandated increases in fuel prices, in what was described as a coup.
It is true that Chalabi got 1% of the vote in the most recent election,
so it stands to reason that he should control the oil -- the main
cash-generating business in Iraq.
[Jan03'06] The evidence is now in that the US has increased bombing raids
across Iraq by more than a factor of 5 since the summer (500% increase),
slaughtering hundreds of civilians in each 'campaign'. Meanwhile,
back at home, merry little US war criminals sport their yellow ribbons.
I only wish there was a God ("But Mr. God, sir, everybody else was
supporting the troops, too!").
[Jan04'06] Demand for oil shows no sign of letting up, either in the
US, EU, or in developing countries. The only place where real demand
destruction has occurred as a result of recently increased oil prices is
in places like Eritrea, where high oil prices have cleared the streets
of cars. Meanwhile, improved recovery methods such as horizontal well
terminations have increased the extraction rate of existing well and kept
up production. As Simmons and others have been warning for a few years,
better extraction technology results in faster fall-off rates when the
peak for such a field finally does come. For example, horizontally
drilled UK North Sea oil has been declining at an astounding 10% per
year -- far faster than the shallow post-US-peak post-1970 decline in
older-style US oil production at that time. There is still about half
of the oil left in the world, so we are not about to run out next year.
However, you'd have to be an economist not to get a shiver down your
spine at the thought of 10% per year decline rates running into 10%
per year demand increases in the near future. It is true that people
slowed down their buying of SUVs with the recent hurricane related gas
price increases, but it's going to take a lot more than not buying a few
SUVs to fix 10% per year declines. As much as I respect the market as
an efficient short-term optimization method, I'm worried.
[Jan13'06] This picture, which shows Jose
Padilla, says a lot. You can see that, in contrast to the ubiquitous
Photoshop-darkened perp photos, he is almost as light skinned as his
guards. Dressed in an orange terr'ist suit, he is so dangerous, even
handcuffed and ankle-chained -- after all he is accused, literally,
of 'conspiring to do something to somebody in some other country'
(pretty scary boys and girls) -- that both guards have to have headsets
on and... kneepads?! Maybe it's a recruitment photo for other wannabe
stormtroopers. After all, stormtroopin' for the man is one of the
last things to get outsourced, and all that math just hurts your brain
anyway...
[Jan21'06] I've assembled some graphs from Bud
Conrad and the St. Louis Fed. They show the cumulative current account
deficit and the M3 money supply (the most inclusive) on the same
vertical and horizontal scale. The graphs do not look stable in the
long term. It should be noted, however, that M3 has been inflating
at this same rate this since 1996 (starting before the end of term
one of Clinton). And except for a brief respite during the early
1990's (end of Bush1, most of Clinton's first term), M3 was inflating
(albeit at a somewhat slower rate) since the 1970's, well *before* the
current account deficit ballooned. The M3 graph shows surprisingly
little effect of the Clinton-to-Bush transition or 9-11. Also, the
cumulative current account deficit took a steep downward turn *before*
the end of Clinton's second term and then substantially increased its
negative slope with Bush. This resulted in M3 growth and cumulative
current account deficit being virtual mirror images of each other.
So for the past 10 years, we have been 'printing' electronic money to
send over the internet to foreigners' computers, and then, amazingly,
they ship actual physical stuff to us in return. I don't see how things
can go on like this for too many more years, but it sure is good 'work'
when you can get it! :-} However, the Economist has recently 'explained'
this by citing a paper by Hausmann and Struzenegger (pdf here),
who develop a theory of economic 'dark matter'
(hehe -- see critique of that paper here).
Is economic dark matter something like naked shorting?
Maybe I've underestimated the relation between economics and physics.
Physicists have a theory of 'vaccuum energy' whereby complete emptiness
is in fact filled with a seething background energy of particles coming
into existence out of nothing and disappearing back into the empty void
in times so short that energy conservation is not violated. This is a
little like money borrowed/created by the Fed -- these dollars are emitted
from a vaccuum, you pay interest on them, and then they disappear back
into the void when you pay them back. Well, except for the interest.
I guess the Fed is more like a black hole where one of the pair of a
created-out-of-nothing particles can escape if the pair is created on
the event horizon.
[Jan24'06] Out of curiosity I just googled Roger Boisjoly (cv here), the
Morton Thiokol solid booster engineer who tried to stop the launch of the
Challenger in 1986 because he thought the rubber O-rings would fail (even
more severely than previously) because of the extreme cold. The O-rings
were supposed to keep the joints in the solid rocket booster air-tight
during their slight flexing during firing (fire resistant putty inside of
the O-rings actually took the heat). On the cold day of the explosion,
the cold rigid rubber failed to seal, allowing hot gases to burn through
the O-rings, the booster support, and eventually the adjoining liquid
oxygen fuel tank, which caused it to explode. Boisjoly had refused to
sign the launch papers that day because of his reasoned assessment of
this risk, despite extreme pressure on him. But he was overruled by a
supervisor who was advised 'to take off his engineering hat and put on
his management hat' -- which the supervisor had already done. It was
rumored that some of the pressure for take-off was that Reagan wanted
to talk to the Christa McAuliffe, the "teacher in space" live at his
upcoming state of the union address. But no hard evidence of that emerged
(Feynman went looking for telephone records but didn't get anything).
Boisjoly explained what happened at a Congressional hearing on the
diaster. The result was that he was promptly and permanently black-balled
from industry. He remade his career as a lecturer on professionalism
and organizational behavior -- and on explaining to other people how
to recover after your professional career has been ended by doing the
right thing. People like this make me proud to be a human.
[Jan25'06] "Doug [Douglas Barber] was in a traffic jam one day, feeling
very vulnerable, and the US units dismounted to clear the traffic jam --
angry and afraid and waving weapons at the civilians -- when a woman in a
bus held up her baby for them to see... like that window-sign we see in
cars on American highways: 'Baby on Board'. Only she wasn't cautioning
other drivers to be careful. She was trying to prevent an armed attack
that could kill her child." -- Stan Goff. Classic primate behavior!
This is exactly how macaques defuse a tense situation when males are
about to fight -- they grab a kid and hold it up. Unfortunately,
this only works up close and personal. It's hard for our boys to see
the kids when they're on a bombing run for da man, esp. at night.
When they *do* see them (sometimes they do get up close and personal),
they often end up like Doug. It's intrinsic to the nature of any war and
the people who implement it. An equal number of Vietnam vets committed
suicide after the war as were actually killed in the war (about 50,000).
Unfortunately, a majority of American's still think 'it' is worth the
price -- or at least they are willing to let it go on. I think that's
mainly because they can't see 'it'.
[Jan26'06] It's blackly hilarious watching the oil, gasoline, and natural
gas prices wobble around in synchrony on theoildrum.com. Gasoline is
refined out of some kinds of oil, but it takes time. Natural gas
comes out of some oil wells, but is largely decoupled in place, time
of extraction, and transport methods. The chance that coupled intraday
movements in price of these three commodities reflects something 'real'
about production, transport, refinement, or demand seems remote to
me.
[Jan28'06] The polls published in the LA Times and elsewhere suggesting
that a majority of Americans support an attack on Iran leave me
stunned. As usual, I poorly gauge the man on the street whose pliable
sponge-like brain soaks up the nightly newspeak which I don't watch
(I should). How did we get here so soon? The stunning irreality of
it all! Attacking a country supplying a couple of percent of of the
world's yearly oil production to every other industrialized country
except the US? While the occupied territories of Iraq are in chaos?
While things are so bad on the ground that the US military has doubled
its per capita fuel used (by avoiding ground transport) since last year?
No prob! Just do Iran! I had been worrying that people are too much like
yeast, living in the huge beer barrel of Earth without understanding or
having the time to investigate how the purchasing choices they make every
day are affecting the entire barrel/Earth. But I was secretly hopeful
that the same mind that sometimes makes beautiful words and pictures and
music and science might still shine through. No way, baby! Human minds
are so weak! The Blitzer puppet injects a handful of words every day:
"must. attack. Iran". They don't even have to be in the right order.
Stick in a random satellite photo. It doesn't have to be the right one
(sometimes it wasn't). Over half the peeps are already convinced and they
haven't even brought out the big propaganda guns! People don't even know
where Iran is. Doesn't matter. It's enough to fire up the mini-nukes
and get the battle-plan drones to do their dirty deeds. The AIDS virus
has less than ten genes but it takes over a certain kind of cell and
eventually can bring down the whole Leviathan. The 'attack Iran now' meme
is only 3 friggin' words! That's like a virus containing 9 base pairs.
Maybe
language would have been better off it had been comprehension-only,
like DNA/RNA/protein. For something completely different, here is
Richard Rainwater, a 5 billionaire talking about peak oil: "This is
a nonrecurring event. The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was
one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and
now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of
natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just
stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than
making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the
survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and
say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by
being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'" I hate it when
the richies start going all soft and guilty on you. Are they worried
about an undersupply of trained servants? An oversupply of villagers
with torches? Whatever it is, it's not good.
[Feb02'06] Isn't there *one* reporter out there that got through
high school physics?? Can't *any* of them calculate simple ratios??
The reporting on the state of the union address was worse than what a
fifth grader could have done. This isn't rocket science. The US uses
about 20 million barrels of oil a day. About 12 million barrels of
that (60%) is imported and 2.4 million barrels (20% of imports, 3% of
total use) comes from the mideast (mostly Saudi). Reducing our mideast
imports by 75% (state of the union speech) therefore means reducing our
total oil usage by 1.8 million barrels (2.2%). Then, hilariously, the
idea of reducing Saudi imports was withdrawn the day after the speech.
Let's put aside oil and batteries and ethanol for a minute to consider
the most critical shortage on the horizon -- natural gas. It wasn't
even mentioned in the speech. Despite the fact that oil is more depleted
worldwide than natural gas, natural gas will be the first truly generally
visible fossil fuel problem in North America because it is much harder to
transport than oil. When the gas pipeline pressure goes down, increasing
the price won't make it go back up if there is not enough gas to put in
the other end. That is, it's not like when the Russians recently turned
down the pressure in the pipeline to Ukraine to get them to pay more.
When shortages come to North America (because of depleting US and
Canadian production) it will be a massive shock. Natural gas wells
deplete much faster than oil wells (2-4 years), and require constant
drilling to keep production up -- that is, until there is no more
to drill. To use an odd analogy between energy use and anesthetia,
oil is more like barbiturates and natural gas is like isoflurane;
it takes a long time to groggily awake from barbiturate anesthesia;
but when they turn off the gas, you're awake in less than a minute.
Turning back to batteries, hydrogen, and ethanol, the speech contained
the usual non sequiturs. C'mon reporters -- call him on it! Better
batteries and hydrogen are merely lossy energy storage media -- they do
nothing to increase energy *supply*. Finally, there was ethanol, which is
potentially a new source of energy. Missouri has mandated that fuel there
contain 10% ethanol and it plans to produce even more ethanol from corn
than it is already. They are currently producing 0.31 million gallons
of ethanol a day using 11% of the state's entire corn crop (info here
). Ethanol has comparable energy density to gasoline (actually 70% the
energy density of gasoline but let's say it's the same). We get about 20
gallons of gasoline out of a 42 gallon barrel of oil. Ignoring the other
energy-producing stuff we get out of a barrel of oil to be favorable to
ethanol, the current Missouri ethanol output is therefore equivalent
to 0.015 million barrels a day of oil, or 0.075% (1/1330) of our 20
million barrels of oil daily usage. When the newest Missouri ethanol
plants go online, it is prediced that they will use 25% of Missouri's
corn crop to produce 0.71 million gallons of ethanol a day or 0.18% of
our daily oil gulp. Let's assume that this planned increase in ethanol
production (0.4 million gallons a day) goes directly into replacing the
called-for-then-retracted-the-next-day 75% reduction in mideast imports.
That ethanol, made from 14% of Missouri's corn, would account for only 1%
of the planned mideast oil reduction! If 100% of the corn of Missouri
was used, it would generate only 8% of the now-retracted mideast reduction
suggestion, which is only 0.71% -- less than 1% -- of our total daily oil.
A high school student could see some problems here in expanding this to
other states, not the least having to do with, uhh, food. Also, none
of this takes into account the fact that corn is grown using gasoline-
and diesel-powered farm machinery, and fertilizers and pesticides
made from oil and natural gas (as opposed to Roman Empire style);
and it is turned into ethanol in plants powered by natural gas, and
more recently by coal (because natural gas prices recently quintupled).
The energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of the state subsidized
ethanol from corn process is disputed and hard to calculate, but it is
near 1.0 (that is, break even). It could even be negative (Pimentel)
-- that is, you use more fossil fuel to produce ethanol from corn it
that you get back from it, making burning the fossil fuel directly
more efficient. Now, one could complain that a hypothetical switchgrass
biodigester using processed cow manure fertilizer (switchgrass typically
needs 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre per crop) would have a better
EROEI than corn. Perhaps, if you don't believe Pimentel. But it's
still way hypothetical. And though switchgrass is better than corn,
switchgrass is still basically a photosynthetic plant collecting
solar radiation, which has a fixed, low density. Some plants do this
a little bit better than others. But we are not going to get 10x
corn, or probably even 2x corn. And it's going to be a decade before
currently nonexistent switchgrass ethanol plants are scaled up to even
the current trivial-with-respect-to-oil size of ethanol-from-corn.
And scaled up real big, it would still compete in a big way with food.
Not doom and gloom -- just straightforward, sensible-shoes worries about
our continued existence. Actions speak louder than words: $0.3 billion
promised for alternative energy vs. $100 billion a year actually spent for
Iraq occupation -- that's a ratio of 330 to 1. I think the priorities
are clear: we have decided to occupy the land around the remaining oil
with a trivial token investment in alternative energy.
[Feb04'06] I was surprised to read in a report on a talk
by Steven Jones that even half of that audience -- definitely not a
cross section of the population -- had not seen the WTC7 collapse video.
I guess that's why MSNBC Tucker Carlson at MSNBC was so adamant about
not showing it when he interviewed Jones a few months back.
[Feb06'06] There was a confusing ethanol
puff piece published in Science last week out of Dan Kammen's group at
Berkeley that has gotten a lot of publicity (with a front-of-the-magazine
'scientific editorial' by Steve Koonin from BP). The most bizarre graph
is in Fig. 2, where it is shown that gasoline has a negative net energy of
0.2 MJ/L (!) while current ethanol production has a net positive energy
of around 4 MJ/L (positive, but not that much more than Pimentel's
slightly negative net energy value). They arrived at this bizarre
'conclusion' by including the total energy of the input petroleum into
the energy 'cost' of gasoline. This totally ignores the fact that we
drill for oil so we can make gasoline and get a lot of energy out of it!
It *is* true that a small percentage of the retrieved energy is lost
in refining. But a huge amount is left! (over 34 MJ/L for gasoline).
Subtracting out that huge majority of the remaining energy in the
gasoline is just perverse. This is all a matter of deciding where
to set the boundaries of the system. Shouldn't the real net energy of
gasoline be 34 MJ/L minus the fossil fuels that were used in drilling for
oil and producing gasoline from it??? That's definitely not negative
(yet!). Then if you want to show that using oil and natural gas and
coal to make ethanol is better than using the fossil fuels directly,
you would get a net energy calculation that would show something like
30 MJ/L for gasoline (34 minus refining, discovery, and transport)
and something similar for natural gas and coal (after conversion into
equivalent liquid energy units), and then this would be compared to
something like 38 MG/L for ethanol (that is, the 34 MJ/L previously
subtracted out plus the 4 MJ/L net gain). That would put the actual
percent net energy gain -- from using oil and coal and natural gas to
capture energy from the sun via photosynthsis -- in better perspective.
Assuming you believe the positive 4 MJ/L net, then this would be a 1.26x
gain in energy over burning the fossil fuels directly. That sounds good,
but cost would be huge. To actually retrieve this 1.26 times gain using
current methods, we would have to convert all productive agricultural
land to ethanol production. As outlined in a previous post, using 100%
of the corn in Missouri to generate ethanol would cover only 0.71% of
our daily gasoline needs. Thus, to replace all our daily oil with more
efficient ethanol, we would need to use the complete corn output of 140
Missouri's). Even with some as yet completely hypothetical switchgrass
process that was more efficient in fertilizer, water, land space, soil
degradation, planting, harvesting, and processing, I don't think we will
ever get close to this coverage since the density of solar radiation,
water, and arable land are hard limiting factors -- and we still have to
use a lot of water and arable land to grow food (unless you want to just
eat the ethanol production leftovers...). So a practical magnification
of our energy sources by passing oil, natural gas, and coal through
current ethanol production methods is probably more like 1.1 or 1.05
times gain -- again, assuming the positive net gain they calculate for
ethanol is correct (almost all of it comes from energy credits for the
co-products: dried distiller grains, corn gluten feed, and corn oil).
That would cover a few years of current growth in US energy usage.
And all of this *completely* depends on having fossil fuels on the input
side -- unless you want to plant, water, fertilize, harvest, crush,
and cook the corn or switchgrass by hand. Publishing something like
this in Science in this form is a political statement, similar to the
"don't you scientists worry your little heads about peak oil" article
by Leonardo Maugeri last year (disclosure: I knew Dan Kammen when he
was a post-doc with Christof Koch when I was at Caltech). link
[Feb06'06] Here is an example of how the confusing statements in
the Kammen article lead to a garbled public translation. A news
report describing the Kammen study says: "Producing a gallon
of ethanol 'gas' from corn requires 95 percent less petroleum than
producing a gallon from fossil fuels, a new study finds." Well, duh.
That's because the fossil fuels used to produce ethanol are mostly
natural gas and coal, not oil. The Kammen study states that 1.1 units
of petroleum are used to produce 1.0 unit of gasoline, while 0.75 units
of fossil fuels (0.05 oil, 0.4 coal, and 0.3 natural gas) are used
to produce 1.0 unit of ethanol (which is how they got "95% less").
Ethanol could still be a good thing, if you buy the current positive
4 MJ/L net energy calculation (mostly from energy credits for the
ethanol coproducts since the energy of the output ethanol is basically
equivalent to the energy of the fossil fuel inputs). But the headline
is way misleading, esp. when you don't mention that this 4 MJ/L net
is riding on top of 30 MJ/L available from both gasoline and ethanol
(ethanol is less energy-dense than gasoline but it can be made to burn a
little more efficiently). Also, the article fails to point out that you
get a similar amount of CO2 from burning ethanol and gasoline; and this
end-use CO2 is much more than production-related CO2 (else there would
be no point in burning fossil fuels to extract and refine fossil fuels,
since the CO2 bascially indexes how many energy-releasing bonds have
been broken). It's all a matter of establishing the overall picture
before snowing people with irrelevant and misleading details.
[Feb09'06] A soldier, who was forced to pay for his body armour
because a medic threw it out because it was a 'biohazard'
(because it was soaked with the soldier's blood), said: "I still
love the Army, loved being a soldier and loved my unit". He was refunded
after Senator Byrd questioned Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker about it.
The former soldier has had seven operations on his arm and still has
movement problems and pain. Can you imagine an intrepeneurial corporate
CEO making these statements? Me neither. That's why we need more CEO's
on the front lines. Our wars would be 'right-sized' in a jiffy.
[Feb11'06] Here
is a list of Bush's proposed program cuts. The AP didn't give
a total, but I added it up and it comes out to about 14 billion
dollars. All these programs would be cut in order to allow us
to continue spending almost $100 billion tax dollars a year for
the occupation and bombing of Iraq under false pretenses. C'mon
press guys! You need to mention the names of the programs for $14
billion, $100 billion for Iraq (for giant, permanent bases like al-Asad),
and "lies" in the same damn article for once. All we have is Helen
Thomas, and not one of her wimpy colleagues ever utters a peep in
support of this fine old lady for fear of losing their jobs as what? --
court jesters? Is it such a great job?
[Feb15'06] A Ford Explorer with three people in it is better than three
Priuses with one person each. Why should single-person Priuses be able
to use the car pool lane?
[Feb16'06] The military is a major user of fossil fuels. Each of our 11
nuclear-powered aircraft carriers needs to be filled up every three months
with 3 million gallons of jet fuel for the planes it hauls around.
[Feb21'06] The power goes down in Denver and upstate New York probably
because of natural gas shortages, catching Kunstler of all people with
his grid down (!); he was heating his house with his stove because
his electric furnace igniters didn't work, and none of his phones were
usable without electricity. Also, all hell breaks loose in Nigeria's
oil patch over the weekend. None of it makes the mainstream media news.
Move along, nothing to see.
[Feb23'06] The money guys have lately been worrying about the "yen carry
trade unwinding". This has to do with a very abstract way to 'make' money
(indeed!). You borrow Japanese yen at almost zero percent interest and
then invest them in US treasuries at about a 3% interest rate gain net.
Since Japan's economy has perked up, it is considering raising interest
rates, which would make this "carry trade" less lucrative. It's hard
for me to wrap my mind around such disparate activities as this, and,
say, trying to localize food production. Yet the money guys' "unwinding"
could very much affect my food supply, so I try to listen up.
[Feb28'06] Almost 90% of US
troops in Iraq think the war they are implementing is a retaliation
for Saddam's role in 9/11. Only about 30% of their loyal 'supporters'
back at home think this. The troops also think the war should end.
Wrong on both counts.
[Mar02'06] This year, we used about 30 Gb of oil and discovered 4.5 Gb.
That's about 6.5 used to 1 discovered. I've updated my peak oil intro to include
more info on global temperature changes.
[Mar05'06] Our Guantanamo gulag is partly powered by renewable
energy (25% of electricity from windmills in windy months). Great.
Green torture.
[Mar06'06] "Making ethanol from corn is a process by which a certain
amount of energy in the forms of natural gas and diesel fuel are used to
create an equivalent amount of energy in the form of ethanol, with the
primary output being money from government subsidies." -- Bob Hirsch.
[Mar16'06] Bush's approval polls
are looking pretty dire; and 43% are currently in favor of outright
impeachment. But the last time the approval polls got this low
(just after Katrina), all it took was 5 or so speeches to hand-picked
audiences (this makes me think of the speech Bush recently had to give in
an Indian zoo to avoid the demonstrators...). The 5 or so speeches were
then amplified and re-re-re-re-broadcast by the scumbag media to bring
Bush back to just over 40% in a few weeks. The lapdog press has now even
taken to 'pre-announcing' the next set of Bush speeches about preemption,
even before he reads the stupid things. Good show, guys! Worms!
The largest airstrikes since the 2003 Iraq invasion are underway today
(probably what some of the AC-130's were for), and the speeches/media
in the pipeline will probably get robotic North Americans to rise to
the occasion. What's all the to-do about 'man the thinking animal'?
It makes them so much less cute.
[Mar18'06] I don't don't know what to think about the Operation Swarmer
psyop/photo-op/assault. It is true the US stormed and blew up few houses
and killed a few women and children, or rather "collateral", elsewhere
(Tikrit), and they dragged off a bunch of men, I mean, "terrorists",
from Samarra to the torture prisons, but it is an open question of how
widespread the airstrikes were/are. Some Iraqi sites say it's real.
The level of mainstream disinfo/BS is so high (the Time article suggesting
it was a photo-op/disinfo operation could easily itself be disinfo),
trying to be objective makes you feel just a little bit schizo. There are
essentially no non-embedded independent Western reporters in the area,
so we won't know what really happened for a month or two.
[Mar20'06] Oil prices had their biggest drop today in 7 months as
stockpiles of oil rose to a 7-year high. Those supplies jumped 4.8
million barrels to 340 million barrels. That sounds like a lot. However,
we use 20 million barrels a day, so our current supplies are equivalent
to 17 days of US usage. That sounds like a much smaller cushion (just
in time, man). Of course, it is unlikely that all domestic supply
and all imports would be shut down simultaneously, so supplies are no
doubt safe for at least a few months. Another thing to consider about
the price drop is that the second quarter of each year is normally a
quiet time for oil since winter demand fades and summer demand has not
yet started. So that's what oil prices are fundamentally driven by:
a few months look-ahead. You'd have to be a rabid anti-capitalist to
think -- living here on our finite blue sphere -- that it's worthwhile
trying to look/plan any further into the future, right?
[Mar24'06] The flow of idiotic bird flu propaganda continues without
stop -- from the regular media as well as the blogs, left and right.
Politics and mind control is fundamentally based on the fact that many
people can't remember anything but television shows for more than two
years. The reason they *can* remember television shows (often used in
tests of long-term memory) is partly because they practice with them more.
Unfortunately, there are no nightly 're-runs' of recent history -- where
an explicit piece of recent history is re-run with a title indicating
that this actually happened. Remember SARS? It killed a tiny handful of
people, like the currently 'dreaded' bird flu. Then and now, thousands of
humans are dying every day from diarrhea and regular old incurable viral
and somewhat more curable bacterial pneumonia, and of course, regular
non-bird flu. Never a peep about those diseases in the daily effluent --
or anything about SARS. Where did SARS go? Isn't SARS still out there
waiting to getcha?? (or West Nile!) Well, maybe they are after all! --
in about 2 more years. Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia, indeed.
[Mar27'06] The commentator Westexas had an interesting comment
about peak college enrollment at theoildrum.com. The massive building
out of the physical plant is sure visible here at UCSD! The peak of
US college graduates will probably hit in a few years, right about the
time that natural gas really starts spiking in price (natural gas will
probably ding us in the US before oil, even though there is more of it
left in the world because it's hard to transport). In 5 or 10 years,
young academic people are going to be very mad at us (I'm 50). They will
have some justification. We should probably should have been trying
to control our academic reproduction -- esp. at the graduate level --
for the past few years -- right as the undergraduate boom was occurring.
But that wouldn't have made anybody happy (parents, applicants, current
undergraduates, current graduate students, campuses, journals, granting
agencies), even though it was probably the right thing to do. Currently,
things are pretty quite in energyland. But we just had one of the mildest
winters on record. Oil has been wobbling around just above $60 for the
last few months. When it gets hot in summer, it could really take off
(along with natural gas). Right during the stupid election contest
between two equally execrable parties. The democrats will be trying
to outflank, out-war, out-surveillance, out-Israel, and out-rightwing
their republican opponents who will instead be setting up to fix voting
machines in key races -- all right when oil and/or natural gas prices hits
them both in the face. Great stategies, both of you bozos. Of course,
the oil companies *will* be making out like (even fatter) gangbusters
when oil goes above $100. Yet, trying to hold their muzzles away from
the ever-growing trough of money will unfortunately not make any more
oil appear underground or make it take less energy to get the remaining
harder-to-get second half out. Also, capitalists and politicians and
consumers won't budge on large-scale alternative energy until fossil fuel
prices get painful. Higher energy prices will cause many other prices to
increase, and may very well increase the price of alternative energy, too.
One can hope that those prices won't go up faster than fossil fuel prices.
Peak oil *is* a big oil scam; but it's also true. But I always like
to end on the positive side. Light rail is being built in *Dallas*.
If they can build more light rail in Dallas (and use it to sell houses),
they can build a more across the rest of the country, too.
[Apr11'06] The price of steel, aluminum, nickel, zinc, and copper (and
silver and gold) are all going up along with oil (which went above $69
today). All of these have doubled or tripled over the past few years.
The cost of energy certainly factors into the cost of other things that
require energy to get them (e.g., copper), but it seems hard to believe
that all the increased cost of copper comes from the increased cost of
energy. So the parallel price runs also probably have to be explained
by us starting to run out of copper and other things.
[Apr13'06] I am worried about the combination of a tepid public
response to the Iran nuke leaks/disinfo and upcoming oil supply problems.
Though catatonic US-ians have finally begun to dislike the Iraq war (they
forgot that they started off perhaps 5 to 1 in favor of it) because it
has continued to kill a few of our boy stormtroopers (and thousands of
Iraqis every month, but that doesn't matter), dazed slack-jaw CNN-ified
US-ians currently support an attack on Iran 48% to 40%. The numbers
supporting an attack on Iran are distressingly identical in the UK.
In general, people didn't want to send troops (and certainly not their own
precious Camerons and Williams), just remote control bombs. How nuanced.
With continued saturation coverage of 'Iranian nuke within 16 days'
no doubt soon to be followed by 'Iranian nuke here in 15 minutes'
(how quickly the sheep forget) by our disgusting state/corporate
media/sewer that never even whispers a word about the permanent bases
being constructed across Iraq, these numbers will slowly 'improve'.
But there is also oil (and gas) trouble on the horizon. Canterell in
Mexico (2% of current world oil production) is about to fall off a
40%-decline-per-year cliff; Saudi intimates that it may have peaked;
Kuwait calmly announces it has only 5% of total world oil reserves instead
of 10% (and nobody burps); the former Soviet Union is near peak; 2006
is shaping up to be another nasty hurricane season; and the rest of
the world is already in 'depletion'. The problem I see is that if a
plurality of US-ians and UK-ian *already* support an attack on Iran,
just think what will happen when they get a little economic shock to
their shorts. Things could get Reich-y here in a hurry! The 'whatever'
response to torture and imprisonment without trial of darkies is small
potatoes compared to what Good Americans might approve under serious
economic duress. Intelligent people are beginning to think about
getting out ahead of the game, like many did in Germany in the late 30's.
But where to go? The UK has an even better surveillance state underway.
And the world is a lot more filled up then it was then...
[Apr15'06] I think that the market is a fine optimizer when the boundary
conditions are set right. I don't think they currently are, since
environmental costs are not included. But let's set that aside. The main
hope is that correct boundary conditions or not, as fossil fuel prices
increase, businesses will surely 'innovate'. With respect to fossil fuels
and their replacements, however, there are two giant question marks.
