1. simple rule of supply and demand. High demand plus low supply =
high prices.

2. In 1800 human population approximately 800 million; in 2010 7
billion.

3. More growth of developed world and emerging 3rd world = more demand
for oil.

4. Rate at which oil can be extracted from the earth is not growing as
fast as the demand.

5. Growth will be capped but growth is a must so recession after
recession.

6. Alternative energy is dependant on oil too. Ironic, no? Takes oil
to make solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Why? Oil has the most "bang for
the buck."

7. High price for oil cripples manufacturing.

8. HAART requires manufacturing.

9. HAART goes *poof*

10. I die of AIDS

While I agree that oil is a finite resource and at some point it will be
gone that point is not likely to come within your or your children's or
grand children's lifespan. We have more known reserves today then we did
during the 1970 oil crisis. That is counting crude oil as we know it, there
are also more reserves in Canada's oil bearing shale then the entire
historic use of crude oil to date, yes it is much more costly to extract but
as reserves of easily extractable oil disappear things like oil bearing
shale and coal liquefaction become cost effective to produce. Also deep
wells (over 4 miles down) may have similar levels of reserves in the Gulf of
Mexico though this is just now beginning to be explored.

So while there will certainly be a point at which oil prices will start to
rise and then be forever after on an upward spiral we most likely will never
actually run out of oil it just will be used in only high value ways. The US
has doubled the amount of GDP produced per gallon of oil since the 1970's
and that process will only accelerate as oil prices rise as they are
currently doing.

Gary Stein


"Baby Peanut" <baby_p_nut2@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:96d83290.0406150829.73a6e17a@posting.google.c om...

Baby Peanut wrote:
Nuclear perhaps. But the others? How?

Perhaps with the price of oil there may be solar fields in the
Southwest, wave generators off the NE coast, and windmills in Chicago.

SF pass a bill last election that 25% of all public buildings be solar
and off the grid by 2010.

B/

"Gary Stein" <ge.stein@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<Q4Gzc.26535$tA6.3957@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>.. .
http://www.oilcrash.com/

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

Brian Mailman <bmailman@sfo.invalid> wrote in message news:<40CF3CDE.B1D7E268@sfo.com>...
Show me the solar powered solar panel manufacturing plant please.

Show me the wind powered wind generator manufacturing plant please.

Dream on about how these puny things will save you. Either that or
wake up and smell the burning oil. Why a war on Iraq? Why did the
whole east coast have a blackout last August?

That will be too late.

Text of Interview with Matthew Simmons by Mike Ruppert of
Fromthewildnerness.com

Matthew Simmons is the CEO of the world's largest Energy Investment
Bank, Simmons & Company International. It has a web site located at
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com. Its clients include Halliburton; Baker,
Botts, LLP; Dynegy; Kerr-McGee; and the World Bank. Since 1993, it has
underwritten or financed 18 transactions valued at more than $350
million. Of those, six were valued at more than $1 billion. Simmons is
a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the
National Petroleum Council's Natural Gas Task Force. He has a lot to
say about the Northeast power grid blackout, its causes, and what they
imply for the future. He also has a lot to say about Peak Oil and Gas.

FTW interviewed Simmons via telephone from his home in Rockport, Maine
on August 18, 2003

FTW: What's the most important thing you want the American people to
know about Black Thursday?

SIMMONS: This blackout ought to be an incredible jolt telling us
about a host of energy problems that are ultimately going to prevent
any future economic growth. It's like people have been ignoring
annoying phone calls and living in denial about a problem that won't
go away. It's like the ghost of Enron calling. The event itself was
astonishing. Senior people like Governor Pataki or the head of NERC
[North American Electric Reliability Council] were asking how this
could happen. But the problem was inevitable. The only thing we didn't
know was when it would happen.

FTW: What did happen?

SIMMONS: On a large scale what happened was deregulation.
Deregulation destroyed excess capacity. Under deregulation, excess
capacity was labeled as "massive glut" and removed from the system to
cut costs and increase profits. Experience has taught us that weather
is the chief culprit in events like this. The system needs to be
designed for a 100-year cyclical event of peak demand. If you don't
prepare for this, you are asking for a massive blackout. New plants
generally aren't built unless they are mandated, and free markets
don't make investments that give one percent returns. There was also
no investment in new transmission lines.

Underlying all this is the fact that we have no idea how to store
electricity. And every aspect of carrying capacity, from generators,
to transmission lines, to the lines to and inside your house, has a
rated capacity of x. When you exceed x, the lines melt. That's why we
have fuse boxes and why power grids shut down. So we have now created
a vicious cyclicality that progresses over time.

Another problem was that with deregulation, people thought that they
could borrow from their neighbor. New York thought it could borrow
from Vermont. Ohio thought that it could borrow from Michigan, etc.
That works, but only up to the point where everyone needs to borrow at
once and there's no place to go.

A second major reason is that decisions were made in the 1990s that
all new generating plants were to be gas fired. We've had a natural
gas summit this year and, as you know, I have been talking for some
time about the natural gas cliff we are experiencing. Many thought
that this winter would be deadly, and I have to say that it's just a
miracle that we have replenished our gas stocks going into the cold
months. This winter could have been a major disaster. We've seen a
price collapse in natural gas to the five to eight dollar range (per
thousand cubic feet) and the only reason that happened was throughout
almost the entire summer there were only a handful of days when the
temperature rose above eighty degrees anywhere. That was miraculous.
It allowed us to prepare for the winter but we shouldn't be
optimistic. One good hurricane that disrupts production, one blazing
heat wave, one freezing winter after that and we're out of solutions.

FTW: And natural gas too?

SIMMONS: Well, I know you understand it, but people need to
understand the concept of peaking and irreversible decline. It's a
sharper issue with gas, which doesn't follow a bell curve but tends to
fall off a cliff.

There will always be oil and gas in the ground, even a million years
from now. The question is, will you be a microbe to go down and eat
the oil in small pockets at depths no one can afford or is able to
drill to? Will you spend hundreds of thousands to drill a gas well
that will run dry in a few months? All the big deposits have been
found and exploited. There aren't going to be any dramatic new
discoveries and the discovery trends have made this abundantly clear.

We are now in a box we should never have gotten into and it has very
serious implications. We also see the inevitable issues that follow a
major blackout: no water, no sewage, no gasoline. The gasoline issue
is very important. Our gasoline stocks are at near all time lows. With
the blackout, more than seven hundred thousand barrels per day of
refinery capacity were shut down. People were told to boil their
water. So what do they do, they go to their electric stove which isn't
working. What then?

FTW: Makes you wonder about France and the heat wave that has killed
5,000.

SIMMONS: The only reason Europe was spared a far worse blackout than
what hit the USA was that Europe barely uses air conditioning. In
fact, even though America uses a lot of air conditioning some areas
have become fairly efficient in the ways they use it. Quantitatively,
we use more energy because there are more of us. But air conditioning
is a relatively new experience in Ontario, Canada. Until recently
Ontario had been a net energy exporter. They have a population of just
over 12 million. With air conditioning in the last five years, Ontario
became a net importer of electricity. Now, on just a normal hot summer
day, Ontario's peak power use averages about 23,000 Gigawatts.
Texas, with a population of 25 million, set an all time record of
60,000 Gigawatts just a week before the blackout. The difference is
that except for one tiny line running into Arkansas, Texas is
self-contained for electricity. It's not tied to any other users. As
we saw on Black Thursday, Ottawa was part of a whole interlocking
system that had no place to go but down.

FTW: So how big a factor was the weather?

SIMMONS: It was THE factor in my opinion. To show much weather
determines power use, in the week of August 3rd, the US set an
all-time national record for electricity use of 90,000 Gigawatts. The
Mid-Atlantic States' use of power had jumped 29.5% over last year and
20% over just the previous four weeks. Why? The temperature had been
as hot as we experienced on Black Thursday. If you want to compare it
to vehicles and roadways, air conditioning is the interstate highway
system and the Internet is the equivalent of SUVs. Everything that
happened on August 14 started in the 17th hour. (5 PM at various local
times). That's when everything is running at once: industrial,
residential, and commercial. This is when demand peaks regardless of
the weather. And we know that in hour 17 on that day the USexperienced
all-time peak energy use. That's when the system tripped out.

FTW: So we have two basic camps saying that the problems are
generating capacity and transmission lines, without addressing
feedstock issues. What about the advocates for deregulation who argued
that there would be more generating capacity as a result?

SIMMONS: History answers that one. Following the 1965 blackout when
NERC was created there was a mandate that publicly owned and regulated
power providers had to build new plants. Every five years, ten per
cent was added to the generating base. As deregulation was implemented
in the 1990s, it was argued that it would open up vast quantities of
energy in neighboring states. In the first five years of the decade,
only four per cent capacity was added over the entire period. In the
second five years, only two per cent was added.
In the summer of 1999, we had thirty consecutive power events which
unleashed the single biggest construction boom in history which built
220 thousand megawatts of new plants at a capitalization cost of six
to seven hundred thousand dollars per megawatt. Ninety-eight per cent
of those plants were gas fired.

It was decided to use solely natural gas plants for several reasons.
Coal fired plants took five to seven years to build. They are very
dirty environmentally and the permit process is difficult. We have
built on all the available hydroelectric sites we can build on.
Nuclear is unpopular and expensive. Oil fired plants are remnants of
the days when oil was cheap. Those days are not coming back because
Peak Oil is with us now.

Besides that, oil fired power plants are about the least efficient use
of a barrel of oil that I can imagine. That left natural gas and the
economists mistakenly presumed there would be large supplies. But
natural gas plants were built with no supplies. Synthetic contracts
were used, Enron-style, to sell gas futures when the gas didn't
necessarily exist.

FTW: Assuming that there was enough feed stock to run the new plants
how much building are we talking about?

SIMMONS: Each state would need to build forty to fifty per cent
excess capacity. A forty per cent cushion merely provides the chance
to withstand a day of high summer heat and the chance to grow by about
3% per year for three years.

FTW: Yet even if we re-regulate there are still going to be problems
with feed stock to power the plants. How serious is that?

SIMMONS: Someone's going to be left holding the bag big time. If
natural gas consumption surges in ten days of excessive heat then it
would require almost a complete shutdown of industrial consumption to
compensate and protect the grid. As I have been reporting for years
now, there isn't going to be enough gas to run those plants, let alone
new ones.

FTW: You mean shut down the economy for ten days to keep people from
cooking?
SIMMONS: Yes.

FTW: Everyone keeps saying that ANWR (The Arctic Natural Wildlife
Reserve) is the answer if we drill there. Is it?

SIMMONS: ANWR is not "The Answer". However, it makes great sense to
develop. Drilling there should not have a negative impact on the
coastal plains of the Arctic. With great luck, it could create between
300,000 and possibly up to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day and lots
of natural gas that could last a decade or two. But this does not
become the sole answer. On the other hand, if ANWR is kept off limits,
it becomes no answer.

FTW: What about imports of natural gas from overseas? Russia and
Indonesia have huge reserves; Canada, as the Canadians are painfully
aware, is almost depleted when it comes to natural gas.

SIMMONS: Indonesia's gas fields are very old. Its Natuna gas fields,
a source of stranded gas that gets discussed all the time has 95% CO2
and apparently costs about $40 billion to develop a mere 1 bcf/day of
dry gas. Russia has four old fields that make up over 80% of their gas
supply and they all are in decline. Canada's decline problems are as
serious as the US.

FTW: Windmills? Solar?

SIMMONS: There's no way they can replace even a portion of
hydrocarbon energy.

FTW: Reducing consumption?