The first is that as fossil fuel prices go up, they will also drive up
the prices of renewables, since renewables are currently exclusively
made with fossil fuels (for steel, copper mining, silicon smelting, etc).
This may keep the cost of renewables higher than the cost of fossil fuels
for a long time. It is also likely to drive up the price of lower EROEI
fossil fuel sources like tar sands. Second, as total energy peaks and
starts to slowly run down, it will slow down the replacement of fuel
inefficient cars, buildings, power plants without carbon sequestration,
and more generally, fuel-inefficient city designs. This will make
it harder to avoid running down the remaining fossil fuel supplies.
A tax on fossil fuels that could be used to develop alternatives before
the market gets to them would seem like a good idea. But we are far
away politically from being able to implement something like this given
how politicians are funded; and there is no political change in sight
(Democrats in Congress would not be a political change in this respect).
Also, it is obvious that this strategy has led to distortions in the past.
Take the case of corn-based ethanol, where a process with a dubious
energy-return-on-energy-investment (0.8 to 1.25) exists mainly because of
subsidies (N.B.: a lot of energy used in making ethanol goes into boiling
the ethanol out of the ethanol-water mixture that is initially generated
by fermentation; all the other non-corn processes also first generate
an ethanol-water mixture). So it's more new iPods for the time being.
Peak oil-ists often talk about all the oil we could save with more
efficient cars. But the main way to use less energy is to simply have
less people in the world! There is no reason populations can't contract
gracefully. Just a few percent a year for a few decades would make a
huge difference. It's amazing to me that people don't discuss this more.
Instead, they have idiotic discussions about going to live in the woods
when most of them have barely been hiking. It all gets hopelessly bogged
down when they find out about ticks and Lyme disease (hilarious comments
on Anthropik). Why not just try to get everyone to have less babies?
It's all good.
[Apr18'06] Several days ago, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed
9 Israeli civilians and injured more, which rightfully made
the mainstream news and was rightfully condemned. But over
the last three weeks, when Israel rained hundreds of shells
a day on civilian Gaza neigborhoods last week (2,000 artillery
shells on civilian neighborhoods since the beginning of April), killing
27 Palestinian civilians and injuring more (a college student lost one
of her eyes to an Israeli sniper), it wasn't mainstream news. How is an
artillery shell more moral than a suicide bomb? Because it's fired out
of a computer-aimed gun? Palestinian civilians don't count -- after all,
there are no Palestinian civilians by definition: they're all terrorists,
even the kids (because they were thinking about becoming terrorists
when the shells landed in their house). And besides, the kids have
terrorist uncles, so tough luck, for sleeping in a house on the same
block, untermenschen -- you don't exist, you're not news.
[Apr19'06] All but one or two of our Democratic worms are in
Congress are digging deep into the soil to avoid mentioning
anything about Iran. When you can get them to say anything,
they all say they are leaving all Iran options 'on the table', including
the US use of nuclear weapons! Disgusting worms. What are they
scared of? Cheney? With an approval rating lower than OJ (and even
lower than Congress itself)? I wonder what would it take for them to
crawl out into the light? There was a peace march sign: "Would someone
please give the President a blow job so we can impeach him?" Funny as
this is, it wouldn't work! The Democrats would still be hiding under
the soil, since it could be anti-gay to denigrate blow jobs. And anyway,
Gannon-gate came and went, and Bush is still here...
[Apr20'06] The US is a TP Nation! The US has about 5% of the
world's population, uses about 25% of the world's oil, but 50%
of the world's toilet paper (from Amanda Kovattana). The US
is Mr. Clean. In other news, two men from Houston were arrested
after setting off alarms at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
They were carrying $500K in small bills in a bag from Chicago
(which they hadn't opened, Big Lebowski style), and dogs detected
drugs in their vehicle. They were released without charges. Huh?
Finally, a few days ago, Michael Alan "Savage" Weiner said this on Talk Radio
Network about Muslims: "They say, 'Oh, there's a billion of them.'
I said, 'So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million
of them.' I mean, would you rather die -- would you rather us die than
them?" Hey, that's only 16 holocausts worth. You can go to jail for
holocaust denial, but calling for 16 new holocausts is no prob, as long
as you are careful to only call for the genocide of Muslims (and despite
that fact that Arab Muslims are Semites, it's not even anti-sem itic).
This is the same Michael Weiner who once was a beatnik, frolicking nude
on the beach with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. Why not go back to the
beach, guy? It's easier on the women and children (though perhaps not
on the eyes at this point).
[Apr21'06] The Washington Post today had an interestingly titled article
by Rick Weiss on climate change: "Climate Change Will Be Significant
but Not Extreme, Study Predicts". He explains that the most extreme of
the climate change predictions (more than 11 deg F increase this century)
have only a 5% chance of being correct and that the most likely outcome is
about 5 deg F. This is not news. This has, in fact, been the mainstream
scientific consensus for the past decade (not counting the musings of that
famous 'climate researcher' and sometime presidential science advisor,
novelist Michael Crichton). The story, however, coyly fails to mention
that a 5 deg F change is close to the difference between no glaciation
(where we are now) and glaciation, except that it will be added onto
no glaciation, making the globe hotter than it has been in millions of
years. Half full or half empty, I guess. This reminds me of oil prices,
which are constantly 'easing' but somehow always end up higher than a few
months ago. Today, they 'eased' their way up to $75 (from $73 yesterday).
Yergin was hauled out of storage; and the Economist put out its yearly
'there is plenty of oil article'. Finally, I was a bit worried to read
an article by John Dean suggesting that there might be a synthetic terror
event to win elections or justify an attack Iran. My worry was tempered
by his mention of the possibility of a bin Laden capture October surprise.
That would be a smelly surprise indeed, since OBL's probably been dead
since 2001 (it is true they could capture a lookalike, and how would we
ever know?). Sniffing the web for the last few days, there seems to
have been a slight pull back with respect to an Iran attack. Dean is
correct that a new synthetic terror would change that in a hurry.
[Apr26'06] There was a sort of article in Newsweek by Michael Hirsh
introducing the sheep to the idea of permanent Iraq bases, though these
were only 10-years-permanent, and then only for attacking other places as
opposed to mere occupation -- how comforting. On a completely different
note, a while back I read and linked an article by Rob Kirby called
"Pirates of the Caribbean" about debt buying. I don't think I really
explicitly understood what he was saying. I think the idea is that the
Fed creates money and then somehow transports it to 'offshore' Caribbean
banks, who then use the created money to buy American debt. I think the
problem I had was understanding the meaning of "using created money to buy
debt" -- the first time you read it, it's just nonsensical. Recently, it
appears that
UK has taken over from the 'pirates' who have not even been keeping up
with Saudi, much less China and Japan. Here is the clearest, shortest article I've ever seen
on the Fed, repos, and fractional reserve banking.
[May02'06] Bush's popularity
is at its lowest ever (about 33%) and yet the spineless Democratic worms
can't even vote against the ridiculous Iran resolution. What unbelievable
cowards! What would it take for them to vote against Bush? If a crowd
of villagers stormed the White house, d'ya think they might finally
'revolt'? It's stuff like this that makes me thing the boat really is
going down. As Michael Donnelly writes below, this is not a new thing:
The Democrats only finally voted to end funding for the Vietnam war in
1975, several years after the generals had already ended it! The main
reason the peace movement consists largely of a bunch of fossilized
anybody-but-Bush oldies is that there is so far no draft (not mentioned
by Donnelly, despite the fact he was a Vietnam conscientious objector).
That might change with a few more back-to-back wars, though.
[May07'06] James Hamilton (econbrowser.com) presents the case for possibly
lower oil prices (new fields coming online, price-driven reduction in
demand). Some small price drops are not out of the question. I just
wonder what will happen to child-like Americans when the price inevitably
starts to go back up. With Cantarell going off a cliff and Ghawar soon to
follow, Venezuela having to buy oil from Russia (!?), the use-to-discovery
ratio running at 6:1, a price rise seems likely by years end -- even
if the lunatics in currently charge decide not to attack Iran. Then,
who will tell Americans, that even after getting rid of the porker from
Exxon, oil prices may still not go down because there just isn't enough
oil left given how many people are using it? Certainly not the Republican
here's-a-hundred-dollars rats or the Democrat let's-drop-gas-taxes mice.
This will require an adult discussion of how to negotiate our lifestyles,
which is *completely* out of the question given our current system.
Unfortunately, not discussing it won't make the problem go away.
[May09'06] Kyle has some great tidbits
on biodiesel at the oildrum today. Dynoil is planning to build a 1.5
billion gallons a year biodiesel refinery in Houston. The main type of
input oil is soybean oil. The current US production of soybean oil is 2.5
billion gallons/year, so this plant will consume 60% (!) of that total.
For comparison, our yearly use of gasoline is about 150 billion gallons
a year (10 million barrels a day refined from 20 million barrels of
oil a day). So... 60% of our total soybean oil will generate, uuh, 1%
of our daily liquid fuel gulp? Well, I never really did like tofu or
veggie burgers that much... A ways down, Robert Rapier points out that
the price of ethanol -- even subsidized, as ethanol has always been --
moves in lockstep with oil (and always higher than oil). This is because
the EROEI of ethanol is close to 1.0 (mainly because you have to distill
a water/ethanol mixture to get the ethanol out), and is an excellent
illustration of my repeatedly expressed worries above about the problem
that all 'renewables' are currently made with fossil fuels.
[May12'06] Well now it looks like Rove might go down for some stupid
Watergate-like Plame-related idiocy. This would be like getting
rid of Nixon for a two-bit break-in instead of getting rid of him for
slaughtering an extra million or so South east asians. But the worst part
is that as all the pukes still left in the current administration start
to get a little fidgety, they might consider doing something really rash.
As much fun as it is to look at Pollkatz and see Bush's numbers going
below 30%, the latest dip is making me a little queasy. Where are those
life-style-non-negotiating, richie-loving, gas-guzzling, anti-evolutionist
glass-half-full backwash kinda guys when you need them?
[May21'06] The predicted Rove indictment didn't happen, which was obvious
by May 15 when Rove went on conspicuous parade instead of hiding.
Initially, it seemed like it might be a classic Rove stunt (leak
disinfo, then out it), but other people have speculated that Gonzales
was involved in actually stopping Fitzgerald or that Rove has turned
state's evidence. It certainly is strange that Joe Wilson might have
have been Jason Leopold's source for the indictment story. It's bad
to ever underestimate these guys. Also, bad to overestimate US-ians.
Though Bush's approval numbers are low (around 30%), Kerry, Gore, and
Hillary's number are *all* slightly lower (!). One wonders what Bush
would have to do for US-ians not to prefer him.
[Jun14'06] The DOD has instituted a de facto ban on all new wind power
installations in the because they might affect nearby radar bases.
Really bright.
[Jun19'06] The pollkatz graph
never ceases to amaze. The sizeable Zarqawi uptick is now visible.
The sudden upticks were, in order of size: 9-11, invade Iraq, capture
Saddam, post-Katrina road show, and Zarqawi (the 2004 election campaign
was the only slow upslope of 5 percentage points total; it was expensive
and the whole thing was smaller than Zarqawi). In the absence of a
stunt, the downward slope is relatively constant at 2 percentage points
loss per month. That would put him at zero in a year and a half.
A new stunt will be needed before the year is out.
[Jun30'06] I laugh when I see the latest 'bin
Laden' tape talking about 'Zarqawi', but sometimes I think the joke's
on me, because nobody else seems to be laughing.
[Jul03'06] Jokes on me again (second 'bin Laden' tape). Polls have now
recovered to near post-Katrina-road-show levels.
[Jul09'06] The cost of producing oil from oil sands has sextupled
in about 6 years. A little more of this and making oil from oil sand will
become uneconomic, even with high oil prices (currently about $74/barrel).
The likely cause of this is that higher energy costs have increased
the cost of obtaining energy from a low EROEI (energy return on energy
investment) resource. The point at which oil sands reach EROEI = 1.0
(i.e., no longer be an energy source) may be closer than some think.
It is likely to occur long before the 'reserves' are depleted. It is a
cruel joke to call EROEI-less-than-1.0 things 'reserves', though I suppose
they are the best kind -- ones that you can never deplete...
[Jul17'06] A senior State department official said
today: "I don't expect there's going to be any requirement for the
United States forces" in Lebanon to defend Israel. I wonder exactly what
forces he had in mind? This is beginning to sound a little draft-y.
Of course, we could just rubble-ize whatever hasn't been rubble-ized
yet, and this wouldn't require additional non-existent ground troops.
Also, it wouldn't be terrorism because countries with air forces are
by definition incapable of terrorism and only carry out strikes with
"surgical precision" -- which translates to "strikes requiring surgery
without anesthetic or electrical power".
[Jul26'06] When I was younger, I read a lot of history in addition
to science. I always found it incredibly depressing. Sure there were
uplifting bits about nice buildings, but it was impossible to ignore
the constant wars, genocides, tortures, enslavements, and the towering,
ubiquitous inequality (I have no problem with having 5 or 10 times as
much, but having 1000 times as much is simply obscene to me, and it will
always be). Back then, I still had a feeling that despite all that,
an alternate human social organization might be possible where things
could be better -- less violent, more equitable. And I still get a
tear in my eye when I see a wonderful musical performance or read a
finely written-down idea. At moments like those, I am briefly proud to
be a human. But taking the whole human picture into consideration --
on the threshold of peak energy and impending irreversible, catastrophic
climate change -- humans and language have been a disaster for the
planet and for themselves. Here at the acme of civilization, overweight
humans take an SUV to the exercise place to watch Wolf Blitzer talk
to some minister of propaganda on a flat screen in a not very stylish
building. This is this high point of language and the primate brain!
I am not proud to be human. When human animals first accidentally
acquired the increased power of language and linguistic thought, which
led eventually to dominion over other animals, plants, minerals, rivers,
shoreline, and oceans, there was no requirement that things work out in
the end. If history is a guide, the hotter, drier, lower-energy road
ahead is likely to be pretty rough. It might work out, or it might not.
If it doesn't, it won't be a tragedy.
[Jul27'06] Well, now that Floyd Landis has tested positive
for doping (testosterone), I should probably revise my
calculation on theoildrum (based on his measured wattage) of how
much human power there is in a barrel of oil... :-}
[Aug09'06] Creepy Palast goes on his usual bait and switch on the
Alaskan pipeline shutdown and peak oil. Sure, the pipeline inspectors
were a little lax in their inspections and some repairs were postponed.
But the widespread problem appears to have been caused by a complicated,
unexpected turn of events. Insiders suggest that increased acetate from
water in the oil and lower flows interacted to lead to the development
of sulfide-generating metal-corroding bacteria (see theoildrum.com).
Acetate feeds the bacteria and lower flows of lower grade (more viscous)
oil allow them to stick to the pipe and then build up a protective
coating so they can do their anaerobic work. This doesn't prove that
peak oil is an oil company scam. In fact, the problem was *due* to
depletion! The acetate is from sea water injected to fix declining well
head pressure and the lower flows and lower grades are because the oil
field is past its peak. Of course the companies were trying to get away
with as little maintenance as possible. But I highly doubt a complete
pipeline shutdown was planned, even if the expected result would be a
temporary few percent bump in oil prices. And it is not clear whether it
would have been more efficient (in terms of not disturbing oil prices)
to shutdown the pipeline multiple times for smaller repairs. Finally,
spilling all that ink over a temporary interruption in 0.5% of world
oil production (Prudoe) distracts attention from the much more serious
permanent problems at Ghawar (~5% of world total oil plus more in 'gas
liquids') and Cantarell (~2% of world total oil plus more in gas liquids),
which never make the news (or appear in Palast's articles).
[Aug12'06] Given (1) all the lies about previous terror scams (e.g.,
random Brazilian guy executed by UK secret police in the tube, Florida
dummies, fake NY tunnel bomb), (2) the biggest lies of all that convinced
John Q Idiot to donate half a trillion of his hard-earned dollars to
occupying and destroying Iraq, and (3) the obvious boost to the sociopaths
in charge, why would anyone with half a brain believe any of the load
of cr*p that is being shoveled out at us about 'liquid explosives'?
That said, it truly was genius to do it in the UK, where the population
is slightly less out of it than here and Blair is floundering with
internal party desertions, but then still use it to make all Americans
dump out their orange juice, lipstick, toothpaste, and laptops. Genius.
If people keep uncritically swallowing all this bullsh*t without making
fun of it or asking hard questions, another real event could lead us
down the slippery slope real quick. The purpose of these events and the
coordinated media Blitzer is to train people to become subservient slaves.
Use it or lose it (your mind).
[Aug13'06] Liquid explosives and Hezbollah have been linked -- by being
used in the same sentence by Bush. C'mon you human monkeys! Use the
gift of language. Are we not men? Because some were deceived last time
is an excellent reason to think ahead this time.
[Aug17'06] The terror alerts are getting more cartoonish, but
I'm worried that not enough people are laughing. Two days ago,
a woman on a London-to-D.C. flight was so dangerous (she was said
to be carrying a screwdriver, matches, a note from al Qaeda, and a
jar of Vaseline), that her London-to-D.C. flight had to be escorted
by two fighter jets to Boston. Fox said she was Middle Eastern.
Then yesterday, she was a woman from Vermont having a panic
attack (the screwdriver, matches, and al Qaeda note had disappeared). One wonders
who that stuff in the story in the first place? Could it be... Satan?
Today, she turned out to be a 59 year old mentally ill woman who urinated
on the floor when the flight attendants made her use a different bathroom
(terr'ist training is sure going down the tubes these days). I suppose we
should be grateful she wasn't shot to death. Also yesterday, women were
warned not to wear gel bras when they fly (in addition to not urinating
on the floor, I suppose). Sounds funny, but read some of the
comments on the bra story. Half the people are just about
ready to bring on cavity searches. Perhaps we need these lie detector
sunglasses (this company can detect "love" too) or this
lie-detector booth. Since these are at least 85% accurate according
to the companies, that should only have the airport goons working over
a couple of hundred thousand hapless non-white travelers a day. All to
make the the rest of us safer (I guess the fact that Aldrich Ames passed
all his lie dectector tests is irrelevant). What is wrong with you,
Americans? Can't you see where this is going? Several people in the bra
story comments mentioned the possibility of explosive breast implants.
Clearly, this means that only men and extremely flat-chested women
should be allowed to fly since "it will make us safer". Well, penile
implants are actually extremely common (one of the most common operations,
up there with by appendectomies). OK, so maybe just castrated, thin,
senile, naked old men that made it out of the Israeli-made Cogito1002
lie-detector booth without cracking a sweat because they couldn't remember
the questions... (and since the bathrooms will be locked, everybody gets
adult diapers).
[Aug22'06] Today, there is a terr'ism drill on campus with helicopters
circling even lower than they would in a bad neigborhood (normally we
only hear fighter jets taking off from the nearby military airfield).
This was presumably so they could better see the terr'ists under every
bed. In the UK, Blair is so unpopular, and Labor so pusillanimous, that
the moribund Tories are finally ahead of Labor in the polls. In Israel,
Netanyahu is about to come back after the IDF, which had gone soft in
their daily job of humiliating and terrorizing Palestinians, actually
ran into somebody who could fight back. Netanyahu could be stopped if
Olmert manages to start another bombing campaign. In the US, the Iraq
war is the most unpopular it has ever been, but the daily bogus terror
follies has actually given Bush's polls an uptick (vs. in the UK, where
Reid's and Labour's fake terror gambit seems to have penalized Labour).
Life sucks all around.
[Aug25'06] I get tired of reading about 100 mpg 'cars'. The amount of
force it takes to push a car through still air at 60 mph is not going
to change because the price of oil goes up or Vinod Khosla decides
to skim off some tax subsidies by investing in almost-energy-neutral
ethanol plants. Sure, you can make a 'car' that has racing bike tires
pumped up to 150 psi that looks like a giant roach standing two feet
off the ground that can get 100 mpg. But there will never be a real
car that will get 100 mpg -- if by a 'car' you mean something that is
big enough to hold 4-5 people sitting up, plus some cargo. Of course,
we *already* have vehicles that get *200* mpg per passenger -- trains
(this is because of less wind resistance and steel-on-steel wheels).
The practical limit for a real, affordable 4-person capable car is
around 50 mpg (which is about what the aerodynamic, lightweight,
high-tire-pressure, small-engine Prius gets in real life).
[Aug30'06] After having the JonBenet guy shoved down our throats
for weeks, it turns out he didn't do it, so forget that, and on to an
unsightly polygamist. Teevee -- an open corporate sewer that pours right
into your brain. Forget about peak oil, forget about climate change,
forget about WWIII, lookie here at this Mormon. While the rubes are
are catatonic and drooling, the federally funded Dr. Strangeloves are
hard at work on the 'Terminator' gene technology. Monsanto just
bought the seed company, Delta & Pine Land, that has been working
on this technology with the USDA for several decades. The basic idea is
to create a biotech version of a hybrid -- that is, a viable plant that
produces edible seeds, but seeds that won't germinate -- so you have to
buy new seeds every year. In Europe, instead of using hybrids to keep
people from saving seeds, there are laws to protect breeder's rights (US
'hybrid vigor' is a PR crock). People have saved seeds since the dawn
of agriculture (it's nature's way after all), and they still do so in
most countries of the world (e.g., India, Europe). The Terminator gene
is nothing more than a (potentially) more general way of making any plant
produce non-germinating seed -- a peculiarly American obsession. It would
be a bad idea, even if the world *wasn't* on the threshold of world food
problems, with climate-change-induced droughts killing off Midwest crops
(dust-bowl-like conditions in Nebraska this month), grain surplusses at
twenty year lows, and depleted aquifers and reduced snowmelt threatening
future water shortages and conflicts. There could be a world of pain
on the horizon as oil- and natural-gas-fueled industrial agriculture
(fertilizer, cultivation, processing, transport) begins its slow and
potentially catastrophic descent. Instead of doing something useful,
we've got a bunch of evil nincompoops spending our tax dollars for several
decades trying to figure out how to put 'copy-protection' into the plants
that we eat, so that Monsanto, Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta, and DuPont's
Pioneer Hi-Bred International can spread the joy of sterile food crops
to the rest of the world (i.e., China or India or Brazil) and protect
the investments of these wonderful companies (who also just happen to
make the Roundup that 'goes well together with' Roundup-Ready genetically
modified food crops). The whole scheme is revealed as a scam because the
performance of GM food crops is actually no better or slightly worse than
non-genetically-hacked crops. It's like a bad sci-fi movie -- except that
these sickening suicidal sociopathic drones currently control the world.
Ignore all the crap about the genius of capitalism. This is the genius
of class war, pure and simple -- their going right for your food.
[Sep14'06] The capital expenditure per barrel of oil
produced per day from deep water wells (like the new 'Jack'
discovery in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico) is about *thirty
times* that of the shallow water wells that include almost
every every other well in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason is
the distance from the shore (175 miles -- right in the middle of
where hurricanes are the biggest), the deep water (7,000 feet),
and then the deep hole into the seabed: the Jack #2 hit oil at
20,000
feet below the seabed. This is below the usual 'oil window' which
is 7,500-15,000 feet below the earth's surface; as a result of the
depth, the oil is very hot (390 degrees, Fahrenheit) and at very
high pressure (20,000 psi). Dealing with all this is expensive.
For example, Chevron has invested an estimated $1 billion in its
'Blind Faith' project (cool name, eh?) that is expected to yield
30,000 barrels per day. The fact that companies are willing to go
after such expensive oil is perhaps the best evidence that oil has
indeed peaked. Meanwhile, take a look at these remarkable statements by
Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne, who wants to test non-lethal
crowd control weapons on American crowds. The incredible reason given
is so that there won't be an outcry from peecee whiners in the 'world
press' when we start using them on the untermenschen (we haven't been?).
Together with a recent pictorial in Vogue Italia showing us police
state as fashion statement, I'm, like, thinking, first they came
for the super-models, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't, like,
a super-model (pace Pastor Niemoller).
[Sep17'06] Only one out of ten people on the planet currently drive cars.
That number will begin to be *reduced* as oil passes its bumpy peak in
the next ten years. Despite all the squawking in the business press over
the temporary drop in oil prices last week, a one-week or one-month or
one-year drop in oil price is going to do precious little to change the
amount of oil remaining in the ground that is easy enough to get to that
more energy is released from burning it than you use up getting it out.
Even Econobrowser thinks the recent price drop is partly due to a demand
reduction indicating economic distress, not a result of an increase in
supply. 50 years from now, it will be patently obvious how ridiculous
it is to *drive* to the *exercise* place.
[Sep20'06] Well, pollkatz'
poll collection has spoken. By confiscating lipstick, coffee, and hand
lotion, by making a new fake bin Laden tape (he's dead, Jim), and by
pasting the public with endless idiotic 9-11 festivities, Bush's polls
numbers have experienced a definitive uptick -- of almost the same
amplitude as the one from Zarqawi. Sometimes I just hate our stupid
animal brains, despite all my efforts to study them. Looking over
what I wrote above just before both of these upticks, I predicted there
would have to be some kind of stunt to keep Bush from going below 30%.
As always, I failed to appreciate just how *cheap* effective stunts
can be. I hate to think of what would happen if there was (another)
expensive one! (it's not facism when we do it).
[Sep23'06] Sure seems like an attack on Iran may be moving forward
once again. If Bush moves to attack, there will be little opposition
from mostly pro-Israel Democrats, just as was the case with Iraq.
There isn't a peep of antiwar protest here. I agree with JoAnn Wypijewski that the
9-11 black t-shirt people have functioned to some extent as a distraction
(esp. the Pentagon no-plane people), but not with the idea that the topic
is unimportant -- after all, 9-11 is being re-used for the third time
-- Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran. Who benefits? The truly Reich-y
feeling I got here during the original Iraq invasion will come back with
a vengence if Iran is bombed. Right now, instead, I just feel like
people are tired and worried about the economy and housing prices (as
we are!). But that could change. An Iran strike would almost surely
be a big hit to the economy, and the resulting fear and loathing could
easily be used to power more rapid moves toward a police state here and
in the UK. I like Alexander Cockburn with his snappy writing style
and all. He doesn't think an attack on Iran will happen. But then,
he doesn't believe in global warming and thinks that peak oil is just an
oil company plot. Sure it's an oil company plot; but the fact that we
used up about half of the world's oil and that our current rate of usage
is the highest ever is also *really* important -- much more important --
for the future of industrial civilization than a few fatted oil company
executives (read some damn geology and www.realclimate.org, Alexander)
or some professional traders getting rich (or losing their investor's
shirts) on preposterously rapid swings (relative to the underlying
geology) in commodity prices.
[Sep30'06] The Congress' latest legislation about secret detention and
torture without trial defines an "enemy combatant" as anyone who has
"purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United
States." That's awfully general. A lot of what I have written above
could be construed as hostile to some Americans in the United States --
like the ones that have spent 500 billion of our tax dollars to slaughter
people in Iraq. All joking aside, this is an extremely dangerous law that
sets aside habeas corpus and makes it possible to detain and 'disappear'
anybody without public due process. It is somewhat stupefying to think
that Bush's success in ramming this through will benefit the Republicans
and Bush because it returns the emotional focus to fear and submission.
The current polls suggest that only 20% of Americans approve of the way
the current Iraq war is being run, but an additional 33% approve of it
'if a new strategy were used' (if it were Kerry-ified). So that means
that a majority approve; Less than half disapprove. This is quite
amazing, considering the actual 'facts on the ground' and is omninous
with respect to a possible attack on Iran, which in older polls cited
above was even more popular than the Iraq war.
[Oct04'06] Foley says he wrote the dirty love emails (and had cyber sex
while voting on the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriation for
Iraq in 2003) because he was molested by clergy. So to fix this, he
resigned and checked himself into an alcohol rehab run by Scientologists
(better clergy?). Sounds like Frank Zappa. And how do we know that
he's not lying to cover up the fact that he was actually molested
by conjoined Amish twins? (oh, mercy). The great majority of child
molesters are heterosexual but this isn't useful Repug spin. Teehee.
While this hallucinogenic circus goes on, out of view of the news,
17 US soldiers were killed in Iraq from Saturday to Tuesday, and 263 other
humans were killed in Iraq Tuesday -- all in just one day. Amazingly,
Bush's poll numbers have continued their rise from his all time low
in May 2006, which was partly due to a spike in gas prices, which
are now easing. Unlike gas prices, sex scandals have no affect on an
already-made-up Republican mind. In fact, I fear that Republicans
may not lose control of either house of Congress if enough media
chaff is blown into the air in the next few weeks. For example,
alert viewers noticed that on Tuesday, Foley was repeatedly listed as a
Democrat on Fox 'News' O'Reilly Factor. Kewl Rove effect. Americans
sure are cheap dates -- the 'laughing terrorist' tape released last
week was already in US possession at the end of 2001 as explained (!) by
expert Evan
Coleman on NBC "Ladies and gentlemen -- this is a psyop; do not
attempt to adjust the controls; we control the vertical". Of course,
depending on how pesky those daily polls look, some stronger medicine
may be required, but I doubt it will be needed. I suppose the thing
that depresses me the most is the leisurely mechanical way in which
policy works. For example, the "Salvador option" for Iraq was announced
by John 'Death Squad' Negroponte almost two years ago (see above).
Now we see its full expression.
[Oct05'06] Drudge explains today that the "naughty emails" were just a
prank. Works for me. An 'insider' responding to Drudge said it couldn't
be a prank but insisted on anonymity. It worked for him/her, too!