SIMMONS: Reducing consumption has to happen, but many of the favorite
conservation concepts make little overall difference. The big
conservation changes end up being steps, like a ban on using
electricity to either heat water or melt metals and instead, always
using the "burner tip of natural gas". The latter is vastly more
efficient, the energy savings are enormous and we need lower ceilings
and smaller rooms. We need mass transit, and to eliminate traffic
congestion. Finally, we need a way to keep people from using
air-conditioning when the weather gets really muggy and hot at same
time. The strain this puts on our grid is too overwhelming.

We also must begin to use our current discretionary power during the
nighttime. All of theses steps are hard to implement but they make a
difference.

FTW: What is the solution?

SIMMONS: I don't think there is one… The solution is to pray. Pray
for mild weather and a mild winter. Pray for no hurricanes and to stop
the erosion of natural gas supplies. Under the best of circumstances,
if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two
years. After that it's a certainty.

FTW: On that cheery note let's take a look at oil supplies.

SIMMONS: Currently, oil supply issues are as serious as the
electrical grid. Last month the IEA (International Energy Agency)
updated their database. They had for years been talking about a coming
huge surge in non-OPEC supply, excluding the FSU (Former Soviet
Union). It hasn't happened. We have the highest oil prices in 20 years
and even great technological advances have not had a measurable impact
on discovery or production.

FTW: I have recently noted the speed with which the Chad-Cameroon
pipeline was built and switched on. Chad only has estimated reserves
of around 900 million barrels (World consumption is I billion barrels
every 12 days). I see a sense of urgency there.

SIMMONS: It's amazing. What's that pipeline going to pump, fifty
thousand barrels per day? That figure may go up, but it's
inconsequential in the long run. It's a sign of how strapped world
supplies really are and that we may be finding out that we are already
over the peak.

FTW: What about Iraq and Saudi Arabia? We have been following Iraq
closely and all the sabotage, infrastructure damage and the pipeline
bombings are actually reducing Iraqi capacity. That leaves Saudi
Arabia with 25% of known reserves.

SIMMONS: I have for years described two camps: the economists who
told us that technology would always produce new supply and the
pessimists or Cassandras who told us that peak was coming in maybe
fifteen or twenty years. We may be finding out that we went over the
peak in 2000. That makes both camps wrong.
Over the last year, I have obtained and closely examined more than 100
very technical production reports from Saudi Arabia. What I glean from
examining the data is that it is very likely that Saudi Arabia,
already a debtor nation, has very likely gone over its Peak. If that
is true, then it is a certainty that planet earth has passed its peak
of production.

What that means, in the starkest possible terms, is that we are no
longer going to be able to grow. It's like with a human being who
passes a certain age in life. Getting older does not mean the same
thing as death. It means progressively diminishing capacity, a rapid
decline, followed by a long tail.

FTW: What about people like Alan Greenspan and popular writers who
tell us that there is no basic problem with energy supplies? Others
offer us hydrogen, which is laughed out of hand by people who have
looked at its feasibility and efficiency.

SIMMONS: Basically they just don't get it. Some of them have gotten
lazy. They were so carried away by the arguments of the economists
that they stopped doing their homework. Month by month, and year by
year, events are proving them systematically and thoroughly incorrect.
They just don't get it. Right now, there is a deluge of stories on the
wonders of hydrogen. This is another area of great confusion. Hydrogen
is not a primary source of energy. For a Hydrogen Era to occur you
need an abundance of natural gas, or you need to create a great deal
of new power plants using coal and nuclear power.

What I find so ironic about our very serious energy problems is that
they started in Santa Barbarain 1969. This was where the best work was
being done to create a new technological evolution in our ability to
recover energy from deep water sources. Then we had a tragic spill.
This gave birth to the environmental movement. It began the war
between modern energy and environmental "anarchists". They have worked
overtime to shut down our access to areas that might have diversified
our energy supply.

Had we been able to develop these areas, then we would have more
options now to ensure a continuation of the economic prosperity we
take so much for granted. And there is no better friend of the
environment that economic prosperity.

FTW: But peak oil is peak oil, is it not? Aren't we just talking
about something that would have delayed the inevitable for a few
years? It would take a couple of years to drill and pipe out of A NWR
but there's only a two year (total US ) supply of gas there at best,
and even less oil. Then what? At the May ASPO (Association for the
Study of Peak Oil) conference in Paris, I think it was you or another
expert who disclosed that four out of five very expensive deep water
holes were coming up dry?

SIMMONS: Peaking of oil and gas will occur, if it has not already
happened, and we will never know when the event has happened until we
see it "in our rear view mirrors".

FTW: Is it time for Peak Oil and Gas to become part of the public
policy debate?

SIMMONS: It is past time. As I have said, the experts and politicians
have no Plan B to fall back on. If energy peaks, particularly while 5
of the world's 6.5 billion people have little or no use of modern
energy, it will be a tremendous jolt to our economic well-being and to
our heath — greater than anyone could ever imagine.

After I ended the interview, I recalled something that I had read
recently in a book called "Contraction and Convergence - The Global
Solution to Climate Change". (www.gci.org.uk). It was a startling
revelation that since 1950 there has been a near perfect correlation
between the growth in world GDP and the emission of greenhouse gases
(i.e. - the consumption of hydrocarbon energy).
In an economic system that is predicated first and foremost on
perpetual growth, Matt Simmons' statement that we are no longer ever
going to grow took on a whole new meaning.

— Mike Ruppert

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_blackout.html

"Gary Stein" <ge.stein@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<Q4Gzc.26535$tA6.3957@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>.. .
It's not about running out of oil, it's about running out of cheap
energy.

We who? The Saudis? They have incentives for lying about having
reserves that they do not have.

Only in a relative sense. In an absolute sense there will not be
cheap energy anymore.

Wells to depths of four miles or more are not cheap.

While I applaud attempts at conservation you have to factor in the
increases in human population and the increases in the
industrialization of the third world. Those are increasing the demand
to outstrip the supply and drive the price up.

Baby Peanut wrote:
Ah, OK. Getcha.

Don't patronize me, please.

Not puny, maybe now, but in the future. How much oil does the solar
laundromat in the next couple blocks over save?

1. Granted, of course. But that was also because Cheney said Anericans
can't live without SUVs or change their their energy-luxuours lifestyle.

2. Incompetence at one of the plants in Ohio.

I'd talk about our energy crisis, which everyone seems to have forgotten
in their rush to sooth NYC, but it's coming out more and more Enron and
the other energies _made_ that happen.

For what?

I'll read the rest later, it's too long to concentrate on at the moment.

B/

Brian Mailman <bmailman@sfo.invalid> wrote in message news:<40CF3CDE.B1D7E268@sfo.com>...
Since I gave Gary some nice web links I shouldn't forget to give you one Brian.

http://dieoff.org/

Brian Mailman <bmailman@sfo.invalid> wrote in message news:<40CFBA29.B4862553@sfo.com>...
I've read that one barrel of oil can be used to make one hundred
barrels of oil and that no other energy source comes close to that
return on energy. I've read that you have to run a wind generator for
three months to get the energy used to make it back.

You can't make protease inhibitors without manufacturing that requires
the cheap energy of oil and methane and we are in danger of being left
with only expensive, hard to process oil and expensive alternative
energy sources.

Sorry to be so dramatic. People have so much resistance to trying to
learn about this issue and I've never seen a more dangerous one.

SUVs aren't the problem. The economy we use now is dependant on
growth and if you project the growth into the future and then try to
project energy resources it will use you will come up way short.

Sorry the incompetence is epidemic. See the interview in my previous
post. See the bottom of this page.

Go ahead and write then.

For us. The economny will not be saved by solar powered laundermats.

http://dieoff.org/page240.htm

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS

The Short Version, by Jay Hanson

( The Long Version is archived at http://dieoff.com/page241.htm )

(Permission to reprint explicitly granted.)

Any ONE fundamental error in neoclassical theory should be sufficient
reason to reject conclusions based upon that theory. Here are five
fundamental errors in the theory:

#1. A fundamentally incorrect "method": the economist uses
"correlation" and "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" (after-the-fact)
reasoning, rather than the "scientific method".

#2. A fundamentally inverted worldview: the economist sees the
environment as a subsystem of the economy, rather than the other way
around. In other words, economists are trained to believe that natural
resources come from "markets" rather than the "environment". The
corollary is that "man-made capital" can substitute for "natural
capital". But the First Law of thermodynamics tells us there is no
"creation" -- there is no such thing as "man-made capital". Thus, ALL
capital is "natural capital", and the economy is 100% dependent on the
"environment" for everything.

#3. A fundamentally incorrect view of "money": the economist sees
"money" as nothing more than a medium of exchange, rather than as
social power -- or "political power". But even the casual observer can
see that money is social power because it "empowers" people to buy and
do the things they want -- including buying and doing other people:
politics.

If employers have the freedom to pay workers less "political power",
then they will retain more political power for themselves. Money is,
in a word, "coercion", and "economic efficiency" is correctly seen as
a political concept designed to conserve social power for those who
have it -- to make the politically powerful, even more powerful, and
the politically weak, even weaker.

#4. A fundamentally incorrect view of his raison d'etre: the economist
sees "Homo economicus" as a "Bayesian utility maximizer", rather than
"Homo sapiens" as a "primate". In other words, contemporary economics
and econometrics is WRONG from the bottom up -- and economists know
it. The entire discipline of economics is based on a lie -- and
economists know it. Moreover, if human behavior is not the result of
mathematical calculation -- and it isn't -- then in principle,
economists will NEVER get it right.

#5. A fundamentally incorrect view of economic élan vital: the
economist sees economic activity as a function of infinite "money
creation", rather than a function of finite "energy stocks" and finite
"energy flows". In fact, the economy is 100% dependent on available
energy -- it always has been, and it always will be. See a synopsis of
the current energy situation at http://dieoff.com/synopsis.htm .

Baby Peanut wrote:
Sure, and the higher price of oil the more the return gap closes.

Research is also improving the return. Solar is now twice as efficient
as it was 10 years ago and they expect it to become even more
efficient. In addition, manufacturing processes are becoming less
costly (what word am I looking for here, but I think the sense comes
through) and thus reducing the cost per kilowatt hour. When it becomes
feasible to recoup initial costs in 4-5 years (semi/completely off the
grid vs. costs paid to PG&E) then I'll think quite seriously of doing
it.

I looked at putting a solar-wind combo on my roof 7-8 years ago, since
I'm on the edge of the sun belt here in SF. Catch the sun on days; and
dark days, as well as evenings there's usually a 5-12mph onshore breez.
It was $22,000. I looked at it again during the 2001 crisis and it was
$14,000 and much more efficient. Still too high, but moving in the
right direction.

And how long does a wind generator last?

What about wave generators?

I'd ask about geothermal, but if that was really worthwhile on a large
scale the preent Administration would be digging in generators in
Yellowstone Park and selling the contracts to the Texas energy/oil
companies.

Heh. remember the scene in Thunderdome where the city's energy was run
from the energy produced by a pig herd's methane?

If you haven't noticed, oil is expensive these days.

So what's your solution? Drop everything else in this and say, "nothing
works." Then, what will?

Somewhat melodramatic, and that was my first response, actually, but it
read like it was being dismissive.

That's capitalism, yes.

Again, what would by your idea for a solution?

Yes it is. For many years the educational system has specialized in
producing Gammas, who are literate enough to read, but not comprehend
and trained not to think to put the ladder under the banana. As well as
Deltas who are simply mindless McLaborers.

I'm using that as an example of how individual efforts can assist.
Think about if every laundromat in Southern California and the southwest
were solar. That's a hell of a lot of hot water.