[Oct07'06] There is a useful book "Where There is No Doctor". But that's
a little premature. First we need "Where There is no iPod" (yes, I own
an early model). It is insane to be spending $100 billion a year to make
a shambles of Iraq instead of spending $100 billion a year on upgrading
non-car transport, given predictions about near future oil production.
Why do people look at you dirty for trying to plan ahead? Why is it
considered immoral and anti-business to even think about planning more
than 1 year into the future?
[Oct09'06] Bush's polls took about a 5% hit from PageGate. But I think
the NK test may reverse that and resume the upward trend stimulated
by low gas prices over the past few months. We will have to wait for
another week to see. The aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its escort
set sail for Iran a week ago and will get there around October 21.
That's seems a little small for an Iran attack. Perhaps the attack has
been put off until after the election.
[Oct20'06] What's up? The continuing Pagegate dribbles suggest some kind
of internal squabble amongst the ruling junta. I had expected that
the neocon Republicans would have been pushed out years ago in favor
of equally pliant Clinton-style 'Demopublicans', but I was mistaken.
But now that it looks looks like they may finally be on the ropes, I'm
not sure I am looking forward to the alternative. The 'I can't believe
it's not torture' Military Commissions Act sailed through with hardly
a comment. Most Democrats voted against it, but Hillary voted for it.
It is worth noting that the people who are probably doing the pushing
in Pagegate are the same people who book rendition flights to Syria.
The Foley follies may have served a dual purpose as both house-cleaning
as well as a smokescreen for the creeping police state.
[Oct25'06] The news that ethanol producers are being hurt by the
recent drop in oil prices fills my brain with a weird feeling that
combines ennui and disgust. Ethanol from corn is a pretty stupid idea
since currently you have to put in about 4-5 units of fossil fuel to
get 4-5 units of ethanol plus 1 energy unit worth of brewers grains
(fermentation leftovers -- yum). This is mostly because it takes a lot
of energy to distill the ethanol-water mixture generated by fermentation.
It's obviously not practical to scale up an EROEI = 1.2 to 1.25 process
that much, even ignoring the cost to soil fertility and water supplies.
And as soon as the market for brewer's grains saturates, you'd end up with
an energy break-even (EROEI = 1.0) process. But the news that ethanol
is taking a beating because of a few weeks dip in oil prices strikes
me as absurd -- even given that ethanol from corn is a very bad idea.
This is how we plan to power our fine civilization? Changing our plans
on the roll of an oil hedge fund's dice? What insanity! Even Vinod
Khosla -- so recently a major ethanol booster -- has suddenly turned
against it this week. Imagine if people treated infrastructure like
roads this way. Luckily, roads are harder to tear up that quickly.
Besides, they will eventually make fine bicycle paths if we can get a
hold of them before road maintenance goes away :-}
[Oct29'06] The elections are almost upon
us. The Democrats have graciously promised
to continue the war in case they 'win' (gee thanks, you disgusting
worms). But it has been apparent for over a month that a pre-election Saddam
surprise was being planned. It is a testament to the power of
government-corporate media that things like this can be planned in
advance, basically in public, *but they work anyway* -- even with the
internet. The 'bin Laden' tape shown a few days before Nov 2004 election
(plus a little vote machine fraud) was all that was needed back then. It
is true that Bush himself couldn't win now because he is about 13
points below when he was at breakeven in Nov 2004. But the
Republiworms still might survive the midterms with a little help
from the Saddam verdict, the ongoing counter-barrage of sex dirt,
and another 'bin Laden' tape. From an anonymous comment by "w" at
informationclearinghouse: "Oh, how I love the smell of human nature in
the morning"...
[Nov02'06] Boy, the rats are really leaving the sinking
ship! Bechtel, Halliburton and Kroll are exiting Iraq after prying
their mouths loose from the money spigot. And redundant
scumbags Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens get on Paula
Zahn and say they oppose Bush and the war without mentioning how,
when it counted in the run-up to war, they supported it all the way.
It's skin-crawlingly embarrassing to watch. The likely bill for the Iraq
war will come in at at least 1 trillion dollars. That would have paid
for about 3 years of total US oil imports (15 billion barrels of oil at
75 dollars a barrel). We certainly have not managed to steal anywhere
near that much oil. Total Iraq production numbers are unreliable, but
is likely to have been less than 2 billion barrels of oil total since
the war started. I have always suspected that the chaos was part of the
plan to keep the oil in the ground for when the crunch really starts to
hit in a few years. Conventionally, Iraq's reserves are thought to be
around 100 billion barrels, though this is after the mid-80's doubling
of reserves when oil prices crashed. If the real reserves are closer to
50 billion barrels, then we could have just bought everything remaining
for 3 trillion, and nobody would have gotten hurt. The permanent bases
and the biggest embassy in the world are still under construction, so
it is hard to believe the war is over yet. I'll believe that the US is
leaving when *those* construction projects (as opposed to electricity
and sewage for Iraqis) end. If we stay for a while longer, the total
cost easily get up to 3 trillion.
[Nov08'06] Well, the most expensive midterm election in history ($2.8
billion dollars) is over and looks the Democrats have taken the House,
partly because opposition to the war is growing and partly out of disgust.
The news sites all mention the war, but not the fact that a number of
the gained seats are occupied by pro-war Democrats, courtesy of Democrat
master planner, Rahm Emanuel (though his pro-war war-injury wheelchair
candidate lost). So the war will go on for the foreseeable future.
Phased redeployments will occur. That means staying. The Democrats
may end up devoting *even more* resources and troops to the war, to 'do
it right'. I'm sure that the Iraqis would have liked us *so* much better
and would have been happy to have us steal their oil if only our troops
had had better body armour, and if we had only used more robot drones
to sneakily blow them up at night instead of shooting them in their
beds up close and personal, and if all our troops got counseling for
PTSD not only after but also *before* slaughtering families. Riiight.
The Democrats do have a problem, though -- if they don't make *some*
kind of antiwar noise, they may be back out the door soon. It should
be interesting seeing the centrist neocon-like core of the Democratic
party trying to weasel their way around this one. They will have to
repeatedly explain their votes to pay for the continued occupation --
since we can't leave all that oil just sitting there 'unprotected',
can we? -- yet they will have to explain every time that the war it
is just about to end, any minute now, and that it's all Bush's fault.
Iran fired a large number of surface-to-air missiles in a test and the
US armada in the Persian gulf seems to have temporarily backed off.
Perhaps that Iran tests had something to do with the back down.
[Nov11'06] The U.S. armed services have requested a staggering
$160 billion supplemental appropriation to fund the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan just for the second half of fiscal year 2007. For context,
this half-a-year request is roughly 10 times what we spend in half a
year on all biomedical research in this country. This request is on
top of the half a trillion or so appropriated for 'defense' each year.
Way to go, America. Thank god we no longer have to fight this war
'on the cheap', Rumsfeld-style, since he's gone, right?
[Nov13'06] I have begun to curb the misanthropy that can sometimes well
up when I read that the best way to fix finite energy, water, soil,
and food resources in the face of growing human population and growing
human demands is to keep on buying *even more* things in order to help
creative businessmen innovate. If only *even more* plasma screens could
be bought on credit, our cunning businessmen would be able to make *even
more* money, which would help them to solve the peak oil problem for us
(we don't have to do anything ourselves -- just buy), because that's why
we pay them the big bucks. Instead of letting my brain react to this
crap as if it had smelt something bad, I am learning in my old age that
it's better to take complete control of my mind, sit back, and watch the
river flow. One or two billion people are just starting to slowly and
desperately creep northward in search of water and food. In a decade or
two, more will moving faster. The northerners will try to keep them out.
Eventually, cars and roads and chip fabs will begin to be abandoned.
Some humans may embrace earlier patterns of living. It's neither bad or
good, beautiful or ugly. They don't call us Baby Doomers (from Jas
Jain) for nothing!
[Nov17'06] Hoyer (pro-Israel, liberal, hawk) crushes Murtha (conservative,
ABSCAM-swift-boated, antiwar, former Marine) for House Democratic majority
leader in a secret vote. Standard labels sure are strange these days.
Matt Barganier wrote on antiwar.com a few days ago, "Here's a plan:
leave". But now that the election is safely over, the mainstream media
blitz against withdrawal has reached a new screeching crescendo to
make it clear why now we have to spend more than twice as much on Iraq
(the latest *half-year* extra-for-Iraq request will be for $125 to 160
billion!) and send 20,000 more troops on top of the 150,000 already there.
As usual, I'm amazed by how pliable the public is. While Al Franken
is distracting the proles with his stupid victory dance on Colbert,
the war is *escalating* (in order to end it, of course). The rats are
boarding the new ship. A great election victory! How Orwellian.
[Nov22'06] The 'I can't believe it's not apartheid' Dems
have jumped over themselves to rebut the title of Jimmy
Carter's new book. The destruction of the two-state solution has
left only the one-state solution (or the final solution for Palestinians,
a la Avigdor Lieberman). The eventual one-state solution will simply
be a public recognition of the 'facts on the ground' -- the shelled
bombed walled Bantustan prisons of Gaza and the West Bank will never be
a Palestinian state. A (even bloodier) assault on Gaza is likely to
occur soon under cover of Thanksgiving and the Gemayel assassination
in Lebanon It will probably look something like this
accidental attack on BBC reporters in Iraq in 2003.
It will be on teevee everywhere but here in the US [update:
Nov29 -- more killings on Sat, none on Sun, more on Monday].
And as Nancy Pelosi has explained, the original and
ongoing seizure of Palestinian land has *absolutely nothing* to do
with the conflict.
[Nov29'06] It is difficult to curb the tendency of the human mind
toward black and white. Sometimes, things *are* basically black and
white. In the case of the Iraq war before it started in late 2002, I
was virtually positive (see above) that there were no WMDs. This was
based on all the faked propaganda as well as the fact that the US
was preparing to invade without any obvious fear of WMD retaliation.
Anyone with a scientific attitude and an internet connection could have
come to the same conclusion before the war started. Not 100% positive,
but 99.9% positive. With respect to the current situation in Iraq,
it's important keep similar probabilities in mind. I think that there
is no question that a divide-and-conquer strategy of encouraging Shi'a
vs. Sunni vs. Kurd sectarian violence was an explicit strategy of the
US and UK -- e.g., see the "El Salvador option" comment of Negroponte,
or UK soldiers caught by Iraqis dressed as Arabs carrying car bombs.
Over the past 6 months, however, it looks like things have gotten slightly
more out of control than even the Rumsfelds and Negropontes planned.
The Negropontes et al. have their own probability estimates, but they
are hardly perfect either. The US and the UK appear to be somewhat less
in control of the oil than they were initially planning to be. But the
problem comes in estimating just how out of control things actually are.
This is currently very difficult, since there is virtually no independent
non-propaganda information coming out of Iraq and virtually nothing
is known about what is really going on with their oil industry, aside
from reports of pipeline attacks and repairs. Patrick Cockburn took
a dangerous drive along the Iranian border and talked to a few people
on the way this week. He said it was too dangerous to go into many
towns. That's as good as it has gotten for the past few months. So,
I maintain a high level of uncertainty with respect to what is currently
happening and what will happen next. It is possible that the US could
have its Vietnam evacuation moment in the next year as a result of
an interruption of the main supply line north from Kuwait and Basra,
should the US significantly attack their Shi'a death squad allies.
Or the Green Zone could suffer a major Ba'athist attack on the Shi'a
death squad administrators housed there. Currently, it seems somewhat
more likely to me that the US military will hang on without a major
disaster, and retreat somewhat into its permanent bases and into the
Green Zone to cut casualties. I am virtually certain that the US will
not voluntarily leave all that oil behind. They will only go if they
are forced out militarily. Oil prices appear to be on the way back up.
If prices get up to $100 next year, it probably won't be difficult to
convince the proles to start changing their mind about the occupation.
The oil card has already been floated by Bush.
[Dec01'06] Natural gas prices have jumped up
because it got cold for a few weeks. Just the warm
(cold?) feeling of the invisible hand at work. This graph
of conventional and non-conventional gas production in the US is not
comforting (notice how non-conventional is not compensating for the
drop in conventional). Natural gas is also the feedstock for making
fertilizer. I'm not looking forward to when the invisible hand starts
grabbing my food.
[Dec03'06] The world is getting pretty weird. Perhaps Rumsfeld was fired
partly because he was planning an Iraq drawdown!? As expected (by me
and others), the 'commission' doesn't suggest withdrawal, Bush ignores
it anyway, and the Orwellian press explains it all to the proles. Bush's
numbers are down but still haven't breached the post-Katrina low.
[Dec12'06] World 'oil' production is holding steady as larger and larger
amounts of 'condensate' or 'natural gas liquids' are substituting for
traditional crude oil. In the depleted US, only a quarter of our 6
million barrels of a day of 'oil' production comes from *crude oil*.
The rest is 'condensate', which is slightly shorter chain hydrocarbons
that condense from a gas to liquid (e.g., pentane) when they come up
the well bore and are cooled to surface temperatures (don't get these
'natural gas liquids' mixed up with 'liquified natural gas', which is
cooled, compressed methane). The earth is hotter and hotter with depth.
For example, it can be 180 deg centigrade -- well above the boiling
point of water -- in a deep gas well. Natural gas liquids come out
of gas wells, which are generally deeper than oil wells. They mostly
produce gas (methane) and 'natural gas liquids' because the higher
heat at greater depths 'cracks' the oil to shorter chain hydrocarbons.
The lastest way to make oil production look like it's not dropping is to
not only include condensates (natural gas liquids) but also ethanol (!).
This total number, which is available for liquid fuels for cars, trucks,
and planes, is called 'all liquids'. The problem is that ethanol is
made using a lot of natural gas and coal, and is mainly a conversion
product of fossil fuels, not a big energy source (energy returned on
energy invested, EROEI, is only 1.2-1.3 for corn ethanol in the US, and
this is only after including spent brewers grains as an energy output).
The rest of the oil-producing world is inexorably headed to where the US
is now. Gas wells also deplete much faster than oil wells, because the
gas comes out of porous rocks more quickly. Thus, the production from
a typical US gas begins to drop off markedly after only 5 or 6 years.
Move along, nothing to see here.
[Dec19'06] Stuart Staniford returned to posting on The Oil Drum after
an absence and had a few recent posts on how we are spending too much
money on public transit and should instead count on smaller, better gas
mileage vehicles. Ooooh! Don't get the scary American consumers mad!
Ooooh! Don't anger the godlike venture capitalists! (Stuart do you
really think that that dufus Vinod Khosla is godlike in anything else
than the ability to line his pockets with the money of stupid people?).
Stuart didn't include all of the subsidies given to cars and highways,
or the costs associated with the fact that there are 750,000 maimings a
year on US highways (defined as the loss of at least an arm, a leg, or
an eye), but he is probably right that better mileage will give us the
biggest bang for the buck in the next few years. Also, Stuart had it
right about scary Americans, but for the wrong reason. Sure they won't
support a large tax on fossil energy. But down the line, I'm worried
about what they might support when the sh** really starts to hit the
fan as the world arrives at the endgame of peak 'all fossil energy'
(coal+oil+gas+nuclear). That's still a ways off (2030 by the sensible
estimates I know). My worry is that then, the US will still have the
world's best WMD's, but will likely have continued its ongoing contraction
in percent of the world gross national product (currently, about 22%
down from 60% in the middle of the 20th century and will probably have
lost its ability to outbid other major powers for energy resources.
Scary indeed. Of course, Stuart can't imagine planning that far ahead
because that's not how capitalism works, currently, in the US and UK.
Too bad. Another thing that irks me about The Oil Drum is the studied
avoidance of the elephant-in-the-room topic of the ongoing occupation
of the country containing 12% of the world's remaining oil. Sheesh!
It's the *oil* drum. It's embarrassing to see otherwise smart people with
all their graphs (I like graphs!) skirting around the issue. This doesn't
mean that the Iraq oil steal is a slam dunk -- though the operation has
not
yet failed and we are now getting
a lot of oil from Iraq (again), it's not completely out
of the question that the US military could actually lose.
[Dec20'06] Bush announces that
70,000 more troops are going to Iraq along with an extra $100 billion
(on top of the regular half-a-trillion Bloat-a-gon budget), the Democratic
worms hide in their own night soil (that's what we elected them for,
right?), and for a distraction, Wolf Blitzer interviews David Duke, who
accuses Wolf of still working for AIPAC and of having him on to try to
spin 'Iran' (he probably meant Iraq). Good Americans yawn uncomfortably
as they prepare to pay for the holocaust of another half a million Iraqis
because underneath it all, they know they value their SUV's more than
other human lives. Why protest? Good Americans.
[Dec21'06] In a talk at Berkeley last month, Peter
Dale Scott made the point that by 9:59 AM on 9-11, the time of the
second collapse, the FBI already had a list of the alleged hijackers
(Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp. 13-14). But according to the
9-11 Report, NORAD only became aware that Flight 93 was hijacked 9 minutes
later at 10:08, after it had already crashed (the 9-11 Report says it
crashed at 10:03). Those FBI guys sure got that list out quick.
[Dec28'06] "Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist.
That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming" -- Supreme
Court Justice Scalia, 2006. Don't worry, Tony, you won't have to deal
with global warming. Your 9 kids and their grandkids will deal with it
(whether or not they're scientists...).
[Jan04'07] The virtual silence of the antiwar movement is dreadful. Just
about the only visible resistance is Cindy Sheehan (go Cindy!) closing
down an Orwellian Rahm Emanuel event with a moment of clarity.
Nancy Pelosi flexes her biceps for the camera, which is fine, but the
upcoming escalation of the Iraq war merits hardly a peep from her.
The only thing she will say about Iraq in her acceptance speech is: "It
is the responsibility of the President to articulate a new plan ... that
allows us to responsibly redeploy American forces". What complete trash!
I'm sure the preznit is articulating a new plan for redeploying troops.
The 2006 election was completely irrelevant! Bush will propose a troop
increase, the Democratic worms and roaches will bravely force him to
increase a tiny bit less, and then they will vote to pay for it all,
which will be an increase over current funding, without ever bringing
up the elephant-in-the-room fact that the whole multi-trillion dollar war
was based on outright lies (WMDs and Iraq/9-11). The only way to end the
war quicker is to vote *against* appropriations, not to increase them!
That's exactly how the Vietnam war ended. The Democratic guy with
the blown arteriovenous malformation will be replaced by a Republican
worm, and the Democratic worms will just wriggle a bit. Oil is actually
dropping. It went down $5 over the past two days (over 8%, $61 -> $56).
So life is good. And blowing that trillion or two to demolish Iraq and
continuously terrorize all of its inhabitants is, oh well, it's impolite
to bring it up during the shopping season. Bush's numbers numbers
*are* almost down to his post-Katrina all-time low (which was,
averaging across polls about, 34% approval). If they go down
another 10% into the twenties -- which would be quite possible if
there were to be an oil price spike -- there might be some actual
unease in Washington. Since the largest two currently producing
oil fields are crashing (Ghawar at 5% and Cantarell at 2% of current
world production), and since crude oil stocks are rapidly dropping,
the spike may be just around the corner. However, it's good to remember
that Congress routinely polls in the twenties and even below, and that
doesn't mean people care enough to do anything about it. Just drive
the SUV to the exercise place.
[Jan10'07] This
article by Robert Parry is profoundly depressing. Among other
things, it confirms the notion I suggested above that Rumsfeld was fired
because he had 'gone wobbly' on the Iraq war (!). And the disgusting
vicious Negroponte -- originally associated with the Vietnam CIA Phoenix
assassination program, and after that, architect of the Central American
death squads in the 80's -- may have been demoted from intelligence czar
to Condi's helper because he argued that intelligence suggested that Iran
was still many years away from bomb-grade uranium enrichment. As Chalmers
Johnson (former CIA) and others have written, as empires start to decay
as a result of the run-down of energy, food, metals, soil, and climate
change, they often find it impossible to avoid over-allocating resources
to foreign and domestic militarization. This diverts resources -- at the
most critical point in time -- from constructive efforts to reorganize
the empire to avoid collapse. As an example, the enormous drain of tax
money into Iraq (3-5 times the entire budget for biomedical research,
a comparable amount of money to what is spent to import oil!) has
resulted in the freezing of science budgets, esp. in the physical
sciences (e.g., better renewable energy, better batteries, etc.).
When per capita energy begins to decline in a decade or two (it has
been flat since 1980), it will be more and more difficult to undo the
infrastructure decisions -- such as low density spread-out suburbs --
made in a time of higher per capita energy consumption, because undoing
them requires so much energy. Society will likely get less complex.
The reduction in complexity of societies has happened very many times
in human history. Sometimes it was fast and disorderly; other times it
was slower and more dignified. Many people think that the development
of modern technology and science in the twentieth century has moved us
beyond the possibility of complexity reduction. Certainly, there are more
smart, technologically capable people alive today than there were at any
point in human history; and smart humans are more fully interconnected
than they have ever been in history. But that interconnection relies
primarily on late nineteenth to mid twentieth century energy supplies --
coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium -- that are running out (humans now
use oil at a rate of 150 tons per second, every second). As someone
recently pointed out, an avatar in Second Life uses as much energy as a
real Brazilian. I don't think that complexity reduction is unavoidable.
And there is still a lot of 'slack' in the system (e.g., cars that are way
too big). But watching the Democrats cave on increases in militarization
(Pelosi is 'against the war' but will not cut funding for it -- WTF?),
and seeing the late-Roman-empire-like imperial overstretch overseas and
the militarization of domestic life (daily innundation with images of
SWAT teams and hazmat suits; the latest '24' is about domestic internment
camps), it seems clear that at this point, we are still moving in the
wrong direction.
[Jan15'07] Today was the Orwellian "Martin Luther King" parade. Over the
years in San Diego, it has gradually attracted larger and larger numbers
of the military and prison industrial complex, which finally this year
prompted the peace community to withdraw (King opposed the Vietnam war
early on, in 1967 -- the war ended in 1973). The US now has 5 to 10
times as many people in jail per capita as any other Western country
-- the highest percentage in the entire world (3x China, 2x Russia).
The US was more or less like other Western countries from 1920 to 1980.
Since then, the number of people in jail per capita has gone up over
500%, a lot of it, the result of the war on pot. In California, prison
guards make more money than University full professors. In 1980, we
used to spend twice as much tax money on the Universities as we did
on prisons. Now we spend more than twice tax money on prisons as we
spend on Universities. In this light, it was perhaps not surprising to
see the a prison transport bus, decorated as a float, with people waving
happily through barred windows -- in the "Martin Luther King" parade?
How sad. War is peace. Imprisonment is freedom.
[Jan16'07] Every day is a decision. The problem with ballots is that
they just have stupid face contests and bozo propositions on them
instead of issues. There should be votes in which you have to choose
between health insurance and invading a foreign country to make sure we
get the oil and someone else doesn't. Or, 'do you want to change over
to coal-to-liquids as regular oil depletes thereby ruining the Earth
for your grandchildren, or do you want everybody to buy smaller cars'?
Decisions, decisions.
[Jan21'07] Here is my annotation
of Stuart Eugene Thiel's (Pollkatz') Bush approval poll compilation
for today, showing the Mighty Wurlitzer in action over the past
6 years. By my calculations, it looks like the uptick from the 'war
on shampoo' was almost exactly nullified by the downtick from the
Abramoff/Page-gate/Republicans-feeding-in-the-money-trough scandals.
The graph sure looks like is ripe for another uptick to me...
[Jan22'07] Global carbon emissions are currently about 1 ton per person
per year on average. But we Americans put out and average of 10 tons
each per year once indirect output (CO2 generated when stuff is made
elsewhere and transported here) is included. We could reduce global
carbon outputs in a fair way by having Americans reduce a lot and
having other people not increase too much. Unfortunately, I think
this is very unlikely to happen voluntarily on either end. However,
looking on the bright side :-}, oil+gas will peak soon, which will
start to force a slow decline in CO2 output from oil+gas, perhaps as
soon as by the end of this decade (ASPO). What happens *then* with
respect to coal will be critical for the quality of human (and other)
life on the planet after the middle of this century. If we burn all the
remaining EROEI>1.0 coal or convert most of it to liquids in an attempt
to keep our current lifestyle going for another few decades, our kids
probably won't forgive us for ruining the Earth, and why should they?
That is exactly what we are currently setting up to do! Large numbers of
coal plants without CO2 sequestration are being planned and built, and
coal-to-liquids is the next big thing, in America and elsewhere (e.g.,
see Stern report, or the fact that a new coal power station is coming
online every 5 days in China). This winter has been very warm (December
2006 average as much as 10 degrees higher than previous averages)
in northern
America and northern Europe, and this has spooked some people there
a little; but it was also unusually pleasant (I grew up in Chicago).
But I am afraid it is not scary and not nearly unpleasant enough.
Given that weather has some chaotic features, the best I can 'hope' for
is a really shocking event -- a once-in-a-millenium storm that causes a
dam to fail or a freak once-in-a-millenium winter that causes a worldwide
crop failure. It won't be directly attributable to global warming, but
people will think it is a sign from the gods, and might start to wake
from their daily walking (I mean driving...) dreams and do something to
avoid leaving their grandchildren a fried earth. Alternatively, peak
oil+gas could cause an economic collapse that prevents the immediate
atmosphere-i-fication of all the remaining coal. Hmmm... I'm not sure
which I would prefer (an act of god or an act of economics). But I
think both are preferable to business as usual for the simple reason that
the bad effects of CO2 additions take many decades to kick in (this is
what the climate scientists really mean when they say that the system
is now 'not in equilibrium with current forcings'). Business as usual
is likely to result in a terrible coming together of global warming,
sea level rise, increased storminess, crop failure, water shortages,
and energy starvation in the second half of this century.
[Jan24'07] SWAT teams are called out 40,000 times
annually -- over 100 times a day. There have been essentially
no terrorist incidents for years, and so most of the time, the SWAT
teams are serving warrants, often drug-related. The great majority
of the drug-related late night home invasions are based on tips
from snitches (people trying to cop a plea), and many have resulted
in mistakes and murders (next old lady door neigbor, the address
provided the snitch was drawn at random). Here is a map map of where the SWAT teams murdered
innocent people (e.g., after being startled by their own flash bang
grenades) and where they broke into the wrong house. Sometimes, a snitch
might sell a small amount of pot to a person to create a suspect (and
some income). At its height, the East German Stasi turned a substantial
portion of the population into snitches and had enormous paper files on
just about everybody. The real problem is providing 'market incentives'
to people to become snitches. There are various kinds of incentives.
In the bad old days of El Salvador, death squads would torture each
suspect they kidnapped until they came up with a few names. Then they
would kidnap those people and torture them. We really don't want to
(continue to) go there, people.
[Jan24'07] Well, so much for the hydrogen economy (that was a few
state-of-the-unions ago). Hydrogen is *soooo* 2004, man! This year,
it's corn ethanol. The energy return on energy invested for ethanol is at
best 1.3, after counting dried distiller grains as output (the market for
them as cow food is already saturated). If you just the count fossil fuel
input, the EROEI for corn ethanol is more like 1.1 (from the pro-ethanol
Kammen lab study in Science), so you need 10 units of fossil fuel to make
one unit of ethanol. This is so you can replace one unit of fossil fuel.
This idiocy of it all is stunning. By contrast, Brazilian ethanol is
more energy positive because they harvest a lot of the sugar cane by
hand, and then they burn the bagasse leftovers (instead of fossil fuel)
to distill the ethanol. Scaling this up would result in at least 2x the
CO2 output of fossil fuels (cane bagasse burnt for distilling, then the
ethanol itself burnt as fuel). To scale this up much at all would cut
deeply into soil fertility, cropland, and water supply. But who needs
food and water as long as you can *drive*?
[Jan25'07] No reasonably well-to-do middle-class US- or UK-ian would
think of *not* driving a kid around in a giant SUV with a special car
seat to 'make them safe'. They're doing it for the children! At the
same time, not one of these people thinks twice about destroying the
earth for those very same kids by moving to a huge house in the suburbs
and driving them around in a giant SUV. In *that* case: "it's not our
problem; somebody will figure something out; everybody else is doing it;
it's child abuse to discuss such a scary topic with a child; it won't
happen for a while anyway; it's too inconvenient to not do it; public
transportation is for poor people and therefore unsafe; blah, blah".
When our kids grow up, they will find us disgusting.
[Jan26'07] Chomsky is always babbling on about how the world is getting
so much more civilized (smaller and smaller holocausts). It is true
there is nothing to compare with the biggest holocaust of all time --
the reduction of the population of the New World from 80 million to
about 10 million in the first 100 years of the occupation by Spaniards,
Italians, Portuguese, and British in the 16th century. But sometimes
things decisively turn around, for the worse. It looks like the vulcans
in the US and Israel are slavering over themselves once again as they
contemplate using small nuclear bombs on a non-nuclear-bomb-possessing
country, Iran -- a place where in a poll this month, 70% of the
population has a favorable view of the US (that seems higher than here!).
A fear that I voiced a few years ago is that this just might 'work'.
It will be unbelievably horrible. But then, somewhere upwards of
2/3 of a million Iraqis have already perished horribly -- and nobody
here cares. There would probably be similar level of casualities
in a small nuclear attack. Will Good Americans care? I doubt it.
However, Iran will survive such a nuclear attack if large hydrogen bombs
are not used. Just as our oil-reserves-driven attack on a starved,
defenseless Iraq made us look weak, a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear
Iran will make us look even more weak (Scott Horton
interview with Gordon Prather mp3). Contrary to the brayings of
hypercapitalists, maintaining the position of the US requires a huge
amount of good will from other people -- i.e., altruism. A nuclear
attack will use up what is left of that. Stupid chess move, vulcans
(not to mention, it's *wrong*). 'Give us your oil and food, or we'll
hydrogen bomb you' is not a plausible negotiating strategy for a teetering
empire.