Think about the flexible single/double/triple solar panels being
developed. Wrap one around a telephone or existing power pole and feed
it into the grid.... how many of those in your city? (poles that is).
Think about power hogs such as public swimming pools, not to mention
private ones.

It's my belief the problem doesn't have one single solution but many,
all working to the same goal.

baby_p_nut2@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) wrote:

I'm not sure just exactly what the *huge* quote was supposed to
demonstrate, but I can easily show just one particular thing
that it highlights very nicely:

People who want simple answers to complex problems (we also
tend to call them "conservatives") usually don't care whether
the answers they get are correct, or not, or whether the
people they put their faith in have any integrity at all.

Here we have "Baby Peanut" posting to Usenet, apparently
thinking that Mike Ruppert can select an honest person with
correct answers to tell us the true facts. And Rupper gives
us... Matthew Simmons.

Simmons gives us a load of *bullshit*!

But given this first paragraph, I fail to understand why anyone
would expect truth to come from him. Is Baby Peanut just naive?

Does *anything* above suggest this guy is more interested in
money or more oil compared to describing reality about oil
production?????

Or are we really all that stone dumb?

You want proof? All it takes is looking, and I'll trim out just
one part of this.

....

What point can there be in paying attention to anyone who is so
*clearly* ignoring facts?

"Drilling there should not have a negative impact on the
coastal plains of the Arctic."

Well, it certainly won't negatively impact the Central Siberian
Coastal plain, or perhaps the northern plain of Greenland. But
included in the many many "coastal plains of the Arctic" is the
coastal plain of ANWR.

Anyone who says there would be no negative impact from oil
development in ANWR is one of a) a total idiot, b) abjectly
ignorant, c) an unabashed liar (or d, all of the above, eh?).

We have 30 some years of biology studies of the effects of oil
production 100 miles away at Prudhoe Bay, where the negative
impact has been *huge* (tolerable, but huge none the less). We
*know positively* that certain things happen when oil
development takes place on an Arctic coastal plain, and claiming
it is not negative is absurd. (They have *400* some toxic
spills each year in the Prudhoe Bay industrial complex! Not
negative???)

The question is not is it negative or not, but is it tolerable.
And in the case of ANWR it is *not tolerable* for a number of
reasons. Those reasons have to do with differences in various
areas of the Arctic. For example the nearness of the Brooks
Range, which at Prudhoe Bay is 150-200 miles distant, compared
to 15-45 miles in ANWR. Other differences are the number of
animals using an area and the alternative places for those
animals to go if displaced (for caribou in ANWR, as one example,
there are 4-6 times as many and there is *no* alternate area,
while caribou farther west at Prudhoe Bay are not only fewer but
have vast alternate locations).

These facts are not disputable. I can dump several *pages* of
bibliography listing the reports generated by the USFWS and the
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) studies that have been
and are ongoing. (All, incidentally, done by people funded from
oil money who would *love* find ways to safely produce oil in
ANWR.) The simple fact is there is not a *single* biologist
that has done field work in the Arctic who supports drilling for
oil in ANWR. Not one. They (and there are dozens) are
unanimously opposed because of the negative impact on the
coastal plain of ANWR.

Yet we have idiots saying there will be no negative impact and
being quoted as "experts". They are *liars*, and they don't
give a damned what it costs you, as long as they put more money
in *their* pockets!

So why do you believe them?

--
FloydL. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 10:38:28 -0700, Brian Mailman
<bmailman@sfo.invalid> wrote:

snip...
I'd say this is NOT entirely true on a global scale re SUVs. I'd also
say this almost completely off topic!! (Well, OK, it's true that
lacking energy, production facilities of all kinds will be seriously
affected.) But fascinating...

First, we can CERTAINLY save an enormous amount of oil in the US by
increasing engine efficiencies. The US consumes a hugely
disproportionate amount of energy and there are ways to conserve. The
combustion engine industry must face this.

However, we are probably approaching global peak production and these
estimates have been made by some industry people, not
environmentalists. So indeed, we ARE facing the end of the Oil Era.

The developing world uses lots of diesel with horrific environmental
consequences. I can see one way to reduce that problem is to take all
those "tuk-tuks" or auto-rickshaws and mopeds/motorcycles and such and
slap a flexible solar panel on them, turn them electric or something.
That could reduce emissions enormously and save the world some...

Second area is in energy storage. We are making grindingly slow
progress in producing superconducting supercoils that operate in "high
termperature" conditions. If we can produce such wiring, we could
store energy MUCH more efficiently and this again saves a huge amount.
Something like 30%? Not sure.

Fiinally, the population of the planet is bursting at the seems. We
need to have population reduction programs GLOBALLY. AIDS, war,
disease--these are pretty miserable and ineffective methods. So we
must stop the AIDS, war, disease and grow up as a species. Countries
like Iran have had very successful population control programs,
including condom distribution, vasectomies (voluntary) and so forth.
Of all places! We could learn from them.

Critically, having more people be gay will offset the maxim that
heterosexuality on an overpopulated planet is a psychosocial disorder!
WE RECRUIT!! (Where's my copy of that Gay Agenda...let's see what's on
for today...)

that little treatise on economists was very intriguing! Thanks!

George M. Carter

GMCarter wrote:
The above sentence was Baby Peanut, not me...

B/

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 09:48:18 -0700, Brian Mailman
<bmailman@sfo.invalid> wrote:

Yeah, sure, Brian. We KNOW you own sixteen SUVs and a fleet of
cadillacs!! C'mon!! Fess up!!!

Oh, wait--that's Baby Peanut at the door to pick me up in his '57
Chevy gas hog deluxe!!!

George Mary

GMCarter <fiar@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<bko2d0hd9khnfiicd02cu3c91icotr73vd@4ax.com>. ..
The topic was the collapse of the manufacturing industries leading to
the end of the production of HAART.

Suburban sprawl causes much of this. Have to use a car to do anything
outside the house and yard. More walkable living designs are needed.
Even just plotzing a school and a shopping center next to each other
would be a great improvement.

Yes, no more oil for plastic bottles to put pills in, etc.

Trains. Used to be that suburbia was light rail-based but a cartel
took care of making sure only cars and busses were used.

Which will happen first? Sustaned fusion reaction, room-temperature
superconductors, or wide spread anihilation?

er, seams. In any case it was industrialization that enabled the
human race to go from 800 million in 1800 to seven billion in 2010.
Once the plug is pulled things will return to "normal" the hard way.

*holds breath*
*turns blue*
*falls down*
*starts breathing again*

Did we learn anything from Iraq while I was holding my breath and
waiting?

See below.

Maybe we learned something from Iraq. Maybe we learned it's hard to
have a war over oil because oil fields and pipelines are easy to
sabotage.

Repairs to Sabotaged Pipeline Are Delayed
By JAMES GLANZ

Published: June 20, 2004

ZUBAYR, Iraq, June 19 — The gash in a critical pipeline that saboteurs
struck four days ago remained submerged in a vast lake of crude oil on
Saturday, defying attempts at repairs that would get the oil moving
again to tankers in the Persian Gulf.

In southern summer heat of at least 120 degrees, with great plumes of
flames and smoke at refineries dotting the horizon of a parched and
desolate plain, workers at times moved so slowly that they seemed to
be mirages. The pace frustrated American military and private
engineers who were there to drain the lake so that repairs could
proceed.

"It's just really a logistical nightmare to work here," said Michael
Doherty of the Army Corps of Engineers, a resident engineer on an oil
infrastructure restoration in the south, who had led a convoy of
pumps, lights and cranes across nearly impassable roads. "You don't
have it, you can't go back for it."

At the same time, suspicions grew here that the attack on this
pipeline last Tuesday, and on another large pipeline the day before,
were in effect inside jobs, explosions so carefully placed in the
barely comprehensible web of Iraqi pipelines that only someone with
expert knowledge could have directed the work. The attacks shut down
exports from Iraq's southern oil fields, which are by far its most
productive.

"They must have had help from someone who knew very well where the
pipelines were, said a civil engineer with the Southern Oil Company
who would not give his name. Asked whether the help would have had to
come from someone now active in the company, the engineer said,
"Perhaps."

The engineer said that repairs on the second sabotaged pipeline were
more advanced, with 90 percent of the work completed. He said that it
could begin carrying oil within a few days, possibly Sunday.

The daylong ordeal produced little more than plans to begin pumping
the lakes the next day, and it underscored the dilapidated state of
Iraq's oil infrastructure. One reason the strikes were able to shut
down the system is that valves in the pipelines, meant to isolate
breaches, are broken down, ineffective or missing.

"I think it's probably normal in Iraq because the designed systems
weren't very good," said Lyle Nelson, a Halliburton engineer who
arrived late in the day to lend advice on the pumping project.

The delays and technical problems near Zubayr, the air filled with the
sickly sweet smell of evaporating crude, also revealed some of the
other challenges Iraq faces in preserving its oil infrastructure
against determined and sophisticated saboteurs.

Rare equipment for stopping oil leaks did not arrive. Convoys with
both equipment and technical experts took hours to organize as
security consultants scurried about in the heat. At least one vehicle
got stuck on the ravaged Iraqi roads. The Americans once threatened to
drive off if Iraqis who were smoking and using spark-prone pumps near
the sea of oil did not pull their equipment back.

The oil continued to bubble and ripple above the submerged breach in
the pipeline, creating a deep canal of oil perhaps a quarter of a mile
long and dozens of strangely shaped lakes — some vaguely in the shape
of sand traps at golf courses — that seemed to go on forever.

The black pools alternately evoked Armageddon and Jed Clampett, the
poor mountaineer in the television situation comedy who discovered oil
bubbling up on his land while hunting, became rich and moved his
family to Beverly Hills.

No security was obvious in the desolate emptiness, except for Ghurkas,
working for a private security company, who were there to protect the
Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors, Halliburton and Kellogg,
Brown & Root.

"We are trying studying security plans now," said Sheik Jabbar Ali
al-Luabi, director general of the Southern Oil Company, which is
responsible for the main repairs. "After we finish them, we will
announce them."

Mr. Nelson said that, partly because it was so hard to isolate
breached sections, the immediately affected part of the pipeline was
30 miles long. That length of the pipeline, which is 48 inches in
diameter, would contain about 370,000 barrels oil if it were full, he
said. Unless the pipeline could be plugged, it would all have to spill
out before repairs could start.

The day began at an Army Corps base near the Basra Airport — the large
city of Basra is less than 10 miles away — where there are loads of
equipment for the operation and sport utility vehicles with engineers
and managers.

The convoy took until just after noon to get started, and then it
encountered the jouncing, potholed back roads leading to the breach.
The convoy crept by a smoldering junkyard being picked over by Iraqis.
A donkey hitched to a cart waited patiently for its master.

Around 1:15 the convoy arrived at the breach. About 35 Iraqi workers
were laboring slowly in the heat, many wearing blue jumpers with SOC
in white on the back — for Southern Oil Company.

By 2 p.m., an earth mover had begun pushing dirt across the canal of
oil to form a dam. The idea was to isolate the breach, then plug the
pipeline with inflatable balloons called stopples. But word soon came
over a radio that no stopples for pipelines this large could be found
in Iraq or in the region on short notice.

The dam took about an hour to finish, and Iraqi workers gradually
sucked oil from one pit that looked like a swimming hole. The pipeline
— but not the broken section — was exposed below, as oil seeped out of
the surrounding soil and again accumulated in the bottom of the pit.

As the work slowed even further, two SOC workers debated whether this
pipeline had been sabotaged or simply ruptured because it was so old
and corroded. One of the workers, named Adnan, appeared to win the
debate by pointing out that a motorcycle battery used to set off the
charge had been found nearby.