[Jan27'07] I just read a story linked to from Rawstory. A toddler
reached for an electrical cord and the parents gave the kid a swat on its
diapered bottom. Their grandmother in law was there and threatened to
file a child abuse report. She was asked to leave. She wouldn't. So the
father tasered her. The whole sequence starting with the grandmother's
threat just puts my mind off balance. What will happen to us when we
start facing real problems? Where is common sense? I feel like people's
minds are losing their coherence under the onslaught of media, marketing,
and modern life and are becoming brittle and drone-like. I see this in
my classes. My students in undergraduate and graduate classes come in
knowing less and less about basic biology, much less evolution. Some of
them haven't even heard of the idea of evolution! This is in part because
textbook manufacturers -- bottom-line people they are -- were scared
by the creationists wanting front cover stickers saying evolution was
just a theory, blah, blah. That's bad for sales. So instead of adding
creationism to the biology texts, they simply took out evolution, along
with a lot of the biology. Understanding biology without evolution is like
trying to understand electricity and magnetism while carefully avoiding
any reference to the Maxwell equations. A similar thing is starting to
happen with global warming. After an evangelical who works as a "computer
consultant" complained in Washington state, a local school board sent
out a ban on showing 'controversial' films about global warming in
science classes for 22,000 students in the district. The stupefying
reason for the complaint wasn't that the parent disagreed that the earth
was heating up! He was just ticked off because he believed that the
warming wasn't caused by lefty carbon dioxide, but rather that it was
"one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.
I'm thinking we should try to postpone it (judgment day) for a bit.
Probably even that guy's 7 kids would appreciate it when they grow
up.
[Jan27'07] The richies in Davos fattened up by globalization are
getting worried about global warming. Something must be done.
De-globalization and boiling a little of their own fat off? I don't
think so. These parasites will be coming after the small amount of fat
remaining on their hosts.
[Jan29'07] An article today in the Wall Street Journal has a shocking
graph showing that Cantarell -- the super giant oil field in the Yucatan
that accounts for more than half of Mexico's oil output -- peaked in
2004 and is now rapidly declining (it's output was boosted by nitrogen
injection starting in 2000). The output of Cantarell declined a stunning
25% in 2006 (though partly due to scheduled maintenance -- the expected
continuing decline rate is 'only' 15%). Cantarell accounts for 2% of
total world oil production and like the North Sea, began its decline
unexpectedly. Not worthy of the US teevee news, of course (after all,
Mexico is just one of our largest oil import sources, whatever). Here is
a graph from a Pemex report (now
taken down) from 2005, showing the rapid increase between 2000 and 2004
(as a result of the initiation of nitrogen injection -- 'secondary
production'). Here is the sorry
tale of what happened after 2004. In June 2005 (see my recently
updated peak oil talk), based on that Pemex
report, I expected Cantarell to start declining in 2008. Little did
I know that Cantarell was already past peak at that time! US peak
oil in 1970 was like that; and it peaked despite a huge (more than 10
times) increase in the number of wells drilled in Texas as well as the
discovery of a super giant field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Omninously,
Saudi Arabia has been on a drilling binge. World peak will likely sneak
up on us in a similar fashion. Hopefully, it's still a few years off
(I guessed 2008 a few years ago; most of the curve fitters at theOilDrum
are currently guessing 2010-2012).
[Feb02'07] Dang, another Robert Parry article,
combined with the chimp grabbing extra executive powers earlier this week
is sure starting to move me from being incredulous about an Iran attack to
being resigned. It seems we're at the stage of November or December 2002
with respect to Iraq. But seriously, screw the resigned B.S. people,
we *really* shouldn't let this happen! We're getting near peak oil.
We need to start planning ahead constructively, not trying to squat on
other people's oil halfway around the globe. From a strictly military
perspective, that's a *mighty* long supply line to defend when the rest
of the world finally begins to take action against us. Note that they
are still with us now; a recent poll in Iran of all places showed that
70% of the people there had a favorable view of the US! One of our
Darth Vader attack flotillas just sailed unmolested through the Suez
canal toward the oil, I mean, toward Iran. I wouldn't bet on something
like that happening without a hitch in 2015 once real oil shortages have
begun to bite -- or that tankers will be able to leave from there to come
here unmolested. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the plan is to spend $170 billion
this year (not counting money used from the gigantic 'defense' budget).
That means that each year, Iraq alone is sucking up more than 5 times
what we spend on all biomedical research every year. Really, really,
really stupid.
[Feb04'07] Zbignew Brzezinski said this last Thursday in the Senate:
"A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves
Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of
Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in
Iraq, or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a
'defensive' U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely
America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging
across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A mythical historical
narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially
expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by
false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as
the 'decisive ideological struggle' of our time, reminiscent of the
earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist
extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat
posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent
of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement
in World War II." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senate Foreign relations
testimony, February 1, 2007 (transcript from senate.gov here).
Zbig's not your average conspiracy theorist but the very guy that set
up al-Qaida against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- he's a conspiracy
construction worker. That's the funny thing about the US. You can
softly explain how things work ahead of time, but they will still work
their magic anyway, because the big media will voluntarily keep a tight
lid on the key wink wink, nudge nudges.
[Feb05'07] It's absurd that Bostonians should be rewarded with $2 million
dollars because the police and the people acted like complete idiots
lacking all common sense, while more sensible police and people elsewhere
(e.g., Chicago) used common sense and they got nothing. Don't reward
those mental midgets! Penalize them! Bostonians should have been sent
a *bill* for ninny-ism, not a check!
[Feb06'07] The disconnect between global warming physics and policy
is both amusing and terrifying. We have already added an amount of
CO2 that distinguishes warm periods from glacial periods -- on top
of a warm period. The warming effects of that extra CO2 have mostly
not been felt yet, but are on the way this century and next no matter
what we do. The climate scientists therefore say we should stop adding
CO2 immediately. So how about hybrids? Well, as Alan Zarembo in the
LA Times notes, if *all* 245 million cars in the US were instantly
replaced by Priuses, that would get us less than 3% of the way there
(to not adding any more CO2), and assuming growth in car buying stopped
cold -- that is, we would still be adding more than 97% of what we are
now adding each year. I guess we can always hope that that maverick
'climate scientist' Michael Crichton is right about global warming being
a hoax, and that the other 99% of climate scientists who actually study
climate science are all wrong. And besides, we're 'well on the way': 1%
of vehicle sales are hybrids now. So this year, we will be reducing
our CO2 output by just under 0.03 percent or 1/3500 of our total,
well on the way to reaching zero by 5506. It is true that most of
those savings from hybrids will be eaten up as soon as General Motors
'responds to the green challenge' and introduces large-engine hybrid
SUVs, but hey, look on the bright side of life, or lookie here instead at
something more important -- like an 'astronaut gone wild'. Seriously,
on the bright side, methane seems to have stopped increasing for now
(it's 21 times worse a greenhouse gas as CO2, but there is a lot less
of it), for unknown reasons, perhaps because Russia fixed some of its
leaking gas pipelines and garbage is being burned instead of being put
into methane-emitting landfills (though that makes CO2 instead).
[Feb07'07] As much as I find Joe Lieberman's warmongering disgusting,
I'm actually in favor of a big war-on-terr'ism tax, but only if it
was from a separate tax table so you could see how much it was.
Since the war on terr'ism seems to involve a lot of probing,
including making sure old man terr'ists aren't hiding things in their
fistulas, perhaps proctologists should be able to get deductions for
making us all safer. But the whole probing thing..., hmmm, d'ya think the
TSA guys are actually aliens posing as TSA guys? A new angle for Rense?
:-}
[Feb09'07] The Pentagon explains
that killing half a million people in Iraq (so far) based on faked
intelligence was "inappropriate" but not "illegal". Woohoo. I'd hate
to see how many people the Pentagon has to kill before it becomes
"wrong". The US killed 2-4 million people in Vietnam. They never said
that was "illegal" or "wrong" either. Maybe if they killed 10 million
people, that would actually be "wrong". We should probably have have
a ten-million-strikes law -- if you dare go over that, bub, yer in jail
for a real long time.
[Feb15'07] While huge piles of military hardware are being hoisted over
to the Persian Gulf towards Iran, Pelosi bravely 'restricts' Iraq war
funding -- oooh, the drama! -- by making sure that it is 'spent properly
for training and equipment' in a non-binding (!) resolution. What utter
worms these people are! But thank god she supports the troops. Because,
instead of 'never again', it's oops, we did it again. The killings
unleashed in Iraq (3/4 of a million people) by our 'well-supported'
Universal Soldiers have reached a level worse than the Rwandan genocide.
Some day, the rest of the world may get around to holding us responsible
for the rape of Iraq. Perhaps for a change, some of the people who gave
the orders will get their due, too.
[Feb26'07] The vicious, blood-stained Negroponte is rumored (Hersh) to
be leaving his National Intelligence directorship to accept a sub-Cabinet
position of Deputy Secretary of State because he is worried about 'off the
books' operations with 'no finding' like the ones he directed in central
America (death-squad-Negroponte worried about 'off the books'?! WTF?).
When scum of the earth like that start jumping ship, things must really
be out of control. I suppose this should be taken as a good sign.
The problem is the giant nest of cockroaches that remain.
[Mar02'07] There are real headlines buried alongside Anna Nicole: "House
Democrats seek more war funds than
Bush". Karen Kwiatkowski's recent interview
interview cuts through the crap: we're staying there. The
Republicans, Democrats, and the American people all support staying, once
you strip away the window dressing. The number of US troop fatalities
and injuries is tiny in the greater scheme of things. *Hundreds of times*
more limbs and eyes are lost in domestic car accidents every year than in
Iraq. The almost one million dead Iraqis don't matter to US-ians at all.
The US will retreat to the giant self-contained concrete air bases and
the troop deaths will subside. They will continue bombing the natives.
The Iraqi resistance can't effectively attack the giant bases. The US
can attack Iran from Iraq and still seems likely to do so this month or
next month, on a new moon.
[Mar06'07] The Department of Transportation
has wisely decided to place an
indefinite moratorium on the installation of Windows Vista on any of
their machines. From Peter Guttmann: "Driver revocation is a lose/lose
situation for Microsoft, they're in for some serious pain whether they
do or they don't. Their lawyers must have been asleep when they let
themselves get painted into this particular corner -- the first time
some 'feature' of Vista's content protection inadvertently takes out
a hospital, foreign government department, air traffic control system,
or whatever, they've guaranteed themselves a front-row seat in court for
the rest of their natural lives." -- Peter Guttmann from his cost
analysis of Windows Vista content protection.
[Mar13'07] Worried about its possible impact on Israel, Democrats
removed a requirement that Bush gain approval from Congress to
attack Iran. This is the beauty of the controlled media. Such a
non sequitur can be printed and broadcast across the land without
evoking any official comment. A more accurate headline (and what
historians will write 50 years from now) would be, in order to protect
the financing of their political campaigns, the US Congress turned over
its constitutional duty to declare war to a dangerous, barely mentally
competent, lame duck president and his vicious puppeteers. I guess the
whole checks and balances things was only really meant to be applied to
things like the minumum wage and not little trifles like declaring war.
Bush should be able to handle another war since the last one worked out
so well, right? (for his bidness cronies). Thank god we sent a message
by electing Democrats, right?
[Mar23'07] The 'liberal' democratic worms completely caved on Iraq
funding. The logic for surrender expressed by David Sirota in support
of the Iraq war spending bill is Orwellian: lawmakers should accept
the congressional world as it is right now and not insist on the
world as they wish it to be. Huh? That'll teach 'em! War is peace!
We'll stop the war by funding it *even more* ($124 billion) than they
originally asked for. After all, that's what the people voted for.
How disgusting and criminal. Almost one million people were killed by
worms like this. The US has created an Iraqi holocaust. Maybe one
day, we'll see these limp cowards in the war crimes dock. The whole
charade is blackly humorous to watch. The US has no intention of ever
(voluntarily) evacuating the huge military bases it has built in Iraq,
but these disgusting lumps of flesh in Congress have to stand there on
the teevee studiously avoiding ever mentioning this reality, day after
day after day.
[Apr03'07] Moved to London.
[Apr09'07] The UK also is not
planning to leave Iraq anytime soon. The UK's North Sea oil
peaked unexpectedly in 1999 and output has been dropping at 10-15% *per
year*. The UK has begun to import oil. By tagging along on the US's
coattails, the hope has presumably been to get some of the spoils, too.
The danger is the unknown rate of decline as the entire world hits peak
oil+condensate in the near future. If the decline rate is steep enough,
the US may not be in a mood to share the spoils.
[Apr10'07] When Walter F. Murphy, an emeritus Constitutional scholar
from Princeton (and a Korean war verteran) who has been critical of
Bush, asked an airline clerk why he had apparently been put
on the no-fly list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any
peace marches. "We ban a lot of people from flying because of that",
the clerk said. He eventually got on his plane, but the clerk said his
luggage would be "ransacked". It ended up 'lost'. For now, it's just
petty harrassment for criticising the fuhrer (as long as you're not
a Muslim). People are not putting up enough objections to each slide
down the slippery slope. There is extreme danger ahead.
[Apr15'07] Wolfowitz. He engineers a policy to slaughter nearly a
million people, and the press has no problem with the morals of that.
But when he arranges to pay his girlie a few extra thousand dollars,
the press nincompoops go ballistic. Give her the money, I don't care.
Then put Mr. Creep in jail for arranging to murder that many people.
He can serve the 1 million sentences concurrently.
[May16'07] Gareth Porter (if you can believe him) reports that the more
aggressive policy toward Iran (3 carriers in the Gulf) was tempered
by Admiral William Fallon, head of CENTCOM, in February 2007. The
'tempering' consisted of keeping the number of carriers there at two, so
that when the Nimitz arrived, another one would leave. Any progress away
from an attack -- however small -- is good news. It is a truly sad day
when Admirals are the only thing standing in the way of disaster.
[May19'07] Money talks. With all the DemoRepublocrap hand-wringing,
the war is still fully funded -- in fact, with the highest budget ever.
The Senate is planning to hold war funding talks in private. What a
charade. The US is like the monkey grabbing onto the oil treat in
the jar. It can't/won't let go of it, no matter what the consequence.
If Chalmers Johnson is right, it may end up turning the US into a
dictatorship.
[Jun12'07] The Iraq occupation and base-building has continued on
schedule. US military spending in Iraq is at record levels. The death
rates for US soldiers and Iraqi civilians are up. The second number is
usually 50x the first, which reflects the reality of all modern hi tech
wars -- extra tech makes it possible for a small number of soldiers to
kill a larger number of civilians with only small losses of their own.
The antiwar left (e.g., Kos) is now 'disillusioned' with the Democrats,
who actually managed to *raise* the amount of money appropriated for
the war over what the Repubs asked for. Wow, disillusion should sure
make those Dems sit up and take notice, right? Meanwhile, left foggers
like Cockburn write nonsense about global warming ("since aerosols
cause temperature to drop, and bad coal companies generate aerosols and
want to generate more, the science of global warming must be false").
Great logic Alex. Ever consider that A and B do not imply C? Did you
forget that the idea that aerosols cause a temperature drop is actually
part of global warming science? Alex also doesn't believe there is
any oil problem. I don't have a good feeling generally about how
things will begin to play out in a decade or two as total fossil
fuel usage (oil+gas+coal) starts to go flat. The trends of the last
three decades have pointed toward more polarization of rich and poor.
Despite suggestions from the left that flattening energy supplies will
somehow cause people to cooperate better, it seems more likely to me
that fossil fuel constraints may further increase wealth polarization
to levels never seen before in the history of civilization. However,
we are entering a new era not exactly like anything that came before.
We have have better tech. Getting rid of one 100,000 watt car makes it
possible to run a whole lot of 50 watt laptops. If we start reducing
consumption now, we might be able to keep the computers.
[Jun27'07] The National Academy of Sciences report on coal includes the
following important statement: "Present estimates of coal reserves
are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since
their inception in 1974, and much of the input data were compiled in
the early 1970s. Recent programs to assess reserves in limited areas
using updated methods indicate that only a small fraction of previously
estimated reserves are actually minable reserves." As conventional
oil continues its decline (the probable peak was 2005), and natural
gas liquids (e.g., pentane) and natural gas (methane) peak in the
near future, the focus will be on coal and mine-able oil (tar sands --
not oil shale, which will likely never be touched because of it's poor
energy-return-on-energy-investment ratio). There is a lot less coal left
than people usually assume. China is currently bringing online one new
coal electric plant per week. Peak fossil fuel energy and peak energy,
period, are closer than people realize. Now is the time to act to reduce
energy usage voluntarily before geology does it for us. To quote the
title of my peak
oil presentation: Mother nature bats last.
[Jul01'07] Bankers have made huge amounts of money from "collateralised
debt obligations" (pdf defining some terms and tricks of the
trade in English for dealing with financial 'toxic waste' here)
where they have bought subprime mortgages but somehow still maintained
high credit ratings. The reason they bought these risky mortgages
was that the interest rate was higher because the people taking out
the mortgages were poor (relative to the size of the mortgages).
Saski Scholtes notes in the Financial Times that it is "ironic"
that "many of these new-fangled instruments" of the uber-capitalists
"have never been priced through market trading." Ironic? Normally,
if you go into a store and grab some cash, they don't call it 'ironic'.
The only difference here is that the scale of cash-grabbing so enormous,
these guys are hauling away semi-trailers of cash -- and there are never
any police sirens.
[Jul08'07] The focus on Libby is utterly idiotic. We are killing 10,000
Iraqis every month. That should be the focus. Who cares if Libby gets
out? Give him a bonus bigger than Wolfowitz's girlie. Libby's pardon
is about as newsworthy as Paris Hilton. I could care less.
[Jul17'07] The 'new' bin Laden video is a laughably bad composite of tapes
previously released more than four years ago (one from 2001) -- though I
didn't hear much laughing. The problem is that I usually underestimate
how effective these stupid fart stunts are. They are not disinfo
but more like movie music, creating a mood, not consciously perceived.
It is amazing how *cheap* these things are to make. Who needs real fake
events when this ultra-low-budget crap just works? Maybe they could pull
out all the stops and have Robert Fisk interview him again next time.
(wouldn't cost much more). It would be like that old Second City skit
where the crime photographer says "Work with me, work with me" to the
corpse he is posing. Bush's numbers are already starting to jog up a
bit from the stupid London stunt (which was barely perceptible here
in London). This will keep up the momentum and keep him from going
below 30%. It's quite amazing that after all that has happened, 30%
of Americans still view Bush favorably, and enthusiastically approve of
killing 10,000 Iraqis a month -- more deaths than ever. Another maybe
30-40% only disapprove of the killing because it seems not to be 'going
well' and has not 'delivered the goods'. I'm not sure how killing 10,000
a people a month could ever 'go well', and we still seem to have our
bloody mitts around 'the goods', but whatever. The peace movement has
virtually collapsed in embarrassment and cowardice after supporting the
Democrats, who immediately turned around and gave Bush even more funding
for the war than he asked for, just like many of us warned. I shudder
to think what would happen if there was another one or two 9-11 sized
events (9-11, bad as it was, was only equivalent to several weeks of US
automobile accident deaths). Overnight, good Americans would be ready
to send their neighbors off to the camps. Unfortunately, a small number
of camps (so far) have already been constructed by Cheney's military
contractor companies, supposedly for unruly immigrants. Nothing to see
here, Americans, move along.
[Jul20'07] The US is still a major oil producer with a output almost
as large as Saudi Arabia, despite being long past (almost half down
from) its 1970 peak. It's interesting to see where it currently
comes from. There are about 880,000 producing wells in the world,
but a full 520,000 of them are in the US. 502,000 (most) of the
US wells use mechanical pumps (e.g., the rocker arms on 'stripper
wells'), which indicate that the wells are depressurized (normal live
wellhead pressure is 2000 to 3500 pounds per square inch -- real wells
don't need a pump, but rather a series of very large stoppers or BOPs
[blowout protectors]). Stripper well produce a mere 1 or 2 barrels
a day. The US also drilled 36,000 new wells last year. The average
per-well output of all US wells was therefore a tiny 100 barrels a day.
Contrast this with Saudi Arabia which drilled 300 new wells and has
a total of only 3,000 wells (see map of Ghawar wells in my peak oil
pdf here).
The well numbers are from an article by Alex Lightman here. But that
writer then assumes incorrectly that Saudi's 260 Gb reserves (which were
doubled arbitrarily in the 1980's and not decremented since) are vastly
underestimated and will balloon when they start doing a lot more drilling.
He fails to cite what happened when oil peaked in the US in the 1970's.
There was a massive increase in US drilling -- a 10x increase. That
together with the discovery of the super giant Prudhoe Bay oil field in
Alaska, however, failed to reverse the US peak, which didn't look like
smooth Gaussian but rather a sharp peak followed by an almost linear
decline. Ominously, Saudi has begun a massive new drilling program (for
them) in the past two years, quintupling its oil drilling rig count (graph
here
from Stuart Staniford). It is unlikely that a massive increase in Saudi
drilling will fix the Saudi peak either. To his credit, Lightman does
also suggest that we start conserving now, before we slam into the wall.
He sells a meeting badge for large conferences that records who it
comes in contact with and lights up when two people pass each other
with similar interests (to alert them that they might want to strike
up a conversation). I attend several large yearly meetings myself.
Though they are enjoyable and intellectually stimulating, I think there
will be less of them in the future (because I think the true Saudi
reserves are less than they say).
[Jul23'07] Like friggin' clockwork, as I predicted, the Beavis and
Butthead London stunt and the Osama-sings-the-classics greatest-hits
tape have caused an uptick in Bush's ratings, visible here.
If this low budget crap can arrest Bush's decline, imagine what another
*real* stunt could do! Some left writers say things in the US are
about the blow and people there are finally mad. I just don't see it
at all. Besides, what would people do if somebody told them the truth?
If somebody said, "yeah, we lied to you, there's actually less oil, there
is nothing obvious with which to replace it, your SUV and large house and
new spread-out suburbs are a bad idea, you have to start driving less,
riding your bike more, taking public transportation, living in closer to
where you work, and in a smaller house", it wouldn't play well in Peoria.
It's true that most US-ians want the Iraq war to go away (though they
have probably forgotten how enthusiastically they supported it at one
time), but they certainly aren't about to get onto a damn bicycle (I
just rode mine home through a light rain, which was actually refreshing,
and my clothes are now dry). They won't get on their bikes en masse
until it is clear that oil price spikes will never go away. And that
is not going to happen until we've had continuous oil price spikes
every year or so for a decade, and oil costs $200 or $300 a barrel
(its true absolute minimum value, since one barrel of oil is equivalent
to about one year of human work; for comparison, the US yearly
minimum wage is over $10,000). And after a few more oil wars.
This won't happen until maybe 2020 or thereabouts (the current oil
war is already four and a half years old). And even then, there
will still be a reasonable amount of (expensive) oil around for
another decade (though less than there is today). So there will
be no revolution until maybe 2030 when peak all-energy begins to
bite and oil production is down a lot. By then, the revolution may
very well not be televised (esp. if we get a few more of these).
[Jul24'07] Today, 50 activists including Cindy Sheehan (out of 400
present) were arrested for not leaving John Conyers office after he
so much as told them that he can't support impeachment because 'it was
more important to get a Democrat in office in 2008 than to end the war
in Iraq'. Accurately said, John Conyers, limp lifetime member of the
Oceania party.
[Aug05'07] It looks like US M3(b) *growth* has
flattened out (at 13% a year!) over the past few months. I think M3
(total money) growth is a truer measure of inflation than the ridiculously
named 'core rate of inflation' or the consumer price index, which seem to
have had all the things that inflate like food, energy, and housing taken
out of them (after all, who actually *uses* food, energy, and housing?).
This temporary pause in the increase in the *rate of growth* seems to have
been associated with and/or caused by a slowing down of credit creation
(sub-prime/prime mortgages, commercial, leveraged buy-outs) and serious
heartburn in the the stock/money/hedge markets over the past few weeks.
I can feel that something a little different is starting to happen, but
I don't really know what it is. It just makes me nervous when people
like Doug Noland
seem more nervous than their usual industrious, tut-tutting selves.
Since cash only makes 5% per year when the currency is inflating at 10
or 12% per year, it's obvious that smart money only stays in cash when it
gets really scared. It seems to be getting a little scared now. However,
the Euro and pound are inflating at about the same rate as the dollar,
so the between-currency fluctuations must be due to slight inter-country
delays (e.g., housing already topped in the US vs. housing still going
up -- for now! -- in the UK). And most of the money guys have hardly
heard of peak oil and climate change since they involves thinking more
than 6 months (or 2 weeks) ahead. I suppose it's better not to get them
too upset.
[Aug07'07] There is a lot of talk about the recent FISA revisions with
respect to warrantless tapping of overseas phone calls (see Scott Horton
in Harpers). But sometimes I feel like I am in a house of mirrors.
The NSA has long monitored all foreign phone calls without warrant --
probably for decades. The significance of this change is that they can
now do it 'officially'. For many years, the US supported oppressive
governments abroad (Central American death squads, South Vietnam,
Afghanistan). It looks like similar methods are slowly being re-imported
to the homeland (US and UK), and people are being slowly introduced to
accepting it as normal. The significance of this development is not that
the NSA is doing some new bad thing, but rather that they are brazenly
advertising their exploits.
[Aug08'07] US troops in Iraq have reached an all-time high. This has
been supported by both Republicans and Democrats. Ignore the propaganda
miasma. The numbers talk.
[Aug12'07] Looking out the window in London at all the cars going
by gets me down. I really don't see how the ships of state and
industry can possibly be turned around quickly enough. It takes a
long time to make large scale wind, solar, and nuclear power plants.
North Sea oil just north of here is depleting at almost 10% per year.
I am really afraid there won't be enough time for people to react in
a sensible way. Take bicycles. Sure, London car drivers hate them.
As a daily cyclist, I, too, hate the cyclists that dangerously
totter through red lights. But what would London look like if you
100-tupled the number of bicycles, and added bicycles with trailers
and a zillion mopeds and small electric carts? People aren't planning
ahead. The household-debt-to-personal-income ratio in the UK is even
larger (1.62) than in the US (1.42). Not that this really applies to
central London, where 80% of purchases don't even use mortgages...
[Aug14'07] Glad to see Rove gone. I didn't expect it. I can't imagine
that he left voluntarily. But that leaves open the question of who
forced him out. Above, I had speculated that Rumsfeld might have been
forced out for not being hawkish enough on Iraq. I find it difficult
to believe that Rove was not enthusiatic enough, but maybe it's true.
The latest world
oil production figures show that we are now at, or perhaps even
slightly past (!) peak "all liquids" (i.e., crude oil + lease condensate
+ natural gas liquids + other liquids [e.g., ethanol]). In 2004, I had
expected that this wouldn't happen until 2008. Things now seem to be
precariously in balance. We are only one event -- e.g., a hurricane
in the Gulf of Mexico, a war in another oil country, an unusually cold
winter -- away from chaotic price oil price fluctuations. The only 'good'
news is that the US seems to on the verge of a recession, which should
slightly lower the US's 25% demand on total world oil production.
[Aug19'07] John Mauldin has a table of
adjustable mortgage resets by the month here
that suggests that the peak in resets won't occur until March 2008,
at a peak rate of $110 billion/month. Compare this with the average
rate of resets from Jan-Aug 2007 of $37 billion/month. This suggests
that the forces that have seem to have precipitated the recent turmoil
will be more than twice as strong 5-10 months from now, as the the
presidential election gets into high gear -- normally a time when
the economy is pumped. Feb-May 2008 sounds like an awfully dangerous
time to me, with enormous whipsawing forces, political and economic.
The Fed does have some room to drop interest rates, though that could
have bad effects on the dollar. Perhaps this is overestimated,
though, since the pound seems to be coming down relative to the
dollar despite the fact that US interest rates were dropped and UK
interest rates are still being increased. Note that both the dollar
and pound *have* dropped relative to the yen. For comic relief,
look here
for feats of squirrel cognition. And don't forget about
US patent 6,970,105 granted in 2005 to a certain Valletta for a
passenger control system to prevent hijackments (yup) by putting a
neckband on every passenger with sensors to determine each of their
"emotional conditions" and if necessary, inject "sedatives, narcotics or
strong tranquilizers" by "pelvic contact" into the "evil-minded persons".
The joke is, it's not a joke.
[Aug23'07] Despite the fact that nothing fundamental has changed (US
mortgage resets are still a long ways from their March 2008 peak, peak oil
is still here, the Iraq war into its fifth year, the Democratic worms are
just as cowardly as before), the fear so palpable a week ago is subsiding.
Nothing to see here. Wouldn't it be great if fossil fuel reserves *did*
go up an down as a function of how good people felt about them?
[Aug29'07] The bump upward in the polls predicted
above (from the London stunts and the nightly Fox news
'minute of hate') is now even more clearly visible here.
When you read the internet on on your own and don't watch teevee, you
expect these things, but they are still amazing and amazingly depressing
to see in the flesh as it were. There was a good article on capitalism
in Iraq in the Rolling Stone, though it shamefully fails to mention
the fact that we've killed more than a million people of the non-US
persuasion there, and the fact that 4 million people have been run
out of their homes. You might get the idea reading the thing that it
would have all been OK, if we had only done it more efficiently and
with less corruption. It wouldn't have been OK. The people in the
US should be ostracized for decades for overseeing the holocaust of
a million people. Skimming tax money in the process and charging the
cannon fodder to repair their own shredded limbs is unfortunate, but
not what will be remembered as the main point in the fullness of time.