A local engineer said that the saboteurs had dug a hole and set the
charges — the pipeline is buried about six feet below the surface.

"And we find pieces of clay and mud as if thrown out," Adnan said,
explaining one result of the blast.

The Iraqi and Army Corps engineers were awaiting the arrival of the
experts from Halliburton when the radio cracked. "We're not good shape
here," someone said on the other end. "We're stuck."

A KBR engineer, standing in the dizzying fumes generated by
evaporation of the oil, swore. The Halliburton engineers finally
arrived, but then the dispute over safety broke out. A spark, the
American engineers said, could create a huge fireball.

As the Iraqis sullenly pulled their equipment back after 6 p.m., the
workday ended. It was not safe to drive in this area in the dark, Mr.
Doherty said, so it was time to go.

On 19 Jun 2004 19:08:30 -0700, baby_p_nut2@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut)
wrote:

snip
LOL. So?

If oil is globally conserved through much higher efficiency engines,
industry for ARV or other pharmaceutical drug production will not
collapse so soon. Let alone manufacture of a whole HOST of products
(including the plastic bottles that keep drugs from air/light).

Excellent point!! I couldn't agree more...and again, this is another
piece in the complex set of solutions to a simple problem (reduced
energy access/oil).

Yep!

YES! NYC had streetcars for years, but Ford et al., supposedly forced
the city to get rid of them in favor of gas guzzling buses (which
usually are slower than WALKING. I only take the subway).


Take yer bets! Sustained fusion reaction is coming in at 75:4 while
room-temperature superconductors are a favorite at 27:11!! Odds on
annihilation have been put on hold til after the elections...but a
Bush win brings the odds WAY up!!

LOL...yes, thanks. That's why I recommend being gay as a more humane
response...

Whee!

That Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Piles, et al. are a bunch of lying,
murdering, criminal thieves?

That one too. Even as the US endeavors to steal it all, making the lot
and life of the poorest even more difficult and full of suffering.

George M. Carter

GMCarter <fiar@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<vtpad0d921004gqu050vn14i1rlgndudge@4ax.com>. ..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2946671a13,00.html

'Fill 'er up' becomes the unlikely battle cry of Car Wars
20 June 2004

By FINLAY MACDONALD
Have you, like me, been experiencing a sharp stabbing pain in the
wallet each time you fill the car up?

Normally I don't register those little fluctuations in the price of
petrol. But now, as the meter ticks ever higher before that click-off
mechanism on the nozzle activates, one has more time to contemplate
the complex geopolitical connection between your guzzling gas tank and
the rulers of the global oil economy.

Standing in that bland suburban forecourt, you are briefly but
directly plugged into that tumultuous world of occupation, resistance,
bombing and execution that might otherwise just be part of the media
wallpaper.

There are many factors influencing the cost of a litre of gas, some of
them merely the perennial machinations of the oil cartels that can
turn supply and demand off and on like the valves on their wells. But
shadowing every move by OPEC now is the spectre of the masked
extremist and suicide bomber.

After the recent attack by suspected al Qaeda gangsters in Saudi
Arabia, for instance, already inflated crude oil prices shot to record
highs almost instantly. This was not part of George Bush's game plan.
The liberation of Iraq's oil fields was meant to have improved flows
to the west and brought down prices. Instead they have increased by 50
per cent.

Depending on who you read, prices are expected to decrease slightly
once speculation and hedging against future "uncertainties"
diminishes, and what is known as the "terrorist premium" (fill 'er
up!) reduces. But that is also predicated on attacks on oil
infrastructure and personnel not getting worse or – horror of horrors
– actually causing the fall of the Saudi regime. As I write, pipelines
are burning in southern and northern Iraq, another group of foreign
contractors has been blown up in Baghdad and the markets are
responding "nervously".

Now, you might assume governments will begin to act in the interests
of consumers when oil supply fluctuations start to bite. After all,
inflation's no good for anyone, is it? Perhaps. But there is also the
possibility we're living through the early phases of something much
bigger than just another temporary "crisis" and which history will
record as a turning point.

And that's how we deal with the coming and predictable scarcity of
fossil fuels.

You may have already heard of a thing called "Hubbert's peak". Hubbert
was the geologist who (along with later analysts who revised his
figures) more or less accurately predicted when global oil production
would hit its maximum output – around 2006-2010. Once over this peak,
with demand steadily outstripping supply, prices will inevitably
climb. For a world obsessed with growth and globalisation, the
potential consequences are dire – and a little harder to fix than by
car pooling in the Auckland rush hour.

China, for instance, is on track to overtake the US, Europe and Japan
for new automobile consumption. The only question, if Hubbert was
right, is whether the factories making the cars will run out of oil
before the cars they make run out of affordable petrol. (Which might,
after all, save us all from choking the planet or cooking the climate
in the first place, but let's not complicate matters.)

One way to deal with the problem, of course, is to do what the
oil-crazed oligarchs of Washington appear to have opted for: draw a
map of the world's strategic oil and gas reserves and transport
routes, then find excuses to launch wars or counter-insurgencies in
the hot spots. From the Straits of Malucca to the Middle East to
central Asia to Latin America, the US has been increasing its military
presence in oil and energy rich neighbourhoods.

I realise the blood-for-oil explanation is looked on in some quarters
as the ultimate conspiracy theory. But, as historian and writer Mike
Davis recently suggested, the uncanny congruence of the "war on
terror" with the bits of the globe you might stick a drill into or
build a pipeline across, certainly doesn't do anything to dispel it.

From the imperial-warrior point of view, such a solution to an
impending oil famine is entirely logical - location, location,
location in khaki. The net result, though, is to protect the
investment and future profits of the cartels and their viziers at the
expense of global security, social development and environmental
sustainability.