Today, hardly anybody remembers the fact that 1-2 million German men
were marched and starved to death in US-run concentration camps after
they lost WWII.
[Sep01'07] With the new $50 billion dollar Iraq war supplement Bush
just requested, the US is spending over 1 billion dollars every 2 days
to occupy/destroy Iraq. Americans are not up in arms about it at all,
and won't be until we start to actually get driven out. That's a
contribution of several thousand dollars a year from every adult in
the US. For the cost of the Iraq war, those tax receipts could have paid
for a halfway decent solar power setup for most families in the US --
an eleventh hour rescue for the grid problems that will be on the way.
But like the Archdruid says :-}, unfortunately it's already the
*twelfth hour*. While this
article about wind turbine problems in Germany is a little FUD'y,
it does accurately point out how many years it takes to wring faults
out of even relatively old technology. And wind turbines currently
generate only a tiny fraction of energy in the EU (less than 0.5%).
Even that tiny contribution is a lot more than solar, however, which
is so tiny it's irrelevant. And in the spirit of the twelfth hour,
there is currently a silicon panel shortage (in the process of being
remedied), so we could hardly have paneled everybody's roof this year.
But one can always dream.
[Sep03'07] The anti-Iran propaganda is definitely on the increase again
over the last month, though still not quite at the level of anti-Iraq
propaganda in late 2002. Enough carriers are still probably in place
(I'm not aware of any recent news about where they currently are). Bush's
numbers are still drifting upwards (amazing, innit?). There is an endless
drumbeat of predictions of another 9/11 from the *mainstream media*. The
usu. disinfo sources are catapulting the propaganda, too (e.g., DisinfoKos)
-- and I don't particularly trust the motives of
Dan Plesch (next door!) or Robert Baer or Sarah
Baxter or Todd Gitlin (ehh), who have all recently announced
that attacks are coming. I think this September is too soon, still.
The movement of (additional) men and materiel is always an unexpectedly
leisurely affair. I remain most worried most about what might happen in
the run-up to the election early next year when mortgage resets will be
at their peak as the elections get seriously under way. The key question
is how to sustain the patriotic idiot juice long enough after an attack
so that it colors the election. A quick several day blitzkieg in a few
weeks doesn't seem like it would do that. Certainly, Bush doesn't need
majority support to start another war, maybe just another 5 or 10 more
points (cf. Mr. Hilter). Reading online comments suggests that there
is already a solid chunk of support or at least a green light for an
attack, unbelievable as this may seem given the events of the past 5
years, and also because all these people have access to the internet.
And hard as it is to believe, maybe Rove really did resign because he
thought it was a bridge too far. Last time (Sept 2002), I remember the
big but absolutely ineffectual anti-war movement (of which I was a small part)
just sitting there watching the armaments and people being put on ships
and sailing over there. I see nothing to stop something similar from
happening again. The only way it could be stopped (if they decide
to to it), would be a long general strike, and that seems unlikely.
In any case, the consolidation of US Iraqi bases into 6 megabases is
continuing at full speed, consuming half of the money spent in Iraq.
The Balad/Anaconda base is the second most busy airport in the world
after Heathrow, and is guarded by 20,000 troops. The US is planning to
stay, period.
[Sep09'07] Yet another fake Osama dead Laden reappears, this time with
a curly Grecian formula beard (an actor or maybe just very old tapes).
Reading the LA Times article on it reminds me of how they wrote about
Reagan -- when his Alzheimers had gotten bad, but the newspaper whores
picked through the crap he said, and pretended like his brain was
still there.
[Sep13'07] I'm feeling ill at ease this week (Barksdale joyride, Libor
way up, 'withdrawn' UK Basra troops head instead to Iranian border,
partial air force standdown on Sept 14), but hopefully nothing will
happen. The rhetoric on the Iraq war is absolutely dismal. The air
war has been increased in size by a factor of 5 since the beginning
of the year (!). There is effectively bipartisan support for the war.
Any Democrat capable of getting into office 2008 will by definition be
incapable of making the slightest difference to the conduct of the war,
given how the election and Democratic party is funded. Despite the fact
that the midterm elections were in large part a vote against the war,
Rahm Emmanuel among others made sure that Democratic candidates available
were 'realists' -- that is, Democrats who 'opposed the war' as window
dressing, and then turned around and voted *even more* money for the war
than preznit chimp asked for! All the viable Democrats have tripped over
themselves rushing to say they will be the first to nuke Iran. And the
elephant in the room that no one talks about (as stated many times above)
is that the only reason that Good Americans are a bit sour about the
Iraq war now is that it is going somewhat badly. They could care less
how many Iraqis they have annihilated or driven out of their homes.
They could care less about how much it costs (most hardly know the
difference between million, billion, and trillion). Some of our troops
have been killed and maimed, but the total numbers so far are small --
equivalent to only a month's worth of car accidents in the US (people who
survive car accidents also end up with hideous injuries). Most Americans
don't care at all that the war is wrong. Finally, and most importantly
for thinking about how things will play out, most Americans have no idea
how close we are to the beginning of permanent declines in oil, gas,
coal, uranium, copper, indium, gallium, soil, water, fish, forests,
food, helium (boo hoo, eventually bye-bye fMRI!), etc. etc. Many of
them, left and right, think high oil prices are a conspiracy to enrich
piggish oil company executives. High oil prices *do* enrich piggish
oil company executives. So what? That has absolutely no relevance to
the prospects for maintaining industrial civilization as fossil fuels
production starts to go over to the downward part of the curve. It has
no relevance to geology. As I have said many times, if Americans actually
knew how dire the energy/soil/food/metals problem actually was, they would
get in line behind our present (and future) resource wars in a snap.
They would be happy to nuke the whole rest of the world if push came
to shove. In retrospect, it's amazing that the Iraq war has been able
to be waged for more than 4 years without any official mention of oil.
That may finally have to change in 2008.
[Sep14'07] I hear lots of left talk about Americans finally getting fed
up enough with the current administration to 'not take it anymore'.
What exactly would 'it' be? An oversized portion of the world's
resources? Do Americans *really* want to leave all that oil behind?
I'm relieved nothing happened today.
[Sep19'07] Nothing to see, so far. The Fed is has been injecting a
little more money than it normally does. It also just cut the discount
window interest rate by 0.5% to 4.75%. But the peak in mortgage resets
(which involve multiple-percent upticks in interest rates that only
very roughly follow the discount window interest rate) is still not
until Mar 2008. And long term bonds actually went *down* -- i.e.,
long-term interest rates went *up* -- in response to the fed cut, which
will actually hurt mortgage rates. Oil production is continuing to
decline (slightly down from the 85 million barrels/day 2006 all-liquids
all-time peak) while oil prices continue to rise. Perhaps "probable"
and "possible" reserves aren't as tasty as "proven" reserves, after all.
Or maybe there is still one more several-year production increase left
after the current plateau. That would be great, but even if it happens,
society will likely only use it to party on, instead of bowing down in
thanks for a few extra years to prepare. The exact moment of the peak
doesn't really matter. We are at or very close to the beginning of a
permanent, grinding decline. The only concrete societal response in the
US so far has been to invade and occupy Iraq and to commission 235 new
corn ethanol plants on top of the 111 already operating. By 2008,
those plants will (literally) be eating half of the entire US corn
harvest, but supplying only five percent of the energy in our liquid
fuel use. Tax subsidies for this 1.25x energy-return-on-energy-investment
process is absolute insanity as we approach the energy/food/soil/water
precipice of industrial civilization. Reading the summaries of introductory
presentations at latest ASPO conference in Cork Ireland gave me the
willies -- what happened to these people? What are they smoking?
OPEC is supposed to go to 50 million barrels/day by 2020 (Mike Rogers)
given that it seems to have trouble keeping production at 30 million
barrels/day, much of it from 40-year-old fields? And after 12 more
years of depletion from now? Sheesh. A.M. Samsam Bakhtiari bowed
out of ASPO events after some unexplained altercation in Florence
in 2007. William Engdahl has discovered abiotic oil (huh?!). I know,
I should just be watching the river flow. It's impossible to reason
with an over-sexed deer herd on an island heading for a food crash
by explaining the mathematics of population biology to them. People,
businessmen, and bankers aren't any different. We must all party on.
As a footnote, the vote to restore habaeus corpus (the idea that the
government can't hold people without a formal public hearing) just failed
in the Senate (not enough Repubicans supported it).
[Sep24'07] Alan Greenspan says Iraq was about oil, and that he
lobbied for the Iraq war. I wonder what the current fed governor is
lobbying for now? Off-shoring the majority of productive US industry
as supported by Greenspan was merely wage arbitrage for the short-term
gain of the super-rich. It has gutted the productive ability country.
Apple now designs the outer half-a-millimeter of a laptop (and a fine
half millimeter it is!) and then ships off the substantive design of this
advertising 'skin' (like the one I'm currently typing on!) to Taiwan
where the working guts of it are designed to fit inside the skin and
the circuit boards and other working parts are then manufactured and
assembled, in Taiwan, China, and Thailand. This is *not* a sustainable
course for the US empire; it looks more like the endgame of empire.
I imagine that the growth of private police forces to guard rich people
and their estates is going to explode in the decade ahead.
[Oct02'07] Tad Patzek has a long-winded paper on
biofuels, "Can we outlive our way of life? (pdf
here). One critical fact that was new to me is that the cellulosic
ethanol process (at least currently) only gives a 'beer' that is about
4% alcohol while the corn ethanol process gives one that is 12% to 16%
ethanol. Since distillation is a major energy loser (actually using
up more energy than the energy in the resulting ethanol when applied
to a 4% alcohol-water mixture) cellulosic ethanol only gets barely
net-energy-positive by getting a credit for all the heating value of the
lignin (wheat straw). Since a 1:1 replacement of fossil fuels by biofuels
is utterly impossible for more than a few years if we want to still live
on the planet in addition to just driving on it, and since we are now
at peak oil, he suggests that Europe aim to ramp up to a reduction in
fossil fuel usage of 6% per year (over 8 years) and then stay there,
every year after that. Having just bicycled home right alongside
a bunch of yahoos in cars gunning their engines to madly accelerate
their ugly heaps for one block at a time so that they have to slam on
the brakes half a block later (using alomost 100,000 watts every time
the numbskulls step on the accelerator), I say, it's not a moment too
soon to start that reduction! (and yes, I stopped at every light, too).
Given that Londoners have passed extreme laws requiring every hallway
in new buildings to be made wide enough for *2* wheelchairs to pass each
other (resulting in ridiculous office buildings that have as much as
60% of their area as hallways), you'd think it might be possible pass a
practical law to really start reducing fossil fuel usage, too, before
we run our stupid monkey heads right into the wall. If we *can* think.
Reading about users finally finally finally revolting against Microsoft
and downgrading from Vista to XP gives me hope.
[Oct05'07] The rate of stock trading seems to go up with no end in sight.
The entire issue of stocks like Google and Apple now turns over 5 to 10
times a year. Stocks are being held on *average* for only a few days.
This is not "investment".
[Oct07'07] Gordon Brown is now behind
a joint UK/US/(French?) attack on Iran, but only
if Iran was proved to be behind a big militant attack or another
stunt similar to the kidnapping in March of British sailors. But,
uhhh, the 'kidnapped' British sailors were halfway around the world
from Britain and admitted they were trespassing on Iranian coastal
waters (for an analogy, imagine Iranians in gunboats picked up by
the British Navy in the North Sea). Gordon is finding his inner
poodle! What's got him so excited? The French poodle's recent dog
tricks? Jealousy of the French for not having helped to cause
Darfur? Feeling not manly enough in comparison to those incomparably
manly Blackwater storm troopers who have the true grit needed to boldly
shoot up women and children in passenger cars? Or maybe it's just that
recurrent itch to 'bring Democracy' to another country? Given that the
last time Democracy was brought, a million Iraqis were murdered, I do
sympathize that you might need an even bigger army to deliver it this
time, in case the natives decide they don't want it just yet...
[Oct10'07] Here
is a hopeful article about photovoltaic power. Photovoltaic power is
increasing in popularity. However, it is still a tiny fraction of our
total power (0.05% or 1/2000 of total world electrical generation, which
itself is about one third of total fossil fuel power). In fact, it is
currently increasing at a tiny fraction of our *increased yearly usage*
of fossil fuels. It is currently accounting for only 0.5% (1/200) of
newly installed capacity. It's rate of increase *is* increasing some.
But at current rates, it is hard to see how in 20 years it could
account for a substantial fraction of the energy currently gotten
from fossil fuel -- right around the time oil and gas will be a lot
scarcer than now. Here's hoping the rate of increase itself increases
-- a lot, starting very soon. There are a lot of possibly cool ideas.
For example, V2G (vehicle to grid), where electric vehicle batteries are
used for distributed storage of extra power for the grid (pdf here)
Most people don't realize that the amount of power used each day by cars
is several times the amount of electrical power used out of outlets and
the grid (a car can generate a 100,000 watt burst of power and uses 10,000
to 20,000 watts on average [=13-26 hp]). Huge numbers of electric vehicle
batteries plugged into the grid could store and buffer intermittent wind
and solar power, which are harder than fossil fuels to turn on at will.
However, this would require a fundamental re-orientation of people's
attitude toward their vehicles. Rather than being something you (just)
tear through the wilderness with, they would also be part of the shared
grid on which their community relies. This also implies that people would
be allowing their expensive vehicle batteries to be cycled (i.e., some
of the batteries' available life used up) by other people on the grid.
It would take a lot of experimentation -- physical and social -- to figure
out if something like this could every be practical. I fear that such
'commie' ideas will be laughed out of court until it is too late and the
grid has already been Iraq-i-fied, and it's every man for himself.
[Oct11'07] As someone very poorly schooled in economics, this graph
(of 3-month US Treasury Bills yield and the Fed funds rate) is perhaps
the most amazing money graph I have ever seen. The Fed seems completely
passive, slavishly following short-term interest rates with a very
short delay! It sure looks like the Fed will have to continue lowering.
What the global effect of that will be is hard for me to guess.
[Oct14'07] I'm feeling blue, watching
the river flow. Big banks are colluding
to 'fix' their greed market so that they don't accidentally shoot each
other in the face by denying each other credit. I thought the market
fixed all, without the need for any interference? Their solution won't
be in our interest ("our" means people like you and me that don't own or
run banks). It reminds me of an old scene from The Tall Blond Man with
One Black Shoe where the assassins all accidentally end up in one room:
"we're all professionals here...". In the midst of various economic
indigestion, the severity of the oil problem will finally come into
view back in the US because, paradoxically, low gasoline taxes couple
oil price signals more directly to gasoline price signals (the large,
fixed-size gas taxes in Europe mean that oil price increases are damped
for the enduser). People in the US will not be in a constructive
mood when they finally realize what the situation is. And when
oil prices finally break through the European tax damper, I doubt
the response here will be much more charitable (in the UK at least,
think back to 2000, when the lorry drivers shut down the the economy
for a week over fuel prices). And for something completely different,
the pharmeceutical companies have turned in a big way toward the nasal
epithelium, targetting it with anti-obesity, diabetes, and even
anti-autism drugs (oxytocin work-alikes). Before long, there will be
hundreds of companies fighting for membrane space inside your nose.
I wish I could instead get that positive emotion that brings a tear
to my eye and makes me proud to be a human when I see a remarkable
musical performance or come to finally understand a remarkable
turn of scientific thought. Instead, I'm dejectedly thinking
about the other, equally notable technologically-enabled, violent
side of my fellow man-apes. I feel sad for us -- apes with language
and immensely more powerful minds -- having worked ourselves into the same
situation as deer herd on the threshold of overwhelming the resources
on a small island, all just munching away, all just barely aware of the
terrible cull that is almost surely on the way.
[Oct20'07] Bush took an unexpected, discontinuous plummet
in the polls from an average of about 34% to an average of 26% in
two recent polls (Zogby, Harris) -- the lowest number ever -- after a
slow sustained rise from May to October of 30% to about 34%. It must
be housing+oil. It could also be red-state faithful getting hammered by
the "Exceptional" drought (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and Idaho) visible here (the scale is:
abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought, and
finally, exceptional drought). But a desperate Bush and Cheney could take
desperate measures. The fact that such a large number of people (70)
were punished for the supposedly 'minor' mistake (leaked first to
The Military Times) of flying nukes arounds the country suggests that
it wasn't a minor mistake. Several people have noted that for the
leak to come out in The Military Times, it had to pass several high
level military censors. Perhaps this was a sign of internal conflict.
Bush's poll numbers worry me. On the positive side, things have been
thankfully completely quiet during the dirtie balm exercises in Portland
and Guam.
[Oct21'07] Here
is another article pointing out that for the past two decades, the
Fed funds rate has *followed* the short term credit market rates with
a small delay. These graphs are completely contrary to the generally
accepted view that the Fed rate somehow controls/throttles the economy.
Maybe it does by other actions that affect the short term credit markets
that I don't fully understand (perhaps involve 'repos', whatever they
are, and/or the banks of the 'Caribbean', heh). And I don't really
understand the recent 'master liquidity enabler conduit garbage collector
structured investment vehicle'... But returning to the Fed funds rate,
why this strange fiction??
[Oct28'07] The torture methods of the US have hardly changed for 40
years. And they were in turn largely adapted from methods originally
developed by the Nazis. Here is an excellent article by Fred
Morris about his experiences in Brazil in the 1970's, face to face
with American-trained Brazilian interrogators. Torture has long been
a major American export. Instead of outsourcing it, however, it looks
like a domestic market is finally being developed. Tasers are just
good old electric shock torture, now in the hands of every police dept
in the country, and in widespread use -- so much so that 300 people
have already been killed in the US with tasers (here is an example
from last year where police tasered a handcuffed epileptic man 5 times
until he passed out and died -- and then got off without the grand
jury even viewing the video). Perhaps some of my buddies in machine
learning are already working on auto-targetting tasers for the genitals
to make Tasers exactly equivalent to what was already being taught at the
School of the Americas thirty years ago. And maybe the police need to
hire some doctors like the professionally trained torturers often do,
so that their poor victims can be tortured again and again.
[Oct29'07] "Be green. Drive green." says the Prius ad now running on
The Oildrum. Then, top it off with the "carbon-neutral car insurance"
that they sell on the teevee, and we're all set to consume this year's
cubic mile of oil in style (there are about 30 cubic miles left).
The market is fixing everything, getting everybody to agree on a fair
price (which hit $93/barrel today). Of course, since the market value of
'our' people is a little higher than 'yours', we might have to grab your
oil because we have a much bigger military than you (merely a background
fact for the market, like when the market determines prices after the
harbor has been fired upon in the olden days). The US+UK have so far
killed a million people building permanent military bases to control
(steal) Iraqi oil. And that atrocity got started even before peak oil
hit (happening about now). Imagine what the oh-so-greens will want
to do to the world when the pressure really goes up. We have just now
reached an equilibrium where oil demand is starting to bump into maximum
oil production. Maxmimum oil production is set to go down from here,
relentlessly, permanently, and demand is set to go up. If *I* were the
rest of the world, I'd be thinking about getting me some atomic fire
of my own before furious Mr. Green arrives at the door threatening to
kill my kids and atomize my house. Even if the world tanks the dollar,
it won't do anything to US+UK (and FR) big guns and bombs. Tanking the
dollar or the pound is like beating the schoolyard bully at Scrabble.
He'll just knock the pieces off the board unless you've got a big stick.
It's the only language he understands. If Iran already had the big
stick, we wouldn't be threatening them. Without it, the 4 million
barrels a day coming from the Iranian oil strip (in Khuzestan on the
western edge of the country, bordering Iraq) are a mighty inviting target.
After all, perhaps we could dismember their country in a fashion similar
to the way the men with the shriveled little thingees in the US Senate
are now planning to do to Iraq (after their heartfelt attempt to rebuild
Iraq using the 1994 Lonely Planet guide failed). Little thingees
on little Eichmanns.
[Oct30'07] The idiocy
and criminality of a slight majority of my fellow Americans who
support a strike on Iran is breathtaking. Their minds are open sewers
down which teevee propaganda is flushed, even as the source only rates a
25% approval by the very same people. But it doesn't matter! Hard to
believe, but unfortunately, accurate to plus or minus a few percent.
Flush the whole country down the toilet, fools, in order to get your war
on. Doesn't mean it will happen. I still think it probably it
won't happen. Also, maybe this reflects the beginning of a mostly
unconscious realization, alluded to many times above, by the pissed
off zombies that there actually *is* an oil problem, and that it's
not going to go away. Trying to also steal Iran's oil will not work.
$100 a barrel oil is not a stopping point. We have to use less.
[Oct31'07] Today Warren Buffett says he wants to pay more tax. Richies
only say stuff like this when they are scared that something is about
to blow. When they get scared, I get scared.
[Nov08'07] I am extremely worried about what will happen as the python
continues to digest the pig of (1) rarely traded investment vehicles
of still-not-yet-known value, but getting lower all the time, (2)
still yet-to-peak mortgage resets, and (3) continued oil volatility.
There is perhaps $500 billion (or more) of risky junk on bank balance
sheets, potentially bigger than the 1980's savings and loan disaster,
where $125 billion in tax money was used to bail out a bunch of crooks
who had sold off mortgages in order to reinvest the money in more exotic
instruments. Given that half of Americans support an attack on Iran,
it's clear they're not afraid of any of this. Amazing!
[Nov14'07] As the dollar falls, it is just beginning to stimulate
reverse globalization. Just think, Americans, too, will soon have the
pleasure of talking to people that have just spent 10 minutes fuming
on a phone menu. But seriously, the worldwide energy crunch is going
to impact poorer nations more severely than rich western countries (we
haven't had fuel riots like the ones in Myanmar or Iran). I think it it
likely that right when the rest of the world is really down and hungry,
the rich west will be itself a little pinched and less likely to help out.
That is, reverse globalization is unlikely to go very far.
[Nov17'07] The decomposition of trees damaged as a result of Katrina and
Rita will generate as much CO2 as all of the living trees in the US take
out of the atmosphere in one year (~1 billion tons). -- James Cummins,
Wildlife Mississippi
[Nov23'07] There have been about 300 deaths from Tasers. Since they
usually don't kill people, police must be Tasering people constantly.
The distraught Polish guy in the Vancouver airport recently
killed by a Taser was unconscious within 20 secs of the police
arriving. At this rate, everyone is going to need a Taser to defend
themselves against sadistic cops. Tasers for everyone! Of course,
it wouldn't have helped the guy the UK cops Tasered for having fallen into a
diabetic coma.
[Nov26'07] Things are sure looking shakey! Maybe
that's why Taser will soon be bringing out taser
flying saucers. This is what machine learning is getting used for.
We pay taxes to fund people to understand how visual perception and the
brain works and then it gets applied to crap like this. Surveillance and
now torture from the sky. Lovely. Sometimes makes me wonder whether
the end of fossil fuels might actually be a good thing that will save
us from ourselves.
[Nov27'07] Rig count figures from Baker Hughes show that 1762 out of 3124
rigs drilling in October 2007 were drilling in America -- that is, over
56% of all rigs in the world were drilling in US. But I thought peak oil
is happening because environmentalists are not allowing oil exploration,
blah, blah. The US is the most well-drilled place on the planet (which is
why the production curve up, to 1971 peak, and down is so smooth).
[Nov29'07] "We are not your problem. We are Israelis.
Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians
are your problem" -- an explanation from the 'dancing
Israelis' from 'Urban Moving Systems' for why they were laughing,
high-fiving, posing for photos with a cigarette lighter in front of the
ruins as if lighting them, while videoing. "Our purpose was to document
the event." Many people would like to see how this confiscated but
never-made-public video document begins.
[Nov30'07] Once again, I was wrong about the Bush approval
polls. In October, I thought they had experienced an
almost discontinuous drop. But in fact, that was just 3
outliers. Instead, Bush's numbers have actually, amazingly, drifted
up a bit, to about 34%, from a steady diet of 'news' about the surge
'working' (despite 2007 resulting in the most US casualties of any year!),
Iran war talk, and worries about the economy. I would guess that now a
majority of Americans approve of torture, both Repug-worms and Demo-worms.
This is frightening, given that the recession has not yet happened in a
big way. Under serious economic duress, I imagine that Americans would
be willing to go a lot further.
[Dec02'07] It's worth summing up 2006 and 2007. Supporting Democrats
did absolutely nothing to stop or even slow down the war. In fact,
Democrats actually helped *increase* funding for the war as well as
the number of troops on the ground. Despite an actual Congressional
majority, the Democrats didn't once even threaten to filibuster a war
funding bill, much less actually do it. They only need 41 solid votes to
sustain a filibuster. They tabled impeachment. That's just the facts.
The US -- and the UK -- antiwar movements were co-opted into supporting
the official 'left' (Democrats, Labour) in the 1960's sense of the word.
The utter failure of this strategy to even slightly slow down the war(s)
has completely enervated the antiwar movement. There are less people
on the street than ever before. What's next? Support the Democrats
again? They didn't deliver the goods. Facts on the ground are more
important than the spin in the air. Supporting the Democrats was
a mistake. Sometimes people make mistakes. This one just happened
to occur at a particularly crucial time in history. At this point,
the main ongoing resistance to an attack on Iran is coming from the
military, of all places! The constant Goebbels-like propaganda from
the mainstream media already has over half of the American sheeple in
favor of it, which is quite amazing given their generally unfavorable
view of the ongoing Iraq disaster.
[Dec05'07] The organ donor thing sure creeps me out. Whether it's getting
organs from the third world or grandparents asking their grandkid for a
kidney, it's just sicko. In about 20 years, the average boomer (like me)
is going to be 70. I'm sure by then, there will be web courses about how
to conduct these negotiations in a politically correct way. If things
continue along the path they're currently on in America, in another 5
years, maybe there will be enough terr'ists in jail to keep a bunch of
ugly boomers alive as their organs begin to fail. Why can't they (we)
just die normally?
[Dec06'07] The NIE
report sure had the Bush decider-idiot more fumble-mouthed than
usual. It seems like a clear strike back from the military to slow
the push toward the Iran war. Ah, my antiwar friends -- the military
industrial and surveillance complex. Sheesh. I hope they do stop the
(next) war. However, given that there were more than 5 words in the
NIE report, and given that it only takes something like 2 or 3 words
for effective propaganda (e.g., "9/11" + "WMD" + "Iraq"), all the
verbiage in this report may end up being easily bypassed, for example,
by "nuclear" + "Iran" + "wiped-off-the-face-of-the-map". And yes,
wiped-off-the-face-of-the-map counts as one word because the media has
defined it, through incessant repetition of this mistranslation, as a
fixed idiomatic expression.
[Dec07'07] Features of fascism (Mussolini, Franco, Suharto,
Pinochet) according to Lawrence Britt: increased patriotism,
racial/religious/minority demonization together with homeland
racial/religious supremacy, glamourization and increased funding of
military, increased emphasis on punishment, decreased emphasis on human
rights legitimizing torture and extra-judicial imprisonment and execution,
increased sexism, deemphasis of academia and arts, government control
and censorship of media, national security obsession, protection
of corporate power, cronyism between government and security/war
businesses. Recent changes in the US and UK are currently all going
pretty much in the direction of fascism. As an example, there is
currently a debate in the UK as to whether the already-lengthened limit
for holding somebody without charges (1 month) should be extended
to almost 2 months. But why stop at 2 months? Wouldn't a year, or
ten, help keep 'us' even safer? And it wouldn't inconvenience 'real'
Brits, right? Check out this excerpt from a 2006 Popular Mechanics
article on NYPD routinely deploying SWAT team storm troopers onto city
streets where there is nothing to SWAT at, just in order to scare people and then see how they
react (you looking suspicious? you videotaping?). This is how sheep
are trained to live in a police state (original putrid article here).
[Dec08'07] The latest USA
today poll shows a just-statistically-significant loss of support
for attacking Iran, probably because of the unexpected release of the
National Intelligence Estimate report a week ago. And CNN hilariously
had to re-schedule and re-purpose footage from its planned 2 hours of sewage/propaganda
about a future nuclear Iran this weekend because of the
report (they are no doubt furiously shuffling video cuts as we
speak). Israel is upset that, as Uri Avnery writes, "they stole
the bomb from us". Ehud Barak called the report a "blow
to the groin", while the Shas party minister Yitzhak Cohen
pulled out all the anti-semitism stops, saying that Americans'
attitude to the National Intelligence Estimate was reminiscent
of Auschwitz. Yeah, yeah. But the polls are still uncomfortably
close to 50% of Americans supporting an Iran attack -- and
that's without any real stunt having occurred. It's possible
that the neo-crazies might strike back in the next month or two.
They (e.g., Podhoretz/Abrams/Ledeen/Kristol/Bolton/Murdoch-WSJ)
are currently all spluttering in unison about the CIA
plot against Bush. And Wolfowitz is back in town (at the
International Security Advisory Board); and now France has Sarkozy
and Bernard Kouchner. I think there is a small chance of another
false flag. The pressure will really be on around March 2008.
[Dec09'07] If Ron Paul were to become a third party candidate,
we might end up with a Ross-Perot-1992-like situation.
He wouldn't win but he might actually draw away more disaffected
Democratic than Republican votes. The dismal
performance of the Democrats (yet another
pusillanimous sell-out on war funding this week) has begun to
sour even the most faithful. The failure of the Republican attempt in
California to have (only!) Democratic California proportionally allocate
its electoral college votes (instead of winner-take-all) has failed (this
would be a good idea, of course, if all states did it). Also this week,
the Senate 'blocked' a House bill that included such commie provisions
as requirements for better fuel economy -- 35 mpg by 2020 -- which is
sensible, practical, uncontroversial, etc, etc. To be fair, it did also
contain an utterly ridiculous and impractical plan to 7-tuple the amount
of ethanol production by 2022 that would use most of our farmland for
cars, doesn't have a chance of happening given that world grain stockpiles
have already fallen to record lows, and that was in any case not the
reason the bill was blocked. There were also reasonable incentives for
wind turbines and solar power. There were 53 yes votes, but it needed
60/100 to overcome a Bush veto. You go, lemmings. Stop those commies.
Don't dangerously distort the market with incentives. Let it creatively
destroy the entire planet. *Something's* bound to survive.
[Dec11'07] Wow. The NIE report even has the Guiliani-worm-thing back-sliming
on attacking Iran! Go spooks. I'm hoping this all sticks, despite the
shrieking from the neocrazies.
[Dec13'07] The complete lack of an effect of the Fed having tightened
from 1% in 2004 to over 5% on M3 total
money (note that the graph at the top that page is money M3 *growth*,
not M3 itself!) suggests that the Fed has considerably less control over
the creation of money -- at least via the Fed rate -- than is usually
portrayed. Also, as mentioned above, the Fed rate seems to actually
*follow*, not lead changes in interest rate of short-term treasuries,
which are set by the market and probably influenced by non-public Fed
actions other than Fed interest rate changes. One of those new "liquidity
injection methods" was introduced by the Fed this week, possibly to be
a "permanent addition" to its "monetary policy toolkit". The Fed now
generates money from the void (as it always does), but instead of a bank
just borrowing the money for a short term to cover withdrawals with a
public record of the loan, the Fed directly buys toxic financial waste
that nobody wants (because it's almost worthless), and does it secretly.
That kind of counterfeiting seems hazardous.
[Dec15'07] The third pic down (discount rate
spread) clearly shows two sudden events in August and just now.
The response of the money people has been to increase trading
of derivatives by 27% in the third quarter to a record 681
trillion. For reference, the yearly US GDP is around 13 trillion.
The derivatives traded in one quarter amounted to almost one quadrillion
(as in 681,000,000,000,000 dollars in one quarter).
[Dec16'07] "The larger problem here, I think, is
that this kind of stuff [torture] just makes people feel
better, even if it doesn't work." -- CIA officer quoted here.
Don't support torture to make a bunch of fake he-men producers and fake
he-men writers for tripe like "24" 'feel better'. Make them feel bad
by not hiring their pitiful asses.
[Dec17'07] As noted above, the smart money seems to have piled into
derivatives after fleeing the toxic waste that the Fed is now secretly
buying. What a scheme! What a complete rip-off of people who actually
work, make things, help people, or do music, art, and science! Why do
we let these turds skim off all the proceeds? What they do is selfish,
dangerous (to us, not them!), and shouldn't be rewarded. We need
to make it more dangerous *to them*. When they screw up, we should
seize their yachts, cars, estates, and bank accounts, just like they do
with petty criminals and drug lords, and make them do some real work.
The rough sequence of events since 2000 seems to have been: (1) stock
market tanks, (2) Fed drops interest rates to the floor, (3) hot money
flows into housing, (4) as the growth of normal mortgages starts to flag,
the subprime carcass is constructed and then fed upon by more exotic
blood suckers, (5) housing finally crashes (now including commercial
real estate), (6) the parasites drop off the 'exotic' carcasses and flee
into derivatives (!), leaving the Fed to clean up (i.e., by devaluing
everybody else's money by buying the drained carcasses in secret for
10 times what they are currently worth). Who would have guessed that
derivatives would be considered 'safe' at this point in time? (well, not
me, which is why I'm always one step behind). Derivatives a safe haven!
But they don't have to be safe (and won't be safe) for very long. They just
have to be stable enough for a year or two to allow the parasites to suck
another few hundred billion out of the body politic. Given the massive
increases in money creation (M3 *growth* is running at 15% per year,
which is a doubling of money in 5 years), real growth has already stopped.
Real growth stopping is actually a good thing. But I remain very worried
about 2008 (my original prediction of peak oil). By early 2008, prime
ARMs (along with yet more subprimes) are going to be in trouble, raising
economic pressure even further. Even some fixed rate mortgages are
under water. 2008 is shaping up to be a truly a dangerous year of slow
motion economic hangover. I doubt if the destruction will be creative.
But I have been wrong more often than right w.r.t. economics.
[Dec19'07] Throw the torturers
out, now. If Latin American mothers of the disappeared can do it, then so
can cowardly American men. If Americans don't rise up soon, even men and
blondes
are going to be in deep doodoo.
[Dec27'07] Consumer confidence rose unexpectedly in December.
[Dec28'07] Peak oil humor: JD, who is a peak oil debunker, complained
that TheOilDrum has turned into "Disasterpedia"... :-}
[Dec30'07] There is a very good article by Richard K. Moore (rkm) here about,
among other things, (Northern) energy and (Southern) food. It reiterates
a point I have made many times that once US-ians (and UK-ians) finally
read the peak oil writing on the wall, they will support policies that
lead to the holocaust of the South. It's only matter of finding a
politically correct way in which it can be Blitzer'd. At an enormous
human cost, the North will keep its (slightly smaller) motors running
for another 20 years, all while 'fighting global warming' and 'becoming
energy independent' and making a zillion more iPods out of Chinese coal.
Unless something changes drastically in our economic system, our way
of life will not be negotiated, but rather fully prosecuted over giant
piles of dead bodies, until geology has the last word with us. If (when)
oil prices double or triple (again), it will cause people in the North
to drive less and to finally prefer better mileage cars (as in Europe,
where oil prices are already 2-3x those in the US because of taxes);
but in the South, doubling or tripling real oil prices (again) will
cause riots (e.g., see Myanmar, 2007) and the beginnings of widespread
starvation. But I don't see a way that oil prices can get high enough
(e.g., 10x or 50x as high as now) to motivate people in the North to
fundamentally retool their ways and their economic system without at
the same time killing huge numbers of people in the South.
[Jan02'08] To start off the new year on a good foot, here
is a positive article about how solar could help save the day.
[Jan05'08] "National security isn't going to mean much if
we have a generation of kids so physically incapacitated [by
obesity] they can't go to war." -- Mike Hukabee. But McDonald's
is free enterprise! Is Huckabee a closet librul? I don't
usually read Kunstler, but he made a good point in a recent column
about the final suburban phase of US history: "40 percent of all new
jobs after the year 2000 were created in the final burst of suburban
expansion". I saw it in San Diego. I moved there in the late 80's and
left last year. During that time, all the mostly empty space between
the 5 and the 15 freeways north of the city was filled in -- an amazing
expansion into an area much larger than the original footprint of the
city (it's not just San Diego -- the same thing happened just outside
the 'green belt' around London). Perhaps it will all work out, even as
transportation becomes more expensive. The price of oil doubled in 2007.
It *might* temporarily dip because of demand destruction during a serious
world recession, but even if that happens, it soon afterwards has nowhere
to go but up -- even if the recession never ends.
[Jan07'08] The Persian Gulf of Tonkin-y thingee, plus two F-18's crash in
mid-air over the Gulf, plus a major fire in the largest Iraqi oil refinery
-- and oil goes down (!?). The oil traders must have some inside info
on a serious near-term economic contraction (very near term is all they
can see). Here
is a more quantitative look at how the current exponential growth
corn ethanol and other biofuels are well set up to starve the South
(as noted a few posts back). The key point out of all of Stuart
Staniford's too-many graphs is that gasoline proice elasticiy in the US
is -0.05 while price elasticity for food consumption by poor consumers
is -0.7. The -0.05 means that large price increases don't affect how
much people buy very much, while -0.7 means that large price increases
strongly reduce the amount people will buy. Growing corn for ethanol
competes directly with growing corn, wheat, and rice for food. It's already happening.
Americans have and will continue to easily outbid (for biofuels) what
poor people can bid (for food). Americans are burning up the food of the
world to move their oversize butts around in their stupid oversize cars.
It's truly sick.
[Jan10'08] The (Rupert-Murdock-owned!) Times Sibel Edmonds article is
getting remarkably little play in the US, given that is is supposedly
about 'nuclear al-Queda in Pakistan'. There was also: "We need to
get them out of the U.S. because we can't afford for them to spill the
beans." -- as told to Marc Grossman (former number 3 at the State dept)
by spy handlers for people in Turkey, Israel, and Pakistan. "Them"
was a bunch of people arrested by the FBI in connection with 9/11, then
released from jail and sent out of the country after this call from spy
handlers came in (now, if you were a random taxi driver grabbed for cash
in Afghanistan, tough luck). The timing and location of this partial
and extremely confusing release of information make it a major play,
like the National Intelligence Estimate. But I can't really figure out
what it means (or why it is not being played up in the US, given how
well it would fit with in with Drool-iani or Obama calling for an attack
on Pakistan). Some have suggested that she was (maybe unknowingly)
a part of a counterintelligence operation to sell defective plans (the
Pakistani A-tests *were* very small).
[Jan11'08] The Pentagon-assisted (cf. CIA-assisted NIE) unwinding of the
shoddy Tonkin-lite (ironically, or not-so-ironically coinciding with
a report admitting the original fake!) does look like Bush is losing
his grip. With a lot more bank funny business still to unwind/unload,
2008 could be a doozy. On the bright side, a world recession could
temporarily bring down oil prices -- right at Peak Oil!
[Jan13'08] Unfortunately, I noticed a hit from somebody that was
previously at hzzp:||sviolett.com (don't go there if you have a Windows
machine -- it will install a trojan in the form a codec, even if you try
to cancel and close the browser), which means my page may have been linked
from there. Google drops links on known Trojan-installing sites.
[Jan14'08] Americans are now worried more about the economy than about the
war, as if the two weren't related (almost a billion a day in American
tax dollars go to support our daily genocide in Iraq). Americans want
'leaders' who will 'fix the economy' and go after oil companies who are
driving up the cost of oil. It's positively embarrassing.
[Jan21'08] It sure looks like there is about to be some more violent
price whipsawing in the world's stock markets (a lot of downs, but also
some sharp ups) after the 5% one-day drops on Monday (the US markets
were closed). The much greater suddenness of these worldwide changes
compared to changes in the underlying fundamentals (sure oil is running
down and grain supplies are dropping, but they can't possibly have
fallen off a cliff in 3 days -- and as before the drops took oil along
with them!) re-emphasizes what a complete casino (at the rest of our
expenses) the stock market is. It's not about investing but rather
in taking advantage of panics with time courses of hours or days --
petty little greed and fear cycles of the psychopaths running things
that have nothing much to do with what I like to think of as reality.
The world is not decoupled at all -- the greed oscillations of the
psychopaths resonate across the entire world now like an epileptic
fit. Unfortunately, those greed cycles actually *are* our reality.
Stuart Staniford's tedious piece in the oildrum today explaining how
industrial agriculture will actually profit from rising oil prices must
have required wearing holes in his tongue licking the boots of the
greedy psychopaths (don't mention the subsidies, the soil, or water,
Stuart... you mentioned them once but I think you got away with it).
Maybe his religion made him do it. The rest of the world can eat cake.
A little Eichmann-y for my taste. Good for his CV, tho.
[Jan22'08] A sharp up it was indeed for the Dow, after the
more-than-expected Fed cut, which cancelled the opening-bell
(overnight) downward spike (though leaving the previous week of US
losses intact).
[Jan27'08] First Obama girls, now, uhhh, peak oil girls (?!) on youtube!
Even the Rupert Street Journal is getting in on the
peak oil bandwagon. I think they thought the survivalist bit showed some
skin. Anything to distract attention from FED graphs like this
one and this
one and this
one, which suggest that business is seriously 'not as usual'.
These sudden spikes don't look like anything that has happened
in the past 50 years. They look like the first expression of
the kind of kind of instabilities I had been worrying about for
years above. By contrast, the set of energy graphs in my peak oil pdf are on a much
longer time scale than those wild Fed graphs. Smoothing the feathers of
the poor little jittery financial wizards so they won't shoot each other
in the legs is one thing; dealing with the crushing long-term downtrends
in the peak oil/energy graphs is another. Like the peak oil girl says,
I suppose.
[Feb02'08] US banks are now basically out of reserves and are borrowing
from the Fed to pay for withdrawals. They are technically insolvent.
Since 'innovations' like 'sweeps' have already lowered effective bank
reserve requirements to maybe 3%, perhaps this is no big thing, just a few
percent difference. Just a flesh wound. My main worry is that as bank
reserve requirements have declined (or been worked around), a singularity
is approached. Bank reserve requirements effectively define the factor
by which banks can multiply the money supply (10% reserve requirement
means banks will multiply the amount of money borrowed into existence
from the Fed by 10 after multiple cycles of deposit and withdrawal).
At zero reserves, banks can multiply money infinitely. There are big
differences between 3%, 2%, and 1% reserves (money multipliers of 33, 50,
and 100). It does seem that something like this has started to happen
in derivatives, where their nominal 'values' of $500 trillion are many
times larger then the world's GDP or world M3 equivalent.
[Feb03'08] From Chalmers Johnson: By 1990, production for the Department
of Defense amounted to 83 percent of the value of all manufacturing
plants and equipment in the US -- that is, 17 percent of the US
manufacturing base made products not meant to kill. The US is in the
late stages of pissing away its unique intellectual, artistic, mineral,
and agrarian resources. It won't get them back. It's sad. And all to
fill the pockets and pay for hookers for a small number of stinky old
hair-transplant men who are already drafting plans for their offshore
concubines and vacation/retirement castles. But there is one unfortunate
difference from the Roman empire (or the former British empire).
The US has nukes. When the barbarians finally came to the gates of Rome
demanding all of Rome's treasure, the cashiered Romans didn't have any
serious doomsday firepower. If they *had* had them, everything might
have turned out differently. This time, even the richies' tropical safe
havens might 'get their hair mussed'.
[Feb09'08] I have a feeling that articles like this by Matthew
Rothschild in the Progressive and films like V is for Vendetta, either
knowingly or unknowingly, serve as psychological acceptance training
for a police state. The great majority of people that read them don't
get mad, but scared and helpless. No fear, as they used to say.
[Feb10'08] Sheryl Crow's (!) sorta kinda peak oil song (third line:
"And oil was way beyond its peak") written by Ben Harper, incongruously
hooked "Gasoline
will be free" (I like the bluesy 1970 feel, even if the concept
is dorky).
[Feb15'08] I graduated from NIU with a degree in geology and good
grades and I play guitar. However, I think it would be premature
at this point in time to tar all NIU graduates with a label of
NIU-white-guy-slamofascism.
[Feb17'08] This graph of non-borrowed
bank reserves (was 40 billion, now zero!) and this graph of total
borrowings by depository institutions from the Federal
Reserve (now at 45 billion -- a giant spike 11 times the
9/11 and 1987 spikes, and 5 times the 1984 spike) suggests that
'regular' banks are now all truly insolvent (both from
here). They have no reserves other than those borrowed into existence
last week from the Fed. And this emergency borrowing has recently been
made secret, so normal people can no longer identify which banks are going
bankrupt (all of them?). In contrast with the LEAP 2020 people, I think
the situation in Europe and the UK is virtually identical (if anything,
the UK and EU central banks have created even more money via this route
than the US has so far). It looks like a giant freeway pileup, but in
slow mo, with no sound. I suppose people will object that the numbers
here ($40 billion of US small people and family business bank deposits)
are trivial compared to trillions of real estate equity, $3.5 trillion
in money market funds, the US or world GDP ($10-ish trillion, $40-ish
trillion) or derivatives ($400-ish trillion) or interest rate swaps
($600 trillion-ish). It still creeps me out. And peak oil hasn't even
started to bite. What will happen when there is real pressure on the
system? I have no clear idea whether to expect inflation or deflation.
Creating money is generally inflationary, but problems obtaining credit
mean deflation. I suppose I still feel deflationary, like
Genesis at Market Ticker. It's true US/UK/EU central banks are
creating huge amounts of credit/money to buy distressed things of zero
value rather than wringing them out of the system. But I don't agree
with the gold idiots (like the tedbits guy who posted the graphs above)
who ridiculously group gold and oil together as 'commodities' and then
see inflation relative to them. I don't think gold matters much at all
now (in the long run you can't eat it or power a truck with it), and oil
is going up because of simple supply and demand (we are near peak oil),
not because of money games. Housing still has a huge way to fall to get
back into historical alignment with salaries. People can no longer spend
extra by taking out home equity loans (consumers are 70% of the GDP and
home equity withdrawals maybe 10% of that). Municipalities are having
to pay 20% interest on loans (NY Port Authority this week), which will
lead to municipal bankruptcies (only banking richies can get secret low
interest 'loans' from the Fed printing presses because they are such good
people and have invested money so wisely; working people by contrast have
to pay 20% interest to the banks because working people are 'risky').
None of these huge deflationary 'meals' are even close to having made
it through the python yet (we haven't even reached the peak of 'funny'
mortgage resets yet, much less the consequences of them). Meanwhile,
back in Washington, yet more war and defense spending bills are being
prepared and will be passed. As Elaine Meinel Supkis says, the entire
Congress and Bush and Greenspan/Bernanke should be arrested for fraud
for cutting taxes and lowering interest rates to almost zero, all while
launching *two* wars. Eat the rich before they eat us.
[Feb25'08] Sad to see that the violent, pointless piece-'o-crap movie,
no country for old men was given a bunch of awards. For what? It's the
emperor with no clothes! I'm very sorry to have paid them money to see
it without finding out about it first. Complete trash. I loved the Big
Lebowski. This one sucked. As one imdb commenter suggested, it seemed
like a joke -- they make a vile movie that abuses the audience and then
they watch as the self-flagellating idiots explain to themselves how deep
Tommy Lee Jones stupid lines are. It's Federico Krueger, chumps. I can't
wait for the sequel -- Anton Chigurh vs. Predator *and* Alien.
[Feb27'08] As expected last year by anybody who could fog a laptop
screen (e.g., me, above) the number of foreclosures is skyrocketing.
The number of mortgage resets is about to hit its peak -- but the
people who suddenly can't pay now aren't the ones foreclosing now! --
the current interest rate resets won't foreclose until this Fall. Banks
have already been completely drained (and more!) of their non-borrowed
reserves over the past two months. The worst could still be yet to come.
The weird complacency I get when talking to people about this sets
me on edge. I really wish we could get the next 6 months out of the
way quickly. And I especially don't like it when the richies announce
to you that you're about to be f***ed (but of course, they still
get to keep theirs).
[Mar03'08] Scott Horton wrote an insightful piece on the
embrace of torture by Americans, noting that Fox's "24" gave Americans
67 torture scenes in its first five seasons (up from virtually no torture
scenes on teevee in the 90's). Widespread torture was given up (at least
in the homeland of western countries) because: (1) it doesn't work, (2)
once rooted it spreads like kudzu, (3) there are no ticking time bombs,
and (4) it doesn't fit well with a free society. Many Americans now
shamefully think otherwise. Unfortunately, these tastes have a nasty
way of bubbling into a craze like the witch trials. It doesn't help
media broadcasting identical copies of these memes into everybody's
bedroom at the same time.
[Mar05'08] Interesting stats on the costs of using a car here.
43,000 deaths a year and several times that many serious injuries a
year costing each big city person about $1000/year and each smaller city
person over $2000/year. At $164 billion/year, crashes are a visible chunk
of the GDP. For comparison, prisons -- another big component of state
budgets that has far outstripped what is spent on higher education and
put the US on the world map as the country with the highest percentage
of its population in jail -- cost a mere $50 billion/year.
[Mar08'08] Things certainly do look shaky
when the regular press starts echoing whacko blogs like mine. But things
have looked shaky before -- e.g., late 1970's, 1987, 1998. In all those
cases, financial people got whipsawing psychological oscillations back
under control and life went on. Things seem hugely more precarious
then they were back then (esp. oil, food, unprecedented global size of
housing inflation and hedge fund leverage, the fact that at the *top*
of a huge housing bubble people have ended up with a record *low*
percent equity, the $200 billion Fed action this week, people squatting in their multimillion dollar
seaside mansions because there is a year delay for the bank to get a court
date) but who knows? Maybe still not the big one? The fundamentals
of oil, food, and housing are all slow moving. The slopes either
side of their peaks are very shallow (even though the slopes from
unwinding huge leverage on them can be violent). A glance at this
chart shows the largest recorded swing in summer/winter ice coverage
change in 2007/2008, coincident with extremely rough weather in China
(which destroyed 10% of its forests) and the northern US. If the rough
weather continues into summer, it could be a real doozy of a hurricane
season. Global warming means more precipitation in addition to warming.
Like I said above, I wish we could just get through the next 6 months
real quick...
[Mar08'08] Now that there is a peak oil video game (KAOS
Studios in New York just spent $15 million making Frontlines:
Fuel of War) my job is done: I guess there is no need to update my peak oil pdf anymore :-}
[Mar10'08] A recent meme is that since the move to ethanol was prompted
by concerns about global warming, and since ethanol is bad and competes
with food, global warming must be a scam. Ethanol is certainly very bad.
But it's hardly being done because of concerns about global warming.
It would be better from a CO2 point of view to just burn the fossil fuels
used to make it directly, since burning ethanol of course generates CO2
(and the EROEI is almost 1:1). This is a little like claiming that peak
oil must be wrong because oil companies are run by pigmen. The second is
true but is completely unrelated to the first, which depends on geology
and maximum flow rates, not greed.
[Mar12'08] Admiral Fallon has resigned, perhaps, because like Rumsfeld,
he didn't feel it was strategically optimal to 'crush the ants'
at this particular point in time (Fallon's own words from the recent
bootlicking article written about him in Esquire). In Rumsfeld's case,
what happened after was the surge (more of the same). In this case,
it could be worse. This is just a few days after a US navy attack
group arrived in the mideast. The recent jump of oil to $110 may
be related. Most senior military officers seem to oppose a strike,
so getting rid of Fallon doesn't mean a strike is imminent. It also
indicates that there is dissension at the top. But on balance, I
don't think it's a good sign. A successful attack on an American ship
(false flag or otherwise) could rapidly change the situation (this
came close to working). The threat of fast water-skimming cruise missiles
has been well rehearsed. Because of this, some have suggested that an
attack on Iran will only come when all the US ships in the Gulf *leave*
:-}
[Mar15'08] The poor wittle freemarket pigmen at Bear Stearns are
getting bailed out by the gubmint, just a few days after the $200
billion announcement. These are the same guys who say, "tough luck
bucko, the free market won't allow us to pay your health insurance".
Socialism is only for pigmen. The reason they are failing is because
their equally flush New York hedge fund rat-friends (e.g., Renaissance
'Technologies' [heh] Corp.) ratted them out to save their own a$$es,
last Wednesday and Thursday. Toss them in jail! Take all the away all
the huge bonuses they paid themselves just before the sh** hit the fan!
Don't bail them out by effectively taxing everybody else by devaluing
our money! Take their bonuses! Why should we pay more for food so these
scumbags can keep their 7th house? The irony of it all is that the recent
crisis seems to have been caused by various players in these complex
ponzi schemes turning on each other. On a somewhat positive
note, many commentators seem to agree that Fallon's resignation
doesn't indicate an imminent Iran attack (e.g., Robert Parry).
Hope they're right. But Parry also says that this may just be (another)
postponement.
[Mar19'08] Supposedly, 2/3 of Americans oppose the war. But at the
same time, stay-in-Iraq-for-100-years McCain leads both Democrats in the
polls (46% to 40%)! Americans don't seems to think that the Iraq war has
anything to do with the plummetting economy. It's positively stupefying.
Maybe people realize that voting Democratic won't end the war. Plus,
I'm sure they feel that the rich have not been given enough tax cuts
and bailouts, and they feel that their own standards of living are
still too high and that it's unfair that more rich people don't have
yachts like they really don't deserve health care and that the thiss.
[Mar22'08] The rates on three-month treasury bills yesterday went to 0.387
percent, the lowest level since 1954, and for the first time since 1993,
lower than in Japan. This means that some people are scared. Oil has
'plunged' to $101 as a result of speculators (probably using some of
the funny money recently doled out to them by central banks) having
to take profits to make margin calls (for other risky investments).
This shows, of course, that peak oil is wrong. And since I saw a few
flecks of snow riding my bike this morning in London, it means that
global warming is wrong, too. Whew, those two things had me scared
there for a while.
[Mar23'08] The New York State Teacher's Retirement System owns almost
half a million shares of Bear Stearns stock. They will lose over $50
million if J. Pirate Morgan (from Elaine Meinel Supkis) pockets the
remaining loot for $2 a share ($300 million). Their NYC building alone
is thought to be worth $1.5 billion. Where's Eliot Spitzer when you
*really* need him? Indirectly, taxes are being used to bail out the
guys with the yachts while stiffing the teachers. If socialism isn't
good enough for us, the bankers shouldn't get it either! The gov should
seize the yachts and the bonuses and sell them off for the teachers!
Just like they do will ill-gotten drug money. Ignore the suits and see
the reeking pirates underneath. The Amurrican people might even start
to get mad after they have funded another 10 or 20 of these.
[Mar25'08] I went here
to see a video of the beginnings of what might be the sudden breakup of
the largest Antarctic ice shelf yet (the Wilkins Ice shelf, the size of
Northern Ireland) but first I had to sit through a commercial... for a
Land Rover SUV like thing. OK, I know I'm just being an old fogey who
doesn't get google gen humor.
[Mar30'08] On Monday, Henry Paulson will announce that the US government
is essentially planning to hand over the control of its banking system to
a the very private pigmen owners of the Fed that got us into our present
state, reducing the power of the SEC bank regulators in the process.
There will be no vote. This is like the beginning of the Iraq war.
Anybody whose mind was clear enough to think straight could see that
it was a very bad idea. A record number of us even got out onto the
streets, unprecedentedly, before the war had even started. Most of
the rest now admit privately it was a mistake (but won't, of course,
give us any credit for foresight, or remember or take responsibility
for what they thought back then). In any case, the demonstrations had
absolutely no effect because they immediately went away (mainly because
there was no draft). People now seem even more passive than back then.
Is it because there is about to be a huge explosion of discontent and I'm
just not hearing what people are actually thinking? One can always hope.
That the polls put McCain ahead (not that I think that the other two
would make much difference) suggests that the American mind remains more
seriously dazed and confused than ever. If people can even think about
voting for McCain, how could they possibly come to grips with the concept
of the peaking of world per capita energy use? Or the coming collision
between that and an economic and money system based on the concept of
continuous growth? Support for McCain is probably partly support for
a strongman in uncertain times. It's embarrassing that *he's* the best
strongman available! (not that I would have preferred a better
strongman).
[Apr01'08] In addition to stiffing each other and the New York Port
Authority, banks have suddenly stopped lending to students. And these
are the kind of ultra secure loans where they come after your parents and
kids if you die! (but they are not as profitable as credit cards with 25%
interest, and so out the door they go). The ripple effects of this are
likely to hit universities hard. The cost of a university education has
increased at several times the rate of inflation over the past 15 years.
Expensive as they are, universities are truly one of the few great things
that are really still 'made in the US', and long admired the world over.
The time has come to outsource them, too, I suppose. This is getting
awfully tunicate-like. Tunicates are animals whose larvae have certain
similarities to early vertebrates. One difference from vertebrates,
is that when the tunicate larva finally settles down and attaches
itself to a surface to become an adult sea squirt, the first thing it
does is jettison its brain. Americans can't you see that spending huge
amounts of money killing Iraqis -- not to mention it being a war crime
-- is wiping out the country and your retirement? You can't pay
for your war crimes and your universities, too (graph by
RandomViolence).
[Apr05'08] We are now close to the peak of mortgage interest rate resets.
House prices in the US/UK/EU are still way (two to three times) over
3x yearly income, the historical rate at which it is possible to pay a
mortgage (plus or minus variations in interest rate). Mortgages are
getting harder and harder to get. At the same time, people are much
less enthusiastic about buying in a falling market. Foreclosures have
ballooned and are now as common as sales in many places in the US.
Personal saving rates have dropped below zero (a 20% down payment is hard
to amass with a negative savings rate). Banks would seem to have major
problems on their hands given how mortgage credit was used to spin out
huge amounts of additional debt/money creation. The recent moves to allow
banks to not declare all of these losses or to 'sell' them to taxpayers
hardly seem to be long term solutions. By any measure, we would seem to
be at a Wile-E.-Coyote suspended-in-air moment. The amount of unwinding
that has to happen to get things back to historical averages is truly
breathtaking. Yet, the general mood seems not *that* dark. And this is
all assuming that growth will resume once all the bad debt gets destroyed.
It's not clear to me that rapid growth can resume after the great unwind
is done. In another decade, we will be hitting the beginning of the
plateau of peak all-energy. This will constrain growth potential.
On positive side, at least peak all energy and peak per capita energy
is a gentle peak (compared to pigmen fear-greed oscillations).
[Apr12'08] Interesting numbers from a long (naturally :-} ) H.C.K. Liu article
"Between 1925 and 1929 the total amount of outstanding installment credit
more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion while the GDP
rose from $91 billion to $104 billion. Today, outstanding consumer credit
besides home mortgages adds up to about $14 trillion, about the same as
the annual GDP". That is, in 1929, outstanding installment credit was 3%
of GDP in 1929, while outstanding consumer credit is now 100% of GDP.