As Davis also points out, "The rising value of an increasingly scarce
resource is a form of monopoly rent." If it meant a permanent crude
price rise to $US50 per barrel, it would equate to transferring "at
least $US1 trillion per decade from consumers to oil producers. In
plain English, this would be the greatest robbery by a rentier elite
in world history. Someday, Enron may seem like the equivalent of a
liquor store hold-up by comparison".

Likewise, someday, the current unpleasantness in the Middle East and
elsewhere may seem like merely the opening skirmishes in this
century's defining conflict. Car Wars rather than star wars.

GMCarter <fiar@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<s6q3d0lap8pej9v1mg7vaij2ha9vhdv0b7@4ax.com>. ..
Couldn't be, there's no gas left.

Subject: down from 1.6m barrels/day to 30,000

ADVERTISEMENT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3825155.stm

Iraq resumes southern oil exports

Iraq has started exporting oil again from two southern terminals after
attacks by saboteurs last week.

Officials said loading started at 0900 (0500 GMT) at Basra terminal
and the smaller Khor al-Amaya terminal.

One of two damaged pipelines has been repaired, they said, but oil is
being exported at a rate of 1m barrels a day.

Iraq's main source of income comes from oil sales, but insurgents
fighting the US occupation have repeatedly attacked Iraq's oil
infrastructure.

The latest attacks cut off all crude oil exports from the two southern
terminals which had been handling virtually all the country's exports.

They had been exporting 1.6m barrels of oil a day and the aim was to
increase output to 2m barrels a day by 30 June, when the US-led
coalition is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi
government.

Crippled exports

"We started loading Basra Light at 0900 Baghdad time (0500 GMT),"
Reuters news agency quoted an Iraqi official as saying.

"We are exporting at around 30,000 barrels per hour and will stay at
this rate for the next few days until repairs are finished on the
second pipeline."

Apart from the attacks on oil installations in the south, a pipeline
in northern Iraq was bombed last Tuesday, even though exports there
had already been crippled as a result of previous attacks.

The pipeline from the oil fields around Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey
has barely been in operation since the March 2003 US-led invasion
because of repeated sabotage.

Iraqi oil exports are still below the pre-war level, even though a
14,000-strong Iraqi guard force has been set up specifically to
protect pipelines and other vital parts of the oil infrastructure.

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says pipeline sabotage has cost the
country more than $200m in lost revenues over the past seven months.

With global demand for oil remaining strong, international markets can
not easily cope with a prolonged interruption, says the BBC's
economics correspondent.

--------------------------------

Subject: Russian oil pipeline ruptures; authorities suspect terrorism


http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/mon/jun21w33.htm

Russian oil pipeline ruptures; authorities suspect terrorism
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - An oil pipeline ruptured and caught fire
Sunday in the restive southern Russian region of Dagestan in what
authorities said might have been a terrorist attack.

About 60 metric tonnes of oil leaked from the Tikhoretsk-Baku pipeline
in Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, after the early morning rupture,
said Sergei Petrov, duty officer at the Emergency Situations
Ministry's southern regional office.

He said the spill covered an area of about 5,000 square metres and
erupted into a massive fire. Fire fighters managed to extinguish the
flames just before dawn.

An explosion is considered one of the most likely causes, Petrov said.
Russia's main security agency, the Federal Security Service, and the
Interior Ministry are investigating. Environmental protection
officials were also on the scene to assess the damage to the soil
around the oil spill.

"It is obvious that the pipeline was damaged as a result of external
factors," Omaroskhab Khadzhialiyev, an oil official with
Chernomorsktransneft, was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.
"It is up to the investigators to find out whether it was blown up or
shelled from automatic weapons."

Chechen rebel leaders have threatened and been blamed for attacks
against pipelines, electricity pylons and other infrastructure in
Russia.

Dagestan, a volatile, ethnically mixed Caspian Sea region, also is
frequently rocked by explosions and other violence committed by
homegrown criminal groups, in addition to spill over from the war in
Chechnya.

---------------------

http://www.gateway2russia.com/st/art_243890.php

21 June 2004 09:50
Explosion hits Azeri oil pipeline in Russia
An explosion hit a pipeline taking oil from Azerbaijan across Russia
for export early on Sunday, causing a fire and sending tonnes of crude
spewing out, emergency ministry officials said. The explosion occurred
at about 1 a.m. in the southern Russian region of Dagestan about 180
km (112 miles) from the Azeri capital of Baku, a regional ministry
spokesman said.

"There was an explosion on the Baku-Tikhoretsk pipeline. The automatic
protection system went immediately into operation and the damaged
section shut down," the spokesman told Reuters. About 2.5 million
tonnes of Azeri oil is pumped through the pipeline every year to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossisk, via Tikhoretsk, and from there
shipped to Western markets.

It was not immediately clear whether exports were affected by the
blast. The spokesman said an ensuing fire blazed for three hours
before being brought under control. "About 40 tonnes of oil leaked
out. It covers an area of approximately 4,800 square metres," the
spokesman said.

RIA Novosti news agency quoted a senior regional energy official,
Guseim Adilov, as saying the explosion had been caused deliberately by
somebody trying to syphon off oil a common practice by criminal gangs
in the region. The pipeline, that runs close to the Russian rebel
region of Chechnya, has been hit by many explosions in the past.

floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote in message news:<877ju78k34.fld@barrow.com>...
Read what was written not what you want there to have been written.
He did not say "will not" he said "should not". Makes a big
difference.

I see two possiblities. One is a great conspiracy to lie about future
shortages in an effort to drive up prices and the other is future
shortages.

What does it take to prove which one is true?

Are there other possiblities?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/SC0409/S00039.htm

<< We don't have to run out of oil for life to be up-ended. We merely
need to experience a supply squeeze and a reasonable price spike for
all the mechanisms that support our modern life to be seriously
destabilised. This situation is quickly approaching. The world is
currently experiencing growth in oil use that is stretching available
supply to the absolute limit. This is occurring when the global
production of oil is about to move over it's all time peak, after
which it will be in permanent and increasing decline. >>