Americans need a raise, not another loan. As Mike Whitney says, power
has to be taken from the financial pirates that put us in this mess or
they will continue to increase their share of the loot until they have to
abandon our sinking ship on private lifeboats overloaded with booty. Just
because the teevee doesn't call it class war doesn't mean the lampreys
will voluntarily detach themselves from the body politic. They have to
be forcibly knocked off.
[Apr20'08] Despite the continuing moral, not to mention fiscal, drain of
the US/UK-directed Iraq genocide (over 1 million dead), Americans still
can't bring themselves to demand a withdrawal. I've read that people
are afraid to complain because they might 'get on a list'. This will be
looked upon unkindly in the fullness of time. I wonder what would have
to happen before Americans (and Britons) will speak out? House prices
halved? Weekly bank collapses? Things that really count? (as compared
to the mere lives of a million low-market-value human beings). At the
current rate, Americans and Britons will never demand a withdrawal.
The war occupation will end only when their economies collapses so far
it can't be maintained (or the troops revolt).
[Apr22'08] This
remarkably Orwellian article about the death of Riad Hamad reads:
"Activist under FBI investigation found dead in lake, hands and legs
bound, eyes covered with duct tape -- police leaning toward suicide
ruling". War is peace.
[Apr23'08] Recently, the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana
has been hyped. It is not a new find. The oil bearing beds are mostly
rather 'tight' rock (i.e., not very porous and therefore hard to get
oil out of). So far 110 million barrels of oil have been produced from
Bakken over the last 50 years. Sounds like a lot, but don't mix up your
millions and billions. The *total* production so far is equivalent to
just 5 *days* of current US usage (about 20.7 million barrels a day),
or just 1.3 days of current world usage. Of course, there is a lot more
oil in there, but little of it is recoverable at a reasonable energy
return on energy investment ratio. The USGS estimates that there is
3.6 recoverable billion barrels left in Bakken (180 days of US usage).
This is similar to other highly inflated USGS numbers that have turned out
to be inconsistent with flat world production in the face of skyrocketing
oil prices over the past 4 years. A more realistic estimate here is that the ultimate
recovery from Bakken will be around 500 million barrels (i.e., 390 million
new barrels past the 110 gotten over the past 50 years, or about 20 more
*days* of current US usage). It's criminal to have these glowing reports
without even the most basic context (US usage of 20 million barrels a
day, Bakken a well-known oil bearing formation that has produced 110
million barrels total, etc). Simple grade-school-level division shows
that the wolf is at the door, and even 30 more Bakkens wouldn't make
him go away.
[May16'08] The parallel reality in which this
article exists is amazing to me. I link to Evans-Pritchard sometimes,
but the unbelievable ignorance about oil reserves and possible oil
production rates on display here (which includes most of the comments)
is dizzying. For Evans-Pritchard, I guess it's just an occupational
hazard of being an economist. For the rest, study some physics,
chemistry, geology, and agriculture!
[Jun03'08] I'd have a tough time making up stufflike this:
Halliburton sells $1.2 million worth of toasters to the government for
$2,000 each, after stealing them (!) from a discount appliance warehouse,
under the cover of an FBI consumer protection raid. To justify the
price, they have 4 Pentagon generals inspect one, eventually resulting in
database programmers inventing over 200 components, all priced separately,
some of which contain expensive "heat resistant platinum alloys".
Fearing for her life, the attempted whistle-blower on this scheme flees
to Canada.
[Jun04'08] There are currently 18.5 million empty houses in the US.
Young people need about 1.85 million new houses a year. About 0.5
million homes are demolished per year to build something new on the
lot. About 1.1 million homes are vacated per year by old people.
Even in recession, home builders are still adding about 1 million
homes per year. Add all these together and you get 0.35 million net
empty houses occupied. That's an awful lot of inventory still to
clear (it would take 50 years at current rates!) (stats from here).
It is a relief to be (just) past the peak in mortgage resets mentioned
in previous posts. But the numbers in this post suggest that the housing
market will remain distressed for a long time.
[Jun08'08] As pension funds and other speculators (heh!) pile into oil
and food, even going as far as buying actually food, not just futures
(the Enron-i-zation of wheat!), oil and food prices have bumped up a
little faster than they would have otherwise. The main source of the
long term rise, though, is simply that demand is bumping up against
max supply. Oil and food may slump back a little ("oil plunges to
$110! we're saved! the commie hippies were wrong!"). This will take a
little pressure off of countries that subsidize gasoline. Those subsidies
effectively increase taxes there, however, and as oil prices increase,
they effectively increase the cost of labor. This is beginning to
finally put the brakes on the global labor arbitrage that has gutted the
industrial economies of the US (and UK). A temporary oil price pullback
in a few months (if this even happens!) will not change the long term
contours of the drawdown of oil reserves. Despite the constant drone of
tabloid puff pieces about "a fantastic new oil discovery has just been
discovered" and "hippies have prevented us from drilling giant reserves
in ANWR/Californa/whatever", total world oil reserves numbers are *very*
slowly moving (well except when OPEC doubled its reserves during the
1980's oil glut). That means yearly discoveries (now running at best at
1/5 of yearly usage) are never going to make it safe to buy SUV's again;
but it also means that the falloff will be gradual, too (at first...).
Note that all this is about *oil* prices, not gasoline/petrol prices.
There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil. It is possible to make about
20 gallons of gasoline/petrol out of a barrel of crude oil. Dividing a
$130 barrel of crude by 20 gallons gives $6.50/gallon -- before refining
and transportation costs, taxes, etc. Gasoline/petrol made from oil
delivered today is going to cost well over $4/gallon.
[Jun13'08] It mkes me laugh to see comparison
between the dot com run-up and rising oil prices. Sure, both computers
and oil are useful. But computers as we know them are not possible
without oil and other fossil fuels. Oil is the lifeblood of industrial
civilization, which now, includes computers. I hope we can find a
replacement for this lifeblood. In Portugal, Spain, the Philippines,
and Thailand, angry truckers blocked roads and set fire to the truck
of a scab. As oil gets more scarce, the price will fitfully go up,
eventually dwarfing taxes, subsidies, until it gets beyond the means of
most of the world to pay for it. That is the real meaning of demand
destruction -- not piddly 2% reductions in North American miles per
capita. These riots have already happened with only tiny reductions in
overall demand. It's tempting to make fun of people who would seem to be
threatening geological formations (and I confess I have done so above).
But that's not really their target -- the true target is other people
(like me) who are using the same dwindling resource.
[Jun22'08] Watching things turn out like I feared 5 years ago is
sure depressing. Mere price increases can't increase the *rate of
flow* of oil. The rate of flow of oil from tar sands will never
reach above a few percent of daily usage. Economics isn't physics.
I'm still hoping the attack on Iran will be foiled by conservative
elements of the military. It certainly isn't going to be stopped
by the public or by the civilian government; the Democratic worms
just bent over again and continued their unbroken record of fully
funding the war, and followed that up with support for a naval
blockage of Iran. Election? What election? There is only one
ruling party.
[Jun27'08] Oil at $142 implies gasoline at $7 or $8/gallon (~20 gallons
of gasoline can be made from a 42 gallon barrel of oil). I predicted a number of
years ago that peak oil would really begin to hit in 2008. I'm not at all
happy to probably be right. I don't care that everybody said I was too
much of an alarmist. If the crazies can be prevented from attacking Iran,
oil should fall back a little. But the main reason for its high price
is that we have reached maximum flow rates. Unless demand goes down,
prices won't go down either (they will go higher even if demand stays flat
because flow rates may soon begin to slowly go down). Sure there are
a bunch of useless parasites sucking money-for-nothing out of oil price
volatility. It's unlikely the rabble will treat them kindly at the end
of the day. As much as this parasitic occupation disgusts me, it is not
the primary driver for oil prices. It's merely high rollers at the craps
tables on the Titanic, right before the tables got really wet...
[Jul03'08] It's pathetic to see all the talk about the 'inflation'
threat from high oil prices. High oil prices aren't inflation -- they
simply mean oil demand is bumping up against oil peak flow rates, period.
As I've said many times before, oil isn't an optional purchase, but the
lifeforce (literally) of industrial society. As oil prices increase,
businesses will close. Wages will *fall* as unemployment increases.
Banks will fail because unemployed people will get (further) behind on
their mortgages. The supply of credit (AKA money) is constricting.
Banks are rushing to find some way of making sure rich people don't
lose any of their tax-free, ill-gotten gains. In the face of all this,
the central European bank is warning of the danger of a (poor people)
wage spiral. To show that they got the message, EU truckers should
picket and blockade the banks instead of the ports.
[Jul10'08] Cantarell in Mexico, (formerly!) the world's
second-largest-producing oil field after Ghawar, is now declining
at an average annual rate of 14%. Eeesh. I was worrying about --
and writing about -- this almost 4 years ago. Now Cantarell really is
"falling off a cliff". That's a *nasty* lot of depletion to make up
for, esp. when you consider that it has to come from a large number
of new wells that are tiny cousins of a super giant like Cantarell.
I wish I hadn't been right. This is not because 'the Mexicans don't
use up-to-date 'murrican technology'. In fact, the rapid decline rate
is precisely because Mexicans *did* use up-to-date technology -- like
horizontal wells and early nitrogen injection. And that's why many
of us could see the cliff coming 4 years ago. In another few years,
the same thing will start to happen to Ghawar. Just great. The lower
overall decline rate of existing wells (around 4-5% per year) means we
have to find the equivalent of a new Ghawar -- the largest oil field
ever found in the world -- every two years, forever. Somehow, I think
this won't happen, eh? How on earth can the 'planning' nincompoops
*possibly* think about building new runways now? What are they smoking?
Their ignorance of basic geology is just stunning. At these rates, we're
looking at the possibility of serious social unrest in five or ten years.
Now I know, that's the far distant future. Whew, I was worried there
for a while.
[Jul13'08] Meanwhile, back with the money geniuses, IndyMac gets
bailed out, taking out 10-20% of the total capitalization of FDIC.
Not bad! The FDIC maintains reserves of a little over 1% of the value
of the deposits that it insures. So that means that it is currently
insuring about 350 IndyMac-equivalents with 5 or 10 IndyMac-equivalents
of reserves. That won't cause anyone else to panic I'm sure. We're all
professionals here, you know...
[Jul15'08] One thing I didn't forsee above was the advent of the Peak Oil
self help book (can a Suze Orman book on Women and Oil be far behind?).
I always knew I was terrible at business (tho the internet helps).
Speaking of the internet, I recently found out from it that Martha Farah
was at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting. Now that's different! And also
that vision researcher Joe Atick is now at L-1 -- the company behind
airport retinal scans -- from Fallujah to Heathrow.
[Jul19'08] A recent estimate from Bridgewater Associates is that bank
losses may reach $1,600 billion (earlier estimates were in the range of
$500 billion). For comparison, the Savings and Loan disaster from the
80's was $125 billion, largely paid by taxpayers. Even after inflation
adjustment, the current disaster could turn out to be 5-10 times as big.
If banks and bank-like thingees are bailed out by taxpayer money, it
could turn in one of the largest transfers of wealth from poor and middle
income to rich in the history of the US (similiar slow motion poor->rich
bailouts will likely occur in the UK and EU). Just because it's slow
doesn't mean the bankers aren't rifling through your wallet every day.
National health care? No chance. National bank share-holder care? *Now*
you're talking. Socialism only for rich people. Even though truckers
blocking deliveries to protest high oil prices is aimed at the wrong
target, any actual action trumps words (like mine, I suppose).
[Jul22'08] Roubini now estimates $2-3 trillion in losses and no
housing bottom until 2010. On the bright side, he says it won't be
as bad as the Depression. The UK and the EU have similar problems.
Germany -- the head of the pack -- actually contracted in the
second quarter. The global game of chicken is on. Last Sunday,
Evans-Pritchard said "If we are lucky, America will start to stabilise
before Asia goes down. Should our leaders mismanage affairs, almost
every part of the global system will go down together. Then we are in
trouble." I would say we are in trouble when the major way of making
money today is to bet that another company will fail (particularly
profitable when you haven't even bought the shares that you are selling
short, i.e., 'naked shorting'). It has such a decline of the Roman
empire feeling to it. Don't do anything that might slow the decline of
industrial civilization -- instead we have a bunch of decadent fatties
reclining and stuffing their faces and betting from the sidelines on who
will crash and burn, between trips to the vomitorium. But the really
sad thing about this whole mess is that it is happening *before* peak oil
or peak natural gas has really begun to bite! Significant year-on-year
production *declines* in oil probably won't start in earnest until
2012.
[Jul28'08] When I went to college in the 1970's at a state supported
university in Illinois. I was able to make enough money at a
just-over-minimum-wage summer job to pay for both tuition and room
and board for the year (about $2,000/year). I stayed an extra year
as an undergraduate (no longer allowed there) and learned a lot from
excellent teachers who had more teaching experience than many teachers
at better-rated universities. Thirty years later, the minimum wage is
only 50% higher but the cost for tuition and room and board at that same
university is *1000%* higher (over $20,000/year), in part because the
states including Illinois have withdrawn funding for Universities and
diverted it to things like prisons (California used to spend twice as
much on universities as prisons; now it's more than the other way around).
Professors' salaries have more or less kept pace with inflation (too bad
they didn't go up 1000%, too :-} ) but permanent 'temporary' non-tenure
track workers have fallen considerably behind. Meanwhile, the students
emerge from college massively in debt with 30 year loans with usurious
rates (some ballooning to 11% after a few years). Like the situation
with housing, where house prices doubled or tripled while salaries
stayed the same, this is *not* a sustainable situation and will have to
unwind at some point. Too bad universities can't charge 10% interest per
year on ideas generated there like banks do on the money they generate.
It's certainly more mental work generating ideas than generating money
(the automatic consequence of fractional reserve lending). And it doesn't
take much mental effort to borrow money at 3 or 5% and then charge some
poor student 11%. I learned that kind of math back in the third grade.
With current trends, universities will be once again turned back into
the luxuries for the rich they were a hundred years ago.
[Jul28'08] There was an interesting report here about
how funds for repairing roads are being impacted by people driving less
(3.7% fewer miles than this time last year). Trucks do a great majority
of damage to roads (over 99%), because road damage goes up as a high power
of axle load, but they are not taxed proportionately. So car drivers
are subsidizing the trucking industry through gas taxes and road-repair
taxes (you never hear libertarians complaining about this compared to
the way they complain about taxes for railroad maintenance). This is
an excellent example of the unrecognized mechanics of peak oil -- and
it already became obvious after only a tiny drop in driving! I hate to
imagine what the roads will look like when oil prices reach $400/barrel.
It's such a shame. Instead of leaving us great, big, beautiful bicycle
lanes, industrial civilization might end up instead pounding unmaintained
roads into big dusty, cracked up messes and then leaving us to pick our
way around zillions of potholes (a lot harder in a bike than an SUV).
Instead of addressing any of this, the Pentagon (=government) has
unveiled a 2009 military budget of over half a trillion -- the highest
ever, even after adjusting for inflation. Note that this huge tax bill
*doesn't* include funds for the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the CIA,
the surveillance agencies, the spy satellites, etc, etc, much of it now
privately
contracted, and not even overseen by the government (most signals
intelligence is collected by SAIC not the NSA). As I've said before,
Americans are pouring their country down the toilet, without a whimper.
It should be pretty obvious to even a ten year old that all that military
spending isn't helping the country. Once the country's been flushed,
it's going to be awfully hard to put all that sh*t back together.
In virtually all historical cases, it never came back out of the sewer
in one piece.
[Jul30'08] Here is one of America's finest slowing down
a bicyclist. Before this video came to light, the cop filed a
report that the bicyclist had assaulted him. How about mister fat guy
gets to ride a bicycle for a year as community service! It's the same
idea as requiring people getting a driving license to ride a bicycle
in traffic. If there had been a similar video for the following raid,
perhaps we could have avoided the travesty of 8 Minneapolis police
SWAT team members being awarded bravery medals (WTF?) for shooting
up the wrong home. 'Bravery medals' for cowardly
storm troopers. Disgusting. Don't these guys have
any shame? Just remember, make sure a friend gets a video,
else you're toast (this guy, for
example, tasered 19 times *after* he broke his back, unfortunately lacks
a video).
[Aug01'08] The temporary oil drop may be a good sign that the Iran
war lunatics are in temporarily in retreat, as evidenced by various
recent leaks: signs of informal negotiation with Iran, Admiral
Mullen (a strong supporter of Israel) going to Israel and warning
against a second USS Liberty, the Hersh
leak of Cheney's shooting-at-SEALs-dressed-like-Iranians
plan. Let's hope it sticks as the housing/credit bubble
continues to unwind, racheting up the pressure. Looks like there's still
a ways to go in that process...
[Aug06'08] Alt-A mortgages (e.g., pay option adjustable rate mortgages)
have started to implode in the US, keeping default rates up, even as
subprime defaults have started to fall. Pay option ARMs have insane
schedules where you pay less than just the interest until the principal
gets to say, 125% of the original loan, then suddenly you have to pay
full interest plus principal. I remember when these came out. From the
beginning, it was clear that they were time bombs. US house prices
are already down over 30%. Many commentators worry that prime mortgages
are next. To get mortgages back into historical alignment with salaries,
prices must continue down. Ouch. Of course, salaries could be raised.
That, of course, is completely off the table -- socialism is only for
rich people (corporations have begun raiding their own pension funds to
pay extra dividends to the smelly pirates that run them).
[Aug20'08] A brilliant member of the proud, the few, the TSA ("thousands
standing around") decided to perform an impromptu overnight 'security
check' to see if someone could break into parked aircraft. Or perhaps
he was was on a mission to plant something on a plane (that he himself
was guarding, of course) to see if pilots would find it, which would
generate a fine if the pilots missed it (makes sense if you think that
finding things hidden by TSA numbskulls is one of a pilot's main jobs...).
Anyway, back to to TSA idiot. He climbed up onto the cockpits of a bunch
of planes using delicate flight control sensors as a ladder, damaging the
sensors on 9 of the planes, grounding them, and creating havoc at O'Hare.
The pilots were furious, saying that the TSA was endangering air safety.
Why can't these fine Americans just stick to keeping us safe from our
suntan lotion and bottled water and little girl's snow globes?
[Aug20'08] Now that Obama has picked "I am
a Zionist" Biden as VP, I suppose McCain can go for Lieberman.
I don't see how Biden could posssibly rescue the votes of Democrats
who have problems with Obama's skin color. Amazingly, it looks like
the doddering and dangerous McCain could win. If it's any consolation,
Biden is probably worse than McCain on the Iraq holocaust (1.5 million
people dead).
[Aug24'08] The new NIST explanation of the 5 PM collapse of 47-story
WTC7 (a building not hit by a place) now gets rid of diesel fires (the
original FEMA explanation) and damage from the earlier WTC1 collapse
(many other reports) as explanations of the collapse, and attributes it
instead to stresses (changes in length) caused by thermal expansion,
caused by office fires. A collapse from office fires due to thermal
expansion stress is unprecedented for a steel framed building (steel is an
excellent conductor of heat). The NIST explanation also doesn't explain
reports of molten steel (slag mixed with melted concrete, extremely high
surface temperatures weeks after the collapse, and iron-rich microspheres
in dust collected immediately after event) in WTC7 debris, none of which
could have resulted from office fires.
[Aug30'08] Here is an amazingly clueless
Will Greider article in the Nation about McCain's choice of Sarah
Palin as vice-president, calling it a desperation move. As some of
the commenters pointed out, it's naive to call it 'desperation' when
McCain is tied or even ahead in some polls. I think it will probably
be the thing that clinches the election for McCain. Of course,
I completely failed to predict something like this in my comment
above, not having a working political strategist's bone in my body.
But I'm good at recognizing the fruits of that expertise. A genius
move. It will be hard to pick on her obvious lack of experience
from the 'left' and because she is a woman and not the presidential
candidate. She has the strong support of AIPAC. Unbelievable that
that a doddering scumbag carpet bomber baby killer war criminal
will probably win. Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf coast
offshore rigs and pipelines creates some uncertainty. But even
there, a (semi-)natural aspects of a disaster will distract attention
from the underlying cause of high oil prices (we're running out).
It remains beyond me why anyone would want to be president of any
country given the economic s-storm bearing down, laid on top of
the real start of Peak Oil. I know, think of the bright side of
life -- all things must pass, but they will pass at a more stately
rate than anyone expects (I'm hoping).
[Sep01'08] Well, OK, the McCain-thing wasn't looking too bouncy here,
but maybe he forgot to take his pills.
[Sep02'08] By any objective measure, the scenes from St. Paul show that
the US is slowly turning into a police state. Almost 1000 people were
arrested. The creeping militarization will be difficult to turn back,
esp. as conditions get hotter as we begin a long slow energy descent.
Not looking good. And as the California continues without a budget,
several *billion* a week is still being spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars/holocausts (more than 1.5 million killed so far). What wars?
You'd hardly know we were in two wars for longer than WWII from the
vile, supine press. Bringing that tax money back home could repair the
California budget in a few weeks, even with housing continuing to plummet.
Shame.
[Sep08'08] Well, sadly, as I had suspected above, Obama has for now fallen
decisively behind in the latest Gallup poll. McCain-Palin -- mostly
the result of Palin and the failure of leftish attacks on her! -- now
have a crushing 10% lead amongst likely voters. It makes me angry that
the left is so completely clueless -- even when it comes to seeing that
they have been knocked upside the head! The left's attacks completely
backfired, as even a political numbskull such as myself immediately
predicted they would. The bad thing is if the 'slightly left' loses,
I doubt they will learn a lesson. Americans deserve McCain and Palin.
They deserve creationism in the schools. They need to downsize all their
major universities. They need more prisons and more people in them.
Then need even more testing in schools because children are not far enough
behind. They need to stay in Iraq for 100 years. They need to protect
Israel because protecting Israel is a 'biblical imperative'. Americans
have a God-given right to run the country down the toilet.
[Sep14'08] Fingers crossed that everything doesn't go haywire with a bunch
of jittery money creeps all trying to suck each others blood on Monday.
Looks like the Barclays Lehman bid has been withdrawn.
[Sep17'08] The central European bank injected 30 billion euros (about
1/3 of what they injected in August 2007) on Monday to try to head off
interbank chaos caused by American problems (collapse of 158 year old
Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest US investment bank and the biggest
bankruptcy in history, and the fire sale of Merrill Lynch to BofA).
Today, $75 billion dollars were proposed to be injected by the Fed for
the same purpose. Sadly, my business-friendly friends who assured
me that derivatives were a safe way of milking billions of dollars
out of people who actually make things (Lehman paid out $5.7 billion
in ill-gotten bonuses in 2007) seem to have been wrong. Lehman had a
trillion or more in derivatives nominally worth a substantial fraction
of the US GDP, which are now in an 'uncertain' state. The US stock
market dropped 4.4% on Monday. The dollar, somewhat mysteriously,
remained strong relative to oil, the euro, and the pound, for now
at least. Meanwhile, the slaughter to control the oil in Iraq and
the opium in Afghanistan continues to the tune of a billion dollars
every 2 days (the Chimp Who Can Drive has it right here
as does Chalmers Johnson here).
At this rate, the endless war won't stop until the US and the UK
completely collapse economically. Despite all the central bank attempts
to inject money, it looks like money is currently being destroyed faster
than it can be made. Overnight interbank interest rates doubled to 6.4%
on Monday evening -- their highest since 2001 and then went over 10%
on Tuesday evening (normally, this number tracks the Fed, or vice
versa!, which is currently at 2%). European banks are being hit up
for dollars because there are so tight in the US. All of this makes
money scarcer and causes the value of money to increase relative to
things -- like oil, AKA deflation -- even despite things that would
normally be highly inflationary like the Fannie and Freddie takeover.
Others argue that it's not really deflation but only temporary efforts to
raise money (deleveraging) by selling profitable things like oil-related
investments. I suppose we'll know in a year or two for sure. Smells like
deflation.
[Sep18'08] It's worth noting that the total amount of money used
by the public-US-gov-slash-private-Fed to feed the slavering money
trolls ($1-2 trillion) is approaching the amount of public money
invested in the Iraq/Afghanistan holocaust/oilgrab ($1+ trillion,
including a massive $0.6 trillion dollar 'defense' bill passed
this Wednesday!). It's has also, unfortunately, used up most of
the short term reserves available to the Fed. No tumbrils for money
trolls yet (the sh*t-carts symbolically used to haul the aristocracy to
the guillotine), but history has a nasty way of returning for a visit.
The yield of 3-month US treasury bills has fallen to 0.02 percent,
gold shot up almost $100 dollars, and oil went up $10, indicating that
all the trolls have run for cover at the same time. The last
time short term interest rates were that low was 1940. Normally,
short term interest rate moves like this are quickly followed by the Fed
dropping interest rates to match. However, since the Fed is already at
only 2%, there is not much leeway. When the Fed interest rate reaches 0%,
then the money that it loans into existence out of nothingness truly *is*
being "printed". That's a bad thing. That trolls are willing to accept
zero interest for their ill-gotten stash is a bad sign for normal people.
Danger ahead. the housing market can't stabilize when people are being
fired. Transferring even more money from small people to the trolls
won't help. Things remain unstable. The vampire trolls can't control
themselves. As long as the bailouts continue, they will pick off weakened
companies one by one. They don't care if the entire country is destroyed.
They'll leave with the loot. It's pure, uncreative destruction.
[Sep20'08] If the wars continue, the US is in serious danger of a
major economic collapse. Voting in Obama won't help at all! -- he will
continue the two current wars and has said he is strongly behind starting
the next one in Pakistan. There aren't enough police to stop a true
public uprising like a general strike. At this point, that is the only
thing that would make the rulers stand up and listen. The problem is,
that can't happen until people are more desperate. Right now, they are
uselessly talking about Palin. She's completely irrelevant. It's a
delicate balance between collapse inspiring people to act to prevent
further collapse and mere galloping collapse. Historically, distracting
events have 'happened' at times like these to avoid public action.
[Sep22'08] "Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and
social." -- Gaetano Salvemini explaining fascism in 1936.
[Sep23'08] "It's the best game in town. Take a huge amount of risk, be
paid exceedingly well for it and if you screw up -- you have absolute
proof that the government will come in and bail you out at the expense
of the rest of the population (who did not share in your profits in the
first place). -- Daniel Amerman.
[Sep23'08] Unfortunately, US home prices, at least on the coasts, are
still way out of kilter with salaries. Either home prices come down
by another, say, 50% or salaries go up by 50%. There is little chance
of increased salaries happening if the small remains of US industry
continues to be offshored. The bailout won't increase salaries, so
I don't see how it can possibly help home prices. It will *cost* the
average family $10,000 to pay for the yachts of Goldman's executives (the
man behind the bailout of Goldman, Paulson, was formerly a Goldman exec)
-- without counting interest. Whatever was caused by the current drop in
home prices will continue to be caused, for at least another two years.
It seems we are perhaps halfway through at best. Congressmen will
publically complain about the bailout, but since the richies in need of
the bailout have them all by the b*lls, it will pass (just like last
week's record 'defense' spending bill -- passed in the midst of the
biggest crisis since the Depression). About the only thing that would
convince the congress worms to vote against it would be an insurrection.
This is disgusting bailout of the piggies, paid for by people making
$50,000 per year. And as I never tire of saying, all this stupidity is
occurrring before peak oil has even hit. We're fiddling while industrial
civilization burns. Even though it's yet more fiddling, I wouldn't
mind seeing a few bankers get their yachts seized. I don't care about
that constitutes a direct a economic attack on the rest of us normal
people (people for whom the FDIC limits were written). As things start
to unravel further, there is going to be an unstable competition between
(1) people grabbing for their 'pitchforks' (2) people getting in line
behind the next Mussolini (of course, eventually, the Italians took
'pitchforks' to Mussolini himself and hung him and his girlfriend from
meat hooks), and (3) people realizing that the continued powering of
industrial civilization is an even bigger problem than stupid money
games/cheating, because thermodynamics is the one place where cheating
and inflation truly isn't possible. You'd think now, with everything
poised to blow up, that military spending (at almost $1 trillion, about
equivalent per year to the proposed bailout) would be on the table.
No chance. The Congress worms (approval rating: 15%) just approved the
biggest military spending bill *ever*. Absolutely insane.
[Sep29'08] What I really meant to say in the last comment was, since large
banks demanded (and got) that their credit default swaps markets, etc.,
not be regulated or overseen, they should not derive the positive perks
of regulation -- a giant consumer-funded bailout. They should have to
figure out how to unwind all the problems privately as well. See? much
more temperate sounding :-} . Instead, as described fawningly in this
article, the brave titans (e.g., Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman)
went directly to the gubmint once they faced a sure loss. Of course,
Blankfein "participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire
financial system, not his firm's own interests." How do we know?
Well, we don't! -- since virtually all of the things the public is
going to be bailing out are secret, not publically traded! The deal
was conducted at night, under virtual martial law in Congress, with
dissident congressmen (bit of an oxymoron) being escorted by police out
of hearing rooms. It's hard even to imagine a petty criminal telling
crap like that to a judge. Here is the best I can do: "your honor,
I was only stealing this particular DVD player for the health of the
entire consumer electronics industry" (actually, it should be, 'I was
only stealing all the branches of this particular store chain' ...).
I suppose getting mad is one notch above generalized misanthropy.
[Sep29'08] The close (yes-205, no-228) House vote-down of the bailout
was came out like this: Democrats: yes-140 to no-95, and Republicans:
yes-65 to no-133. Pelosi and Reid look like two sycophantic sidekicks
for the rich people coup. They demanded no changes (even the tiniest
bit of oversight, actual ownership, legality!, etc). It is crystal
clear that having wall street billionaires (Paulson) bailing out other
rich wall street gambler/billionaires (from the same frigging firm!) is
not going to help average people with now-falling salaries to take out
normal loans to buy houses that are still at least 2 times the price
they were before the bubble (back when people took out normal loans).
The whole idea of gambling is that you can win *or* lose. Instead,
the bailout will take money from public health and Social Security --
just like Russia under Yeltsin. Immediately after the bill failed, the
Fed announced it was creating/pumping $630 billion into the financial
system anyway. Nya-nya, stupid peasants. Note that a lot of this
came from temporary swap lines of credit with Bank of Japan and Bank
of England contributing the most, but also Australia, Canada, Sweden,
Denmark, and Norway. These are short term (until Jan 2009, woohoo).
The fact that the US has to go to foreign banks to get dollars suggests
that dollars are still rapidly disappearing. After the deal failed, stock
in Goldman -- now supposedly a 'normal' bank -- sank 24%. That tells you
something about where insiders thought a chunk of the $700 billion would
go to. The real purpose of a good part of the money would have been to
prop up share prices so the that the useless eater lampreys who run them
could dump their shares at a good price and escape the burning country
in their private jets to their Costa Rica compounds. But the game's not
over yet. The people united behind the bill were -- if you can believe
it! -- Shrub, Pelosi, Barney Frank, Paulson, Obama, McCain (McBama),
and Warren Buffett. It was opposed by over 80% of the public. Amazing.
There is an excellent summary of Bush's speech by Craig Murray here
[Sep30'08] Just because I was against the crony bailout doesn't mean I
think there isn't a danger of deflation. If a normal (i.e., smallish)
bank fails with $100 billion assets (assuming standard, conservative 10%
reserves), it potentially removes $1 billion dollars from the economy.
And some of the things concocted by off-duty physicists that are
now swirling around in the depths of the unconscious have effective
reserves ratios 5 or 10 times that. Depending on the ratio of money
destruction to money creation, even a $700 billion injection can end up
being deflationary. That may explain why the dollar just strangely went
up (they were getting rarer). How all this unfolds depends on how much
the monkeys trust each other. Since deflations are good for rich people,
they may even be looking forward to one. Deflations are not good at all
for normal people that don't have a lot of money. But for an unstable
system with very large opposing forces, hyperinflationary episodes are
equally possible, since they can be caused by small differences.
[Sep30'08] There was a lively discussion in dailykos about some fine
print in the bailout bill that would have allowed zero bank reserves
sooner (zero reserves were originally proposed to start 2011 in a 2006
bill I didn't know about, changed in the failed bailout bill to start
in a few days, Oct 1 2008). The standard 10% fractional reserves rule
for banks allows Fed generated-from-nothing money to be multiplied by
10 as it cycles in and out of the bank, which is argued to be good
when the economy is growing, since it matches money to more things.
Zero reserves increase the multiplier of Fed-injected money as high as
borrowers and lenders will allow. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect
of all this stupid mess is that it is terribly destructive to the real
economy and distracts attention from it, *just* when we need to invest in
new real energy systems and new real transport systems. We don't need
more bankers -- we need small cars, more electric rail, solar electric
and heat, heat pumps, better windows, and wind power. We have plenty
enough bankers for that. Same for the UK. Americans have a relatively
short amount of time to prevent a Russian-like collapse from occurring
where a rapacious financial mafia harvest most of their assets.
[Oct01'08] The fact that the pound and the euro have continued to drop
relative to the dollar after the failure of the $700 billion bailout
bill should also be viewed in light of the strong foreign (British,
Chinese, German) component to the bailout given reports suggesting that
1/3 of the bailout would have ended up in British banks alone (the other
factor implied by the 'also' above is that dollars may be being destroyed
currently at a faster rate than pounds and euros). People have been
looking for reasons for the strong administration/Paulson support such
a large US-taxpayer-funded payout to foreign banks. One reason might
be threats of foreign retaliation/legal action for fraudulent sales.
It's funny the things that don't really make the news. Today, Ireland
performed a 400 *billion* euro bailout of its major banks. That's the
same size at the proposed US bailout -- even more remarkable given
Ireland's smaller size (24x as big as the US bailout!).
[Oct02'08] The second hack at the bailout (now 400 pages long) passes,
as expected. It contains such gems as "Sec. 308. Increase in limit on
cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands." and
"Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed
for use by children." That'll make this giant rich-person bailout OK.
Obama was behind it all the way. Pig Paulson now has the last laugh.
The overseas banks will get their hush money. As soon as it was passed,
the stock market went down -- a third of a trillion dollars.
[Oct08'08] Okie-dokie. Not a good week. Plus, there's serious
S about to HTF on Thursday [Oct09 update: that particular S (the
settlement of Lehman credit-default-swaps) now isn't planned to HTF
until Friday]. Hopefully, next week will be better [well now, maybe not].
Several stock markets have been closed to stop crashes (which often occur
immediately on their reopening). It's hard to concentrate! People are
scared and broke, and have suddenly stopped spending, scaring exporters
like Japan, whose stock market dropped almost 10% today. Bailing out
rich people won't fix this. It could only be fixed by giving money
to the lower 70% of the population, who could then buy more things and
pay their mortgages. Rich people don't buy Priuses; and they buy their
houses with cash.
[Oct09'08] What a depressing mess. We've destroyed Iraq and killed a
million and a half people there. A horrible war crime approaching the
size of our Vietnam holocaust (3 million Vietnamese people killed).
Hardly a peep out of the candidates/media over the last two years
about this (except about protecting our 'boys' who followed the
orders to do it). OK, so utter moral depravity isn't newsworthy. But
amazingly, neither is utter fiscal depravity. Barely a peep out of the
candidates/media about the fact that we're *still* pouring 100+ billion
a year down the drain in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan to destroy countries
and kill all those people, plus another 500+ billion visible and 150+
billion hidden to fund an insanely bloated military -- all in spending
bills passed the same damn week as the economy starts to fly apart!
The UK is doing exaclty the same thing on a somewhat smaller scale.
What is wrong with Anglos?
[Oct11'08] There is a rumor going around that much of the sudden market
drops of the past two weeks ($5-7 trillion lost in world shares last week
-- more than 10% of the world GDP) were due to forced selling of stocks
to raise cash to cover suddenly-changed margin requirements for broker
dealers (changed by large banks from 15% to 35%), rumored to peak this
Monday. To be honest, I don't really understand what these words mean in
a deep way. Who writes these rules? How have they varied over the past?
Are these rules even public? Then there is the more 0.4 *trillion*
dollar Lehman insurance claim. Well nobody has volunteered to pay yet --
all that happened at the vaunted 'auction' was that each exposed bank
bought its own offerings for 8% of their full value. The amount due
is about 1/30 of the GDP of the entire US, or 10 times as much as the
US spends yearly biomedical research every year, or almost as much as
the US spends yearly on its ridiculously bloated military. These super
bankers are worth it, though, since they perform such an important duty
of inventing things that are 10 or 100 times as expensive as all of the
stuff in entire the world, and by skimming off massive amounts of money
from people who actually make things. If they weren't helping us this
way, we might be wasting money on fixing and updating the infrastructure
so that industrial civilization stays going 20 years from now. 20 years,
however is almost an infinitely long amount of time into the future and
therefore impossible to visualize. There is no need to bail out people
losing their homes (one family every 10 seconds) because these people
don't count. Only mortgage *bonds* get bailed out -- not the mortgages
themselves.
[Oct13'08] The Nikkei went up 14% on Tuesday (canceling the equivalent
drop the previous Friday) so Europe and America will probably follow
later today. It seems that the waterfalls of central bank money have
finally stabilized things for a while. This won't fix underlying problems
(US and UK housing still insanely overpriced compared to salaries and
savings, number of people underwater on mortgages still increasing, a
US home is still being lost to foreclosure every 10 sec), but Newspeak
now says 'this week of fear has officially ended, back to work'. Not a
peep about the possibility of recapitalizing the economy by straightening
out the tax code. Why should capital gains taxes be much less for rich
people (15%) than taxes on the much smaller 'capital gains' (i.e. wages)
of poorer people? Unfortunately, the next 'week of fear' has already
probably already been scheduled to keep the bottom 3/4 of the population
from asking for this. Also, I think there is some danger of a military
action over the next month.
[Oct15'08] The Baltic dry goods index has crashed 82% down (!) since May,
reaching a 5-year low. This measures how many goods are being shipped.
This means that people are buying a lot less things and that producing
countries will have to start producing less things. This is actually a
good thing overall, given the upcoming energy crunch. However, the costs
of this shrinkage are distributed extremely unfairly. The richest 1% of
the world have almost doubled their piggish share in the last two years.
The laws have to be changed to rein in the pigs before the place turns
into Argentina (with even more guns).
[Oct16'08] The Democrats look like they might win (even after subtracting
a 7% race factor from the opinion polls). It's unlikely to make much
difference, though. Look at the UK. The 'Democrats' have been in power
continuously (Blair, Brown). I have great difficulty detecting much
difference between the US and the UK with regard to continuous support
and funding for the wars, support for torture, support for detention
without charges, support for 'rendition' flights, support for an all
encompassing surveillance/police state, corporatization of every part of
life, and basic style of bank bail outs. There *are* some differences
between the countries (e.g., more socialized medicine in the UK); but
Blair/Brown had nothing to do with them.
[Oct18'08] Banks are now borrowing (into existence) almost half a
trillion dollars every *day* from the Fed. At this rate, banks are
borrowing slightly more than the total US GDP -- *every month*.
These are supposed to be short term loans. However, these
two
graphs are not reassuring. In order to properly compensate the wise
bankers for bringing us to this point, they are being given pay
and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of the US government
bail-out package! London bankers absconded with a similar
amount of loot. Of course, if they weren't paid such outrageous
salaries, we wouldn't have been able to retain their 'services', right?
That's some serious pitchfork material, banker guys. If this continues,
it could turn away from simple plunder of the rubes to real class war.
Put Paulson and all the Gollum Sachs pals he hired to hand out money
in jail -- now! Martial law won't work in the US. The country is too
big, people have too many guns, and there are simply too many people.
The US hasn't been able to control Iraq after utterly destroying its
infrastructure, cowardly bombing it daily since 1991, killing a million
and a half people since 2003, engineering Negroponte-style death squads,
and fomenting inter-religious wars. And that's only 27 million people.
If night raids, smart bombs, and scorched earth didn't work there, a few
crowd control 'ray' guns and some tear gas will be just a drop in the
bucket if a real insurrection starts at home. Don't let the right wing
free-markets-will-solve-everything guys off the hook -- the failure of
the market is obvious (even with all the behind-the-scenes cheating and
drug money laundering!). A number of the largest, meanest banks have been
nationalized/socialized with a fascist private corporation in full secret
control of public finances. The market has failed utterly by completely
seizing up. The 'toxic wastes' are not being traded at all. Their value
is therefore undefined. The wonderful new things the unregulated bankers
invented have brought the entire world to the precipice. Banks are
so scared of each other that they won't even lend each other money
for a day (and they wonder why people don't trust them?!). This is a
time when major social change is actually possible -- for the better,
or for the worse. In order for things to get better, the rot has to be
brought entirely into public view. The 'candidates' aren't going to do
it, since they are just worm-like vestigial appendices attached to the
colons of Goldman-Sachs and JPM. Their 'debate' was utterly laughable
given the current situation. People have to get really mad. Before
peak oil hits.
[traveling]
[Nov04'08] Election is today. There are surprisingly small policy
differences between McCain and Obama on some of big issues of the day --
'defense' spending, continuing the occupation of Iraq, bombing Pakistan
and/or Iran, position on the Palestinians, 'bank' (=rich person) bailout,
supporting big pharma over universal health insurance, supporting big Ag.
Of course the doddering, cancer-ridden McCain is a disgusting lump.
But Goldman-Sachs is Obama's largest contributor. Many of the bailed-out
banks spent a majority or even all of their public bailout cash (e.g.,
$10.7 *billion* at Morgan Stanley) paying bonuses to the greedy rich
pigs that have literally brought capitalism and world trade to its knees.
Obama is behind this overt class war all the way. It is true that Obama
is more friendly to science, which would benefit my kind, and arguably
humanity. But I don't look forward to almost the same policies as Bush,
but with a politically and EU-ally correct (Obama was polling 99-1 in
France) black Democratic face. In the UK, Brown was elected largely to
get out of Iraq. He completely ignored this charge once in office, as
will Obama. I *do* love the fact that redneck red states will probably
have a black man as preznit.
[Nov05'08] Obama wins by 4% percent in the popular vote -- closer
than the polls but thankfully a clear win. As Kent Ewing wrote
in Asia Times, "it is once again cool to be an American living
abroad". The giant election industrial complex slash morality play
finally ends, and the rest of the world breathes a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, under the radar, over the past few pre-election weeks,
something brand new occurred with the US money supply, perhaps
the first example of real 'helicopter' money (from a comment a
few years ago by Bernanke). The following Fed graph shows that bank
borrowing from the Fed erupted in November/December 2007
(after a small blip in August). The only other blip visible
at this scale is the tiny one around 9-11. This huge increase
in bank borrowing correlates with an equally large plunge of net
free or borrowed bank reserves far into negative
territory (I find the whole concept of 'negative
reserves' blackly humorous) that started a month later in
January 2008. This was somewhat correlated with a drop
in the dollar [e.g., Euro vs. dollar] that started in in September
2007 and picked up in early 2008. However, something completely new
occurred in the month before the election. The total amount of US
cash dollars ("base money", which means notes and coins only, held
outside of the central bank and outside government, similar to M1)
made an unprecedented discontinuous upward jump from 0.87 trillion to
1.18 trillion -- a jump of 0.31 trillion, which should be compared with
a normal average smooth monthly increase of .000003 trillion (i.e., the
jump was 100,000 times larger than average). This increased the number of
paper dollars in circulation by a factor of 1.36. The only other visble
blips in base money are the (relatively) tiny ones for Y2K and 9-11.
Here are 5 years of those three times series plotted on the same
graph. This could be due to panic withdrawals of 1/3 of a trillion
dollars in cash (that would be 16 billion $20 dollar bills). Or it could
include the first examples of true 'helicopter' money. Unlike credit
injected into banks to cover paper losses, this would be actual printing
of paper money. If so, it would be quite inflationary for the dollar.
The key question for me is whether other central banks (e.g., UK, EU)
might have done something similar.
[Nov07'08] The appointment of Rahm Emmanuel is a very bad sign.
He is the Democratic master planner who among other things
engineered the Illinois pro-war legs-blown-off-in-Iraq female
wheelchair candidate at the midterms (who lost anyway!) and who is a
'realist' -- meaning, you tell people you are against the war, but
then you vote for a larger and larger amount of money for it each
year. It also concretizes an ultra-hard-right policy with respect
to Israel (he is an Israeli citizen). Other news reports news
reports agree that the basic change in Obama foreign policy is going
to be style -- that is, no change from Bush! How's that for 2 days
after the election, suckers? (suckers includes the rest of the world).
Just because Obama can actually speak in coherent English sentences
*doesn't* make him the slightest bit better than Bush if his policies are
essentially the same (I have heard many people in America and outside
of it saying how thankful they are that they have somebody articulate
to replace the chimp). In fact, it's probably worse. With respect to
the domestic economy, as US carmakers sink into the muck, I sometimes
wish there was some way that all the SUV-people could be singled out for
having made the wrong decision on what they bought, so that only *their*
wages would be garnished to bail out GM/Ford etc. These things have to
be retroactive else how can people learn, right? The reason US carmakers
did what they did was that it was profitable (slap decorative crap around
a truck body and sell it with less pollution control and less hardware
for gas efficiency for an inflated price), but also -- and this is key
-- because a bunch of rubes fell for the stupid advertising and bought
zillions of them. The the Orwellian/corporate/surveillance/nanny state
has already started collecting the necessary database. Imagine what
additional profits could be made for the corporate/fascist state by taxing
the rubes for having fallen prey to its very own advertising. This
reminds me of the corporate state duking it out (fast food advertisers
versus big pharma anti-fat drugs) inside your very own brain.
[Nov08'08] The disgusting fact that most of the bailout/hostage/tax money
arranged by pig Paulson from Gollem Sachs is brazenly being used by his
capitalist banking slime buddies to pay themselves insanely large bonses
and to acquire other more solvent banks is a crime. It's the largest
financial theft in history! Paulson is an ugly criminal. The people
he's giving our money to are criminals. He's Tony Soprano auditing his
own books. He and they should be put in jail. Whatever shard remains of
the free press must not let this die. As I've repeatedly said, this is
class war, plain and simple. They're breaking into the bank, taking our
money, and running. We must not let this aggression stand, man!
[Nov09'08] I'm beginning to wonder whether the huge October jump
in cash mostly represents rich rat-people and drug money (C IA and
otherwise!) bailing soom of their loot out of the sinking ship into
paper cash (that would be 3 billion $100 dollar bills as opposed to 16
billion $20 dollar bills :-} ).
[Nov10'08] Here is a report
that pension funds are set to flee equities for, uhhh, hedge funds and
commodities? That's so this year, guys! Didn't you hear that Warren
Buffett of "derivatives are weapons of mass destruction" and "advisor
to Obama" fame, just lost a billion or so of his own and Berkshire
Hathaway's money in derivatives last *month*? I was already planning
for my pension to be worth less, but do you scumbags have to toss the
whole damn thing into the sh*tter?
[Nov11'08]
US 2008 Federal Budget $3200 billion
-------------------------------------
Medicare/Medicaid: $624 billion
Social Security: $644 billion
Department of Defense: $515 billion
Intelligence, Energy: $101 billion
Iraq/Afghanistan etc: $294 billion
Dept Education: $59 billion
Dept Health Hum Serv: $68 billion
Interest on ext debt: $260 billion
Other: $1043 billion
Estimated deficit: $408 billion
-------------------------------------
[Nov20'08] Insightful comment from Stoneleigh
at The Automatic Earth on perverse incentives in the derivatives
markets: "Allowing a third party to take out a credit default swap against
a company they do not own is analogous to allowing me to take out fire
insurance on your home, thereby giving me an incentive to burn it down
for profit. We have yet to see the 'burning down for profit' phase..."
[Nov22'08] GM is failing now not just because they make cars that no one
wants now, but because stupid people fell for the mind control and bought
stupid, oversized, cheaply constructed cars that *the very same people*
now no longer want to buy or are able to buy. I'm fine with bailing out
the carmakers (but only after firing the idiots currently charge and
taking their severance pay and private jets) and converting them into
manufacturers of electric cycles, carts, and small trucks, solar cells,
wind turbines, and a few small cars. But if we wanted to be fair, the SUV
buyers -- who intimately participated in creating the current disaster --
should have to pay more of their taxes for the bailout/conversion.
[Nov23'08] Obama looks like he will have crony capitalist Tim Geithner --
currently thickly involved with pig Paulson in shoveling huge piles of
tax money down the overstuffed gullets of his rich pig banker friends (oh
sorry, I meant to say he was expertly dealing with the recent difficulties
at Bear Stearns, Lehman, and AIG) -- as Treasury Secretary. Ugh.
Put them both in jail! Seize their money and their yachts! They're
criminal kinpins! The Obama white house, not unexpectedly, is
looking a lot like Clinton's.
[Nov23'08] Trading in hedge funds has suddenly
and massively slowed in September and October. The selling
of these kind of assets to get cash is what must explain this
bizarre and unprecedented 1.7x jump in cash (as opposed to regular
people withdrawing cash from their bank accounts). Good riddance,
pirates.
[Nov24'08] The festering cancer of the Iraq war/genocide/oilsteal still
rages. Stop the Iraq war! Stop trying to steal Iraq's oil! Stop Israel
from strangling Gaza! Start fighting back in the class war! The richies
have already taken it to the streets (the media). Appeasement doesn't
work with them. They won't stop when they have 5 houses. They won't stop
when they have 30 houses and 5 boats and 2 planes and 50 billion dollars.
They've got a mental sickness that will destroy our world.
[Nov25'08] Reading gobbledygook
like this makes me really mad. I'm a reasonably intelligent person,
and willing to suspend judgement and work hard for long enough to try
to understand how something like the Fourier transform works. But the
thought of these money pipsqueaks crashing the world around us make me
want to reach for a pitchfork. Today, Sh*ttygroup gets a third of a
trillion from the taxpayers and then thanks them by increasing interest
on credit cards to 29%. Seize their yachts! The bailout is now 10
times as big as it was last month -- $7.7 trillion -- fully half the US
GDP released in two months to bail out a bunch of bank pigs. These pigs
should be in jail. Pouring tax money down these useless eater's gullets
won't fund wind farms, solar energy, more light rail, and smaller cars.
It will merely allow these pigs to escape with the loot. Our loot.
Our pensions. Listen to those hedge fund sh*theads on the business
channel talking about how 'we' all have to give back our pensions.
Better watch it or you might have 50,000 auto workers coming to your
house asking about *your* 'pension', bucko.
[Nov27'08] Obama's cabinet picks suggest little change in economic
policy (more bailouts for the rich) and no change in foreign policy
(Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine; Gates is Mr. Afghan surge --
yet more killer drones to shoot up wedding parties, and 20,000
more troops to raid the homes of people who complain). With the
kleptocrats recently appointed to his cabinet, Michael Hudson notes the more than
passing resemblance of Obama to Yeltsin -- Obama has actually appointed
some of the very same people who advised Yeltsin to hand over all the
valuables in Russia to the oligarchs! All my friends say they can now
breathe a sigh of relief, and stay in the country after all. This despite
the fact that the only change on the way seems to be a little itty bitty
trickle down -- a few billion (only promised) while 7 trillion today goes
down the Godzilla-sized maws of flailing investment bankers. The planned
trickle down -- if it even gets funded! -- is hardly a different than
the recent Bush tax rebate. Now if if we only could have had McCain,
he probably would have died in office from his metastasized melanoma,
and then we could have had Palin as preznit. That might have actually
led to more change.
[Nov30'08] One can make fun of the stupid greedy Americans trampling
a Walmart employee to death in search of bargains. But the richies
running the country should take note. Crowds are the same everywhere.
So far, we have only had moderate lack of affordability. In a real
crunch, dangerous crowds could become much more common. Just like the
richies mouth their threats on the teevee about taking our pensions,
we have to respond in kind.
December 31, 2008 (earlier: scroll back)
[Dec01'08] Data center servers in the US and UK now use 5% of total
electrical demand. That doesn't include electrical costs of powering
the internet and the user computers needed to view the data. Centralized
server farms are currently set to grow. Ground was recently broken for a
new data center in Chicago that will draw 100 megawatts (the power output
capacity of the 83 coal-fueled electricity generating plants in Illinois
currently averages about 200 megawatts each). The plan is do disempower
everyone in a google-like manner by hosting everybody's desktop,
documents, schedules, applications, and life on centralized servers
beyond individual control -- a throwback to the original 'time-sharing'
systems of the 60's. People locally would only have a passive portal to
the central systems and will eventually have to continually pay to rent
applications. This will work fine until "the machine stops" or rather
'the machine hiccups', as electrical grids begin to fail more often
(they have less overhead than ever before). Watching the deer-like
computer consumers and sysadmins (I see it around here) going along with
this flow reminds me of watching real deer, or little fish in a stream.
Our linguistic overlay helps (I can hear and read about and vicariously
experience this without actually having to live in central server hell);
but the macroscopic result is just like little fish in a stream that is
too big for one fish to understand. And if DNA/RNA/protein is really
closely analogous to language, then perhaps it couldn't ever have been
any different: the creativity of the individual code-using systems is
bound to lead to the evolution macro systems that are too complex for
their component individuals to understand.
[Dec07'08] Here
is a an explanation of the bizarrely discontinuous graph in BASE money
supply (the AMBSL graph Mauldin shows is virtually identical). His point
is that it includes bank reserves (I had missed this point). Recently,
bank reserves have been generated by the Fed by trading them for other
so-called non-cash 'assets' the banks had (which actually were of much
reduced value...). This, then, not hedge fund collapses (my second
guess), must explain the discontinuous jump. My original guess -- that
it was the first true helicopter money -- was basically correct.
[Dec13'08] The existence of a substantial
number of pay option loans (described here here) that are set to
blow up in 2009 and 2010 suggests that the cresting subprime blowup
will be supported by a new wave of pay option blowups over the next
few years. If housing prices and job losses were to stabilize, these
booby traps would still be set to go off. The further drops in housing
and jobs expected in 2009 and 2010 will exacerbate that problem.
In 2007, I was hoping that we could begin to recover from the worst
of the subprime blowups after spring of 2008. Now, this doesn't
seem possible. This was *so* avoidable. In 2005, I made this graph
of the deficit and M3. It was obvious back then that the oppositely
trending lines (cumulative debt and cumulative money) were completely
unstable and unsustainable, and I said that then. I worriedly showed
it to a lot of people and posted it on my office door. Unfortunately,
my worries were correct. In the 1960's, the financial sector was 2%
of US corporate profits. Now it is 40%. But like energy extracted from
the vacuum, it now has to go back there.
[Dec14'08] What should American car companies be doing? From even
a moderately rational perspective, it's pretty clear. It's also
totally impossible to do this right thing from a 3-6-month look-ahead
business perspective. This is why business didn't figure out molecular
biology. Government did -- because it was willing to invest further
into the future. When government scientists figured out how DNA and
proteins worked after many decades of work, then the companies piled
in to take profits. And they complain bitterly when they are called
on to pay taxes -- the very thing that made their existence possible.
Imagine raising a kid with a 3 month look ahead -- sorry kid, we have to
downsize, so you're going to be sleeping on the street and not getting
any health care. It's called child abuse. The only problem is that
business is in control, and people have gotten used to human abuse as
the norm. First, car companies should ignore current low oil prices.
We'll be lucky if they last a year -- until our one-cubic-mile-per-year
oil usage catches up with ongoing oil field depletion and the dollar
begins to gradually lose its world reserve currency status and its
status as the only currency in which oil is denominated. Second,
they should immediately stop what they are doing and begin to retool
to make all manner of tiny cars and trucks and carts, and busses,
and electic scooters and bicycles and bicycle taxis, light rail, wind
turbines, and solar cells. They are capable of this (cf. the car =>
tank+airplane+boat switch during WWII, which happened without the help
of all our fine new computer-aided tools). It's completely obvious that
if we don't do that *RIGHT NOW*, in about 15 years when oil falls to 50%
of its current production rate with continued population growth, that
we will be in *really* deep sh*t (of course, we should have started
30 years ago, when these problems first became apparent, but that's
water under the bridge). Why is this completely impossible, even now?
Because of our -- now failing -- economic system. If we don't change
it right now, it's going to take down industrial civilization, possibly
forever. There isn't much time left. Instead Republican business
types are slavering at the mouth at the opportunity to kill the auto
workers union, one of the few left. Great. Chop off the very legs that
could carry us back from the brink. All to perpetuate a failed system.
Why is business so against people getting health care and living indoors?
Sometimes you'd think they were anti-human, eh? Some of the humans are
finally starting to take offense.
[Dec17'08] Why crucify just Bernie Madoff? What did he do that was so
different than the rest of the 'innovative banking' crooks? His $50
billion dollar fraud was big, but not the biggest (cf. AIG bailout at
$500 billion and Sh*itigroup at maybe $1000 billion). He doesn't get
bailed out because he didn't steal enough? Are hedge funds that collapse
the minute people try to take out money different? And what about hedge
funds half invested in Madoff? Or 'insurers' (CDS's) that collapse on
their first partial payout? Meanwhile, the Fed has just cut its interest
rate to 'a range between 0.0 to 0.25%'. At 0.0% you get a loan without
paying any interest. The next logical step is negative interest --
you get paid interest when to borrow (created) money (this isn't very
different ahn 1% interest since it just means a small extra amount of
money had to be created at loan time). People may still not be persuaded
to borrow, however, if they are worried that they might not be able to pay
it back, or if the bank they deposit the zero interest loan in doesn't
pay any interest, or charges them more for keeping the money than they
got for borrowing it (the only way a bank would be able to make money in
a negative interest regime), or if the bank has a chance of collapsing
(because it wasn't charging depositors negative interest!).
[Dec20'08] Oh dear. This
is not a good sign. The temporary respite in the growth of the
BASE money supply last month was welcome, but the resumption of 25%
growth per *month* (where the 50 year average is 3 percent per *year*
-- that is, money is growing 100x faster than normal) is a sign
that things remain insanely out of equilibrium. The Fed must have
resumed pumping money directly into (insolvent) banks. Another very
bad sign is that hedge funds can now borrow directly from the Fed --
for essentially zero interest! What absolute criminals! Peak oil?
Retooling cars, transportation, energy generation? Persistence of
industrial civilization? None of that matters. These guys shouldn't
get free money!!! They should be put in jail! Their remaining assets
should be seized, just like they do with drug dealers. These guys are
*much* worse than drug dealers. Clearly, the market has utterly failed.
The Fed should be disbanded. I want to hear people say -- esp. in the
mainstream main-sewer media -- that 'the market has failed'. Just like
I want to hear them say that 'the Iraq war was a bad idea' and that
those of us against the war were right. Of course, they never will --
not even on the day that angry crowds storm the studios.
[Dec23'08] There is a lot of talk of 'saving capitalism'. But why?
Why save a system that *right at the moment of peak oil* generates
prices (mostly via the unwinding of non-productive speculation/betting)
that cause *disinvestment* in real oil exploration and real alternative
energy companies? That's one seriously broken economic system! In the
fullness of time, the Darwinian evolution of non-linguistic living things
ruthlessly prunes out stupidly unstable systems that behave like this.
The problem is that we don't have millions of y
